The First Light Was Good
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light (Genesis 1:3).
The leftover energy became light and heat, and the first morning began. What Penzias and Wilson called the “cosmic microwave background” is really the last light of the first morning. The Cosmic Background Explorer’s instruments proved that this light was like the light any hot object produces, such as the filament of a light bulb. Moses rightly called it light in the ordinary sense of the word, as a child would understand it.
As soon as there was light the first night was over. No one has yet observed the dawn of the first morning with a telescope, because the mixture of light and free particles was translucent but not transparent. Free particles with an electric charge, such as electrons or protons, scatter light in random directions, like a bright fog in the present Earth atmosphere. After the first dawn there was plenty of light, but no object could be seen clearly.
God saw that the light was good (Genesis 1:4a). The first light is the most perfect light ever analyzed. Sunspots and solar flares mar the light of the Sun. Joseph von Fraunhofer (Bavarian optician and physicist, 1787–1826) examined sunlight closely with a prism and found dark absorption lines. These arise from iron vapor and other hot atoms in the atmosphere of the Sun.
The leftover energy became light and heat, and the first morning began. What Penzias and Wilson called the “cosmic microwave background” is really the last light of the first morning. The Cosmic Background Explorer’s instruments proved that this light was like the light any hot object produces, such as the filament of a light bulb. Moses rightly called it light in the ordinary sense of the word, as a child would understand it.
As soon as there was light the first night was over. No one has yet observed the dawn of the first morning with a telescope, because the mixture of light and free particles was translucent but not transparent. Free particles with an electric charge, such as electrons or protons, scatter light in random directions, like a bright fog in the present Earth atmosphere. After the first dawn there was plenty of light, but no object could be seen clearly.
God saw that the light was good (Genesis 1:4a). The first light is the most perfect light ever analyzed. Sunspots and solar flares mar the light of the Sun. Joseph von Fraunhofer (Bavarian optician and physicist, 1787–1826) examined sunlight closely with a prism and found dark absorption lines. These arise from iron vapor and other hot atoms in the atmosphere of the Sun.
Graph showing Fraunhofer lines: Atoms make sunlight imperfect, but the first light comes from before the formation of atoms.
The first light is not like the flash of a nuclear explosion. It lacks the strong X-ray lines that are present in the fireball of a nuclear bomb. The first light conforms very closely to a theoretical law Planck discovered in 1900, the first law ever proposed in quantum mechanics. In four years of measurements the Cosmic Background Explorer’s instruments detected no systematic deviation from Planck’s distribution of wavelengths.[i] The first light is light from pure energetic darkness, darkness that God created directly long before there were atoms. It has no imperfections to detract from its agreement with the laws of physics.
[i] Schwarzschild, Bertram, “COBE Satellite Finds No Hint of Excess in the Cosmic Microwave Spectrum,” Physics Today, 43 (Number 3, March 1990), pp. 17–20.
The first light is not like the flash of a nuclear explosion. It lacks the strong X-ray lines that are present in the fireball of a nuclear bomb. The first light conforms very closely to a theoretical law Planck discovered in 1900, the first law ever proposed in quantum mechanics. In four years of measurements the Cosmic Background Explorer’s instruments detected no systematic deviation from Planck’s distribution of wavelengths.[i] The first light is light from pure energetic darkness, darkness that God created directly long before there were atoms. It has no imperfections to detract from its agreement with the laws of physics.
[i] Schwarzschild, Bertram, “COBE Satellite Finds No Hint of Excess in the Cosmic Microwave Spectrum,” Physics Today, 43 (Number 3, March 1990), pp. 17–20.
This graph compares the amount of light measured at each frequency with the amount of light Planck’s law predicts. The squares are data points and the solid curve is the theoretical distribution. After four years of measurements, data and theory agreed within 50 parts per million. No absorption or emission lines mar the smooth distribution. The light is the most perfect light science has ever analyzed.
But the first light comes from all points in space. The whole universe suddenly glowed with light, like the light of the aurora borealis, the northern lights, or the aurora australis, the southern lights.
People observed the emission of light from darkness long before there were laboratories and X-rays. The auroras are an example of the natural emission of light from darkness. Cosmic rays, energetic but dark to our eyes, strike the Earth’s atmosphere and produce light. The auroras shine most frequently near the poles of the Earth’s magnetic field, but sometimes at temperate latitudes. Occasionally Bible writers may have seen the aurora borealis. Astronauts have photographed the light of the auroras from space in orbit near the Earth. The photos show that the light originates in the Earth's atmosphere. It does not shine down on the atmosphere from some far-away source in space.
This picture coincides exactly with Moses’ account of the first day. There was no Sun and there were no stars or galaxies to shine. On day one the darkness shone, and the universe passed from the first night to the first morning. Moses says that God separated the light from the darkness (Genesis 1:4b). God separated light and darkness in time as well as space.
The last light of the first morning had a very uniform temperature of about 3 000 kelvins. The formation of the first atoms set the temperature. At that temperature the hydrogen, helium, and lithium nuclei were cool enough to capture and hold one, two, or three electrons respectively. Once the charged particles were bound into atoms most of the light scattering stopped.
The Immediate Cause of the First Light
A few people object to the Bible’s creation account because, they say, it leaves no room for research. No law of physics can explain what God did and why.
The Genesis account says that the first light appeared in the universe by divine fiat. God commanded and it was so. One of the Psalms says the same. For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. (Psalm 33:9).
Yet if we read carefully, we will discover something interesting. As we said before, God’s commands may be the ultimate cause of everything, but they are not always the immediate cause. The first light had a source, according to the Bible. Sources are physical and scientists can study them. The source of the first light was the darkness.
Creation “ex nihilo” means creation from or out of nothing. Neither this phrase nor this idea appears in the Moses’ creation account. The Bible does not say that God created the first light out of nothing.
For centuries it has been hard to understand the formation of the first light. Now physicists understand it better. Physical causes, the kind that scientists can reproduce and investigate in the laboratory, made the first light shine out from the darkness. This fact should change our understanding of the place of God’s command in the chain of causes. We cannot of course oblige God to speak every time we want to run an experiment. Yet physicists can at will make light shine from properly prepared darkness. Therefore, the ultimate cause of the light, God’s command, is not involved at present when physicists make light shine out from darkness in the laboratory. We should understand that some of God’s commands were decrees governing physical phenomena. Our laws of physics are our approximate knowledge of those decrees. To the extent that our knowledge is accurate, we can predict the results of experiments from the laws of physics.
But the first light comes from all points in space. The whole universe suddenly glowed with light, like the light of the aurora borealis, the northern lights, or the aurora australis, the southern lights.
People observed the emission of light from darkness long before there were laboratories and X-rays. The auroras are an example of the natural emission of light from darkness. Cosmic rays, energetic but dark to our eyes, strike the Earth’s atmosphere and produce light. The auroras shine most frequently near the poles of the Earth’s magnetic field, but sometimes at temperate latitudes. Occasionally Bible writers may have seen the aurora borealis. Astronauts have photographed the light of the auroras from space in orbit near the Earth. The photos show that the light originates in the Earth's atmosphere. It does not shine down on the atmosphere from some far-away source in space.
This picture coincides exactly with Moses’ account of the first day. There was no Sun and there were no stars or galaxies to shine. On day one the darkness shone, and the universe passed from the first night to the first morning. Moses says that God separated the light from the darkness (Genesis 1:4b). God separated light and darkness in time as well as space.
The last light of the first morning had a very uniform temperature of about 3 000 kelvins. The formation of the first atoms set the temperature. At that temperature the hydrogen, helium, and lithium nuclei were cool enough to capture and hold one, two, or three electrons respectively. Once the charged particles were bound into atoms most of the light scattering stopped.
The Immediate Cause of the First Light
A few people object to the Bible’s creation account because, they say, it leaves no room for research. No law of physics can explain what God did and why.
The Genesis account says that the first light appeared in the universe by divine fiat. God commanded and it was so. One of the Psalms says the same. For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. (Psalm 33:9).
Yet if we read carefully, we will discover something interesting. As we said before, God’s commands may be the ultimate cause of everything, but they are not always the immediate cause. The first light had a source, according to the Bible. Sources are physical and scientists can study them. The source of the first light was the darkness.
Creation “ex nihilo” means creation from or out of nothing. Neither this phrase nor this idea appears in the Moses’ creation account. The Bible does not say that God created the first light out of nothing.
For centuries it has been hard to understand the formation of the first light. Now physicists understand it better. Physical causes, the kind that scientists can reproduce and investigate in the laboratory, made the first light shine out from the darkness. This fact should change our understanding of the place of God’s command in the chain of causes. We cannot of course oblige God to speak every time we want to run an experiment. Yet physicists can at will make light shine from properly prepared darkness. Therefore, the ultimate cause of the light, God’s command, is not involved at present when physicists make light shine out from darkness in the laboratory. We should understand that some of God’s commands were decrees governing physical phenomena. Our laws of physics are our approximate knowledge of those decrees. To the extent that our knowledge is accurate, we can predict the results of experiments from the laws of physics.