rationalskepticism.org

crank wrote:

newolder wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

newolder wrote:
The RS1 model is not concerned with universe creation.

So why did R&S talk about brane collisions causing big bangs?

Where did they do this? (Perhaps you are thinking of Paul Steinhardt & Neil Turok and their ekpyrotic model. )

I've enjoyed a lot of Steinhardt's lectures on this and other subjects. One of the things he mentions fairly often is that their brane model could be easily refuted by observations that were not too far off. That was from a number of years ago. Do you know what I'm talking about and if so, what became of it? I can go dig up the youtube links if needed.

I covered the papers from these two authors on multiple occasions in the past.

One of the predictions of the Steinhardt-Turok model, is that the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves is blue-shifted, i.e., biased toward short wavelengths. If our new collection of gravitational wave detectors pick up primordial gravitational waves, analyse them, and find no bias toward short wavelengths, it's back to the drawing board for S&T. On the other hand, if a biased spectrum is found, in accordance with the specifications in their papers, they pick up a Nobel for predicting it in advance. As far as I'm aware, their model is the only model making this prediction about primordial gravitational waves, and thus provides an acid test to determine whether their model is plain, flat, wrong, or provisionally onto something big.

If you want the technical meat, I covered it here, as well as in several other posts.