3.3 An Inflationary Cosmology

Previous posts in this chapter:

3.1 General and Special Relativity
3.2 Three Cosmologies

3.4 Ex Nihilo Creation
3.5 The Cosmological Argument
3.6 The Fine Tuning Argument 
3.7 The State of the Question
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3.3 In 1981, Alan Guth published a landmark paper hypothesizing that several problems in cosmology might be explained if the early universe underwent a rapid inflation in fractions of a second from a tiny, hot, dense state into a much larger size, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. [1] For one, there was the "horizon problem." This was the fact that the universe appears somewhat uniform in all directions even though it is not old enough for its parts otherwise to have ever been in contact with each other. Similarly, the universe is generally "flat," a condition that would not likely have been the case without some special circumstance such as the expansion Guth proposed.

Finally, "grand unified theories" had proposed that the fundamental forces of nature were all related to each other in the early universe. However, such theories imply the existence of monopoles, lone charges that might exist without their opposing charge. This phenomenon has never been observed. Guth proposed that they might have been so widely distributed by a rapid expansion of the early universe as to be undetected. 

In the decades that have followed, a general consensus has emerged in terms of the timeline and sequence of the universe's early expansion. Later in the chapter, we will explore how the events that unfolded seemed to be "just right" for the universe to form in a way that would eventually allow for stars and planets such as ours. If we did not live in a "Goldilocks universe," none of us would be here today.

As in the image above, the universe is currently thought to have begun in an incredibly hot, dense singularity. Then, something pulls the trigger. It begins to expand rapidly. Three minutes later, we will have atomic nuclei. [2]

The Planck Epoch
In the time from beginning to nuclei, the universe will undergo several rapid "epochs." It starts in the Planck epoch. This is the time immediately after the Big Bang when the laws of physics as we now know them break down. The universe is arguably the smallest possible space, 10^-35 meters, a quantum of space, and the smallest quantum of time passes, around 10^-43 seconds. This is the starting line.

The Grand Unification Epoch
Then gravity distinguishes itself from the other fundamental forces. This is the "Grand Unification Epoch." In the next fraction of a second, from 10^-43 to 10^-36 seconds, the other fundamental forces are still combined. Only gravity has become an independent force.

The Inflationary Epoch
Now comes the inflation. In the period from 10^-36 to 10^-32 seconds, the universe goes from a subatomic size of 10^-26 meters to about the size of a marble of 1cm. This is the period that Guth predicted, explaining the horizon problem, the flatness of the universe, and the lack of detecting monopoles.

The Electroweak Epoch
From 10^-32 to 10^-12 seconds, the strong nuclear force -- which eventually will hold the nuclei of atoms together -- distinguishes itself from the still combined other forces, called the "electroweak" force. The sphere of space that will become the universe is about 300 light seconds in size or a little more than half the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

The Quark Epoch
This epoch begins with the electroweak force dividing into the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force. We now have all four of the fundamental forces of nature. In this period from 10^-12 to 10^-6 seconds, we also see quarks and gluons dominate. In the Standard Model of Particle physics, quarks are some of the most fundamental of particles, thought to be the component parts of protons, neutrons, and a host of other subatomic particles. In this period, they are too hot to glue together yet, but make up a quark-gluon plasma. By the end of the epoch, the universe is about the size of our solar system.

The Hadron Epoch
Early in this period from 10^-6 to one second, matter and antimatter annihilate each other following Einstein's famous equation, E = mc². There is slightly more matter than antimatter, allowing the universe as we know it to continue to unfold. Quarks begin to fuse together to form some of the particles we learned about in high school -- protons and neutrons. The universe is now a second old, and it is now several light years across. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, going at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second.

The Lepton Epoch
The next epoch begins as the universe cools enough for neutrinos to be liberated from matter. From about one to 10 seconds, the universe will expand to be a few million kilometers across. Particles like electrons and neutrinos dominate.  

The Nucleosynthesis Epoch
From 10 seconds to about 3 minutes, the universe has cooled enough for protons and neutrons to fuse together to form nuclei. It is still too hot for electrons to orbit, but the nuclei of hydrogen, helium, as well as some deuterium and lithium to form. [4] The universe is now several light minutes across.

The Photon Epoch
Up to this point, it seems like there is little that might conflict between science and faith. In the standard timeline, the universe is only 3 minutes old. However, the current model now supposes a period of some 380,000 years in which the universe exists in a plasma of photons (light particles), electrons, and nuclei. The soup is initially too hot to form atoms, but it is cooling. By the end of this period, the universe is thought to be about 84 millions light years in diameter.

From about 280,000 years on, the universe is getting cool enough for atoms to begin to "recombine." This will gradually happen all over the universe, reaching the peak of recombination at the end of this epoch.

At the end of ths period, the universe cools enough for photons to be released. This is thought to be the basis for the cosmic microwave background that was discovered in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson. If one is sympathetic to the idea that the days of Genesis 1 could have been epochs, then it is fascinating that the event of Day 1 is the creation of light (Gen. 1:3). According to the current inflationary model, in the 380,000th year, the universe said, "Let there be light."

The Dark Ages
The universe grows dark. The frequency of the light from the cosmic photon release gets stretched as the universe expands and red-shifts everywhere. It goes into the infrared part of the spectrum, the stuff of night goggles. According to the prevailing model, the next 150 million years are a time when gravity slowly pulls hydrogen and helium together into clumps. The expansion was uneven, so there are concentrations of matter where galaxies can form. The dark ages end as the first stars ignite, and there is a cosmic dawn.

If you would like to take Genesis metaphorically, you might see this slow separation and gathering of hydrogen across the universe as analogous to the separation of the waters in Genesis 1:6-8. Now the sky appears.

Galaxy Formation
In the prevailing model, the next 300 million years or so see the formation of huge stars that burn out quickly. The first galaxies begin to form. In the current theory, the oldest observable galaxy is MoM-z14, thought to date to about 300 million years after the Big Bang. 

Reionization Period
In the current model, at the same time galaxies are forming until about a billion years after the Big Bang, the newly formed stars and quasars begin to detach hydrogen nuclei from their electrons. It is called re-ionization because you'll remember that they had been separated in the early universe. Bubbles of ionized hydrogen gas merged with each other, leaving the transparent universe we see today when we look up to the skies.

Generations of Stars
For the next 8 billion years or so -- at least in the current model -- the first generation of stars burn out and go supernova. Some become black holes. Others crunch helium together to begin to form heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. According to the prevailing theory, the elements that will soon become the fundamental elements of life are being created in the burning out, collapsing, and re-formation of stars.

Our Solar System
Again, in the current model, our solar system forms about 4.5 billion years ago, about 9 billion years into the existence of the universe. Our Sun is thought to be a third generation star, meaning that a first star burned out and exploded. Then a second star formed with heavier elements in the mix. It burned out and exploded, creating all the elements we now know. Then that material coalesed around our Sun, Sol, with at least eight planets in tow.

The main feature of this model that could present a potential conflict with faith is the timeline. Those who take Genesis 1 to teach a full creation in six 24 hour days will object to a universe that is 13.5 billion years old. However, there are also interpretations of Genesis 1 that see no conflict here.

We will discuss various interpretations and science strategies in the next chapter. Apart from the timeline, nothing in this sequence seems intrinsically unbiblical or contrary to faith. Indeed, one could suppose that God himself was orchestrating these developments, as we will argue in the later section in this chapter on the Fine-Tuning argument.

[1] Alan H. Guth, “Inflationary universe: A possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems,” Physical Review D 23, no. 2 (1981): 347–356. He published a more popular version of his argument that same year as The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins (Basic, 1981).

[2] See Stephen Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (Basic, 1993).

[3] Deuterium is hydrogen with a neutron in the nucleus. Normally hydrogen has no neutrons. Lithium has three protons and four neutrons in its nucleus.

3.2 Three Cosmologies

Previous writings here on the blog have included:

2.1 Relationships between Science and Faith
2.2 Critical Realism and the Coherence of Truth
2.3 Approaches to Scripture

3.1 General and Special Relativity

8.1 Approaches to Genesis 2-3
8.2 Situating Genesis 2-3
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3.2 Three Cosmologies
As the vastness of the universe became more and more apparent over the course of the twentieth century, three primary theories emerged to account for its origins and ongoing nature. At the middle of the century, the favorite was the so-called steady state theory, championed to great effect by individuals like Fred Hoyle. A small minority thought the math of general relativity might point to a beginning of the universe with something like a "big bang." The name "big bang theory" was actually given to this approach in ridicule. However, after it became clear that this was the most likely beginning to the universe, some suggested an ongoing oscillating big bang so as to avoid the need to invoke something like a Creator. [1]

textbox: Three Models:
steady state theory -- the universe has no beginning and matter is constantly being created as space expands
big bang theory -- the universe began at a point in the past in a dense hot state that has been expanding and cooling ever since 
oscillating big bang theory -- the universe begins, expands, contracts, expands again endlessly

3.2.1 Steady State Theory
After Einstein introduced the general theory of relativity, it was not long before individuals like Alexander Friedmann (1922) and Georges Lemaître (1927) recognized that the theory could point to a beginning to the universe followed by cosmic expansion. Einstein himself did not find this possibility appealing. He preferred a static universe that neither expanded nor contracted but that more or less stayed the same for all time. To counteract gravity and keep the universe static, he introduced a "cosmological constant" to his equations.

However, in 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding -- everywhere. As a light-emitting object moves away, the frequency of the waves gets elongated (like the Doppler effect when a siren is moving away from you). The result is what's called a "red shift." Galaxies all appeared to be moving away from one another, as though space itself were stretching. 

So, despite Einstein's attempt with the cosmological constant, the scientific community now had to come to grips with a universe that wasn't static at all. [2] In fact, it might very well have had a beginning. Georges Lemaître had seen this theoretical possibility of the math in 1927. He was both a scientist and a Belgian Roman Catholic priest. He saw this evidence as support for the idea of God as a Creator.

Enter Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle in 1948. Finding the possibility of a "Big Bang" at the beginning distasteful, they proposed a "steady state theory." The idea was that as the universe expanded, the average density of the universe stayed the same by creating matter to fill the gaps. They proposed that about every billion years, one hydrogen atom came into being for every cubic meter in the universe. They suggested that matter is continuously being created and thus that there did not need to be a beginning (or a Creator). Thus, the universe had no beginning or end in time.

Hoyle was known for his charismatic personality. In fact, he was the one who coined the expression "big bang" for the idea of a beginning. He regularly appeared on the radio and made it easy for the public to believe that his preferred cosmological option was the best of the alternatives.

3.2.2 The Big Bang Theory
As early as 1922, Alexander Friedmann recognized that Einstein's relativity equations could be interpreted to suggest a beginning to the universe in a very dense state. Friedmann's life unfortunately was cut short in Russia by typhoid, but seven years later the Belgian scientist Georges Lemaître independently came to the same conclusion.

With the confirmation of the universe's expansion in 1929, the possibility that the universe began with a "big bang" became even more plausible. Although the expression was originally one of derision, the name stuck. Nevertheless, this option remained unpopular among naturalists until the mid-1960s. Naturalism insists on explaining all the phenomenon of the world without recourse to the existence of the supernatural or spiritual. Many naturalists resisted the idea of a cosmic beginning, since a universe with no beginning seemed to remove the need for any first cause or Creator.

Nevertheless, events that unfolded in 1965 finally settled the debate. Early, in the 1940s, scientists like George Gamow had suggested that if the universe did begin in a hot, dense, fiery state, then the leftover radiation from that fireball should be detectable still today. As space stretched, the leftover radiation would stretch into the microwave frequencies and would form a sort of cosmic microwave background (CMB) everywhere in the universe, with a temperature a few degrees above absolute zero.

It was by accident in 1965 that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson stumbled upon this very background
radiation. They were working on a radio telescope for Bell Labs, but wherever they pointed the telescope in the sky, it was picking up a faint microwave hiss. They tried everything to eliminate possible noise sources, even cleaning out pigeon droppings inside the antenna. But the signal remained.

When Robert Dicke and Jim Peebles at nearby Princeton University heard about the situation, they immediately suspected that Penzias and Wilson had come upon the very "afterglow of creation" that for which they were planning to test. This puzzling signal was exactly what Gamow and others had predicted if the universe had begun with a "big bang." Hoyle and others were unable to account for it with their steady state theory, and the big bang theory became the primary theory for the universe's origin.

As we will see in the section on the inflationary universe, the current thinking is that the cosmic microwave background comes from around 380,000 years after the beginning, when the universe cooled enough for photons to be released universe wide. "Let there be light," you might say. If the universe were infinitely old, the background radiation would have already dissipated. The CMB is thus strong evidence that the universe had a beginning.

3.2.3 The Oscillating Big Bang
Naturalism insists on explaining the phenomena of the world without recourse to the supernatural or spiritual. However, the Big Bang theory suggested that the universe had a beginning, which raised the question of why the universe began. Theists were all too ready with an answer -- a Creator. This left the naturalist to ask what other explanation there might be.

One option came to be known as the "oscillating" big bang. As early as the 1930s, Richard Tolman had explored the possibility of "cyclic" universes. In the late 1900s, the theory revived of a universe that was in a constant process of rapid expansion, then contracting into a crunch, then expanding again in an endless, eternal cycle. In this way, the universe would have no beginning or ending. It would just be one endless cycle of expansion and contraction -- bang and crunch, bang and crunch for all eternity.

The main problem with the theory was entropy, the tendency of systems to increase in disorder and to lose heat. Each recycled universe would thus have less usable energy than the previous one. The result is basically a countdown to a universe without order -- not an infinitely repeatable cycle. Further, by the early twenty-first century, it was clear that there was not enough matter in the universe for its gravity to pull it back into a crunch. Indeed, the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. Its destiny could actually be a cosmic "rip" rather than a cosmic "crunch."

[1] Einstein preferred a static model in the early twentieth century, with the universe always being more or less as it is today.

[2] Einstein later called the constant a blunder, although it did turn out to be part of the equation.

8. Is the Big Bang theory compatible with Scripture and Christian faith?

When I went to Houghton, I revived an old Carl Schultz course called Science and Scripture and offered it online. The idea was to open it up to the public for auditing and possibly attract some students. Plus it was a Bible option for online students among a faculty that didn't really like online (what else is new). Since then, I've wanted to write a book on Science and Scripture that roughly covers the topics of the course. I floated a proposal a few years back but didn't get a bite.

In the meantime, especially in the light of AI developments, I've been thinking about self-publishing an intermediate work that could lead up to that ultimate goal. In training AI, you create snippet answers it seems. I've jotted down about 50 questions so far that might make for something like "Science and Scripture: Questions and Answers." Here's question 8: Is the Big Bang theory compatible with Scripture and Christian faith?

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Yes -- it is potentially compatible as long as one believes God is the one who caused the Big Bang.

The reason so many Christians assume the concept of a Big Bang conflicts with Christian faith and Scripture is because they assume it is atheistic. However, if one believes that God caused the Big Bang, then the theory actually supports faith in God. The Big Bang Theory itself says nothing about its cause. It simply says the universe started with a "bang." It is only about the how. It says nothing about the why. The only bone of contention, then, is how long ago it happened.

1. In the mid-1900s, the Big Bang Theory was the idea that the universe began in a hot dense state and then expanded rapidly from there to the vast cosmos we know today. As early as 1922, a Russian physicist named Alexander Friedmann recognized that Einstein's equations for general relativity could support an expanding rather than a static universe. In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) also suggested independently the idea of a "cosmic egg" or cosmic atom as a possible solution to Einstein's equations. Einstein disdained this possibility so much that he added a constant to his equation.

It is important to consider that many mid-twentieth-century cosmologists did not like this option precisely because it played so well into the idea of a Creator. After all, Lemaître himself was a Roman Catholic priest. One millennia-old argument for the existence of God was the cosmological argument, which argues that the universe must have had a cause. In the 300s BC, Aristotle suggested that the cosmos needed a "prime mover" to give it a first push. In the 1200s, Aquinas expanded this argument. 

The idea that the universe had a beginning raised the question, "Why did it begin? What was the cause?" And the cosmological argument stood ready to say that the best answer was a Creator, an intelligent Designer.

2. The very term "Big Bang Theory" was coined by Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) in the 1949 to make fun of the proposal. Hoyle favored an alternative known as the "Steady-State Theory." This was the idea that the universe may be constantly generating matter in some way somewhere as well as losing matter somewhere. Since it required no beginning to the universe, many cosmologists found it attractive.

Hoyle would have to swallow his mockery in 1964 with the discovery of a cosmic background radiation that confirmed that the universe had a beginning. Since this radiation was steadily in decline all over the universe, it served as a kind of timer since an early cosmic event. If the universe were infinitely old, it would have already dissipated.

Further, Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) had shown in 1927 that the universe was expanding. If you are acquainted with the Doppler effect, wavelengths stretch out if an object emitting them is moving away from you. With light, this effect produces a "red shift." Hubble observed this shift everywhere in the universe. Everything is moving away from everything else.

All these data points and more have led to the current sense that the universe began in a singularity -- a point of the smallest possible dimensions. It then rapidly expanded some 13.8 billion years ago into the massive space we now know. [1] The Big Bang that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered in 1964 is now thought to be a "cosmic microwave background" (CMB) that emerged as the early universe cooled enough to release photons all over the universe when the universe was about 380,000 years after the universe began.

3. An alternative proposal was the so-called "Oscillating Big Bang Theory." In this proposal, the universe explodes from a singularity but then collapses again into a singularity because of the gravitational pull of the universe's mass. Like the Steady State Theory, this approach would allow for a universe that was infinitely old and did not require a Creator.

However, there does not seem to be enough mass in the universe for this theory to work. The so-called "critical density parameter" (Ω) would seem to be less than 1. This observation suggests that the universe will expand forever. Once again, we are left with a unique beginning event, which leads to the question, "Why did the universe begin? What was the cause?" 

The existence of a Creator God remains a perfectly coherent answer. We might add that the frequent retort, "Then where did God come from?" is a non sequitur. It does not follow. It actually is circular because it assumes that God is part of the creation. We observe that events within the universe require a cause. We have no point of reference to say whether entities outside the universe need a cause.

4. The main bone of contention is then the length of time. Many Christians would consider 13.8 million years ago to be too long ago to fit with the Bible. We will explore the age of the earth and the universe in another chapter. There are however varying interpretations. For example, some would see Genesis 1 specifically in relation to the creation of the earth, not the universe. Some might suggest an apparent age theory where God created the universe to look like it's 13.8 billion years old. Some might view the days of Genesis 1 as ages rather than 24 hour periods.

In the end, however, the notion that the universe started with a bang supports rather than conflicts with the notion of God as Creator.

[1] Some key aspects of the current understanding emerged from the work of Alan Guth in 1980.

Novel on Creation now self-published

About a year and a half ago, I started writing a series of self-published novels called Gabriel's Diaries. The first one was about the incarnation. The second was about Jesus' earthly ministry to his resurrection. I'll do a second edition with notes by Advent for the first and by Lent for the second.

I've now finished the third. This one is geeky and extremely speculative. The idea was to see if it was possible to combine faith in the inspiration of the Bible, an affirmation of Christian orthodoxy, and modern science when it comes to cosmology, genetics, and evolution. I am not claiming that these latter ideas are true. I am exploring possibilities because some people's faith may be at stake.

Because these are sensitive topics, this one has a 7 page preface. Here's an excerpt:

"I am not staking any claims in this novella. It is an exploration of possibilities, not a statement of actualities. All the evidence of science could easily be accounted for by way of the 'apparent age theory.' This is the idea that God created the universe with apparent age. Indeed, as I told a class even last week, God could have created us six minutes ago with our memories intact. The question is whether such a theory is necessary or fits with the character of God. What purpose might God have had in creating the DNA sequences of all animals to look like they come from common origins? Would God really have set up fossil evidence just to test the faith of people in the last couple centuries, assuming that it reads the way most scientists say it does?

"For most of us, these issues are not central to our faith. I am a New Testament expert, not a scientist. I do not deal with scientific evidence in my daily life. I grew up taking Genesis 1 as literal 24 hour days and had no problem with the idea. I am still open to this possibility.

"I also fear that a lot of people have lost their faith over this issue. Others I fear are hindered from coming to faith because of these questions. Someone does graduate study in biology or genetics or some other scientific discipline, and they become convinced that the universe is 13.8 billion years old and the earth 4.5 billion years old. They become convinced that evolution is true. If they were taught that literal 24 hour days are a non-negotiable, they may lose their faith, not because they want to but because they just cannot fit the two together.

"Perhaps it will all blow over. What if the scientific evidence suddenly turned and older views of creation became obvious to all? In the meantime, it is worthwhile for Christian theologians, philosophers, and biblical experts to explore the possibilities. Scientists can be wrong for sure. But as an expert on the Bible, I can tell you that biblical interpreters are wrong just as often. They have to be—there are just too many conflicting interpretations out there!

"So my purpose here is to explore. May the Lord rescue any reader from any thought that might lead our trust in God astray. That is, after all, what it is all about, our faith. God is not primarily interested in our intellects, although God is truth. God is of course interested in our actions, because they have an impact on others. But it is the heart that is the center of the moral universe of humans. May the Lord protect our hearts as we try to navigate the troubled waters of our finite, fallen heads!"

So here is now Gabriel's Diary: The Creation, volume three of my Gabriel series.

Paperback

Kindle

Friday Science: Hawking 3 (Expansion of Universe)

I started Friday reviews of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Chapter 3: The Expanding Universe
1. I'm trying to figure out why I found this book so hard to read back in the nineties. My brain is a strange thing. Sometimes nothing will go in and then at other times a mess of complicated stuff goes right through. My breakthrough book was The Perfect Theory.

So chapter 1 talks about the earth at the center of the universe. We hear about Copernicus and Newton. He mentions relativity and quantum mechanics. Chapter 2 then gives Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Chapter 3 is about the Big Bang.

2. This chapter makes it clear that Hawking sees how the Big Bang theory could play into belief in God but of course he rejects that. I'm always a little puzzled by Christians who have a really negative view of a big bang, because it seems to serve in strong support of the cosmological argument for the existence of God.

It must be the fact that most scientists think it took place a little less than 14 billion years ago. But that's not the same as evolution. John Piper, for example, is very open to an old earth even though he does not believe in evolution.

3. He talks a little about the process of discovering that we are inside a galaxy of stars and that there are millions of other galaxies of stars. Edwin Hubble in 1924 was the first to discover other galaxies. The two factors in the brightness of a star are its luminosity and its distance from us. Hubble's logic went like this:

• If we know the luminosity of what we're observing, we can figure the distance from us.
• We know the distance of some stars near us using geometry. Since we know the distance, we can determine the luminosity of various type of stars.
• [We can type them by analysis of the light they emit, their spectra.]
• Now, knowing the luminosity of these types, we can figure out the distances of distant ones.

4. Hubble discovered that the spectra of all the stars everywhere was shifted to the red end of the spectrum. That is to say, using the Doppler effect, they were moving away from us. In short, every point, everywhere in the universe, is moving away from every other part of the universe. The universe is expanding.

Indeed, the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away! The speed of expansion suggests whether 1) it will eventually slow down and pull back in on itself (cosmic crunch), 2) it will continue at a steady speed, or 3) it will expand faster and faster until there is a cosmic rip. The third seems to be the case. Alexander Friedmann in 1922, four years before Hubble, had predicted the expansion.

Einstein hated the idea of cosmic expansion, actually introduced a "cosmological constant" into his formulas to make it stop. :-) Ironically, he was right about the constant, but wrong about expansion.

5. In 1965, two men working for Bell Labs picked up a background radiation that was theoretically explained by a big bang. If the universe was infinitely old, it would have already dissipated. The universe must have been fantastically hot to begin with, but it has been cooling down ever since. If we extrapolate back, the universe would have begun as something like a "singularity," a single point.

"Dark matter" has also been proposed to explain why galaxies swirl as they do. The outer rims of the galaxies swirl at the same basic speed as other parts.

A lot of people didn't like the idea of an expanding universe. It played too easily into an argument for God. Fred Hoyle in England was a very charismatic propagator of a "steady state" theory, where matter is constantly being created. He's a study in how people believe as much because of the person selling stuff as on the basis of truth. He was wrong. Go away, charmer.

6. The chapter ends with Roger Penrose's discovery of the probability of black holes, and of course Hawking's work built off of him. Together they proposed that the universe had begun with such a singularity that then expanded in a big bang. Again, this idea faced a lot of resistance but, in the end, the math was the math.

The problem--still unsolved--is that general relativity and quantum mechanics don't fit together. This is no problem today because the cosmos is really big and the atom is really small. But before the big bang, the universe was immensely dense and immensely small. This is the biggest problem in modern physics.

Friday Science: The First Day

1. As I was reading through the next chapter of The Road to Reality, I decided I was wasting my time for now. I'm not horrible when it comes to math and science. I want to understand. But I have experienced his words like having a map without any clue where you are on it. He needs a translator. :-)

2. So today I thought I'd work out the outline for an idea I had for a "novel" of sorts based on a post I did here a while back. The novel idea is "The First Day," namely, Genesis 1:1-3: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth, but the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."

So here's how I see the chapters going:

Chapter 1: In the beginning, God.
A little (Wesleyan) theology about God prior to creation :-)

Chapter 2: Let there be one.
So the second chapter of the novel would have God create math. He would create 1 out of 0. He would create multiples of 1. Not 100% sure what all I would do here, but it would be fun for nerds. This is the time of the universe before 10^-43 seconds. The economic Trinity might be mentioned.

Chapter 3: Let the universe inflate.
The next chapter would deal with the time between 10^-43 to 10^-34. This is the time when all the forces are unified (so I would make up some grand unification theory, probably not string theory since for some reason I don't like it). The universe increases its size by 10²⁶ times in less than a trillionth of a second. At the end of the period, the electroweak and strong nuclear forces differentiate, and there are gravitational ripples.

Chapter 4: Let there be quarks.
So the next time frame is 10^-34 to 10^-10. Matter and antimatter annihilate, leaving a lot of energy and a sliver of matter. Supersymmetry is broken, so time only flows one direction. The Higgs boson is frozen at a trillionth of a second. The electromagnetic and weak forces are differentiated.

Chapter 5: Let there be protons.
From about 10^-10 seconds to three minutes, the universe cools enough from about 10¹⁵ to 10¹² for quarks to stick together enough to form protons and neutrons. Dark matter is formed.

Chapter 6: Let there be light.
From about three minutes to 380,000 years, we basically have hydrogen and helium nuclei in a plasma state. There is darkness over the face of the deep, and the Spirit hovers over the face of the waters. But once the temperature of the universe cools down to about 3000K, actual atoms can form and the photons that had been absorbed by the plasma burst free and we have the cosmic background radiation we can still detect today.

Chapter 7: The universe rested.
For the next period, there is darkness again as atoms roam in gaseous clouds. Eventually, they will form stars.

From Big Bang to Dark Energy

I finished a MOOC for the first time. I've started several but this was the first one I finished. It was a four weeker with Hatoshi Murayama through the University of Tokyo, called "From the Big Bang to Dark Energy." He is a phenomenal teacher.

1. There has been massive movement in the field of cosmology in the last twenty years. We've seen the rise of the concepts of "dark matter" and "dark energy." Something that correlates well with the Higgs boson has been discovered. Gravitational waves have been detected. There seem to be a number of projects in motion. Much seems in flux in the field.

[Now for the Christian disclaimer. Even physicists are in flux here--the room is hardly painted, let alone dry. Meanwhile, I have never seen anything contradictory between the idea that the universe began with a bang and the belief in creation. Indeed, there is much in the current scenario that would do well with a Designer. The theological issue with evolution primarily has to do with Adam, not the age of the universe. In short, I neither consider this course correct, nor do I find anything in it that contradicts the Bible or orthodox faith.]

2. The image above a standard picture of the big bang hypothesis. We can see everything since the "afterglow" of cosmic radiation release by pointing our telescopes out into the galaxy. The most natural explanation for what we see in the sky is the following:

• Given the speed of light and various mathematical and scientific tricks, the most natural explanation is that, when we look up at the stars, we are looking into the distant past. If Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away (the next closest galaxy), then the universe must be at least 2.5 million years old in order for the light to reach us. 
• Sure, God could have created the light in mid-stream. Sure, the stars could be an angel kindergarten project painted onto a wall just outside our solar system (with Voyager 1 soon to smash into the wall). But since there's no need for us to worry about taking the universe as it seems to be, we probably shouldn't worry about it.
• In 1964, a couple of radio astronomers accidentally discovered cosmic background radiation (CMB). It is everywhere you point a radioscope into the universe. It is the "Afterglow Light Pattern" in the image above. Cosmologists currently date it to 380,000 years after the Big Bang.



NASA/WMAP of CMB

• Again, as a Christian I have found this gold and am puzzled by those who think the Big Bang is hostile to the Bible or Christian faith. CMB suggests that the universe had a beginning, which plays directly into the cosmological argument for the existence of God. If the universe began, we can plausibly ask, what caused it?

Fluctuations in CMB (blue wrinkles in the second image) have been part of the puzzle that cosmologists are trying to solve as they try to theorize back behind the 380,000 year mark.

2. CMB is said to reflect a point when the universe had cooled enough for electrons and protons to combine ("recombination") to form neutral hydrogen atoms. Before that point, photons of light were absorbed by a kind of hydrogen plasma with a temperature exceeding about 3000 degrees Kelvin. But when the universe had cooled down enough, these photons were "decoupled" and burst free all over the universe.

Since then, allegedly some 13.8 billion years ago, the photons have been spreading everywhere, but steadily diminishing in frequency because of the red shift of the Doppler effect. They are thus currently in the microwave range.

The fact that this radiation points to about the same temperature everywhere in the universe at about the same point in the past suggests that the vast expanse of the universe we now see, some 13.8 billion light years across, was originally all together. Einstein's relativity suggests that space would contract to a point in relation to an infinitely massive object.

Meanwhile, the fact that everything in the universe is red-shifted suggests that everything in the universe is moving away from everything else in the universe. Sure, there could be some other explanation. But right now, given the evidence, the most plausible suggestion is that the universe exploded from a point and space itself has been expanding ever since.

[Again, there were plenty of scientists in the 1950s that hated this big bang idea because it fit with the idea that the universe had a beginning, which is amenable to a God interpretation. The steady state theory was what was popular (constant generation of matter). And the Roman Catholic priest Georges L'Maitre who suggested a big bang was scorned by morons like Fred Hoyle.]

3. We then enter a dark period. Hydrogen clouds wander as space itself continues to expand. Over the next half billion years, gravity clumps them to form stars. Once stars begin to form, we can see again as we look out into space at the distant past.

In the dense centers of stars, hydrogen fuses into helium and some lithium. For the next 8 billion years or so, stars burn, burn out and explode, then collapse to form second and then third generation stars. Galaxies are formed around black holes, which are the remnants of particularly dense stars after they burn out. Galaxies cluster.

With each each generation of star, heavier and heavier elements are formed by fusion. About 4.5 billion years ago, our own sun--perhaps a third generation star--reformed with eight larger rocks and countless smaller ones in tow. Its third rock was in just the right place for life as we know it.

4. The most recent measurements suggest that the universe is not only expanding, but that its rate of expansion is increasing. If so, it is unlikely that the universe will ever collapse back into a ball (a "big crunch"), such as those who suggested an "oscillating big bang" used to suggest. [a theory that also potentially by-passed a creator, since then the universe might simply be an unending cycle of explosions]

The current thought is that instead the universe is heading for a "big rip," where its rate of expansion will eventually rip every atom of the universe apart. To try to explain why the universe is expanding, cosmologists have suggested an unknown energy, which is currently being called "dark energy" because no one has actually detected it. But it is thought to constitute about 73% of all the mass and energy of the universe, in order to make the math work. We'll see.

https://arieskindred.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/cosmogenesis/

4. Theories that push back before CMB do so in part on the basis of our understanding of how nuclear particles work. Nuclear particle accelerators crash particles into each other in search of these sorts of relationships.

So from about 3 minutes after creation to the suggested creation of neutral atoms about 380,000 years later, you have hydrogen and helium nuclei in a soup of plasma. All light is absorbed. Some call this the "photon epoch."

5. At some point, I may review Stephen Weinberg's classic work, The First Three Minutes (2nd ed). The problem is that I'm sure it is hugely out of date. It was first written in 1979 and updated in 1993.

The epoch from about 10^-10 seconds to three minutes after creation is a period sometimes called the "lepton epoch." During this period, with a temperature of about 10¹⁵ to 10¹² degrees Kelvin, protons and neutrons are formed out of quarks. In Murayama's approach, dark matter is formed.

Dark matter is thought to make up about 25% of the universe. It is called dark matter because it is unknown matter that has not been observed but seems necessary to explain what we see. For example, the stars at the edge of galaxies swirl at the same speed as stars near the centers. If galaxies exist in the middle of spheres of some unknown matter, that would explain this motion. It might also explain why there is an unevenness to the distribution of stars and galaxies throughout the universe.

6. The period from about 10^-34 to 10^-10 is sometimes called the "quark epoch." At the end of this era,

the recently "discovered" Higgs boson gets frozen into the universe at about a trillionth of a second, and the electromagnetic force is now distinguished from the weak nuclear force. Supersymmetry is broken and now time has an arrow. Entropy now points irrevocably toward the future.

Somewhere in here, Murayama thinks there was a grand annihilation of matter and antimatter, but perhaps because neutrinos can switch back and forth between neutrino and anti-neutrino, we ended up with a 2 in a billion excess of matter over antimatter. Thus, after most of these particles had become photons, enough matter remained to form the stars that now remain.

7. The period from about 10^-43 to 10^-34 is sometimes called the "grand unification epoch." During this period, the universe undergoes an inflation that increases its size by 10²⁶ times in less than a trillionth of a second. At the end of this brief period, the electroweak and strong nuclear forces differentiate.

A by-product of this inflation is thought to be gravitational ripples. They have been claimed to be detected in the last year or so.

8. Before 10^-43 seconds, we have a breakdown of our understanding of space time.

9. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

Friday Science: Fabric of Cosmos 1

1. I had been reading a book called, Our Mathematical Universe. I got through the part of the book that is generally accepted by physicists of the universe. But I came to realize that most view the rest of the book not only speculative, but perhaps bordering on the irresponsibly speculative.

So I've switched to another book on the current state of physics: Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. Now he is also speculative. He obviously likes string theory and the idea of multiple universes. I'm not real fond of either but at least these are well-trodden paths.

So I thought I'd dawdle through this book for a few Fridays. Chapter one is called "Roads to Reality: Space, Time, and Why Things Are as They Are."

2. The progression of the chapter is roughly:

• Classical Reality
• Relativistic Reality
• Quantum Reality
• Cosmological Reality
• Past and Future Reality

The first half of this material will be familiar to the science enthusiast. He starts with Newton's sense that space and time are fixed entities in which we move. Einstein transformed our understanding here, for space and time become adjustable.

Entering the quantum reality apparently requires us to throw all our intuitions out the window. Here we encounter an idea I believe I first saw in Richard Feynman. Human intuitions were formed to help us survive and thrive in the macro-world. (I think you might say so whether you are speaking of how God made us or of how evolution developed us). The implication is that our "common sense" and our intuitions have no point of reference for the quantum world.

So the math seems to work, but no one really knows what it means. There are aspects of math itself that are are like this. Take Euler's famous equation from the 1700s: e^iπ - 1 = 0. What does it mean to raise something to the power of the square root of negative 1? I don't have a clue, but it works.

In the quantum world, at least so far, you cannot predict things. Rather, each event has a probability of happening. The universe is not determined. It is a game of chance.

3. When Greene gets to his section on cosmological reality, he covers some of the bases that I had been reading in Tegmark. One cosmological reality is the fact that the arrow of time only points in one direction. In theory, it would not have to be so. But the current sense of things is that something that happened very early in the history of the universe flipped the switch that makes time unidirectional.

Then he covers the big bang, the idea that the universe expanded rapidly into something like its current form from a much smaller version. He also mentions ideas new to me from Tegmark, which apparently have been around since the 70s and 80s--inflationary cosmology. This is a supposed period before the big bang when space itself expanded a million trillion trillion times in less than a millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

4. What's missing is a grand unified theory that can reconcile both quantum mechanics and relativity. He seems to like Superstring theory and M theory. I sense increasing disgruntlement with these theories because there is no experimental data to suggest them whatsoever. They are completely hypothetical. Even Sheldon has given up on string theory. :-)

Sheldon versus Wolowitz

There is a running joke in the show Big Bang Theory about how Howard is only an engineer with a master's degree. Sheldon, the Asperger's theoretical physicist doesn't consider him a real scientist.

This distinction, like so many things on Big Bang, is not just made up. It represents a very real difference that often exists between theoretical and experimental physicists.

It is, generally, the difference between N and S personalities in Myers-Briggs. The N is big-picture, imaginative, and intuitive. The S is concrete, detailed, and hands on. Engineers are S types. But let's just say there aren't likely any Ss doing string theory.

When it comes to experts, you do need to know who you're talking to. Even among engineers, there are several different kinds. You don't ask a surgeon about physical chemistry.