Is it possible to test empirically the cosmological model of the Creation, described in the Bible

 (Abridged version)

full version: http://kosmos-21.blogspot.com/2014_01_01_archive.html
                                                                                       

The most essential flaw of the Christian view on the Creation still remains the circumstance that it is based primarily on the criticism of the evolutionary doctrine and does not evolve its own theory to be subject to verification. In this article we will make an attempt to present for the FIRST TIME a Biblical model, which allows drawing its consequences theoretically with the assistance of physics and mathematics, as well as verifying them by observation, experiments, computer simulation, etc.

 The empirical data used for testing the cosmological models are related to the time from the moment of the Big Bang to about 380 000 years later, i.e. until the cosmic microwave background appeared. Here, however, we will try to include also the time period of 200 – 500 million years, when the first stars and protogalaxies were born, up to the formation of the mature galaxies - approximately 3, 3 billion years after the start of the Universe.

І Dialectical materialism

If we accept the naturalistic standpoint, it says that the celestial bodies and systems should have formed through chaotic collisions, arranged accidentally.

 In other words, within the period 200-500 million up to 3, 3 billion years one should expect the generation of powerful gravitation waves, because there would be extremely frequent collisions between the bodies in the systems and collisions in the protogalaxies, resulting in their expansion, as well the formation of large scale structures (clusters, gigantic clouds of galaxies, etc.) of the Universe. It is another issue whether the extremely beautiful and complicated hierarchical arrangement of the celestial formations - planetary, stellar, galactic, etc., could be achieved accidentally, as well as their enormous stability in time (calculations are made, for example, that the Milky way will remain stable for 10¹⁶, i.e. ten million billion years).

ІІ Christian theism

The narration at the beginning of the Genesis reveals that God created the matter out of nothing and developed His grand design when building the Universe. We should be aware that creating such a dynamic structure is an incredibly complicated task, because in any one moment it is arranged differently and what is more, it always keeps its equilibrium. (Of course, God does not need to make calculations - He possesses the complete knowledge, great wisdom and omnipotence, therefore calls perfect Universe into being without any intellectual and creative effort!)

But as observations show, the order in these systems is destroyed - stars explode, galaxies collide, etc. The identified changes result in drastic alterations of the interrelations between the members within the systems, and finally they would lead to their extinction. These implications conform astonishingly well to the Biblical standpoint on that issue. It is written there that at the beginning "The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved" (Ps. 95:10), but as a consequence of man's sin, the whole creation was subjected to the "bondage to decay", i.e. destruction (Romans 8: 20, 21).

 As is obvious, according to materialism the direction of the processes in nature should be from chaos towards order, whereas theism outlines precisely the opposite trend - from order towards chaos (which fully complies with the second principle of thermodynamics - the law of increasing entropy).

In the 1970s, while considering the initial conditions for the origin of the world, B. Collins and S. Hawking, by a dew mathematical analysis show that "... a Universe that is not absolutely regular is unstable. In other words, a Universe that was chaotic at its origin, would have become even more chaotic later on".[1] The result is the "domino effect" - in the course of time the chaos is multiplied, i.e. the disorder and disorganization increase, until the order in the whole system is utterly destroyed.

By applying the relevant mathematical methods and provision, and also suitable computer simulation, we could verify whether this principle remains the same also for the more complex structures of the Universe - planetary, stellar, galactic, etc.

If we make a probability curve of the distribution of the stability of the celestial systems (originating on an accidental principle) in time, we could report whether it is valid with the enormous number of observed galaxies - over 175 billion, which allows us to perfectly test the statistical forecasts. For instance, it is reasonable to expect that a certain percentage of the galaxies will not succeed to achieve stable dynamic equilibrium, and thus we should notice a great number, which are in a moment of collapse. It is another issue whether the galaxies will be able to increase their dimensions as a result of consecutive collisions and to rearrange themselves in new long living configurations, etc.

(Already at this time we can say, however, that the whole Cosmos is an incredibly well balanced and ordered - colliding stars and galaxies are quite insignificant in number - which suggest to us that it is hardly accidentally organized!)

Fig. 1. Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) are photographs of the Universe, covering areas of the ultra deep cosmos, made by the cosmic telescope Hubble with an exposure for over a million of seconds.

The picture called Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (Fig. 1) shows us more than ten thousand galaxies of about 13 billion ly, which is confirmed also by their spectral lines, obtained with the assistance of earth telescopes. Indeed, quite a lot of them are small, with odd and weird shapes; we can see also mysterious quasars, but quite a big number resemble entirely the contemporary galaxies.[2]

If we accept that we have witnessed the origin of one of the first protogralaxies (forming only 700 million years after the Big Bang), collisions between the stars inside the protogalaxies and between the protogalaxies themselves should be quite a normal phenomenon. (According to the theory mature galaxies formed 2, 6 billion years later - see table 1). We have to set ourselves thinking why the observed picture is so much at odds with our expectations?! I.e. why we perceive nowhere the process of the formation of the galaxies, and everywhere they appear to us in a totally completed form? This makes us ask ourselves whether scientists, with the aid of the next generation of telescopes will not discover that all the galaxies have been ordered at the very beginning of the Universe?! The "deafening silence" of the available gravitation waves detectors bespeaks of the same!

ІІІ Biblical cosmologic model.

According to the Christian theology God created the worlds ex nihilo, i.e. out of nothing. Almost all the interpreters of the Bible consider that by "heavens" in the first verse of the Genesis one should understand the invisible world where God's throne is to be found surrounded by the angels, cherubs, seraphim, etc. This transcendental world is described in more detail in the books by Isaiah, Ezekiel, Revelation and others, but we are not going to dwell on that. As regards the word "earth", the views are split mainly into two categories:

A) Some assume that apart from the Earth, it denotes all the matter in the cosmos, for example gas and dust clouds. In that case, by an order of God later on the celestial bodies should have formed and must have started going round their orbits, forming planetary, stellar and galactic systems.

B) Others find that the word "earth" relates only to our Planet, and the Sun, Moon and the stars appeared on the fourth day, consequently, the Universe came into being all of a sudden completely ordered.

Empirical consequences:

1.) With the Biblical model we could use the "Big Bang" to denote the instantaneous creation of the spatial and temporal material continuum ex nihilo, but in contrast to the standard scenario here it does not start from one point.

The mathematical attempt опит to combine the General theory of relativity and the quantum mechanic convincingly showed that there is no way for the Universe to have started from a point with a zero value and infinite density, which poses the question what was its original volume?

As of 2020 NASA and the ESA plan to launch into orbit the most perfect gravitational waves detector - LISA (Laser Interferometry Space Antenna). As some scientists phrase it: "it will be able to take God's fingerprints left on the cosmos tissue as early as the first moments of the Creation, so that we could understand how exactly the Universe originated".

2.) The Biblical model foresees that the formation of the stars happened only once, at the daybreak of time. In that case we should observe their nascency only in the earliest galaxies (or find out that in the initial moment the Universe appeared completely ordered).

In 2013, with the joint efforts of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency the James Webb space telescope will be positioned in heliocentric orbit; its mission will be to search for light from the first stars and galaxies that have formed.

However, according to the classical theory, the luminaries did not appear at one and the same time, but they form incessantly. If that is so, the number of the stars to be found in a certain phase of their development will be proportionate to the time which they spent in that phase. The protostar phase is about one hundred times shorter than the time in which stars stay on the Main sequence. This indicates that the protostars observed must be about 100 times less in number than the normal stars. In the Milky way and the other above thirty galaxies from the Local group one could see very well not only the nuclei and the structural peculiarities, but also the individual stars, clusters, nebulas, etc. The total number of stars therein is determined between 2000 and 3000 billion, thus, they provide a very good basis to make statistical conclusions on how different phases from their development run. Simple calculations show that within the Local group we should find at least several dozens of billions of protostars. How the advocates of the classical concept of the stars evolution would explain their shortage?

       

 Fir.2 According to the latest data, the Big Bang must have happened 13,7 billion years ago. With the space telescope Hubble today we reach almost to the Universe "boundary".

And why still no one could affirm with certainty that he has seen the intermediate phases from the stars "incubation", even when the whole part of the Universe that could be observed is examined? The bigger the distance to the galaxies, the more the processes that we perceive taking place there must have happened in epochs further back. If we assume that the most distanced observed objects are at about 13 billion ly, this would mean that in a certain sense we could trace all the epochs of the development of the Metagalaxy for that period of time (Fig. 2).[3] Thus, we could witness the nascency of the stars, if it had happened somewhere in the distant past even. But where is that enormous number of protostars in the heaven?!

Already in the middle of 2009 the Herschel telescope studied the cosmos in the infrared and the submillimeter range, which allows it to see through the dust disturbing Hubble. In that way it can glimpse into the gas and dust clouds, from which it is supposed that the stars originated, and to examine the "conditions in the womb". Today, when its mission is coming to an end, after more than three years almost continuous work, it did not manage to take even a single picture in the whole Metagalaxy, on which protostars are observed with evidence?! Needless to comment!

3.) Let us make another allowance, namely, that it is possible that the cosmic microwave background is a residue of that "light" which has illuminated the heavenly space in the first day of the Creation. If that is really so, we could specify which of the two Biblical scenarios is more probable to have realized in practice.

According to the first option, the Earth and the gas and dust clouds appeared prior to the CMB, and with the second one - the whole matter in the form of ready stellar systems comes after it. Also, with a gradual construction of the bodies and formation of the cosmic structures, the nature of the gravitational waves and fluctuations (and maybe also the polarization) in the CMB should differ from the ones in case the Universe sprang up in a moment.

(However, we should not forget that "God moves in mysterious was", i.e. it is possible that God has implemented His design in a way which we could not think of or predict at all.)

Conclusion:

After the failure of hundreds (and now even thousands) of hypotheses on the formation of the Solar system, the stars and the galaxies, it is reasonable to think that the dialectic-materialistic approach is unacceptable as an explanation for the origin of the Universe! Today, the Christian church faces the challenge, with the help of a team of experts - cosmologists, astronomers, physicists, mathematicians, theologians, etc. - to develop a detailed model of the Creation, which would allow an empirical verification of its authenticity. From now on two crucial satellite programs are to be implemented – LISA иand James Webb, - which to a great extent will assist us to understand whether the balances are tipped to naturalism or to theism.

We definitely believe that science is the best ally of Christianity, as it offers the most objective model for studying the structure and for establishing the origin of the universe. Our expectation is that, after all, scientific disclosures will affirm the truth about the creation of the world by an intelligent God-Creator.

NOTES:

[1] See the book by the Italian astronomer Paolo Maffei "Universe in time", DI "Nauka i izkustvo", Sofia, 1989, p. 321.

[2] When this picture is being commented, the focus is usually placed on the fact that the size of a great part of the galaxies presented thereon is hardly about 1% of the size of the Milky Way, and other are so blue that they must be extremely poor in heavy elements. Some cosmologists believe that such objects are a key момент for the disclosure of the mystery regarding the first evolutionary steps in the formation of the Universe. Rychard Bouwens, University of California, states: "Deep observations provide new evidence of the hierarchical model of the gradual formation of the galaxies, in which small objects build up mass, or merge to form bigger objects, over a smooth and systematic, but dramatic process of collisions and aglomeration."

(http://www.vesti.bg/?tid=40&oid=2682971)

          Similar argument, however, is not convincing enough, especially after three scientists from the Universities of Yale, Prinston in the USA and Leiden in the Netherlands, observed a galaxy, named 1255-0, at a distance of 10,7 billion ly, which is 4 times as massive as the Milky Way, but whose size is 6 times less. This discovery shows that as early as the beginning of the time there existed enormous galaxies, which did not need to increase their size, devouring like cannibals their self likes. The astrophysicist Carl Glasbruk predicted that hundreds of galaxies reminding of 1255-0, will be discovered during the coming years, and commented: "This is as if to establish that ancient Rome had the same number of inhabitants as today's London, including the suburbs".
         (http://science.actualno.com/news_255378.html)

Let us add that the number of the supernovas is absolutely insignificant to state that it was their bangs exactly that later on interspersed the elements after the iron in the Universe. That is why the quoted comments obviously say nothing of the fact that one part of the primary galaxes are not poor in heavy chemical elements at all, i.e. the focus is put only on the data which conform to the theory (something that is quite common as a practice).

[3] Here we do not say that we could trace the individual life of the galaxies (or the stars therein), only that they are all seen in some past moment from their existence. For example, if a galaxy is located at a distance of 250 million ly, we will perceive it as it was 250 million years ago, because this is the time required for its light to reach us. In other words, objects that are located at different distances are seen in different periods in the past. In that sense we say that we could witness (almost) all the epochs from the development of the Metagalaxy. And, if the number of the stars in it is about 10²², in that case the number of the protostars should be about 10²⁰, i.e. one hundred billion billions - a number which is too significant to leave them unnoticed?!