Dr. John Ankerberg: Let’s go back to the Big Bang because lots of people are interested and I know you’ve got more to tell us in this area. Isn’t it true that the Big Bang Theory does not posit an absolute beginning of the cosmos, a coming into existence out of nothing, but only an initial event in the development of the cosmos as we know it, an event that occurred some 15 to 20 billion years ago? It seems to me, and I may be dead wrong, that with Einstein’s special and general relativity, when it was checked out by certain scientists that they posited that it did show that gravity, space, time, and matter all went back to a point. Okay, and then other theories started to develop. Now, what I want to know is can we truthfully say, on either side, can we go back past a certain time or does the scientific evidence show that we do have a full stop, or don’t we know?

DeYoung: Yes. I think, Duane, you’re referring to the background radiation, which is one of the evidences in favor of the Big Bang explosion. A couple of decades ago, when this background radiation was discovered, a low temperature that all of space has, and this temperature that’s measured is said to be the last dying ember of the Big Bang explosion. Well, our satellites, especially the cosmic explorer satellite, even in the beginning 1990’s, has been making some measurements on this background radiation and has found it to be a very smooth, very homogenous. It’s the same everywhere in the universe.

That’s a problem for our current Big Bang understanding. Because when we look at the universe, we see a rather lumpy structure, clusters of galaxies. It’s not uniformly spread out. And so you have background radiation which very smooth, and you have a physical universe that is not smooth. And so we are beginning to wonder now about this background radiation and instead of supporting the Big Bank theory, it conflicts with it.

Gish: Yes, it’s supposed to be one of the greatest proofs of the Big Bang. It’s turning out, it looks like to me, to be the death knell, because the real universe does not conform to the theoretical universe or to the background radiation.

DeYoung: That’s true. The background radiation and the other traditional evidence in favor of the Big Bang is the Red Shift, the change in starlight from faraway galaxies. It appears that they are going away from us so their light is stretched out and Doppler-shifted or red-shifted. And then if you extrapolate that back in time, then years ago the universe was smaller and smaller and they begin again with this kernel. And there are questions that are arising about the Red Shift. I do believe that the universe is expanding, but there are also some other possible sources of this red-shift, and it’s not quite the closed-case evidence for a big bang that there once was.

I really think that the Big Bang Theory is temporary. In fact, if you look at the history of astronomy, back in the ’60s there was a lot of talk about the steady state theory. The universe had been around here forever—always was and always will be. In the ’70s and ’80s, the Big Bang has been very popular, but now we’re starting to see it weaken as these holes develop. During the 1990s, it could well be that a new idea will come across called the plasma theory, that’s a new one that’ll replace the Big Bang. This ever-changing status of theories I think is another reason why creation has become a little bit doubtful and skeptical of the latest views of astronomy, because the theories are forever changing. And of course, as creationists we have to be very careful about hooking our theology and Scripture to the latest views of astrophysics because those views, those theories, keep changing.

Ankerberg: Does thermodynamics, in terms of the entire universe, can it really come into influencing our view of the beginning of the universe? There are some scientists that apparently are saying that they can work around the laws of thermodynamics and we can still have the universe as we see it and it’s not going to run down and just be an icebox someday. What do you think?

DeYoung: Thermodynamics. I already referred to the first law, which is that energy is constant or conserved. Then you have the second law of thermo, which says energy sources are spreading out, that the universe seems to be decaying. I really do think that these laws of thermodynamics are strong evidence in favor of creation and maybe some of the strongest evidence we have.

Although, at the same time thermodynamics, especially the second law, it’s hard to pin it down. It’s very complicated; it even involves the curse, I believe, when the second law of thermodynamics was set up. And it’s difficult to get a handle on it.

Let me give you an example. Again, I was referring to the Big Bang story, and we began with a kernel of mass and energy. Well, if you do begin with the whole universe contracted like that into some kind of kernel, some kind of beginning, that would be defined as what we call today a Black Hole, where all the matter is very much condensed down and trapped into one place like that, and we don’t whether black holes exist or not today. But, anyway, if the early universe was like that, one part of the idea of a black hole is that nothing can escape from it. That’s a problem with the Big Bang occurring in the first place. But with a black hole, no atoms can escape, no clouds, not even any light.

So if you can’t get any energy out of a black hole, that energy is not available, you could say that the Big Bang story postulates a beginning where there wasn’t any energy available, where entropy was already very high. And, I think, that’s again a problem with the Big Bang. But that doesn’t stop the whole story, they have to have a universe, so they do postulate that this kernel did explode and the energy came out, so then they had that energy available, and then you can play around with thermodynamics.

So you can look at this both ways. Thermodynamics can deny the Big Bang explosion, because entropy was already high, energy was unavailable, but again, if you do push it and let it explode, then you can go along with the story.

DeYoung: This is one way to look at black holes, that even they are unstable, and they can evaporate after a while and give off radiation. That’s one possible idea. We really don’t know whether that’s true or not. Black holes, they’ve been talked about now for a couple centuries, and the theory’s there, we haven’t located any black holes, we don’t even know if they exist, and there are a variety of theories like that, so you don’t know whether to go off in that direction or not.

Wise: Is my perception correct? I’ve looked at this field from the outside, obviously. I’m a paleontologist; I’m way out of the field here. My perception has been that there has been a creation of a large number of theories that seem to be trying to avoid putting a beginning to this universe: steady-state theory, oscillating universe theory, accepting the Big Bang, but preceding it with oscillations, and various others. Is it true that there seems to be within the field a tendency for people to try to avoid an origin to things?

DeYoung: Yes. The astronomy world has never been happy with the Big Bang theory, because it does have that embarrassing beginning point, where something is there and it explodes, and it almost sounds like you need a supernatural push to have that happen. And so there have been many attempts to avoid that singularity at the beginning.

You mentioned one idea of an oscillating universe, that the universe explodes and as it expands there we get our stars, and galaxies, and planets. But then after awhile the universe stops stretching out and it falls back in and turns into a new nugget of material which then explodes. And so the whole thing goes in and out, vibrating like a bubble over time, and that is sort of an idea that has come along to get away from one initial origin, but to say that the universe has expanded and contracted forever, that it’s just been going on and on, therefore, there was no beginning origin and there is no final destiny. We just happen to live at one of the episodes of when the universe is expanding. Yes, they go to great lengths to avoid an initial origin.

Wise: Is there any way to make a case for a definite origin that cans all these other theories and says that they can’t possibly be true; that we have, there must be, an origin of things?

DeYoung: Well, yes, in fact, you can take some data in that area. The oscillating universe is the popular thing these days. And if the universe is going to stop expanding and contract again and then blow up again, there has to be a certain minimum density of material in the universe, stars and galaxies, there has to be enough mass, enough gravity to stop this stretching rubber band of the universe expanding and bring it back together again. And hence come a lot of surveys of the sky, measuring stars and galaxies to come up with an average density.

And the results have not been pleasing to the astronomy world because it does appear that the density is about a hundred times too small to have the universe snap back again and then rebound in that way. They talk about us living in an open universe, that even if you do allow a Big Bang explosion, there’s only been one. They would rather find a closed universe with more mass where again it goes in and out like a bubble over and over again.

Wise: Suppose the only other alternative is to see the current Big Bang universe being one of a series and this just happens to be the last one. Which is almost as disturbing as to say there is a beginning. It’s to say that this is unique, this is the last one.

DeYoung: Yes. They dearly would like to have us be in an oscillating universe. They need more mass to do that, so there’s a search today for what’s called the missing mass. Where is more material which we haven’t seen yet that might bring about this rebound of the universe? In fact, they’re so sure that it’s there that it’s not called the missing mass these days, it’s called the hidden mass—they just haven’t found it yet.

(to be continued)