At Mind Matters News: Re the Webb findings uproar: Who owns the Big Bang anyhow?

Researcher and science writer Eric Lerner would never have attracted the attention he has in recent weeks if the Webb findings were not disturbing to many cosmologists:

Could it be that, as data drifts back to Earth, something is happening that is hard to put into words?

First, Lerner would never have attracted the attention he has in recent weeks if nothing were happening. His book came out twenty years ago, with no especially significant outcome.

Second, as noted earlier, there are two separate questions here: Must the universe have a beginning? Yes, if you want to avoid the impossible mathematics of infinity. But did that beginning play out just as the textbooks and popular science documentaries claim? That’s the part under discussion and many are distressed by the debate the Webb findings have inevitably created.

News, “Re the Webb findings uproar: Who owns the Big Bang anyhow?” at Mind Matters News (September 11, 2022)

Takehome: To avoid absurd “infinity” math, we just assume our universe has a beginning. But then the Webb shook up many details, creating distress and anger.

You may also wish to read: Astrophysicist: Webb finds may bring “revolutionary changes.” It doesn’t disprove the Big Bang, says Brian Koberlein… but read the fine print. Fermilab’s Don Lincoln gets the religious implications all wrong. Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder thinks we don’t know what happened and never will — and that the Big Bang is a “creation myth” in the language of math.

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