I thought that cosmology, or at least that part of it which tries to explain how our Universe got born and how it looks, is a very interesting subject. It has a couple of very amusing features.

Feature 1: You can say anything.

I am starting off on a humorous note, a note that has it's grain of truth. Indeed, cosmology theories, no matter how good they are, can never be tested. Moreover, it is arguable that no matter how technically advanced we become, as long as we are INSIDE the Universe, we will never be able to actually explain how it looks. The theories on how Universe came to be are also hardly a subject of test.

So basically you can come up with anything and only pseudoskeptics and maybe a couple of your close friends will tell you how dumb your theory really is. The rest of the science world would only have to admit that there is no evidence whatsoever, so either your theory is right or else it's wrong - and those would be the eternal choices.

Indeed - if I say that our Universe originated from a small rabbit hole of some outer universe and took a form of a carrot, I doubt anyone can prove me wrong. And the Louigi Verona theory might even be taught at schools - at least during our physics classes theories that the Universe might have a form of a cigar or a hat had been mentioned.

I must say that on the other hand both of those questions, no matter how important they may seem to our imagination, might not really matter in the understanding of how the Universe "works" now. While many may argue that knowing how everything originated is one of the basic keys to the secrets of existance, in reality the fact that we did not originate from Big Bang migth really change nothing, or at least the answer to the origin of the Universe lies in what it is today, just like the human body may be examined and it can be told how it came to be.

Anyway, cosmology is one of the most free subjects around and people with imagination might have a fun time coming up with original ideas.

Feature 2: No matter what you say, you end up with creating a schematic which reflects human life.

This is a known idea of course, but I'd like to extend it a bit further.

Yes, no matter what we do, we tend to create things similar to what we are. Even the Big Bang theory is very reminiscent of how we are born.

But in reality it can be the other way around as well - that all life as it is is similar to what the Universe is, to how it develops and to how it got born. So, each creature might be a tiny model of the Universe.

If this is true, then exploring ourselves is basically exploring the whole Universe and the exploration of complex human relationships might be the exploration of very global things - like how galaxies interact or the essence of existence and absence.

Don't know about you, but I find it a fascinating idea, knowing that although I am just a very small body on a tiny planet in vast space, my personal life experience has a very realistic contact with the whole thing, with the whole possibly infinite Universe.

Conclusion: I thereby officially propose the Louigi Verona hypothesis (that the Universe originated from a tiny rabbit hole and is in a form of a carrot) and announce that no matter how pointless somebody's life may seem, in reality it is not.


But I wouldn't want to leave everybody with just my (hopefully) funny essay and the question for you is this:

What is your favourite cosmological theory?

Note that I am not asking which one you think is closer to the truth! Just name your favourite one and tell us what's it about!

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The universe couldn't originate from a tiny rabbit hole. If it did then rabbits and holes could only be realized by our particle accelerators ramped up to the max and the fundamental constituents would not consist of quarks and gluons and leptons but would consist of rabbits and holes. If you break a rabbit down to its most fundamental particles that we know of you come up with quarks and gluons and leptons.

Cosmology involves the structure of spacetime and the topology of space and has applications that will not be realized by next Thursday but, if we are patient enough, we will in the future. Maxwell synthesized a relationship between magnetism and electricity and now we have cell phones.

Do you understand how spectroscopy works and how it originated in the study of stars, planets and cosmology? Do you undertand how it has been verified in labs and is used in other fields of science like chemistry and microbiology and even is inclusive to the police departments in their investigations? Are you saying that it is invalid?

The Big Bang, if any one of the many BB theories hold up, has no similarity to childbirth.

You act as though there is some necessity to measuring the shape and size of a universe by only being outside of it. Are you telling me that I cannot measure the shape and size of my house by being inside of it?

The universe has billions of examples for us to look at and billions of them are in parts that have spread apart just as there are examples of exploded parts views to the equipment we buy at Menard's or Home Depot. Those parts and their properties tell us many things including their ages and their motions, many of which we debate about just as we do about cancer cells and their behavior.


But I have been told by a few friends in science that correcting people is a mistake concerning flaws in well-understood theories. They rarely listen to reason. They want attention and fame in having disproven some fundamental model. Any efforts to guide them toward a real understanding of the material is met with either dead silence or claims that the reviewer is either inept or part of some consipiracy to maintain the status quo and keep them from their Nobel Prizes.

I have not been serious in my claim and the Louigi Verona hypothesis is probably one of the most flawed and stupid cosmology theories ever created, it was just to illustrate the point.

As for the childbirth analogy - I may have been not very clear on what I meant and I certainly didn't mean the biological process, but the major idea of life appearing, of life BEING BORN. There are various ways space time may have come to be, including a theory that there was no definite starting point.

"The universe has billions of examples for us to look at and billions of them are in parts that have spread apart just as there are examples of exploded parts views to the equipment we buy at Menard's or Home Depot. Those parts and their properties tell us many things including their ages and their motions, many of which we debate about just as we do about cancer cells and their behavior."

Exactly - that's what I was saying.
You must forgive me - I am not very good at numbers and formulas when it comes to cosmology. So I put a lot of meaning into words I wrote. And I think that my views on this are actually a bit metaphysical, because I believe that even our everyday life experience can shed life on most basic laws of nature, which happens now and then.

So - yep! One day we might be able to understand the shape and size of the Universe from inside of it, if there is anything like size and shape of the Universe anyway.

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This is incorrect. Your concept of a "cosmology theory" is also rather narrow and seemingly misinformed.

We are ON the surface of the earth. How was it determined to be roughly spherical and mapped prior to spaceflight?

What theories are those? The big bang is not one. It doesn't address that question.

If there's no evidence, then there's no science, and no theory.

I would not recommend teaching anything in science classes that has no evidence to support it.

You are aware, of course, that there is a big difference between science classes and creative writing classes...

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Could be! Can you help me then?

What does it address then?

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Sure.

It addresses what must have been happening after the universe started expanding and cooling - up to the present day. Here is a good article that makes the following clarification:

We have no direct knowledge of what the universe was like before the Big-Bang nucleosynthesis era, when the universe was between a few seconds and a few minutes old.... It is worth emphasizing that any ideas we have about earlier times are only that -- ideas. -- Sean Carroll

Here is another page, courtesy of an occasional participant on these boards, that contains scads of links to all things cosmological....

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Thank you very much, I am studying the links!

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