Is there a reason the Big Bang would be secret?

[BadgerBadger92]

Main Question or Discussion Point

Is there a reason the Big Bang would be a private science (like time travel would be). Is the creation of a universe dangerous? Would there be any reason to this?

 

[Ibix]

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about how science works. Pop culture tends to regard scientists as interchangeable with Tolkien-esque wizards, mysterious figures locked away in remote towers, isolated from humanity as they struggle to understand arcane forces. But that's not how scientists operate in reality. Science is a strongly collaborative enterprise - we advance by discussing ideas and arguing amongst ourselves. Loners don't get the cross-pollination of ideas, and they don't tend to advance so fast. So the idea of "private science" is a science fiction concept.

Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that there are (for example) intelligence agencies that know stuff about cryptography that's ahead of public knowledge. But these are in specific areas where they have built on public knowledge for specific tactical goals. I can't imagine fundamental research being done that way. And how would you keep it secret? It's a rare scientific discovery when there aren't other people almost there (see Alfred Russel Wallace, Henri Poincare, and David Hilbert, for example).

If there isn't public information on the creation of the universe, it's because we haven't figured it out yet. And time travel is likely impossible.

 

[jedishrfu]

Is this for a science fiction story? In general, fundamental research is freely shared within academic circles. When it’s not, it’s because the researcher isn’t ready or is fearful of sharing too soon and losing control of his/her discovery.

A case in point is the discovery of the structure of DNA where Watson and Crick were fearful of Linus Pauling getting a whiff of their research and beating them to the punch. You can read more here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_Structure_of_Nucleic_Acids:_A_Structure_for_Deoxyribose_Nucleic_Acid#Collaborators_and_controversy

 

[Orodruin]

In general, fundamental research is freely shared within academic circles.

Not only within academic circles. Today, much of research is freely available to anyone through open access publishing or preprints on servers like arXiv. Just as a random example, these are the Higgs boson discovery papers from ATLAS and CMS:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.020
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.021
Both can be freely downloaded and examined by anyone with internet access. Of course, you will likely need a certain amount of pre-knowledge to understand them, but that is another matter.