J.R. Gott Stumped by Marshall Barnes on Coast To Coast AM - Leads to Educational Opportunity

Online, November 16, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Early yesterday morning on Coast To Coast AM, J.R. Gott had a critical flaw, that raises a number of other issues with his model of the universe "being its own mother", pointed out to him for which he was unable to respond any other way than reiterating the same flawed idea.

The caller was none other than internationally noted research and development engineer Marshall Barnes, who has become well known for his work in the advanced concept research and development area, lecturing and being the biggest challenger to Stephen Hawking, writing often about mistakes that the famed physicist has made which even high school students have seen when he has given them the chance. On Coast To Coast AM, Marshall was plain and deliberate, pointing out how Gott, and associate Li-Xin Li's proposal of an inflationary universe that creates itself is wrong. The model that Gott was promoting has various branches diverge and create baby universes - and one of the branches circles back around to become the trunk where it all began. Although Gott said his idea shows how the universe is "its own mother", Marshall deftly pointed out why this doesn't work.

"At the moment before the branch circles back, you place a video camera," the R&D engineer stated confidently, "and you can show on that video tape that there wasn't anything back there before you have this curvature begin. So you have a beginning to the universe without it creating itself."

Gott's reply was simply to ignore the point and reiterate the idea of the universe with a little time loop at the very beginning. Based on this apparent inability of Gott to understand the ramifications of his own theory, Marshall plans on writing a paper and creating a hands-on experiment for a high school class to test Gott's model, which will reveal all of its inherent flaws, and then release the video of the student's activities on the internet as part of his own educational outreach.

Marshall believes that this will all happen in early 2011 and will release an announcement once everything is in place. He states at this point he hasn't decided which school will get the project.