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Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 - Solving the "Unsolvable Problem" 9
Chapter 2 - Creation Week: A Possible Scenario 31
Appendix A - Notes on Previous Related Creationist Theories 43
Appendix B - A Biblical Basis for Creationist Cosmology 53
Appendix C - Progress Toward a Young-Earth
Relativistic Cosmology 83
About the Author:
D. Russell Humphreys, B.S., Ph.D ... was awarded his Ph.D. in physics from Louisiana State University in 1972. For the next 6 years he worked in the High Voltage Laboratory of General Electric Company, designing and inventing equipment and researching high-voltage phenomena. ... Since 1979 he has worked for Sandia National Laboratories in nuclear physics, geophysics, pulsed-power research, and theoretical atomic and nuclear physics. Since 1985 he has been working with Sandia’s Particle Beam Fusion Project ... He has published some 20 papers in secular scientific journals, as well as many creationist technical papers. ... is an adjunct professor of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, a board member of the Creation Research Society, and is president of the Creation Science Fellowship of New Mexico.
Foreword by Ken Ham:
Creationist research has exposed many of the weaknesses and flaws in evolutionary philosophy, and has provided answers in such areas as geology and biology. These contributions have given public speakers such as myself a good degree of confidence to give "reasons for what we believe" when challenged by opponent.
However, if I were asked whether there were any major places of weakness in the creationist armor, I would have to admit that it has been (till now at least) in the area of .
... until I read Dr. Russ Humphreys’ new creationist cosmology as outlined in this book, I was not convinced of real progress towards a complete, scientifically satisfying framework. ... see in this book such a God-honoring approach in a scientific discipline that has involved meticulous work (by a scientist well qualified in his field, with review by qualified peers) in this area of front-line importance in the "battle for the Bible." Some traditional creationist concepts will be challenged ... but we need to remember that scientific theories and models are always subject to change -- the Word of God is not.
... learn of viable answers to those within and without the Christian camp who would challenge a real six-day creation because of Big Bang theories and the starlight questions.
Back Cover:
"The
Bible says the universe is just thousands of years old, and
yet we can see stars that are billions of light-years away. Until now,
creation scientists have not had a satisfactory answer to this puzzle,
but the new cosmology outlined in this book offers a fresh and scientifically
sound solution. Though he challenges some traditional creationist theories,
Dr. Humphreys takes Scripture very straightforwardly, upholding its inerrancy
and the idea of a young universe as he explains days one through four of
Creation Week. This book not only contains an easy-to-read popular summary
of this new cosmology, but also two technical papers which were very well
received at the Third International Conference on Creationism.
pg9 Chapter 1: Solving the "Unsolvable Problem"
Whenever I have spoken on the positive physical evidences for a recent creation, an extremely common question ... "If the universe is so young, how can we see light from stars that are more than 10,000 light-years away?" A light-year is the distance that light travels at its present speed in one year, ...
... A relatively close neighboring galaxy, M31 in Andromeda, is supposed to be so distant that light traveling at today’s speed would take about two million years to reach us. At that speed, if the universe were only six to ten thousand years old, the first light from the Andromeda galaxy could hardly have traveled more than a few percent of its way toward earth. Yet stargazers in the northern hemisphere can see it with binoculars.
p10 In the southern hemisphere, people can see our nearest neighbor galaxies, the two Magellanic clouds, with the naked eye. Yet they are supposed to be on the order of 100,000 light years away. The most distant galaxy astronomers have observed to date is supposed to be about 12 billion light years away. If the universe is young, ... how can we be seeing the light from such distant objects?
Some laymen pondering this question wonder if the astronomers’ estimates of distances might be greatly in error. I don’t think so. Astronomers have dozens of methods for estimating such distances, all of which generally agree with one another. Many of the methods, especially for closer objects such as the Andromeda galaxy, are based on very reasonable assumptions, such as the overall size or brightness of a galaxy.
For that reason, I am convinced that the large distances are generally correct, at least within a factor of two or so. Certainly, it is hard to imagine how correcting errors in all these methods could somehow shrink, say the 12 billion ly mentioned above down to 10,000 lys. Thus the question represents a problem which is very real and needs to be answered.
Because of the testimony of Scripture and the weight of other evidence favoring a recent creation, young-earth creationists have tried a number of theories to explain how the light from distant galaxies got here in less than 10,000 years. These have thus far not been very successful (Appendix A). Since 1985 I have been working on a new theory to explain this problem and other large-scale phenomena in the cosmos, such as red shifts in the light from distant galaxies and the cosmic microwave background radiation (Appendix C).
p11 Two papers of mine on this new young-earth creationist cosmology (an alternative to the Big Bang) have had very positive peer review at the Third International Conference on Creationism (ICC). They are reprinted in Appendices B & C for those readers wanting more technical details. Cosmology is a very complex and subtle subject, but I will try to strip it down to the bare essentials here.
GRAVITY DISTORTS TIME - ... The theory utilizes Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which is the best theory of gravity we have today. General relativity (GR) has been well-established experimentally, and is the physics framework for all modern cosmologies. According to GR, gravity affects time. Clocks at low altitude should tick more slowly than clocks at a high altitude - and observations confirm this effect, which some call gravitational time dilation. (Not to be confused with the better-known "velocity" time dilation in Einstein’s special relativity theory.)
For example, an atomic clock at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, ticks five microseconds per year slower than an identical clock at the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado, both clocks being accurate to about one microsecond per
p12 year. The difference is exactly what general relativity predicts for the one-mile difference in altitude. ... Which one is showing (or running at) the "right time"? Both are - in their own frame of reference. There is no longer any way to say which is the "correct" rate at which time runs - it all depends on where you are in relation to a gravitational field. A large variety of more precise experiments has confirmed gravitational time dilation to an accuracy of better than one percent - it’s for real!
The effect applies to the rates of all physical processes - the earth rotating beneath your feet, decay of atomic nuclei in your bones, how fast you get old, the ticking of the watch on your wrist, and the speed of nerve impulses in your brain. This means that locally, the effect is unnoticeable. Whatever measurements were made at one altitude would not show the effect, because everything at that altitude
p13 would be slowed by the same factor. You would have to compare clocks at different altitudes to see a difference.
SIX REAL EARTH-DAYS: What this new cosmology shows is that gravitational time distortion in the early universe would have meant that while a few days were passing on earth, billions of years would have been available for light to travel to earth. It still means that God made the heavens and earth (i.e., the whole universe) in six ordinary days, only a few thousand years ago. But with the reality revealed by GR, we now know that we have to ask - six days as measured by which clock? In which frame of reference? The mathematics of this new theory shows that while God makes the universe in six days in the earth’s reference frame (Earth Standard Time, if you like), the light has ample time in the extra-terrestrial reference frame to travel the required distances.
None of these time frames can be said to be "God’s time" since the Creator, who sees the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10, Rev. 22:13, John 8:58, and more) is outside of time. Time is a created feature of His universe, like matter and space. It is interesting that the equations of GR have long indicated that time itself had a
It might be suspected that such a startling result requires some fairly creative manipulation, but interestingly, the result "falls out" of the equations of GR (the same mathematical machinery used to generate the Big Bang theory), just as does the Big Bang. The crucial reason why such different cosmologies come out of the same mathematics is that two different (but absolutely ) starting points (initial assumptions) are utilized, as we will see. We need to understand more about Big Bang theory to be able to understand this creationist alternative.
p14 WHAT THE BIG BANG THEORISTS FAIL TO TELL YOU - Most non-experts (in fact, most scientists not trained in cosmology) are unaware that the universe by the Big Bang theorist has no boundaries, no edge and no center. Most people visualize the Big Bang as ... like a ball of matter expanding into space -- but that would imply that it had boundaries, and that’s not how the experts see it. They prefer to ASSUME that there is no edge to the 3-dimensional space we live in -- or to the matter therein. (See, for example, the well-known undergraduate text by cosmologist Edward R. Harrison, Cosmology: The Science of the Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1981, especially pp. 106-107.)
There are basically two versions of Big-Bang cosmology. The most popular one is the finite form, which maintains that if you traveled in space far enough, though you wouldn’t ever reach the edge (there is none in this version), you could (if you could travel fast enough) end up coming right back to your starting point. Imagine an ant crawling on the surface of a
P16 balloon - it never reaches the edge of its 2-dimensional space - there is none! But this space is nevertheless not infinitely large, and the ant could end up at its starting point just by traveling in a straight line.
Now imagine sequins (representing galaxies, for instance) pasted on and uniformly spotting the surface of the balloon. As the balloon expands in 3 dimensions, so this 2-dimensional space on its surface stretches and causes each sequin to move away from every other sequin. Now hang onto your hats, because it’s really impossible for anyone to actually imagine a fourth dimension, but the equations of GR seem to require that space have an extra dimension (one more than length, breath, and width - and I’m not referring to time as the extra dimension). To understand a little more of what the Big Bang theory is saying, we have to move our sequin/balloon example up by one dimension, as follows.
p17 We’ve seen that the 3-dimensional (3-D) expansion of the balloon causes the "galaxies" to move apart in 2-D. Just so, the Big Bang proposes that our 3-D space is on the "surface" of a 4-D sphere which is undergoing a 4-D expansion. The resultant effect is to cause galaxies to move away from all other galaxies in 3-D space.
There is no "center" to this proposed expansion, just as, on the surface of the balloon, there is no central point from which all other sequins are receding. On the balloon, the sequins which began furthest away from each other are moving apart more rapidly. This is given as the reason that the further a galaxy is from earth, the faster it appears to be moving away from us. The shift of its light to the red end of the spectrum is interpreted as a measure of its speed, although Appendix C explains that such a "Doppler effect" is not really what general relativists think is the cause of such "redshifting".
Incidentally, this hopefully explains an aspect of Big Bang theory many non-experts find puzzling. If, they
p18 say, distant galaxies are all believed to be moving away from us, then surely that means we’re supposed to be in the center of the "bang"? The answer, as we have seen, is that in Big-Bang theory, somebody on one of those distant galaxies also sees the same sort of redshift pattern we do, and would be able to interpret this as if distant galaxies were receding from that point. (Because every galaxy is supposed to be moving away from every other galaxy in 3-D.)
In the infinite version of the Big Bang, by the way, it is that matter and space are infinite - you would just keep traveling forever and come across more and more space and matter. The space is expanding, but across an infinite vista. According to these theories, if you went traveling in the early universe, you would find matter to be more dense and very hot, but again you could travel forever and would never come to a region where there was no matter.
WHY NO BOUNDARY? Why do Big-Bang cosmologists use as their starting point the ASSUMPTION (which seems quite contrary to common sense) that the universe has no boundary? Is there some good scientific reason, or is it perhaps demanded or even suggested by well-established, experimentally-backed theory, like general relativity?
The answer is no. It is an ASSUMPTION, called the "cosmological principle," or more recently the "Copernican principle." This ASSUMES that
p19 (whether the universe is finite - like that of the ant on the balloon - or infinite) there is no edge and no center. On a large enough scale, matter is evenly distributed around us. Therefore, it is asked, if there were an edge, they why don’t we see more galaxies on one side of us than on the other?
This would be easy to explain if we were in a special place close to the center. Such a "special arrangement" is exceedingly improbable on a chance basis. It therefore strongly smacks of purpose, and is thus unpalatable to most theorists today, who in a universe ruled by randomness. So it is simply that there is no center, and no boundary. In this assumption, every part of the universe will appear to have matter evenly distributed around it as well.
It may not be unfair to suggest another possible reason for the near-universal acceptance of this assumption. To allow the possibility of anything "outside" the universe (perhaps God?) makes it harder to hold the position that the universe is "all there is" (the popular position of philosophical materialism).
Why have I spent so much time on this belief in an unbounded universe? In such a universe, every galaxy is surrounded by an even distribution of other galaxies, and there is no net gravitational force (on a large enough scale). However, if the universe is bounded, then there would be a center of mass and a net gravitational force, and we could begin to consider the time-distorting effects of gravity on a massive scale.
p20 In such a universe, clocks at the edge of the universe would be ticking at a rate different from clocks at the center. However, this effect, though significant, would be nowhere near enough to give the huge time dilation mentioned.
Returning to the "unbounded" assumption: when this is fed into the "hopper" of general relativity, the Big-Bang cosmology "falls out" -- it is a natural consequence of the equations. Actually, two options fall out: either things are expanding from a Big Bang or they are collapsing into a Big Crunch. The choice between the two is made on the basis of observations which certainly indicate that things are
p21 not collapsing. In fact, there is sound observational evidence that the universe has expanded.
However, what if we begin our calculations with the opposite assumption, equally scientifically valid, namely that matter in the universe has a center and an edge (is bounded)? This makes more common sense and is also Scripturally far more appropriate.
When we feed in this, plus the same observations, into general relativity, quite a different cosmology falls out.
I call it a "WHITE HOLE" cosmology for reasons to become clearer shortly -- and it just happens to solve the problem of the starlight travel-time rather neatly.
EXPANSION AFFECTS THE TIME DIFFERENCE -
For a given amount of matter, the bigger the radius in which it is contained, the less the effect of gravitational time dilation. If we assume that the matter we can observe with telescopes is all there is (i.e., the edge of matter is closer than, say, 20 billion light-years), than our clocks are ticking only a few percent slower than clocks near the edge. This is not enough to solve the problem.
However, when I referred to this new cosmology as "falling out," I mentioned that observations had to be fed into the "hopper" as well. After many years of studying the evidence, I am convinced that the observations indicate that the universe has indeed expanded significantly, by a factor of at least one thousand (Appendix C).
p22 There also appears to be Scriptural evidence for such an expansion; for example, the following verse: "Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in." Isaiah 40:22
My exegetical ICC article lists 17 such verses throughout the Old Testament (see reprint in Appendix B). The verses use four different Hebrew verbs and occur in a wide variety of contexts. Their frequency and diversity suggested to me as far back as 1985 that they might not be mere metaphors. Instead, they could be referring to the same expansion of space permitted in GR and used in many cosmologies.
Thus, there seem to be both Biblical and scientific reasons for thinking the universe was much smaller in the past. In a bounded universe, some startling effects would then occur.
BLACK HOLES AND EVENT HORIZONS -
Imagine this bounded universe when it was about 50 times smaller than today (see page 107). The equations of GR would then allow the universe to be in one of two states (no other states are possible). One of the possibilities ... is that the whole universe would be inside a huge black hole.
Black holes are more than just theoretical concepts. They are, first, direct predictions of general relativity, which is backed by a great deal of experimental evidence. In addition, most astronomers are convinced they have observational evidence of possibly
p23 three star-sized black holes, and very strong evidence for another one, millions of times larger. As huge quantities of matter fall toward such black holes, copious amounts of energy are given off. The giant one, recently discovered, is at the center of the galaxy M87; astronomers know of no cause other than a black hole to explain what they observe.
Black holes can be very small or very large - it all depends on the amount of matteer packed within a given radius. The combined gravitational force of all the mass inside a black hole is so strong that light rays cannot escape - hence the name.
This means that all the matter within our 50-times-smaller universe would have been trapped within an intangible spherical border called the event horizon, at least a billion light-years in diameter. This is the point at which light rays trying to escape a black hole bend back on themselves; it is also where time is massively distorted.
The diameter of an event horizon depends on the amount of matter inside it. This means that the event horizon of, say, a star-sized black hole, the gravity of which causes it to swallow more and more matter, will increase - like a fat man gorging himself and growing ever fatter.
Matter and light can exist inside a black hole; however, the equations of GR require that they must fall inward, eventually reaching the "singularity" at the center, where they would be crushed down to a pinpoint of nearly infinite density. However, as mentioned, the evidence indicates that the universe
p24 has expanded and is not currently undergoing such an overall inward-falling. Therefore the universe cannot now be within a black hole.
Given a bounded universe that was once 50 times smaller, the other possibility allowed by GR is that the universe was previously in a huge white hole. This is a black hole running in reverse. Astrophysicists of the 1970’s gave that name to the concept, arising from theoretical studies of black holes. The name never really became popular, but the concept is still considered valid today.
Like a black hole, a white hole would also have an event horizon. Matter and light could exist inside its event horizon without any particular problems. There need be no singularity at its center, except perhaps at the very beginning of its existence. However, the equations of GR require that light and matter inside the event horizon of a white hole must expand outward.
The event horizon of a white hole would be a one-way border which permits only outward motion through itself. Matter and light waves would have to move out of a white hole, but they could not go back in. Since the diameter of an event horizon is proportional to the amount of matter inside it, the event horizon would shrink as matter passes through it and out of the white hole. The analogy would be a fat man on a very strict diet - no input allowed, only output! Eventually, he would waste away. In the same
p25 way, the event horizon would get smaller and smaller, and eventually shrink to nothing. There would then be no more white hole, but only scattered matter moving away from a central point.
SOME SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS -
Remember, I did not invent these seemingly strange ideas about black and white holes. Instead, they are a consequence of the best knowledge we have today about gravity. The equations of GR permit, but do not demand, the existence of white holes today.
We see, therefore, from this discussion (and Appendix C) that, just by starting with the ASSUMPTION that the universe is bounded (and accepting the overwhelming observational evidence that it has expanded), the following deductive sequence applies.
1. The visible universe was once inside an event horizon.
This means it was once either within a black hole or a white hole. We have seen that if it were a black hole, it would be contracting, which is not indicated by the evidence. Therefore:
2. The visible universe was once inside a white hole.
It may, however, have commenced as a black hole before expansion started - Appendix C. If the universe is not much bigger or much denser than what we can directly observe right now (see Appendix C for other possibilities), then calculations in Appendix C show that an event horizon can no longer exist. This means that the
p26 event horizon has shrunk to zero radius sometime in the past, meaning that an expansion of space continued at least until the white hole ceased to exist.
So from all the physics and astronomical data we now know, we can draw a straightforward conclusion:
If
the universe is bounded, then sometime in its past the universe must have
expanded out of
a
WHITE HOLE.
An unbounded universe (such as a Big-Bang cosmos) could never be in a black or white hole at any time in its history, because there would be no center in 3-D
p27 space for gravitational forces to point
to. Thus, unbounded and bounded cosmologies are profoundly different.
Both
types of cosmology are equally rigorous deductions from their starting
So the main scientific question is this: which input assumption gives a better explanation of the cosmos we live in?
The following sections show how the White Hole cosmology can explain the same data as the Big Bang, while retaining the idea of a young earth. But more than that, the White Hole cosmology seems to have a very good chance of explaining data which the Big Bang cannot (Appendix C).
EVENT HORIZONS AND TIME -
Strange things happen to time near an event horizon. In his popular book A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books, 1988, p. 87) Stephen Hawking tells the story of a man, say an astronaut, falling toward the event horizon of a black hole. I paraphrase it here as following: "The astronaut is scheduled to reach the event horizon at 12:00 noon, as measured by his watch. As he falls toward it, a dark sphere blocking off the starry background, an astronomer watching him from far away sees that the astronaut’s watch is ticking slower and slower. By the astronomer’s wall clock, it takes an hour for the astronaut’s watch to go from 11:57 am to 11:58. And then a day to reach 11:59! The astronomer never does see the astronaut’s watch reach 12:00. Instead, he sees
p28 the motionless images of the astronaut and his watch getting redder and dimmer, finally fading from view completely.
Hawking didn’t describe much of what the astronaut could see, so here I take up his story: "As the astronaut approaches the event horizon, he looks back through binoculars at the astronomer’s wall clock and sees it running faster and faster. He sees the astronomer moving rapidly around the laboratory like a video in fast-forward. He sees planets and stars moving very rapidly in their orbits. The whole universe far away from him is moving at a frenzied place, aging rapidly. Yet the astronaut sees that his own watch is ticking normally. When his watch reaches 12:00 noon, the astronaut sees the hands of the astronomer’s wall clock moving forward so fast they are just a blur. As he crosses the event horizon, he feels no particular sensation, but now he sees bright light inside the horizon. His watch reaches 12:01 and continues ticking.
The main point is that according to GR, time effectively stands still at the event horizon. Clocks and all physical processes at that location are stopped, and near that location they run very slowly (relative to clocks away from it). We have already shown how the scientific evidence indicates that the universe (with the earth roughly at its center) must have expanded out of a WHITE HOLE which no longer exists. This means that the event horizon shrank down to zero. (GR sets no limit on the speed at which such a shrinkage can take place, incidentally.)
p29 If you were standing on the earth as the event horizon arrived, distant objects in the universe could age billions of years in a single day of your time. And there would be ample time for their light to reach you.
WHAT IS THE BIBLICAL TIME STANDARD?
In a bounded universe, clocks in different places can tick (or register time) at drastically different rates. So which set of clocks is the Bible referring to in Genesis 1, or in Exodus 20:11, when it says that God made the universe in six ordinary weekdays?
In Appendix B, I show Scriptural
evidence (Genesis 1:5, 1:14-15) that God’s intention was to define time
in terms of the earth’s rotation and the earth’s motion around the sun,
thus speaking of periods of time in our own frame of reference. This is
quite reasonable in a book intended to be understood by people of widely
different cultures and degrees of scientific knowledge. Therefore, it looks
as if the Bible is telling us that God made the universe in six days E.S.T.
--
p31 Chapter 2 CREATION WEEK: A POSSIBLE
SCENARIO
P43 APPENDIX A
NOTES ON PREVIOUS RELATED CREATIONIST THEORIES
1. Mature Creation
A large number of creationists has favored this theory for many decades (see the astrophysics paper in appendix C for references). I myself held it as a young creationist. Also called the "created-in-transit" theory, it holds that when God created all the particles in the universe, He also instantaneously created, in transit along their paths, all the light waves which would have been emitted by those particles for billions of years prior to their creation. Thus, He would have created a cosmos filled with light waves, all traveling in various directions toward various destinations.
It is certainly possible that God could have done such a thing, but I now know of 5 problems with the idea:
1. Its proponents cite no decisive Biblical support for it, i.e., statements in the Bible which would clearly favor this theory over another. Furthermore, it appears that there is no Biblical reason for God to have set up such an illusion. For example, the seeming age of Adam is made necessary by God’s desire to create him as a mature adult. But in contrast, proponents of the theory offer no particular reason why God could not have done away with the necessity for illusion by simply letting us see only as much of the universe as a simple interpretation of the speed of light would permit. Except for parts of the Milky Way, most of the stars visible to the naked eye are closer than 6000 light-years.
2. Most of the events astronomers observe would never have happened. For example consider a star explosion which astronomers observed in early 1987. This bright explosion, called Supernova 1987a, took place in one of the Magellanic Clouds (see introduction), about 160,000 light-years away from us. It was visible to the naked eye, and astronomers were (and are) very excited about it.
According to the "in-transit" theory, during creation week God would have made, about 6000 light-years away from us along the path between us and the Magellanic clouds, the light-wave images of an exploding star. He would also have had to have made the high-energy particles (gamma rays and neutrinos), as observed, from the exploded supernova. At the same instant of creation, further out along the path, He would have made images of an already-exploded star and its expanding shell of debris.
To be consistent, at the end of the 160,000 light-year path, God would also during creation week have made an actual supernova remnant (a dead neutron star), seemingly 160,000 years old with a large debris shell around it.
But according to the "in-transit" theory, in spite of the images and particles astronomers observed, no actual supernova explosion would have ever happened!
This sort of fictional interpretation of events that we see in the sky would deny astronomy most of its value as a study of the real world. It would make the study of distant stars into a kind of theological literary criticism -- a study of the fiction God would havve chosen to write for us in the sky. And if most of what the heavens declare to us were fictional, then according to Psalm 19:1 ("The heavens declare the glory of God"), most of the glory of God would also be fictional. This philosophical-theological problem does not bother some supporters of the "in-transit" theory, but it disturbs many other people, including myself.
3. The theory has little explanatory power. For example, it explains neither galactic red shifts nor the cosmic microwave background, except to say that for some incomprehensible reason God chose to support the Big Bang theory by manufacturing seeming evidence for it in the sky.
4. The theory is untestable, because it makes no scientific predictions.
5. The theory discourages deeper investigation. It reminds me of the 17th-century theory that the fossils were created by God just to puzzle men and test their faith! If all creationists had remained content with such a view of the fossils, we would today be denied the tremendous explanatory power of flood geology. In a similar way, we should not remain content with the "created-in-transit" theory, lest we overlook a much better explanation.
... See the book for the rest of the story.
Note: A commentary on Dr. Humphreys’ White Hole theory is contained within the
ICR Web Site and can be referred to by clicking on the below URL: