The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal
We’re stuck in a paradigm that doesn’t result in any valid fundamental predictions. The idea that running the expanding universe backward makes everything denser and hotter in the past is just dumb.<p>The universe is not like a loaf expanding from dense batter to fluffy bread.<p>Instead, the chaotic vacuum produces, for want of a more accurate concept, particle-antiparticle pairs at random that exert a “pressure” seen as the Casimir Effect and a force that underlies the expansion of space-time.<p>These pairs are mostly ephemeral, but under certain conditions they can randomly transition to a stable state. This eventually results in matter. (It results in a lot of things, but we’re biased toward the minor component, matter, because we’re made of it.)<p>The process happens a lot in very empty space, and almost not at all in space that is constrained by the existence of matter already. This is why “dark matter” exists out there and not down here. The Casimir Effect will give this to you; constrain the available space and some wave equations are excluded, resulting in a measurable inward pressure.<p>Run the expanding universe backwards: space-time contracts and we have exactly what we have right now. Run it forward and space-time expands, again giving us exactly what we have right now. Of course, things are different, but the physics is unchanged. The universe doesn’t get hotter or cooler, there’s no era of total ionization or inflation.<p>The fundamental ground state of the universe is chaos. Anything can arise out of that chaos, but specific events are constrained by probability: some are so unlikely that we never see them; some are so likely that they are certain and they happen all the time.<p>Mathematics, so useful a tool in the past, cannot describe this situation. The only way to describe this system is by using the system itself; there are no shortcuts.<p>Math, philosophy, reason and order are inapplicable because they are only rules-based approximations of a chaotic state.