Hi Mercer!
I did clearly cite the paper by Wills and Carter in the conversation. In some cases, such as when I was discussing Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and BGV theorem, I did not think it necessary to cite the paper. Grok is fully aware of the science and I thought scientists would be also.
See Einstein, Albert. “Cosmological considerations on the general theory of relativity.” Cosmological Constants (1915): 16.
When Einstein wrote that paper, Hubble had not yet discovered the “red shift” and the Big Bang model had not been developed.
In 1982 Vilenkin published his paper that clearly explained the fact that a beginning of spacetime requires that the initial conditions prior to the Big Bang to be “no spacetime.”
Vilenkin, Alexander. “Birth of inflationary universes.” Physical Review D 27.12 (1983): 2848.
This paper is not readily available and so I will provide you with a short video clip in which Vilenkin describes the initial conditions and his proposal on how the universe can still be viewed as Naturalistic. This is important background since I spent a little space explaining why his proposal is not scientific (it cannot be observed or tested). While I reject his proposal as unscientific, I congratulate him for clearly explaining the initial conditions of “no matter, no space and no time.”
Regarding BGV theorem, here’s the full citation:
Borde, Arvind, Alan H. Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin. “Inflationary spacetimes are incomplete in past directions.” Physical review letters 90.15 (2003): 151301.
While Guth and Vilenkin have tried to walk back the implications of BGV theorem, they have both published peer reviewed papers saying the theorem implies the universe had a beginning and that the theorem is difficult to evade.
Regarding the fact the RNA World hypothesis has been falsified, I also cited this paper by my friend Charlie Carter and gave the full citation.
Wills, Peter R., and Charles W. Carter Jr. “Insuperable problems of the genetic code initially emerging in an RNA world.” Biosystems 164 (2018): 155-166.