Origins Quest
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    • Reconciling Science and the Bible >
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      • Moses Foresaw Three Discoveries >
        • First Discovery >
          • Mass and Weight of Energy
          • Transformations and Materialization
          • Different Kinds of Rays and Materialization in Empty Space
          • Was Energy the Source of Material
        • Second Discovery
        • Third Discovery >
          • The First Light
          • Separating Light from Darkness
        • Early Ideas about the Beginning
        • An Up-to-Date Ancient Cosmology
        • The Confirmation
        • A Challenging Question
      • Cycles of Darkness and Light >
        • Teaching Children
        • The Idea the Word “Day” Expresses >
          • A Day Not The First Day
          • Not Literal 24-Hour Days
        • How Long Did the First Three Days Last?
        • Earth Rotation and the First Two Days
        • The Duration of the First Day
        • The First Three Cycles of Darkness and Light
      • Was There a Beginning? >
        • An Uncreated Unchanging Universe
        • Evidence for a Beginning >
          • Elements in the Stars
          • Natural Radiation from Space
          • Stars Consume Their Fuel
        • Cosmology and Relativity
        • Instability Determinism Uncertainty, Predestination >
          • Instability
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        • Einstein Science and Philosophy
        • Predestination versus Timely Intervention
    • Simple Elements and Morning Stars >
      • First Evening Energy and Particles >
        • The Energy of Different Kinds of Rays
        • The Most Energetic Rays
        • Natural Particle Production >
          • Simulating the Process
          • Particles from Darkness
        • Darkness in the Bible >
          • Why Darkness Comes First
          • Isaiah on Darkness and Light
      • First Morning-Simple Elements >
        • Doppler Shift Expansion and Cooling >
          • The Beginning of Nucleosynthesis
          • Four Forces
          • Forces Present in Empty Space
        • Nucleosynthesis >
          • The First Elements
          • The First Halt in Nuclei Production
          • Insufficient Complexity
        • The First Light Was Good >
          • The Immediate Cause of the First Light
          • Forming the Light
          • The Confirmation of Darkness and Light
    • Stars that Formed Complex Elements >
      • Second Evening-Expansion >
        • The Expanding Universe >
          • The Giant Atom that Exploded
          • Expansion Not a Big Bang Explosion
          • Expansion Preserves Order
        • Expanding Now But Later What? >
          • Expanding but Uncreated
          • Continuous Creation
          • The Cyclic Version of Continuous Creation
        • The Expanding Universe Prevails
      • Second Morning-Heavy Elements >
        • Heat and Light Make Heavy Elements >
          • Differences in Stellar Composition
          • Nuclear Binding Energy
        • Energy from Fusion and Fission >
          • The Proton-Proton Reaction
          • Nuclear Stability
        • Different Kinds of Fission
        • Burning Helium and Heavier Elements
    • Forming the Sun and Earth >
      • Third Evening-A Dusty Yellow Star >
        • Supernovas Begin the Third Evening
        • Extraterrestrial Water
        • Lighting the Sun
        • The Carbon to Oxygen Reaction
        • The Darkness of the Third Evening
      • Third Morning-The Earth Forms >
        • The Search for a Planet Suitable for Life
    • How Does God Create? >
      • Conditions at the Very Beginning >
        • Creation from Nothing
        • Can We Create Energy? >
          • God Works to Create Energy
          • The Work Necessary to Create the Universe
        • Denial of Creation
        • The Simplest Explanation
        • Creation in a Singularity >
          • Can We Investigate the Instant of Creation?
          • The First Light Has Fluctuations
      • The Next Three Days >
        • Structure in the Genesis Narrative >
          • Examples of Parallelism
          • Parallel Structure in the Creation Narrative
        • Day Four >
          • Not All Stars Formed on the Fourth Day
          • When Did the Stars and Sun Start to Shine?
          • Signs for Animals and People
      • What Is the Origin of the Universe?
    • Appendices >
      • Appendix A
      • Appendix B
  • Design or Luck?
    • Creative Design >
      • Darwin and Adaptive Variation >
        • Finches and Form Adaptation
        • Adaptive Behavior and Structure
        • Intelligence and Autonomy
      • Biological Structure and Reproduction
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        • Small Improvements Are Merely Engineering
        • The Vastness of Hyperspace
        • Primordial Alphabet Soup >
          • Wide Coding Overcomes Noise
          • DNA is a Natural Language
          • Common Ancestry
          • Accepted Words Span the Space
        • Is Creative Design Consistent with Darwinism? >
          • Engineering Design
          • A Challenge for Darwinists
    • Thermodynamics >
      • Thermodynamics Information and Creation >
        • The First Law of Thermodynamics
        • The Second Law of Thermodynamics >
          • Entropy
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          • Structure and Breakdown--Death and Decay
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      • Earth-Sun Thermodynamics >
        • A Simple Example of a Thermodynamic Process
        • The Example Applied to the Sun and Earth
      • Another Error about Thermodynamics >
        • A Darwinist Argument about Thermodynamics
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        • What Makes Sunlight Suitable?
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        • Olbers and his Paradox
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          • Ordinary Darkness
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        • Living Organisms and Heat Engines >
          • The Thermodynamics of Life without Sunlight
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          • Darwinism and Thermodynamics
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Expanding Now But Later What?

Solutions of Einstein’s general relativity equations allowed three possible destinies for the universe, depending on the average density of matter in it. Given the initial expansion at an average velocity and the continuous deceleration that gravity causes, the universe may grow to a certain size and then fall back in on itself, like a ball thrown upward from the surface of the Earth. However, if the initial velocity is large enough and if the deceleration of gravity is weak enough because the average density of matter is low enough, the universe may expand forever and never lose all of its initial velocity. The third possibility is the limiting case between the first two. The universe may have just enough initial velocity to overcome the deceleration of gravity after expanding for a very long time. In this case, as the universe approaches infinite size its remaining initial velocity will approach zero. Cosmologists say that such a universe expands at the “critical rate.”

The rockets we launch now use most of their fuel in the first few minutes of flight to accelerate to high speed. If a rocket’s final speed after leaving the Earth’s atmosphere is greater than “escape velocity” then the rocket will move forever away from the Earth, but if the rocket’s final speed is too slow it will fall back to the Earth. The universe may act in a similar way, eventually collapsing back inwards or expanding forever.

None of the destinies is appealing. If the universe keeps on expanding then after a very long time all the fuel for all the stars will be exhausted. If our own galaxy burns out first, any other galaxy with a remnant of fuel left would be too far away for our posterity to reach it, no matter how advanced their space flight technology may become. Such a universe will end with all remaining energy and material spread out too thinly to support life of any kind. That will be the “heat death” of the universe described by Sir James Jeans.[i]

If the universe falls in on itself everything will be crushed together, burned up, and destroyed. Such a universe will finally end up as one huge black hole, and nothing will ever escape from it.

Of the three possibilities, the least unappealing is expansion at the critical rate, because that postpones disaster for the longest time. By 1981 astronomers knew that the expansion rate is at present within a factor of 100 of the critical rate.

If the universe expands more slowly than the critical rate then gravity will eventually slow the expansion to a halt and then produce contraction and a Big Crunch at the end of time. If the expansion had been substantially less rapid than the critical rate then the Big Crunch would come far too soon. The expanding material would have lost its outward impulse very quickly. Providing the full number of atomic elements, the basis for life, takes thousands of millions of years. In a universe that expanded too slowly hardly anything could have happened before everything collapsed back into a black hole. Not even light could have escaped from it.

But if the expansion had been substantially more rapid than the critical rate, the particles would have dispersed outward into empty space. They would have moved quickly so far from each other that their mutual gravity could never bring them together again in dense regions. All the material would be blown away as a fine gas of atoms. There could be no gravitational regathering of material to produce the galaxies, stars and planets. Without planets there could be no life in the universe.

If the expansion rate were either too much more or too much less than the critical rate, life would not be possible anywhere in the universe.

At the beginning the expansion rate must have been adjusted very precisely for the present expansion rate to be as close as it is to the critical rate. See Appendix A for an estimate of the precision required. Such fine tuning requires a fine-tuning mechanism.

We do not know what fine-tuning mechanism operated or how it caused the physical change that enables the universe to support life. Guth showed that the right phase change could have produced the fine adjustment required for the expansion rate. This would help the universe achieve the present rate of expansion, the rate that makes life possible. However, neither Guth nor anyone else has yet found a phase change that works. Very many physical changes are possible. Even if physicists ever find the right phase change, they will still have to explain why that change occurred instead of any other. The one phase change that would make life possible happened. Was that outrageously good luck, or did a benevolent Fine Tuner choose the right mechanism and cause it to operate in the early universe to make life possible?

Today we know that the rate of expansion is equal to the critical rate plus or minus one percent. It is not reasonable to believe that “we were just lucky.” The chances are so small that mathematicians generally agree to say it is impossible. If something impossible happens, it is a miracle, something that shows the effective working of a beneficent intelligence. Only God does miracles.


[i] Jeans, James, The Universe around Us (Cambridge, 1960), Fourth Edition, p. 280.
Expanding but Uncreated
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  • Home
  • The First Three Days of the Earth
    • Reconciling Science and the Bible >
      • Precise Science Confirms the Bible
      • Moses Foresaw Three Discoveries >
        • First Discovery >
          • Mass and Weight of Energy
          • Transformations and Materialization
          • Different Kinds of Rays and Materialization in Empty Space
          • Was Energy the Source of Material
        • Second Discovery
        • Third Discovery >
          • The First Light
          • Separating Light from Darkness
        • Early Ideas about the Beginning
        • An Up-to-Date Ancient Cosmology
        • The Confirmation
        • A Challenging Question
      • Cycles of Darkness and Light >
        • Teaching Children
        • The Idea the Word “Day” Expresses >
          • A Day Not The First Day
          • Not Literal 24-Hour Days
        • How Long Did the First Three Days Last?
        • Earth Rotation and the First Two Days
        • The Duration of the First Day
        • The First Three Cycles of Darkness and Light
      • Was There a Beginning? >
        • An Uncreated Unchanging Universe
        • Evidence for a Beginning >
          • Elements in the Stars
          • Natural Radiation from Space
          • Stars Consume Their Fuel
        • Cosmology and Relativity
        • Instability Determinism Uncertainty, Predestination >
          • Instability
          • Stability and Determinism
          • Predestination Indeterminacy Uncertainty
        • Einstein Science and Philosophy
        • Predestination versus Timely Intervention
    • Simple Elements and Morning Stars >
      • First Evening Energy and Particles >
        • The Energy of Different Kinds of Rays
        • The Most Energetic Rays
        • Natural Particle Production >
          • Simulating the Process
          • Particles from Darkness
        • Darkness in the Bible >
          • Why Darkness Comes First
          • Isaiah on Darkness and Light
      • First Morning-Simple Elements >
        • Doppler Shift Expansion and Cooling >
          • The Beginning of Nucleosynthesis
          • Four Forces
          • Forces Present in Empty Space
        • Nucleosynthesis >
          • The First Elements
          • The First Halt in Nuclei Production
          • Insufficient Complexity
        • The First Light Was Good >
          • The Immediate Cause of the First Light
          • Forming the Light
          • The Confirmation of Darkness and Light
    • Stars that Formed Complex Elements >
      • Second Evening-Expansion >
        • The Expanding Universe >
          • The Giant Atom that Exploded
          • Expansion Not a Big Bang Explosion
          • Expansion Preserves Order
        • Expanding Now But Later What? >
          • Expanding but Uncreated
          • Continuous Creation
          • The Cyclic Version of Continuous Creation
        • The Expanding Universe Prevails
      • Second Morning-Heavy Elements >
        • Heat and Light Make Heavy Elements >
          • Differences in Stellar Composition
          • Nuclear Binding Energy
        • Energy from Fusion and Fission >
          • The Proton-Proton Reaction
          • Nuclear Stability
        • Different Kinds of Fission
        • Burning Helium and Heavier Elements
    • Forming the Sun and Earth >
      • Third Evening-A Dusty Yellow Star >
        • Supernovas Begin the Third Evening
        • Extraterrestrial Water
        • Lighting the Sun
        • The Carbon to Oxygen Reaction
        • The Darkness of the Third Evening
      • Third Morning-The Earth Forms >
        • The Search for a Planet Suitable for Life
    • How Does God Create? >
      • Conditions at the Very Beginning >
        • Creation from Nothing
        • Can We Create Energy? >
          • God Works to Create Energy
          • The Work Necessary to Create the Universe
        • Denial of Creation
        • The Simplest Explanation
        • Creation in a Singularity >
          • Can We Investigate the Instant of Creation?
          • The First Light Has Fluctuations
      • The Next Three Days >
        • Structure in the Genesis Narrative >
          • Examples of Parallelism
          • Parallel Structure in the Creation Narrative
        • Day Four >
          • Not All Stars Formed on the Fourth Day
          • When Did the Stars and Sun Start to Shine?
          • Signs for Animals and People
      • What Is the Origin of the Universe?
    • Appendices >
      • Appendix A
      • Appendix B
  • Design or Luck?
    • Creative Design >
      • Darwin and Adaptive Variation >
        • Finches and Form Adaptation
        • Adaptive Behavior and Structure
        • Intelligence and Autonomy
      • Biological Structure and Reproduction
      • Adaptive Form
      • Darwin and Darwinism >
        • The Development of the Sciences
        • Contrasting Darwinism and Thermodynamics
        • Darwinism Today
      • The Limits of Automatic Design
    • Why Are Not All Darwinists Rich? >
      • Automatic Design: Artificial and Natural >
        • The Automatic Lens-Design Program
        • Company Top Secret
        • Comparing Evolution and Lens Design
        • My Colleagues Reacted
      • Conclusion-Darwinism Does Not Work >
        • Can Design Be Automatic?
        • Darwinism and Automatic Design
      • How Far Can Small Steps Take Us? >
        • Small Improvements Are Merely Engineering
        • The Vastness of Hyperspace
        • Primordial Alphabet Soup >
          • Wide Coding Overcomes Noise
          • DNA is a Natural Language
          • Common Ancestry
          • Accepted Words Span the Space
        • Is Creative Design Consistent with Darwinism? >
          • Engineering Design
          • A Challenge for Darwinists
    • Thermodynamics >
      • Thermodynamics Information and Creation >
        • The First Law of Thermodynamics
        • The Second Law of Thermodynamics >
          • Entropy
          • Perpetual Motion
        • Information and Order >
          • Entropy Probability and Information
          • Multiplying Probability and Adding Entropy
          • Probability and Information
        • Structure Design Intelligence and Creativity >
          • Structure and Breakdown--Death and Decay
          • Perfection and Beauty
      • Earth-Sun Thermodynamics >
        • A Simple Example of a Thermodynamic Process
        • The Example Applied to the Sun and Earth
      • Another Error about Thermodynamics >
        • A Darwinist Argument about Thermodynamics
        • Sunlight and Earth Temperature
        • What Makes Sunlight Suitable?
      • The Night Sky Is Dark >
        • Olbers and his Paradox
        • A Black Forest and the Stars >
          • Seeing to the Far Limit of the Universe
          • The Limit of the Known Universe
          • Ordinary Darkness
      • A Planet Suitable for Life
      • The Thermodynamics of Life >
        • Living Organisms and Heat Engines >
          • The Thermodynamics of Life without Sunlight
        • Entropy Thermodynamics and Prigogine >
          • Darwinism and Thermodynamics
      • Thermodynamics and the Universe >
        • Formless and Dark but Energetic and Orderly >
          • Entropy and Penrose
        • Creative Agencies and Their Characteristics
    • Complex Order-Life-Intelligence >
      • Random Action and Complexity
      • Does Matter Organize Itself?
      • Complexity Can Be Specified
      • Information and Physical Laws
      • Did Our Life Begin Elsewhere?
      • Discovering Alien Life Will Change Nothing
      • Creative Design Suits the Universe for Life
    • The Quest Continues
  • Creationism that Scientists Can Accept
  • About
  • Contact
  • DVD
  • Booklet