Origins Quest
  • Home
  • Life Did Not Begin by Itself
  • 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 >
          • Ancient Myths and Modern Cosmology
          • 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?
        • The Earth’s 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 Particles
        • The Energy of Different Kinds of Rays >
          • The Most Energetic Rays
          • Only X- or Gamma-Rays Make Particles
        • Natural Particle Production >
          • The First Particles
          • Simulating the Process
          • Particles from Darkness
        • Darkness in the Bible >
          • The First Evening
          • Why Darkness Comes First
          • Isaiah’s Insight on Darkness and Light
      • First Morning—Simple Elements >
        • The End of Particle Production >
          • 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
          • Light Shining out of Darkness
          • 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
          • The Cyclic Universe
          • Always Expanding but Never Beginning
          • Continuous Creation
          • Objections to Continuous Creation
          • The Cyclic Version of Continuous Creation
          • Can New Physics Recycle the Universe?
          • Accelerating Expansion
        • 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
          • Instability Releases Energy
          • Nuclear Stability
        • Different Kinds of Fission
        • Making the Rest of the Elements
        • 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’s Fire
        • 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
      • Adapting the Form of Robots
      • The Origin of Adaptive Form Variation
      • Darwin’s Idea Extrapolated to Darwinism >
        • The Development of the Sciences
        • Contrasting Darwinism and Thermodynamics
        • Darwinism Today
      • The Limits of Automatic Design
    • Why Aren’t All Darwinists Rich? >
      • Early Attempts to Automate Design
      • Automatic Design: Artificial and Natural >
        • The Automatic Lens-Design Program
        • Company Top Secret
        • Comparing Evolution and Lens Design
        • My Colleagues’ Reaction
      • Conclusion: Darwinism Doesn’t Work >
        • Can Design Be Automatic?
        • Darwinism and “Automatic” Design
      • How Far Can Small Steps Take Us? >
        • Most Journeys Require Big Steps >
          • Small Improvements Are Merely Engineering
          • Guidelines for Personal Creativity
          • 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
        • Confusion about Entropy >
          • Entropy
          • Perpetual Motion
          • Information
          • Measuring 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 >
        • Entropy Produced in the Sun and Stars >
          • Decreases and Compensating Increases
          • 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 the Earth’s Temperature
        • What Makes Sunlight Suitable?
        • The Night Sky Is Dark >
          • Olbers’ Paradox
          • A Black Forest and the Stars >
            • Seeing to the Far Limit of the Universe
            • The Limit of the Known Universe
          • Ordinary Darkness
      • 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 >
        • The Universe and Information Theory >
          • Increasing Entropy and the End of the Universe
          • Formless and Dark but Energetic and Orderly
          • Entropy and Penrose
          • Creative Agencies and Their Characteristics
        • Thermodynamic Prerequisites for Creation
        • Agency or Agent
    • A Planet Suitable for Life
    • Complex Order, Life, Intelligence >
      • Complexity and Information >
        • 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
The First Light
PictureA flattened globe represents the inside view of the skies over-head. No matter what direction we look, the temperature of the first light is almost the same. False color represents the temperature fluctuations. The red regions are about 40 microkelvins warmer than the blue regions.
Researchers have by now studied the first light with antennas even larger than the one Penzias and Wilson used. The Earth’s atmosphere absorbs a large part of the signal. To see better, experimenters worked with mountain-top and balloon-borne antennas. In 1989 NASA launched the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). In outer space this satellite was far from human-made interference on Earth. It was also outside the atmosphere. From there the instruments studied the electromagnetic waves that Penzias and Wilson called the “background.” When the waves started out, they were ordinary light, perhaps a little more reddish than sunlight. For this reason, the experimenters may present their data as a “photograph.”

More recently WMAP has “photographed” the first light with higher resolution and refined the COBE satellite picture.

Heat and light produced the pressure that drove the expansion. Like the original gamma rays, the newly materialized particles also moved in all directions at various speeds. This kind of movement, entirely due to heat and completely random, is what we call thermal agitation. Its pressure depends only on the temperature.

People are familiar with relative temperature, measured above or below the freezing point of water on the centigrade or Celsius scale, or above or below the temperature of a well-drained salt-and-ice mixture on the Fahrenheit scale. Scientists measure absolute temperature from the lowest possible temperature, a temperature so low that thermal agitation ceases and particles are frozen together. The lowest possible temperature is called “absolute zero.” On the more familiar scales it is ‑273.15º C or ‑459.67º F.

Scientists no longer use the word “degrees” when quoting an absolute temperature. The unit of absolute temperature is the kelvin, after William Thomson Kelvin (British mathematician and physicist, 1824–1907). The kelvin is a unit of temperature just as the meter is a unit of distance and the second is a unit of time. We do not say “degrees meter” or “degrees second.” On the absolute temperature scale water freezes at +273.15 kelvins (0º C, 32º F) and boils at +373.15 kelvins (100º C, 212º F). Kelvins and Centigrade degrees represent the same increment of temperature, but a Fahrenheit degree is 5/9ths of that increment.

Since the mixture was hot and thermal, physicists can apply to it everything they know from studying similar mixtures in the laboratory. This warrants their theoretical analyses, and builds confidence that we really understand what we are seeing.

The characteristics of thermal agitation are well known from theoretical analysis and experimental confirmation. Temperature determines most of its characteristics.

Robert Brown (British botanist, 1773–1858) used a microscope to observe small particles suspended in a liquid. He discovered that they move erratically. In 1905 Einstein explained that the erratic motion arises because random thermal agitation of the molecules of the liquid makes pressure fluctuations. The net pressure is slightly higher first on one side of a small particle, then on another. Experimentalists subsequently confirmed Einstein’s explanation.

Thermal agitation pressure is not entirely steady. It comes from a random bombardment of particles. Since the bombardment is random, the pressure has small fluctuations. Fluctuations are the visible result of thermal agitation. The light from the early universe is the most perfectly thermal light physicists have ever analyzed. The fluctuations are the evidence that the background Penzias and Wilson detected really is the first light.

The universe as it is now could not have formed from a perfectly uniform initial state. There can be no net gravitational attraction if all the material and energy is evenly distributed over all points of space. Gravitational force is directly proportional to the mass of material and the equivalent mass of the energy at a given point. If the total mass of material and energy is the same at every point, then the attraction from any point exactly counterbalances the attraction from all other points.

If two teams playing a tug-of-war are equally strong there can be no movement provided the rope is stronger than the teams.

Fluctuations, however, let some regions pull harder than others. The regions that pulled hardest were the densest regions, those with the most material and energy packed into them. They attracted material and energy out of the more rarified regions. The movement of attracted material and energy left the dense regions denser and the rarified regions more rarified. This made the fluctuations more pronounced. It also made the dense regions more strongly attracting.

The original dense fluctuations served as seeds of condensation or centers of attraction. The gravity of the dense regions compressed them and heated them up again. It also swept space bare and made the rarified regions more rarefied. Eventually the rarified regions joined together, forming a dark, cold void punctuated with dense clouds of bright, hot gas. The dense clouds became galaxies containing stars and planets. The universe took on the aspect we see now in the night sky: isolated points of light and heat in a dark void.



Picture
In the upper sky map the warm, dense regions are white. The cool, rarefied regions are black. Gravity concentrated light and material in hot, dense regions, leaving the empty, cold voids of the lower sky map.
separating light from darkness
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  • Home
  • Life Did Not Begin by Itself
  • 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 >
          • Ancient Myths and Modern Cosmology
          • 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?
        • The Earth’s 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 Particles
        • The Energy of Different Kinds of Rays >
          • The Most Energetic Rays
          • Only X- or Gamma-Rays Make Particles
        • Natural Particle Production >
          • The First Particles
          • Simulating the Process
          • Particles from Darkness
        • Darkness in the Bible >
          • The First Evening
          • Why Darkness Comes First
          • Isaiah’s Insight on Darkness and Light
      • First Morning—Simple Elements >
        • The End of Particle Production >
          • 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
          • Light Shining out of Darkness
          • 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
          • The Cyclic Universe
          • Always Expanding but Never Beginning
          • Continuous Creation
          • Objections to Continuous Creation
          • The Cyclic Version of Continuous Creation
          • Can New Physics Recycle the Universe?
          • Accelerating Expansion
        • 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
          • Instability Releases Energy
          • Nuclear Stability
        • Different Kinds of Fission
        • Making the Rest of the Elements
        • 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’s Fire
        • 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
      • Adapting the Form of Robots
      • The Origin of Adaptive Form Variation
      • Darwin’s Idea Extrapolated to Darwinism >
        • The Development of the Sciences
        • Contrasting Darwinism and Thermodynamics
        • Darwinism Today
      • The Limits of Automatic Design
    • Why Aren’t All Darwinists Rich? >
      • Early Attempts to Automate Design
      • Automatic Design: Artificial and Natural >
        • The Automatic Lens-Design Program
        • Company Top Secret
        • Comparing Evolution and Lens Design
        • My Colleagues’ Reaction
      • Conclusion: Darwinism Doesn’t Work >
        • Can Design Be Automatic?
        • Darwinism and “Automatic” Design
      • How Far Can Small Steps Take Us? >
        • Most Journeys Require Big Steps >
          • Small Improvements Are Merely Engineering
          • Guidelines for Personal Creativity
          • 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
        • Confusion about Entropy >
          • Entropy
          • Perpetual Motion
          • Information
          • Measuring 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 >
        • Entropy Produced in the Sun and Stars >
          • Decreases and Compensating Increases
          • 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 the Earth’s Temperature
        • What Makes Sunlight Suitable?
        • The Night Sky Is Dark >
          • Olbers’ Paradox
          • A Black Forest and the Stars >
            • Seeing to the Far Limit of the Universe
            • The Limit of the Known Universe
          • Ordinary Darkness
      • 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 >
        • The Universe and Information Theory >
          • Increasing Entropy and the End of the Universe
          • Formless and Dark but Energetic and Orderly
          • Entropy and Penrose
          • Creative Agencies and Their Characteristics
        • Thermodynamic Prerequisites for Creation
        • Agency or Agent
    • A Planet Suitable for Life
    • Complex Order, Life, Intelligence >
      • Complexity and Information >
        • 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
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