Origin of the Universe (Cosmology)
Science or Pseudoscience?
Go to The 'Something from Nothing' Universe page:
“Nothing created everything” video from Living Waters:
Contrary to widespread belief, there are NO adequate naturalistic explanations for the appearance of the universe and its 100+ billion galaxies:
- “It’s perhaps natural that we don’t know much about how the Universe was created – after all, we were never there ourselves. But it’s surprising to realise that when it comes to the Universe today, we don’t necessarily have a much better knowledge of what is out there. In fact, astronomers and physicists have found that all we see in the Universe – planets, stars, galaxies – accounts for only a tiny 4% of it! In a way, it is not so much the visible things that define the Universe, but rather the void around them.”
European Organization for Nuclear Research website, “Dark secrets of the Universe” page
- “It is beyond the realm of the Big Bang Model to say what gave rise to the Big Bang. There are a number of speculative theories about this topic, but none of them make realistically testable predictions as of yet.”
NASA website, “Universe 101 Big Bang Theory: Foundations of Big Bang Cosmology.”
- “What happened before the Big Bang? What happened right at the moment of the Big Bang? We don't know. To even address these questions we need to have a quantum theory of gravity. We have a quantum theory, and we have a gravity theory, but these two theories somehow need to be combined. We know that our current gravity theory does not apply to the conditions of the earliest moments of the Big Bang. This is exciting research now in progress!”
NASA website, “WMAP Frequently Asked Questions”
- “The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.”
“An Open Letter to the Scientific Community,” from a worldwide dissenting list of physicists published in New Scientist, May 22, 2004.
Without any empirical evidence substantiating them, evolutionists devise fanciful supernatural explanations (unexplainable by natural laws) for the creation and the expansion of the universe. But, only because they purposely leave out ANY mention of a necessary force attributed to each action, these scenarios are given the erroneous status as being legitimate scientific theories:
- “A new theory of the universe suggests that space and time may not have begun in a big bang, but may have always existed in an endless cycle of expansion and rebirth.”
- “The big bang theory states that at some time in the distant past there was nothing. A process known as vacuum fluctuation created what astrophysicists call a singularity. From that singularity, which was about the size of a dime, our Universe was born.”
- “The Ekpyrotic Model of the Universe proposes that our current universe arose from a collision of two three-dimensional worlds (branes) in a space with an extra (fourth) spatial dimension.”
Paul J. Steinhardt, Director, Center for Theoretical Science & Professor of Physics, A Brief Introduction to the Ekpyrotic Universe, Princeton University.
Imagine millions, billions, or even trillions of stars contained in one galaxy, each star gravitationally bound within the galaxy. Next, imagine 40+ galaxies contained in one group, each galaxy gravitationally bound within the galaxy group. Now, imagine hundreds or thousands of galaxies and galaxy groups contained in one cluster, each galaxy gravitationally bound within the cluster. Finally, imagine hundreds of galaxy clusters contained in one supercluster, each cluster gravitationally bound within the supercluster:
- “Our own Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. These are much more massive than the relatively tiny dwarf galaxies, and contain hundreds of billions of stars. For example, the Milky Way contains 200 billion stars – 200,000,000,000 stars. The nearby Andromeda galaxy is much more massive than the Milky Way and contains 1 trillion stars; 5 times as many stars as the Milky Way.”
Universe Today, “How Many Stars are in Galaxies?”, January 28, 2009.
- “A typical galaxy group has around 50 galaxies, and contains a total mass of about 10 trillion times the mass of the Sun. Galaxy clusters are even larger, and can contain up to 1000 galaxies., with a mass of 100 trillion to 1000 trillion suns.”
Universe Today, “Galaxy Groups”, May 6, 2009.
- “Galaxies within a cluster are generally considered to be bound together by their mutual gravitational pulls. They each orbit around their common center of mass. Because the density of galaxies is high within clusters, galaxy collisions occur ... The enormous gravity of the Virgo Cluster makes it the center of a larger structure, called the Local Supercluster. This collection of nearly 100 clusters, and thousands of galaxies, stretches across a hundred million light-years.”
Nova Online, “Runaway Universe: Galaxies, Clusters, and Superclusters”.
How do Big Bang followers explain gravitational anomalies like these pockets of matter contained within smaller pockets of matter? Enter 'dark matter'. Even though it's invisible and no one knows what it is, nor has it been directly detected, Big Bang followers believe that dark matter is the key that could explain these anomalies.
They also claim the dark matter makes up approximately 83% of all the matter in the universe, but how do they know this? They don't. All they know is that something out there is needed to explain these anomalies that are found EVERYWHERE in the universe:
- “Dark matter is invisible and nobody even knows what it is, but it is evident by the fact that galaxies hold together at all. Some unseen substance lurks in space — concentrated in galaxies — and generated gravity in amounts well beyond the visible matter.”
NASA, “Galaxies Protected by Dark Matter”, March 12, 2010, SPACE.com.
- “What is the nature of the "dark matter", this mysterious material that exerts a gravitational pull, but does not emit nor absorb light? Astronomers do not know.”
NASA website, “Universe 101 Big Bang Theory: What is the Universe Made Of?”
- “Only 4% of the universe is made of known material …
Now the team believes that the interactions between dark and ordinary matter could be more important and more complex than previously thought, and even speculate that dark matter might not exist and that the anomalous motions of stars in galaxies are due to a modification of gravity on extragalactic scales.”
University of St. Andrews, “Is Unknown Force In Universe Acting On Dark Matter?”, October 23, 2009, ScienceDaily.
Describing a different scientific explanation for the origin of the universe, the phenomenon of sonoluminescence parallels the Genesis account of creation that states God ‘spoke’ the universe into existence. It is a fact that sound waves emitted through water can create light:
- “How can sound be transformed into a brief flash of light? Recent experiments have provided new insights into this remarkable phenomenon, but its cause is not yet fully understood.”
“Sonoluminescence: the star in a jar” by Seth Putterman, Physics World, May 1998. (See PDF)
- “First discovered in the 1930s as a byproduct of early work on sonar, the phenomenon is defined as the generation of light energy from sound waves.”
"Sonoluminescence: A Galaxy of Nanostars Created in a Beaker” NASA, Glenn Research Center web page.
But since sonoluminescence is too related to creationism, research money connecting it with the origin of the universe is non-existent.
(Refer to the Genesis Account of Creation on our website:
Did you know that the universe is flat … wait, it’s spherical … no, it’s saddle shaped! Or, is it just a hologram? See the confusion:
- “With the 5 year WMAP data, we detect no convincing deviations from the minimal 6-parameter LCDM model: a flat universe dominated by a cosmological constant, with adiabatic and nearly scale-invariant Gaussian fluctuations."
“Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Data Processing, Sky Maps, and Basic Results,” Submitted on 5 Mar 2008 (v1), last revised 17 Oct 2008.
- “6. Doesn't the Big Bang theory require space to be flat?
No. To explain the stretching of the universe, the analogy of the surface of a balloon is often employed. Spots on the surface of the balloon grow apart as the balloon stretches while being blown up. Sometimes people infer from this analogy that the shape of space is spherical. However, the interior of the balloon has no meaning in this analogy and, therefore, the surface shape (spherical in this case) is only one possibility for the universe …
The shape of the universe (flat, saddle, or spherical) is not specified by the Big Bang theory so all shapes are permitted. The shape of the universe will be determined by measurements that depend on the way light traverses space, as in the laser example. So far, measurements indicate that space is very nearly flat. This is, of course, the easiest shape for us to mentally picture.”
NASA website, “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)”
- “Many ideas in theoretical physics involve extra dimensions, but the possibility that the universe has only two dimensions could also have surprising implications. The idea is that space on the ultra-small Planck scale is two-dimensional, and the third dimension is inextricably linked with time. If this is the case, then our three-dimensional universe is nothing more than a hologram of a two-dimensional universe.”
Fermilab, “Holometer experiment to test if the universe is a hologram,” October 28, 2010, Physorg.
REVIEW HOW EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATIONS FOR THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE HOLDS UP WHEN USING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF TESTING A HYPOTHESIS:
- Make observations.
- Form a testable, unifying hypothesis to explain these observations.
“By 'testable,' we mean the predictions must include examples of what is likely be observed if the hypothesis is true and of what is unlikely to be observed if the hypothesis is true. A hypothesis that can explain all possible data equally well is not testable, nor is it scientific. A good scientific hypothesis must rule out some conceivable possibilities, at least in principle.”
- Deduce predictions from the hypothesis.
- Search for confirmations of the predictions; if the predictions are contradicted by empirical observation, go back to step (2).
Using the standards established by the Scientific Method listed above, each evolutionary explanation for the universe forming has:
1. NO observations of occurrence;
2. NO defining hypotheses that allow for testing;
3. NO exclusive predictions that allow for deductions;
4. No confirmations because there are NO exclusive predictions.
REVIEW WHAT IS CONSIDERED AS “NATURALISTIC” BY EVOLUTIONARY STANDARDS:
“In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena. Natural causes are, in principle, reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others.”
“Science, Evolution, and Creationism” 2008, National Academy of Sciences (NAS), The National Academies Press, third edition, page 10.
Using the standards above:
- Are any of the evolutionary explanations for the origin of the universe a “naturally occurring phenomena” within know scientific information, laws, and principles?
- Can any be “reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others”?
Since the answer is NO, all existing evolutionary explanations for the origin of the universe MUST be given the correct status of being supernatural, i.e. something attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.
“How galaxies form and then evolve is still a major
unanswered question in astronomy.”
“What is the origin of mass? Why do tiny particles weigh the amount they do? Why do some particles have no mass at all? At present, there are no established answers to these questions.”
“The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics.”