Could All Our Scientific Knowledge Come Tumbling Down Like A House Of Cards?
“Now, think about what would be required to do today to tear down one of our leading scientific theories. It’s not as complicated as you might imagine: all it would take is a single observation of any phenomenon that contradicted the Big Bang’s predictions. Within the context of General Relativity, if you could find a theoretical consequence of the Big Bang that didn’t match up with our observations, we’d truly be in store for a revolution.
But here’s the important part: that won’t mean that everything about the Big Bang is wrong. General Relativity didn’t mean everything about Newtonian gravity was wrong; it simply exposed the limit of where and how Newtonian gravity was successful. It will still be accurate to describe the Universe as having originated from a hot, dense, expanding state; it will still be accurate to describe our observable Universe as being many billions of years old (but not infinite in age); it will still be accurate to talk about the first stars and galaxies, the first neutral atoms, and the first stable atomic nuclei.”
There are a great many people out there who absolutely cannot wait for the day where one of our greatest scientific theories is demonstrated to be wrong. Where an experiment or observation comes in that cannot be reconciled with our leading ideas of how the Universe works. At last, perhaps an unintuitive part of our existence, like relativity or quantum mechanics, might be replaced with something that’s a closer approximation of our actual reality. But that won’t invalidate what we already know; it will merely extend it.