Re: Biblical - Scientific correlation
- From: hedrick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 03:16:06 GMT
Gordon wrote:
Science - Big Bang Theory - Approximately 15,750,000,000 years
ago there was an actual beginning of the universe. At the time of
this beginning the entire multiverse was nothing but a
dimensionless point. With the occurrence of the Big Bang, this
point expanded into the multiverse in its present form, very
quickly. The ten dimensions of space and one of time that were
initiated with the Big Bang now form the earth (our three
dimensional space) and the levels of heaven (multiverse).
Well, maybe. I should first note that I'm not a physicist. I majored
in physics in college, but that was a long time ago. However I spent
some time reading up on this in preparation for a Sunday School class,
and checked with one of our senior physicists to make sure I got it
right.
When I first ran into the Big Bang, it sounded like there was a
singularity at the beginning. This raises the obvious question of
where the singularity came from.
However scientists don't generally believe in singularities. Normally
when one occurs it means that you have reached the limits of your
model. In this case the problem is believed to be that the normal
models used in astronomy don't work for very small distances. So going
back in history, you eventually reach a point where theory breaks
down. The theory claims there's a singularity, but a more complete
theory would not have that problem.
One possible answer, as someone mentions in another posting, is
string theory. Among its other supposed benefits, it unifies very
large and very small. Thus in principle it's capable of dealing
with the region in history that otherwise turns into a singularity.
However it's far from clear that string theory is needed here. One
change that's occurred from the original naive singularity model is the
idea of "inflation." The idea is that for the first 10^-35 sec or so,
the universe expanded much more rapidly than later, driven by a very
peculiar mechanism in which gravity is repulsive. During this time the
universe expanded from 10^-32 cm to 100 cm. This idea is testable by
astronomy, and there appears to be a concensus that the evidence
strongly supports it.
However there's still a question of where the original 10^-32 cm of
matter came from. On that, as on the details of the inflation, there
is currently no real conclusion. But there are lots of ideas that seem
promising, ranging from spontaneous explosion of a very small region
in a "previous" universe to a continuing infinite inflation, with
universes as small regions of "normal" space "falling out" of the
inflationary process. Other speculations involve new universes being
created inside black holes, etc.
There have been some calculations suggesting that this overall process
can't have been going on forever, on thermodynamic grounds. Here's
where I get hazy, because I can't actually check the physics. However
a brief review of the literature suggests to me that these
calculations are based on assumptions that may well not be true.
At this point I would say that while there's a lot of uncertainty
among physicists, the best bet is that it will not turn out that our
universe simply came out of nothing. Most likely the origin of the
universe will turn out to be part of a larger process.
.
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