Is There a Way to Avoid a Universe with a Beginning?

After examining the evidence, cosmologists and physicists have largely embraced the fact we live in a universe that began to exist at a point in the distant past. At this point of “cosmic singularity” all space, time and matter came into existence abruptly, beginning in an extremely hot and dense state and expanding rapidly. Everything came from nothing. This view of the universe’s origin is called the Standard Cosmological model, and it best explains the evidence we presently observe. Astrophysicist Andrew Liddle and astronomer Jon Loveday affirm this: “The standard cosmological model is a striking success, as a phenomenological description of the cosmological data… The model’s success in explaining high precision observations has led a clear majority of the cosmological community to accept it as a good account of how the universe works” (Oxford Companion to Cosmology, page 8).

If the universe began to exist, however, it’s reasonable to look for a cause sufficient to begin its existence. This cause, by definition, would have to be something non-spatial, a-temporal and immaterial (something other than the universe itself). In addition, the foundational cause of the universe must be uncaused, or it simply isn’t foundational. All of us, regardless of worldview, are looking for the first, uncaused, sufficiently powerful, non-spatial, a-temporal, immaterial cause of the universe. From this description you can see how dangerously close this cause sounds to a theistic description of God. Perhaps this is why many researchers and cosmologists seek to find a cosmological model avoiding a cosmological singularity (a model denying the beginning of space, time and matter). A number of models have been offered, but none have the explanatory ability to supplant the Standard Cosmological Model:

The Steady State Model
This theory was developed in 1949 by Sir Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold and others, although a number of variations of this idea have been proposed over the years. Steady State (also known as “eternal inflation”) theories acknowledge the expansion of the universe, but explain this as the result of new matter being formed over time. As galaxies move away from one another, new matter appears in the voids created by the expansion. The universe is continually expanding not from a point of beginning but as a continuous process of stretching and “infilling.” The theory removed the need for the universe to have a beginning, but it had several flaws causing scientists to abandon it. The theory violates the laws regulating the conservation of mass, has never been confirmed by a single observation. Most scientists abandoned the theory in the late 1960s when observations affirmed the universe was in fact changing over time: quasars and radio galaxies were observed at large distances (meaning they existed in the past), but not in closer, newer galaxies. In addition to this, the theory fails to explain cosmic background radiation (the Steady State Theory tried to explain this radiation as the result of light from ancient stars scattered by galactic dust, but this is inconsistent with the “smooth” nature of the radiation). Worse yet, there has never been any experimental or evidential verification of the idea, and no one’s been able to offer a reasonable mechanism explaining the appearance of new galaxies.

The Oscillating Universe Model
This model describes the universe as continually expanding and contracting from eternity past. While we may observe the universe to be expanding at this moment, oscillating (also known as “cyclical”) models claim the universe will eventually slow under the gravitational attraction of its own mass, causing it to coalesce, more or less, to a much smaller region of contraction. While the model certainly describes an infinite universe with no beginning, it does not explain the creation of the first matter at all. The theory also suffers from other observational and theoretical problems. Every attempt to demonstrate the existence of enough mass in the universe to cause this kind of gravitational attraction has failed. The mass of the universe is simply insufficient to halt the expansion we observe or reverse it toward contraction. In fact, red shift measurements of distant supernovae reveal the universe is expanding faster now than it was when it was much younger. In addition, the Second Law of Thermodynamics must be considered in these cyclical models. In each successive cycle of expansion and contraction, the useful energy in the universe would decrease, making the cycles larger and longer moving forward in time. As we go back in time, these cycles would be smaller and smaller until, once again, we come to a point of cosmic singularity. Cyclical models fail to provide us with a viable alternative eliminating a beginning of the universe.

Quantum Gravity Models
Discoveries related to sub-atomic “virtual particles” opened up yet another alternative explanation for researchers rejecting a cosmic beginning. Scientists believe “virtual particles” arise due to fluctuations in the energy contained in a vacuum at the quantum level. Cosmologists, working with this information, have proposed Quantum Gravity (also known as “emergent”) models describing a primordial, stationary vacuum pre-existing our universe. Energy fluctuations in this eternal vacuum caused tiny universes to be born the same way virtual particles pop into existence. Under this theory, our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes, all of which came into existence in the primordial environment. Skeptics of these theories have noted the difficulty of such explanations. If the primordial vacuum is eternal (infinitely old), we would expect an infinite number of universes to have popped into existence in an infinite number of locations across the vacuum. We would expect these universes to interact with one another, and given the infinitude in which they have existed, we should see some evidence of these intersections. This is not the case, however. One possible solution to this dilemma is to describe the primordial vacuum as ever-expanding to accommodate the appearance of these universes without interaction, putting each of them out of reach from one another. But this expansion (when rewinding the timeline) would once again infer a point of singularity in the past, this time for the primordial vacuum.

Scientists who postulate the sudden appearance of virtual particles (or universes) from a primordial vacuum still have to account for the primordial vacuum. Theoretical physicists have redefined the notion of nothing by describing a vacuum containing much of what we commonly consider to be something. According to Stanford University theoretical physicist, Leonard Susskind, “The vacuum represents potential for all things that can happen in that background. It means a list of all the elementary particles as well as the constants of nature that would be revealed by experiments in that vacuum. In short, it means an environment in which the Laws of Physics take a particular form.” According to this definition, the primordial vacuum is spatial, filled with particles, charged with energy, and able to change over time. Even Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist and author of A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing admits the vacuum is really something, rather than nothing: “…it would be disingenuous to suggest that empty space endowed with energy, which drives inflation, is really nothing. In this picture one must assume that space exists and can store energy, and one uses the laws of physics like general relativity to calculate the consequences. So if we stopped here, one might be justified in claiming that modern science is a long way from really addressing how to get something from nothing” (Kindle location 2029). Theories such as these fail to account for the origin of the environment in which universes such as ours could emerge.

Alexander Vilenkin, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University is not a theist, but he rejects eternal inflation, cyclical, and emergent models. In 2012 he authored a scientific paper with Audrey Mithani entitled, “Did the Universe Have a Beginning?” He examined “…three candidate scenarios which seem to allow the possibility that the universe could have existed forever with no initial singularity: eternal inflation, cyclic evolution, and the emergent universe.” Here’s what he concluded: “The first two of these scenarios are geodesically incomplete to the past, and thus cannot describe a universe without a beginning. The third, although it is stable with respect to classical perturbations, can collapse quantum mechanically, and therefore cannot have an eternal past.” Not only does Vilenkin’s work address (and eliminate) all the eternal inflation, cyclical and emergent models, it also excludes any future proposals in which the expansion of the universe is acknowledged. The most reasonable inference from the evidence and the alternatives is simply this: The universe began to exist. It’s reasonable to look now for a first, uncaused, sufficiently powerful, non-spatial, a-temporal, immaterial cause of the universe. Theism offers such a cause, and He remains the most reasonable explanation.

Comments

[The Great Suprendo]

What cosmology tells us. The universe is expanding. We can wind the clock back so that the universe looks smaller and smaller as we look back in time. However, that only works back to the Planck Time. At that point general relativity breaks down and the universe is so small quantum effects take over. Unless I have missed something really rather radical in physics, theories of quantum gravity and the effects on spacetime have not progressed to allow us to make ANY conclusions about whether the universe had a beginning or not.

So the standard model works POST Planck Time, not before

"From this description you can see how dangerously close this cause sounds to a theistic description of God. Perhaps this is why many researchers and cosmologists seek to find a cosmological model avoiding a cosmological singularity (a model denying the beginning of space, time and matter"

Its a little rude to impute an agenda to deny God. Rather it's because our current physics doesnt work so they are trying to find ways to understand what's going on. The fact that this direction doesn't fit your particular brand of religion is neither here nor there and I doubt that factor ever enters their conciousness.

So P2 of the Kalam "The universe began to exist" is not supported currently by science. The best you can say if you support Vilenkins work (and I quote from his paper):

"Did the universe have a beginning? At this point, it seems that the answer to this question is probably yes" http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4658v1.pdf p5

You may also like to consider Turok and Steinhardts Ekpyrotic model for completeness, which is empirically testable and an interesting alternative to answering the question.

[WisdomLover]

Without going into the other problems with the cyclical universe, we can at least scratch the Second Law of Thermodynamics of the list.

The first thing to remember about that law is that it is a statistical law. It is immensely probable that entropy will increase, not certain.

The reason for this bias for increased in interactions is not that somehow that is how it must be. The bias exists because the universe is expanding. Things tend to spread out (i.e. entropy increases) because there is more space to spread out into.

In a contracting universe, this is not the case. In a contracting universe, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is false. As such, the Second law has no overarching application on the system of the cyclical universe itself.

So, a world that cycles between big bang, universe, big crunch and back to big bang seems to be possible. That does not, of course, make it true

[WisdomLover]

"The reason for this bias for increased in interactions"

Rule #13 of good writing:

Make sure you haven't any words out.

The phrase above s/be:

"The reason for this bias for increased entropy in interactions"

[Deedub]

The Great Suprendo: I have read some of Turok and Steinhardt's work on the Ekpyrotic Model, but in fairness to this topic, it still offers no explanation for how the infinite, empty universes (or branes) necessary to allow the Ekpyrotic Model to work came into existence. Their model starts with the assumption of at least two infinite, empty universes and proceeds from that point to attempt to provide an explanation for what we observe in our universe. Their model does not answer the question of how our universe (empty or otherwise) came to exist. We are still left with the question of "what caused our universe to begin to exist?"

[Sam]

Wisdomlover,

You said, "In a contracting universe, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is false." This is news to me. As long as the universe remains a closed system, I don't see why this would be true. Why do you think it's true?

[WisdomLover]

Entropy is a measure of how much space things have to move around in (not, as popularly characterized, of disorder).

In an expanding universe, there is more and more space for the same things to move around in.

In a contracting universe, there is less and less space for the same things to move around in.

Because of this, entropy increases in an expanding universe, but decreases in a contracting universe.

Since the Second Law of Thermodynamics is that entropy always increases it is, therefore, false in a contracting universe.

[Sam]

WL, where are you getting this? I went through the Naval nuclear power program, took all kinds of physics and thermodynamics, then went to college and took more physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics, and I've never heard this.

[WisdomLover]

My physics coursework was many years ago. But I seem to recall getting it either in the classical thermodynamics courses or the follow-on statistical mechanics courses that I took.

To be sure, any such discussion in those classes was informal in nature. You can do thermodynamics and statistical mechanics perfectly well without assuming that the second law doesn't apply in a contracting universe. This is because, of course, we live in an expanding universe.

But it would be quite surprising to me if the second law were still true in a contracting universe.

It's tempting to think of entropy as 'stuff' in the way that energy is. So that the second law would seem to be saying that you just get more and more of it as time goes by.

That strikes me as misguided.

Entropy is a measurement of how much space things have to move around in.

That's all.

The second law is simply an expression of how grossly improbable it is that things will spontaneously move into a smaller spaces. They will tend instead to expand out into a larger spaces.

But, obviously, if there's less and less space for things to move around in, they just can't move into a larger space and must move into a smaller space. So that measurement that we call entropy, goes down.

How else could it be?

[RonH]

Entropy is a measurement of how much space things have to move around in.

Maybe you mean phase space?

[WisdomLover]

Ron-

I wasn't going for technical perfection. I was trying to move past the first order misconception of entropy as mere disorder.

If you have a sample of helium in a 10 liter container at 0 Celsius and you slowly let it expand into a 20 liter container keeping the temperature at 0 Celsius, you increase the entropy in the sample...even though both the initial and final state have about the same level of disorder. The helium atoms just have more space to move around in.

[RonH]

Look here, for example. It says, "[Bolzmann] interpreted rho as a density in phase space".

What is 'phase space'?

A point, P, in space is identified by its 3 spatial coordinates (x, y, z).

A 'point' X in phase space is identified by those same coordinates (x, y, z) PLUS 3 momentum components, call them (p, q, r).

So you can say that 'phase space' consists of every possible combination of position and momentum. That is, phase space is every possible (x, y, z, p, q, r).

Knowing a particle's 'location' in phase space means knowing its position AND its momentum.

A 'volume' of phase space is a set of possible combinations of location and momentum.

(The momentum of a particle is its mass times its velocity.)

It sounds like you may have heard about Bolzmann's formula in your course, intuitively carried the ideas of expansion and contraction over into your thinking about phase space, and then drawn your conclusions about the second law.

You can't do that.

[WisdomLover]

No Ron. I'm not confusing phase space and regular space. I just chose not to over-complicate the discussion.

You're, more or less, right about what phase space is. There is one dimension of phase space for each degree of freedom in a system.

In a classical gas sample, for example, that works out to six times the number of particles. Each position can vary along the x, y and z axes and each momentum can vary along the same axes.

Now think about the phase space of the simple example of the Helium sample I just described.

Since the temperature is held constant the range of possible momenta of each Helium atom remains unchanged. But since the volume of the gas increased, the range of possible positions increased. As such the volume in phase space increased. Entropy goes up. Not because of disorder, but simply because particles have more space to move around in. (And, of course, the opposite is the case if the volume is halved instead of doubled...entropy goes down in that case). It turns out not to be a linear increase (or decrease) in entropy. The entropy doesn't double when we double the volume, nor does it halve when we halve the volume. The relation is logarithmic, but that's neither here nor there.

Now think about the 'big crunch'. All the particles in the universe are coalescing into a smaller and smaller volume forced there by the ever increasing mass at the center of that volume. So the average range of their positions on each axis is decreasing. What is more, as they are constrained into that smaller and smaller space, their average velocity begins to approach zero because more and more of them are being crunched down into a single point where all motion becomes impossible. So the average range of their momenta is also decreasing. Since both the position and momentum ranges are decreasing, the volume of the system in phase space is decreasing. As such the total entropy of that system is going down.

(That last bit is still highly informal, obviously. There are more degrees of freedom in the real world than just x-y-z position and momentum.)

[RonH]

Certainly, an isothermal expansion will result in a change in in entropy. It will be: delta S = Q/T. Q is the heat the gas absorbs and T is your constant temp. But a gas need not stay at constant temperature!

Entropy is a measurement of how much space things have to move around in.

An expansion (or compression) with no change in entropy is an isentropic process. Such a process is thermodynamically possible making it clear that your definition is wrong. Entropy is not defined by or tied to 'how much space things have to move around in'.

[TC]

"What cosmology tells us. The universe is expanding. We can wind the clock back so that the universe looks smaller and smaller as we look back in time. However, that only works back to the Planck Time."

Does that not simply fuzz out the start, rather than eliminating it?

IF there was nothing 1 sec prior to getting back that far, you know there was a beginning some time during that one second.

[RonH]

IF there was nothing 1 sec prior to getting back that far

Why would you think there was nothing?

[WisdomLover]

Isentropic processes are reversible processes. They can only occur when a system remains in equilibrium throughout the process. This is, in practice, impossible.

But just to be clear, my claim is not that every decrease in entropy involves a reduction in volume. Nor that every reduction in volume results in a reduction in entropy.

The point is that the entropy of the entire universe during the time leading up to a big crunch is going down.

But let's suppose that I'm wrong. This number called entropy just keeps going up and up and up.

And then...what?

Is there a suggestion that if the universe cycles back to a big crunch that there will be some sort of problem?

What exactly would that be? All the energy in the universe would coalesce back into the crunch. And it's not like the energy in the crunch will be differentiated into some light, some heat, some mechanical energy. If anything, it's probably closer to think that it will just be mass. If there's a big bounce from there back into a big bang, would some of the ergs from the new big bang be 'second-class' ergs? Would there be more of these 'second-class' ergs in the new bang than the prior bang?

"But our entropy is higher than before" you cry.

Who cares? We won't run out of numbers to express this terrible entropy inflation.

[RonH]

They can only occur when a system remains in equilibrium throughout the process.

There are no isothermal processes either. Same reason.

But let's suppose that I'm wrong.

OK

[WisdomLover]

"There are no isothermal processes either. Same reason."

Isothermal processes can, but need not be, reversible. Isentropic processes must be reversible. Reversibility can't exist in the real world. Isothermality can.

But again, neither here nor there, since my general point is not that entropy depends simply on volume. The entropy of a sample of water obviously goes down when it freezes...even though the volume increases. My point was that the events leading up to a big crunch involve the total decrease of entropy of the universe and that is linked to the contracting volume of the universe. (Just as having all the gas in a chamber spontaneously move to the center is a decrease in entropy, having all the matter in the universe spontaneously move to the center is a decrease in entropy.)

As for the "OK", cute.

You think you won a point there?

[brgulker]

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry when Christian apologists make a mess of cosmology to try to prove Christianity.

[WisdomLover]

brgulker-

How about starting with identifying the mess you perceive being made?

[ralph clark]

some things humans cannot understand because they are over our heads. maybe rotating around the earth's center and revolving around the sun prevent us from thinking straight.

[Francesco]

“Perhaps the best argument in favor of the thesis that the Big Bang supports theism,” the astrophysicist Christopher Isham has observed, “is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas, such as continuous creation or an oscillating universe, being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his or her theory.”

Berlinski, David (2009-08-26). The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions (Kindle Locations 988-991). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.