Tanelorn said:
Summary:: A question about which Cosmology theories are mainstream and how they become mainstream
I was reading recently about string theory recently which postulates that there are 11 dimensions representing all possibilities for everything. This is an interesting theory, although very difficult to prove and therefore somewhat speculative in my opinion. [Ed.: personal speculation removed] I move quickly to my question:
I would like to ask roughly how many professional Cosmologists are there, and who (and how) decides which Cosmology theories become accepted mainstream Cosmology? Is there an up to date resource for learning which Cosmology theories are currently the most accepted and which are hypotheses still require further investigation? Is there a professional body of Cosmology specialists who make a judgement on these matters?
[Moderator's note: If you know that personal speculation isn't allowed, why do you mention them? Post edited.]
No single person makes such a decision. The science of cosmology (any science, really) is an ongoing conversation between scientists. No question is well and truly considered settled forever. Everything is open to criticism. But over time the answers that different cosmologists prefer tend to converge.
Scientists will generally ignore claims that aren't well-structured. This requires one of two things:
1) The claim is firmly grounded in evidence. The case of the Hubble tension is an example here: physical evidence that indicates that either our measurements are wrong, our assumptions are wrong, or our models are wrong. And the ongoing conversation between cosmologists will not come to significant agreement until there is lots of evidence.
2) The claim is well thought-out. This is a high bar to reach, often higher than many people seem to realize. It requires not only that people suggest something is different, but that they can describe it in a precise, mathematical way. It's not enough to say, for example, "Maybe gravity doesn't work like General Relativity says." You actually have to come up with a model that describes
how gravity might operate instead.
Either of the above just get your foot in the door, though. These are the start of the conversation. The way the conversation continues for the first case is often a matter of gathering more evidence. Long experience has taught cosmologists that it is genuinely hard to find an observation that diverges from the standard model: nearly every observation which claims to turns out to be a false alarm. One of my professors liked to say, "I don't get out of bed for less than four sigma." Which is a way of saying that he wouldn't even consider an experimental deviation to maybe be real until there is overwhelming evidence.
Then, if an idea is to reach any kind of consensus, it's going to need to be tested against experiment. You can't just have an interesting, well-thought-out idea. There are lots of interesting ideas about how the universe might be. Determining
which is the problem. Besides, ruling out things we haven't thought of yet is impossible. So if your theory can't be tested experimentally in some way, then cosmologists are never going to reach any kind of agreement on it. They might think it's plausible. Many might even think it's likely. But there will be many others who just discount it. Without observation, there's no way to obtain agreement.
String theory is instructive here. String theory sees a lot of attention primarily because it is
extremely compelling in a mathematical sense. Perhaps the most compelling fact about string theory is that it
predicts quantum gravity. Given that quantum gravity is the holy grail of theory in physics at present, this fact alone attracts a great many to it. String theory also predicts supersymmetry, which would neatly solve other problems in high-energy physics.
But string theory is incredibly difficult to test. The base model can never be tested for experimentally in any realistic sense: the energies required are far too high. There is always the hope, however, that we might get lucky and some of the models derived from string theory might be testable. Like supersymmetry. But we can't falsify the theory: the energy required is just far too high. If we get lucky, we might be able to confirm some aspects of it. But we would have to get lucky.