Paul Steinhardt’s Cyclical Cosmology Fails to Challenge a Cosmic Beginning 

Abraham Loeb, Anna Ijjas, Big Bang, brane, Charlie Wood, contraction phase, cosmic beginning, cosmology, cyclical cosmology, entropy, Faith & Science, homogeneity, inflation phase, inflationary theory, Intelligent Design, isotropy, Paul Steinhardt, Physics, Earth & Space, Quanta Magazine, Return of the God Hypothesis, Roger Penrose, Stephen Meyer
The conclusion that the universe had a beginning is far more parsimonious and consistent with the evidence. Source
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Are the Laws of the Universe “Inevitable”?

Adam Falkowski, Albert Einstein, beauty of nature, Big Bang, black holes, CEA Saclay, Daniel Baumann, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Laurentiu Rodina, laws of the universe, mathematics, metric tensor, Natalie Wolchover, Nobel Prize, Paul Dirac, physics, Physics, Earth & Space, Quanta Magazine, quantum mechanics, Shakespearean sonnet, Sistine Chapel, Steven Weinberg, theory of gravity, University of Amsterdam
Natalie Wolchover at Quanta Magazine has a thoughtful but misguided essay on the “inevitability” of the laws of nature. She writes: Compared to the unsolved mysteries of the universe, far less gets said about one of the most profound facts to have crystallized in physics over the past half-century: To an astonishing degree, nature is the way it is because it couldn’t be any different. “There’s just no freedom in the laws of physics that we have,” said Daniel Baumann, a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam. She cites Baumann to describe the incredible interlocked intricacy of physical laws: [L]aws essentially dictate one another through their mutual consistency — that nature “pulls itself up by its own bootstraps.” The idea turns out to explain a huge amount about the universe.…
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