Recent debates on legitimacy and accuracy of biblical texts has led to parallel discourses on the status of religion in the light of modern scientific knowledge. One of the hotly debated issues is that of the so called “big bang” theory. Observations by this author indicate a general lack of knowledge on this topic particularly by opponents of it, resulting in distorted caricatures of the theory as they attempt to bring it into question. The objective of this article is to provide an overview of some of the fundamental tenets of the big bang cosmology, what is posits, some of the evidence that led to it, and current research. It is also hoped that some of the wrong notions and caricatures about this topic will cleared up.
It should be noted however that this author is not a trained theoretical physicist and is not attempting to present himself as one. Also this article should not be considered as a comprehensive or exhaustive presentation, but rather a general overview from a “lay” person’s point of view.
We shall start by addressing one rhetorical statement that commonly arises namely ‘…well, its just a theory ...” In actual fact this is a statement of high ignorance and an advertisement of hopeless and willful lack of education on scientific matters. Sadly today, we see politicians on TV repeating this mantra to score quick partisan political points, as if they are expressing a view of substance. In science a theory is the highest level of knowledge on a specific topic. A theory explains the how and why, provides a formal mechanism by which the model can be used to make testable predictions, it is consistent with other established knowledge in that field, and has been subject to extensive testing, application, re-testing and peer review. A theory unifies other laws, rules, conjectures, hypotheses, and theorems related to that topic. For example, the Theory of Gravity unifies the laws of motion, geometry, calculus, Newton’s law for mass and inertia, trigonometry, algebra, and many others. The reason why scientists don’t say the “Fact” of gravity is because scientists do not offer 100% knowledge in anything. They always leave room for improvement regardless, otherwise we would stop educating ourselves if we thought we had 100% knowhow. For example Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity is “fact” for all intents and purposes. However Newton lived in an era when there were no calculators, computers, cars, spacecraft etc. Today we have been able to use these new inventions to calculate and re-check Newton’s theory to even higher accuracy, and yet in years to come even more powerful inventions will go even further. This however does not de-legitimize the theory at all, it simply improves on the current knowledge and leaves room for even more improvement by future generations but the overall theory is proven beyond all reasonable doubt. It is based on this that scientists still do not give 100% for any theory as no one knows what future computers, resources, or other new methods can do to make the theory even still better. So “…it’s just a theory …” is a non-starter, and statement of high ignorance.
Another rhetorical quip is “how can something come from nothing?” Well it cannot. And the big bang does not make that claim. The big bang model posits that our universe began in a hot dense state, and then there was an expansion of space-time that resulted in the continuously expanding universe we have today. It is interesting to note the bible makes no mention that the universe is expanding, the very defining property of the universe itself. So yes there was something that produced something else. And this process can be tracked with accuracy back to 10^(-43) seconds known as the Planck time. Beyond that the big bag model has nothing to say about any issue. Currently a new field called string theory is working on what happened before the Planck time and possibly before the big bang event, and judging from their progress maybe 10 – 15 years from now they will have some serious information to share with us. The problem is the mathematics involved in understanding and applying string theory is by itself even above and beyond that needed to become a PhD in Mathematics itself, so you see it takes time. So we can see how it is therefore easier to claim supernatural reasons than to do the hard work.
And talking about something coming from nothing, even if it were the case simply injecting a deity into the picture also answers nothing. It would simply be an untenable sweeping claim without lifting a single brain cell. But more troublesome is that it would raise the question of where did that designer deity come from? Who designed the designer, and who designed that super designer and we could take it to infinite regress. But back to the evidence for the big bang.
In the early 20th century a young Swiss patent clerk was conducting research on light rays in his free time. His name was Albert Einstein. He later published a paper on certain properties of light. He demonstrated that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light, and that the speed of light was constant regardless of the observers point of view. One outcome of this conclusion was that if this was true then time is relative. In other words the pace at which time passes is not universal but was relative to the observer in a process called time dilation. His work was called the theory of special relativity. The ramifications of this finding were so radical that Einstein became an international superstar over night. He later moved to the US where he stayed for the rest of his life. Almost 10 years later Einstein published another paper called theory of general relativity in which he demonstrated that the universe as we know it is not in 3-dimensions as we humans perceive it but has another 4th dimension which is time itself. Space can therefore be visualized as a fabric of space-time, and that matter distorts space-time causing it to curve. Objects close to such an object that are caught in the distortion zone feels this curvature of space-time and this is what we perceive as gravity. This radical new insight described gravity and explained what it is, a question that eluded Isaac Newton. This result put Einstein on the path to Nobel Prize in Physics and one of the most revered scientists of all time. Einstein applied his theory to analyze the gravity of other objects in the universe. Einstein’s theory suggested that the universe was expanding, but the prevailing scientific consensus at the time was that the universe was eternal and unchanging an idea called the steady-state model of the universe. So Einstein inserted a factor into his equations that he called the cosmological constant, and his new results were now in conformance with the steady state model. He then moved on to work on other projects.
At the time a young Belgian Catholic priest named Lemaitre reviewed Einstein’s work but he found no defendable reason to justify the cosmological constant. He reworked the equations and came up with the solution that the universe was indeed expanding. Lemaitre did not consider himself a co-equal of Einstein so he did not publish his work but kept it to himself. He was later posted to the US to lead a congregation. During his spare time he would work on his scientific research.
One day Lemaitre read a report in a US science magazine about observations made by an astronomer in California named Edwin Hubble. Dr Hubble was in charge of what was at the time the world’s largest and most complex telescope. In the report Hubble documented his findings that a) not all the celestial objects we see at night are stars b) all the actual stars we observe from earth are all together in the same galaxy called the Milky Way, c) some celestial objects are galaxies with their own many billions of stars, and that the galaxies were at great distances from us and from each other. But the most important finding was that after observing neighboring galaxies over several months it appeared the galaxies were racing away from each other, the further away a galaxy was from earth the faster it appeared to be moving away from us. In other words the universe is continuously expanding. Dr Hubble however did not know how to explain this and simply documented his observations. Lemaitre knew exactly what this meant. He revived his paper and published it entitled “The Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom.” He immediately called Einstein to announce to him that the universe is indeed expanding exactly as his equations predicted and that observational evidence had been gathered in the US. Lemaitre demonstrated that if the galaxies are moving away from each other now then in the past they were closer together. If we go back and back in time almost 13.7 billion years ago when the expansion started, all the galaxies were in the same location and some event must have taken took place that caused the galaxies to blast off and move away from each other. This expansion of space-time now called the “big bang” continues to this day. Lemaitre was later awarded the Nobel Prize for his work and became a national hero for Belgium.
As this new discovery of an expanding universe became well publicized a Russian scientist named George Gamow posited in 1948 that if this big bang “explosion” event really occurred then like any other expansion-explosion event there should be some residual background vibrations, ripples or aftershocks that can be detected independently. Gamow predicted exactly what form of radiation this would be and the corresponding temperature. However Gamow did not know which equipment could detect this radiation because he was a theoretical physicist not an engineer. In 1962 two telecommunications engineers working for the Bell Telecoms company (today called AT&T) named Wilson and Penzias were testing a new antennae they had developed. They noticed that certain interfering “static” of different types affected the performance. Some of these static appeared to rise when the antennae was pointed in specific directions and so they corrected for them. However one last interference remained no matter how they oriented the equipment. It appeared this radiation was coming from all directions of the sky. These gentlemen were not specialists in cosmology so they did not even give thought to any relevance it could have in physics. So they published their findings in an electrical engineering magazine on how best to manipulate telecoms antennae. Their paper was later reviewed by physicists elsewhere who later concluded that this radiation was in fact the one predicted by Gamow in 1948. It turned out that the radiation was a perfect match to what Gamow predicted. It was named the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. Gamow had passed away before this discovery. The Gamow Tower at the University of Colorado is named in his honor. Wilson and Penzias were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery. Today when your radio goes off channel or your TV loses channels and you see that “snow” on the screen up to 5% of it is CMB, the afterglow of the big bang. We are all witnessing it whether we understand it or not.
The discovery of the CMB was seen as the final proof of the big bang. At the time there was another competing theory called the steady state model. Some of the supporters of the steady state model included Einstein and another gentleman named Fred Hoyle, a British physicist. Hoyle hated the big bang idea because to him it suggested a moment of creation, or that science was somehow trying to conform to religious creation stories. Hoyle believed the universe was eternal and infinite, and had no creator, no beginning and no end. In fact Hoyle made several outstanding contributions to enable us understand how stars work and produce energy and elements that we see today. He even wrote equations to predict how much oxygen, hydrogen etc can be in the universe, for which he also received the Nobel Prize. It was Hoyle who came up with the term “big bang” as a way of being sarcastic about the whole nonsense idea. Hoyle remained defiant to his death even after big bang became the consensus theory unifying all physics. Einstein himself admitted that his support of the steady state model “…was the biggest mistake of my career…” Today with computers the CMB has been mapped into great detail and provides a view of the universe in its infancy. True to the predictions of the big bang theory it shows that the mass and densities were not uniformly distributed but that there were uneven distributions of clumps of hot dense matter scattered in the early universe. When we superimpose this on a map of the universe as it exists today it is easy to see that those hot dense clumps are now the galaxies including our own, whereas the sparse regions of the CMB are now mostly voids, vacuum and “empty” regions of space.
So when scientists make claims they back it up with evidence, else it will not be accepted. This evidence must conform to or at least be consistent with previously known information. Big bang theory is not based on faith as some claim, it is based on the evidence from cosmology, and that evidence is also consistent with other theories such as gravity, electromagnetism, and many others. No faith or prayers are needed to demonstrate or to understand it, none , but rather education and critical thinking both of which can be taught. But religion fails all these tests. It rather claims 100% knowledge and yet when asked for evidence we are told to shut up, prepare for eternal burning, and ask no questions. That is simply not acceptable and an insult. So at this time we humbly and respectfully ask the religious yet again to provide the evidence for their claims such as six day creation, resurrection, global flood, walking on water, talking snakes and burning bushes among others. Enough is enough, provide the evidence else we will simply shovel your ideas into the garbage. Religion has had over 4,000 years to prove itself but so far nothing. Modern science dated from around 1600 and so far the results have been beyond our wildest dreams and yet we don’t claim 100% and leave room for even more improvements.
And so at this juncture some of the evidence for the big bang theory has been enumerated in this essay. It must be noted that even though it has passed every test put to it scientists still call it “theory” and there is good reason for this. In 2003 for example, it was concluded by observation and measurement that the rate of expansion of the universe is speeding up. This had not been previously known or predicted. According to the theory this can occur due the presence of something they called dark energy and dark matter. So far no devices have been invented that can detect these entities. So that is the latest position of research in the field of big bang physics. Maybe some of our smart Ghanaian physicist may come up with the solution and become the first Ghanaian Nobel winner in Physics. What a proud moment that would be for our country. But this will not happen if we don’t prioritize our education and scientific research but rather continue to peddle ancient myths of barbaric and archaic desert dwelling tribesmen and nomads as our means of meeting a bearded Hebrew speaking bearded old white man in the sky when we die. Folks, we need to focus on our education, it is the only way Ghana will achieve self sufficiency, maybe not in our time but for future generations.
So lets go slow with the religion miracles circus and spend more effort on reality so we can also develop our nation and become positive contributors to the future of human kind. In my next article I shall tackle the misconceptions regarding the theory of Evolution, another of the most incorrectly caricatured ideas by people of “faith”.
God bless you all. Peace.
kwaku ba © July 2010
