Book contents
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Physical cosmology: A brief introduction
- Part II Discovery of the CMB and current cosmological orthodoxy
- Part III What constitutes an unorthodoxy? An epistemological framework of cosmology
- Part IV Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
- 11 Cold and Tepid Big Bangs
- 12 Models with unresolved sources
- 13 Thermalization by grains, the first wave
- 14 Primordial chaos
- 15 Early intergalactic medium, massive Population III objects, and the large-numbers hypothesis
- 16 Late thermalization of starlight
- 17 “An excess in moderation”
- Part V Radical unorthodoxies: The CMB without the Big Bang
- Part VI Formation of the orthodoxy and the alternatives: Epistemological lessons
- Part VII Other philosophically relevant aspects of the CMB
- Book part
- Notes
- References
- Index
13 - Thermalization by grains, the first wave
from Part IV - Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2024
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Physical cosmology: A brief introduction
- Part II Discovery of the CMB and current cosmological orthodoxy
- Part III What constitutes an unorthodoxy? An epistemological framework of cosmology
- Part IV Moderate unorthodoxies: The CMB with the Big Bang
- 11 Cold and Tepid Big Bangs
- 12 Models with unresolved sources
- 13 Thermalization by grains, the first wave
- 14 Primordial chaos
- 15 Early intergalactic medium, massive Population III objects, and the large-numbers hypothesis
- 16 Late thermalization of starlight
- 17 “An excess in moderation”
- Part V Radical unorthodoxies: The CMB without the Big Bang
- Part VI Formation of the orthodoxy and the alternatives: Epistemological lessons
- Part VII Other philosophically relevant aspects of the CMB
- Book part
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The idea that the basic features of the CMB were at least in part due to thermalization by cosmic dust was an auxiliary hypothesis to cold and tepid Big Bang explanations and later to the explanations within variants of the steady state model. David Layzer started developing his cold Big Bang views in the late 1960s, epistemically motivated by avoidance of Hot Big Bang ad hoc assumptions about initial conditions, while sticking to explanations based on regular known processes as much as possible. He argued for early favorable conditions in a cold Big Bang, which required the auxiliary of thermalization of the CMB by grains. Different physically plausible shapes of grains were devised, from hollow spheres to elongated ones, along with their different observationally plausible content. Explanations of the dust’s exact appearance during the evolution of the universe also differed.
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- The Cosmic Microwave BackgroundHistorical and Philosophical Lessons, pp. 82 - 85Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024