Blog

by Steve Risner

In this blog post we’ll wrap up what we began talking about here and here — how time is a major issue for the cosmology (the belief on how the universe came about and why it appears to us as it does at present) surrounding the Big Bang theory. This leads to chemical evolution (how elements formed) and stellar evolution (how stars formed and allegedly changed over time). This eventually leads to planets and nebulae and large amounts of cosmic debris. We’re going to explore a central part of Big Bang cosmology today on top of this: magic.

The universe is a lot of empty space, but it also has a great deal of stuff in it—over 100 billion galaxies that we’ve spotted with each having billions of stars. There are huge gas clouds called nebulae that can encompass millions of light years in space. They’re truly huge, although their density is less than any vacuum we can create here on earth. But, from earth, as far as we can see in this universe that is thought to be 93 billion light years across, we see things occupying space. There’s a great deal of empty space between objects, but there has had to be time for stars to form and die and spew out their contents and reform trillions of times and fill this universe that is about 6 x10ˆ23 miles across (a 6 with 23 zeros following it).

Last time, we looked at some difficulties with star formation. To be fair, those who believe in the Big Bang have made up some nice solutions to some of their major issues. Explanations like the inflationary period (which we can never verify happened, but it solves some issues) and dark matter and energy (which we can never verify exist but, again, they solve some major issues). But star formation, especially the first stars, is a challenge for physics. As with many other things, they’ll contend that the physics allows for star formation, but it really doesn’t. We need to allow for some very large assumptions and just give some passes in order to believe it. However, since it is vital to the Big Bang (there cannot be anything without star formation) they will fight tooth and nail over it. It’s interesting what lengths they’ll go to in order to hang on to their origins myth.

Why don’t we see any Population III stars—stars only consisting of hydrogen and helium? Maybe because they never existed. That doesn’t fly, so they have made up a number of reasons why we might not see them. One is they might have been too big. Bigger stars burn out faster; smaller stars exist longer. Now, as of the early 2000’s, nearly 3 out of 4 stars were 0.8 solar masses on the average. This means they are very small. If Pop III stars were this size, there would likely be some still out there. There are none. So, the solution is to claim that all of them were much, much larger than this so they’d burn out quickly. Convenient, right? Another is that they were Pop III stars at first, but over time they turned into Pop II stars. Also convenient, right?

As far as lacking evidence, there is no evidence at all that any primordial gas clouds that could birth these first stars existed. None. No evidence exists showing us that Pop III stars currently do or ever did exist. There is none. There is no evidence that dark matter and dark energy exist, but they claim these mysterious entities account for 95% of the substance of the universe. Not having evidence never stops the person who rejects the Bible from having second thoughts. These things are foundational to their beliefs, and yet there is no evidence of any kind that any of it is real.

Why do I bring up dark matter again? It’s directly connected to the story telling we hear about star formation. According to Dr. John Hartnett, a well-published research scientist (retired now), “‘Dark matter’ is an essential ingredient to form stars naturally given only standard known physics. ‘Dark matter’ is a hypothetical exotic form of matter, unknown to laboratory physics, which does not interact with or emit light in any way, hence it is invisible to all forms of detection within the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio-waves to gamma radiation. ‘Dark matter’ itself, therefore, is outside of standard known physics. It is made-up stuff that has been given one special property, which is that it gravitates, that is, unlike normal matter, it is a source of gravity only.”

“Magic” is what we can call this, really. Something with no explanation that happens outside of all known physical laws would be magic. This is not an appropriate way to describe Creation and things related to the supernatural when God is the source of such actions. He would be an explanation, so God’s works lie outside the realms of magic. Atheists have a monopoly on magic since much of what they believe hinges on processes and occurrences that are far beyond what nature and materialism can produce, and their worldview rejects anything related to God doing the supernatural.

In a 2014 New Scientist article, reporter Marcus Chown spoke with Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom and asked him, “Why is now a good time to take an alternative to dark matter seriously?”

To which Dr. Milgrom replied:
“A host of experiments searching for dark matter, including the Large Hadron Collider, many underground experiments and several space missions, have failed to see anything convincing. This comes on top of increasing realization that the leading dark matter model has its failings. Among other things, it predicts that we should see many more dwarf galaxies orbiting our Milky Way than we actually do.”

He seems to drive home rather well the idea that dark matter is an excuse for us to be ignorant. Often times, I’ve been told or have read that creationism, especially Biblical creation or what has been called “Young Earth creationism” can lead us to not being inquisitive enough or stunting the growth of scientific research. Dark matter seems to be the height of this as it screams to us of ignorance, yet many will hang their hats on it and proclaim we actually understand how the universe works. Obviously, we don’t understand if we need to employ matter and energy that have no evidence for their existence that acts like magic on the universe so our calculations work. This accounts for 95% of the universe and we can’t find it anywhere! The irony is hopefully very clear and shocking.

You see, dark matter is critical to star and even galaxy formation but there’s no reason at all to believe it exists. In this creation article, you can read how Professor Carlos Frenk points out that dark matter is essential to making the universe look like it does in computer simulations. Without dark matter, there is no way to understand much about the universe as we see it. Stars cannot form, period. Galaxies cannot form, period. What Professor Frenk is saying is that there are no known ways for nature to produce stars or galaxies without invoking a material we have no way of detecting. If this isn’t invoking magic, I’m not sure what is.

Dr. Hartnett goes on in the above cited creation.com article to say, “Nowadays, dark matter is added as an essential ingredient to all simulations on star formation because once any hypothesized cloud of hydrogen gas condenses to a certain size it comes into hydrodynamic equilibrium. This means the outward force on the cloud, caused by the accumulated pressure due to heating of the compressed cloud, equals the inward force on the cloud due to the mutual gravitational attraction of all matter in the cloud. At this point no further contraction can occur, unless something else is introduced to overcome this limitation.”

That’s a lot of jargon but to paraphrase, he’s saying that as gas molecules accumulate due to their gravitational attraction, they begin to compress and heat up. As they heat up, they want to expand. This gets to a point where no more contraction can occur, and this huge ball of gas will never become a star. It just sits in equilibrium, in balance. This is physics. The laws of physics make star formation an impossibility, at least as we know them currently.

This is explained by those who adhere to the belief in the Big Bang by claiming that a nearby supernova could compress the gas further, overcoming the equilibrium of outward and inward pressures. That seems fine, but there are a few issues here. 1) We have no idea if it actually will do this. 2) Since there are billions of trillions of stars in the known universe, this process had to happen perfectly an astounding number of times. 3) This has no explanatory power for the first stars since a supernova is an exploding star. You cannot have stars go through a life cycle and explode before the first stars existed.

The storytelling is amazing and, frankly, a little insulting. We are told with confidence how the universe began and how stars originally formed and then how younger stars formed as well as planets and other debris we find in space. But the truth is, this is nothing more than telling stories without much factual basis at all.

I trust in the Word of God. It has explanatory power, and it’s sent to us from the One who created the heavens and the earth—who breathed the stars. I put my trust in Him to accurately and articulately explain what He did and, since He seems to have left us easy-to-follow clues as to when He did this, I accept that as well. Trust in the Lord and always view the world through the lens of the Bible. You won’t be disappointed. We can join with the Levites who sang the praises of our God as they returned from exile and had rebuilt Jerusalem when they said, “You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.”

The heavens truly declare His glory and greatness!

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