The consequences of 'a beginning'

Quote taken from a New Scientist article

While many of us may be OK with the idea of the big bang simply starting everything, physicists, including Hawking, tend to shy away from cosmic genesis. "A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God," Hawking told the meeting, at the University of Cambridge, in a pre-recorded speech.

For a while it looked like it might be possible to dodge this problem, by relying on models such as an eternally inflating or cyclic universe, both of which seemed to continue infinitely in the past as well as the future. Perhaps surprisingly, these were also both compatible with the big bang, the idea that the universe most likely burst forth from an extremely dense, hot state about 13.7 billion years ago.

However, as cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston explained last week, that hope has been gradually fading and may now be dead. He showed that all these theories still demand a beginning.

Read it all here

Non identical twins

There have been a few recent items in the news concerning 'twin' planets for our very own earth. They centre discoveries in other solar systems of planets of similar size and composition to the earth together with speculation that perhaps we could live there one day, or perhaps they contain life too.

Actually what they highlight is how special the earth is. For example these two recent discoveries are 'hot as hell'.

An improbable bang

The Big Bang defies probability. How could an accident produce something so ordered? Roger Penrose tells us just how unlikely it is that we should have a universe that is compatible with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics

This now tells us how precise the Creator's aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of

one part in 10 to the power of 1230.

This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full. Even if we were to write a "0" on each separate proton and each separate neutron in the entire universe - and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure - we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed.

Its important to say that Penrose's use of 'Creator' here is not in any theistic sense.

A 10 dimensional universe

Superstring theory calculates that the universe has ten dimensions. Very early on there was an amicable split. Four dimensions expanded and went on to produce the observable universe's space and time (3+1 dimensions). The other six shrivelled up so as to be invisible, although they still exist. As Dean Overman remarks in 'A case against accident and self-organization':

For the purpose of the formation of life, this split was fortunate, because carbon-based life could not exist in any other than three spatial dimensions. Gravity would not allow for stable planetary systems unless it functioned in three spatial dimensions because it follows an inverse square law which requires the force of gravity to decrease as distance increases. In four spatial dimensions, the force of gravity would fall to a fraction of one-eighth its power (rather than one quarter) for every doubling of distance, and in five spatial dimensions, the force would fall to one-sixteenth its strength for every doubling of distance. Moreover, in more than three spatial dimensions, the force of electromagnetism would not function in a manner which would allow for life, because electrons would either spiral away from or into the nuclei.

On squeaky voices...

The fact that the early universe gives rise to an 'interesting' abundance of Helium-4, that is, neither zero nor 100%, is a consequence of a delicate coincidence between the gravitational and weak interactions.

There was a tiny window of opportunity for the formation of the light elements at the beginning of the Big Bang. In the first 0.04 seconds it was far too hot for little nuclei not to disintegrate. On the other hand after around 8 minutes the temperature was too low to force the wee nucleons to come in range of the strong nuclear force. So in 14 billion years of history there was only one period of time, just long enough to boil a pan of pasta, during which Hydrogen and Helium could have been formed.

The proportion of neutrons and protons that combined to form either hydrogen or helium is dictated by the various actions of different forces (as alluded to in the quote from Barrow and Tipler above). The maths works out at about 1 He for every 10 H nuclei.

Were the forces not so delicately balanced then we would have 100% Helium or 100% Hydrogen. In the former case life wouldn't be possible (no water, stars that burnt up faster). In the later life would probably have been possible.

Quote Unquote

As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it seems almost as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.

F Dyson

Cosmic coincidences part 2

Four and a half billion years ago, when the earth was just a wee bairn, it was struck by an object the size of Mars. From what physicists can make out collisions of this magnitude are extremely rare in the universe. When the dust of that collision had settled there were two key outcomes. Firstly the earth had grown a bit bigger, and secondly the debris that was kicked into space coagulated to form the unusually large moon.

Typically moons are very small compared to the planet they orbit, but for earth's satellite body things are very different. This is crucial to maintaining our climate. The size of the moon means that it acts as a gravitational steadying force, stabilising the earth's tilt, and in doing so preventing wild fluctuations in the heat coming from the sun.

Conditions might be bad for complex land-based life if there were no moon and obliquity varied significantly.

Cosmic coincidences part 1

New Scientist magazine this week has an article that discusses some of the unlikely happenings that occurred in the universe en route to the arrival of us.

In the first moments of the Big Bang matter and antimatter were present in equal amounts. The thing is that when these two come into contact with one another they wipe each other out in a spray of photons, so in theory that's all that should be left of the universe.

However the reality is another matter, so to speak. Matter won the day over antimatter and in doing so creating a universe that really does matter.

Something tipped the balance in favour of matter and in doing so allowed a universe to develop in which life could exist.

Something seems to have favoured the creation of matter at a crucial moment within the first instants after the big bang.

The very beginning

Here's a link to a great article on the implications of the Big Bang on philosophy.

All across the multiverse

A recent paper by some Stanford physicists has taken a theoretical count of the possible number of universes in a multiverse. Yes I said that correctly! Imagine the whole thing starting as a immensly dense blob of everything, and then inflating like a balloon. As the surface area increases, so the theory goes, universes form in the space.

Is there any evidence for it? No, and there never will be, but the concept is a vital one for materialists who need to find an explanation for our 'just-so' universe. But just in case you are interested, the answer they came up with is 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 7!!!!!!

Well now we know!

He also made the stars...

Okay, so this is astrophysics and I understand little but it sounds awesome!

This picture is of an area of space where stars are being formed. The shell in the white box has been expanding for something less than one million years. Around it hydrogen is condensed to a density great enough to create new stars - in fact, where it is densest scientists have located 'two young stellar objects in early evolutionary stages'.

It's the expansion of the shell region that triggers the formation of the stars. The Bible tells us that God made the stars - and not in a way that implies he just 'got the ball rolling' either:

'He also made the stars.'
Genesis 1 v 16

He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.
Great is our Lord and mighty in power
his understanding has no limit.
Psalm 147 v 4, 5

So we must conclude that God is working through these natural processes. He is not separate from them and doesn't rely on supernatural actions to intervene. That's the kind of creationism I believe in.