Do We Have the Big Bang Theory All Wrong?
BY MARK ANDERSON
ll that Hans-Jörg Fahr wants is for someone to prove him wrong. A professor of astrophysics at the University of Bonn in Germany, he has taken a stand against nearly the entire field of cosmology by claiming that the diffuse glow of background microwave radiation which bathes the sky is not, as is commonly believed, a distant echo of the Big Bang, the universe’s fiery moment of creation. The idea held by the cosmology community that tiny temperature fluctuations in this microwave background tell us about the clumpiness of the early universe, he says, is wrong. The rank and file cosmologist may as well be doing Rorschach tests.
Understandably, his ideas have met with skepticism among many. Glenn Starkman, a professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, puts it this way: “If you seek to replace a successful theory with an alternative, then [you] must demonstrate that your alternative explains a similarly full range of phenomena… In this task [Fahr and his colleagues] have not done due diligence.” But at the same time, Fahr’s ideas are rooted in physics that has already been proven in other systems, and they make falsifiable predictions. Pressed to defend his controversial position, the unorthodox theorist stands his ground. Whether he likes it or not, Fahr has become a cosmological iconoclast.
It didn’t start this way for Fahr. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Fahr says he wholeheartedly supported the conventional Big Bang models of the universe while he pursued his own research into space physics. He’s made important contributions to the study of the solar wind (the stream of electrons and protons issuing from the sun) and the far solar system, where the solar wind slams into the gas and dust of interstellar space. He coined the term “heliopause” to describe this border region, which the Voyager spacecraft are now exploring today. When he turned 65 in 2005, Fahr’s colleagues organized a symposium in his honor that focused on unsolved problems in solar wind physics. A colleague of Fahr’s at the University of Bonn describes him as “one of the cleverest people around here.”
In parallel with his successes in the physics of the solar wind, Fahr also pursued a more unorthodox line of inquiry. In the 1990s he became aware of what were, in his opinion, curious gaps in the standard interpretation of the cosmic microwave background. The universe is a clumpy place, filled with vast voids interspersed with narrow, stringy filaments of galaxies and galaxy clusters. Yet the microwave background is staggeringly uniform in temperature, to one part in 1,000. Cosmologists usually assume that the microwave background’s homogeneity reflects the homogeneity of the universe as it was shortly after the Big Bang. To get from this smooth-as-cream beginning to today’s spotty universe full of voids and filaments, cosmologists add a clumping agent to their model: mysterious dark matter particles, whose existence remains unconfirmed.
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http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/do-we-have-the-big-bang-theory-all-wrong
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--imm
Me either, but I'd go for something a little catchier. Maybe the "Fahr Flung Theory". 
if you enjoy the English's use of English, it is a great read
