Singularity
Singularity is an event that due to its nature is assumed to only happened once[1] and that has no natural explanation. Most frequently the term is used in connection with the origin of the universe. When scientific principles were first being developed into the scientific method, scientists like Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and William Kelvin distinguished between primary and secondary (natural) causes. A primary cause was a first cause to explain singularities.[2] Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica argued that when it comes to causes, it is not possible to go to infinity (either there is a first cause or there is no cause at all) and he referred to the first cause as the ultimate cause. He identified it with God, because at least in one respect, a first cause exhibits an important property of the divine: It is uncaused. According to David Berlinski this is a weak (Aquinas's conclusion might not be definitively confirmed as true or false) but not absurd argument that is frequently met with inept objections.[3] Berlinski also argues that the concept of singularity belongs essentially to mathematics and singularities are not experimentally accessible objects that could be weighted, measured, assessed, replicated, balanced, or seen by any modality of the senses.[4]
On the other hand, when contemporary physicists refer to a singularity, they are generally referring to an event or situation in which one or more physical quantities (like temperature or density) approach infinite value[5] as another parameter goes to zero. There is however a problem how to interpret such terms as an infinite temperature, infinite mass, infinite energy or infinite force in the realms of physics. That's why many naturalistic physicists assume that there is some new set of physical laws[6] or some new way of looking at the problem needed to make the apparent singularity go away.[7]
The big bang singularity
The big bang singularity or the cosmic singularity refers to a conjectured state at the beginning of universe in which material particles were at no distance from one another and the temperature, density, and curvature of the universe were infinite. The inference to this state is based on the evidence that the universe is expanding and thus it has established a clear path into the past. If expanding things (the large scale structure of the universe) are now far apart, they must at one point have been close together. At the singularity itself, a great many physical parameters zoom to infinity. This posts however a great problem for attempts for naturalistic explanations of the beginning of the universe since as the astronomer Joseph Silk observed, an indefinitely dense universe is where the laws of physics, and even space and time, break down.[3] He further asserts that a state of infinite density is completely unacceptable as a physical description of the universe.[4] According to Alan Guth, "In spite of the fact that we call it the Big Bang theory it really says absolutely nothing about the Big Bang. It doesn't tell us what banged, why it banged, what caused it to bang. It doesn't even describe, doesn't really allow us to predict what the conditions are immediately after this bang." Michio Kaku from City University of New York adds that "at the instant of the Big Bang ... we have the centrepiece of the Universe itself, a missing piece beyond physical law".[8]
Many naturalistic scientists are trying to escape the inescapable fact that the universe really did begin by proposing speculative theories including imaginary time (cf. Hawking:"Only if we could picture the universe in terms of imaginary time would there be no singularities...When we go back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still be singularities")[9], string theory, prior universe[10] (cf. Dr.Stenger: "In the scenario I presented, our universe is described as having "tunneled" through the chaos ...from prior universe that existed for all previous time")[5], or put heir hope to quantum mechanics[7]. Some resort to the assertion that the world was uncaused (cf. Carl Sagan: "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be")[2] while other dismiss the question of the first cause altogether (cf. Hawking: "To ask what happened before the universe began is like asking for a point on the Earth at 91 degrees north latitude. Instead of talking about the universe being created, and maybe coming to and end, one should just say: the universe is.")[4].
Antipathy to the idea of beginning
J.C. Lennox points out that the supporters of various schools of materialism let their worldview to play a a role in their antipathy to th eidea of beginning. Among them are Engels (cf. "Did the God created the world, or has the world been in existence eternally?"), Stephen Hawking (cf."the idea that the time has beginning...smacks of divine intervention") and Sir John Maddox, a former editor of Nature (cf. "ultimite origin of our world [gave creationists] ample justification [for their beliefs]").[1]
The naked singularity
The naked singularity is referred to as "a troublesome sibling" of the black hole, which is then considered one of the strangest ideas the modern science ever introduced. Both terms pertain to fate of a massive star that reached the end of its life. Naturalistic scientists believe large star eventually collapses to a black hole or suggest it might instead become a so-called naked singularity. Sorting out what actually happens[11] is declared one of the most important unresolved problems in astrophysics. The speculations about undiscovered naked singularities are part of the quest for a unified theory of physics and they do not provide any direct observational tests of such a theory.[12]
Einstein on singularity
Some scientists argue that when Einstein's general Theory of Relativity is extrapolated back to the beginning [of universe] it is discovered the equations blow up in the region of singularity or a cosmic singularity, respectively.[8] Einstein himself however expressed his following views on this matter: "One may not therefore assume the validity of the [field] equation for very high density of the field and of the matter and one may not conclude that the beginning of the expansion must mean a singularity in the mathematical sense. All we have to realize is that the equations may not be continued over such regions."[4]
Bible and origins
Scientists that are biblical Christians believe that a creation model of the biblical kind clearly predicted a beginning [of the world][1] and thus this can be considered as successful testable prediction giving the credit to predictive power of Biblical message. They warn against the danger of being seduced by speculation masquerading as science, consider cosmic singularity to be compatible with creation of space and time ex nihilo and often cite Arno Penzias, astrophysicist and Nobel laureate who stated in 1978 for The New York Times that "The best data we have (concerning the Big Bang) are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole."[5]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 John C. Lennox (2009). God's undertaker. Has science buried God?. Oxford, England: Lion Hudson, 67-69, 204. ISBN 978-0-7459-5371-7. “Apart from the obvious fact that no one observed [the origin of the universe], scientists think of the Big Bang as a singularity in the past, an unrepeatable event;...”
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks (1990). "10. Questions about Science and Evolution", When Skeptics Ask. Victor Books, Baker Books, 213-215. ISBN 978-0-8010-7164-5. Retrieved on 25.1.2012.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 David Berlinski. "The Cause", The Devil’s Delusion. Basic Books, New York, 2009, 74, 79-82. ISBN 978-0-465-01937-3.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 David Berlinski (2009). "Was there a Big Bang?", The deniable Darwin. Seattle, USA: Discovery Institute Press, 226-228. ISBN 978-0-9790141-2-3.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Edgar Anrews (2010). Who made God? Searching for a theory of everything.. Carlisle, PA, USA: EP Books, 93-94, 101, 121. ISBN 978-0-85234-707-2.
- ↑ ALAN GUTH, Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics. MIT department of physics. “Recently Guth has worked with Alex Vilenkin (Tufts) and Arvind Borde (Southampton College) to show that the inflating region of spacetime must have a past boundary, and that some new physics, perhaps a quantum theory of creation, would be needed to understand it.”
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 What is singularity and why do all laws of physics break down at singularity?. PhysLink.com. “Most people worry about singularities involving general relativity: two examples being a black hole and the singularity that classical general relativity predicts was our universe at the moment it began. If you try to apply the laws of general relativity in these situations you will inevitably find the same 1/x singularities I've been talking about. How are we going to resolve these singularities? We expect quantum mechanics to do the job, since it is the theory that correctly describes physics at small distance scales. Unfortunately, while we have good theories of atomic physics, we don't real have a good theory of quantum gravity. Many of us think string theory will ultimately provide the resolution to these problems. In short then, a singularity represents an infinity and we generally don't think nature is infinite. The problem arises from not having some kind of 'floor' built into a theory that keeps you from taking the limit of 1/x as x goes to zero. The way out is to apply a new theory that has such a floor, such as quantum mechanics or string theory (quantum gravity).”}
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Parallel Universes. BBC (14 February 2002). “NARRATOR: If everything in the Universe was to be explained then String Theory and the Big Bang would now seamlessly merge and they'd complement each other perfectly. After all, one concerned the birth of the Universe and the other all the matter in it. It was surely a foregone conclusion. Physics seemed to be on the edge of glory, but it all went terribly wrong. Try as they might they just couldn't get the two ideas to merge and then, after 10 years of struggling, something even worse happened: their two pet theories now began to self-destruct. The first problem appeared with the Big Bang. The cosmologists had assumed that as they worked backwards in time they would eventually work their way back all the way to the beginning of the Big Bang. There would be no awkward gaps, but after years of end-less refinement there was one gap which refused to disappear, the most important one of all. ALAN GUTH: In spite of the fact that we call it the Big Bang Theory it really says absolutely nothing about the Big Bang. It doesn't tell us what banged, why it banged, what caused it to bang. It doesn't even describe, doesn't really allow us to predict what the conditions are immediately after this bang. MICHIO KAKU: The fundamental problem of cosmology is that the laws of physics as we know them break down at the instant of the Big Bang. Well some people say what's wrong with that, what's wrong with having the laws of physics collapse? Well for a physicist this is a disaster. All our lives we've dedicated to the proposition that the Universe obeys knowable laws, laws that can be written down in the language of mathematics and here we have the centrepiece of the Universe itself, a missing piece beyond physical law. NARRATOR: The very beginning of the Big Bang was the single biggest mystery in all of cosmology. It was called the singularity. PAUL STEINHARDT: When you extrapolate Einstein's general Theory of Relativity back to the beginning you discover what we call a singularity, a cosmic singularity, which is to say that the equations blow up.”
- ↑ Stephen Hawking (1996). A brief history of time. Buntam books, 135. ISBN 0-553-10953-7.
- ↑ Is the Universe finite or infinite? An interview with Joseph Silk. ESA, European Space Agency (2 May 2001). “ESA: We seem to agree that the Big Bang started with an 'inflation', a short period of high-speed expansion. But what happened before that? Joseph Silk: Maybe long before inflation there was a Universe that was collapsing near a singularity, which then inflated again, so there was already a history before the Big Bang. Some people think there was a 'pre-Big Bang'. One possibility is that this pre-Big Bang, if there was such a place, would have made lots of entropy (the amount of disorder in the Universe). And the Universe we live in does have huge amounts of entropy. That's one theory. But we have no understanding of how to change from collapsing to expanding. There's no physical way to explain that transition. Some people believe that they have explanations the pre-Big Bang, so it's a respectable theory.”
- ↑ Nature of the Universe. The University of Hong Kong, Department of Physics; Hong Kong Space Museum. “We call the center of a black hole a singularity. Naively, it has zero radius and infinite density. However, a more accurate statement is that we do not know the physical laws that govern the singularity and we have no idea what happens there.”
- ↑ Pankaj S. Joshi (January 21, 2009). Do Naked Singularities Break the Rules of Physics?. Scientific American Magazine (February 2009). “A black hole has two parts. At its core is a singularity, the infinitesimal point into which all the matter of the star gets crushed. Surrounding the singularity is the region of space from which escape is impossible, the perimeter of which is called the event horizon. Once something enters the event horizon, it loses all hope of exiting. Whatever light the falling body gives off is trapped, too, so an outside observer never sees it again. It ultimately crashes into the singularity. Conventional wisdom has it that a large star eventually collapses to a black hole, but some theoretical models suggest it might instead become a so-called naked singularity. Sorting out what happens is one of the most important unresolved problems in astrophysics.The discovery of naked singularities would transform the search for a unified theory of physics, not least by providing direct observational tests of such a theory.”