Big Bang Beginning

The most accepted theory about the origin of the universe is that it began with a big bang. There was a huge explosion from which all the matter in the universe came into existence. There are some weird things about the big bang. One of them is the inflation period. Immediately after the big bang, the universe expanded extremely quickly, faster actually than the speed of light. Then the expansion slowed down to more or less the rate it is expanding today. How is this possible? Matter that does not obey the rules of the universe suggests that someone or some thing manipulated the early moments.
Then there is the precise rate of expansion. The universe expanded at EXACTLY the right speed for it to create the conditions of life. According to Stephen Hawking in his book, A Brief History of Time, "If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size." If the expansion had been a tiny bit faster, matter would have separated and the galaxies and stars would not have formed. Without the formation of stars and the elements they create, there could be no life as we know it. It seems highly improbable that this exact rate could have happened by chance. The big bang beginning seems to support the idea of some kind of creator.

Water everywhere

Lately I've been reading about water. How did all our water get to earth. There is a lot of it here. It makes up 0.4% of the earth by volume, about 326 000 000 000 000 000 000 gallons. That's a lot of water. For most evolutionary theories to work, water had to be present in large quantities early on in the earth's development. The problem is that the early earth was hot and dry, molten lava cooling slowly. Also, the early earth had no atmosphere and the solar winds were strong so any formation of water vapour would have been whisked away into space. Hydrogen and oxygen should have been present so the capability to make water was there. The problem that I see is that water needed to have formed fairly quickly in the geological clock, in around 150 million years according to most theories. If it took significantly longer, there would not have been time for the long, slow evolutionary process to occur. To get 326 000 000 000 000 000 000 gallons of water the earth would have had to receive 16 500 tons of water every minute for 150 million years. And that is not considering the water we lose to space by the disassociation of oxygen and hydrogen that is taking place on a tiny but constant basis. There are two main theories on how our water got here. It may have been formed from volitiles in the earth's crust being expelled by volcanoes outgassing or the water may have been imported here by falling comets. Neither of these seem reasonable to me. I can understand the physics of this happening but I can't imagine how either of these could have supplied anywhere close to the amount of water that we are talking about. The articles I have read don't supply any reassurance. There doesn't seem to be a logical physical explanation for it.

The Minimum Requirements for Life

One assignment I received during a graduate course in microbiology was to find a candidate for the first living cell. The first cell would have needed to metabolize and replicate. We (the other graduate students and I) began by looking for the simplest possible living cell. We narrowed it down to the archaeon and viruses. Simple viruses only need about 10 000 base pairs but we disqualified them because they absolutely must have another cell to be able to reproduce. Some archaeon need only 30 000 base pairs in their DNA molecule and so the archaeon became our candidate for the simplest life form and possibly a relative of the first living cell on earth. The largest human DNA molecule by contrast has 220 million base pairs. Then we gathered a list of everything the cell needed to be able to be considered a living thing. Now, I'm going from memory here so forgive me if I omit something or get numbers wrong. Here is what the simplest living things needs to be a living thing;

- a minimum of 30 000 base pairs in the correct order with phosphate and sugars to provide the backbone

- a minimum of 12 proteins with the amino acids in the correct order

- a number of molecules of ATP

- a number of molecules of NADPH

- a semi-permeable cell wall that completely engulfs these substances

There were other things on the list but I forget them. If any one of these components was missing or a tiny percentage of the nucleotides or amino acids are out of order, the cell would not be able to function and there would be no life. It was astounding to me how complex the simplest living cell was. I cannot imagine this set of circumstances happening by chance. First of all, where did all these components come from? The experiment of Miller and Urey in 1953 has been more or less discarded as a viable example of the early earth's environment. Even if there were amino acids, what is the probability of them lining up in the correct order for not one but 12 different proteins. It's been a while since I've taken statistics but the probability of the amino acids of just one protein lining up in the correct order is so infinitesimally small, it is hardly worth considering, let alone a DNA molecule of 30 000 base pairs. It is not logical for the first cell to have happened by chance. There must be another explanation. I have read of a theory that postulates that the components for the first cell were "seeded" on earth by meteorites. I find this unlikely also. What is the probability of all these components being in close enough proximity to each other and then engulfed by a semi-permeable cell wall? What kind of environment could have formed these components somewhere out in space? How could these components have remained viable in the harsh environment of space and the traumatic trip to earth? I have yet to see a reasonable model for the first living cell. This aspect of the origin of life debate pulls me toward the intelligent design side.

Start at the Beginning

There are a lot of aspects of the creation of the universe that I feel I can make sense of but the beginning of the universe is not one of them. To me it defies logic.
There are two possibilities; the universe always existed or the universe was created. Neither of them seems logical. There are a set of rules in place in the universe. For example, anything that has mass is attracted to anything else that has mass. Thus we have gravity. Some of the rules apply to energy. The first law of thermodynamics is that energy is never created or destroyed, it just changes in form. In a solar panel, energy from the sun is converted to electrical energy. If we lift something, our muscular energy is converted to the potential energy in the new height of the object. So, how is it possible for all the energy in the universe to be created. Think of all the energy in the trillions of stars. What kind of power would be needed to create and organize that amount of energy. Most scientists believe that the universe began in a single instant, a big bang from which all the matter and energy of the universe was created. How is this possible? Some scientists claim that the universe goes through a constant cycle, that it expands from the big bang until it runs out of inertia and then collapses back on itself to create another big bang from which another universe is created and so on. If this is the case, how did the system begin?
The idea that the universe always existed also defies logic. How can something with a set or rules containing a finite amount of energy always have been there. Creationists will say that God created it. In science, all theories are possibilities and I am not discounting any options. Neither do I want to offend sensibilities on either side. The purpose of this blog is to wonder about the big questions and hopefully get logical feedback to help me fill in the gaps. The existence of God defies logic also. I am not saying that an all powerful being is not possible, it is just not logical. Where did God come from in the first place. If God always existed, we are back to the problem of how can something have existed for ever.
I'm stumped on this one. Anyone out there have any input?

Determining Truth

I once had the opportunity of observing a trial. The trial was between two individuals who had gotten into a fight. According to the witnesses, there had been drinking involved, threats, and fists thrown. I had a chance to talk to the judge afterwards and what he said amazed me. He said that the human mind is unreliable. In his experience, witnesses to crimes frequently do not tell the truth. He came to this conclusion because witnesses to the same incident will often contradict each other. He also said that these errors are generally not made on purpose. The witnesses truly believe what they are telling the judge is the truth but perspective, emotion, faulty memory, and human frailty cause their view on reality to be skewed. It was his job to sift through the testimony and try and determine what the actual truth was.
We human beings decide on what is truth by receiving input from our senses and using our brains to come to logical conclusions. Let's suppose that a adult was knocked on the head and lost all her/his memory so that (s)he had to start determining truth all over again. (S)He picks up a stone and lets go of it and notices that it falls down to the ground. His/Her mind creates a theory that things fall toward the ground. (S)He tries it again and the same thing happens. The theory becomes more solid in her/his mind. After numerous tries, (s)he decides that the truth of the matter is that when something is dropped, it falls toward the ground.
Science decides on truth in much the same way except that there are no facts in science. To be an absolute fact, there has to be zero chance for the theory to be broken. The only way to know for absolute certain that the stone will fall toward the ground every time would be to perform this experiment every time possible. Since we cannot perform experiments infinity times, we cannot say with absolute certainty that it is truth. We call things "facts" when there is an extremely high likelihood of it being true. The only certainty is a reasonable probability in the scientific world. Thus it all comes down to percentages. Determining truth is like a big poker game. If there are extremely high odds for a theory to be true, it is considered truth. It is our job then to calculate the probabilities, taking into account that our senses are fallible and the truth may have to be adjusted if we receive new input.