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Sabine Hossenfelder Profile picture
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Aug 23 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
About the #BigBang issue again. Let me say it with this handy picture from (?) @WKCosmo To which I've added two arrows.
We understand the physics of matter roughly up to the point where it says "Electroweak Phase Transition". Anything earlier than that is just speculation, and there are many theories for it. Some have a big bang others don't.
The Big Bang (red arrow top left) is what you get if you stick with Einstein's theory. It's the simplest extrapolation. The JWST data that everyone is talking about is at the bottom right. Doesn't tell you anything whatsoever about the Big Bang.
The JWST can tell apart dark matter from modified gravity, I talked about this here
I also (rather coincidentally) have a video coming up on Saturday explaining why we don't know how the universe began and why we will probably never know.

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More from @skdh

Sabine Hossenfelder Profile picture
Aug 23
The reason cosmologists are now having people claiming that the "big bang didn't happen" is that they have confused everyone including themselves by using the word "big bang" to refer to what happened WAY AFTER the big bang singularity, this being what most people think it means.
I see this constantly in the comments on my videos and blog and socials and in questions in my public lectures. People think the "Big Bang" is the hypothetical birth of the universe. But many astrophysicists use it as a catchy name for LCDM.
Now they're whining because (tentative) evidence against LCDM is misconstrued as evidence against the Big Bang. Well, you have to sleep in the bed you made, or eat the soup you cooked, or whatever your idiom of choice.
Read 4 tweets
Sabine Hossenfelder Profile picture
Aug 18
In other news, my project proposal was rejected by the German Research Foundation @dfg_public which means that in three months I'll be unemployed. To make it sound better, let's just say I'll be self-employed.
Since people are always surprised about my miserable employment situation, no I am not tenured. My institution doesn't even have tenure track. And in any case, they don't pay me. I've been paid by research grants since 2015.
There are basically no jobs in academia that it would both make sense for me to apply for and that I'd also want to do. It's been foreseeable for a long time that my luck getting research grants would run out eventually, so I can't say I'm surprised.
Read 5 tweets
Sabine Hossenfelder Profile picture
Aug 6
For those of you who are interested in how the debate about nuclear power is going in Germany, a brief summary of the situation. 1/
According to a recent survey, an overwhelming majority of Germans (78%) support keeping the 3 remaining German nuclear power plants running until summer 2023. 67% support keeping them running for five years. And 41% even support building new ones. 2/

spiegel.de/panorama/atom-…
Nuclear power opponents have largely dropped the alleged fuel rod issue. As I said earlier, it's not like those stop working on a particular day and given some time, new ones can be ordered. 3/
Read 7 tweets
Sabine Hossenfelder Profile picture
Jul 22
I frequently see the swift phasing out of CFCs after the discovery of the ozone hole named as a global success in protecting the environment. But this story is only half correct and I think it misses some important points. 🧵 1/
First and most importantly, the ozone hole was discovered in 1985, but scientists had warned that CFCs would deplete the ozone layer more than a decade before that. It was to my knowledge first published by Molina and Rowland in 1974 nature.com/articles/24981… 2/
The Molina and Rowland work was heavily disputed by representatives of industries who made money from CFCs. No surprises there. lpl.arizona.edu/sites/default/… 3/
Read 10 tweets
Sabine Hossenfelder Profile picture
Jul 21
Guess what! @penguinrandom
A delivery man put the thing on our doorstep and disappeared. Good thing it's not raining!
It's the parcel from Essex that customs called about the other day.
Read 5 tweets
Sabine Hossenfelder Profile picture
Jul 19
I just received a text message from German customs and I'm afraid this means someone didn't fill in their custom's form correctly, so they'll try to charge me. I don't even know what the delivery is, so I can't possibly provide any customs information, even if I had it.
I constantly have to deal with this and most of the time I don't even know who is trying to deliver what or from whom or if it's something I even want to have. It's like it never occurred to anyone you can put any address on a parcel and ship something there.
Sometimes someone who means well accepts a delivery for me that I didn't order and would never have accepted myself and then it takes me months to sort out the custom's issue -- for something I had nothing to do with other than that someone put my name on sheet of paper.
Read 6 tweets

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