Cosmology; importance of a beginning (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, May 07, 2019, 14:57 (2028 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTES from Ekeberg: Born out of a cosmic explosion 13.8 billion years ago, the universe rapidly inflated and then cooled, it is still expanding at an increasing rate and mostly made up of unknown dark matter and dark energy … right?
This well-known story is usually taken as a self-evident scientific fact, despite the relative lack of empirical evidence—and despite a steady crop of discrepancies arising with observations of the distant universe.

“…”the cosmos is unlike any scientific subject matter on earth. A theory of the entire universe, based on our own tiny neighborhood as the only known sample of it, requires a lot of simplifying assumptions. When these assumptions are multiplied and stretched across vast distances, the potential for error increases, and this is further compounded by our very limited means of testing.

QUOTE from Sheldon: "The edifice of the Big Bang has some serious cracks in it. It isn’t that physics models have to be perfect, but this one is so essential to the entire field, there’s a feeling of the ground shifting under the cosmologists feet."

DAVID: I should note that Rob Sheldon accepts that God exists. He is a research cosmologist and has worked on the Planck findings. My view is take a neutral view of science, neither pro-God or anti-God and study the results. Underlying bias has no place in scientific thinking about cosmology or evolution as we have discussed.

dhw: Thank you for these very important articles. It is clear that both authors are sceptical about the Big Bang theory and all the theories derived from it. Of course that doesn’t mean it is wrong, but it is certainly not to be regarded as scientific fact, despite the many text books which present it as such. For what it’s worth, I have always been sceptical of the very concept of a beginning out of nothing. Until today, you have argued that only your eternal God, who is pure energy, could have preceded the Big Bang. I have proposed that whether there was a Big Bang or not, the universe has always existed in the form of energy and matter constantly changing itself. Once again, thank you for drawing our attention to this welcome challenge to current scientific dogma.

Thank you. The expanding universe gives rise to the theory , which tries to answer the question, expanding from what? Einstein's theories lead to singularity, but what is missing is quantum gravity, which doesn't want to fit into the studies.