Big Bang Postscript
Lee, Param, Michio, Neil and Andrei
Horizon – Before the Big Bang
In the last 10 years, cosmology has experienced a remarkable turnaround. From insisting that there was nothing at all before the big bang, most researchers now concede that there must have been something. But understanding what that something was and how it worked, means that cosmologists are having to give up many of their most prized certainties.
Lee Smolin “Whatever the fate of the ideas which are on the table now, about the big bang and before the big bang, it’s inconceivable
to me that the universe really started at the big bang. Why? Because that would leave so many basic questions unanswered.”
Param Singh “What I certainly believe in is that the big bang is just a very small event in this whole history of the universe. And I think
that itself is a big paradigm change. Once we start thinking about things before big bang, and we work on these theories, maybe very soon we’ll
find the answer to how it all started.”
Michio Kaku “My parents were Buddhists. In Buddhism there is no beginning, there is no end. There is just Nirvana. But as a child I also
went to Sunday school, where we learned that there was an instant where God said, ‘Let there be light’. So I’ve had these two mutually contradicting
paradigms in my head. Well, now we can meld these two paradigms together into a pleasing whole. Yes, there was a Genesis. Yes, there was a big bang,
and it happens all the time.”
Neil Turok “I’m open to almost any philosophical point of view, as long as it works, and I want her theory that’s ultimately tested by data
and confirmed that this is the way the world works.”
