Alpha and Omega:The Beginning and the EndHow did the Universe begin? How will it end? Who is responsible? It is easy to assume that some Creator, an entity with unlimited power, made the Universe. But can this view be right? In the absence of definitive evidence, it is an impossible question to answer with certainty, but we can decide what is most probable. The Theist viewpoint is not consistent; some (a minority) say that the Bible is literally true, that the Earth was created in six literal days less than 10,000 years ago. They attempt to reinterpret and distort the observed facts to fit the Bible. Most Theists concede that the universe is very old - the 10 to 25 thousand million years that science has determined. They attempt to reinterpret and distort the Bible to fit the observed facts. Theists in both camps cite the normal scientific process of re-evaluation and discussion of evidence as being divisions within science. There are divisions, true, but science proceeds by argument over how evidence, observation and experiment fit in with theory. Theories differ; it is the task of science to develop them and to test them. The Theists see this and read it as division, they often claim that it shows science to be in error. (This is particularly done by Creationists trying to disprove evolution.) In reality, science is divided much less than Religion. There is no debate in Science as sharp as the Theist uncertainty of the age of the Universe - six orders of magnitude? There are many things science still does not know, but nothing, to my knowledge, is uncertain to 6 orders of magnitude. So what of the Theist standpoint? "Young Earth" believers can be proved wrong by any number of physical evidences, yet they chose to believe a book written 3,000 years ago rather than the facts they can observe for themselves. For example, they cite any minor landslide, of any age, as "evidence" of the Biblical Flood. They make the absurd claim that light from distant galaxies was created en route. This is clearly nothing more than an attempt to bolster a belief system which has been disproved time and again. "Old Earth Creationists" are a little more rational. They agree that the sequence revealed by geology, palaeontology and physics is true, but that the Creator instigated each step. It is probably impossible to entirely disprove this idea, but on the other hand some deductions may be made regarding its likelihood. In particular, the issue of the beginning: the Big Bang. There are other issues in which God's direct participation may be shown to be redundant, but I will concentrate here on the beginning, and ultimate fate, of the Universe. There can be little doubt now that the Universe began with an explosion. Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic background radiation about 30 years ago. For some reason, Theist Hugh Ross (in this article1, for instance) dedicates a great deal of time and effort in pointing out that the Universe is not infinite, even though no-one has claimed that it is for several decades. Ross claims to have a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Toronto, but his knowledge of fairly basic astronomy is rather lacking. He apparently believes that: Pleiades and Orion as [sic] gravitationally bound star groups (Job 38:31)... All other star groups visible to the naked eye are unbound, with the possible exception of the Hyades. Now, the Pleiades and Hyades certainly are gravitationally bound groups, but Orion most definitely is not. On the other hand, 5 of the brightest stars of the Ursa Major are gravitationally bound, as are innumerable star clusters (including one, to be fair, in the constellation of Orion), several globular clusters, and 4 galaxies (including our own and its two satellites, the Magellanic Clouds). All of these are visible to the naked eye. Dr Ross is one of those theists who re-interprets the Bible. In the Bible the Earth is described as being flat. (Specifically, the Hebrew word for "circle" is used.) According to Dr Ross though, the Bible says the Earth is spherical. In the crucible of scientific investigation, the Bible has proven invariably to be correct. --- But only if you misinterpret it in just the right way. I understand that, according to the Bible, rabbits chew cud. I'd like to see Dr Ross's explanation for that. Getting back to the point, the Universe began. The question many ask is: what caused it to explode? The Theists' answer is God, of course, but the next question must be: "Where did God come from?" This is exactly the same as the old issue connected to evolution: if one finds a watch, one can see it is something that was made. An animal is more complex, therefore (the argument goes) it too must have been made, by God. The response to this is almost as old as the question, but still is generally ignored by Theists: God must be vastly more complex than any mere mortal creature... so who made God? An infinite series of Creators is envisaged. The problem of Origins has not been solved, but multiplied. So we look for something different. Time itself began at the Big Bang, so it is rather meaningless to ask what happened before then. We can re-word the question as: "Why did the Big Bang happen?" It is the nature of science that it aims to find the answers. This means that it does not already know. However, not knowing the answer to some particular problem does not mean that the theory or observation that threw out the problem must be wrong, neither does it mean that God must be invoked to explain the gap in our knowledge. All it means is that science is incomplete. The two great triumphs of 20th century physics are Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Relativity applies under conditions of high speed, large distance, or high mass. The Universe is massive. Its expansion is rapid. Quantum mechanics applies particularly in situations of small distances. The early Universe was small. So both Relativity and Quantum Theory apply. Unfortunately, the two theories are incomplete, and do not fully describe situations where both might apply. This effectively limits how far back in time theorists can look. Some tentative theories for the mechanism of the big bang have been suggested, however. The best known of these is "Quantum Fluctuations." A fairly detailed explanation can be found on this webpage. (Scroll down to the section headed "Quantum Cosmology.") This explains how the Big Bang could have happened, without the need for any Instigator. And how will the Universe end? Theists are more concerned with how life on Earth will end. The Bible describes Armageddon, and its description is taken as being literal or figurative as the real world context requires. Does the Book of Revelation hold any literal truth? If Dr Ross's opinion quoted above is to be believed, then yes. Christians have always believed that the "Second Coming" was imminent. So far, they have always been wrong. Granted, if the second coming ever does happen, and Christians always believe it is imminent, then they will eventually be right, but after how many centuries of being wrong? It is similar to believing that one will win the Lottery this week. If you believe it every week, you will almost always be wrong. One week in 14,000,000 you can expect to be right. It would be better, more accurate, to believe that you will eventually win, if you live long enough. This is where this analogy breaks down: there is no guarantee that the Biblical Apocalypse will ever happen, while given infinite time, a lottery win would eventually occur. Many people seem to think that the End will come soon because next year happens to carry a label with three zeros in it. But the Millennium promised by the Bible is a period of 1,000 years. There is no indication that it should occur on the 2,000th anniversary of a date near to that of Christ's birth. And, for the record, the 2,000th anniversary has already happened. The exact date of the birth of Christ is unknown, but it was definitely not December 25th, 1AD. It was earlier than that. Estimates range from 2BC back to 7BC. Which puts the 2,000th anniversary between 1993 and 1998. And we're still here. What does science have to say about the end of the world? Well, assuming for the moment that we humans will not be the agents of destruction, the World will most likely end when the Sun does. As a star like the Sun ages, it expands into a Red Giant. Its outer layers cool till they are merely red hot, but the expansion brings this hot surface much closer to Earth. The temperature here will thus rise, killing off all life. Ultimately, the Earth will be enveloped by the Sun's tenuous outer layers, and the friction will drag the planet inwards to be absorbed. Mars will escape this fate, but will still become rather warm. Presently, the Sun's outer layers become so distant that gravity cannot hold them; heat and radiation can drive them away into space, leaving the slowly cooling core as a white dwarf. (A good description of the death of the Sun can be found in The Stars, by Heather Couper & Nigel Henbest, Channel 4 publishing 1990(?); based on the TV series of the same name.) And the Universe itself? Well, the ultimate end of the universe is not yet entirely clear. The question apparently hinges on the amount of mass in the Universe, and on its rate of expansion. If the mass is high and the expansion rate low, then gravity will ultimately stop the expansion, and collapse will follow. Everything would then ultimately collide into a singularity; the Big Bang in reverse. If, on the other hand, the mass is not high enough to halt the expansion, then the end will be a slower running down. This is the "Heat Death" scenario. Eventually stars will run out of fuel; they will die. Small stars like the Sun die quietly, bigger ones with violence. All throw material into space. This material sweeps interstellar gas and dust before it, gathering it together much as a brush collects domestic dust into piles. These concentrations are thought to become centres of star formation, but in the end there will simply not be enough interstellar material for this to happen. All stars will eventually die, leaving White Dwarfs, Neutron stars and Black Holes behind. What little interstellar matter remains will, in time, encounter these remnants, and will fall into them under gravity. According to theory, it is possible for neutron stars to spontaneously collapse further. White dwarfs can accrete mass, and explode as supernovae. All would be black holes, in time. Black holes are not truly "black" though. They emit energy, Hawking Radiation, and in doing so lose mass. They evaporate. And so the Universe ends as an inconceivably large, cold, empty space; no matter to be found, and the only energy its heat, so low as to be undetectable. Which of these two will be the fate of the Universe? It seems there is not enough mass for the Universe to stop expanding. Some recent measurements indicate that the expansion may actually be accelerating, meaning that Einstein's "greatest blunder" was not a mistake after all. But more work needs to be done before these results can be taken as being reliable. So it seems that "Heat Death" will indeed be the way the Universe ends. Useful websites:
The last of these is Saul Permutter's website. He is the leader of the team that produced these results. Footnotes: 1: This link is now dead, but the quoted sections are to be found here. (11/2003 update) |