Once upon a time, people believed the sun, planets, and stars orbited a stationary earth – an idea called, “geocentricism.” I'm sure it seemed intuitive to everyone then because we certainly can't feel the earth moving and the sun seems to move across the sky. In a real sense, geocentricism seemed to explain the “evidence” well. Some things, however, like the retrograde motion of planets, seemed to not fit the theory well.
Today, we understand that the Sun is the center of our solar system and the earth, as well as the other planets, orbit it. The apparent retrograde motion of other planets is caused by a difference in the relative speed of planets as they are observed from the earth. Deferents, epicycles, and equants never existed at all! These things were the symptoms of a flawed theory. They seemed to answer some questions about the theory but the real problems laid in the theory itself. So as long as the underlying theory persisted, more and more fanciful sub-theories had to be invented to keep the failed theory afloat. You might call it them “fudge factors.”
So where am I going with all this? Well, when it comes to secular theories of cosmology, I've seen a lot of same behavior among scientists. There are several crazy, er... I mean, “exotic”... explanations that have been invoked in order to hammer down stubborn difficulties with their theories. Actually, I'm only using the term “exotic” to be nice. These theories are so insanely ridiculous that I suspect that deep down even their most staunch proponents don't sincerely believe them. They merely cling to them because without them their entire worldview completely fails.
A UNIVERSE WITHOUT EDGES
Imagine for a moment a very large, flat meadow of grass with a crowd of people standing in it. You are somewhere in the crowd. Through just simple observation, it would not be hard to guess where you are in the crowd. If all the people are on one side of you and no one on the other, you would be on the very edge of the crowd. If there were more people on one side than the other, you would be toward the edge. If there were about the same number of people everywhere you looked, you would be closer to the center. It's not hard, right?
As we look around in the universe, we observe about the same number of stars no matter which direction we look. Just as in my crowd analogy, it would be very reasonable to conclude from this observation that we are somewhere near the center of the universe. Of course, the universe is very, very large and since we cannot see the edge of it in any direction, it makes it hard to be sure that we're in the center. It would be like being in the ocean with no land in sight; you would really have no idea if you're in the middle of the ocean or just outside sight of the shore. To really know we're in the center, we'd have to have more information.
In the mid-19th century, Dutch physicist, Christian Doppler noticed that sound waves changed frequency relative to the observer when the source was in motion. He dubbed this phenomenon, “the Doppler Effect” and believed it would apply to all waves including light and radiometric waves. In the beginning of the 20th century, we were able to observe this phenomenon in the light from distant stars. The light from the stars was “redshifted” indicating that the light wave was being stretched and that the star was moving away from us. As we began to survey more and more stars, we realized that the stars uniformly seemed to be moving away from us at a constant speed.
The implications of what was being observed was huge. Obviously it meant the universe was expanding but more than that, the general movement of the stars directly away from us further seemed to confirm our position near the center of the universe. In this enormous universe, the odds of us coincidentally being in the center are mind numbingly small. If God had intended us to be in the center of the universe, then the remote odds of it happening randomly don't matter. However, scientists, because of their bias toward natural explanations will not allow themselves to consider that we're here by design. So what is the solution?
Scientists have put forth a model of the universe where there really is no center – or rather everywhere is the center. Space is a flat surface that is being stretched like the surface of a balloon being blown up. All points on the surface would be moving away from each other yet there is no edge nor center to the universe. They say space is curved, similar to the surface of the earth and if you started in one direction and headed in a straight line, you would eventually end up where you began. No matter where you are in the universe, we would observe exactly the same things in every direction.
This “Balloon Model” of the universe seems to be the epitomy of an “exotic theory.” To me it seems way more far fetched than Ptolemey's equants and epicycles. The mad genius of it is that really is no way to test it. There's no way we could fly to edge of the universe to see if it's there. We can't stand back from the universe and see if it resembles the surface of a balloon. We can only picture the universe based upon we can observe from the earth and that supports the Bible.
THE OORT CLOUD
When I was young, I used to think that comets hurtling through space were similar to meteors entering earth's atmosphere; I pictured it as a fiery ball with a long tail of flames. I know now that comets are made of ice and the long tail we see is actually ice particles being blasted away from the body of the comet as it passes near the sun.
The fact that comets lose some of their mass each time they pass near the sun has a bearing on the age-of-the-earth debate. Obviously, if a comet becomes smaller with each orbit of the sun, eventually it must disappear all together. Also, each time a comet comes near the sun, it also risks collision with a planet or the sun itself which would end its life immediately. Simple reason, then, forces us to acknowledge that comets can only exist so long. Their long tails are a visual testimony of their short livedness. Eventually, they will either exhaust all of their matter or crash into a planet. If our solar system were really billions of years old, they should all be gone by now. End of story.
One very famous comet is Halley's comet which passes by our sun once every 75 years. It is consider a “short period,” one who's orbit takes less than 200 years. Since Halley's orbit is only 75 years, in just one million years it would have passed by the sun more than 13K times! No one believes that is possible and I'm not suggesting that's what secular scientists believe. Actually, secular scientists believe the maximum life span of Halley is about 40,000 years. If the universe is less than 10,000 years old, this isn't a problem at all. However, it doesn't comport well with the idea that the solar system is millions or billions of years old. If the solar system is really billions of years old, why are there still so many short period comets left? In order to rescue their theory, secular science must find a source that can replenish comets as they are exhausted. After all, since there still are comets, and we know that most of them can't have been circling the sun for billions of years, these comets had to come from somewhere more recently.
In the same article, we can read the following:
“Over the course of the Solar System's existence the orbits of comets are unstable, and eventually dynamics dictate that a comet must either collide with the Sun or a planet or be ejected from the Solar System by planetary perturbations. Moreover, their volatile composition means that as they repeatedly approach the Sun, radiation gradually boils the volatiles off until the comet splits or develops an insulating crust that prevents further outgassing. Thus, Oort reasoned, a comet could not have formed while in its current orbit and must have been held in an outer reservoir for almost all of its existence.”
You can read it for yourselves. The Oort cloud was hypothesized seemingly for no reason other than the need for a source of comets! It about as scientific as saying comets are made by unicorns. Most people agree that science is founded upon observations. Here, we are talking about a hypothetical source of comets that cannot be observed so their belief is the Oort cloud is no more scientific than my belief in God. The existence of the Oort cloud is simply necessitated by a belief in an old universe. It's akin to a faith belief except they see it as more plausible because it's a “natural” explanation rather than a supernatural one.
INFLATION COSMOLOGY
The Big Bang model of the universe is a theory brimming with difficulties – I mean difficulties beyond the obvious, “where did all the matter come from.” The problems I'm talking about are a little less obvious but still very substantial. Please note too that these aren't my objections to the theory. These are objections raised by secular scientists and discussed in this Wiki article.
The Horizon Problem: If we looked toward the eastern sky, we could see galaxies that are estimated to be 10 billion light years away. We could see the same thing in the western sky. So if one galaxy is 10 billion light years away in one direction and another is 10 billion light years in the other, then they would be 20 billion light years apart from each other. Now, secular scientists date the universe to be around 13.8 billion years old. Assuming that is true, the light from the “eastern” most region of space has not had enough time to reach the “western” region. Even though we can see both ends, they should not be able to see each other because their light could not have traveled the 20 billion light years of distance between them in only 13.8 billion years. Are you still with me? OK. Here is the problem: everywhere we look, the universe appears to be homogenous.
If I dropped an ice cube into hot water, the cube would melt and the water would cool a little. Eventually, it all becomes the same temperature. That's homogeneity and it always happens eventually once the two things begin to interact. It seems to have already happened in the cosmos. The cosmic background microwave radiation, for example is the nearly the same everywhere we look. But how could the entire universe have evened out so uniformly if all the regions have not had enough time to interact?
The Flatness Problem: Matter produces gravity. Objects in motion have kinetic energy. When the supposed Big Bang happened, matter began to expand. Once the expansion began, kinetic energy would have carried the matter forward while gravity would have been slowing the expansion. Let me see if I can explain it in lay terms.
If the rate of expansion were too slow, gravity would have quickly pulled everything back into a Big Crunch. If the expansion were too rapid, the matter would have accelerated too quickly for stars to form. From the very beginning there must have been a perfect balance, a “fine tuning,” between the expansion and the slowing or else the universe could not exist as it is now. The precise balance of 1 is represented by the value Ω (omega). The margin is so narrow as to be incredible.
These Horizon problem and Flatness problem just two problems with a Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. While either one alone could be fatal to the theory, scientists cling desparately to the belief there had to be a solution. Enter now Inflation Cosmology! It was suggested in the 1980s that in the very early seconds after the initial expansion, the universe when through short period of hyper-expansion where it figuratively exploded from about the size of a grape to trillions of miles across in just a fraction of a second. They say such an event would solve a few difficulties.
First, they suppose that the homogeneity we observe occurred prior to the hyper-expansion, while all of space was still close together. When inflation occurred, it carried the homogeneity out with it. Concerning the flatness problem, the inflation supposedly forced the value of Ω to that fine-tuned balance of 1. Some have compared it to a how a balloon smooths out as it inflates. I'm not sure how well the analogy describes the solution but most cosmologists seemed satisfied with it.
So what is the evidence for all of this? We'll, it's pretty much like the evidence for the Oort cloud – they simply need it for their theory to be viable. It's a sort of fudge factor to get around some of the serious difficulties they know exist with the Big Bang. Actually, the idea of inflation is even less credible than the Oort cloud. In the case of the Oort cloud, at least we know that icy bodies exist in the universe. We've never seen an event like the inflation epoch and there's nothing in physics that would otherwise suggest such an event could or should occur.
CONCLUSION
When we consider modern cosmology, the Big Bang doesn't sound unreasonable at first hearing. We can see the stars moving away from us. If the universe is continuously expanding, then we need only extrapolate backward to conclude that at some point in the distant past, all matter very close together. It's obvious. Yet no matter how reasonable it sounds, some things just don't add up – things like the flatness problem or the horizon problem. There's also the unsettling coincidence that we appear to be at the very center of the universe. Never mind there are still many other difficulties I don't have time to discuss.
To be certain, scientists have “explanations” for all these things. They invent exotic theories to explain their failed predictions. It's like epicycles all over again. However, unlike epicycles, we can't test these fanciful cosmologies as easily. Scientists say that there really is no center of the universe and it would look basically the same from any vantage point. Really? How do we test that? We can't even fly to the next star, let alone a star millions of light years away, to see how the universe looks from there. We only know what the universe looks like from our vantage point.
The Big Bang theory is simply a modern version of Ptolemy. It might seem reasonable at first but it is completely contrary to reality and can only be kept afloat by continuously invoking very unreasonable sub-theories. These sub-theories, though, lie outside scientific inquiry. They can't really be observed or tested. They aren't as much theories as they are stories. Secular scientists believe them not because the scientific evidence for them is overwhelming but because they refuse to consider the alternative.
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