Is the future of Cosmology limitless or are we bound by fundamental questions?

[Tanelorn]

I have some general, fundermental questions about Cosmology and the future of Cosmology:


1. Is there a resource or management initative of some kind, which is keeping track of all the theories, sub theories, completely different theories and competing theories related to cosmology? If so is this resource keeping track of the level of confidence or uncertainty attached to these these theories, including parts of the LCDM?

2. Some theories are only intended as partial descriptions of what is happening in the real world. Is this being made sufficiently clear? Some theories are also only intended as a description of what is happening, but may not be what is actually taking place in the real world. Is this being made sufficiently clear?

3. The LCDM has only been around since 1964 and the discovery of the CDR, so modern cosmology is still only 46 years old. Do we now have sufficient confidence in this model that other alternative theories no longer need to be considered?

4. Given an extremely large amount of time and the very best possible instrumentation what questions in cosmology can we eventually hope to unravel? In general, for each question we answer, are we still finding that there are even more questions raised to replace it? Is it likely that we will eventually always be left with fundermental questions that can never be answered?



I think I may be expecting too much with that lot but thanks for looking anyway.

 

[marcus]

I have some general, fundermental questions about Cosmology and the future of Cosmology:1. ... keeping track of the level of confidence or uncertainty attached to these these theories, including parts of the LCDM?

2. Some theories are only intended as partial descriptions of what is happening in the real world. Is this being made sufficiently clear?...

3. The LCDM has only been around since 1964 ... Do we now have sufficient confidence in this model that other alternative theories no longer need to be considered?

4. ... Is it likely that we will eventually always be left with fundermental questions that can never be answered?

1. Yes. Scientists tend to be critical of each other's ideas. A lot of research effort is currently going into modifying the LCDM---basically a complete makeover of the mathematical model depicting the early universe. Other parts of LCDM being scrutinized professionally as well, constant probing to see if there are better alternatives.

You get some of that news here, we try to follow professional research lines, and exclude private or amateur ideas because it would be too distracting. Better to focus on mainstream stuff, and ignore private notions. Otherwise we'd be going crazy.

2. Yes! You hear the uncertainty and gaps emphasized a lot. Part of the fun. They seem to enjoy uncertainty. If you don't like uncertainty don't be a scientist. They seem always on the look-out for contradictions and surprises. It's what gets their attention.

3. No, as I said. A bunch of re-makes of LCDM are being studied. Folks try to discredit them and throw them out roughly as fast as they make them up. Here are the "quantum cosmology" research papers on the Spires database with date > 2006. That is, papers that appeared from 2007 onwards. It will give you idea of what alternatives to LCDM are currently hot.
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=dk+quantum+cosmology+and+date%3E2006&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=citecount%28d%29

4. I hope so very much. Science is not about finding final answers but about finding always deeper questions. We can't be sure, but it would be very sad if we came to an end of questions and I hope very much that never happens.

I'm not staff, so this is definitely just my own opinion as regards how things seem to work, nor by any stretch an "official" point of view.

 

[twofish-quant]

1. Is there a resource or management initative of some kind, which is keeping track of all the theories, sub theories, completely different theories and competing theories related to cosmology?

From time to time someone will write a review paper or textbook that summarizes the current state of the research, but these things get pretty quickly out of date. This is one of those things that you need a human being to summarize and you really can't do it with a database.

2. Some theories are only intended as partial descriptions of what is happening in the real world. Is this being made sufficiently clear? Some theories are also only intended as a description of what is happening, but may not be what is actually taking place in the real world. Is this being made sufficiently clear?

I prefer the use of the term "model." *All* models are partial descriptions for what is happening in the real world. Also *all* models are potentially wrong, and I'm pretty sure that there is some part of LCDM that's either wrong or rather strongly incomplete.

All models are wrong. Some models are useful.

As far as who clearly this is being stated. People in the business know that models have their limitation. As far as how well science is communicated to the general public that's a different issue, but I try to do my part.

3. The LCDM has only been around since 1964 and the discovery of the CDR, so modern cosmology is still only 46 years old. Do we now have sufficient confidence in this model that other alternative theories no longer need to be considered?

LCDM has been the preferred cosmological model since the late-1990's. At this point, I think it's rather unlikely that LCDM will be totally off, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some radically different way of looking at the universe, or if it turned out that LCDM was only a small part of a much bigger theory.

The other thing is that there are lots of places where you can argue for things like modified gravity. The other thing to realize that LCDM are these huge giant fudge factors, and we are still quite a long way from figuring out what those fudge factors are.

Given an extremely large amount of time and the very best possible instrumentation what questions in cosmology can we eventually hope to unravel? In general, for each question we answer, are we still finding that there are even more questions raised to replace it? Is it likely that we will eventually always be left with fundermental questions that can never be answered?

Don't know. A lot depends on what we observe.

Also once should point that just from a philosophical point of view, scientific methods are very bad for answering fundamental questions like "why?" or "so what does this all mean?"

 

[Tanelorn]

Just wanted to thank you both for your replies and to add a couple of thoughts:

Firstly, there may well be intelligence in our galaxy that is already 7 billion years old, and who might have been able to make better observations of the younger universe. Surely a good enough reason alone to make contact.

Secondly, it would be very good indeed to understand our universe as well as possible before we ourselves are forced to leave it.


Anyway, thanks again.