17. Rebooting Cosmology - Part 2

The science of cosmology suffers from one insurmountable problem more than any other: We will never be able to travel back in time to find out what really did happen. So when a cosmological theory does make a testable prediction, scientists grandly celebrate when confirming observations are made. This is exactly what happened in 1965 when Penzias and Wilson discovered a weak field of microwave energy visible in all directions. The find was immediately hailed as the much-sought-after Cosmic Background Radiation, i.e., the faint reverberation of the Big Bang.

But now, after decades of study, cosmologists are not so sure. Astrophysicist Glen Starkman is one of many who have shown that the microwave picture is not as smooth as predicted by theory. Instead it is decidedly uneven and strongly aligned to nearby stars and galaxies. To Starkman, that looks a lot more like a microwave “fog” caused by the scattering of local starlight than a muffled echo from the dawn of time.

At the Crisis in Cosmology Conference, astronomer Tom Van Flandern’s summed things up with his presentation emphasizing red-shift conundrums, entitled The Top 50 Problems with the Big Bang. In conclusion he remarked, “It should be evident to objective minds that nothing about the universe interpreted with the Big Bang theory is necessarily right.” Van Flandern even goes so far as to question basic idea that the universe is expanding, suggesting alternative explanations for the Hubble red-shift.

Cosmology may be in the process of a wholesale paradigm shift. That prospect positively rankles an elder generation of scientists who are now in key policy and funding positions internationally.

Resistance to change, even well-warranted change, among scientists would not surprise students of the history and philosophy of science. Thomas Kuhn, in his modern classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, explains why old ideas die hard even in the light of compelling evidence. “Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition.”

Ever since George Gamow popularized the Big Bang theory in the 1950’s, research organized itself around finding confirmation and filling in the details of the theory. What was no longer up for discussion was whether or not the theory itself is correct.

The upshot of the new crisis in cosmology is that the more we know, the more we realize that we don’t know. Humility is inherent to true science. In the words of Nobel physicist, Max Planck, “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.” How do we transcend nature to address those big questions on which science is necessarily mute? Who or What created the universe? Is belief in the Creator consistent with modern science? What about a six-day creation? And if the prevailing cosmology is equivalent to myth, on what basis can the Genesis account rejected?

Even anti-Creationist lobbyists like the National Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science are silent on these questions, agreeing that science can neither verify nor refute the claims of believers. Similarly the National Association of Biology Teachers has published their view that “. . .all of science is necessarily silent on religion and neither refutes nor supports the existence of a deity. . .”

Whatever your answers to the big questions, you would not be alone in contemplating them, as evidenced by skyrocketing sales of books bridging religion and science (som 30,000 titles answering to a “science and religion” search on amazon.com). Moreover the vast majority of these titles are not science-versus-religion books but rather reflective of a pervasive trend towards synergizing the spiritual with the scientific.

This spirit of reconciliation is not only evident in popular books and articles but in scholarly venues as well. For instance, relativity guru and Nobel commissioner Moshe Carmeli has published research demonstrating that the age of the universe is a physical constant that hasn’t changed since the first cosmological day. That, says Carmeli, renders the Genesis account scientifically valid.

Ultimate questions need ultimate answers, and those by definition cannot be found within the purview of science. Periodic shakeups, like the current crisis in cosmology, serve a dual purpose: They refresh our awareness that scientific knowledge is always tentative, while impelling us to seek the truth from wherever it may be found.