Actually, multiverse cosmology would make a starting point irrelevant or else subject to endless redefinition. Powell’s bookmark-able summary can’t address the problem, of course, but that’s precisely what the multiverse does. Facts no longer matter much because contradictory facts have equal status.
Big Bang
Continuing efforts to erase the beginning of time
It’s quite clear that Siegel’s objection to the idea of a beginning to the universe is philosophical. Most of the nonsense one hears, generally, can be traced to unwillingness to admit that.
Hawking’s idea that the universe had no beginning is still alive, on life support
At Quanta: After two years of sparring, the groups have traced their technical disagreement to differing beliefs about how nature works.
Rob Sheldon: The real reason there is a crisis in cosmology
Nearly everything that has failed about the Big Bang model has been added because of bad metaphysics, a refusal to accept the consequences of a beginning. The remaining pieces of the Big Bang model that are failing and which can’t be attributed to bad metaphysics, were added from sheer laziness.
At Scientific American: Understanding the cosmology crisis
All that said, faith in mathematics is better than faith in a lucky rabbit’s foot because the mathematics might make sense someday.
Researcher: Finding helium hydride today confirms its presence from within 100,000 years of the Big Bang
Compared to evidence-free claims about the multiverse, news about the filling in of the missing pieces of Big Bang cosmology attracts little attention. Could that be because, however well-attested, the Big Bang is unpopular among cosmologists? (Due, we are told, to its apparent theistic implications.)
Researchers: Universe’s proposed first chemical detected for the first time
Researcher: The lack of evidence of HeH+ caused some doubts whether we do understand the formation and destruction of this special molecule as well as we thought,’ Güsten tells Chemistry World. ‘This concern is gone now.’
Hugh Ross: How recent measurements support the Big Bang theory
Maybe the cosmologists who don’t like the theistic implications of the Big Bang can overthrow the current universe and appoint another one?
Logic & First Principles, 17: Pondering the Hyperreals *R with Prof Carol Wood (including Infinitesimals)
Dr Carol Wood of Wesleyan University (a student of Abraham Robinson who pioneered non-standard analysis 50+ years ago) has discussed the hyperreals in two Numberphile videos: First: Extended: Wenmackers may also be helpful: In effect, using Model Theory (thus a fair amount of protective hedging!) or other approaches, one may propose an “extension” of the […]
Are the best measurements to date deepening the “cosmological crisis”?
Two things many cosmologists would like to get rid of are the Big Bang and apparent fine-tuning of the universe. Telling a different story is difficult mainly due to lack of evidence for a different story but they can make do with discrepancies. But then maybe the years have made some of us cynical.
At Forbes: The “miracle” hope for finding the dark matter of the universe is dead
The WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive particles) model has just not worked out: We understand how the Standard Model particles behave. We have solid predictions for how they should interact through all of the fundamental forces, and experimental confirmation of those theories. We also have extraordinary constraints on how they’re permitted to interact in a beyond-the-Standard-Model […]
We actually don’t know the precise value of the Hubble Constant
Thank goodness we were never in any danger of running out of end-of-the-universe/world/world-as-we-know-it scenarios anyway.
Bill Nye’s “Christianity vs. the Big Universe” myth
“The big universe is a problem for Christianity” is a claim something like “They’re out there” (meaning ET). It has nothing to do with facts; it is pure social positioning (or posturing). As with the Cosmos’s series’s “artistic license to lie,” it is a way of indicating that their social position is so powerful that they can misrepresent people.
Rob Sheldon responds to cosmologist Sean Carroll’s 19 True Facts of Cosmology
Sean Carroll, an avowed atheist in the “scientism” camp of Bill Nye and Jerry Coyne, has made a list of apologia for the Big Bang (hereafter BB). You might wonder why there needs to be any apology at all if, as he himself says, “We have overwhelming evidence that it is true.”
Will the Large Hadron Collider doom particle physics?
They’ll find the money to continue. Consider: The Standard Model begins with the hated Big Bang. Nothing that supports string theory, eternal cosmic inflation, or a multiverse has been found. Don’t many people just have to keep looking and keep quiet about what they find that wasn’t what they hoped for?