Physicist Brian Miller reflects on claims that the universe had no beginning

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 19, 2021

Big Bang}

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Readers may recall that we’d noticed recently several pieces fussing that the Big Bang is a discreditable theory, despite its wide acceptance. On Saturday, Evolution News and Science Today asked whether some cosmologists were responding to Steve Meyer’s new book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, which they did not want to mention by name.

The Big Bang timeline — a world with a beginning

Can’t know for sure but the pieces were far-fetched enough to prompt some thought about the motives.

Anyway, physicist Brian Miller offers some thoughts about the piece by Paul Sutter which argues that “a cosmological model based on causal set theory demonstrates that the universe might not have had a beginning”:

Sutter asserts that Bento and Zalel’s article offers a credible response against the evidence for a cosmic beginning. Yet this claim is only based on what might be possible in the realm of the imagination. The referenced paper is a highly theoretical and entirely speculative cosmological model that is almost entirely divorced from physical reality. Sutter even acknowledges this point. …
Brian Miller, “Attempt to Explain Away the Beginning of the Universe Fails to Distinguish Imagination from Reality” at Evolution News and Science Today (October 19, 2021)

Here’s the article Sutter’s speculations are based on.

One question is, how long can the nonsense be kept going before some realities must be faced? What would it take to bring about realistic cosmology?

You may also wish to read: Another shot in the campaign against the Big Bang. Bento’s theory sounds convincing — compared to the Easter Bunny. The question we should be asking is, why is the Big Bang so unpopular with these people?

and

Ethan Siegel makes another paper assault on the Big Bang Is the Big Bang the least popular widely accepted science theory? Theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel wishes it out of existence by positing a cosmic inflation that wipes out all possibility of knowledge.

Comments

Fasteddious @5,
Perhaps I am just too simple to accept whatever sleight of mind is needed to take this multiverse hypothesis seriously?
Yeah, me too. A logical equivalent of the multiverse is a Massive Meta-cosmic Turtle (MMT hypothesis) that lays eggs, each of which is an emergent universe. The Massive Meta-cosmic Turtle came from another, Meta Meta-cosmic Turtle (MMMT) in an infinite succession. In other words, it's turtles all the way up! -QQuerius_{October 26, 2021
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I have a problem with the inflationary multiverse. As I understand it, the supposed inflation field spits out bubble universes in sequence; i.e. it seems unlikely to be able to spit out a huge number all at the same time. Meanwhile the inflation is supposedly an ongoing, super-rapid expansion in order to get our resulting bubble as a flat, uniform space-time continuum. To me that means that any bubble preceding ours would be denser than ours and hence, would probably collapse quickly. Any bubbles after ours would have to be less dense than ours and would expand rapidly without time for stars, galaxies, etc. If this simplistic argument makes sense, then the inflationary universe can only produce one - or perhaps a few - universe with the correct density, thereby destroying the reason for positing the multiverse in the first place; i.e. to "account for" the fine tuning in our universe. Then there is the question of just where this inflationary bubble mechanism resides. It would have to be outside our 4-D space-time continuum, I assume. Perhaps I am just too simple to accept whatever sleight of mind is needed to take this multiverse hypothesis seriously?Fasteddious_{October 20, 2021
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What I don't understand is how a quantum gravity (if it even exists) could exist outside of space and time, and become the causal agent for space-time, mass-energy, dark energy, dark matter, and all the laws and fine tuning in the universe. Maybe, as is the case with the multiverse, that "quantum gravity" is simply another name for God. -QQuerius_{October 20, 2021
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@2 We are discussing a causally linked succession of events within a space-time-law context. Understanding something implies putting that something in its (proper) context. And a context of an event, encapsulates an event, otherwise it is not a context. However, an infinite poses an insurmountable problem. Suppose a table in a room. If the table is infinite in size one cannot have a room which encapsulates the table. Anything which existentially resides within a space-time context cannot be infinite. Since only a finite thing can be encapsulated by a context—— only a finite thing can be within a space-time context. An infinite thing cannot be encapsulated; it never fits. An infinite within space-time is an impossibility — "similar to how we cannot ever create a square circle."Origenes_{October 20, 2021
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Once we have finite stage, causal-temporal succession of steps to now -- years for convenience -- we cannot have traversed an explicitly or implicitly transfinite past. Let the present year -- now -- be p, the bang 0 [implies a multiverse type model] and the beyond past stretches out that for any negative integer z' label for a year there are unlimited further prior years z'-1, z'-2, . . . From this, by setting Z as mileposts of R in the wider hyperreals R* we readily see that this is a claim to transfinite stepwise traverse in the past. But as time has an arrow, stepwise succession would have had to traverse a transfinite span to now. Which it cannot. Such stepwise succession can be potentially infinite beyond any particular reference point that was the actual present and succeeded to now we can pick but the actual causal-temporal stepwise succession will always be finite at any given once, current or future now. The claim of a beginningless causal-temporal past violates the logic of structure and quantity, similar to how we cannot ever create a square circle.Now we need to ask, what is it telling us that materialists are forced to suggest a cosmos from utter non being, or to suggest an implicit past transfinite traverse or the like. KFkairosfocus_{October 20, 2021
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Brian Miller cites Meyer's summarization of how cosmologist Alan Guth demonstrated that the oscillations could not continue indefinitely due to entropy. The crucial insight that * expansion means increases in entropy, which in turn means less energy available to do work in each cycle * is a death blow to any eternal oscilating universe theory, including Sutter's attempt. BTW as I have argued elsewhere, I fail to see how the 'eternal' Multiverse itself escapes the exact same problem.Origenes_{October 20, 2021
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