Tag: cosmological constant

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Fine-Tuning the Universe

Fine-tuning pumpkin bread is easier than fine-tuning the universe
This is what pumpkin bread should look like.

I recently attempted to bake some pumpkin bread. It was a disaster because I failed to use the proper proportion of one ingredient. When baking any pastry, having all the right ingredients in the right proportions is essential. Equally important is having the correct oven temperature for the right amount of time. Every factor must be just right. This is a simple illustration of fine-tuning the recipe. Far more complicated than baking any pastry is fine-tuning the universe.

Scientists have realized that the universe requires fine-tuning to make the existence of complex life possible. The number of factors that must be fine-tuned is vast, but five significant ones are these:

Gravitational Force Constant – This is the force that pulls us toward Earth. More than that, it holds the planet together and makes it round. It also holds the Moon in orbit around the Earth and the planets in orbit around the Sun. It holds together the Milky Way and all other galaxies. This force has to be strong enough to form stars and planets, but if it were too strong, stars would quickly burn up, and no planets would form.

Electromagnetic Force Constant – This force holds atoms together. It must be just right for chemical bonds to form, creating molecules that everything is made of, including our bodies.

Strong Nuclear Force Constant – This force holds together the protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms. It must be just right to form stable atoms.

Weak Nuclear Force Constant – This force regulates radioactive decay and must be precisely correct to form stars such as our Sun.

Cosmological Constant – This force controls the universe’s expansion speed, balancing the attractive force of gravity with the repulsive force causing space to expand. It must be extremely precise to prevent the universe from flying apart or collapsing on itself.

A properly “baked” universe requires that all of these constants and many more parameters be just right. The chance of all of them coming together by accident is beyond impossible. Fine-tuning the universe requires intelligent planning far beyond that of any human baker, and it could not have happened by accident. It is evidence of an intelligent creator God.

— Roland Earnst © 2024
Reference: “List of Fine-Tuning Parameters” by Jay W. Richards

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Expanding Universe and What It Means

Expanding Universe
We live in an expanding universe. For thousands of years, from Aristotle to Einstein, scientists thought that the universe was eternal. Einstein’s equations proposed in his general theory of relativity in 1915 seemed to indicate that the universe was not stable. Einstein thought it was a mistake and tried to correct for the “error” by creating a variable called the “cosmological constant.” The only error was the cosmological constant, and Einstein later called it “the biggest blunder of my life.”

Later in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble found strong evidence that the universe was expanding. That evidence was further confirmed in 1964 when radio astronomers accidentally discovered the cosmic microwave background. It was finally confirmed by space-based experiments in the twenty-first century.

The rate of expansion of the universe based on experiments was established and is known as the Hubble constant. On February 22, 2018, a new survey of the expansion rate was released. This scientific paper was based on the most precise measurements of the universe’s expansion rate using the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists are surprised to discover that the expansion rate is faster than they thought. This new information may require some re-evaluation of the scientific understanding of the universe.

This is not the first time a re-evaluation was needed. Evidence of an expanding universe indicates that it had a beginning. If you trace the expansion backward through time, you can see that at one point the entire universe would have been compacted into a single point. The evidence of the expansion shows that the universe had a beginning when that expansion began. Since the expansion is accelerating, that means that the universe will never contract back and start over. Therefore, the universe is not eternal. It had a beginning, and it will have an end.

The bottom line is this: What did Moses know that Einstein and scientists before him did not know? That the universe had a beginning. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
–Roland Earnst © 2018