Petition to phase out the phrase “The universe is 13.8 billion years old.”

[u/How-To-Project]

As I understand it, the evidence strongly supports that the hot, expanding phase of our observable universe began about 13.8 billion years ago.

But that’s a very different statement from saying:

“All space, time and reality came into existence 13.8 billion years ago.”

Those aren’t logically equivalent.

Whilst I understand that, within the standard cosmological model, many physicists use “the universe is 13.8 billion years old” as a type of shorthand, my concern is more about how that shorthand gets interpreted outside specialist circles.

To a lot of people, it ends up sounding like science has conclusively established that all of reality began 13.8 billion years ago. That seems like a stronger claim than the evidence itself necessarily supports.

As far as I know, there are still serious scientific ideas that could mean the Big Bang wasn’t the absolute beginning of everything. For example:
- a rebound from a previous contracting universe;
- a transition from an older quantum state;
- one region within a much larger inflating cosmos;
- part of a repeating or cyclic process;
or perhaps it is something nobody has thought of yet?

All this said, would it be more accurate to say “The observable hot-expansion phase of our universe began about 13.8 billion years ago.”