Public communications piece from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Laura Mersini-Houghton’s recent announcements (previously reported Bang Goes The Big Bang here):
“Physicists have been trying to merge these two theories — Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum mechanics — for decades, but this scenario brings these two theories together, into harmony,” said Mersini-Houghton. “And that’s a big deal.”
And it does that by dispensing with black holes and singularities (and consequent inflation and dark-matter and dark-energy and many-worlds multi-verses), all the way back to the big bang. Stripping out the hacks and returning to (classical) common sense. (Hat tip to Rick on FB again- trawling the web for big-bang updates.)
That’s a big deal.
[Post Note : Obviously there are honestly sceptical responses to Mersini-Houghton, but so far no direct refutation, and I did notice one reference to Stephen Hawking having now agreed with her, over the non-existence of black-holes as singularities anyway. Need to collate other links.]
[Post Note : Oh, and how timely.]
Another brilliant woman physicist has not yet decided. See today’s blog post by the provocative and ever fascinating Sabine Hossenfelder: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2014/09/black-holes-declared-non-existent-again.html
Interesting, though this is a technical response to the specific calculations. It will take a while before everyone is convinced – 80 years I reckon – but no doubt the hacks and fudges in the “standard model” are having all credibility undermined enough for people to look rather than defend. (ie science instead of politics)
I should add, Sabine Hossenfelder, seems to be very active on Facebook and Twitter – people keep sending me posts from her.