What Can Be Wrong with the Theories of Big Astronomy?

BLINDED BY BEAUTY
​ How each culture views the Universe is guided by its beliefs in, for example, mathematical beauty or the structure of reality. If these ideas are deeply rooted, people tend to interpret all data as supportive of them — adding parameters or performing mathematical gymnastics to force the fit. Recall how the belief that the Sun moves around Earth led to the mathematically beautiful (and incorrect) theory of epicycles advocated by the ancient Greek philosopher Ptolemy. Similarly, modern cosmology is augmented by unsubstantiated, mathematically sophisticated ideas — of the multiverse, anthropic reasoning and string theory. The multiverse idea postulates the existence of numerous other regions of space-time, to which we have no access and in which the cosmological parameters have different values. The anthropic argument is then often applied. It holds that our own region has the parameters it does (including those of dark energy and dark matter) because other, more likely values would not have allowed life to develop near a star like the Sun in a galaxy such as the Milky Way. An overlooked problem with this argument is that, accord¬ing to one analysis, life is 1,000 times more likely to exist 10 trillion years from now around stars that weigh one-tenth the mass of the Sun. This means that terrestrial life might be premature and not the most likely form of life, even in our own Universe.

A vibrant scientific culture encourages many interpretations of evidence, argues Avi Loeb. 

Abraham Loeb Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, Harvard University Chair, Harvard Astronomy Department Director, Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) Founding Director, Black Hole Initiative (BHI) Chair, Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee Vice Chair, Board on Physics and Astronomy, National Academies​

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