The Case for a Creator (19 page)

ALTERNATIVES TO THE BIG BANG

Efforts to come up with alternatives to the standard Big Bang model have intensified in recent years. Many scientists are troubled by the fact that the beginning of the universe necessitates a Creator. Others are perturbed because the laws of physics can’t account for the creation event.

Einstein admitted the idea of the expanding universe “irritates me”
³²
(presumably, said one prominent scientist, “because of its theological implications”).
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British astronomer Arthur Eddington called it “repugnant.” MIT’s Phillip Morrison said, “I would like to reject it.”
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Jastrow said it was “distasteful to the scientific mind,” adding:

There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause. . . . This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized.
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Has this attitude, I asked Craig, fueled efforts to circumvent the idea of the Big Bang?

“I believe it has. A good example is the Steady State theory proposed in 1948,” he replied. “It said that the universe was expanding all right but claimed that as galaxies retreat from each other, new matter comes into being out of nothing and fills the void. So in contradiction to the First Law of Thermodynamics, which says that matter is neither created nor destroyed, the universe is supposedly being constantly replenished with new stuff.”

The concept was intriguing if nothing else. “What was the evidence for it?” I asked.

“There was none!” Craig exclaimed. “It never secured a single piece of experimental verification. It was motivated purely by a desire to avoid the absolute beginning of the universe predicted by the Big Bang model—in fact, one of its originators, Sir Fred Hoyle, was quite overt about this. He was very up front about his desire to avoid the metaphysical and theological implications of the Big Bang by proposing a model that was eternal in the past.”

I interrupted. “Wait a minute, Bill,” I said. Recalling a comment by science philosopher Stephen C. Meyer in my earlier interview, I asked: “Wouldn’t you agree that the motivations behind a theory are independent of its scientific worth?”

“Yes, yes, I’d agree with that,” Craig replied. “In this case, though, there were no scientific data supporting it. It’s a good illustration of how scientists are not mere thinking machines but are driven by philosophical and emotional factors as well.”

Rather than try to second-guess the motivations of cosmologists, I decided to ask Craig about several alternatives to the standard Big Bang model that have gained currency through the years. Maybe one of them could succeed in toppling the theistic conclusion of the
kalam
argument.

EXPLORING SAGAN’S COSMOS

The first alternative I mentioned to Craig—the Oscillating Model of the universe—was popularized by astronomer Carl Sagan on his
Cosmos
television program. This theory eliminates the need for an absolute beginning of the universe by suggesting that the universe expands, then collapses, then expands again, and continues in this cycle indefinitely. Interestingly, Sagan even quoted from Hindu scriptures to show how this is consistent with its cyclical themes. When I asked Craig about Sagan’s theory, he said that, yes, he was quite familiar with it.

“That model was popular in the 1960s, particularly among Russian cosmologists,” he said. “In 1968, when I was at the World Congress on Philosophy in Düsseldorf, I heard Soviet bloc cosmologists espousing this model, simply because of their commitment to dialectical materialism. They could not deny the eternality of matter because this was part of Marxist philosophy, and so, despite the evidence, they were holding out hope for the Oscillating Model.”

“But,” I interjected, “support for this model apparently hasn’t waned. As recently as 2003, Bill Bryson, in his best-seller
A Short History of Nearly Everything
, said that ‘one notion’ among scientists is that ‘we’re just one of an eternal cycle of expanding and collapsing universes, like the bladder on an oxygen machine.’ ”
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“Well, several problems with the Oscillating Model have been well known for decades,” he replied. “For one thing, it contradicts the known laws of physics. Theorems by Hawking and Penrose show that as long as the universe is governed by general relativity, the existence of an initial singularity—or beginning—is inevitable, and that it’s impossible to pass through a singularity to a subsequent state. And there’s no known physics that could reverse a contracting universe and suddenly make it bounce before it hits the singularity. The whole theory was simply a theoretical abstraction. Physics never supported it.

“Another problem is that in order for the universe to oscillate, it has to contract at some point. For this to happen, the universe would have to be dense enough to generate sufficient gravity that would eventually slow its expansion to a halt and then, with increasing rapidity, contract it into a big crunch. But estimates have consistently indicated that the universe is far below the density needed to contract, even when you include not only its luminous matter, but also all of the invisible dark matter as well.

“Recent tests, run by five different laboratories in 1998, calculated a ninety-five-percent certainty that the universe will not contract, but that it will expand forever. In fact, in a completely unexpected development, the studies indicated that the expansion is not decelerating, but it’s actually accelerating. This really puts the nails in the coffin for the Oscillating Model.

“And one more problem: even if physics allowed the universe to contract, scientific studies have shown that entropy would be conserved from one cycle to the next. This would have the effect of each expansion getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Now, trace that backwards in time and what do you get? They get smaller and smaller and smaller, until you finally come to the smallest cycle—and then the beginning of the universe. So Joseph Silk, in his book
The Big Bang
, estimates that even if the universe were oscillating, it could not have gone through more than a hundred previous oscillations prior to today.”
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All of this did, indeed, seem to doom this theory. “Sagan was an agnostic who liked to say that the universe ‘is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be,’ ”
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I said. “But you’re saying that the evidence indicates—”

“—that the Oscillating Model itself implies the beginning of the universe which its proponents sought to avoid. That’s right,” Craig said.

“But,” I pointed out, “permutations of his theory are being proposed even today.” I removed a newspaper article from my briefcase and read the headline to Craig:
Princeton Physicist Offers Theory of Cyclic Universe
.
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“This cosmologist says the Big Bang is not the beginning of time but a bridge to a pre-existing era,” I said. “He says the universe undergoes an endless sequence of cycles in which it contracts with a big crunch and reemerges in an expanding Big Bang, with trillions of years of evolution in between. He says mysterious ‘dark energy’ first pushes the universe apart at an accelerating rate, but then it changes its character and causes it to contract and then rebound in cycle after cycle.”

Craig was familiar with the concept. “This model is based on a certain version of string theory, which is an alternative to the standard quark model of particle physics,” he explained.

“The scenario postulates that our universe is a three-dimensional membrane in a five-dimensional space, and that there’s another three-dimensional membrane which is in an eternal cycle of approaching our membrane and colliding with it. When this happens, it supposedly causes an expansion of our universe from the point of collision. Then our universe retreats and repeats the cycle again, and on and on.

“The idea is that this five-dimensional universe is eternal and beginningless. So you have a cyclic model of our universe that is expanding, but nevertheless this larger dimensional universe as a whole is eternal.”

Though difficult to conceptualize, this idea had a certain amount of appeal. “What do you think of this model?” I asked.

“Well, this isn’t even a model, it’s just sort of a scenario, because it hasn’t been developed. The equations for string theory haven’t even all been stated yet, much less solved. So this is extremely speculative and uncertain. But let’s consider it on its merits,” he said.

“This cyclic scenario is plagued with problems. For one thing, it is inconsistent with the very string theory it’s based on! Nobody has been able to solve that problem. Moreover, this is simply the five-dimensional equivalent of a three-dimensional oscillating universe. As such, it faces many of the same problems that the old oscillating model did.

“But more interesting is that in 2001, inflation theorist Alan Guth and two other physicists wrote an article on how inflation is not past eternal. They were able to generalize their results to show that they were also applicable to multidimensional models, like the one in this newspaper article. So it turns out that even the cyclical model in five dimensions has to have a beginning.”

Craig sighed as he sat back in his chair. “It’s amazing how this falls into a consistent pattern,” he said. “Theories designed to avoid the beginning of the universe have either turned out to be untenable, like the Steady State theory, or else they imply the very beginning of the universe that their proponents have been desperately trying to avoid.”

“So the future of this cyclic scenario is . . . what?”

“It will probably provide grist for further exploration,” he said. “Still, another prominent inflation theorist, André Linde, said this concept has been very popular among journalists and very unpopular among cosmologists.”

“Speaking of Linde,” I said, “he proposed another theory, called chaotic inflation, that would eliminate the need for a beginning point.”

“That’s right,” Craig said. “He speculated that maybe inflation—this rapid expansion of the universe—never really quits. He said maybe the universe expands like a balloon, and when it reaches a certain point, then inflation is spawned off of it and begins to expand, and then something expands off of that. So you have inflation begetting inflation begetting inflation, and it goes on forever. The obvious question, then, is this: could inflation be eternal in the past? Could every inflationary domain be the creation of a prior domain so that the universe is an eternally inflating and self-reproducing entity?”

“Is that possible?”

“I’m afraid not. As I said earlier, a universe that is eternally inflating toward the future cannot be past eternal. Two prominent physicists demonstrated that as far back as 1994. There has to be a beginning at some point in the indefinite past. In Linde’s response, he admitted they were correct.”

I thought about another popular alternative: quantum models of the universe, like Edward Tryon’s, which I mentioned earlier. There are several variations, but basically they claim that our universe is part of a bigger mother universe, which is made up of a quantum vacuum where fluctuations occur and turn into baby universes. Our universe is one of these offspring. While our universe is expanding, the bigger mother universe is infinite and eternal.

When I brought up this concept, though, Craig pointed out two fatal problems with it. “Remember we said earlier in our conversation that a quantum vacuum isn’t nothing, but that it’s a very active sea of fluctuating energy that itself demands an explanation for how it came into being,” he said. “What accounts for its beginning? And second, there is a positive—that is, a non-zero—probability that a fluctuation would occur and a universe would be spawned at each and every point in this quantum vacuum.

“So if the mother universe were eternal, eventually a universe would have formed at each point. Think about that. Finally these universes would be running into each other or coalescing until the entire quantum vacuum in the mother universe would be filled with an infinitely old universe, which contradicts our observations. That’s why this model hasn’t survived.”

HAWKING’S CHALLENGE

Most developments in cosmology live an obscure existence within the pages of arcane scientific journals, with only a few—often, the most outlandish ones—receiving even the briefest mention in the popular press. Luminaries in the field, such as Linde and Guth, are hardly household names. But when Stephen William Hawking speaks, the public listens.

A theoretical physicist who is currently the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton, Hawking has become a science icon. He has sold millions of copies of
A Brief History of Time
, although
Business Week
once quipped that the book is “the least-read best-seller ever.”
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His celebrity status was validated when he achieved cartoon form on
The Simpsons
and played a cameo role on
Star Trek
, where he challenged a holographic Einstein to a game of chess.

Hawking, who uses a wheelchair for mobility and a synthesizer for speech due to a progressive neuromuscular disease, has been on a quest for the elusive Theory of Everything, which would unify general relativity with quantum theory. Along the way, he has proposed a quantum gravity model for the universe that he says eliminates the need for a singularity—that is, the Big Bang.