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Has physics gone too far?

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Evolution News and Views

Science-Fictions-square.gif Britain’s Guardian asks, thinking about the multiverse “Has physics gone too far?” Perhaps a better question would be, is New Atheist cosmology failing as physics? Because, make no mistake, an admitted motive for seeking alternatives to the Big Bang and the fine-tuning of our universe is getting rid of their theistic implications.

Worse, for some, the hateful Big Bang bangs on, oblivious of its critics. Cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, resigned to the Big Bang’s reality, theorizes that it was “merely one of a series of big bangs creating an endless number of bubble universes.” Another scheme to get rid of the Big Bang as a singularity involves a rainbow universe where time has no beginning, a model that, as Scientific American tells us, “is not widely accepted.” No wonder because, as one critic put it, the scheme must get rid of the singularity within the Standard Model of physics. Similarly, another new cosmology accounts for the apparent acceleration of the universe — but only if there is no Big Bang: “This universe has no beginning or end, just alternating periods of expansion and contraction.” It also has no cosmic microwave background, which our universe inconveniently does have.

Still others propose that the Big Bang was a “mirage from [a] collapsing higher-dimensional star,” a thesis with which the new Planck data apparently disagree. In general, experimental findings continue to support the Standard Model. As New Scientist’s editors put it in a 2012 editorial titled “The Genesis problem”: More

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New video upload: The Universe Had a Beginning - Stephen C. Meyer, PhD - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrgyPO1g3H4bornagain77
January 14, 2014
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Of somewhat related interest:
Hugh Ross PhD. - Scientific Evidence For Cosmological Constant (Expansion Of The Universe) http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4347218/
Here are the verses in the Bible Dr. Ross listed, which were written well over 2000 years before the discovery of the finely tuned expansion of the universe by 'Dark Energy', that speak of God 'Stretching out the Heavens'; Job 9:8; Isaiah 40:22; Isaiah 44:24; Isaiah 48:13; Zechariah 12:1; Psalm 104:2; Isaiah 42:5; Isaiah 45:12; Isaiah 51:13; Jeremiah 51:15; Jeremiah 10:12. The following verse is my favorite out of the group of verses:
Job 9:8 He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.
Here is the paper from the atheistic astrophysicists, that Dr. Ross referenced in the preceding video, that speaks of the ‘disturbing implications’ of the finely tuned expanding universe (1 in 10^120 cosmological constant):
Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant - Dyson, Kleban, Susskind (each are self proclaimed atheists) - 2002 Excerpt: "Arranging the universe as we think it is arranged would have required a miracle.,,," "A external agent [external to time and space] intervened in cosmic history for reasons of its own.,,," Page 21 "The only reasonable conclusion is that we don't live in a universe with a true cosmological constant". http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0208013.pdf
Besides the evidence that Dr. Ross listed for the 1 in 10^120 finely tuned expansion of the universe, this following paper clearly indicates that we do live in universe with a ‘true cosmological constant’. A cosmological constant that is not reducible to a materialistic basis. Thus, the atheistic astrophysicists are at a complete loss to explain why the universe expands in such a finely tuned way, whereas Theists are vindicated once again in their beliefs that the universal constants are truly transcendent!
Dark energy alternatives to Einstein are running out of room – January 9, 2013 Excerpt: Last month, a group of European astronomers, using a massive radio telescope in Germany, made the most accurate measurement of the proton-to-electron mass ratio ever accomplished and found that there has been no change in the ratio to one part in 10 million at a time when the universe was about half its current age, around 7 billion years ago. When Thompson put this new measurement into his calculations, he found that it excluded almost all of the dark energy models using the commonly expected values or parameters. If the parameter space or range of values is equated to a football field, then almost the whole field is out of bounds except for a single 2-inch by 2-inch patch at one corner of the field. In fact, most of the allowed values are not even on the field. “In effect, the dark energy theories have been playing on the wrong field,” Thompson said. “The 2-inch square does contain the area that corresponds to no change in the fundamental constants, (a 'true cosmological constant'), and that is exactly where Einstein stands.” http://phys.org/news/2013-01-dark-energy-alternatives-einstein-room.html
Music:
Third Day Tunnel (video official) HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWy2tplrytM
bornagain77
January 13, 2014
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What was interesting to me in Alexander Vilenkin's work, even though he took the quasi infinite many worlds of inflation into consideration,,,
"The conclusion is that past-eternal inflation is impossible without a beginning." Alexander Vilenkin - from pg. 35 'New Proofs for the Existence of God' by Robert J. Spitzer (of note: A elegant thought experiment of a space traveler traveling to another galaxy, that Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin, used to illustrate the validity of the proof, is on pg. 35 of the book as well.) Inflationary spacetimes are not past-complete - Borde-Guth-Vilenkin - 2003 Excerpt: inflationary models require physics other than inflation to describe the past boundary of the inflating region of spacetime. http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012 “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” - Cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston - paper delivered at Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday party (Characterized as 'Worst Birthday Present Ever') https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/vilenkins-verdict-all-the-evidence-we-have-says-that-the-universe-had-a-beginning/
,, what was interesting to me in his work is that, even though Vilenkin took the many worlds of inflation into consideration, was the fact that the he took his heaviest flack (and outright misrepresentation of his work) for saying that the universe must have had a beginning even if you take the quasi-infinite many worlds of inflation into consideration,,,
How Atheists Take Alexander Vilenkin (& the BVG Theorem) Out Of Context - William Lane Craig - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z79FGmh50Xo William Lane Craig posts full Vilenkin e-mail (that was dishonestly) misrepresented by Krauss in their debate - Sept. 23, 2013 http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/william-lane-craig-posts-full-text-of-vilenkin-e-mail-misrepresnted-by-lawrence-krauss/
Why this was interesting to me in all this is that the fact the universe has a beginning has many lines of evidence all converging to the fact that the universe must have had a beginning,
The Scientific Evidence For The Big Bang - Michael Strauss PhD. - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4323668
Whereas the postulation inflation itself has much less evidence going for it,
The Absurdity of Inflation, String Theory and The Multiverse - Dr. Bruce Gordon - video http://vimeo.com/34468027
in fact inflation now has much evidence going against it,,
One of cosmic (Rapid) inflation theory’s creators now questions own theory - April 2011 Excerpt: (Rapid) Inflation adds a whole bunch of really unlikely metaphysical assumptions — a new force field that has a never-before-observed particle called the “inflaton”, an expansion faster than the speed of light, an interaction with gravity waves which are themselves only inferred– just so that it can explain the unlikely contingency of a finely-tuned big bang. But instead of these extra assumptions becoming more-and-more supported, the trend went the opposite direction, with more-and-more fine-tuning of the inflation assumptions until they look as fine-tuned as Big Bang theories. At some point, we have “begged the question”. Frankly, the moment we add an additional free variable, I think we have already begged the question. In a Bayesean comparison of theories, extra variables reduce the information content of the theory, (by the so-called Ockham factor), so these inflation theories are less, not more, explanatory than the theory they are supposed to replace.,,, after 20 years of work, if we haven’t made progress, but have instead retreated, it is time to cut bait. https://uncommondescent.com/cosmology/cosmology-one-of-cosmic-inflation-theory%E2%80%99s-creators-now-questions-own-theory/ (Materialistic) Inflation Model Severely Questioned In New Paper - October 29. 2013 Excerpt: There has been much talk in scientific circles recently about a 2013 paper by Anna Ijjas, Paul J. Steinhardt and Abraham Loeb, titled, Inflationary paradigm in trouble after Planck2013. The authors of the paper (severely) question the cosmological theory of inflation, which postulates that the universe underwent a period of extremely rapid expansion shortly after the big bang, and that it has been expanding at a slower rate ever since. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/new-cosmology-paper-by-skeptical-scientists-lends-support-to-the-fine-tuning-argument/
Thus this begs the question, at least for me, why was the beginning of the universe attacked so strongly, whereas inflation, even though it had far less evidence going for it, was given a free ride during all of Vilenkin's work with hardly a peep from a majority of cosmologists as to its highly questionable conjecture within physics? It all seemed kind of backwards to me. Sure it was nice to see even such a far fetched theory shot down, but why was the theory of inflation allowed to progress so far a 'serious' science in the first place when it had not earned that right as far as I can tell?bornagain77
January 13, 2014
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semi OT: Quantum Mechanics Explains Efficiency of Photosynthesis - Jan. 9, 2014 Excerpt: Previous experiments suggest that energy is transferred in a wave-like manner, exploiting quantum phenomena, but crucially, a non-classical explanation could not be conclusively proved as the phenomena identified could equally be described using classical physics.,,, Now, a team at UCL have attempted to identify features in these biological systems which can only be predicted by quantum physics, and for which no classical analogues exist. ,,,said Alexandra Olaya-Castro (UCL Physics & Astronomy), supervisor and co-author of the research. "We found that the properties of some of the chromophore vibrations that assist energy transfer during photosynthesis can never be described with classical laws, and moreover, this non-classical behaviour enhances the efficiency of the energy transfer.",,, Other biomolecular processes such as the transfer of electrons within macromolecules (like in reaction centres in photosynthetic systems), the structural change of a chromophore upon absorption of photons (like in vision processes) or the recognition of a molecule by another (as in olfaction processes), are influenced by specific vibrational motions. The results of this research therefore suggest that a closer examination of the vibrational dynamics involved in these processes could provide other biological prototypes exploiting truly non-classical phenomena http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109092008.htmbornagain77
January 13, 2014
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