Theories for the Universe - the BBT, the Electric/Plasma Cosmos, the Holographic Cosmos, the multiverse? etc.?

Question

Whom to believe?
The BBT - created from a singularity?
The Electric/Plasma Cosmos - Charged particles everywhere?
The Holographic Cosmos - Everything is connected to each other - every electron (or particle for that matter) is related/connected to each other irrespective of the distance between them? They are just replicas of the entire picture?
The Multiverse - The universe as we know it today though however vast it may be, it is also a tiny thing in the entire gamut of universes? There is copy of everything elsewhere in some other Universe?
How a man of common prudence, like me, can believe these things, which are almost (with the present technology that we have developed) impossible to test in a laboratory. And even if we can create some miniature models, can those be even so optimistic to be true for the entire universe/multiverse with observational distances reaching 13.73 billion light years? Even if we succeed in seeing that past, would we be able to see beyond that?

Answer 1

Big Bang theory is science, in the sense that it makes predictions that are testable. The Big Bang theory is a body of knowledge, and undergoes modification as new evidence comes out. It doesn't generally change drastically, just in detail.



The Electric/Plasma Cosmos is not mainstream. Mainstream physics says that the electric potential tends to be nearly zero for bodies. If it isn't, it will get that way quickly.



The Holographic Cosmos is a different way of looking at the Universe, and it stems from evidence like the double slit experiment and so on, but it's not clear that it has much to say about cosmology.



There are several Multiverse theories that spring from String Theory and others. When the parent theories gain some traction, these may be viable. Until then, they are speculation. They tend not to contradict anything we know.



How do you know what to believe? You shouldn't believe anything. The evidence suggests. Right now, the evidence supports the Big Bang body of theory and evidence. This is supported by the consensus view of scientists. But the main thing isn't the scientists, it's the evidence.



Is it possible to see before the beginning of the Big Bang? Some say that an imprint of a previous Universe may remain in the Cosmic Microwave Background. The WMAP successor, Plank, may have the sensitivity to see such a signal. That would be very cool. But it may be that no such signal exists. It may be that String Theory, or some other such TOE or GUT may point to a Multiverse or previous Universe - not evidence per se, but compelling. We'll have to see.

Answer 2

You don't have to believe one theory over others, but note what each theory states, and why. You may find that one theory has more weight, or is more convincng, but that doesn't necessarily rule out other theories.



I don't think Cosmos is correct in stating that the Big Bang is "actually observed". It is inferred. Astronomers see that stars and galaxies have a "redshift", which is known to be caused by objects moving away from us (Doppler redshift).Edwin Hubble found an approximate relationship between distance and redshift (Hubble's Law). It is inferred that astronomical redshift represents distances. The Big Bang theory is a possible explanation.



The Plasma Universe is a theory which merely says that since plasmas respond strongly to electromagnetic forces, and since the visible Universe is 99.999% plasma, then electromagnetic forces and the characteristics of plasmas may be significant.

Answer 3

All serious theories of the Universe nowdays are variants of the Big Bang theory. This is because the Big Bang is, in a sense, actually observed---the Cosmic Microwave Background has now been observed in considerable detail by the WMAP satellite and others, and the data are all consistent with a Big Bang. The Cosmic Microwave Background is at a distance of 13.7 billion lightyears. We can't see further than that with photons, because at that point the Universe becomes opaque. There is some chance of "seeing" earlier times using gravitons or neutrinos, but that just gets us closer to the Big Bang, which is a singularity (or near-singularity) .



Some of the other "cosmologies" you mention are variants of the Big Bang, or elaborations. As such, they are speculative.

Answer 4

Think of it sort of as a "soul machine"...