1-1 Changing Perspectives of the Universe

Until the scientific era, most people thought that the earth was the center of the universe. This perspective seemed obvious since Earth feels stable, and the sun, moon, planets, and stars all appear to revolve around Earth. However, it is an optical illusion. It just appears to be that way since the earth is rotating on its axis.

In the 16th century science and theology followed the views of the Ancient Greek scientist and philosopher Aristotle. Although Aristotle was intelligent, his reliance on logic and disdain of experiments resulted in him being wrong about almost everything, including his concept that the earth was the center of the universe, which is the geocentric model Because Aristotle was so influential, even in the 16th century, it was difficult to break free of what was considered the sacrosanct geocentric model.

What? The Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun? Section 1-2

In the 16th century, an obscure church canon in Poland, Nicolas Copernicus’ spent 30 years observing and calculating planetary movements. He showed that the sun is the center of the solar system (Figure 1-1). He did not want to publish his findings, because he knew that people would reject it. However, at the end of his life (1540 AD), Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres and began the Copernican Revolution (Section 1-2). At least we would have hoped so.

In the words of one famous theologian in the 16th century: believing that that earth travels around the sun is like riding in a carriage and believing that the carriage is standing still, and the earth is moving beneath it. Other theologians made similar statements.

Theologians and scientists did all that they could to discredit the data and its messengers such as Galileo. In the long run, it would have been much less painful to listen to experts explain their data and to honestly consider it. It would have been much easier than going on and on and trying to think up argument after argument to try and support something that is false.

They also should have stepped back and considered whether the Copernican model opposed their philosophy. The earth rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun gives us seasons and the diurnal (day and night) cycles, and it goes on in perpetuity. Why didn't they celebrate it as a demonstration of the infinite wisdom of God. As an example of just how intelligent this system is, try to think up another perpetual system that has diurnal and seasonal cycles.

Unfortunately, both Catholic and Protestant churches resisted the heliocentric model for 300 years. Section 1-9 describes the sad story of the lack of acceptance of the heliocentric model of the solar system. It took so long to convince people that the earth was not the center of the universe that some historians call it the Copernican nonrevolution. The obstinate rejection and questioning of data that supported the heliocentric model was extremely harmful to the church and discredited the church in the eyes of many people.

What? Solar systems, galaxies, and the universe formed naturally?

As if it wasn’t enough to reverse the structure of the universe, scientists proposed that the solar system might have formed naturally rather than God just creating it as is. The Andromeda galaxy is visible with the naked eye and appears to have a disk shape when viewed with a small telescope. Scientists observed other similar nebular disk shapes in space as well as Saturn and the solar system. Immanuel Kant reasoned that if galaxies and solar systems have a disk shape, then they are formed by similar forces, which was gravitational collapse of a cloud and centrifugal forces stretching out the object into a disk, which is the nebular hypothesis. Kant did not widely promote the nebular hypothesis in the 17th century because he was worried about negative reactions. Imagine how vehemently people would oppose it if they could not handle Copernicus.

What? Solar systems and galaxies formed naturally? The funny thing about this question is that there are still many people, probably 1/3 of Americans, who still not accept this. This theory does not fit with their belief that the universe, including all planets and stars, were initially created in their current form. In order to support their belief system, they say to themselves that scientists are against God, and that they are deluded because of their bias against God and are misinterpreting the data themselves Thus, they say that scientists and their data are illegitimate and cannot be trusted.

The odd thing about the assumption that natural formation processes are the delusion of scientists biased against God is that the scientists who introduced the models for the natural formation of the universe and solar systems were dedicated followers of God. Lemaitre who founded the Big Bang Model, was a Catholic priest. The protoplanetary disk model, which is the currently accepted model for the natural formation of solar systems, was founded by Von Wieszacker, who was a dedicated Christian. Also, one cannot accuse the telescopes that are observe the formation of stars and planets of having a religious bias.

What? The sun is one of 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, which is one of 100 billion galaxies? Sections 1-3 and 1-4

As people constructed larger and larger telescopes and achieved greater resolution, scientists defined the structure of the Milky Way (Figure 1-2) and kept discovering more stars, planets, and galaxies. In the process, the earth has continually shrunk from its initial status as the center of the universe to one tiny planet in an ever-increasing number of stars and planets.

We are a small speck in the universe, but are we insignificant? There are two ways to answer this question. With respect to the space that we occupy, we are insignificant, but with respect to our intelligence, the answer may be no. This is a huge debate because nobody knows, but there might be no other intelligent life in the universe. We will talk more about this in subsequent chapters and review some of the different perspectives on the question. If we are one of, or the only, intelligent life in the universe, then we are not insignificant. We are special.

What? The universe expanded from the size of a quantum?  Sections 1-5 and 1-6

Section 1-5 describes the red shift of light. Vesto Slipher (1910) from the University of Arizona attached a spectrograph to his telescope to observe specific wavelengths of light. He observed that the light from distant galaxies is either shifted toward the red if they are moving away from us or shifted toward the blue if they are moving toward us. Hubble had a much bigger telescope than Slipher. Thus, he could observe galaxies that were much farther away. Hubble also Georges Lemaitre visited Hubble in California, and Hubble shared his data on galactic speeds and distances. Lemaitre noticed in Hubble’s data that galaxies that were farther away moved faster and realized that the Universe might be expanding. He was an amazing mathematician and adapted Einstein’s general theory of relatively for an expanding universe. Einstein was not initially impressed with Lemaitre’s work because he thought the universe is static and thought Lemaitre was proposing an origin of the universe because he was a priest.  Lemaitre published his data and the Big Bang theory in the 1930s. Einstein again evaluated the mathematics and eventually stated that this was the most beautiful explanation of creation that he had heard. The Big Bang model was a radical concept when Lemaitre proposed it. Many scientists had difficulty accepting it. The people who had the most difficulty accepting the Big Bang was the atheists, because it implied a beginning, and a finely-tuned creation event. In fact, the name Big Bang was intended as a derisive name by the famous atheist scientist Fred Hoyle.

Data continued to accumulate in support of the Big Bang model. In one interesting twist, Fred Hoyle provided one of the key theories that supported the Big Bang model. The data that finally swung almost all scientists to support the Big Bang was the cosmic microwave background radiation, which was the expected product of the hot dense origin of the universe.

Although controversial, data indicates that Lemaitre’s proposal that the universe began from a small quantum appears to be correct. My daughter, who is a graphic artist, made this video, which describes how scientists observed the first few quanta in the fabric of the universe.

 Quantum Fluctuations (youtube.com) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lmUfls_eQH0

Since it was discovered by Lemaitre, many scientists have worked on the theory and collected observations of the universe. The Big Bang model (Figure 1-3) is more than just the beginning of the universe. It is the entire history of the universe, including quantum fluctuations and inflation during the first fraction of a second, long term steady expansion of the universe for 14 billion years, formation of stars and galaxies, and the increasing pace of expansion in the last 5 billion years, as indicated Figure 1-3

What? Normal matter is only 4% of the universe?       Section 1-7

“One of the big surprises of the last part of the 20th century is that normal matter, which includes everything we can see and touch, makes up only about 4% of the universe. The rest is dark matter and dark energy, which we cannot directly detect. We know they are there because of their effects, which we can observe, but we cannot directly detect dark matter and dark energy, at least we cannot yet detect them; however, there are some promising experiments.

Fritz Zwicky initially proposed the concept of dark matter in the 1930s based on the rotation rate of a cluster of galaxies, but people thought that Zwicky was out in left field. In the 1970s, Vera Rubin, who spent time at the University of Arizona’s Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak and collected data with a spectrograph. She showed through her observations of galaxy rotation rates that most of the matter in the universe is invisible dark matter (Section 1-7). Since the discovery of dark matter, scientists have realized that it was essential to the formation of the first stars in the universe, and it was part of the balance of forces in the steady state expansion of the universe.

After dark matter, scientists discovered dark energy.[1] [2] In 1998, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess independently evaluated distant supernovae and discovered that most of the universe is an undetectable quantity called dark energy, which is causing the expansion rate to increase. Dark energy was essential to the long-term expansion of the universe and has become the primary expansion force during the last 5 billion years (Section 1-7). It is now the dominant substance of the universe. As with dark matter, there is much more dark energy than normal matter.

What? The perfect balance of four fluctuating forces caused steady expansion for 14 billion years? Section 1-8

Would you expect that four dramatically fluctuating forces would remain in balance for 14 billion years, which is why our universe has had steady expansion for 14 billion years. The balance of forces has been compared to a bowling ball traveling down the center of a bowling lane that is 1 light year long, and never veering off into the gutter. Based on my own failed efforts at bowling, I know that this would be a challenge.

Although inflation is given credit for balancing the contraction and expansion forces in the early universe, the long-term expansion of the universe was due to these fluctuating forces. The contraction force of gravity was always perfectly opposed by the combination of expansion forces of kinetic energy, photon gas pressure, and dark energy. This is why the relatively energy density shown in Figure 1-45, which is the ratio of contraction and expansion forces, remained at 1.0 during the entire period of the universe’s expansion.

Gravity needed to be high in the early universe in to cause matter to clump together and to form stars and galaxies; however, the law of gravity shows that as the universe became larger and matter was farther apart, gravity in the universe decreased by more than a quadrillion times.

Even so, the three expanding forces always perfectly equaled the force of gravity. In the early universe, photon gas pressure was extremely high and opposed gravity. As the universe expanded and cooled, the influence of photon gas pressure diminished. However, by this time, kinetic energy of matter and dark matter began to seamlessly replace photon gas pressure, always perfectly balancing the inward contraction due to gravity. As kinetic energy started to fade away, dark energy seamlessly replaced it and is now the primary expansion force in the universe.

The outcome of this discovery is that we now know that the universe is much more finely tuned than we ever would have guessed. It is a stretch to believe that this seamless transition of fluctuating forces over 14 billion years is due to random chance.

What? Dark energy dropped by 120 orders of magnitude after inflation to a precise value that enabled long-term expansion?

One of the more amazing aspects of the balance of forces is that dark energy, which probably caused inflation, dropped by 120 orders of magnitude to a precise value that enabled it to take over the expansion of the universe during the last 5 billion years. Scientists have no theoretical explanation for that drop in energy.

This video shows the level of fine tuning involved of that drop in energy. The analogy is that dark energy dropped to a precise value and not to a value that was not 10 times or 100 times too great or small. The distance scale in the video is intended to help with understanding the precision of the dark energy drop that enabled long-term expansion.  https://youtu.be/Jyqai4LJEwc

Explanations for the origin of the universe.

The most popular explanation of the origin of the universe by philosophical naturalists, who believe that there is a natural explanation for everything, is the multiverse.  They propose that the multiverse creates an infinite number of universes. Thus, they propose that it is statistically possible to have a finely tuned universe for life if there are infinite universes. This is a hypothesis since there is no evidence of any other universe.

Another proposed natural explanation is that our own universe is infinitely large and has varying properties within it. In his video, Stanford professor Leonard Susskind (https://youtu.be/2cT4zZIHR3s) discusses whether God, an accident, or an enormously large “megaverse” was responsible for the fine tuning of the cosmological constant (dark energy) and other parameters. This is also a hypothesis because we don’t know of any variance in the fundamental forces in the universe.

The normal theistic explanation for the origin of the universe is that God created it although it is possible for theists to believe in a multiverse. Moses was a prophet in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. He stated, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Followers of these religion generally think that God created the universe. It is interesting that Moses statement that God created everything is consistent with the Big Bang model, since there is a scientifically unexplained origin of the universe in the Big Bang model, and Moses stated that God created the universe, which is outside of science. This is one reason that the Catholic church supported Lemaitre and the Big Bang model. 

Because we cannot peer into the time before the universe or see parts of the universe that are not like our own part of the universe, there is no way to scientifically test whether God, the multiverse, or some other entity created the universe. The National Academy of Sciences made the following statement about testable hypotheses:

“In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena. Natural causes are, in principle, reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others. If explanations are based on purported forces that are outside of nature, scientists have no way of either confirming or disproving those explanations. Any scientific explanation has to be testable - there must be possible observational consequences that could support the idea but also ones that could refute it. Unless a proposed explanation is framed in a way that some observational evidence could potentially count against it, that explanation cannot be subjected to scientific testing.” [3]

Because the multiverse and God are outside of scientific evaluation, it is incorrect to say that the multiverse is any more scientific than creation. The distinction is that the multiverse is a natural explanation and creation is a theistic explanation, but both are outside of science. The National Academy of Sciences made the following statement.

“Many religious persons, including many scientists, hold that God created the universe and the various processes driving physical and biological evolution and that these processes then resulted in the creation of galaxies, our solar system, and life on Earth. This belief, which sometimes is termed "theistic evolution," is not in disagreement with scientific explanations of evolution. Indeed, it reflects the remarkable and inspiring character of the physical universe revealed by cosmology, paleontology, molecular biology, and many other scientific disciplines.” [4]

References

[1] Riess, Adam G., Alexei V. Filippenko, Peter Challis, Alejandro Clocchiatti, Alan Diercks, Peter M. Garnavich, Ron L. Gilliland et al. "Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant." The astronomical journal 116, no. 3 (1998): 1009.

[2] Perlmutter, Saul, Goldhaber Aldering, Gerson Goldhaber, Richard A. Knop, Peter Nugent, Patricia G. Castro, Susana Deustua et al. "Measurements of Ω and Λ from 42 high-redshift supernovae." The Astrophysical Journal 517, no. 2 (1999): 565.

[3] National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine Science, Evolution and Creationism. The National Academies Press 2008 p. 10

[4] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 1999. Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/6024.