Origin of the Universe

Origin of the Universe

So maybe I accept evolution, but if it’s true then how did the universe start, that had to be god right?

Wrong.  If there was a god then he is responsible or our powers of logic and reason and to disregard such a gift should indeed be blasphemy to a believer.  According to creationists there existed an omnipotent god that always was and always will be, and through his power and will the universe came to be.  Certainly a simple explanation, but I suspect there is more to it.

To some, actually to most people, believing in a universe creating itself is a ludicrous idea, and maybe it is, but does a divine creator really make more sense?  Some things we know about the beginning, there was a big bang.  We know this because we can see the evidence left behind by the bang all around us today in the form of background radiation that permeates the universe, it DID happen.  What can be argued is if the bang was the source of space-time and matter.  As our knowledge in the field of quantum physics continues to expand, the idea of the bang being the start of EVERYTHING is becoming somewhat outdated.  But let’s talk about the bang first.

According to big bang theory, there existed a singularity before time and space where the laws of physics may have operated in a different way.  It is said that in this state of near infinite mass and density that space may have had time like properties and time space like properties.  This singularity, becoming unstable exploded forth becoming the universe.  It inflated at an extreme rate carrying along matter with the spatial expansion.  The background radiation is just one piece of evidence supporting this idea, another is that space is still expanding, and the expansion rate is still increasing.  Right now every galaxy in the universe is moving away from every other galaxy.  I hate to use this example because it’s used so often but it does explain it simply.  Take a deflated balloon, with a black marker make 20-50 dots on the balloon, now blow it up, what happens?  All the dots move away from each other, that is what’s happening in our universe now. 

A popular creationist argument against the big bang goes like this, everything that has a beginning must have been created, or everything that has come into existence was brought into existence by something else, and that original something else was god.  As long as you don’t put too much thought into that it seems to make some kind of sense.  The kitten came into existence because the cat gave birth to it, the chair came into existence because I built it.  This logic is ultimately flawed however, because quantum fluctuations in the vacuum of space have been observed to produce particle/anti-particle pair for short periods of time out of nothing, temporarily violating the law of conservation of energy.  Therefore having a beginning does not necessarily require a cause.  It’s possible the singularity that set off the bang could have been a type of fluctuation, appearing from nothing to make something.  Now would you consider it more likely that a super complex almighty god came from nothing, or a singularity?  Sure we’ve seen particles appear out of nowhere, but have you ever heard of a dog popping into existence out of nothing?  My point is that with the complexity ascribed to god, the only logical way he could exist is if he evolved into his omnipotence, but we’ll deal with the nature of god later.

Now the big bang isn’t the only scientific model for the origin of the universe though it is still incorporated into the others since it is nearly impossible to deny that it happened.  Another origin theory is Brane Cosmology, derived from M-Theory.  It provides a larger framework for existence and a causal event for the bang.  It postulates that the visible, four-dimensional universe is restricted to a Brane inside a higher-dimensional space, called the "bulk".  In the bulk model, other branes may be moving through this bulk. Interactions with the bulk, and possibly with other branes, can influence our Brane and thus introduce effects not seen in more standard cosmological models.  A collision of 2 or more branes would provide an energy release large enough to account for the big bang.

As one of its attractive features, the model can explain the weakness of gravity relative to the other fundamental forces of nature, thus solving the so-called hierarchy problem. In the Brane picture, the other three forces (electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces) are localized on the Brane, but gravity has no such constraint and so much of its attractive power "leaks" into the bulk. As a result, the force of gravity should appear significantly stronger on small (subatomic or at least sub-millimeter) scales, where less gravitational force has "leaked". Various experiments are currently underway to test this.  That’s the beauty of science, it is a continuous effort to discover the truth, no one claims science has all the answers, only that science has the potential to one day have them.

There is another theory of the origin of the universe that derives from the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.  Before we get into what that is and where it leads you need to know about the 2 slit experiment. 

If you shine a light through two very narrow slits, very close together, onto a screen. The light wave emerging from one slit interfered with the wave emerging from the other slit, and the result was not two narrow stripes of light (one for each slit) but a whole series of stripes that we call an interference pattern. Now let's consider this in terms of photons, particles of light. You might expect it to work as follows.  We shine the photons at the slits, some go through one slit, some through the other.  The photons emerging from one slit interfere with the photons emerging from the other, and we get an interference pattern.  Now suppose we make the light very dim, and replace the screen we use to observe the result with a photographic film, thus giving us a permanent record of the light striking the screen.  Dimmer light means fewer photons, and if the lights dim enough we can actually see the impact of the individual photons on the film.  Instead of stripes, we get very tiny spots where the photons hit, but the spots arrange themselves into the interference pattern.  That is, the places where we would have bright stripes if the light were brighter, are the places we see most of the photons hitting. Where the dark stripes would be, we get very few photons.  One can actually make the light so dim that photons pass through the slits one at a time.  Physicists have already done this! And as the spots accumulate on the film, the interference pattern appears.

And there's the problem. If we send just one photon at the slits, and it passes through one slit or the other, what is there for it to interfere with when it emerges? There must be interference because if we do this over and over again, an interference pattern emerges. However, if the photon passes through one slit, there's nothing coming out of the other slit!

The only way to resolve this is to go back to wave thinking again. The wave particle passes through both slits, and the result that emerges from each slit interferes with the result from the other slit.  It's more than simply saying we don't know which slit the photon passes through.  The photon doesn't pass through just one slit at all.  In other words, as the photon passes through the slits, not only don't we know its location, it doesn't even have a location.  It doesn't have a location until we observe it on the film.  This paradox is the heart of what has come to be called the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics.

The Copenhagen interpretation denies that the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics has anything to say about what nature is really like, in particular, as regards the central problem of measurement.  The wave function of a physical system evolves, according to the Schrödinger equation, into a linear superposition of different quantum states encompassing all possibilities. But actual measurement always finds the physical system in a definite state; and this is referred to as “the collapse of the wave function.” The paradox is usually presented as the parable of Schrödinger’s cat imprisoned in a box with a capsule of deadly cyanide gas that would be released the moment a radioactive nuclide decays. The cat is therefore in a superposition of being alive, being dead, and being both alive and dead at the same time until the box is opened, or a measurement is performed; at which instant, the cat is either dead, or alive.  Simply this means that nothing is truly real until it is measured, such as by an observation.  Now if the universe is viewed in this manner, existing in a superposition of all of its possible states, once its wave function was collapsed, one universal history out of all possible histories becomes true.  This in turn means that the universe could have come into a definite existence 20 minutes ago, but since its wave function collapsed the history of everything leading up to this point has become real retroactively, giving the universe a beginning without a true beginning. 

So now you’re probably saying well scientists can’t even agree on things, they must be wrong.  It’s important to understand that none of the theories mentioned preclude any of the others from existing.  But my point in mentioning them is this, the universe is an amazing awe inspiring place, and we know just a fraction of what there is to know about it.  By accepting a creator god we are eliminating the need to continue the pursuit of knowledge about our universe, and how can anyone claim ignorance as a desirable human trait?  It may very well be that science is way off the mark with its interpretation of the available evidence, but as new knowledge comes to light we are able to form a better more complete picture of existence.  To claim that you already have all the answers because an old book tells you so is the height of arrogance, Truth can only come from the combination of knowledge and wisdom, which in turn can only be derived through the application of thought and reason.