Is this question on topic? Or should it be?
How come some people are claiming that the Big Bang never happened?
I actually had the same question (namely how valid is the conclusion) but felt it would be opinion based so I asked it in chat. Now that it's on the main page (and the "Hot Questions" bar) we started discussing whether it is on topic or not. No close votes have been cast at the moment, but I thought it might be worth clarifying here.
Reasons it might be off-topic:
- Primarily opinion based. It asks if the assumptions and conclusions are valid.
- Answers are mostly discussion. You can see in the comments that it is actually mirroring the same discussion we had in chat about it.
- Non-mainstream physics. It's a new theory (although it is a peer-reviewed, published one now) that has not yet been verified and goes against the prevailing scientific opinion.
Reasons those reasons may not be good ones:
- Because it has been peer-reviewed, there must be some validity to their claims. Even if it is limited to universes located within spherical cows.
- Although it seems the answers are mostly discussion, they are all kind of presenting the same answer. And I know in the past that I have said that answers cannot make a question on topic so I personally have some mixed opinions about it.
- Although non-mainstream in the sense it goes against prevailing opinion, I think this is exactly the kind of non-mainstream question we should allow. It is a "How and why does this buck the trend" question. It is also a "Are these assumptions valid to make" question if you really drill into the physics of the problem.
So that said, how does everybody feel about it being on-topic?