For over a century, cosmologists have believed that the universe began with a single fiery moment, the Big Bang. But what if that story is incomplete? Or what if it's even wrong?

This is a million dollar, billion dollar question. And what is a singularity? I mean, it's certainly a catchy word. There's an illusion. It gives an illusion that we know what we're talking about.

My guest today, Professor Nyash AF Shorty, is a professor of astrophysics at the Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo. He and his colleague Phil Halpern argue that the real battle in science is over the mysteries of singularities, those points where our collisions collapse and space time and physics itself seem to break down.

Where I talked to niece F. Shorty and Phil Halper about exactly this question. What happened at or before the Big Bang? Yeah, we don't know the answer. We don't even know whether the Big Bang was the beginning.

In their new book, Battle of the Big Bang, they take us inside the fight to understand whether the Big Bang was truly the beginning of it all, or whether it was just one chapter in a far stranger cosmic saga.

Let's go.

Soon you'll hear why many cosmologists no longer believe the Big Bang marked the beginning of time. And we'll find out exactly what it does mean to one of the most preeminent cosmologists of our generation. But first, what if I told you the biggest myth in science is the one you were taught as a fact in high school? Welcome to the into the Impossible podcast. I'm Brian Keating and I'm joined by my friend and fellow, at least denizen at one point of Brown University, cosmologist, a theoretician, intellectual provocateur. And that's Naish Afshordi, co author of Battle of the Big Bang. His thesis, along with his co author, Phil, is Phil Halpern, right? Is that the origin story of our universe may be a creational myth, a brilliant one perhaps, but a myth nonetheless. And Naish, I don't know if you know it, but you were mentioned by name on Piers Morgan recently. Did you want.

Did you know that?

Yes, I know. Sean Carroll was kind enough to mention us. Yeah. And we had talked to him recently and yeah, I'm looking forward to talking to Piers Morgan in the near future.

I hope it might happen. Actually, I want to start there with what are some of the misconceptions that Piers had? So to set the stage for people that haven't watched it, Sean Carroll had an epic battle with my friend Eric Weinstein, Sean used to be my friend, but he doesn't come on the podcast anymore for some reason. But nevertheless, he's a big character in your new book. And so he was debating with Piers Morgan on this segment that I'll put a clip in of, and Piers kind of called him to task for being arrogant to suggest that he is somehow above Piers because he can speculate on what came before the Big Bang. What did you make of that kind of little spat that Piers had? Were there any misgivings that Piers had, keeping in mind that he might represent the views of many of the audience that's watching and listening now?

Yeah. So it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much, Brian, for inviting me. We've been friends for a long time. Indeed. And it's been. But it's great to talk to you in this capacity now and see you again. So, yeah, so about the Big Bang.

It's such a fascinating story. And I think it's everybody. There isn't anyone who doesn't have a strong opinion about it, which is what makes it very fascinating. And it touches all of us. There is a religious aspect. There is a philosophical aspect. And then of course, there's scientific aspects of it. And yeah, everyone wants to know where they came from.

Right. What is that origin of our origins? And indeed, it's very science and religion meet. In fact, I used to give job talks and I remember one of the criticisms. I have a cosmologist that I tried to kind of. There was this thing called dark energy. Figure of merit. But I don't know if you remember that we're going to measure your experiment by how good they're going to measure dark energy. And I say science is a great thing.

It touches philosophy, it touches religion. There are all these aspects. You cannot really quantify how good the experiment is by one number because it's such a big, much bigger thing. And indeed, Big Bang is part of that. There is not one number that describes the Big Bang. It's an entire kind of ideology and series of ideology. So where we came from is the question. And we've used science to push it and we've pushed it as far as we can, at least until this point.