r/cosmology

▲ 1 r/cosmology+4 crossposts

What If Vibes of Cosmos Is Asking Better Questions Than Its Critics?

I’ve spent the last few weeks watching Vibes of Cosmos.

Before anyone reaches for the downvote button, let me be clear:

I’m not saying it’s right.

I’m asking whether most of its critics have actually engaged with what it’s trying to do.

The overwhelming majority of responses I see amount to:
“That’s not how science works.”

“We already know the Earth is a globe.”

“Satellites.”

“Gravity.”

Case closed.

But that’s not a rebuttal.

It’s a restatement of the prevailing model.

What interests me about VoC isn’t whether every conclusion is correct. It’s that it attempts something most people never do:

It asks whether the observations themselves require the conventional interpretation, or whether we’ve become so accustomed to one framework that we mistake it for the observations.

For example:

When you measure an angle, you’ve measured an angle.

When you measure a distance, you’ve measured a distance.

When you record the apparent motion of the stars, you’ve recorded apparent motion.

The claim that these measurements necessarily imply a rotating globe orbiting the Sun is another step entirely.
Maybe that step is justified.

Maybe it isn’t.

Either way, it’s worth examining.

What I find fascinating is how emotionally charged the discussion becomes the moment someone questions the interpretive framework.

People who constantly insist that science welcomes skepticism often become remarkably uncomfortable when skepticism is directed at assumptions they’ve never personally examined.

That’s not skepticism.

That’s orthodoxy.

Again, this doesn’t make VoC correct.

Alternative cosmologies inherit an enormous burden of proof, and they should be expected to produce quantitative predictions and survive rigorous testing.

But here’s the question that keeps nagging at me:
If VoC is obviously wrong, why do so many responses focus on ridicule instead of identifying the precise observation that makes its core framework impossible?

Not improbable.

Not unconventional.

Impossible.

If a model is genuinely incompatible with reality, it should be possible to explain exactly where it fails, using measurements and logic, rather than appeals to consensus or institutional authority.

So I’m curious.

For those who’ve actually watched VoC—not just reaction videos—what do you think is its strongest argument?

And what do you think is its single weakest point?

Let’s discuss the ideas, not the stereotypes.

reddit.com
u/Kela-el — 18 hours ago

The Fermi Paradox is a cognitive error: Why "Alien Life" will not exist inside the human spatial dashboard

When evaluating the probability of extraterrestrial life, the standard cognitive assumption relies on the classical model of the universe.

Observers visualise the cosmos as a vast, empty three-dimensional container, populated by isolated stars and planets. Under this assumption, "aliens" are conceptualised as secondary biological entities who build physical vehicles and traverse this spatial void to arrive at our specific coordinates.

To define extraterrestrial life accurately, we must apply the mechanics of QIT and Structural Realism.

We will first define what a biological organism fundamentally is.

A human observer is not a passive spectator inside a box. But a localised, embedded subsystem within a continuous quantum relational matrix. To prevent thermodynamic failure, our localised biological processor executes an a priori data-compression algorithm. It discards the continuous quantum fields and formats the remaining data into a specific User Interface: it renders 3D geometric volume, chronological time and solid macroscopic matter.

That is the human "dashboard."

If an extraterrestrial biological processor exists at a different coordinate within the relational matrix, it evolved under a completely different set of thermodynamic and environmental constraints. Therefore its cognitive hardware must be fundamentally distinct from ours.

Because its hardware is distinct, its data-compression algorithm would be distinct. The extraterrestrial processor would homomorphically map the unobserved universe utilising entirely different formatting metrics. It might not render the universe using the metrics of three-dimensional space, linear time or solid matter. Its internal simulation (its Phenomenon) would be structurally mutually exclusive from ours. We assume aliens live in "outer space" but "space" is strictly the cognitive formatting tool utilised by the human nervous system to measure causal isolation.

This directly resolves the Fermi Paradox ("If the universe is so large, why haven't we seen them?")

We do not see them because we are attempting to locate them within our specific biological simulation. Physical distance is not an empty geometric void separating two planets; distance is the phenomenological formatted output of quantum decoherence (causal isolation). If another localised biological processor exists, the relational nodes comprising its system share near-zero quantum entanglement with the relational nodes comprising our system.

We are strictly causally isolated.

"First contact" would then not consist of a physical metallic craft lowering into a human atmospheric system. That is a projection of localised primate mechanics. If two highly advanced localised subsystems were to interact, the interaction would be a collision of operating systems. It would be the attempt to execute a mathematical translation between two entirely distinct, incompatible homomorphic maps attempting to parse the exact same underlying continuous matrix.

If extraterrestrial life exists, it does not live in our universe. It lives in the Noumenon, running a completely different simulation.

reddit.com
u/feihm — 2 days ago

Is there negative and positive warping of space-time?

I recently watched a short video showing how light and heavier objects placed on water interact with the surface tension.

A light object placed on the surface deforms it, creating a well, which causes other light objects to move towards it.

A heavier object placed on the surface creates an adhsive effect. It sits deeper in the surface layer and creates a hill instead of a well. This causes lighter objects on the surface to "move away" from that heavier object.

That got me to thinking about spacetime. Thinking about how energy warps spacetime in a way similar to the lighter objects sitting on the surface of water. It creates wells, bending the paths of objects, even leading to black holes.

Is there anything similar to the effect of heavier objects sitting on the surface of water, that creates a repulsive / negative warping of spacetime?

I've attached a quick drawing of the effect I'm talking about.

Wouldn't this lead into a similar direction to Dark Matter and Dark Energy, combining all three, the undetectable property (since light would always move around this "heavier spacetime object"), the repulsive force seeming to counter-act gravity (pushing lighter objects away from them) and even adding total mass to the galaxy, keeping it together, instead of being flung apart.

It wouldn't even need concepts like anti-gravity, since it's not behaving any differently, it's just sitting "deeper" in the surface tension of spacetime.

Clearly cosmology isn't my forte, but I get intrigued by neat ideas easily and this seems neat to me. Please tell me where and why this analogy comes up short in the real world.

u/platypodus — 2 days ago

Mass lost in black hole collisions

When two black holes spiral into each other, a significant amount of the combined mass is converted to gravitational waves, as detected by LIGO.

Where does that mass come from?

It would seem that any mass that is inside the event horizons cannot escape, because that would require it to move faster than light speed. Does it come from the accretion discs?

reddit.com
u/grkuntzmd — 5 days ago

Lifelong Dream: Learning the Universe from the Big Bang to Today. Is My Roadmap Accurate?

Hi everyone,

This has been a lifelong dream of mine and I've finally decided to start.

I want to learn the entire history of the universe from the Big Bang all the way to modern human civilization. Not just memorizing facts, but actually understanding how everything happened and why.

Instead of following a single textbook, I'm trying to build my own roadmap by researching each topic deeply. My first phase is the history of space, covering everything from the birth of the universe to the formation of Earth.

This is the timeline I've put together so far:

Chapter 1: The Beginning

  • What is the universe?
  • What (if anything) existed before the Big Bang? (What science says vs. what it doesn't.)
  • Big Bang
  • Cosmic inflation
  • Expansion of space
  • Matter vs. antimatter
  • The four fundamental forces

Chapter 2: The First Universe

  • Quarks
  • Protons and neutrons
  • First atoms
  • Why hydrogen and helium formed first
  • The Cosmic Dark Ages
  • Cosmic Microwave Background
  • How scientists know these things

Chapter 3: Birth of Stars

  • Gravity
  • Nebulae
  • Star formation
  • Nuclear fusion
  • Different types of stars
  • Star clusters

Chapter 4: Life Cycle of Stars

  • Main sequence stars
  • Red giants
  • White dwarfs
  • Supernovae
  • Neutron stars
  • Black holes
  • Pulsars

Chapter 5: Galaxies

  • What is a galaxy?
  • Spiral galaxies
  • Elliptical galaxies
  • Irregular galaxies
  • The Milky Way
  • Galaxy collisions

Chapter 6: The Solar System

  • Solar nebula
  • Birth of the Sun
  • Formation of planets
  • Why the inner and outer planets are different
  • Asteroids
  • Comets
  • Meteoroids
  • Kuiper Belt
  • Oort Cloud

Chapter 7: Earth

  • Formation of Earth
  • Formation of the Moon
  • Early atmosphere
  • Oceans
  • Plate tectonics
  • Magnetic field

I'd love your feedback:

  • Does this follow a scientifically accurate timeline?
  • Am I missing any major topics?
  • Is there anything that should be moved, added or removed?
  • If you were starting this journey from scratch, what advice would you give yourself?
  • Are there any books, lectures, documentaries or university courses you'd consider essential?

I'm not trying to rush through this. I'm happy to spend years learning it properly. My goal is to build a deep understanding of the history of the universe before moving on to the history of life, humans, civilizations, and the modern world.

I'd really appreciate any guidance. Thanks!

reddit.com
u/ompossible — 7 days ago
▲ 0 r/cosmology+1 crossposts

ELI5: More center of the universe questions

Yes I have seen that this has been asked many times and explained, but the explanations don’t make sense still so… ELI3…

My first problem is that there are contradictions. Some explain that the universe is expanding, some say it’s infinite. Which is it? I will gladly except that the observable universe is expanding due to how we observe light, the timeline of the CMB, etc. and the universe itself is infinite. I’ll also except that the universe is infinite in the sense that it will expand forever and that the constant (or accelerated) growth is what defines it as infinite in the same way that one can count forever.

I read that space is expanding everywhere in every direction, which is why there is no center point. This makes sense for the observable universe but not the entire universe which was once much smaller. The Earth vs Earth’s crust or ballon theories assume that everything is on the edge of the universe, not somewhere between the center and edge or closer to the center. EDIT: If the Earth expands to 3x its diameter, Australia becomes 3x further away, Canada is also 3x further away but it is not the same difference in distance. END EDIT. I could use paralax to determine the center of the world based on that just as Hubble’s law should allow me to use paralax to find the center of the universe. In my mind, the only way we can’t find the center of the universe is if ythe observable universe is all on the same side of the universe and is only a small portion of the universe, which would mean the CMB doesn’t have much to do with the age or size of the universe, only the observable universe or that we are in the center of the universe.

Edited to properly convey distances between countries.

EDIT: Thank you all for your responses. There were two things I didn’t understand and now do. First is that the universe is not expanding from one location but is expanding from every location. Many of the analogies did not explain this part. I have created a graphic (in a below reply) that should help understand that if there is a center, we will never find it. The second confusing part is that so many articles I’ve read leave out the “observable” part when discussing the size of the universe.

EDIT 2: The third thing I didn’t understand is that I always pictured the universe to be a growing ball, with everything being inside the ball. Using the balloon analogy, with the universe being the skin, changes things.

reddit.com
u/Psychological_Web151 — 11 days ago

How many dimensions before the big bang?

I understand that time only existed after the big bang. If so, my understanding is the pre-BB universe was not four dimensions (3D+Time).

Does this mean the universe had three dimensions or something different?

If different, what are leading theories about what caused the universe to morph into the four dimensions we currently experience?

How do theories involving holography and anti-de sitter space account for dimensional change?

reddit.com
u/da_mess — 13 days ago
▲ 54 r/cosmology+1 crossposts

New DESI Analysis Weakens Tension

A new analysis of DESI DR1 Full-Shape + DESI DR2 BAO comes close to restoring concordance with Lambda CDM.

arxiv.org
u/somethingicanspell — 11 days ago
▲ 2 r/cosmology+2 crossposts

The Expansion of the Universe

*Before you is merely a thought, a guess. I do not make any scientific claims or deny others.*

A squirrel is born in a secluded area from humanity. Each year the squirrel feels the temperature rising, as due to global warming. Our squirrel is a smart one and he hypotheses that if he were to go far enough back in time, the earth would be at 0°K, then it started to warm up and is still doing so. The squirrel can't even comprehend who humans are, and how they can affect the climate of the planet, so he deems it a natural, constant heating.

The squirrel is silly compared to us... or is it?

Don't we do the same when calculating and theorising about the expansion of the universe and the big bang, the 0°K moment? What if the expansion of the universe is a side effect, of the energy consumption of a much higher, incomprehensible civilisation? What if this expansion is just a recent thing, like how global warming started only at the industrial revolution? What if this type 4 ultra-civilisation is trying to stop this expansion like we try to stop global warming? Which is why we observe that "dark energy" might be slowing down...

This thought occurred to me while watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, by the way.

reddit.com
u/Alon_F — 12 days ago

Earendel (WHL0137-LS)

(I am not schooled in physics or cosmology so I would like an explanation in layman’s terms if Poss)

From what I understand the universe is 14.8 billion years old. But scientists have discovered a star Earendel (WHL0137-LS) which is located 28 billion light-years away.

So the light from this star that we can observe took 28 billion years to reach us.

How was light emitted more than 13 billion years before the universe came into being?

Did does the universe expand faster than light? There was a boom - universe was born - and Earendel was shot out 28 billion light years in an instant?

Or was the bakery that exploded more than 28 billion light years wide? The universe is still expanding. Is it expanding faster than C? Has it slowed down?

Thanks

reddit.com
u/Broad-Date4380 — 9 days ago
▲ 19 r/cosmology+3 crossposts

Voyager 1 Picked Up an Unexplained Signal From Interstellar Space (2026) - A documentary on the anomalous signal detected by Voyager 1 in the interstellar medium (CC) [00:11:52]

A short documentary covering Voyager 1's 48 year journey into interstellar space, the anomalous structured signal detected by its plasma wave system in early 2025, and the four scientific theories currently being investigated. No sensationalism — just the data and what we don't know yet.

youtube.com
u/starlord3337 — 14 days ago

Does reversal of entropy imply change in locally observed physics?

In a "big crunch" universe the universe starts contracting and retracts to the first Planck moment, the most highly organized (least entropy) moment in current models. This is proposed as one possibility for the development of our universe in the future.

In a crunch universe entropy is decreasing. Rather than moving toward disorganized states (our universe) the movement is toward more organized states (crunch universe).

Does this in any sense mean that physical and chemical reactions would go backwards or somehow change behaviors? Gravity is operating in both universes in the same way apparently (crunch occurs when gravity pulls universe in by gravitational forces as understood.

Suppose in such a universe a person is isolated in a room (no observations beyond local) and has a variety of everyday objects and devices they can use. How would they be able to tell if entropy was increasing or decreasing?

Offhand I think the person would see no difference -- to all intents and purposes from the observers viewpoint both directions of entropy are equivalent and do not effect the behavior of physical interactions.

Objects would still fall to the floor, electricity/magnetism, chemical interactions and heat would still operate as normal and be indistinguishable from our normal entropy on our time scale. The four forces we know would still operate just as they do now from our local perspective. Is this correct?

It would only be when outside observations are taken and the universe is seen to be contracting that the realization of reverse entropy would be postulated and confirmed in much the same way we have done.

Or would there be any immediately recognizable differences in the behavior of physical and chemical phenomena in a big crunch/negative entropy universe?

reddit.com
u/EnvironmentalWin1277 — 12 days ago

"A Dark Dimension Could Link Two of the Universe’s Great Unknowns"

That sounds nifty.

  1. About how speculative is this?!

  2. This extra dimension could be as large as one micron. Could we learn to send signals or particles there?

  3. What would this theory mean for eschatology/the end of the universe?

quantamagazine.org
u/anti-life86 — 12 days ago