Big Bang Busted, Physics Paradoxes, and the Age of the Universe
Introduction
I am not a scientist, the only formal education of mine in physics having been in the twelfth grade, and through an astronomy course I took in college. I read about physics and related matters on my own. I can find out and point to what some fully qualified scientists have to say. In this document, based on the writings of these scientists, I lay out the following argument(s): 1) The Big Bang theory is scientifically refutable, 2) There is good evidence for the universe being young, as young as the Bible indicates it is, 3) This therefore indicates that physics on the cosmic scale is in one or more ways fundamentally different than physics on the local scale (such as near our solar system), 4) That, though this would be paradoxical, physicists are used to dealing with paradoxes, and 5) That professionals in the field have written papers backing up these claims.
Evidence Against the Big Bang
Hannes Alfven won the Nobel prize for physics in 1970. This was for research into magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). MHD is the study of how magnetic fields can induce currents in conductive fluids such as plasmas. Plasma is a state of matter at energies above that of gas, in which the electrons are stripped off the atomic nuclei and flow with them. Alfven, separate from, but related to, his work in MHD, originated a cosmological alternative to the Big Bang called plasma cosmology. Wikipedia states:
“Plasma cosmology is a non-standard cosmology whose central postulate is that the dynamics of ionized gases and plasmas play important, if not dominant, roles in the physics of the universe beyond the Solar System.”
I bring this up for two reasons: 1) To show that scientists other than creationist cosmologists propose alternatives to the Big Bang, and 2) because it introduces the idea that physics on the cosmic scale is fundamentally different from physics on the local scale, such as near our solar system.
Eric Lerner was a protégé of Alfven, and, based on Alfven’s ideas, wrote a book called The Big Bang Never Happened. I read part(s) of this book.
Lerner gives a number of evidences against the Big Bang that Alfven talked about. I remember a chapter or section entitled “Too Big for the Big Bang.” Alfven had said that cosmic structures called “superclusters” were too large to have formed, by gravitational collapse, in the history of the universe, as postulated by the Big Bang. Wikipedia says:
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A supercluster is a large group of smaller galaxy clusters or galaxy groups; it is among the largest-known structures of the cosmos. The Milky Way is part of the Local Group galaxy group (which contains more than 54 galaxies), which in turn is part of the Virgo Cluster, which is part of the Laniakea Supercluster. The large size and low density of superclusters means they, unlike clusters, expand with the Hubble expansion. The number of superclusters in the observable universe is estimated to be 10 million.
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The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) website has a page mostly about one major problem with the Big Bang, though it lists a few others. This page is entitled “The Light Distance Problem.” Here is a link to it:
The article starts talking about the fact that a problem with creation cosmology is the known speed of light and the known size of the universe. If the universe is only 6,000 years old, how can we see parts of it that are billions of light years away? Then the author, who works for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that the Big Bang theory has its own light distance problem. This is a serious matter called “the horizon problem. The article states:
“According to the Big Bang theory, the universe expanded in all directions from its initial state of high density. In your mind's eye, follow a tiny region on its path; at no time would it come in contact with the particles going in a different direction. The universe would never have mixed; each part of space was beyond the "horizon" of each other part. Herein is the problem. The universe looks homogeneous and isotropic. This means all parts of space appear uniform at large scales. The temperature of the cosmic background radiation is uniform to within one part in 100,000. If no parts ever mixed, how could they achieve such striking uniformity of temperature?”
The author then lists a set of problems with the theory, stating:
“The horizon problem is recognized as a serious difficulty by all secular cosmologists. It was part of the motivation behind an ad-hoc proposal in 1980 called inflation. In addition, the standard Big-Bang model is plagued by the lumpiness problem (matter is structured into stars and galaxies), the entropy problem (the initial "cosmic egg" would have had to start with a high degree of order), the ignition problem (no cause for the expansion), and other more recent difficulties, like the amazingly precise balance between the acceleration rate and density.”
Decades ago, I read an article in Science News magazine that said one or more leading theorists found a problem with the Big Bang having to with the creation of “magnetic monopoles” and the creation of space or spaces in the supposed early universe. It said that based on certain calculations, the universe could have gone from its proposed Big Bang origin to its present state in under 30,000 years. They had to introduce a complication to the theory to slow its expansion, and drag out its history, to the currently assumed 13+ billion years.
Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical particles that act as magnets having only one, instead of two, poles. From the nasa.gov website:
“Big Bang cosmology predicts that a very large number of heavy, stable "magnetic monopoles" should have been produced in the early universe. However, magnetic monopoles have never been observed, so if they exist at all, they are much more rare than the Big Bang theory predicts.”
From a Scientific American article:
“In the grand unified theories there are serious cosmological problems associated with pointlike defects, which correspond to magnetic monopoles, and surfacelike defects, called domain walls. Both are expected to be extremely stable and extremely massive. (The monopole can be shown to be about 10 to the 16th power times as heavy as the proton.) …there would be so many defects …that their mass would dominate the energy density of the universe and thereby speed up its subsequent evolution. The microwave background radiation would reach its present temperature of three degrees K. only 30,000 years after the big bang instead of 10 billion years, and all the successful predictions of the big-bang model would be lost. Thus any successful union of grand unified theories and the big-bang picture must incorporate some mechanism to drastically suppress the production of magnetic monopoles and domain walls.”
There is a principle in science and philosophy called Occam’s Razor. Basically, the idea is that the simplest explanation for something is probably the correct one. Atheistic science thinkers use this to assert there is no God, because we cannot empirically detect one and adding supernatural causes unnecessarily complicates things. But besides the fact that Design is evidence of a Designer, Creation is evidence of a Creator, is the fact that Big Bang theorists have to keep complicating their theory because the basic theory does not match the evidence.
Here’s another complication of the Big Bang, not usually talked about by even creationists. I took an astronomy course in college; what I learned from that text and from recent internet research is that the Big Bang would create no elements heavier than iron. How did the heavier elements get created? The official explanation is that the stars formed by the Big Bang went to the end of their life cycle, exploding in supernovae. Supernova explosions create elements heavier than iron. These explosions seeded the universe with heavy elements. Later, when new stars and planets formed, they sucked up these elements. This is a complication of the Big Bang theory that, among many others, violates the principle of Occam’s Razor.
Mainstream scientists now claim that the vast majority of matter in the universe must be “dark matter:” a hypothetical form of matter that is not currently detectable. This view has been created by a surprising discovery having to do with the rotation speeds of galaxies. The Institute for Creation Research explains:
“One of a number of arguments in favor of the existence of dark matter involves rotating spiral galaxies. The stars and gases in any given spiral galaxy rotate around the galaxy’s center. Physicists and astronomers expected that their rotation speeds would not all be the same but would rather decrease in a particular gradual fashion at greater and greater distances from the center of the visible galactic bulge. Instead, these speeds tend to plateau so that the speeds are essentially constant beyond a certain distance from the galactic center. The discrepancy can be resolved by assuming the existence of large amounts of “invisible” matter in “halos” that surround these spiral galaxies. From this line of reasoning, astronomers concluded that the mass of this invisible dark matter is typically ten times greater than that of the visible stars and gas within spiral galaxies.’”
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There is a relationship between belief in dark matter and the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang theory can predict different amounts of regular matter in the universe depending on an arbitrarily chosen value, which has been declared so as to make it fit with the amount of matter actually understood to exist. However, vastly more matter must exist to explain galactic rotation speeds than the Big Bang predicts or which is observable in the universe. The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) states:
“Hence, the claim that most of the matter in the universe is non-baryonic [not detectable] comes from the requirements of Big Bang nucleosynthesis, as is routinely acknowledged in astronomy and cosmology textbooks.”
Here is a link to the ICR article:
Dark Matter Particles Big Bang
Other evidence against the Big Bang can be read about on, for instance, the ICR website, ICR.org.
The belief in, and search for, dark matter shows that physicists do not understand most of physics. This conclusion fits fine with the proposal that physics is fundamentally different on the cosmic scale than on the local scale.
Evidence for a Young Cosmos
An ICR article states:
“According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years' worth of supernovas.
A paper available on the ICR website says:
“Several decades ago Fritz Zwicky noticed that the members of clusters of galaxies were traveling too fast to be gravitationally bound to one another. The result is that the cluster should evaporate over a time scale of about 1Gyr, far shorter than the 10 to 20 Gyr year age of the universe. Thus the existence of clusters of galaxies suggest that they must have been created more recently than generally thought. As with some of the other arguments of recent creation presented, this one does not directly produce an age of a few thousand years. Instead it indicates an upper limit for the age that may be better reconciled with a recent creation rather than an old one.”
Then there are the cases of supernovas calculated to have occurred tens of thousands of years ago which turn out to have been observed occurring in mankind’s recorded history (six thousand years or less). For instance, the ICR notes:
“In the case of RCW 86 in Centaurus, the calculated time of explosion was 10,000 years. According to Space.com (9/26/2006), astronomers now realize it was witnessed by Chinese astronomers…” in AD 185.
Also:
“A pulsar thought to be 24,000 years old was photographed by the Chandra telescope in 2001. Astronomers later realized it lined up with a supernova observed by the Chinese in AD 386.”
Note:
“A pulsar is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star or white dwarf that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. This radiation can be observed only when the beam of emission is pointing toward Earth, and is responsible for the pulsed appearance of emission. “ Wikipedia
Also, I again refer to the above mention and quoting of science articles that state that, based on the requirements for the creation of magnetic monopoles, the universe is younger than 30,000 years.
As of this note's time of writing, an article has just recently appeared on MSN about the possibility that the discovery of so-called "young" stars in so-called "old" galaxies may debunk the Big Bang theory.
Other evidence for a young cosmos, a young solar system and young Earth can be read about in numerous places, such as the ICR website, ICR.org. Google, for instance, “icr young universe.” Similarly, evidence against biological macroevolutionism and evidence FOR the worldwide flood of Noah can be gleaned from the ICR website and other sources. For evidence against evolutionism by a scientist who was, at the time he wrote, an atheist and an evolutionist, read Evolution: A Theory In Crisis by Michael Denton. And/or read his latest book, Evolution: Still A Theory In Crisis. Here’s a link:
However, while this document that you are reading is about some of the universal evidence in favor of the claim that the Bible is literally the word of God, it is not primarily about Earth’s natural history or the origin and history of life.
Physics Paradoxes
If the concept that physics on the cosmic scale is fundamentally different than physics on the local scale would be a paradox, physicists are confronted by extreme paradoxes on an ongoing basis. I mention some, below.
First, there is the dual nature of light. It is both a particle and a wave. Experiments designed on the basis that light is a particle indeed show that light is a particle. However, experiments formed on the basis that light is a wave, also, indeed, show that light is a wave.
Then there is quantum entanglement, what Einstein called “spooky affects.” Two or more particles, such as electrons, can become “entangled” so that a measurement of a characteristic of one correlates to the characteristics of the others. In the quantum world, measuring something changes or destroys the characteristic being measured. Nevertheless, one can determine what a type of characteristic, called a quantum state, of two related particles is in both particles. The states are either the same or complimentary in both particles. This is true if both particles are close together, and is then no surprise. But it turns out that even if the particles are separated by a great distance, their quantum states remain correlated with each other. If one changes a particular state in one particle, that state in the other particle is simultaneously changed. This occurs even when the particles are far enough apart that the change to the one cannot simultaneously change the other at the speed of light. If the change in the second particle occurred LATER than the change to the first particle, so that an effect can travel at the speed of light from the first particle to the other, then that would not be paradoxical. But experiments have shown that the two particles’ states are changed at the same time; there is not enough time for an effect on the one to travel at the speed of light (nature’s speed limit) to the other.
As Wikipedia puts it:
“Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance.”
Wikipedia goes on to say:
“In fact similar paradoxes can arise even without entanglement: the position of a single particle is spread out over space, and two widely separated detectors attempting to detect the particle in two different places must instantaneously attain appropriate correlation, so that they do not both detect the particle.”
Another paradox is the conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics. www.theguardian.com puts it this way:
“Basically you can think of the division between the relativity and quantum systems as “smooth” versus “chunky”. In general relativity, events are continuous and deterministic, meaning that every cause matches up to a specific, local effect. In quantum mechanics, events produced by the interaction of subatomic particles happen in jumps (yes, quantum leaps), with probabilistic rather than definite outcomes. Quantum rules allow connections forbidden by classical physics. This was demonstrated in a much-discussed recent experiment in which Dutch researchers defied the local effect. They showed that two particles – in this case, electrons – could influence each other instantly, even though they were a mile apart. When you try to interpret smooth relativistic laws in a chunky quantum style, or vice versa, things go dreadfully wrong.”
There are other paradoxes in physics, as well! Again, I am attempting to show that distant stars in a young universe, as paradoxical as that would be, would only be par for the course as to surprises in physics.
What others say
What do scientists who accept the Bible as the word of God have to say about the concept of a big, young universe?
Russell Humphreys is a physicist Christian who has published a book called Starlight and Time. Wikipedia says:
“Its thesis is that the Earth and universe are about six thousand years old when measured in Earth's reference frame, whereas the outer edge of an expanding and rotating 3-dimensional universe is billions of years old (as measured from its reference frame).”
This is discussed, in, among other places, here:
Trueorigin.org has a pdf paper whose abstract says Humphrey’s Starlight and Time is a “trivial” version of the Big Bang:
The below paper proposes undiscovered laws of physics (like I do). But it proposes lightspeed varies with gravity, whereas I propose the same thing, AND/OR SOMETHING ELSE IS DIFFERENT ON THE COSMIC SCALE THAN LOCALLY. It also lists Humphrey’s cosmology among others that propose young earth & old universe. It also talks about other creationist cosmologies that say lightspeed has varied with time. Here is the paper:
CreationWiki says supernatural events occurred at creation and attempts no explanation of it within undiscovered laws of physics:
Conclusion
The idea that the universe was created in six days by God, several thousand years ago, is attacked as being against solid science, which shows what the speed of light and size of the universe are. However, a lot of what is called “science” is not so solid. For instance, the theories of Evolution and the Big Bang are scientifically refutable! Also, existing paradoxes in physics show that physicists do not know some major things about physics, yet! The claim that the creationists’ light-distance problem may be resolvable by the possibility that physics is fundamentally different at the cosmic scale than locally is not so far out, in light of this.
There is compelling, overwhelming evidence that the Bible is literally the word of God, and that the gospel of Jesus Christ is its main message. Some of the evidence is scientific, some historical and some prophetic. I have addressed some of the scientific evidence in this document.
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