Disarming the "big bang"

BANG! Make that a colossal, universe-wide BIG BANG!!! 

Voila! At that ancient instant, our Universe allegedly created itself!

The explosive idea of the creative power of spontaneous celestial fireworks took root in the phrase “hypothesis of the primeval atom,” coined in 1927 by Georges Lemaitre. The Belgian priest looked back in deep time to “a day without yesterday.”

© Romolo Travani

Atomic bomb explosions destroy life and matter. Its unproven conjecture that a “Big Bang” cosmic explosion creates something from nothing.

Successor Big Bangers speculate that somewhere in the deep time past, within the amorphous haze of a subatomic world of “quantum foam,” ² a cataclysmic explosion of a hot, dense, miniscule “dot,” no bigger than a period at the end of a sentence, activated a chain of events that supposedly evolved every star and planet in our universe. As the theory goes, hydrogen and helium were dividends of the initial bang.

Tied to an interpretation of quantum mechanics, the idea portrays a magic moment having occurred spontaneously 13.82 billion years before the present. Side-stepping any attempt to picture conditions prior to the conjectured explosion, the ancient date is viewed as a kick-off point for the formation of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which launched an inflation which allegedly created all matter composing our universe.

Stephen Hawking expressed reservations.

“The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications whenever you start to discuss the origins of the universe.” ³

The blinding paradox is just how a particle dot of quantum foam could have given mass to giant chunks of matter, self-creating billions of bright, burning fireballs, parading perpetually in space in some good-luck sequence of universal order, each pre-loaded with fuel powering indefinite existence.

The unproven philosophical idea cites quantum laws although seeming to rely on unproven suppositions. Did quantum laws predate the universe? If not, did the Big Bang create quantum laws?

Or the ultimate issue: “Did the Big Bang actually occur?”

Assumptive answers under the science banner borders on the theological. Without chemical evolution being proven as absolute fact, any theory of self-creating biological evolution lacks any scintilla of substance.

Thanks to the predictable routes traveled by billions of sparkling sky diamonds, mathematical calculations can plot the time and place of cosmic orbits with uncanny precision, whether dipping multi-millenniums into the past or far into an uncharted future. Humans navigate directions and calculate time by looking to the sky where stars carve repetitive paths through dark oceans of universal space.

The concept of an explosive force creating order out of nothingness is a head-scratcher for earthlings. Explosions witnessed on Planet Earth rip matter apart, strewing shredded fragments of rubble, helter-skelter in disorganized trash heaps. Surviving witnesses of the horrific bang that split the atom above Hiroshima in 1945 would testify the explosion didn’t improve the landscape of their city.

The atomic bomb’s devastation changed world history. So the inevitable question, “If the atom can be split by humans, can the sciences of physics and mathematics devise methodologies that could explain reversing the process so as to successfully create atoms from invisible particles?”

Speculation led to the current theory that our universe might have created itself from some hot, dense, subatomic-sized dot going “Bang,” by evolving gradually over vast chasms of deep time.

© Anatolii Vasilev

Something called “cosmic microwave background radiation” was discovered in 1964. But what could have triggered the Big Bang? Science has sought to identify a theoretical Higgs Boson (Higgs particle) that might possibly deliver the magical power that would give mass to other particles.

Without such a particle, the desired formula would be as inadequate as attempting to create water without oxygen (atomic number 8), as in H₂O.

News was made in 2012 when researchers announced discovery of a powerful particle believed by some to be the mysterious Higgs Boson, critical to the Big Bang equation. If real, such a particle’s brief existence has been estimated to last less than a septillionth of a second.

Still, skepticism exists.

Prior to the announced discovery of the elusive, short-lived particle, one observer commented: “…something is missing, we simply don’t quite know what that something might be.” ⁵

Whether or not real, theorists assigned the minuscule particle the task of giving mass to enough matter to eventually decorate our universe with today’s stars and planets.

This is a tall order given the unknown limits of the cosmic dimension. “The visible universe” is estimated by some to measure 160 billion light-years across—with no known boundaries and containing “about 70,000 million-million-million stars,” ⁶ red-hot balls of fire hanging like untethered, decorative ornaments in vacant emptiness.

The number 7 followed by 22 zeroes surpasses what an ordinary mortal could count correctly in a lifetime. In the brief whiff of time allocated to brilliant human brains, such mind-numbing numbers challenge comprehension. Even the brightest minds lack the capacity to grasp dimensions of time without a beginning or a seemingly endless expanse of openness without boundaries.

Breathtaking conjecture characterizes the cosmic sweepstakes.

“Something preceded the Big Bang, and that ‘something’ is unreachable to our science…We don’t know what caused the Big Bang…going back to the Big Bang is outside the reach of any civilization.” ⁷

Given the assumed pre-existence of space and a quantum foam containing the particle that allegedly fueled the conjectured explosive event, the theory makes no attempt to define the source of the exploding dot. Though the theory relies on extrapolating from science disciplines of physics and mathematics, it casts the beginning of all things as a cosmic accident.

But using the term “beginning” is an assumptive stretch!

“The immensely complex configuration of the forces, masses, ratios, charges, and all other numerical specifications of the universe had to have been determined to such a staggeringly precise level that to assume it happened ‘by chance’ or through the anthropic principle seems futile.” ⁸

The Milky Way Galaxy, decorated by an estimated 400 million stars, is calculated to stretch 93 million light-years in diameter. The Solar System occupies a niche 27,000 light-years distant from the Milky Ways’ Galactic Center. Within that minuscule blip of space, “a pale blue dot…a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”, ⁹ supposedly took shape 4.5 billion years ago. A tall order to suggest a gigantic explosion transformed minuscule particles into the Blue Planet, hanging in space, spinning on a tilted axis, carving a predictable path around the sun.

Earth’s place in space is micro-miniature compared to the Solar System’s sun. A thousand Planet Earths could fit readily inside the sun’s dimensions. Comparatively, the sun doesn’t hold a candle, size-wise, to the enormous Arcturus which takes a back seat when measured by the gigantic Antares.

Suspended in space, without cables or foundations, our “Pale Blue Dot” moves in three directions simultaneously—spinning clockwise on its axis, to the east; orbiting the sun; and floating in sync with the other components of the Solar System. Factor in earth’s wobble of 1 degree every 72 years ¹⁰ and the exactitude stuns thought. Thanks to the influence of a proportionally sized moon, earth’s tilt on its axis prevents climate extremes that would prove devastating to life.

Incomprehensible power hangs the sun, moon, and stars in perpetually moving, cosmic trails. There is nothing random or chaotic about sister planets spinning within their own, uniquely-designed orbits. Theorists can’t duplicate this cosmic balancing act in state-of-the-art science labs.

Keeping free-floating spheres in perpetual motion, floating in precise, repetitious orbits, without strings, defies present scientific know-how. That’s only the beginning of flabbergasting cosmic realities.

The Solar System conducts a symphony of mathematical balance with every planet moving in its own orbit, at its own speed with varied axis tilt angles. Suspended in space, without cables or foundations, planets carve cosmic paths ranging from the round to the elliptical. Venus, Uranus, and Pluto do their own thing, rotating clockwise, to the west. Venus pokes along, rotating only once every 243 earth-days. A Venus solar day runs 116.75 earth days. An earth day consists of 24 hours, with 365.256 days to a year.

The Big Bang offers a contemporary postulation of theoretical chemical evolution—a miraculous beginning without planned design or designer. Though cloaked in the jargon of high science, the scientific community is aware the “Big Bang Theory” bends the laws of physics. Stripped of colorful graphs and fancy phraseology, the idea suggests cosmic matter created itself from a tiny dot that self-ignited, exploded, and evolved over deep time so that everything created itself from nothing (actually from within a black space pre-loaded with energy)—a faith-based, scientific miracle.

For the cosmos to have created itself, the basic laws of physics, as now understood, would have to be suspended, modified, or abandoned.

“When you squeeze the entire universe into an infinitesimally small, but stupendously dense package, at a certain point, our laws of physics simply break down. They just don’t make sense anymore.” ¹¹

Astrophysicist Peter Coles from England’s University of Nottingham throws cold water on the entire hypothesis.

“There is little direct evidence that inflation actually took place…It is a beautiful idea that fits snugly with standard cosmology…but that doesn’t necessarily make it true…We don’t know for sure if inflation happened…In a way, we are still as confused as ever about how the universe began.” ¹²

This Large Hadron Collider, center for the “Higgs boson” particle analysis, is the largest single scientific machine ever built. It occupies a tunnel 17 miles in circumference straddling the Swiss/French border.

Scientific research explores and deciphers laws of nature by observation and experiment. The law of gravity exemplifies the certitude of science. It’s an absolute scientific fact that temperature variations alter the state of water. Bending laws of science to validate interpretations of unknown, imagined events risks blurring the line between science and faith.

Objective depiction of events benefits from eyewitness accounts. The laws of science can help clarify knowledge of known, historic events but are woefully inadequate in attempting to synthesize an imagined or a never-was happening. Extrapolating clues from proven laws of science are subjective, with authenticity confined to the limits of the theorist’s knowledge, biases, and assumptions.

Attempts by science disciplines to construct pre-history by theoretical extrapolation runs the real risk of misinterpreting actual occurrences or even dreaming up the never-was.

No living human observed the origin of matter.

The proposed Big Bang event and its conjectured mechanism is the invention of finite minds. Theory proponents were not eyewitnesses and have no idea as to either the composition or the origin of the pre-existing “quantum foam.” Given the limits of assumptive extrapolations, envisioning a possible event mega-millions of light-years distant becomes an insurmountable challenge to state-of-the-art science.

The Big Bang Theory leaves unanswered questions hanging!

• When did light first penetrate black space?
• What came first, the universe or the natural laws governing it?
• Where did the natural laws of science come from?
• Would “nothing” be possible if space, matter, and energy didn’t exist? What, if anything, would there be in order for nothing to exist—no space, no light, no energy no matter?
• Did “something” exist before the Big Bang?
• How can “something” explode from “nothing?”
• What caused “nothing” to explode into “everything?”
• If “nothing” was all that existed, what could go “bang?”
• Could there be absolutely “nothing”—no energy, no matter, no light, not even empty space, in a universe without boundaries?
• Do the recognized laws of physics support the notion that every piece of matter, floating in a multi-billion light year observable universe, could have been compacted in a dot no bigger than the period closing a sentence?
• What particle, energy, or mass composed the dot of quantum foam? If energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, then when, where, and how did the energy, particles, or mass compressed within that minuscule dot of quantum foam originate before inflation from the Big Bang?
• Can an explosion ignite spontaneously? Since the observed force of a nuclear explosion destroys matter, how can a cosmic explosion set in motion a process that self-creates structured matter?
• Does space have boundaries? What would be on the other side of a space boundary—anything? Can infinite space inflate or expand indefinitely?
  
  

When scrutinized scientifically, is the Big Bang theory anything more than a puff of methane waiting around for someone to light a match?

Verifiable scientific answers ride waves of silence.

“What we see around us is nothing less than a series of extremely unlikely events that could well be explained as a ‘miracle’—the miracle of the universe, the world, life, intelligence, and human beings contemplating the riddle of creation.” ¹³

Until science delivers something beyond abstract ideology, it’s unreasoned presumption to rule out arbitrarily the possible role of an Intelligent Power orchestrating cosmic events. More than that, it’s less than scientific to rule out all possibilities in a quest for authentic answers!

Human genius has proven legendary in harnessing and exploiting natural laws in order to destroy life, matter, and order. Accessibility to a composite of the most sophisticated equations of physics, mathematics, and cosmology, is a gift that can be tragically abused.

Despite breathtaking discoveries, viable formulas for the self-creation of matter has yet to be authenticated. When objectivity is abandoned, science usurps the uneasy, unwarranted crown of universal wisdom. It’s comparable to a futile attempt to create a plausible map of Planet Earth while confining the mapmaker to a dark basement within the city limits of New York.

“…Some truths about infinity can never be known to us. The infinite is so profoundly complicated that, hard as we may try, there are things about it that will always remain beyond our reach. This statement is not a guess or a hypothesis—it was mathematically proved and is accepted as true by all mathematicians.” ¹⁴

Time without beginning and space without end exist in a dimension above and beyond mankind’s intellectual vocabulary. Any theory cloaked in scientific credentials that attempts to explain the beginning of the universe while ignoring any possible role of Supreme Intelligence suffers from self-inflicted, intellectual astigmatism.

Infinity defies comprehension.

The Big Bang Theory is an arbitrary invention of finite minds incapable of defining the edge of space or the beginning of time. The central core of the idea is raw and cold, built on faith in an unseen, undocumented, pre-historic event—an unproven theoretical coincidence of nature.

Energy and matter were not self-created by means of an explosion in a dot of quantum foam. Nor did organic life subsequently create itself from non-living matter by means of some mathematically impossible accident.

Robert Jastrow, (1925-2008), astronomer, physicist, and cosmologist, as well as the founder of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, addressed the dilemma.

“At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”