The Universe Is Made Out of… Fudge!
[Guest article] According to the July issue of Astronomy magazine, the Universe is comprised mostly of fudge – or at least fudge factors, anyway. The article by James Trefil from George Mason University describes the current thinking among astrophysicists as to the eventual fate of the universe. Since the Big Bang, there has been an expansion:
On one hand, the expansion could reverse, in which case, all the matter in the universe would come together again – the Big Crunch… On the other hand, the expansion could go on forever, leading to a bleak, cold, and empty future – the Big Chill.
There is a happy medium called the “flat universe,” where we don’t Crunch or Chill, but coast happily outward forever.
There is a quantity of matter in the universe necessary for the happy coasting. It is called the critical density, and theorists believe that the universe must be at that value in order to observe what we see today. There is a problem, however: “If you count up all the stuff astronomers see – stars, dust clouds, and other kinds of ordinary, or baryonic, matter – it totals about 4 percent of the critical density.” This is way too little to get to the critical density.
In addition, astronomers note that galaxies rotate strangely. The arms of the galaxies, being further away, should, over time, separate from the inner regions of the galaxy. Enter fudge factor #1, “dark matter:”
The only way for this to happen is for the visible galaxy to be surrounded by a sphere, or halo, of something else – something not visible, something dark. This stuff is called ‘dark matter’.
Even though it is not visible, the author states, “We know that over 90 percent of material in galaxies like the Milky Way is dark matter….” Even when you add this generous fudge to the universe, “the density of the universe comes to about a third of the critical density.”
The Big Bang theory predicted that if we were able to measure the velocity of galaxies over time, it would follow a profile one would expect of an energetic explosion – high velocity early, then a slowing as the energy of the explosion dissipated. The physicists devised a method by which they could observe more distant stars, where distance equates to farther looks into the past by their reckoning, and see what earlier velocities were. Unfortunately, there was a bombshell:
Against all expectations, they found the most distant galaxies are receding from Earth more slowly than nearby ones… The expansion is accelerating!
Enter fudge factor #2: “dark energy.” In order to make the expansion get faster later, physicists had to attribute to dark energy the ability to counteract the slowing force of gravity with an impulsive force that would boost the expansion enough to account for the faster current rates. The matter equivalent of dark energy (remember E=mc2 ?) fills up the rest of the matter required to bring the universe to critical density. This dark energy, by the way, is also invisible and unobservable.
Between dark matter and dark energy, these fudge factors fill in gaps of 96 percent of what is observed in order to get old-age math to work out. This helps physicists feel optimistic that in a few tens of billions of years, we won’t Crunch or Chill.
Evolutionists accuse creationists of inventing a “God of the Gaps” to cover for their ignorance of true science. It would appear that the high priests of astrophysics have their own Gods of the Gaps, namely dark matter and dark energy. What will happen to the universe? It won’t be the Big Crunch or the Big Chill, but the Big Furnace: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:10-13).
—TC