When some people wrote privately to protest that this ET>Big Bang stuff is all just one space bunny too far down the cosmic path, I (O’Leary for News) pointed out in response that Neil deGrasse Tyson (here), Martin Rees (here), and Elon Musk (here) have also suggested that very thing. Well, now theoretical physicist Rob Sheldon writes to offer some thoughts on the new-found popularity.
Big Bang
At Mind Matters News: Harvard astronomer: Advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang
Avi Loeb writes in Scientific American that when we humans are sufficiently advanced, we will create other universes as well.
Physicist Brian Miller reflects on claims that the universe had no beginning
Miller: 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.
Is Ethan Siegel’s Big Bang and Parallel Universes nonsense a response to Steve Meyer?
Now that Miller mentions it, several other anti-Big Bang tales have appeared recently. Perhaps the reason that all these stories seem extra-silly is that the authors are rattled.
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?
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.
Stephen Meyer: Can you have an expanding universe without a beginning?
Along the way, Meyer addresses the ideas of Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Edwin Hubble, Lawrence Krauss, Sean Carroll, and more.
At Mind Matters News: 5. Egnor, Dillahunty dispute the basic causes behind the universe
Michael Egnor: All right, then what is a singularity? If you’re saying it’s natural, what is it?
Matt Dillahunty: So first of all, you’re not talking to a cosmologist, but the-
Michael Egnor: Then why do you say it’s natural? …
[Things became quite heated at this point.]
Sabine Hossenfelder asks a curious question: Where did the Big Bang happen?
Hossenfelder: There are two warnings I have to add when it comes to the “Big Bang”. First, I don’t know anybody who actually believes that this singularity is physically real. It probably just means that Einstein’s equations break down and must be replaced by something else.
Science Uprising: The Big Bang: Something from Nothing is here
Klinghoffer: In some ways, this is a quick take on the most novel arguments in Stephen Meyer’s recent book, The Return of the God Hypothesis , but presented in a very different way.
Dinesh D’Souza on the Big Bang and Genesis
Dinesh D’Souza: Here I respond to a question from my audience about whether the Big Bang theory about the origin of the universe confirms or contradicts the biblical account of creation given in the first book of Genesis. Buckle your seatbelt!
At Evolution News: Is the universe “causally closed”?
Egnor explains why not and goes on to cite the Big Bang, singularities in black holes, and the field equations of curved space-time, quantum entanglement, and — of course — the immaterial mind.
Kirk Durston takes on Larry Krauss on whether the universe could come from nothing
Did “nothing” create the universe? Could it?
At Mind Matters News: Round 3: Egnor vs Papineau: The Big Bang has no natural beginning
David Papineau: I am not claiming that every physical event has a physical cause, because I think the Big Bang doesn’t have a cause. I think there’s some physical events that don’t have physical causes.
At Big Think: What happened before the Big Bang?
What happened before anything happened? It’s a meaningless question within itself unless one posits a First Cause or God. Science, like an afghan, tends to fray at the edges.