"Secular cosmologists claim that our Universe formed in a Big Bang, about 13.8 billion years ago.
Then, right after that Bang, our cosmos had a brief period of explosive expansion known as inflation. During this time, our Universe exploded outwards in size, many times faster than the speed of light.
Many non-cosmologists scratch their heads over this.
These are excellent questions. But if you ask them, you’ll usually be told that although inflation sounds strange to the uninitiated, it’s actually a sound scientific model—a model which all
cosmologists believe.
But this isn’t true.
...inflation is not a sound scientific model.
It’s a non-scientific story about mysterious, never-observed, anti-gravity energy—a story invented only because the Big Bang model has several problems, which need inflation to solve them.
Nor is it true that everybody believes in inflation.
Obviously, scientists who accept Biblical creation reject this story. But even among secular cosmologists, there is a fierce debate about inflation.
Some of it has spilled out into public view, in the pages of Scientific American magazine.
It started with an article entitled, “Pop Goes the Universe,” by three cosmologists who reject inflation. The authors pointed out some of the serious problems that inflationary theory has developed.
First, inflation is outside of known physics. “Inflation requires that the universe be filled with a high density of energy that gravitationally self-repels, thereby enhancing the expansion and causing it to speed up. It is important to note, however, that this critical ingredient, referred to as inflationary energy, is purely hypothetical; we have no direct evidence that it exists.”
The Planck mission, which has given us the most precise measurements of the CMB (cosmic microwave background), has not provided the expected support for popular inflationary models. Instead, “the Planck data disfavored the simplest inflation models and exacerbated long-standing foundational problems with the theory.”
Inflation makes predictions which have failed. For example, inflation, if it had occurred, would have produced waves of spacetime distortions in the early cosmos. These would have left visible patterns of polarization in the CMB today. If these patterns existed, the Planck mission would have observed them. But none were observed.
For inflation to start, the universe must have been in an initial state that is extremely unlikely. The overall story has become so contrived that it’s not credible. “It is more difficult than finding a snowy mountain equipped with a ski lift and well-maintained ski slopes in the middle of a desert.”
Plus, inflation was supposed to explain how a random, non-finely-tuned Big Bang could have produced our extremely finely-tuned Universe. But now, Planck has shown that inflation needs to have a ridiculous amount of fine-tuning in its own right—which just recreates one of the main problems for the Big Bang that inflation was supposed to fix.
And once inflation starts, it’s impossible to stop. The result is a “multiverse”: an infinite number of universes. But as the authors point out, this is not a robust scientific idea:
“Eternal inflation may devolve into a purely quantum world of uncertain and random fluctuations everywhere… We would like to suggest “multimess” as a more apt term to describe the unresolved outcome of eternal inflation… the multimess does not predict the properties of our observable universe to be the likely outcome. A good scientific theory is supposed to explain why what we observe happens instead of something else. The multimess fails this fundamental test.”
“Inflationary cosmology, as we currently understand it, cannot be evaluated using the scientific method.”
CreationAstronomy
Then, right after that Bang, our cosmos had a brief period of explosive expansion known as inflation. During this time, our Universe exploded outwards in size, many times faster than the speed of light.
Many non-cosmologists scratch their heads over this.
*How could the Universe have expanded faster than the speed of light?
*What was powering this alleged expansion?
*How did it overcome gravity?
These are excellent questions. But if you ask them, you’ll usually be told that although inflation sounds strange to the uninitiated, it’s actually a sound scientific model—a model which all
But this isn’t true.
...inflation is not a sound scientific model.
It’s a non-scientific story about mysterious, never-observed, anti-gravity energy—a story invented only because the Big Bang model has several problems, which need inflation to solve them.
Nor is it true that everybody believes in inflation.
Obviously, scientists who accept Biblical creation reject this story. But even among secular cosmologists, there is a fierce debate about inflation.
Some of it has spilled out into public view, in the pages of Scientific American magazine.
It started with an article entitled, “Pop Goes the Universe,” by three cosmologists who reject inflation. The authors pointed out some of the serious problems that inflationary theory has developed.
First, inflation is outside of known physics. “Inflation requires that the universe be filled with a high density of energy that gravitationally self-repels, thereby enhancing the expansion and causing it to speed up. It is important to note, however, that this critical ingredient, referred to as inflationary energy, is purely hypothetical; we have no direct evidence that it exists.”
The Planck mission, which has given us the most precise measurements of the CMB (cosmic microwave background), has not provided the expected support for popular inflationary models. Instead, “the Planck data disfavored the simplest inflation models and exacerbated long-standing foundational problems with the theory.”
Inflation makes predictions which have failed. For example, inflation, if it had occurred, would have produced waves of spacetime distortions in the early cosmos. These would have left visible patterns of polarization in the CMB today. If these patterns existed, the Planck mission would have observed them. But none were observed.
For inflation to start, the universe must have been in an initial state that is extremely unlikely. The overall story has become so contrived that it’s not credible. “It is more difficult than finding a snowy mountain equipped with a ski lift and well-maintained ski slopes in the middle of a desert.”
Plus, inflation was supposed to explain how a random, non-finely-tuned Big Bang could have produced our extremely finely-tuned Universe. But now, Planck has shown that inflation needs to have a ridiculous amount of fine-tuning in its own right—which just recreates one of the main problems for the Big Bang that inflation was supposed to fix.
And once inflation starts, it’s impossible to stop. The result is a “multiverse”: an infinite number of universes. But as the authors point out, this is not a robust scientific idea:
“Eternal inflation may devolve into a purely quantum world of uncertain and random fluctuations everywhere… We would like to suggest “multimess” as a more apt term to describe the unresolved outcome of eternal inflation… the multimess does not predict the properties of our observable universe to be the likely outcome. A good scientific theory is supposed to explain why what we observe happens instead of something else. The multimess fails this fundamental test.”
“Inflationary cosmology, as we currently understand it, cannot be evaluated using the scientific method.”
CreationAstronomy
All things were made by him;
and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:3
