> we haven't made any new discoveries in cosmology in the past two decades
Is that true?
At least for my hobbyist understanding of the progress of cosmology, quite a lot seems to have happened in the past two decades. Confirmation of the Higgs Boson at CERN [0] kept me up all night to watch the press conference; I found it extremely exciting. (Maybe you count this strictly as observational particle physics and not cosmology, but I might appeal for it to be allowed in the context of your critique).
And what of TFA? Isn't what we're reading now a new discovery in cosmology?
What about the rush of exoplanet discoveries?
What about the dramatically different galactic properties now observed in increasingly strange corners of the observable universe (including some which perhaps give insight into some of the properties of "dark matter" or whatever it ends up being)?
Yes, it's true. Mainstream science refuses to accept anything radically new because of huge baggage. Nobody wants to look stupid, then relearn, recalculate, republish, reteach everything, or lose their tenures, grants, etc. It's why science advances in small incremental steps. AFAIK, there is a team of scientists secretly working on radically new set of theories (I got contact but cannot join because of war).
That notion is ridiculous. Finding something radically new is every scientist's dream. Look at how Einstein is perceived, who arguably found one of the most radically new theories. Nobody thought he looked stupid or lost tenure. No one goes into science hoping to simply confirm what everybody already thought was true.
Is that true?
At least for my hobbyist understanding of the progress of cosmology, quite a lot seems to have happened in the past two decades. Confirmation of the Higgs Boson at CERN [0] kept me up all night to watch the press conference; I found it extremely exciting. (Maybe you count this strictly as observational particle physics and not cosmology, but I might appeal for it to be allowed in the context of your critique).
And what of TFA? Isn't what we're reading now a new discovery in cosmology?
What about the rush of exoplanet discoveries?
What about the dramatically different galactic properties now observed in increasingly strange corners of the observable universe (including some which perhaps give insight into some of the properties of "dark matter" or whatever it ends up being)?
0: https://home.web.cern.ch/news/news/physics/new-results-indic...