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Episode Description
Get Dr. Brian Keating’s NEW Book for Only 0.99! This week only: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FN8DH6SX?ref_=pe_93986420_775043100
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
Get Dr. Brian Keating’s NEW Book for Only 0.99! This week only: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FN8DH6SX?ref_=pe_93986420_775043100
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