Copernican Revolution Revisited -- The Goldilocks Enigma

Lately, I have been reading in the subjects of Natural Law and Cosmology (not to mention watching those "science" shows on the History Channel). It always has struck me that when science departs from "description" of how systems operate (be the system a cell, a chemical reaction, or cosmology), and into "prescription" about why things are as they are, that science quickly slips into theology.

The idea of the "Big Bang" developed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Although many in the early 21st century teach and believe that the "Big Bang" is scientific fact, it is really the chief theory proposed by many cosmologists to explain what is physically observed by various telescopes. Ironically, the concept of the "Big Bang" first was conceived by Georges Lemaître, a Belgium Roman Catholic priest, in 1927. Lemaître called his theory, "hypothesis of the primeval atom," while his detractors called it "Big Bang."(Fred Hoyle, who rejected Lemaître's theory, coined the term "Big Bang.")  Lemaître's "hypothesis of the primeval atom" not only argued against the prevalent theories of his day but also was viewed as being too "religious" as Lemaître described the explosion of the "primeval atom" as the moment of Creation. Today, most people view the "Big Bang" as being science and against religion.

Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître

At the time Lemaître proposed his "hypothesis of the primeval atom," few scientists accepted it. Albert Einstein said to Lemaître regarding his theory, "Your math is correct, but your physics is abominable." The prevalent theory held that the universe was static, a steady-state. This view of the Universe was first put forth by none other than Aristotle in Ancient Greece.  Favor toward the so-called "Big Bang" theory of the origin of the universe (the universe has a beginning and is perhaps cyclical) over the the steady state view of the universe (the universe is eternal), began to wane when Hubble observed that that the Universe appeared to be expanding in the early 1930s and was more or less defeated with the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964.

Sky Map of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Since the mid-1960s, nearly all astronomers and cosmologists have accepted the "Big Bang" theory as the origin of the universe. In late 20th and early 21st centuries, a number of cosmologists have begun to ask the question, "What was before the Big Bang?" Since by definition, the "Big Bang" is outside of space and time -- it is, according to the theory, the origin of space and time -- as a statement of causality to speak of "before" the Big Bang makes no sense. Yet cosmologists and physicists are wondering what caused the so-called "Big Bang" and what happened before it. Some have suggested that the universe is the result of multiple Big Bangs  or is a member of a multi-verse," a cyclical process by which the universe is recreated or goes through multiple births and deaths (it is really difficult to keep track of all the variant theories). Recently, Michio Kaku, cosmologist and co-creator of "String Theory," stated that his grandparents were Buddhists while he went to Sunday School, and the multi-verse view of the universe allows him to merge his Buddhist heritage (cyclical) with Christianity (beginning).

As previously stated, when science leaves the realm of description, it enters into theology. Modern cosmology (not as the descriptive science but in prescribing how and why) is a jumble of ideas dating from the earliest philosophizing of man. Is the universe eternal? Did the universe have a beginning or multiple beginnings? Is it cyclical? These ideas whirl in utter confusion.

Nicholas Copernicus

In 1543, Nicholas Copernicus published his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. His book challenged Ptotlemy's view that the earth was the center of the universe by positing that the sun was the center. The earth went around the sun, rather than the sun around the earth. The Lutherans published his work, even though Luther apparently did not think much of Copernicus' ideas -- Melanchthon and others were intrigued by them.  The main theological concern regarding Copernicus' ideas was that it somehow diminished the earth and more importantly human beings as the special creation of God. Cosmologists today see the Copernican Revolution as pivotal in demonstrating,"It is evident that in the post-Copernican era of human history, no well-informed and rational person can imagine that the Earth occupies a unique position in the universe." (Michael Rowan-Robinson, Cosmology (3rd ed.). Clarendon Press, Oxford. pp. 62.)

Yet despite this "evident" fact that human beings do not occupy a unique position in the universe, cosmologists have noted since the early 1970s that there is a troubling anthropocentric principle in physics and cosmology. If certain physical constants were slightly different, life could not exist. If the earth were slightly closer or slightly further from the sun, life could not exist. If the sun itself were in a different position in the galaxy life could not exist and so on. In fact, the entire universe seems to favor the existence of life on earth. (Of course, some of us know.)

This brings me to the book The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?

New Model of Universe -- No Big Bang -- Not Really So New

Physicists recently have proposed a new theory of the universe. (See the article at the end of this post.) While I do not claim to understand all aspects of this theory (nor the mathematics behind it), there are certain elements that are familiar to mythology, non-Christian religious thought, and certain philosophical notions.

In this model proposed by Wun-Yi Shu, a professor in Taiwan, the universe has no beginning and no end. This view is consisted with Eastern religion and philosophical views. In Buddhism, the universe has no beginning and no end; there is no creation as creation would imply the beginning of consciousness. For the Buddhist (at least as I understand it), most troubling is the "non-existence" of consciousness; therefore, there can be no beginning as it would imply before the "beginning" there was no consciousness. The idea of the "eternal cosmos" was debated in Aristotle and among the ancient Greeks. (See the article "Ancient Greek-Roman Cosmology: Infinite, Eternal, Finite, Cyclic, and Multiple Universes" in Journal of Cosmology.)

Basically, there isn't a theory regarding the origins (or non-origins) of the universe that already hasn't been debated in philosophy. Philosophical or religious presuppositions govern or color how the mathematical models are devised and how the physical data from telescopes and such are interpreted and understood. Apart from the Judeo-Christian tradition, thought essentially reverts back toward ideas found in Greek paganism or toward ideas found in Eastern religious thought.

For whatever else the "big bang" theory represents, in it, the universe does have a definite beginning and a likely end -- either entropy causes all to fade away into a formless void with no pattern, or the universe crunches in on itself (implosion) -- a beginning and an end. In this one aspect, the "big bang" theory has more in common with traditional Judeo-Christian teaching than some of the "newer" theories, which are actually a throw back to Greek paganism or to Eastern thought.

As science and mathematics is dominated more and more by people of Asian descent, it really should come as no surprise that the philosophical and theological underpinnings of various cosmological theories have taken on a more "Eastern" flavor. 

One interesting aspect of this "new" theory is the variability of the speed of light. In most science textbooks today, it is taught that the speed of light is a "constant" of the universe -- its speed never varies through time. This "new" theory allows for light to travel at different rates in time. Some Creationists and Intelligent Design folk also have posited a variable speed of light to explain in part the vast distances observed in the universe today while maintaining a relatively young earth and cosmos. 

In any case, my interest at the moment isn't a debate or discussion about Creationism but rather the observation how "theological" and "philosophical" notions govern the outcome how physical data is interpreted in the name of "hard" or "pure" science. In the history of thought, it is notable that creation ex nihilo as a "philosophical" idea appears first in the writings of Saint Augustine. 

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Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end

July 29th, 2010 in Physics / General Physics

(PhysOrg.com) -- By suggesting that mass, time, and length can be converted into one another as the universe evolves, Wun-Yi Shu has proposed a new class of cosmological models that may fit observations of the universe better than the current big bang model. What this means specifically is that the new models might explain the increasing acceleration of the universe without relying on a cosmological constant such as dark energy, as well as solve or eliminate other cosmological dilemmas such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem.

Shu, an associate professor at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, explains in a study posted at arXiv.org that the new models emerge from a new perspective of some of the most basic entities: time, space, mass, and length. In his proposal, time and space can be converted into one another, with a varying speed of light as the conversion factor. Mass and length are also interchangeable, with the conversion factor depending on both a varying gravitational “constant” and a varying speed of light (G/c²). Basically, as the universe expands, time is converted into space, and mass is converted into length. As the universe contracts, the opposite occurs.

“We view the speed of light as simply a conversion factor between time and space in spacetime,” Shu writes. “It is simply one of the properties of the spacetime geometry. Since the universe is expanding, we speculate that the conversion factor somehow varies in accordance with the evolution of the universe, hence the speed of light varies with cosmic time.”

As Shu writes in his paper, the newly proposed models have four distinguishing features:

• The speed of light and the gravitational “constant” are not constant, but vary with the evolution of the universe.
• Time has no beginning and no end; i.e., there is neither a big bang nor a big crunch singularity.
• The spatial section of the universe is a 3-sphere [a higher-dimensional analogue of a sphere], ruling out the possibility of a flat or hyperboloid geometry.
• The universe experiences phases of both acceleration and deceleration.

He tested one of the models against current cosmological observations of Type Ia supernovae that have revealed that the universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate. He found that, because acceleration is an inherent part of his model, it fits the redshift data of the observed supernovae quite well. In contrast, the currently accepted big bang model does not fit the data, which has caused scientists to search for other explanations such as dark energy that theoretically makes up 75% of the mass-energy of the universe.

Shu’s models may also account for other problems faced by the standard big bang model. For instance, the flatness problem arises in the big bang model from the observation that a seemingly flat universe such as ours requires finely tuned initial conditions. But because the universe is a 3-sphere in Shu’s models, the flatness problem “disappears automatically.” Similarly, the horizon problem occurs in standard cosmology because it should not be possible for distant places in the universe to share the same physical properties (as they do), since it should require communication faster than the speed of light due to their great distances. However, Shu’s models solve this problem due to their lack of big bang origin and intrinsic acceleration.

“Essentially, this work is a novel theory about how the magnitudes of the three basic physical dimensions, mass, time, and length, are converted into each other, or equivalently, a novel theory about how the geometry of spacetime and the distribution of mass-energy interact,” Shu writes. “The theory resolves problems in cosmology, such as those of the big bang, dark energy, and flatness, in one fell stroke.”