As one who believes in supernatural
creation, I sometimes chuckle when I read books on modern cosmology. Einstein’s Telescope is one of those
books. Early on in the book we are
assured of the veracity of the Big Bang Story.
The author claims that three strong
lines of evidence give us this assurance:
1. The
Expansion of the Universe
2. The
ratios of light elements Lithium, Deuterium and Helium from early nucleosynthesis
from protons and neutrons.
3. The
Cosmic Background Radiation
However, I know from other books on
the subject that, in order for these three lines of evidence to be consistent with
observations, new, speculative entities have been invented.
First, the idea of “dark energy”
had to be invented to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe. According to the latest big bang
calculations, 72% of the mass-energy of the universe is dark energy. Unfortunately, nobody has found it nor are
there any good candidates for what it is.
Yet, secular cosmologists believe in it because “something” is causing
the universe to accelerate outward.
Hmmm.
Second, “cold dark matter” had to
be invented to explain the ratios of the light elements as well as the apparent
mass of galaxies. You see, for the math
to work out, the big bang requires that 23% of the mass-energy of the universe
be made up of this cold dark matter, which is mass that doesn’t absorb or emit
heat or light. Extra mass, which we can’t
see, is required to explain the speed at which galaxies rotate. For many years, scientists believed this mass
was normal “baryonic” matter, like black holes or burnt out stars, which
couldn’t be seen by telescope. However,
if all that mass was normal matter, that extra matter would drastically change
the ratios of the light elements formed according to big bang cosmology. The observation would no longer match the
theory. So, to keep that cosmology
alive, scientists infer “cold dark matter”, an exotic entity which is very
common but never been detected. Hmmm. Cold dark matter also helps to explain how
matter could begin to clump together in the early universe, which otherwise
looks very smooth according to the cosmic background radiation measurements. It’s very useful stuff. If they could only find some.
It is hard to see how the ratio of
light elements is evidence for the big bang when “cold dark matter” has to be
invented to rescue it.
The book Einstein’s Telescope
is about the search for dark matter and dark energy, so I thought it would be
interesting. Indeed.
Finally, the “inflation” epoch was
invented to solve the horizon problem, that is, the uniformity of the Cosmic
Background Radiation. Again, this inflation
epoch is unproven but it is needed to explain why the background temperature is
the same in every direction. Not only is
this “inflation” unproven and unprovable, the inflation theory actually says
that, for at least a moment, the universe expanded many times faster than the speed of light. Hmmm. That
sounds more than a little speculative. Friends,
maybe the background temperature is the same in every direction because we are near
the center of the universe. Oh, no. That would make us special, and we can’t have
that.
As you can tell, I’m more than a
little skeptical about the strong lines of evidence for the “big bang”. Yes, there is good evidence for the three
lines themselves, but the observations could be caused by something, or someone,
else. As Michael Disney, a British
Astrophysicist, put it,
“In its
original form, an expanding Einstein model had an attractive, economic
elegance. Alas, it has since run into serious difficulties, which have been
cured only by sticking on some ugly bandages: inflation to cover horizon and
flatness problems; overwhelming amounts of dark matter to provide internal
structure; and dark energy, whatever that might be, to explain the seemingly
recent acceleration. A skeptic is entitled to feel that a negative
significance, after so much time, effort and trimming, is nothing more than one
would expect of a folktale constantly re-edited to fit inconvenient new
observations.” (from “Modern
Cosmology: Science or Folktale?”, American
Scientist, 2007)
And they think we have faith!
