Are We Wrong About the Big Bang? Niayesh Afshordi

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For over a century, cosmologists have believed that the universe began a single fiery moment. The Big Bang. But what if that story is incomplete?

Or what if it's even wrong?

My guest today, Professor Niayesh Afshordi, is a professor of astrophysics at the Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo.

He and his colleague Bill Halpern argue that the real battle in science is over the mysteries of singularities, those points where our equations collapse and space, time and physics itself seem to break down.

In a new book, Battle of the Big Bang, they take us inside the fight to understand whether the Big Bang was truly the beginning of it all, or whether it was just one chapter in a far stranger cosmic saga.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

00:00:00 – Cosmologists no longer see the Big Bang as the beginning of time

00:11:01 – Singularity vs the later hot Big Bang phases like nucleosynthesis

00:12:13 – Survey of physicists shows “Big Bang” is understood differently

00:15:37 – Hawking and singularities

00:23:12 – Black hole information paradox remains unresolved after 50 years

00:30:26 – Religion remains a social tool

00:35:56 – The Simons Observatory was created to probe primordial gravitational waves in the CMB

00:39:50 – Scientific careers are constrained by funding and “hot topics” in research

00:41:17 – Science advances by tying ideas to observation, not just social structures

00:42:07 – Disagreement with Carlo Rovelli

00:44:54 – Competing quantum gravity models are ideas, not fully testable theories yet

00:46:14 – String theory, loop quantum gravity, and holography lack experimental evidence

00:47:55 – Cancellation of CMB Stage-4 highlights limits of experimental cosmology

00:49:14 – Afshordi views himself closer to an observer than a pure theorist

00:54:51 – Scientific progress benefits from bridging between communities

00:57:47 – Repulsive gravity in inflation avoids singularities but leaves open loopholes

01:01:00 – Singularity theorems can break down with quantum gravity or altered dimensions

01:03:05 – Our universe was born inside a black hole

01:06:16 – Future probes might let us see further back than the CMB

01:10:56 – Einstein unknowingly started the quest for quantum gravity

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Additional resources:

Get Niayesh Afshordi’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Big-Bang-Cosmic-Origins/dp/0226830470

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