The idea that the universe started with a Big Bang is a key tenet of the standard model of cosmology. But that model is a lot less scientific than it’s taken to be. To begin with, we can never have direct evidence of the Big Bang itself, and so if we are to accept it, it must be as a metaphysical, not a scientific hypothesis. Furthermore, the standard model of cosmology has had to adapt to a number of observational discrepancies, postulating entities like dark matter and dark energy for which there is no direct evidence. To add to the above, another central assumption, the cosmological principle, stating that the laws of the universe are the same everywhere, is also under scrutiny. The universe might turn out to be a lot stranger than we think, or could possibly imagine, argues Bjørn Ekeberg.
We usually talk about the Standard Model of particle physics, but you also talk of a standard model of cosmology, and how it’s also on shaky foundations. What do you see as the key tenets of cosmology’s standard model?
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