One of the best parts of my job is reading the kinds of news stories and articles I used to read just for fun. “Death Of The Big Bang, Or The Problem Of Time’s Beginning” by frequent Astronomy contributor and astrophysicist Adam Frank on NPR’s blog 13.7 is such a story, about various alternatives to the Big Bang. The article isn’t attacking the concepts of the universe expanding over 13.7 billion years or general cosmic evolution. Instead, according to Frank, “It’s the beginning that has fallen. It is genesis that stands ready to be replaced.”
While much of the universe’s proposed history remains uncontested, the Big Bang itself seems to be increasingly under fire. NASA
While the scientific content in Frank’s story is a little thin (he says he’ll write more in the future), I recall another recent story with a similar twist, “‘The Big Bang Never Happened’ The New Standard?” by Casey Kazan. Based on the work of Taiwanese scientist Wun-Yi Shu, Kazan explains this latest salvo against the Big Bang: Shu’s theory that “time and space are not independent entities but can be converted back and forth between each other,” with the speed of light acting as the conversion factor. It’s a theory that much data seems to support, though I must confess it sounds really weird to me. But weirder than dark energy, dark matter, or even the Big Bang must have sounded at first? Probably not.
Of course, the whole idea that legitimate scientists can argue over the beginning of the universe itself, and have proof and evidence supporting their claims, is pretty weird, too, if you think about it. Just a few hundred years ago, we were arguing about Earth and the Sun and who orbited whom, and now we’re up to the whole universe. Ah, science.
So even if you’re not required to read them for work, let me know in the comments what you make of these ideas. Is the Big Bang here to stay? Or has its time finally come?