CCC2, Final Day

I had the privilege of speaking the final slot of the whole conference. This had the advantage that many of the previous speakers had already covered much of the background to my topic during their presentations, so I was able to devote more time to the key points in my own presentation.  The presentation itself went well I think, and the feedback was certainly very positive, although I'm not sure how many participants actually understood all the implications of what I was saying.  Anyway, the questions were all intelligent enough.

One of the other presenters on the same session as me was a professor from Connecticut University whose work I had been following for many years, and who I had previously regarded as some sort of rival.  During the conference I had got to know him quite well ant it turned out he was an ex-Brit who had moved to the US about 40 years ago. He actually remembered corresponding with me when I was at Imperial and we had some good discussion about cosmology as a whole, and the quality (or otherwise) of the various presentations at the conference.   Although the details of his model are slightly different to mine, he was very supportive and offered to help me publish in the future if I encountered any difficulty in finding a suitable outlet.  He even offered me some constructive advice for improving the maths in my model. In the end we parted on the best of terms and will probably collaborate on something in the future.

Not surprisingly, there was no consensus on anything at the end of the conference. Everyone who came with their own theory stuck to it doggedly and would not concede any common ground to anyone else's theory.  The objective of the conference had been to find a way of switching public debate away from the discredited Big Bang model of cosmology, but which is doomed to fail unless we can come up with a coherent alternative. In this respect, the conference was a failure, and it is not clear how the Alternative Cosmology Group will take things forward from here.

From a personal point of view, it was invaluable. I met several professional scientists who provided useful advice and are keen to keep in contact after the conference to exchange data and theoretical models.  It has helped me to catch up with the latest developments in cosmology that have taken place in the six years since I left Imperial. It has provided several leads that I need to follow up to see how my model stacks up against various unexplained observational data.  I am not sure if or when there will be another CCC, but I have accepted initiations to two other theoretical physics conferences next year, which should be more than enough to keep me up-to-date. Now I need to get writing my next paper.

More CCC2 photos