(Science Alert) For centuries, people have puzzled over how our Universe began. But the heat just got turned way up on a debate that’s quietly been raging between cosmologists, with 33 of the world’s most famous physicists publishing a letter angrily defending one of the leading hypotheses we have for the origin of the Universe.
The letter is in response to a Scientific American feature published back in February, in which three physicists heavily criticised inflation theory – the idea that the Universe expanded just like a balloon shortly after the Big Bang. The article went as far as claiming that the model “cannot be evaluated using the scientific method” – the academic equivalent of saying it isn’t even real science.
In response, 33 of the world’s top physicists, including Stephen Hawking, Lisa Randall, and Leonard Susskind, have fired back by publishing their own open letter in Scientific American. The Cliff’s note version is this: they’re really angry.
