God's amazing universe: 1. Space and Time

Prior to the discovery in the 20th century of the Big Bang creation event it had been assumed by people of all faiths that the universe was, is and so always would be eternal. It was not created. It just is. Some still cling to this belief.


The only real creation metaphor, story, poem or myth that refers to the universe being created by God, rather than fashioned out of eternally existing chaos by various gods, was Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

According to Hebrew scholars the expression 'the heavens and the earth' is ancient Hebrew for everything, i.e. the universe. It is extraordinary that some 3 thousand years ago the author of Genesis could make this statement and others equally prophetic. He was writing in a pre-science culture. Genesis is not written as a scientific document. It is written poetically and historically to yield, when read with humility and after prayer, divine truths about humankind and its relationship to God.

It is now established by theory and observation that not only did all energy and matter originate from one infinitesimally small point which then expanded at an unimaginably high rate to give us the stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies which we see today on Hubble photographs, but something else had to be created. Mass and energy cannot exist without somewhere to exist in. They have to have extent; so God provided the three dimensions of space. For things to exist they had to have space to extend in. But for things to happen there needed to be time. Only with coexistent matter, energy, time and space could God bring about humanity and the universe we see today, 13.8 billion years later.

Our space-time realm is well named. Even what sight and touch deem solid, like the wall in front of you or the chair you sit on, is actually ethereal, consisting of well over 99.99% space permeated by configurations of energy. Things have been set up to give us the experience or illusion of living in a solid world. You could call it a stage, as did Shakespeare ('the world is a stage on which every man must play his part').
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The Oxford Dictionary of Physics defines space as a property of the universe that enables physical phenomena to be extended into 3 mutually perpendicular dimensions. So it is not just an empty expanse. It is a property in the same way as mass and gravity. Like other properties it is a concept or metaphor which allows mathematicians to describe the way the world works and calculate what happens under certain conditions.

The universe is often visualised as the surface of an expanding balloon. This, however, is only a 2-dimensional representation of a 3D space. It  is visualised in this simple way just to show how space expands with time - that is, as the balloon is blown up all positions on its surface get further and further apart. The billions of galaxies etc. of the real universe would be represented here as dots on the balloon's surface. The  start of the Big Bang would correspond to the balloon before it started to be inflated. Our Milky Way galaxy would be one dot and, like all the other dots, could be considered a centre of the universe but not, in any visual sense, the centre. However, as future posts will strongly suggest, we could well be the only centre with conscious observers. If that is the case, then humankind can go back to thinking of itself as the centre of creation.

How fast is this space-time regime expanding? According to the theory of inflation, which is not yet proven and during which all kinds of strange things have been surmised, in the first extremely small fraction of a second it grew from virtually nothing to a diameter of 10 metres. After that it expanded at a lower and slowing rate until about 5 billion years ago it started to accelerate. Today, 13.8 billion years after the creation event, it is expanding faster than light. When Einstein said that nothing can travel faster than light he was talking about entities inside the universe, not the edge of  the theoretically observable universe itself, some 46.5 billion light years from earth in any direction. At this distance the stars are receding faster than the light they emit, so no information from them can reach us.

Recently it was determined that the space which we and everything in our universe inhabit is flat and infinite. All this means is that two parallel lines never meet and the Euclidian geometry  taught at school (e.g. the Pythagoras theorem) is correct on any scale, providing there are no local gravitational fields to bend the space.

The balloon analogy seems to contradict this until you remember that the curvature of the balloon surface does not apply to the real universe for which the balloon is serving only as a 2D simplification so that we can visualise the expansion that continues as time proceeds.

Although space has the mathematical property of being infinite the actual universe has a boundary at 46.5 billion light years (see above).   This boundary is equal in all directions so the universe is spherical even though the space within it is flat in its geometrical properties. Anything setting out from beyond that distance would never reach us and so is beyond any conceivable scientific observation.

John Sears

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

author of 2077: Knights of Peace (SciFi)

John Sears


I am a layman who follows science. As far as I know the above is factually correct. Please let me know if you find an error or have issues.
cosmik.jo@gmail.com

Unicorn multiverse, a more rational multiverse and Occam's razor

I grew up in a rational world of cause and effect in which the only supernatural events were those attributable to our Creator, e.g. the Resurrection of Christ and the creation by God of the universe from existential nothingness.

Also, everyone I knew  adhered to the Oxford English dictionary definition of the universe:

All existing things; the whole creation; the cosmos 

Since the confirmation of the Big Bang model for the origin of the universe there have been attempts to skate around the conclusion that every single entity in creation, from a quark to a human being to a supermassive black hole, ultimately originates with an uncaused first cause – God. In this sense everything is spiritual or supernatural. Nobody can pretend that anything is truly secular.  Moreover, this God has made us in God’s image,  having concepts of love, justice, truth and beauty regardless of gender, physical appearance, health, sexual preference, intelligence, race or creed. 

image credit: beforeitsnews.com

It has also become established that the probability of morally aware, truth seeking sentient beings like us emerging out of nothingness is zero without invoking a Creator with the properties of personhood. This follows from the unimaginable degree of fine tuning of the physical constants, initial entropy conditions and much else to allow life of any kind to exist anywhere in the universe.  For human civilisation to emerge there are innumerable extra conditions, such as protection from cosmic rays, the availability of the minerals for technology, visibility of an ordered firmament, fertile soil and a freely available abundance of water in liquid form. It all had to be done by an act of will which also imbued humans with the imago dei.

For some obscure reason (the italics are to vent my exasperation)  certain people, including some who purport to base their life on logic and reason, refuse to accept this state of affairs. Instead they have resorted to desperate hypotheses, the most well known of which is the multiverse.

 The implication is, if you can’t stomach living in one universe having a Creator who has made one universe tailored to  achieve the birth of humanity (it is now beyond reasonable doubt that our universe had to be precisely the size and structure it is for humanity, and any other sentient moral beings, to exist) then why not imagine there are an infinite number of eternal universes of which we happen to be one?  That removes the need for  a God since the whole ensemble of universes is eternal, i.e. self existing and having no beginning. And we don’t have to worry about relating to or praising or satisfying or understanding any deity.

Quite apart from the infinite multiverse concept being wholly against the foundation on which the exponential growth of peer reviewed science rests this leads to absurd conclusions, i.e it is invalidated  by reductio ad absurdum.

For example, the unicorn. 

It is necessary to be clear on just what infinity means. The OED defines ‘infinite’ as greater than any assignable quantity or countable number. This means greater than any number or quantity you can imagine. It means that you can multiply infinity by itself an infinite number of times and the result is still infinity, since both results fit the definition. It is also defined mathematically as any number divided by zero.Infinity divided by infinity is meaningless.

To dispense with God (again, why in the name of God would you want to dispense with God and reduce reality to a meaningless conglomerate of energy configurations with epiphenomena giving the illusion of consciousness and meaning?) you also have to invoke eternity, which is infinity applied to time.  An eternal infinite array of ‘universes’ would have to have existed forever, otherwise you would have to invoke a Creator to start the whole show and, heaven forbid, you would then have to try to understand this God.Even if it did last forever it would still be necessary to  explain why it existed at all.

It is not surprising that the use of the words ‘infinite’ and ‘eternal’ to describe reality is going to lead to bizarre and unscientific conclusions.  Applied to a hypothetical ‘multiverse’ it means that any conceivable event or being or set of laws can occur at any time in any place without anyone having to explain it. If one accepts the multiverse fantasy unicorns would be inevitable, along with anything you care to imagine, from Santa Claus to a flat earth.

 Every conceivable thing happens and it happens an infinite number of times. There are an infinite number of yous who have lived identical lives an infinite number of times in an infinite number of universes and this will continue for eternity. There are also an infinite number of yous with one extra atom, and an infinite number with two extra atoms, etc. etc. ad infinitum. There are also an infinite number of different worlds in which the concept of an infinite multiverse does not exist.

Even if we cheat and accept that our own universe started at the observed point 13.8 billion years ago, if we regard this as a purely random spontaneous irrational godless creation out of 'nothingness' (the term is sometimes incorrectly used to denote the energy filled quantum vacuum) then anything goes; there are no constraints. If a whole universe can come out of nothing, so can a unicorn. Even within our own universe the laws could break down at any point, say in the place you are now sitting, and so permit crazy things to happen without need of explanation - unicorns, vampires, tooth fairies  or anything you care to imagine can happen if you bring in inifinity.

Not surprisingly, if the whole ensemble of universes is eternal it does not obey the second law of thermodynamics because it would by now have decayed into total disorder.

The whole idea is an offense against the cherished foundational principle of Ockham's Razor (after William of Ockham, a priest, philosopher and scientist, 1285-1349. It is also spelt 'Occam'.) . This states that 'entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity' (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy). In formulating a new scientific theory always look for the simplest explanation. Western science has advanced since the Christian universities were set up in medieval England and Europe by sticking to this principle. The infinite eternal multiverse violates this principle.

There  are more rational concepts of a 'multiverse' which really mean one universe with parts that are separated and which could conceivably interact in some way. They are finite in time and space and must have been created, being regimes of the same universe with the same laws as the one we know. They only need to be invoked if we find aspects of our observable universe which could be powerfully explained by assuming such additional regimes. For example, one could postulate that  the Big Bang singularity generated more than one expanding pocket of space-time during the initial inflation stage. It would necessitate invoking extra dimensions beyond the space-time realm in which we live our material lives and construct our scientific theories.

If we are to continue sticking to the Ockham's razor principle we should be looking at our universe as imaginatively and creatively as possible. There is plenty in the real universe to explore and stretch our minds: over 95% of it is either dark energy or dark matter, the Standard Model of elementary particles  is incomplete, quantum phenomena seem beyond reductionist physics, consciousness has been shown beyond reasonable doubt to exist beyond the body, no testable theory of biological evolution exists and life has not even been defined. No doubt some powerful theories will be revealed to us and these may allow undreamed of technology when applied.

If you want to believe in an eternal, infinite ensemble of universes (i.e. return to an ancient, pre-Christian view of reality) rather than a rational loving Creator and just the one magnificent tailor-made universe you live in, no one can stop you. But please do not claim it is rational.

 See also
Hold onto the truth

John Sears, author
2077: Knights of Peace.

Reach me via cosmik.jo@gmail.com

Deep mystery of existence. 8. Critical mass of the early universe

Many people wonder why the universe is so massive. They say ‘what a wasteful God’.  The exact opposite applies. The importance of life in God’s scheme is highlighted by the need to create precisely the universe we have, in terms of mass and in many other ways which will not be dealt with in this post (e.g.the finest imaginable tuning of the physical constants and entropy of the universe at the Big Bang stage.)

Cosmologists and astrobiologists will confirm that it could not be any other mass and still sustain even bacterial life. Very slightly smaller in mass and life could not survive anywhere. Being marginally larger would also preclude life.  It has been calculated that if during the early expansion of the universe its mass had been out by the mass of a single coin the present universe could not harbour even bacteria. The precision is

 one part in a  trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. ..

Why does the universe have to have this mass? Because otherwise  two life precluding phenomena would occur as the early universe expanded following the Big Bang (the creation event when space, time, matter and energy came into existence as a point source of everything).

A marginally smaller  mass would have resulted in less gravity and the matter of the universe flying apart too rapidly to form stars and planets – in particular our planet Earth, which has a uniqueness which led not just to bacteria but to human civilization.

A marginally larger mass would have resulted in the early cosmic material coalescing rather than forming stars and planets. Not a trace or promise of life could exist in this scenario – even the stuff out of which bacteria are built would not have existed.

This precision is, according to the latest cosmological theory, a consequence of our three dimensional space being almost totally flat, i.e. only curved to an extremely small but unimaginablyprecise degree,  to 

one part in a trillion trillion trillion  trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.

 It is impossible to visualize what is meant by curved or flat three dimensional space. It is a mathematical concept, but an analogy which is often used is that of an inflated balloon, where the surface of the balloon represents the 3 dimensional space in which we live.  If the balloon is large enough the space is as near to flat as you can make it without the balloon becoming infinitely large. Space is curved to just the precise amount needed to enable bacterial life to survive. To repeat:

 one part in a trillion trillion trillion  trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion

 With space that close to flat the mass density of the universe will have the necessary value to the degree of precision required.

How did space get that flat? As usual in cosmology we have to turn to the mathematicians. The theory that has been proposed is known as cosmic inflation (in fact there is more than one version of this theory). The early universe, when it was only  a fraction of a second old, is postulated to have expanded at such an unimaginably high rate that space was forcefully smoothed out till it became virtually, but not quite, totally flat. This would explain why the universe as observed to today looks so isotropic (similar in structure in all directions) and is flat. But this would not explain why it dperts from absolute flatness to the ultra-fine degree required for a universe with living beings in it.

What could have made the universe expand so much so quickly before it was even a second old no one knows. It was probably not even dark energy (whatever that turns out to be) since that did not come into play until the universe was about 7 billion years old. At this stage it began to expand more rapidly, i.e. to accelerate, after being slowed down by gravitational forces. (If it had not accelerated in precisely the way it has that too would have precluded any kind of biological life. But that’s another story...).

One final point to bear in mind. The idea of increasing or decreasing the mass of the universe by the mass of a single coin having such huge existential significance for living systems applies only if this thought experiment is made at the very early stages of cosmic creation. If such a miniscule mass had been added or subtracted only, say, a million years ago, instead of 13.7 billion - i.e. after the elements, stars and planets had already  been formed - it would, as far as we know, have made no difference. Nevertheless, given that the total mass of the universe at its inception was the same as now, it is no less staggering to think that the mass of a single coin could mean the difference between life and no life some 13.7 billion years later.

As one who has only relatively recently become a follower of the cosmic Christ, the universal source of love,  I had not really understood what was meant when people talked about fearing God. Now I  am beginning to get the point.

 John Sears

Author 2077: Knights of Peace

Reach me at

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

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