Universe

Science and the Supernatural

Everyone wonders where everything began, regardless of outlook regarding religion, cultural history, and education. Religious people believe that God, or gods, created the universe by supernatural power. Others see no need to invoke the supernatural, and view it as just an unknown - a very large unknown - the ultimate unknown. You can find any manner of combination of those two viewpoints.

For most scientists, events and phenomena that occurred during history should be explained using the methods of science, but for the ultimate question about the beginning of our Universe, some scientists wonder about the possibility of the supernatural, in identifying evidence of design or "fine-tuning" that might be inherent to the structure of matter. To each their own on this most perplexing of questions about the ultimate origin of matter. However, recent attempts to bring in the supernatural by interpreting "intelligent design" during history miss the mark, because if you do this you violate a basic requirement that hypotheses be testable and you block or slow our attempts at understanding things, which we are completely capable of doing.

The Big Bang Hypothesis

You've heard of the Big Bang idea probably, as it tends to come up in campfire discussions or during attempts at "deep" discussion, or discussion of the "meaning of Life." Big Bang research encompasses the point of origin of all matter in the Universe. Just as for the origin of the Earth itself, or for the Solar System, or for the origin of Life, scientists don't balk at the notion of asking questions here - scientists ask questions about anything and everything, as far back as they can go. Scientists consider the instants after the point of creation, down to the finest divisions of the millisecond, to be fair game for asking meaningful questions. In fact, for scientists working in cosmology, Big Bang research is a fascinating and productive area of inquiry, where there is confidence in results.

The setup for the Big Bang idea is simple. All objects that we observe, stars and galaxies and molecular clouds, are seen to move away from us and each other. How do we see this motion? By observing light shining from stars and other luminous matter. Discoveries by Albert Einstein and others like Edwin Hubble lead to an understanding that the color of star light shows a "red shift," which indicates the relative motion away from an observer. We take advantage of this phenomenon when we use Doppler radar to sense the motion of rain in violent thunderstorms. We may use the example of a train's horn for understanding this:

1. Imagine a long straight section of railroad track. You are standing at a train station along the track.
2. You hear a distant train, blowing its horn. You listen to the pitch of the horn.
3. The horn gets louder and louder, but the pitch stays high. You gather that the train is coming toward you.
4. As soon as the train passes the station (this train is a "through" train), you notice the pitch of the horn suddenly gets lower.
5. As the train moves away, the horn gets fainter in volume, but the pitch stays low.

The next day you return to the station, and apply what you learned about the pitch of train horns. Without needing to see a train, you can tell if it is coming toward you or away from you, simply by listening to the pitch of the sound. A higher pitch indicates that the train is coming toward you, and vice versa for a lower pitch.

Here's what is happening with the horn's pitch. As the train approaches your position, the velocity of the train adds to the velocity of sound and serves to "compress" the sound waves toward you:

                                           * (((((((((((((((((((((((((( <-train
                                          You

But, when the train is moving away from your position, the velocity of the train subtracts from the velocity of sound and serves to "stretch" the sound waves:

           <-train ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) *
                                          You

What we call pitch, with sound, has to do with the frequency of energy pulses. When the train is approaching, the energy pulses are more frequent (higher pitch) vs. less frequent when it is moving away (lower pitch).

For starlight and the motion of stars and galaxies, it is the same sort of thing, except that instead of sound it is light we observe. "Compressing" and "stretching" occurs with light, depending of whether the source of the light is approaching or moving away. And, instead of a difference in pitch, there is a difference in color.

Thus, the red shift of light coming from distant stars and galaxies indicates motion away from us and each other. The geometry of the expanding shape of the universe has been likened to the movement of raisins in a baking cake: the raisins move away from one another as the dough expands. For our vision of the Universe, our vantage point is our planet, within our solar system, within our galaxy. Our vantage point is akin to being on one raisin, and looking out at all the other raisins moving apart.

Observations by telescope, other viewing instruments on Earth and dedicated spacecraft have found continuing support for the Big Bang hypothesis and the expansion of the Universe.

Web Sources

We are finding out more about the timing of the events in the Big Bang, even down to super-fine divisions of the millisecond. NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) is a satellite designed to study the evidence left behind from the Big Bang. You may be interested to see this Christian Science Monitor article about WMAP's implications and science writer John Gribbin's article called Inflation for Beginners.