A standing man is in size exactly halfway between the smallest subatomic particle and the entire universe.

January, 2006 -- The stars run in their courses, in billions of galaxies, orbited by planets which are orbited by moons, and if they did not do so in ways which are predictable -- that is with  many recurring similarities -- science would not exist.  Predictability to some degree or other is the foundation of science.  Those italics emphasize an extension of previous demands by science, which insisted on absolutes.  Quantum physics took that down, and in the process angered Albert Einstein.  But, still and all, even in the subatomic world one can safely play the odds.  You cannot predict what any given particle will do, but you can predict the general behavior of a large number of particles. 

The idea is important to the Science vs. Intelligent Design controversy.  Science, like fascism, is about following orders. Science is dogmatic about this and would collapse without the concept.  I say a thing will do this if we do that to it.  .The water in a container will go from the liquid to the solid state if we lower its temperature enough.  Predictability is order.  Things behaving as we expect them to behave. In all the universe there is only one place where science must hedge that old rule -- the Las Vegas realm of subatomic particles mentioned above. 

Yet, there is a third place, where the priests of science who rigidly protect the canons of their holy order must perforce live with complete unpredictability, which is possibly why they simply say that it is a place which isn't here -- by definition not even in our universe.   Double talk it is said, infuses religion, but the high religion of science, extreme physics, contains the ultimate double talk.  We'll skip the multiple dimensions (beyond our three plus time) required by string theory.  We'll zero in here on the common sense stuff, like the primordial black hole they call the ylem, which was what they say was "there" before the Big Bang explosion which initiated the universe we see, today. They have to do a slight of hand with gravity to make that happen.  Without that trick, gravity forces the argument in the direction of intelligent design.

Black holes have gravitas

The standard black holes astronomers run across these days are frequently described as collections of matter which are from three to seven times the mass of our sun, or more, and which at the instruction of science's laws of astrophysics have met the various conditions which initiate collapse of the radius to the point where the resulting object has such intensified gravity that it will not allow light to escape from the vicinity.  Compress the Earth into an object the size of a tennis ball and you are approaching the ratio of reduction you need to make a black hole from a fairly beefy star.

A substantial number of scientists believe our universe hatched from the first black hole -- the "primordial ylem," or massive particle a theory proposes once existed.  They say it contained all the mass in the Universe (some physicists prefer "cosmos") jammed into a ball whose physical size has at least once been compared to the diameter of our solar system.  All the material that makes up all the galaxies the Hubble has ever seen, plus all the energy in all of space -- crammed into a ball that would fit inside the orbit of Pluto.

The basic black hole has been described as a place where all known laws of physics break down.  Since the effects of the force known as gravity are almost always included in the list of known laws of physics, and since everything black holes need to become black holes and operate as black holes has to do with gravity, the implication here for us science tourists is that gravity increased to the max eats its own liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. "All known laws?"  What happens to a black hole when one of those "known laws," gravity itself, breaks down? 

A strange idea.   The most massive object ever would not obey Newton.  I think it's a super-massive black hole scientist backdoor conspiracy which makes the sudden dispersal of the matter in the exploding  ylem a Creation option.  Gravity creates it and then at some magic point gravity gets out of the way -- and presto the universe begins. Anything but God. (See speed limit, further down.  If nothing could escape, nothing could escape.)

(An aside: sometimes astrophysicists do not say the Big Bang was an "explosion."  It is by some described as a "rapid expansion."  This idea overcomes the basic problem of it being impossible for anything to escape beyond the singularity, or gravity border of the primordial ylem.  Rapid expansion means we're all inside the bubble to this day.  This, of course generates a different question.  If we're inside a black hole, and the known laws of science don't work inside a black hole, why do the laws of science work inside the biggest black hole there ever was?  Because it expanded and isn't a black hole any longer?  What overcame the infinite gravity it had to begin with, so it could expand?)

Trust me, that two edged little problem immediately above can challenge the ethics of any scientist who is also an atheist.  The double talk required to bail oneself out is, well, infinite.  Anyway, the physicists say that black holes are lawless places.

Where there are no activities governed by physical laws recognized by human science, there is no predictability.  That is, one cannot drop a bowling ball at the top of a long incline, and expect it to roll to the bottom.  Cause and effect may exist within a black hole, but it does not recognize any of the laws of physics understood by human beings. Its rules are strictly local regs.

Scientists say that these places may be described as not even being in this universe, but rather as being volumes which poke through the window and stick out in some other, mysterious region (and possibly are each an independant universe of their own). The movies portray them as tubes to elsewhere and/or elsewhen.  Rubber room stuff, indeed.  Most astrophysicists believe themselves to be rational, and do not like religion because, like American liberals (which ironically most of them are), religion makes statements which cannot be authenticated.  God does not fit into their test tubes. 

But, then, neither should an area of space where nothing makes sense.  There is no science inside a black hole.  We ask if there is any religion in there.  Scientists have never walked around in such a place, or sent a probe to test its strange waters.  So, they take the conditions inside a black hole on faith, alone.  The faith of the mystical path known as mathematics.

The Universal Speed Trap

Now, Einstein said that the greatest velocity possible is that of light in free space. Nothing can go faster, his mathematics said..  Nothing, ever, no matter how many wheels it has. The technical reason he gave was that mass increases with velocity.  A thing weighing a pound at ten miles per hour would weigh almost an infinite amount as it neared the speed of light.  It would take an almost infinite amount of rocket energy to increase the velocity (speed) of an almost infinitely massive object (ship, trolley car, etc.)   At the speed of light, the almost disappears, and we have an infinite mass needing an infinite amount of energy to keep it traveling at the infinite speed of light.  Unless it transformed into something else, of course.  Pure energy, perhaps. It wouldn't be a trollley any more, and the riders might not like the experience.

Scientists, without ever experiencing any of it, believe all this.  What is strange is that they never ask why.  Even if you and I assume that they are correct about all this, of all the things one would expect to hear from a scientist, the first would be "why?"  But, their approach, on behalf of their career,  respects their tabus. Where a Christian's universe is described in historic terms or metaphor, a physicist;s universe is made of numbers.  Everything it is and everything it does is contained in a formula made of numbers.  Parables and formulas, metaphors and numbers, are all representational.  They are artifacts, graphic substitutes for the real thing.  Just ways of describing something.

Where the two conflict, as in this case, the scientists say it is infinite, not comprehensible, or simply not known yet.  The religionist or non-secular scientist, says that which is ultimate and not known, should be described by what is known, plus logic.  Our debate here?  Creation happened by accident or it didn't.

Years back, I asked Ray Bradbury to name a miracle for me.  He said, "The Universe."  Existence.  Everything all around us.  Galaxies, kites and frogs.  The whole thing. That it is, and that it works.  He is correct, of course.  What fool would expect an accident to create a place with rules which make it as orderly as a clock?  The place is here, and works !!!  How astounding.

Never for a second believe they know what they are talking about when it comes to the initial cause of this effect we call our universe. This is being written late in December of 2005.  The judge who recently ordered an East Coast communty to discontinue in schools the suggestion that First Cause might be intelligent in nature is a moron.  Only a liberal is stupid enough to publish a multi-page analysis of current science that like a black hole totally rejects all known laws of astrophysics.

So that you're clear on this, we don't know except by faith whether the Universe began by accident or on purpose.  The most notable astrophysicist  on Earth said the choice is yours,  He is the man who, the last time I checked, holds the Lucasian (first occupied by Isaac Newton) chair of physics at Cambridge University in merry olde England.  His name is Stephen Hawking.

The judge said the schools cannot suggest that which the most famous astrophysicist on the planet says is one of the options.  The judge is a fool, and needs to be replaced by a stump, which would have a higher IQ.

(LL)

© 2006 Oregon Magazine