He Makes It Sound Like Their "Standard Model" Is Mostly a Boast Habit

 Recently there was published a paper by astronomer Fulvio Melia entitled "A Candid Assessment of Standard Cosmology." Melia's paper is a critical analysis of the pretentious claims of cosmologists, the scientists who study the universe as a whole and the universe's origin. Melia gives some reasons for thinking that cosmologists know much less than they claim to know. Referring to the "lambda cold dark matter" model (often called the standard model of cosmology), Melia states, "One cannot avoid the conclusion that the standard model needs a complete overhaul in order to survive."  He states, "The argument against standard cosmology in its present form continues to grow as several major inconsistencies and inexplicable features resist concerted attempts at resolution."

Around about 1978, cosmologists (the scientists who study the universe as a whole) were puzzled by a problem of fine-tuning. They had figured out that the expansion rate of the very early universe (at the time of the Big Bang) seems to have been incredibly fine-tuned, apparently to about one part in ten to the sixtieth power. This dilemma was known as the flatness problem.

Around 1980 Alan Guth (an MIT professor) proposed a way to solve the flatness problem. Guth proposed that for a tiny fraction of its first second (for less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second), the universe expanded at an exponential rate. The universe is not expanding at any such rate, but Guth proposed that after a very brief instant of exponential expansion, the universe switched back to the normal, linear expansion that it now has. The theory was devised to get rid of some fine-tuning, but it turned out that the theory required fine-tuning of its own in multiple places. So we had a kind of "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation in which it was unclear that the need for fine-tuning had been reduced. Melia says this: "It actually requires much more fine-tuning for the Universe to have inflated than for it to have been placed in some low-entropy initial state (Carroll & Chen 2004)." He also refers to "the highly fine-tuned initial conditions required for inflation to work."

On page 3 of his paper,  Melia refers to the most popular of the countless versions of cosmic inflation theory that cosmologists have contrived, the so-called "slow-roll" version. Melia tells us that such a version falls short by an "order of magnitude" (about 10 times) : "For all of the commonly used slow-roll inflaton potentials, the accelerated expansion due to inflation would have fallen short by about an order of magnitude."

In section 3 of his paper, Melia disputes a boast of cosmologists, that they have explained how galaxies and stars arose by an explanation that there were quantum fluctuations in the early universe that were magnified by cosmic inflation. Referring to an "inflaton field" that is often appealed to but still never discovered, he tells us this:

"The standard model also lacks an explanation for how these primordial fluctuations could have classicalized into the macroscopic perturbations we see in the largescale structure....The reality is that we cannot answer the question of how the hypothesized quantum fluctuations in the inflaton field turned into the classical perturbations responsible for the formation of large-scale structure. Nevertheless, the standard model proffers this narrative, without proof, that this is how stars, galaxies and clusters came into existence."

Oops, it sounds like some of our scientists have sewed on their chests self-devised achievement badges that they didn't earn. That happens very often in the world of science. On page 6 of the paper, Melia criticizes a boast about the Big Bang theory, the boast that it has been successful in predicting the abundance of elements. Referring to baryons (protons and neutrons that make up the cores of atoms), he states this:

"But as we shall demonstrate shortly, this is the point at which significant hand-waving needs to be introduced in order to account for the emergence of baryons (and the subsequent creation of the light elements)....One cannot ignore the deep, unanswered question concerning the origin of the baryonic component because baryons and antibaryons should have annihilated almost completely, leaving only a negligible abundance today. Yet we observe a far greater concentration than the standard model of particle physics

 and the first and second laws of thermodynamics should have permitted. So where did baryons come from?"

Melia is calling attention to a fact that undermines all claims that the Big Bang is a predictively successful theory: the fact that it cannot account for a universe like ours in which regular matter (with most of its mass in baryons) is vastly more common than antimatter (with most of its mass in antibaryons).  Referring to the abundance of helium in our universe, Melia states this: "the helium abundance is actually not predicted by the standard model, as is often incorrectly asserted."  Referring to ΛCDM -- the so-called "standard model" of lambda cold dark matter -- and BBN -- big-bang nucleosynthesis, or the creation of elements in the very early universe -- he says, " The only light element that can reasonably be used to test the ΛCDM BBN scenario is 7Li, and as is well known by now, the data disagree with the model’s prediction by over 10σ (Sbordone et al. 2010)."  This is a claim that the only elements whose abundance is predicted by standard cosmology is the Lithium-7 isotope of lithium, and standard cosmology makes a prediction about that abundance that is way, way wrong (10σ means 10 standard deviations, which is very far off the mark). 

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy always increases. If the universe is now 13 billion years old, the universe's entropy at the time of the Big Bang must have been incredibly low, too low for scientists to be able to account for. On page 8 Melia  says, "The standard model currently has no explanation for why the Universe was initially in a very low entropy state (as required by the second law), and for how the CMB acquired such high entropy so soon after the Big Bang." Referring to an Initial Entropy Problem or IEP of how the universe could have began in a state of such low entropy (as it it apparently did), Melia says this on page 9:

"The IEP has been one of the most contentious issues in standard cosmology. It remains unsolved. Neither the equilibrium models nor the inflationary paradigm can adequately account for the very low initial entropy without relying on a lack of ‘naturalness.’  If the initial state of the Universe was random, characterized by a uniform probability of microstates, it should have been born with maximum entropy, representing thermal equilibrium, not the extremely unlikely low-entropy configuration required by ΛCDM. At face value, the standard model of cosmology thus appears to be inconsistent with the first and second laws of thermodynamics, constituting yet another conflict with our fundamental physical theories."

On page 9 Melia also tells us this: "The appearance of supermassive black holes at redshifts z > 6.3 (Fan et al. 2003; Jiang et al. 2007; Willott et al. 2007; Jiang et al. 2008; Willott et al. 2010a,b; Mortlock et al. 2011; Venemans et al. 2013; Bañados et al. 2014; Wu et al. 2015) and primordial galaxies at z ∼ 10 − 12 (Bouwens et al. 2011; Zheng et al. 2012; Bouwens et al. 2013; Ellis et al. 2013; Brammer et al. 2013; Coe et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2013; Bouwens et al. 2014), creates a serious conflict with the formation of such objects within the timeline predicted by the standard model (Melia 2013b, 2014)." On page 13 he tells us this: "These initial detections by HST have been characterized as an ‘impossibly early’ galaxy problem, but the more recent discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) (Castellano et al. 2022; Labbe et al. 2022; Harikane et al. 2022; Naidu et al. 2022; Furtak et al. 2022; Bradley et al. 2022; Atek et al. 2022; Bouwens et al. 2022) of well-formed ... galaxies at redshifts extending out to ∼ 17, with some confirming ALMA observations (Fujimoto et al. 2022), have greatly exacerbated this apparent conflict with the standard model."

These recent observations by the James Webb Space Telescope are observations that effectively "look back in time" 13 billion years, because they are looking at the edge of the cosmic horizon, about 13 billion light-years away. Cosmologists had predicted that no galaxies would be seen at such distances, and had predicted that galaxies did not form until about 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The new observations tell a very different story, of galaxies being well-formed by only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.  This is a problem of the universe getting organized way too fast for scientists to account for. 

Melia ends his paper by saying "this collection of seemingly insurmountable inconsistencies and paradoxes ought to convince even its most diehard supporters that a major overhaul of the standard model is called for." But is it a good idea to try and replace one pretentious dogmatic system with some other pretentious dogmatic system? There is no actual rule in science that when you have some big elaborate theoretical contrivance that purports to explain things, it must stand until it is replaced by some other more successful elaborate theoretical contrivance that purports to explain such things.  

In the world of software, there is a type of event called a rollback. When a rollback occurs, a database or program is restored to its previous state. A software publisher might release version 3.1 of its software, and might discover that the version has serious bugs. The publisher may then announce a rollback of version 3.1, withdrawing it from the market, and advising its customers to revert to the previous version, version 3.0. The same thing can happen in the world of science, but rarely does.  A rare version of a rollback in science occurred with the BICEP 2.0 affair. Scientists announced that they had discovered gravitational waves from primordial cosmic inflation, and had thereby proven one of their favorite theories. Later in the same year support for this claim collapsed.  

A simple rollback could occur in the world of cosmology. Scientists could confess that they don't really understand the composition of the universe, that they don't really understand how galaxies formed, that they don't really understand why the initial expansion of the universe was so fine-tuned, that they don't really understand why galaxies rotate the way they do, and that when they recently published what they called a "dark matter map of the universe," they were misspeaking because dark matter has still never been observed.  But that's unlikely to happen, because it's like their  rule is "a boast must stand until it is replaced by an equally boastful boast."

Why "We Are All Star Stuff" Is a Poor Slogan

Trying to make astronomy seem more relevant to the average man, the astronomer Carl Sagan tried to popularize the slogan "we are all star stuff," a slogan that many people have since repeated.  But there are several reasons why the slogan "we are all star stuff" is a poor slogan to be using. 

Reason #1: We Don't Really Know How the Elements in Our Bodies Originated

Scientists sometimes boast about understanding how the elements originated.  Their claim is that the three lightest elements (hydrogen, helium and lithium) originated in the Big Bang, the sudden origin of the universe. They claim that other elements such as carbon and oxygen originated in stars. 

But the Big Bang theory does not correctly predict the amount of lithium. This shortfall is called the cosmological lithium problem.  A university press release tells us, "The standard models of the Big Bang that are currently used predict an abundance of Li-7, the main lithium isotope, which is three or four times more than that determined via astronomical observations."

The biggest failure of the Big Bang theory is that it incorrectly predicts the universe should consist of equal amounts of matter and antimatter.  We know from experiments in particle accelerators that when two high-energy photons collide at very high speeds, they produce matter and antimatter in equal amounts. In the first instants of the Big Bang, the universe should have consisted of such very high-energy photons, colliding with each other constantly, leaving equal amounts of matter and antimatter. A web page of the leading particle physics organization CERN starts out by saying, "The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe." But it is known that the amount of matter in the universe is actually at least 10,000 times greater than the amount of antimatter in the universe.  If even a tiny bit of antimatter came into contact with some matter here on our planet, it would create an explosion vastly bigger than a hydrogen bomb explosion. 

It seems the Big Bang theory is a far-from-perfected work-in- progress, and currently way, way off in its prediction about the ratio of matter and antimatter in the universe, and also way off in its predictions about lithium. So we cannot rule out the possibility that future refinements of the Big Bang theory will claim that the Big Bang produced not just the first three elements on the periodic table (hydrogen, helium and lithium) but the first eight elements on the periodic table (hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen). If that were to happen, then scientists would stop claiming that most of the mass in our bodies comes from stars. 

No one would be terribly surprised if scientists were to stop claiming that most oxygen and carbon came from stars.  The current theory to explain the origin of oxygen and carbon has a rather fishy smell to it.  The theory is that the oxygen and carbon on Earth came from one or more other stars. But the problem is that stars are very, very far apart.  The nearest star is 25 trillion miles away.  There has always been the problem of accounting for how so much material from other stars could have got here.  An average star will not shoot out matter that far away from it. 

There are rare events called supernova explosions in which stars explode violently and shoot out matter far away. Scientists claim that such explosions can account for planets like Earth getting elements such as oxygen.  Such claims may not be warranted. 

The Crab Nebula is a nebula caused by a supernova explosion nearly 1000 years ago:

 Credit: NASA

The NASA web page here lists the width of the Crab Nebula as six light-years. In the calculation below I'll assume a supernova casts heavy elements across an area of about 1000 light-years (more than the roughly 200 cubic light-years of the Crab Nebula).

Below we see some very rough calculations on the topic on how much of the galaxy should have been seeded with heavy elements from supernova explosions. I'll use the estimate of about 3 supernova explosions per century given by several sources. 

Length of our galaxy, light years	100000
Cubic size of galaxy, light years	1000000000000000
Number of supernova per year in our galaxy	0.03
Number of supernova in past 6 billion years in our galaxy	180000000
Number of cubic light years that get heavy elements from one supernova	1000
Number of cubic light years in our galaxy getting supernova heavy elements (past 6 billion years)	180000000000
Fraction of our galaxy getting heavy elements such as oxygen from supernovas during the past 6 billion years	.000180

These calculations suggest that less than two ten-thousandths of our galaxy should have got elements such as oxygen from supernova explosions.  So what confidence can we have in claims that the oxygen and carbon in our body came from distant stars?

Attempts to account for the origin of heavy elements by stellar activity don't quite work correctly. To account for the abundances we observe of gold and silver, scientists have appealed to far-fetched ideas like colliding neutron stars. A recent paper attempting a "latest and greatest model" confesses, "We find that silver is overproduced by a factor of 6, while gold is underproduced a factor of 5 in the model."  Oops, our "elements from the stars" guys still haven't got things right, it seems.  A 2019 paper states, "The origin of many elements of the periodic table remains an unsolved problem."

My purpose here is not to claim a refutation of current models of the origin of elements, but to merely point out that such models are far from proven.  We don't really know that the oxygen and carbon in our bodies came from some other star or stars.  Such elements could have originated before any stars existed, at the time of the Big Bang. 

Also, the entire universe could have been divinely created ten thousand years ago, a million years ago, a billion years ago, or any number of years ago, in some state of organization far greater than the hot, disorganized state of the Big Bang.  In that case it would be false that the carbon and oxygen in our bodies came from stars. Similarly,  a builder can create a Colonial-style house in Vermont that looks like it is 200 years old, but which is actually only three months old.  

Commenting on the prevailing hypothesis that the oxygen and iron in our solar system came from a nearby supernova explosion, one scientific paper states, "Numerous individual characteristics of the solar system when viewed collectively reveal that the supernova enrichment scenario is not sufficiently self-consistent." The author then discusses at some length some serious problems with such a hypothesis. 

Given all these uncertainties, claiming "we are all star stuff" is not a statement of scientific fact, but a statement of shaky scientist speculation.  

Reason #2: It Is Misleading to Use the Term "Stuff" to Refer to Our Enormously Organized Bodies

Let us consider the word "stuff" in the slogan "we are all star stuff." The word "stuff" implies a disorganized set of things or disorganized material.  For example, if someone said to you, "Let me show you some metal stuff I have in my garage," you would be surprised if the person opened his garage door and pointed at a car.  The word "stuff" implies some not-very-organized set of things.  For example, someone may say, "I bought some stuff at the food store," referring to various items that are not any very organized arrangement.  

But human bodies are not some disorganized stuff. Bodies are things that have an enormous degree of hierarchical organization.  In a body subatomic articles are organized into atoms, which are organized into simple molecules like amino acids, which are organized into vastly more complicated protein molecules consisting of hundreds of amino acids arranged in just the right way to produce a functional effect. Then such protein molecules are organized into protein complexes or organelles, which are organized into cells that may have thousands of such organelles. Then the cells are organized into tissues, which are organized into organs, which are organized into organ systems. "Stuff" is a misleading term to use about that type of organization. Using such a term for something as organized as the human body is like calling the Golden Gate Bridge "some metal stuff." 

Reason #3: We Are Mainly Our Minds Not Our Bodies, and It Is Dehumanizing and Morally Hazardous to Refer to Humans As "Stuff"

A human being is mainly a mind rather than a body. You are mainly your thoughts, your self, your personality, your memories, your beliefs, your feelings, and your way of living, none of which are any kind of material stuff. (The claim that memories are material has no basis in robust science.)  When you speak as if a human being is "some stuff," you are engaging in dehumanizing speech. Such speech is morally hazardous. Once a person starts talking about a human as "some stuff," he may feel no qualms about getting rid of that "stuff."  For example:

Captain: Get rid of all that stuff over there.

Corporal: How should I do that, with a machine gun or a flame thrower?

Slogans such as "we are all star stuff" are loved by those who wish to get people to think of themselves as mere accidents of nature. Get a man to think of himself as mainly some stellar debris, and you may get him close to thinking of himself as some mere accident of nature.  But ironically, in developing their theories of the origin of elements, scientists find themselves appealing to very lucky fine-tuning in physics which does not sound accidental.  For example, a paper entitled "Chemical Elements Abundance in the Universe and the Origin of Life" states this: "

"Element synthesis which started with p-p chain has resulted in several specific characteristics including lack of any stable isotope having atomic masses 5 [boron] or 8 [oxygen]. The carbon to oxygen ratio is fixed early by the chain of coincidences. These  remarkably fine-tuned conditions are responsible for our own existence and indeed the existence of any carbon based life in the Universe."

Postscript: At a mainstream science site, we read the following:

"Our study suggests that the Earth itself has been able to create lighter elements by nuclear transmutation,'  said Mikio Fukuhara, a co-author from Tohoku University's New Industry Creation Hatchery Center in Japan. If accurate, this is a revolutionary discovery because 'it was previously theorized that all of these elements were sourced from supernova explosions, whereas we postulate a supplementary theory,' Fukuhara said."

Apparently there are three possible ways in which the oxygen and carbon in our bodies might have naturally originated: in the Big Bang, in stars, or through earthly processes.  Since we don't know how the elements in our bodies originated, we should not be saying "we are all star stuff," as if we knew how the elements in our bodies originated.