The largest-ever survey of physicists finds almost no consensus on how the universe works
A survey of physicists worldwide, the largest of its kind, found only two questions drew majority agreement: whether the Big Bang marks time's start, and whether cosmic inflation happened. Per University of Waterloo, Perimeter Institute and Physics Magazine.
The largest survey of physicists ever conducted found strikingly little agreement on some of physics' biggest open questions, according to Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo, reported by ScienceDaily and SciTechDaily. The standard cosmological model, known as Lambda-CDM, failed to win majority support, and no single theory of dark matter or quantum gravity dominated. Only two questions crossed the 50 percent threshold: 68% of respondents said the Big Bang does not necessarily mark the beginning of time, and 51% agreed the early universe underwent a rapid period of expansion called inflation. On dark matter, the most common answer, at 21%, favored a combination of theories rather than any single explanation, ahead of an undiscovered particle at 17%. On quantum gravity, string theory led with only 19% support. The survey is described in an arXiv preprint published via the American Physical Society's Physics Magazine, not a peer-reviewed journal article, and reflects physicists' opinions rather than new experimental measurements. Sources: ScienceDaily, SciTechDaily (University of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute).