Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
Dark matter, dark energy, and many other scientific problems with the big bang theory are discussed beginning on page 33.
Accelerating Expansion. The redshift of distant starlight shows an expansion. Just as a ball thrown upward must slow (decelerate) as it moves away from the Earth, a big bang would have produced only a decelerating expansion, after the 10-32 second inflationary burst ended and the universe was the size of a basketball. But, in 1998 it was discovered that distant galaxies were accelerating away from us. Saying, without any experimental evidence or physical details, that “dark energy” produced this acceleration is simply a reflection of ignorance. [See “Dark Thoughts” on page 34.]
Stretching, completed during the creation week (not in 10-32 of a second after time began), ended with a universe nearly the size of our present universe—not a universe the size of a basketball. We should not be surprised that we can detect distant accelerations produced during that stretching.
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is often given as evidence for the big bang theory. Actually, the absence of gravitational waves in the CMB, argues against the big bang and is evidence for the sudden creation of matter within a much smaller universe that was stretched out on Day 4. [For details, Figure 223 and pages 467–469.]
The Universe’s Expansion Energy
This standard derivation of Friedmann’s equation—Equation (4)—is not controversial, but when comparing the big bang and stretching explanations, its implications are surprising and insightful. Assume that the early universe had a uniform density, r. Therefore, every sphere of radius R contained a mass M.
According to Hubble’s law, an observer anywhere in the universe would see all distant galaxies moving away from him at a rate proportional to each galaxy’s distance, R. The faster the galaxy is receding, the more its light is redshifted.
where R-dot (
) is shorthand for the galaxy’s recessional velocity (the derivative of R with respect to time, t), and H is the Hubble constant. Notice that Hubble’s law is a consequence of stretching.1 In other words, Edwin Hubble (or you or I) could have come up with Hubble’s law by only knowing that the universe was stretched out. Solving Equation (2) gives
Because H is positive, Equation (3) says that for a brief time interval, Dt, the universe expanded exponentially from an initial radius R0. During this accelerated expansion, space and all light was stretched out (redshifted).
Both the big bang and stretching explanations agree with the above. However, big bang proponents extrapolate the observed expansion all the way back to a time when all matter and space would have been concentrated at an infinitesimal point. This is how they arrived at their age of the universe.63 They also do that so every particle in the universe interacts with every other particle, thereby solving the horizon problem, explained in Figure 225 on page 453.
In contrast, the stretching explanation says that the initial universe was compact, with a radius, R0, of several light-days. That was large enough to hold all the mass now in the universe, but small enough for light from millions of sources to travel back and forth several times throughout the universe. That solves the horizon problem and explains why the cosmic microwave background radiation contains black-body radiation. [See page 467.] Then for a brief time period, Dt, on Day 4, the heavens were stretched out. Was R0 infinitessimal or finite (several light-days)?
If R0 had been essentially infinitessimal, as with the big bang explanation, the temperatures and energy required for the expansion would have to be infinitely greater than those for the stretching explanation—and therefore, completely unreasonable! That alone falsifies the big bang explanation.
Since the expansion ended, the sum of the kinetic and potential energies of each particle in the smoothly expanding universe has remained remarkably close to zero.64
where G is the gravitational constant, m is the mass of a particle on a sphere (whose radius is R and mass is M) at the center of mass of the universe. Therefore,
Yes, this implies that the universe has a center, is finite, and has a boundary. Substituting Equations (1) and (2) in the above gives Friedmann’s equation, namely
H and G are constants, so r is a constant. In Friedmann’s equation, r is called the energy density, because mass and energy are interchangeable according to Einstein’s famous equation E = Mc2.
Equation (4) exposes a huge problem for the big bang, namely, the flatness problem, explained on page 455. Also, since r was constant during the accelerated expansion, the energy within every expanding sphere (centered at the center of the universe) increased as R3. Equations (1)–(4) apply to both the big bang explanation and the stretching explanation.
But where did that energy come from? Here is where the big bang and stretching explanations clash. According to the big bang, the energy came from inflation, but inflation is simply a made-up term to account for the expansion.2 Inflation is not scientifically demonstratable. As famed cosmologist, Steinhardt, admitted:
The inflationary paradigm is fundamentally untestable, and hence scientifically meaningless.66
Furthermore, having energy increase within the universe violates the law of conservation of energy, but having energy come from outside the universe does not. This also falsifies the big bang explanation.
Nor is the stretching explanation scientifically demonstratable. However, thousands of years before Hubble’s law was discovered, five different books of the Bible asserted that God “stretched out the universe.” Just because neither process is repeatable or was observed by humans, doesn’t mean that one of them isn’t correct. The test must be, “Which explanation does today’s observable evidence support?” As you have seen, 33 separate evidences, listed in Table 27 on page 457, contradict the big bang explanation, but support the stretching explanation.