The Infinite Universe

This is old. I found it on an old USB Thumb Drive while looking for something else.  I am sure was state of the art at the time. It can hold a whole 125 MB of information. That's funny to even think about. It is old enough I don't remember writing it. It is also incomplete, unfinished.
Update: There is a reason I don't remember writing this, because I didn't. Dr. Hugh Ross did. Sorry about that, but I remember studying it in depth probably saved it and when I saw it on an old USB drive thought I wrote it. Doesn't change its truth. Actually gives it more kick of authority. I'm kind of embarrassed at myself, I'm just glad I caught this myself..

The Infinitely Oscillation Universe Model

In the oscillating universe model suggested by physicists like Robert Dicke and John Gribbin, the universe alternates for infinite time between phases of expansion and contraction. Gravity halts the expansion and generates a succeeding phase of contraction. An unknown physical mechanism is proposed to somehow bounce the universe from a period of contraction into a period of expansion, and the characteristics of the contraction and expansion phases are presumed not to vary significantly with time.

According to Princeton physicist Robert Dicke, an infinite number of these cycles of expansion and contraction of the universe would “relieve us of the necessity of understanding the origin of matter at any finite time in the past.” The creation event becomes irrelevant, and our existence could be attributed to one lucky bounce.

But the universe has far less mechanical efficiency than a foam-rubber ball. In 1983 and 1984, American astrophysicists Marc Sher, Alan Guth, and Sidney Bludman demonstrated that even if the universe contained enough mass to halt its current expansion, any ultimate collapse would end in a thud, not a bounce. In terms of mechanical energy, the universe more closely resembles a wet lump of clay than a pumped up volleyball (see table 1). Sher and Guth confidently entitled their paper “The Impossibility of a Bouncing Universe.”

Table 1: Mechanical Efficiencies of Some Common Systems

If the universe oscillated, that means it is behaving like an engine or a system designed to perform work. The ability of a system or engine to perform work or to oscillate depends on its mechanical efficiency. The universe literally ranks as the worst engine in all existence. Its mechanical efficiency is so low that oscillation is impossible.

System or Engine Mechanical Efficiency

Diesel engine 40%

Gasoline engine 25%
Steam engine 12%
Human body 1%
Universe 0.00000001%

Arnold Sikkema and Werner Israel grasped it, hypothesizing bizarre effects of merging black holes in that split second when all the matter and energy of the universe would still have been contained in a very tiny volume. These men honestly admitted that no consistent theory of quantum gravity yet exists. It must be noted, too, that the oscillation theory they proposed yields at most only a sharply limited number of bounces. It offers no escape from the notion of a beginning in the not-so-distant past.

That slender straw grasped by Sikkema and Israel was crushed recently by Russian physicist Andre Linde. At a symposium on the large-scale structure of the universe, Linde demonstrated that the universe, with the characteristics we observe, cannot have arisen from a bounce in the quantum gravity era. Why?

There are two considerations:

During the collapse phase toward a hypothetical bounce at least one region or volume (technically called a “domain”) in the universe would utterly resist being crushed to the tiny volume necessary for the exotic effects of quantum gravity to take over.

1. The bounce, if it could take place, would not produce sufficient matter.

Let me explain. The universe, before the hypothetical bounce, begins with a huge amount of space curvature and little or no matter. But, as the universe expands, space is stretched, reducing the curvature. This loss of curvature is transformed into matter, and in the process, a huge amount of entropy is generated. Because of the enormous entropy produced, the process is not reversible. Matter cannot be converted back into the needed space curvature. Thus the universe we live in cannot be the product of oscillation even if the bounces are hypothesized to occur in the quantum gravity era.

The Pope, the Big Bang, and God

It took Pope Pius XII , in his 1951 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science, to turn that question into an international debate. The Pope spoke of how “true science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree.” The Big Bang suggested that “the material universe had in finite time a mighty beginning.” It showed how matter was dependent on a Necessary Being. In other word, matter had mutability and nature a teleological order. He acknowledged that there can be no absolute proof from science regarding God, and cautioned against tying faith to transient theories. Nevertheless, the evidence was looking pretty good: a religious concept of creation was “entirely compatible” with the Big Bang. Science had “confirmed the contingency of the universe…..Hence, creation took place in time. Therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore God exists!”

Although it quickly entered popular culture and became a household term, the Big Bang theory still had only provisional acceptance in scientific circles until the 1990s. To evaluate the precise fluctuations, or “wrinkles” in the background radiation reported in 1965, NASA sent aloft the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite in 1989. The findings, announced three years later, were an astounding endorsement of the Big Bang, explaining why its apparently smooth beginning ended up in a universe full of clumpy galaxies. The proof came none too soon, said a relieved COBE mission leader George Smoot: “Very simply, the discovery of the wrinkles salvaged Big Bang theory at a time when detractors were attacking it in increasing numbers.”

When the Cambridge astrophysicist Stephen Hawking arrived at the Vatican in 1981 to address a session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, he did not question the Big Bang, but he may have felt he was taking on the legacy of Pope Pius. Hawking unveiled his “no-boundary theory,: which used quantum physics and “imaginary time” to say there was no beginning to the universe. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,” Hawking has said elsewhere. “But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end. What place then for a creator?”

Astronomer George Coyne, a Jesuit and director of the Vatican Observatory, said Hawking embarked on his foray into theology with too little philosophical training in the matter. He was mixing up the “nothings” as used by physics and by theology. “He speaks of a quantum nothing, but that is not nothing,” Coyne said, playing on words. “It has nothing to do with the nothing of Scripture-that God created the universe from nothing.” In sum, “the God he excludes is not the God we believe in.”

Time and the Beginning

Even before the death of the oscillating universe model, a fundamental reason was uncovered for the failure of cosmological models that rejected the finite age of the universe. In a series of papers appearing from 1966 to 1970, three British astrophysicists, Stephen Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose, extended the solution of the equations of general relativity to include space and time. The result was called the space-time theorem of general relativity. This theorem demonstrated that if general relativity is valid for the universe then, under very general conditions, space and time must have originated in the same cosmic bang that brought matter and energy into existence.

In Hawking’s words, time itself must have a beginning. Proof of the beginning of time may rank as the most theologically significant theorem of all time, assuming validity of the theory of general relativity.

This space-time theorem tells us that the dimensions of length, width, height, and time have existed only for as long as the universe has been expanding, less than about twenty billion years. Time really does have a beginning.

By definition, time is that dimension in which cause and effect phenomena take place. No time, no cause and effect. If time’s beginning is concurrent with the beginning of the universe, as the space-time theorem says, then the cause of the universe must be some entity operating in a time dimension completely independent of and preexistent to the time dimension of the cosmos. This conclusion is powerfully important to our understanding of who God is and who or what God isn’t. It tells us that the Creator is transcendent, operating beyond the dimensional limits of the universe. It tells us that God is not the universe itself, nor is God contained within the universe. Pantheism and atheism do not square with the facts.

Pantheism claims there is no existence beyond the universe, that the universe is all there is, and that the universe always has existed. Atheism claims that the universe was not created and no entity exists independent of the matter, energy, and space-time dimensions of the universe. But all the data accumulated in the twentieth century tells us that a transcendent Creator must exist, for all the matter, energy, length, width, height, and even time suddenly and simultaneously came into being from some source beyond itself.

It is valid to refer to such a source, entity, or being as the Creator, for creating is defined as causing something-in this case everything in the universe-to come into existence. Matter, energy, space, and time are the effects He caused. Likewise, it is valid to refer to the Creator as transcendent, for the act of causing these effects must take place outside or independent of them.

Not only does science lead us to these conclusions, but so also does the Bible, and it is the only holy book to do so.

~ Hugh Ross, PhD