Sandwich, I'm glad you bumped this. Its one of my favorite religious/scientific topics for a long time.
This was a good read. The expanded version of this theory made a few things clearer. In the end however, it only reconfirmed my sincere belief that the author is mistaken. His theory makes for wonderful philosophy, but very poor science.
From the article:
"What is your concept of the age of the universe?" Now, in 1959, astronomy was popular, but cosmology - the deep physics of understanding the universe - was just developing. The response to that survey was recently republished in Scientific American - the most widely read science journal in the world. Two-thirds of the scientists gave the same answer. The answer that two-thirds - an overwhelming majority - of the scientists gave was, "Beginning? There was no beginning. Aristotle and Plato taught us 2400 years ago that the universe is eternal. Oh, we know the Bible says 'In the beginning.' That's a nice story, it helps kids go to bed at night. But we sophisticates know better. There was no beginning."
Is this a quote? If it is not, it should not be presented as a quote. By 1959, any scientist who understood Einstein's equations had already seen that one of the primary solutions explicitly required a start at singularity. I'd really like to see the data from this Scientific American survey. Regardless, the article should present this as a synthesis, rather than as a quote.
From the article:
That was 1959. In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the echo of the Big Bang in the black of the sky at night, and the world paradigm changed from a universe that was eternal to a universe that had a beginning.
Penzias and Wilson confirmed the echo. The echo was postulated long before, as a consequence of a the singularity solutions of Einstein's equations.
From the article:
Science had made an enormous paradigm change in its understanding of the world. Understand the impact. Science said that our universe had a beginning, that the first word of the Bible is correct. I can't overestimate the import of that scientific "discovery."
And not just the Bible, but beliefs of other cultures dating as far back a 5000BC (Chinese) and 6000BC (Egyptian) and 7000BC (Mesopotamian). In fact, there is a plethora of pre-judeochristian ideologies that postulate a beginning to the Universe. From a strictly secular point of view, why is the version in the Torah preferred to the creation myths of these other cultures?
There follows a long bit of religious rationalization with no accompanying scientific inquiry. I will not touch that. it is the realm of the theologians.
From the article:
Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos. That's something any scientist will testify never happens in an unguided system. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously. There must be a guide to the system. That's an unequivocal statement.
Actually, any competent physicist will tell you that order can arise spontaneously for chaos--and commonly does. Stars and solar systems are examples of order that arose from chaos. The secret to the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Entropy increases) is that it does NOT say that order cannot form from chaos. It says that in a given system the overall entropy increases. Any decrease in entropy in one region will immediately give rise to an increased amount of entropy in another region. Thus, the entire system continues to become more entropic as a function of time.
From the article:
Order can not arise from disorder by random reactions. (In pure probability it can, but the numbers are so infinitesimally small that physics regards the probability as zero.)
This is a misunderstanding of propability. For order to arise from chaos in a single region in a vast universe, the propability is near zero. Over the entire universe, the set of all possible regions, containing all possible matter, the probability approaches 1.
From the article:
Science has shown that there's only one "substanceless substance" that can change into matter. And that's energy. Einstein's famous equation, E=MC2, tells us that energy can change into matter. And once it changes into matter, time grabs hold.
This is a misunderstanding of Einstein's thoeries. Time exists as soon as matter OR energy exist. Time exists for energy--it must, elsewise quantum effects like tunneling could not take place! Photons are quanta of light, pure energy. They are emitted and absorbed over time by electrons. Without this, electrons couldn't make quantum leaps to different energy levels and molecular bonding could not take place. If you wish to argue strictly, time is infinite in the reference frame of a photon. Outside the reference frame of the photon, time is not infinite. In both frames, however, it does exist.
There is logically and mathematically a distinct difference between 'infinite' and 'non-existent'. Mathematically, just imagine a graph of a curve. When the tangent becomes vertical, the slope of that tangent does not exist (it is undefined). Where the tangent has no slope (the slope has become zero), the graph continues on to infinity, unchanged. These are distinct. Logically, imagine a box in an otherwise perfect vacuum. Within the box is an enclosed space. This space is either a vacuum (it utterly empty) or it has at least one atom in it (it is not empty). It is a binary state: empty or not-empty. Likewise, does-not-exist and infinite (or exists) are binary.
What follows is an interesting thought experiment with a laser at the beginning of time being shot at the Earth, one pulse per second. 15billion years down the line would we see one pulse per second? No, because in an inflationary universe, space itself between pulses gets stretched out, making the distance longer. Thus the first packet would reach us at t=0, and the second packet would reach us not at t=1, but at t=1+[however long it took to travel the expanded distance]. Indeed, it would take longer and longer for each packet to arrive. But this is true from both points of view. In the Earth reference frame, the source is receding at speed, causing a red-shift in the beam. Its getting farther and farther from us, so each pulse is delayed a little bit by the expanding space. From the reference frame of the source, EARTH is receding. This is an important consideration because it shows that there is no absolute reference frame. In order to ensure that the earth recieved a pulse-per-second, the source laser would have to fire faster and faster (trending toward infinitely fast pulses, limiting at the planck time) . Those six days are still 13-21 billion years, no matter where you sit. You cannot accept the time-space dilation implications of relativity without accepting the implication that there is no absolute reference frame. The one leads to the other.
In the final section, the author discusses time dilation in inflationary universes with respect to a reference frame that exists within that universe. This is where the author makes a very large mistake:
From the article:
Every time the universe doubles, the perception of time is cut in half.
Only if the observer in question is in an absolute reference frame. If the observer is in a relative reference frame, the perception of time is constant. Only in an (impossible) absolute reference frame could an observer see time and space dilating with respect to each other. Since, however, relativity (the very same relativity that allows for time dilation and initial singularities) does not allow for any sort of absolute reference frame, this is impossible.
