Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published July 2017 | public
Journal Article

POP goes the universe

Abstract

The origins of space and time are among the most mysterious and contentious topics in science. Our February 2017 article "Pop Goes the Universe" argues against the dominant idea that the early cosmos underwent an extremely rapid expansion called inflation. Its authors instead advocate for another scenario—that our universe began not with a bang but with a bounce from a previously contracting cosmos. In the letter below, a group of 33 physicists who study inflationary cosmology respond to that article. It is followed by a reply from the authors. In "Pop Goes the Universe," by Anna Ijjas, Paul J. Steinhardt and Abraham Loeb, the authors (hereafter "IS&L") make the case for a bouncing cosmology, as was proposed by Steinhardt and others in 2001. They close by making the extraordinary claim that inflationary cosmology "cannot be evaluated using the scientific method" and go on to assert that some scientists who accept inflation have proposed "discarding one of [science's] defining properties: empirical testability," thereby "promoting the idea of some kind of nonempirical science." We have no idea what scientists they are referring to. We disagree with a number of statements in their article, but in this letter, we will focus on our categorical disagreement with these statements about the testability of inflation.

Additional Information

© 2017 Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023