[tigerlily]

I took a good long look at the CMB picture, including the caption. It basically says the Universe was one big hot apparently uniform ball at one stage.

I don't know what conditions were like before that stage, but like Eric Idle says, nothing can come from nothing.

Dark energy is a horse shit name for a theory that was horse shit to begin with. The Universe is probably just inhomogeneous, like your intuition is saying.

[api]

“Dark” matter and energy are placeholder names. “Dark” means “we don’t know” which either means we can’t see or detect it or there is an alternate explanation for the effect.

It’s like a comment in your code like \\ TODO…

I don’t see why that’s that hard, or why we’d expect to instantly be able to figure everything out.

[nobodyandproud]

I think the problem is that it wasn’t just used merely as a placeholder, but to hard shutdown any discussions—often started by lay persons—about possibilities that didn’t involve brand new particle physics.

I still recall how neutrinos and black holes “couldn’t” be candidates.

To physicists, this means stellar neutrinos and blackholes (and galaxy centers). To lay persons, any category such as cold neutrinos or primordial black holes also qualify.

The sheer amount of vitriol and—I can’t think of a better term than this—“smugness” was off putting.

Before the internet, this was fine when locked away in their labs and classes; but I don’t think you understand the scale of damage neurodivergent scientists and its fans have done to the science community once they started to participate directly.

[mr_mitm]

Why do you say "probably"? We can measure and quantify the inhomogeneities very precisely, and they're tiny. This isn't a matter of opinion or intuition.

[tigerlily]

Oh, sorry I was referring to the cosmological principle [1]. The wiki page is actually quite a good summary of the whole fiasco.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle

[tigerlily]

I will say that the current and future telescope lineup is amazing and is bound to reveal: even more fascinating insights and mysteries!