Yes, the Big Bang could be wrong, but what would that really mean?

Big Bang/NASA

Like every “defining narrative,” the Big Bang could be wrong. But what prompts us to think it is wrong?

To modern cosmologists, the Big Bang is a model describing how the universe expanded from an extremely hot, dense early state into the reality that we see today. The evidence for this interpretation overwhelming. Certainly, nothing else has come anywhere close in the last 50 years, even as our knowledge about the universe has grown tremendously…

At the same time, it is important to be open about how much we don’t know. It is not only possible, it is absolutely certain that our understanding of the Big Bang is incomplete.

Cosmic inflation is a widely accepted theory about what happened during the first fraction of a second during the Big Bang, but it is not proven. The current dispute over the cosmic expansion rate may be a reflection of our ignorance about that early era. Why and how the Big Bang occurred are complete mysteries. You may have heard cosmologists speculate about the “multiverse,” or about the idea of an oscillating universe with many beginnings, or about a collision between two membranes of reality that created our universe. Nobody knows which of these ideas, if any, is correct. But what they all have in common is that they all accept the evidence that our current universe emerged from an intensely hot, dense early state—which is to say, they all take the Big Bang as their starting point.

Corey S. Powell, “Could the Big Bang be Wrong?” at Discover Magazine

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. And in the current environment, that would be such welcome news to so many.

See also: Continuing efforts to erase the beginning of time

The Big Bang: Put simply,the facts are wrong.

and

The multiverse is science’s assisted suicide

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