Was your pastor right when he answered the question, “How old is the universe?” by saying that it’s just 6,000 years old? According to the estimates of many astronomers, the universe is 13.8 billion years old. The next natural question is: How can estimates for the age of the universe be that far apart?

For years, scientists believed the universe was 13.7 billion years old. But, according to the latest estimates, many astronomers now believe the universe is 13.8 billion years old. This might seem like a minor adjustment in the grand scheme of things, but it represents a huge leap in our understanding of the cosmos. How did scientists arrive at this number, and what does it mean for us today?

In Christian circles, the age of the universe has long been a topic of debate, reaching back to some of the early church fathers. Even today, scientists continue to debate the accuracy of the commonly cited age of 13.8 billion years.

Perhaps you’ve never researched any of this for yourself. So, let’s separate truth from fiction as we look into the origins of the universe, scientific advancements, and interpretations of the Bible.

We’ll explore time and space alongside the Word of God. If it’s true that “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19), then how can we reconcile biblical faith with this apparent discrepancy of ages?

Tools and Methods for Measuring the Age of the Universe

Over time, scientists have found better ways to study the world around us. Early astronomers used basic tools and calculations, but today’s technology allows us to explore space and time like never before. Consider the advances in our understanding of the cosmos from using tools like the ancient astrolabe (used like a star chart, see figure) to the $10-billion, state-of-the-art James Webb Space Telescope, which is stationed at a stable point more than four times farther from Earth than the Moon.

The twentieth century marked a giant leap forward in our exploration of earth and space. Just 60 to 80 years ago, scientists were debating the origin of the universe. According to the big bang theory, the universe has been expanding for billions of years after all matter, energy, and even space and time began to exist (this explosive starting point is what scientists call a singularity). In contrast, the steady state theory described a universe that, though expanding, always looked the same—it has no beginning or end.

In 1964, radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR)—the faint radiation left over from the cosmic creation event—which provided strong support for the big bang theory. Big bang models say the universe started from a very hot, very dense state and has been expanding ever since. In 2001, NASA launched the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to study the CMBR—that ancient cosmic radiation — in greater detail. WMAP revolutionized our understanding of cosmology by providing precise measurements of the universe’s age, composition, and evolution. The Planck telescope, a successor to WMAP, advanced our understanding even more. It’s been said that the WMAP and Planck provide baby pictures of the universe.

How Did the Universe Begin?

To understand the age of the universe, we must explore how it began. Did the creation event that set reality as we know it into motion happen some 6,000 years ago or 13.8 billion years ago? The big bang theory is the prevailing scientific theory that proposes how the universe began and rapidly expanded into the cosmos we witness today. Many scientists and, ironically, some Christians, think that big bang cosmology says that no supernatural power played a part.

Christianity, on the other hand, holds that the eternal God in his infinite power created the universe. Many Christians see the big bang as evidence for when God spoke the universe into existence for the Bible thousands of years ago correctly predicting several features of the universe. The Bible’s opening words, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), integrate well with the idea of a definite starting point for the universe.

Even within the big bang framework, a question remains: what preceded the singularity? What caused our universe to begin? For Christians, this query points to the necessity of a Creator who exists outside of time and space, and who initiated the universe with purpose and precision. As Hebrews 11:3 declares, “We understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”

Observing the Cosmic Cooling

The big bang theory predicts certain observations that help explain and date the origin of the cosmos. For example, the CMBR provides clues about the age of the universe similar to how you can observe a kitchen with an oven that has been baking at 500 degrees. When you turn off the oven and open the door, heat from the oven begins to dissipate into the kitchen and adjacent rooms. With the right equipment, you can detect the heat in various areas and at various times and calculate when the oven door was opened. Astronomers have measured the temperature of the CMBR at distances ranging over 12 billion light years. As scientific knowledge and technologies advance, learning more about the universe’s beginning and its many properties becomes more detailed and accurate.

Using the CMBR maps and many other measurements, scientists have been able to specify a date for the beginning of space and time—13.8 billion years ago. Several methods contribute to this estimate.

By measuring the cosmic expansion rate, scientists can run the clock backward to calculate when the universe began. Baryon acoustic oscillations — ripple patterns in the early universe that act like a cosmic ruler — provide another independent measure. Analyzing first-generation stars also helps: since they can’t be older than the universe itself, their ages give scientists a baseline.

And by tracking the CMBR temperature cooling curve — how the radiation has gradually cooled as the universe expanded, like an ember slowly losing heat — and determining how long stars have been shining, scientists are able to cross-check and confirm their findings.

Redshift

One of the most powerful tools scientists have to measure the expansion of the universe and consequently the age of the universe is redshift. Astronomers use the Hubble Constant to define the cosmic expansion rate. The Hubble Constant is a measure of how fast galaxies move away from us based on their distances. 

To understand how redshift works, it’s important to know that light comes in different colors, and each color is actually the same type of wave but with a specific wavelength. Blue light has shorter wavelengths and red light has longer wavelengths. When light comes from a galaxy far away and, hence, moving rapidly away from us as a result of the expansion of the universe, the galaxy’s velocity relative to us stretches out the wavelengths, shifting all the galaxy’s wavelengths toward the red part of the color spectrum. This concept is known as redshift.

Astronomers recognize that when light is redshifted, it means those galaxies are moving away from us at velocities proportional to the redshifts. This understanding has helped scientists realize they could use the redshifted light evident in the spectra of galaxies to measure the cosmic expansion rate and therefore the universe’s age.

An example to help visualize this expansion is a balloon. Color a few dots on the surface of the balloon before inflating it, and then blow it up. You’ll see that all the dots move away from each other at rates proportional to the distances between the dots. Similarly, galaxies continue to move apart from each other in proportion to the distances separating them as the universe expands. This movement allows scientists to calculate the universe’s expansion rate by measuring the distances of galaxies and how fast they’re moving away from each other. And, if everything is moving away from everything else, then you can run the clock backward to discover when they all came together at the beginning of the universe.

Einstein’s theory of special relativity gives us yet another way to check the universe’s age. It tells us that the faster something moves away from us, the slower time passes for it relative to us — a phenomenon called time dilation. Think of it like a clock on a rocket ship: the faster the ship travels, the slower the clock ticks compared to one on Earth. Astronomers can observe this effect in distant stellar explosions called supernovae — the farther away they are, the longer they appear to last. This stretching of time across vast distances gives scientists another independent measurement indicating a universe 13.8 billion years old.

What Does the Bible Say About the Age of the Universe?

While it doesn’t provide a specific age for the universe, Scripture emphasizes the Creator’s power and purpose in bringing the cosmos into existence and gradually fashioning it and the earth into a suitable home for life and human beings in particular. Concerning Earth, it states that its mountains and rivers are ancient (Judges 5:21, Habakkuk 3:6, 2 Peter 3:5).

Christians disagree about how to interpret the creation days in Genesis 1. Some read them as consecutive 24-hour periods. Others point out that the seventh creation day in Genesis 1 is never closed with the phrase ‘evening was, morning was’ that ends each of the other days — suggesting that God’s seventh day is still ongoing. Both Psalm 95 and Hebrews 4 affirm that we are still in God’s seventh day. Genesis 2 also describes a long sequence of events between God creating Adam and Eve — events that suggest the passage of several months, not a few minutes at the end of a 24-hour day. For these reasons, many Christians interpret the Genesis 1 creation days as long time periods and find harmony between the scientific record and the Bible on the ages of the universe and Earth.

Biblical Narratives: The Origin of the Universe

The Bible contains several passages that describe the creation of the universe. Genesis 1:1 opens with the foundational statement: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Biblical Hebrew has no word for the universe. Instead, the phrase translated “the heavens and the earth” refers to all matter, energy, space, and time, that is, the universe. This verse establishes God as the ultimate source of all that exists. Beyond Genesis, other Bible verses talk about creation:

• Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
• Job 38–41: God’s dialogue with Job highlights his sovereignty and wisdom beyond man’s in creating and sustaining the universe.
• Psalm 104: A poetic celebration of God’s provision and care for his creation.
• Hebrews 11:3: States that the universe that we can see and detect did not come from what we can see and detect.
• Revelation 21–22: A vision of the new heavens and new earth, pointing to God’s ultimate plan for his creation.

These passages remind us that the universe is not a random accident but the purposeful act of a loving Creator.

How Old Is Our Universe According to the Bible?

Christians often wonder how the Bible’s creation account compares to what we scientifically observe in the universe. If God is the author of both Scripture and creation, then the two should ultimately align. However, the Bible does not explicitly state how old the universe is. Instead, it leaves room for us to explore the universe’s age through science alongside Scripture.

The Creationism Perspective: Bridging Beliefs and Evidence

For Christians, the Bible and the natural world are both revelations of God to us. While the Bible primarily reveals God’s character and purpose and how we humans should live our lives and respond to God’s offer of salvation from our sin, the natural world primarily reflects his creativity, wisdom, power, love, and appreciation of beauty, elegance, and order. Together, they provide a collective picture of who God is, how his nature impacts his work, and his plans for humanity.

Let’s look at the three main views Christians hold about creationism and the age of the universe, recognizing that each view addresses related issues differently. Keep in mind, while these are general summaries highlighting the most common positions, individual views may vary.

Three Creationism Views

Young-Earth Creationism

Young-earth creationism holds that the earth and universe are 6,000 to 10,000 years old. The two primary reasons for this position come from a simple, particular literal reading of Genesis 1 and the interpretation of the Hebrew word yom to mean that the creation days in Genesis 1 are consecutive 24-hour periods.

Young-earth creationists (YECs) also see the various genealogies in Scripture as complete records of direct descendants, with no gaps, which they use to calculate a young age for the earth. YECs believe in a real, specially created Adam and Eve who lived 6,000 to 10,000 years ago from whom all humans are descended. Some YECs believe the universe and Earth are young but God created them with the appearance of age to account for scientific observations.

Old-Earth Creationism

Old-earth creationism accepts the scientific evidence that Earth is 4.6 billion years old and the universe is 13.8 billion years old. It views the fossil record as an accurate picture of God’s creation works and God-directed extinction events throughout history as part of his intimate intervention and ingenuity. While old-earth creationism affirms an ancient earth, it does not accept macroevolution. When looking at the creation days in Genesis, old-earth creationists (OECs) note that the Hebrew word yom has multiple, yet literal, meanings for “day,” just like many words in English do. One of those literal definitions is a long, finite period of time. OECs also believe in a historical Adam and Eve as the first two humans from whom all humans are descended, specially created by God 50,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Evolutionary Creationism

Evolutionary creationism (sometimes called theistic evolution) is the view that God created and designed the universe for life and humans in particular, but that God created life through the process of natural evolution — both macroevolution and microevolution. People who hold this view believe the universe is 13.8 billion years old and Earth is 4.6 billion years old. They affirm the theory of biological evolution, believing that God used it to bring about all the different life-forms we see today and all Earth’s past life evident in the fossil record. In this view, there’s a range of beliefs about how directly God was involved — some think he intervened at certain points, while others think he let natural processes unfold entirely on their own. Most evolutionary creationists see the early chapters of Genesis as symbolic or allegorical rather than literal or historical, and do not believe in a historical Adam and Eve. While evolutionary creationists and theistic evolutionists agree on much, evolutionary creationists are more emphatic that God actively directed and designed the universe and Earth for life, and they remain open to the possibility that God was directly responsible for the origin of life.

Which Creation View Is Correct?

So, for the age of the universe, the key difference between the three creation views is the time between the origin of the universe and the origin of humanity. Both old-earth creationism and evolutionary creationism argue the days of Genesis 1 are much longer than 24 hours. Therefore, a lot of time transpired from when God created the universe to when he created humans. For a young-earth creationist, the origin of humanity and the universe are separated by a few 24-hour days at most.

Without exception all the scientific evidence establishes that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, which is consistent with the old-earth and evolutionary creationist views. Young-earth creationists rest on their interpretation of Genesis to date the universe’s and Earth’s origins at 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. They then try to find ways to account for scientific evidence that indicates a much older age. Some young-earth creationists argue that the speed of light has slowed down to explain how astronomers see objects so far away. Others argue that light might move toward us with an infinite velocity. However, the light travel time from distant galaxies remains an impossible problem for young-earth creationists to solve.

The Universe’s Age and Our Understanding

Our exploration into how old the universe is reveals how scientific advancements, from redshift measurements to the cosmic microwave background, are used to show that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. We’ve also highlighted how the Bible’s creation account can harmonize with these findings, and we’ve considered different perspectives of young-earth, old-earth, and evolutionary creationism.

Regardless of what you’ve been taught, it’s OK to ask questions and explore—even challenge—what you believe. As Christians, we can be confident that science and faith go perfectly together — God’s world and God’s Word each revealing his glory.

May the exploration of both science and Scripture deepen your wonder at our Creator’s wisdom and power — and confirm that in him, faith and knowledge unite perfectly.

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For example, when astronomers observe the Sun, they don’t see it as it is now, but what it was about 8 minutes ago since it took light from the Sun 8 minutes to travel to Earth. Similarly, when astronomers observe the Andromeda Galaxy, they see it as it was 2.5 million years ago since it is at a distance of 2.5 million light years.

Since the universe is only 13.8 billion years old, the most distant observable objects are 13.8 billion light years away. However, the universe has been continuously expanding ever since the cosmic creation event. Hence, the universe that exists today is much larger than the universe astronomers can detect through their telescopes. Based on the measured cosmic expansion rate, astronomers have determined that the presently existing universe is at least 93 billion light-years across.

At RTB, our astrophysicists study the universe’s mass, size, and designs, revealing just how immense and finely tuned it truly is. Let’s explore what science can observe and what Scripture helps us understand. Together, they reveal not only the scale of the cosmos in miles and light-years, but also the intentionality behind it. They reveal that the universe didn’t happen by chance. Its precisely fine-tuned mass, size, and designs remind us of God’s magnitude and power—and of how much more exists beyond what our minds can comprehend.

What Is the Size of the Universe?

To say that the universe for most people is unimaginably big is no exaggeration. Nevertheless, the universe’s size can be visualized. The universe astronomers can see through their telescopes contains about 2 trillion galaxies. Galaxies on average contain about 50 billion stars. That adds up to a hundred billion trillion stars in the observable universe.

How big are the stars? They range in size from 6 miles to a billion miles in diameter. The Sun is a medium-sized star with a diameter of 865,000 miles. One way to visualize the Sun’s size is that one could pack 1.3 million Earths inside the Sun. One way to visualize the largest stars is that one could pack 1.5 billion Suns inside the largest star!

We live in a large spiral galaxy. Our galaxy’s spiral disk contains an estimated 200 billion stars. Our galaxy is orbited by 152 globular clusters. The smallest such globular cluster contains about 50,000 stars. The largest contains about 10 million stars. The giant galaxy M87 in the nearby Virgo Cluster of galaxies has 17,000 globular clusters orbiting it. The largest known galaxy is a thousand times more massive than our Milky Way Galaxy, which weighs 1.2 trillion times the Sun’s mass.

How far apart are the stars from one another? If one were to scale our Sun down to the size of a grapefruit and place it at Terminal 1 of the Los Angeles International Airport, the nearest other grapefruit (star) would be in Peru.

How big is the universe? The observable universe contains a hundred billion trillion stars where the stars are separated from one another by an average of about 25 trillion miles. See this video for a visual treat showing how big is the universe.

And yet, what we see is not all there is. The stuff we see through our telescopes, the stars, planets, nebulae, and galaxies, comprises just 0.27% of the universe. Most of the universe, the other 99.73%, is made up of dark stuff.

The total quantity of stuff in the universe, as incredibly massive and big as it is, cannot be any smaller or any larger for life to possibly exist in the universe. Make the universe the tiniest bit smaller, no elements heavier than helium would exist. Make the universe the tiniest bit bigger, no elements lighter than iron would exist. In both cases the universe would contain no carbon, no nitrogen, and no oxygen and physical life would be impossible.

Evidently, the Creator of the universe did not think it too costly to create a vast universe and carefully and exquisitely fine-tune it for 13.8 billion years so that human beings could live and thrive on a beautifully designed planet. How great is the Creator’s love for us that we see manifested in the size, mass, and designs of the universe!

How Do We Measure the Size of the Universe?

We measure the universe through light emitted by its galaxies, stars, nebulae, gas, and dust.

Astronomers trace light across the ages, following its path through space to learn how the universe has changed over time.

They use methods with names that sound almost poetic—like parallax, redshift, and standard candles—but each one is rooted in careful measurement. Together, these tools help translate the majesty of creation into data we can study and understand.

Every beam of light carries information about where it came from and what it’s passed through, a record of the universe’s history written in photons.

And the more carefully we measure, the more awe we uncover. Every beam of light reveals the physical state of the cosmic object that emitted it and the precise values of the laws and constants of physics at that cosmic site and that cosmic time. Every light beam reflects the faithfulness of the Creator.

Science calls it testable, measurable, and reliable. Faith calls it design.

The Expansion of the Universe: The Sky That’s Still Stretching

We’ve learned something else from that ancient light: the universe isn’t static.

It’s alive with motion and growth—unfolding and stretching toward horizons we have yet to see.
From the first spark of creation, space itself has been expanding.

Every galaxy became a traveler, drifting outward on a tide that has never ceased.

Astronomers can see it even now: galaxies slipping away in every direction, their light stretched thin into longer, redder wavelengths, like a song deepening as it echoes through time.From the beginning, God designed a universe that expands, a scientific concept consistent with Scripture’s description of him “stretching out the heavens.”

And yet, the same God who sent the galaxies expanding away from one another also holds them fast. Gravity gathers stars into clusters, planets into orbits, and atoms into being. As physicists study these phenomena, they see incredible cosmic fine-tuning, a precise balance of forces that lets stars burn, atoms bond, and galaxies hold their form.

Physics reveals a sophisticated dance between forces that hold them together and ones that pull them apart. The expanding universe is governed not by chaos, but care.

Distant galaxies race away from us faster than nearby galaxies. This observed phenomenon is the predicted outcome of the entire universe undergoing a nearly constant rate of expansion. Just like dots on an expanding balloon that are farther apart than dots that are closer together appear to move away from one another at a faster rate, so too the greater a galaxy’s distance from us the faster it moves away from us.

Astronomers call it continuous expansion.

Scripture says the Lord “stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (Isaiah 40:22).

Different words. Same truth.

Astronomers’ measurements of the cosmic expansion rate reveal that the expansion rate is gradually accelerating. This acceleration implies that some time in the future the most distant galaxies will be moving away from us at speeds greater than the velocity of light. When that happens, these galaxies will cease to be visible to us. One day, the galaxies’ light will drift beyond our sight, not because the light has died, but because the space between has stretched too wide for it to reach us.

Is the Universe Infinite in Size?

Stay under the stars for a while, and you’ll start to wonder—does this ever end?

Astronomers have mapped the observable universe, limited by how far light can travel since the beginning.

Beyond that? We can only imagine. 

Some have even proposed that our universe may be one of many, a multiverse, a vast ensemble of realities beyond our reach.

Even if physical realms exist beyond the observable universe, physicists expect them to follow the same physical laws, constants, and patterns as the universe we can see. This idea—known as the cosmological principle—assumes that the universe is uniform and governed by the same laws everywhere, not just in our corner of the cosmos. Indeed, everywhere we can make measurements, we see that the laws and constants of physics measure to be exactly the same as they are on Earth.

That consistency points to the reliability and order built into creation by its Designer.

The size of the observable universe is something we can accurately measure. The fine-tuned features of the universe reveal its order, wonder, and at least eleven distinct purposes or reasons why the universe is the way it is. 

How Big Is the Universe?

The size of the universe reminds us just how small we are and how immense the One who designed it must be.

Isaiah wrote that God measures the heavens “with the breadth of his hand” (Isaiah 40:12). What ancient Scripture expresses, modern astronomy confirms scientifically: the heavens are vast, measurable but beyond our ability to comprehend, and governed by precise physical laws.

Every advance in observation, each new telescope, each new image of distant galaxies doesn’t diminish mystery, it deepens it. The more we discover, the more evidence we see of order, stability, and fine-tuning throughout all of creation.

How big is the universe, really?

Big enough to silence pride.
Small enough to rest within the reach and control of its Creator.

The story the 2 trillion galaxies and a hundred billion trillion stars are telling isn’t about how far they extend, but how faithfully God reigns.

The Shape of the Universe

Astronomers have measured the universe’s size, age, and expansion with remarkable precision, but its overall shape remains one of cosmology’s most fascinating questions.

Current evidence from satellite missions such as WMAP and Planck suggests that the universe is flat on large scales. In a flat universe, light travels in straight lines rather than curving back on itself. This means that, within the portion of the cosmos we can observe, parallel lines would never meet.

However, beyond the limits of our observation, the question is still open.

Some scientists have theorized that the universe is curved like a sphere—a “closed” model—where light could, in theory, circle all the way around and return from behind its starting point, like a traveler who leaves home and arrives again from the opposite direction.

Others suggest it may be that its shape is like a saddle, an “open” model bending ever outward, a universe that never meets itself again.

While we don’t yet have enough data to determine the universe’s exact geometry, the evidence we do have shows extraordinary consistency. The same fine-tuning that governs its forces and constants appears to extend to its shape. The order we observe in the universe’s geometry reflects the character of the One who established its laws—a God of balance, harmony, and design.

How Large Is the Universe?

When astronomers talk about how large the universe is, those discussions not only describe its scale but must also include the remarkable reliability of how the universe behaves. Immensity and intricacy coexist; the same physics that govern entire galaxies also govern the atoms in our own bodies.

Isaiah 40:26 and Psalm 147:4 state that God has given a name to every star and knows the name of every star. If he knows the name of every star, he certainly knows our name. If he cares for every star, he certainly must care immensely more for every human being. As Jesus said, “Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Luke 12:7). The same God who governs galaxies also knows every detail of the world and of each life within it.

Does the Universe End?

Astronomers have long studied what the distant future of the universe might hold. One of the most widely accepted scientific models is known as the Big Freeze or the Heat Death of the Universe. In such a universe, hot bodies will get colder and cold bodies will get warmer. Eventually, every body, every speck of dust, every gas molecule and every atom will attain the identical temperature. When that happens heat will cease to flow in the universe. Work will become impossible. Life will become impossible.

Scripture, however, reveals that what looks like a depressing, hopeless ending is really a transition. God is using the present physics of the universe to eradicate sin and evil. The apostle John describes a future “new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1), and Paul wrote that what is sown perishable will be raised imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:42–44). In other words, creation is not destined for extinction but for renewal. The moment God completely eradicates evil and finishes his work of redeeming willing humans from their sin, he will replace the universe with the new creation, a realm with radically different physics and different dimensions, a realm where God will reward his followers with blessing far beyond what they can imagine (1 Corinthians 2:9).

The same God who stretched out the heavens will bring his creation to completion, demonstrating that nothing, not even the cosmos itself, lies beyond his redemptive plan.

Bigger Than the Universe: The God Who Cannot Be Contained

If creation stretches across billions of years, trillions of galaxies, and miles beyond measure, then the question remains: What could possibly be bigger than the universe?

We can see the stage.
But who wrote the play?
Who drew back the curtain of space and time?

No constellation of laws or particles can explain that first spark.
Everything within the universe depends on something beyond it.
Even skeptical scientists agree on this much: whatever ignited our universe can’t be part of it. It must exist outside our space and time altogether.

Scripture says it plainly: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3).

Because God is beyond, he isn’t bound by decay or change.
He holds the universe by his power; never shaped by it, but shaping all that is.

If the universe is vast beyond imagination, what’s greater is the One who says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13).

If cosmic distances leave us speechless, bigger still is the love that spans them.
If galaxies fade and worlds dissolve, bigger still is the hope that will never end.

Where the Vastness of Space Meets the Nearness of God

Every question we ask about the heavens eventually points back to its Author. We can measure galaxies, chart their motion, and trace light that began billions of years ago. Yet, at the edge of every discovery, the same realization awaits: there is more.

Science reveals how the universe works. Faith reveals why it exists.

The more we learn about creation, the more clearly we see multiple purposes woven into its structure. Every constant, every law of physics, every beam of light reflects intention rather than accident. The universe operates with precision that invites not only study, but also worship of the One who brought it into being.

And yet, the greatest wonder is not merely that God created such an expansive cosmos, it’s that he entered it.

The Creator who set galaxies in motion also stepped into human history. The Word who spoke light into existence became the Light of the world.

That truth reframes every discovery. The universe doesn’t point us away from God; it draws us toward him. Each observation deepens our understanding of his power and our gratitude for his presence.

If you’d like to explore further, you can find more insights in our resource library—or dive deeper through Dr. Hugh Ross’s book, Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, a look at how the cosmos reveals the wisdom and purposes of its Creator.

Because in the end, every light-year, every law, and every living soul testifies to one truth:

The universe was made on purpose, by a God who hung the galaxies in place and still holds us close to his heart.

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What we know is that the periodic table was sparse, initially. The first stars in the universe were comprised of hydrogen, helium, and a trace amount of lithium. The largest of these stars fused hydrogen and helium into heavier elements and scattered these elements into interstellar space when they reached the supernova phase. A second generation of stars formed from the ashes of the first. The largest of these second-generation stars more efficiently generated heavy elements and, when they went supernova, scattered far more heavy-element-enriched ashes into interstellar space. Third-generation stars, like our Sun, formed from the ashes of second-generation stars.

A Consistent Pattern for Most of History
The enrichment of elements heavier than lithium in stars and in the interstellar and intergalactic medium progresses according to a single scaling relationship, one that accurately predicts what astronomers are able to observe in galaxies. As galaxies age, they do, indeed, grow progressively richer in elements heavier than lithium, in keeping with this scaling relationship.

Astronomers have successfully measured the relative abundance of elements in millions of second and third-generation stars. They’ve also determined to a high degree of precision the quantities of heavy elements blasted into interstellar space by supernova eruptions over the past ten billion years. 

However, astronomers’ observations showed hints that this universal scaling relationship connecting star-formation rate, stellar mass, and the abundance of elements heavier than lithium might not match what occurred during the earliest one or two billion years of cosmic history.² These “hints” motivated astronomers to use the JWST to shed light on the star-formation rate, stellar mass distribution, and abundance of elements heavier than lithium in galaxies that formed during the first billion years of cosmic history.   

The JWST Confirms Astronomers’ Hunch
A team of 13 astronomers led by Kaspar Heintz of the Cosmic Dawn Center and the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark used the JWST to measure the chemical abundances of galaxies just 470–770 million years after the cosmic origin event, aka the big bang.³ They noted that these galaxies proved significantly poorer in heavy elements than would be expected if the universal scaling relationship for older galaxies (formed 2.0–13.8 billion years after the big bang) applied. Elements heavier than lithium were only one-fourth as abundant as the universal scaling relationship would have yielded had it been operating at the same level during that early era. 

Implications for Advanced Life on Earth
The measurements by Heintz’s team indicate that while a scaling relationship does exist in these very early galaxies, it proceeded at a much lower rate than it did from 2 billion years onward in cosmic history. Heintz and his colleagues concluded that “galaxies at this time [previous to the first 800 million years of cosmic history] are still intimately connected with the intergalactic medium and subject to continuous infall of pristine gas, which effectively dilutes their metal abundances.”⁴ (In astronomical terms, elements heavier than lithium are referred to as “metals.”)

The dilution of heavy elements in galaxies that formed during the universe’s first 800 million years suggests that the Earth’s rich endowment of heavy elements is unexpected, by natural processes alone. Our solar system formed when the universe was only 9.22 billion years old. Multiple factors required exquisite fine-tuning for Earth to become so rapidly endowed with the superabundance of heavy elements—the elements without which Earth’s global high-technology civilization would be impossible.⁵ This discovery points to a supernatural Designer who provisioned planet Earth not only for the existence of billions of people but also for spreading the message of his redeeming love to all the world’s people groups in a brief (by astronomical terms) time.

Endnotes

1. Filippo Mannucci et al., “A Fundamental Relation Between Mass, Star Formation Rate and Metallicity in Local and High-Redshift Galaxies,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 408, no. 4 (November 2010): 2115–2127, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17291.x; Mirko Curti et al., “The Mass-Metallicity and the Fundamental Metallicity Relation Revisited on a Fully T_e-Based Abundance Scale for Galaxies,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 491, no. 1 (January 2020): 944–964, doi:10.1093/mnras/stz2910; Ryan L. Sanders et al., “The MOSDEF Survey: The Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relation from z = 0 to z ~ 3.3,” Astrophysical Journal 914, no. 1 (June 10, 2021): id. 19, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abf4c1.
2. P. Troncoso et al., “Metallicity Evolution, Metallicity Gradients, and Gas Fractions at z ~ 3.4,” Astronomy & Astrophysics 563 (March 6, 2014): id. A58, doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201322099; M. Onodera et al., “ISM Excitation and Metallicity of Star-Forming Galaxies at z ~ 3.3 from Near-IR Spectroscopy,” Astrophysical Journal 822, no. 1 (May 1, 2016): id. 42, doi:10.3847/0004-637X/822/1/42.
3. Kasper E. Heintz et al., “Dilution of Chemical Enrichment in Galaxies 600 Myr after the Big Bang,” Nature Astronomy2023 (September 21, 2023), doi:10.1038/s41550-023-02078-7.
4. Heintz et al., “Dilution of Chemical Enrichment,” p. 1.
5. I describe many of these factors in my books Improbable Planet (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2016) and Designed to the Core (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2022).

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My Answer: The beginning of the universe was the beginning of space and time, as the space-time theorems prove and as the Bible declared thousands of years ago. The universe began as an infinitesimally tiny volume of space and time. All the matter and energy of the universe is constrained to the space-time surface of the universe. It is impossible for us humans to detect anything interior to or beyond the cosmic space-time surface. Hence, we cannot pinpoint the location of the cosmic creation event.

The universe is not expanding into empty space. There is no space (or time) beyond the expanding cosmic space-time surface. Neither is there any space or time interior to the cosmic space-time surface. An analogy that may help is our planet. It is a 3-dimensional body where we humans are constrained to the 2-dimensional surface of our 3-dimensional Earth. Likewise, all the matter and energy in the universe is constrained to the 3-dimensional surface of our 4-dimensional universe.

The post Where Did the <em class="algolia-search-highlight">Universe</em> Begin and What Is It Expanding Into? appeared first on Reasons to Believe.

Physics Podcast “Debate”
I was interviewed by Ukrainian physicist Mikhail Abukumov on the subject of the fine-tuning of the universe for the possible existence and benefit of human beings. (Abukumov has translated my debate with Oxford University chemist Peter Atkins on the British radio/podcast show Unbelievable? into Russian.) Abukumov paired me up with Russian physicist Alexey Burov, who is presently a staff scientist at Fermi Lab in Batavia, Illinois. Abukumov presumed that this podcast episode would be a debate about fine-tuning since he was aware that my books and articles on cosmic fine-tuning were different from the papers and articles written by Burov.

There was no debate. What I have written on cosmic fine-tuning complemented what Burov had written, and what Burov had written complemented what I had written. Anyone can watch or listen to the “debate” here.

Universe Designed for Observability
Both Alexey Burov and his son Lev Burov are theoretical physicists. Together, they wrote a paper titled Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe.¹ The paper is equation-free and, for the most part, can be understood by readers without a degree in physics.

Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe complements what I wrote in my book, Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, concerning how the universe is designed for observability. In my book, I explained how there’s a relatively narrow time window in the history of the universe during which astronomers can observe 100% of the universe’s past history. Humans are inside that time window now. I also demonstrated that we are living in the one location within this vast universe where intelligent physical life is possible, and where that intelligent life can observe 100% of the past history of the universe. I argued that perhaps our epoch in cosmic history or our location might be coincidental, but not both simultaneously. I concluded that the most rational reason for why we exist at both the ideal time epoch and location is that Someone wanted us to read the entirety of the universe’s “book” so that we can fully comprehend his glory, power, care, righteousness, and other attributes (Psalm 19:1–4, 50:6, 97:6; Romans 1:18–20).

Balance between Complexity and Simplicity
Alexey and Lev Burov made a similar argument based on the laws of physics. They explained how the laws of physics are complex enough to make our existence possible, yet simple enough to allow us to discover and understand those laws and their significance in allowing us to exist and fulfill the purposes for which the Creator created us. They pointed out that the minimum complexity of the laws of physics that would permit us to exist and thrive on one planet equals the maximum complexity of those laws that we could conceivably discover. They wrote, “Every little increase in complexity of the laws would create a tremendous jump in difficulty of their discovery, but if they were even a little simpler, the universe would have lacked the structural variety of life, not to mention human brains.”² This equality, they argue, has no naturalistic explanation. The multiverse cannot account for it. Only a personal Creator who wanted us to exist and discover him explains such an extraordinary equality.

The Burovs demonstrate that what makes the equality a powerful testimony of God’s existence and the degree to which he has fine-tuned the universe for our benefit is that we can prove that the laws of physics are unchanged and noncontradictory throughout the entire space-time continuum of the universe, in some cases to eighteen places of the decimal! Additionally, we can show that the laws of physics apply over a size scale range of 10⁴⁵, from the largest-sized structures in the universe, like the cosmic web, down to the smallest ones, such as the top quark and the Higgs boson. As the Burovs conclude, an Ultimate Mind is necessary not only to explain the mathematical nature of the laws of physics but also to continuously guarantee the noncontradiction of all the laws of physics.

Beauty Principle
Another testimony of God’s existence and his designs comes from the observation that the laws of physics are described by equations that are extraordinarily beautiful and elegant. For example, we see the principles of symmetry, conservation, and equivalence manifested in the physical laws. We note that the laws are designed to fulfill multiple purposes simultaneously. This beauty and elegance are evident throughout the entire size scale range of 10⁴⁵. The beauty and elegance of the physical laws are so profound that it caused atheist theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner,³ a Nobel Laureate, to declare, “The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor desire. We should be grateful for it.”⁴ The Burovs point out that Wigner’s conclusion concerning this wonderful gift that we should be grateful for “can only have meaning if a mind to be grateful to is implied.”⁵ 

The Burovs’ demonstrations remind me of the best advice I ever got from my undergraduate physics professors. That advice: the key to obtaining the correct answer on a physics problem assignment is to look for the solution that is described by the most beautiful and elegant equations.

The undeniable beauty and elegance of the mathematical equations that describe the laws of physics provide profound evidence for God and his attributes. Humans are the only species of life on Earth capable of discovering the laws of physics. We’re also uniquely endowed with the aesthetic sense to comprehend and value beauty and elegance. That capability has no survival advantage. In fact, it’s a survival disadvantage. It finds explanation only in the context of a Creator who values and enjoys beauty and elegance and who wants us, as beings created in his image, to also value and enjoy beauty and elegance.

Endnotes

1. Alexey Burov and Lev Burov, “Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe,” in Trick or Truth? The Mysterious Connection between Physics and Mathematics, edited by Anthony Aguirre, Brendan Foster, and Zeeya Merali (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2016): 157–70, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-27495-9.
2. Alexey Burov and Lev Burov, “Metaphysical Status of Physical Laws,” in Plato in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times: Selected Papers from the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, held in Ottawa, Canada (2019), edited by John F. Finamore and Mark Nyvlt (Lydney, UK: The Prometheus Trust, 2020): 130. This paper is available free in its entirety at http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/Metaphysical_Status_of_Physical_Laws.pdf.
3. Andrew Szanton, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner: As Told to Andrew Szanton (New York: Plenum, 1992), 60–61.
4. Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. Richard Courant Lecture in Mathematical Sciences Delivered at New York University, May 11, 1959,” Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13, issue 1 (1960): 14, doi:10.1002/cpa.3160130102.
5. Burov and Burov, “Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe,” p. 168.

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Failed Big Bang Prediction?
In the big bang creation model, the universe begins with only one element: hydrogen, consisting of a single proton. As the universe expands from the cosmic creation event, it gets colder. (The second law of thermodynamics implies that any system that expands will become cooler in proportion to the degree of expansion that occurs.) Between 3 and 4 minutes after the cosmic creation event, the universe spends about 20 seconds passing through the temperature window when nuclear fusion can occur.

The standard big bang creation model predicts that 24.5% of the primordial hydrogen by mass will be fused into helium and a trace amount of lithium by the time the universe is 4 minutes old and too cold for any further nuclear fusion to occur. Therefore, the first stars to form in the universe, according to the big bang model, will be devoid of any elements heavier than lithium.

For different reasons, atheists and young-earth creationists have cited the failure of astronomers to find any stars that are comprised of only hydrogen, helium, and lithium as evidence that the big bang model has been falsified. To sustain their belief in strict naturalism, atheists need the universe to be at least thousands of times older than the 14-billion-year age the big bang creation model predicts. Atheist plasma physicist, Eric Lerner, author of the book, The Big Bang Never Happened,² claims that all the helium in the universe came from the nuclear furnaces of stars and that stars have been burning not just for billions of years but for infinite time. In his and other atheistic cosmic models where the universe is much older than 14 billion years, there will be no stars with a high ratio of helium to elements heavier than helium. The reason is that for every kilogram of helium produced by stellar burning, about 0.3 kilograms of elements heavier than helium are produced.

To sustain their interpretation of Genesis, young-earth creationists need the universe to be a million times younger than the big bang age. John Hartnett, Rod Bernitt, and Jonathan Sarfati, respectively, have written: “These original stars have never been observed, hence they were nothing more than hypothetical . . . It [the big bang model] vitally needs those Population III stars or there is no story.”³ “Their existence [of Population III stars] remains a matter of conjecture, not fact.”⁴ “The total absence of these stars counts as a falsified prediction of Big Bang cosmology.”⁵ 

Successful Big Bang Prediction
What these and other atheists and young-earth creationists fail to acknowledge to their readers is that the big bang creation model predicts that the spectra of the universe’s firstborn stars, aka Population III stars, that would reveal a composition of 75.5% hydrogen, 24.5% helium, a trace amount of lithium, and nothing else would be undetectable by present-day telescope power. The model predicts that detecting such spectra will be challenging even for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

For all stars, the formation time is inversely proportional to the star’s mass. Stars greater than 20 times the Sun’s mass will form in less than 100,000 years. Stars as massive as the Sun will take millions of years to form. Stars 8–80% of the Sun’s mass will take tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years to form. Similarly, the length of time it takes for a star to burn through all its nuclear fuel is inversely proportional to the star’s mass. Stars bigger than 100 times the Sun’s mass will burn up in just a few tens of thousands of years. Stars 20–60 times the Sun’s mass consume all their nuclear fuel within a million to a few tens of millions of years. The Sun’s nuclear furnace has been burning for the past 4.57 billion years and has 4.57 billion years of nuclear fuel remaining. The smallest stars will take more than a trillion years to burn through all their nuclear fuel.

In the big bang creation model, stars will begin to form when the universe is about 200 million years old. The first of these first stars will be the most massive stars. These most massive stars will burn up and become very faint in less than a million years after they form. Thus, the only way they can be detected is by observing them at distances that correspond to the epoch in the universe’s history when they would have been undergoing nuclear burning. Those distances are at 13.6 billion light-years. Not even the JWST can detect and measure the spectrum of an individual star at that distance, at least not without help.  

Finding the First Stars
With the help of a gravitational lens, the JWST may be able to detect and measure the spectrum of an individual star 13.6 billion light-years away, especially if that star is undergoing a supernova eruption.⁶ It will take a just-right cluster of galaxies located at the just-right distance along a straight line connecting the JWST with the distant star. The gravity of such a cluster of galaxies will bend the light from the distant star in such a manner as to create a gravitational lens that can increase the magnification power of the JWST by a factor of several thousand times (see figure 1).

The JWST is powerful enough by itself to detect and measure the spectrum of a large, compact cluster of very massive firstborn stars 13.6 billion light-years away. However, the stars would all need to be the same mass and form at the same time.

Forming the First Stars
Both atheists and young-earth creationists have asserted that star formation is impossible in an environment devoid of elements heavier than helium and that the minuscule amount of lithium produced in the big bang will be of no help. Big bang theorists agree that the trace amount of lithium produced by the big bang cannot play a significant role in star formation.⁷

While it’s difficult to form stars starting with only hydrogen and helium, it’s not impossible. The challenge is how to get primordial gas clouds—without the benefit of elements heavier than helium to form dust—to cool sufficiently so that they can condense to form stars. Heat tends to disperse the gas. For a star to form, gravitational collapse must overcome thermal expansion within a particular gas cloud. Thus, two circumstances must occur: (1) the mass of gas must be sufficient to generate a strong gravitational collapse, and (2) some means, independent of dust, must exist to cool the gas.

Calculations show that where only hydrogen and helium exist, the only possible cooling factor is molecular hydrogen (H₂). This H₂ will permit only very massive stars to form. However, all big bang creation models predict that some of the primordial hydrogen will be deuterium (HD, heavy hydrogen atoms comprised of a proton and a neutron). HD molecules provide much more efficient cooling than H₂ molecules. Thus, the combination of cooling by H₂ and HD molecules permits stars as small as 70–80% of the Sun’s mass to form.

Stars just 80% of the Sun’s mass will sustain nuclear burning for 17.5 billion years. Therefore, no matter how early in the universe’s history such stars form, they will still be burning today. This nuclear-burning longevity means that astronomers need not look billions of light-years away to find such stars. Some should exist in or near our galaxy.

Discovery of Firstborn Stars
As noted, stars less massive than the Sun will take tens of millions of years to form. During this formation time, they will become slightly polluted by the ashes of very massive firstborn stars that form, burn up, and explode all within less than a million years. Additional pollution will occur thereafter. A low-mass firstborn star that is now 13.6 billion years old will accrete—over its 13.6-billion-year history—a small quantity of heavy elements from the interstellar medium. The ashes from the exploded remains of supergiant stars pollute the interstellar medium.

In high stellar-density regions, the present-day pollution level is too high for astronomers to reliably detect the difference between a polluted firstborn star and a relatively unpolluted second-generation star. However, for a low-mass firstborn star residing in a very low stellar density region, pollution from the interstellar medium will be so low that there will be no doubt that astronomers are observing an old firstborn star rather than any kind of second-generation star.

Calculations by three Japanese astronomers⁸ showed that an old firstborn star in a region of low stellar density can accumulate up to, but not more than, 1/100,000th as much iron per unit mass as the Sun presently possesses, while it would be impossible for any kind of second-generation star to possess so little iron. The halo of our galaxy is where the stellar density is low enough to make unmistakable identifications of firstborn stars.

So far, astronomers have discovered seven firstborn stars in our galaxy’s halo. These stars are HE 0107-5240, J0815+4729, J0023+0307, HE 1327-2326, SMSS J160540.18-144323.1, SDSS J102915+172927, and SMSS J031300.36-670839. Relative to the Sun, they possess, respectively, 250,000, 300,000, 400,000, 500,000, 1,600,000, 10,000,000, and 38,000,000 times less iron per unit mass as the Sun.

Resolving the Calcium Abundance Anomaly
In firstborn stars, where astronomers have a measurement of the calcium abundance, the amount of calcium is anomalously high. It is so high that the only possible explanation for its abundance, if the star is indeed a firstborn star, is if the star formed in close proximity to another firstborn star where that star’s mass exceeded 45 times the Sun’s mass and that star had a supernova eruption where both the star’s outer layers and its metal-rich core was ejected.⁹ If the small-mass firstborn star is polluted by the high-mass firstborn star’s outer layers and metal-rich core before the small-mass firstborn star fully forms, then the small-mass firstborn star’s calcium abundance can be accounted for. However, this pollution scenario is so improbable that it caused some astronomers to doubt whether the star SMSS J031300.36-670839, which possesses an indisputably high calcium abundance, really is a firstborn star.

An international team of 36 nuclear physicists and astronomers led by Liyong Zhang suggested another possible explanation for the calcium abundance anomaly.¹⁰ They pointed out that the nuclear furnaces of very massive firstborn stars, long before small-mass firstborn stars fully form, will fuse hydrogen into helium not only by the proton-proton cycle but also by the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) cycle. They noted that experimental measurements of the nuclear ¹⁹F(p, γ)²⁰Ne breakout reaction rate had only been determined at relatively high energy levels. They explained that if there was a substantial nuclear ¹⁹F(p, γ)²⁰Ne breakout reaction occurring below a million electron volts, that CNO breakout reaction would explain SMSS J031300.36-670839’s calcium abundance via pollution from a single high-mass firstborn star’s scattered outer layers alone.

The reason why experimental measurements of the nuclear ¹⁹F(p, γ)²⁰Ne breakout reaction rate have not been done at energy levels below a million electron volts is that the cosmic gamma-ray background radiation at those energy levels overwhelms any possible signal from the nuclear 19F(p, γ)20Ne breakout reaction. Zhang’s team overcame this limitation by measuring the nuclear 19F(p, γ)20Ne breakout reaction rate in the China JinPing Underground Laboratory (CJPUL). The CJPUL is the best cosmic-ray-shielded underground laboratory in the world. It’s located under 2,400 meters (7,900 feet) of overbearing rock. The cosmic-ray-induced background is about a hundred times less at CJPUL than it is at the second-best cosmic-ray-shielded physics laboratory, the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso under the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy.

Zhang’s team discovered that an important CNO nuclear ¹⁹F(p, γ)²⁰Ne breakout reaction occurs at 225 kiloelectron volts. Nuclear physicists had previously estimated from their calculations that a nuclear ¹⁹F(p, γ)²⁰Ne breakout reaction likely occurred at 225 kiloelectron volts, but that it would not produce much calcium. Zhang and his colleagues’ measurements revealed that the nuclear ¹⁹F(p, γ)²⁰Ne breakout reaction at 225 kiloelectron volts is 5.4–7.4 times the rate that nuclear physicists had previously estimated. This additional factor of 5.4–7.4 times explains the calcium observed in the oldest, extremely iron-poor stars under the assumption that these stars are firstborn stars that have been polluted during their formation by the outer layers exploded off high-mass firstborn stars during supernova eruptions.

Next Steps
The CJPUL is still under construction. When completed, the lab will have 50 times the physics laboratory space that it currently possesses. It will be poised to make precision measurements of nucleosynthesis reactions presently hidden by the cosmic ray background.

Meanwhile, the highest priority mission targets for the JWST are to determine the elemental abundance levels and ratios of the oldest stars and the most distant—hence, the first to form—galaxies in the universe. The combination of a more detailed understanding of stellar nucleosynthesis and comprehensive measurements of the elemental abundances of the oldest stars and earliest galaxies will yield the most definitive and finely detailed tests of the big bang creation model.   

Philosophical Implications
The combination of CJPUL measurements and JWST observations will not only yield yet another definitive test of the big bang creation model, but it will also determine which of the several currently viable big bang creation models correctly explains the origin and history of the universe. Astronomers’ confidence in the reliability of the big bang model has increased through a series of observational tests. Those tests show a progression from confirmation of a hot big bang model to confirmation of an inflationary hot big bang model to confirmation of a ΛCDM inflationary hot big bang model (an inflationary hot big bang model where the universe’s most dominant component is dark energy and its second most dominant component is cold dark matter).

The combination of CJPUL measurements and JWST observations will inform astronomers which of the several ΛCDM inflationary hot big bang models correctly explains the origin, history, and structure of the universe. Though the quest for a holy grail is admirable, we at RTB see more. Such an advance will make an even stronger case that for thousands of years the Bible alone accurately predicted the fundamental characteristics of the universe. It should remove any rational doubt that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant message from the One who created and designed the universe so that billions of humans can know his purposes for creating the universe and human beings.

Endnotes

1. Hugh Ross and John Rea, “Big Bang—The Bible Taught It First!” Reasons to Believe, July 1, 2000; Hugh Ross, “Does the Bible Teach Big Bang Cosmology?” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, August 26, 2019.
2. John G. Hartnett, “Have Population III Stars Finally Been Discovered?” Creation Ministries International (blog), March 3, 2016.
3. Rod Bernitt, “Stellar Evolution and the Problem of the ‘First’ Stars,” Journal of Creation 16, no. 1 (April 2002): 12–14.
4. Jonathan Sarfati, Refuting Compromise: A Biblical and Scientific Refutation of “Progressive Creationism” (Billions of Years) as Popularized by Astronomer Hugh Ross, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: Creation Book Publishers, 2011), 161.
5. Eric Lerner, The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe (New York: Times Books, 1991).
6. Kenneth C. Wong et al., “Searches for Population III Pair-Instability Supernovae: Impact of Gravitational Lensing Magnification,” Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan 71, no. 3 (June 2019): id. 60, doi:10.1093/pasj/psz037.
7. Boyuan Liu and Volker Bromm, “Effect of Lithium Hydride on the Cooling of Primordial Gas,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 476, no. 2 (May 2018): 1826–1834, doi:10.1093/mnras/sty350.
8. Yutaka Komiya, Takuma Suda, and Masayuki Y. Fujimoto, “The Most Iron-Deficient Stars as the Polluted Population III Stars,” Astrophysical Journal Letters 808, no. 2 (July 30, 2015): id. L47, doi:10.1088/2041-8205/808/2/L47.
9. O. Clarkson, F. Herwig, and M. Pignatari, “Erratum: Pop. III i-Process Nucleosynthesis and the Elemental Abundances of SMSS J0313-6708 the Most-Iron Poor Stars,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 488, no. 1 (September 2019): 222–223, doi:10.1093/mnras/stz1676.
10. Liyong Zhang et al., “Measurement of ¹⁹F(p, γ)²⁰ Ne Reaction Suggests CNO Breakout in First Stars,” Nature 610 (October 26, 2022): 656–660, doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05230-x.

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My answer: As I have documented in my books, The Creator and the Cosmos, 4th edition, Improbable Planet, and Designed to the Core, there are hundreds of independent features of the universe, its laws of physics, and its space-time dimensions that must be exquisitely fine-tuned to make the existence of humans, or their equivalent, possible in the universe. However, that pervasive fine-tuning is not the only way the universe and the laws of physics could be.

From a biblical perspective, the angelic realm has different dimensions and different laws of physics. Similarly, the future home of Christians, the new creation (see Revelation 21–22) has different dimensions and different laws of physics. Readers can see our book, Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men, for the scientific physical evidence for angels and the angelic realm.

As I explain in my books on fine-tuning, the universe can be fine-tuned in a different way to allow for the existence of certain kinds of bacteria but not allow for the existence of animals and humans. I also show how the laws of physics can remain unchanged but the universe structured so that no physical life is possible anywhere, anytime in the universe.

As I demonstrate in Designed to the Core, it is not just the laws of physics and the universe as a whole that are fine-tuned to make the existence of humans possible. All the universe’s subcomponents, from those on the largest size scales to those on the smallest size scales must be fine-tuned for humans to possibly exist.

Unlike the universe, the observed sample size of the universe’s subcomponents is not one. For example, there are a trillion trillion stars in the observable universe. So far, however, astronomers have detected only one star, our Sun, that possesses the fine-tuned history and features that make it possible for the existence of humans on a planet orbiting it. The Sun is not the only way stars can be. The same argument can be made for our Laniakea Supergalaxy Cluster, our Virgo Cluster of galaxies, our Local Group of galaxies, our Milky Way Galaxy, our local spiral arm, our Local Bubble, our planetary system, our planet, and our moon. The fine-tuning of the universe and all its subcomponents also vary according to the intended purposes for humans. As I show in Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, Improbable Planet, and Designed to the Core, the fine-tuning that allows billions of humans on one planet to be redeemed from their sin and evil within a time span of several tens of thousands of years is orders of magnitude more constrained than the fine-tuning that allows for the existence of a tiny population of technology-free humans with lifespans briefer than 30 years.  

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Why Quasars Matter
In the late 1960s, astronomers Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge wrote a book in which they stated that no known physics could explain the observed properties of quasars if, indeed, they were billions of light-years away.¹ They concluded, therefore, that quasars “are comparatively nearby although still outside our galaxy.”² Further, they asserted that the observed properties of quasars, whether they reside at cosmological distances or are relatively nearby, demanded the rejection of big bang creation models. Since several of the big bang characteristics of the universe were predicted in the Bible thousands of years ago,³ much more was and is at stake concerning the properties of quasars than just astrophysics. The truthfulness and predictive power of the Bible concerning what it says about the universe and about the cosmic Creator is also at stake.

During my research stints, I observed that flat spectrum radio galaxies (galaxies showing radio brightnesses at high radio frequencies that are similar to those at low radio frequencies) exhibited radio brightnesses and luminosity variabilities that mimicked those of quasars.⁴ Therefore, I concluded that quasars likely existed in the cores of giant galaxies where optical telescopes could see the quasars but not their host galaxies. Years later, astronomers, using the next generation of powerful optical telescopes, successfully imaged the host galaxies of several quasars (see figure 1).

Many years later, astronomers demonstrated that the extreme luminosities and luminosity variations of quasars and flat spectrum radio sources could be explained by supermassive black holes (SMBHs). These astronomical objects weigh in at a hundred million to several billion times the Sun’s mass and accrete enormous amounts of gas, dust, and stars from their host galaxies. Today, more than a million quasars have been detected. The nearest one is about 600 million light-years away. The most distant is 13.15 billion light-years away. Quasar activity was more common in the distant past. The peak epoch of quasar activity was about 10 billion years ago.⁵

Quasar Birth Problem
The peak epoch of quasar activity at 10 billion years ago fits big bang creation models well. That date corresponds to when large galaxies would possess huge quantities of gas, dust, and debris to feed the SMBHs in their cores. However, the early birth dates for quasars present a problem. For quasars to exist when the universe is only 650 million years old means that SMBHs that are a hundred million plus times the Sun’s mass must exist at that time.

SMBHs begin to form through merger events between the burnt-out remains of large stars—small black holes and neutron stars. Using gravity wave telescopes, astronomers have detected over two dozen such merger events.⁶ Only in the cores of galaxies and globular clusters is the stellar density high enough where merger events can cascade. Cascading refers to the aftermath of the merger of two small black holes that, in turn, merge with the aftermath of the merger of two other small black holes and later the merger of now bigger black holes.

The largest existing stars form black holes that top out at 15 times the Sun’s mass. Before stars existed, the universe contained only hydrogen, helium, and a trace amount of lithium. The universe’s first stars formed from this mixture, which permitted much larger stars. These stars could produce black holes as much as 30 times the Sun’s mass.

Beginning with black holes 4–30 times the Sun’s mass, it seems impossible for galaxies to produce SMBHs exceeding one hundred million solar masses in less than 700 million years after the big bang creation event. Some astronomers had speculated that perhaps an early galaxy had evolved exotic conditions that generated an extremely high density of stars in its core. However, it is highly improbable that such conditions would be generated in multiple early galaxies. This improbability is known as the quasar birth problem.

Resolving the Quasar Birth Problem
An international team of five astronomers used the Enzo cosmology code—a sophisticated computer simulation—to accurately model the earliest stages of collapse of the progenitor halos of large galaxies.⁷ The team determined that strong, cold accretion flows in early galaxies drive violent supersonic turbulence that prevents star formation until dense mass clumps greater than 31,000 solar masses form. The formation of these clumps triggers catastrophic baryon (baryons are protons and neutrons) collapse, which results in the generation of “stars” weighing in at 31,000–40,000 times the Sun’s mass. Such stars never shine. They immediately collapse to form black holes.

The formation of hundreds to thousands of black holes weighing 31,000–40,000 times the Sun’s mass in the cores of large galaxies during the first half billion years of cosmic history provides the necessary seeds to generate SMBHs larger than 100,000,000 solar masses. This formation process is needed to explain the handful of quasars astronomers have discovered that are more distant than 13.1 billion light-years, corresponding to when the universe was less than 700 million years old.

Quasar Birth Problem Solution Implications
The resolution of the quasar birth problem demonstrated by the five astronomers only works for the subset of big bang creation models known as ΛCDM (lambda cold dark matter) big bang models. In these models, the dominant component of the universe is dark energy and the second most dominant component is cold dark matter.

The team’s resolution yields yet another example showing that the more we learn about the universe the more detailed, specific, and accurate the big bang creation model becomes. It also adds to the long list of observational, experimental, and theoretical tests that the big bang creation model has consistently passed. These demonstrations give all of us, both Christians and non-Christians, increasing certainty and confidence that the Bible indeed exhibits accurate predictive power in that it taught at least three fundamental features of the big bang universe thousands of years before astronomers discovered them. Those features include the beginning of the universe, constant laws of physics, and a law of decay that pervades the universe.

This established predictive power of the Bible is strong evidence that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant message from the One who created the universe. Consequently, the Bible’s message is one that no rational human being should ever dismiss or ignore.

Endnotes

1. Geoffrey Burbidge and Margaret Burbidge, Quasi-Stellar Objects (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1967).
2. Burbidge and Burbidge, Quasi-Stellar Objects, vi.
3. Hugh Ross and John Rea, “Big Bang—The Bible Taught It First!” Reasons to Believe, July 1, 2000; Hugh Ross, “Does the Bible Teach Big Bang Cosmology?” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, August 26, 2019.
4. Hugh Norman Ross, Radio Sources with Low Frequency Cutoffs, Volumes 1 and 2 (Department of Astronomy, David Dunlap Observatory, University of Toronto, PhD Thesis, 1972).
5. Maarten Schmidt, Donald P. Schneider, and James E. Gunn, “Spectroscopic CCD Surveys for Quasars at Large Redshift. IV. Evolution of the Luminosity Function from Quasars Detected by Their Lyman-Alpha Emission,” Astronomical Journal 110, no. 1 (July 1995): 68–77, doi:10.1086/117497.
6. Hugh Ross, “How Gravitational Waves Help Explain the Universe’s History,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, March 10, 2016; Hugh Ross, “Neutron Star Merger Explains Why We’re Here (Expanded Version), Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe, November 3, 2017.
7. M. A. Latif et al., “Turbulent Cold Flows Gave Birth to the First Quasars,” Nature 607 (July 7, 2022): 48–51, doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04813-y.

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The Standard Model Overview
The standard model of particle physics (or standard model) largely undergirds much of the precision and success of big bang cosmology. In brief, the standard model posits that all the stuff of the universe is comprised of a small group of fundamental particles governed by the four fundamental forces. The group of fundamental particles includes six quarks (up, down, charm, strange, bottom, top), six leptons (electron, muon, tauon, and their associated neutrinos), four force-mediating particles, and the Higgs boson.

All normal matter is built from the quarks and leptons, given mass by the Higgs boson, and interacts through the four fundamental forces—electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear, and gravitational force. The particles on the right of the diagram (the photon, W⁺, W^–, Z⁰, and gluons) mediate three of these fundamental forces. The electromagnetic interaction exchanges photons between particles. Gluon exchange governs the strong nuclear force and the W and Z bosons mediate the weak nuclear force.

All that the standard model seeks to explain, it does so with amazing completeness and precision. It may seem like physicists invented the standard model to explain all the particles above. However, the standard model was developed before scientists had found the charm and top quarks, the Higgs boson, gluons, and the W and Z bosons. In fact, the standard model makes predictions about the existence of each of these particles as well as their properties. Each of those predictions matches our best understanding of the measured values.

Moving beyond the Standard Model
Despite the success of the standard model, scientists know it is incomplete. The standard model offers no explanation for dark matter, or why the expansion of the universe started accelerating, or why the universe contains predominantly matter instead of an equal mix of matter and antimatter. Consequently, scientists search vigorously for signs of how to move beyond the standard model. As Mike Strauss and I discussed in a Stars, Cells, and God podcast, detailed studies of the Higgs boson (mass, number, and other characteristics) provide one avenue in this search. Precisely measuring the W boson mass provides another. However, while studies of the Higgs have found nothing unexpected, recent measurements of the W boson might have revealed some clues.

The CDF-II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron gathered data from proton-antiproton collisions. Using this data, the CDF team determined a mass for the W boson of 80,433.5 +/- 9.6 MeV/c².¹ Two aspects of this measurement warrant mention. First, it represents an amazing technological accomplishment to measure the mass of a particle that decays in an infinitesimal fraction of a second (the half-life of a W boson is 10^-25 seconds) to one part in 10,000! Second, the mass found by the CDF team differs significantly from the calculated value based on the standard model, as shown in the image below.

Cautious Optimism
The CDF team invested considerable effort to ensure the validity of the measurement and confirmed that their measurement of the Z boson mass (a sister of the W boson) matches the predicted value from the standard model. Future measurements by the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) or others will hopefully provide confirmation of the larger mass, but it will take many years for those results. In the meantime, the unexpected result gives a big clue of how physicists could expand the standard model to explain the new W boson mass measurement. Finding ways to do so that remain consistent with all the experimental results will be challenging but may lead to better explanations of dark matter, dark energy, and the lack of antimatter in our universe. Better understanding of the universe’s composition helps inform big bang cosmological models.

Endnotes

1. CDF Collaboration, “High-Precision Measurement of the W Boson Mass with the CDF II Detector,” Science 376, no. 6589 (April 7, 2022): 170–76, doi:10.1126/science.abk1781.

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Examples of Fine-Tuning
As scientists gain increasing knowledge of the beginning and history of the universe, they continue to discover aspects of the universe that must take exacting values for life to exist. Stars’ interior furnaces produce the carbon and oxygen that all life requires. Three finely tuned “coincidences” (a meta-stable beryllium-8 nucleus, a specific nuclear energy level in carbon, and no similar nuclear energy level for oxygen) ensure that stars produce the proper abundance of carbon and oxygen. The form and strengths of the four fundamental forces govern these coincidences and, without fine-tuning, the coincidences don’t occur. Incidentally, the finely tuned values of those forces also ensure that our universe keeps sufficient hydrogen—another element critical for life.

For stars to exist (at least those capable of producing carbon and oxygen), the geometry of the universe must match a specific value to incredible precision. If larger or smaller by a small fraction, the universe either forms no stars or only massive stars that quickly turn into black holes. For more fine-tuning examples, see the extensive catalog of various aspects of the universe that appear fine-tuned for life compiled by my colleague Hugh Ross.

Proposed Explanations of Fine-Tuning
How do scientists account for the fine-tuning? Sometimes, ongoing research appears to explain a fine-tuned aspect of the universe by natural means. One illustrative example relates to the geometry of the universe mentioned above. Back in the 1980s, the dominant quantity known to contribute to the energy budget of the universe was mass (the product of density and volume), and this posed a problem. Even without knowing much about dark matter or anything about dark energy, scientists knew the geometry of our universe is remarkably close to flat—not flat like a piece of paper, but flat in a geometry sense. However, flat is an unstable geometry for our universe such that any small deviations from flatness grow quickly and result in a closed or open universe. Measuring a flat geometry today required the mass density of the universe to vary by no more than one part in 10⁶⁰ in the earliest moments of the universe. The discovery of dark matter and dark energy did not explain this fine-tuning. Eventually, scientists found a mechanism called inflation that ensures the flatness we see today.

Two relevant points about inflation warrant mention. First, getting inflation to work seems to require a high degree of fine-tuning (more on that in a future blog). Second, inflation does not remove the requirement of a precise density to get a flat geometry—it simply provides a mechanism to ensure that density happens. Inflation basically acts like the aforementioned funnel that produces universes with a flat geometry regardless of any deviations from flat that might have existed in the earliest moments of the universe. But this is not the only way scientists propose to explain fine-tuning.

A recent article highlights two common classes of explanations and a third, new one.¹ To see how the three methods work, let’s look at the fine-tuning seen in dark energy. When scientists discovered dark energy back in the 1990s, they realized that the measured amount of dark energy was orders of magnitude smaller than the expected amount based on our understanding of the laws of physics. In fact, the measured value was 120 orders of magnitude smaller. One possible explanation for the discrepancy utilizes an undiscovered symmetry in the universe to explain why something we expect to be very large cancels out to almost zero. A second possible explanation argues that the sample size is much larger than we originally thought. So, the dark energy assumes an unexpectedly small value in our universe, but in a vast multiverse all the more natural values for dark energy arise.

The third, new explanation posits that some trigger mechanism serves to make the value what we measure. Like dark energy, the Higgs boson mass in our universe has an unexpectedly small value. However, we know that the Higgs field couples to itself and makes the Higgs boson that scientists discovered in 2012. If the Higgs field also couples to other particles and fields in specific ways, certain values of the Higgs mass would trigger the formation of a multiverse like the one we inhabit, the model explains. When the Higgs mass is not near these values, no substantial universe forms. The explanation requires multiple Higgs bosons, which adds a predictive aspect so future data could falsify or validate the model.²

Fine-Tuning Is Robust
Each of these explanatory approaches shares two features. First, they all recognize that our universe depends on some parameter meeting exacting conditions. Second, they each posit some mechanism, much like a funnel, that drives our universe toward that exacting condition. As we continue to understand more about our universe, we often find fascinating explanations of how things work, and those explanations add to the evidence that our universe seems fine-tuned for our existence.

Endnotes

1. Francesco Riva, “A Third Way to Explain Fine Tuning,” Physics 14 (November 15, 2021): 157, https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/157.

2. Nima Arkani-Hamed, Raffaele Tito D’Agnolo, and Hyung Do Kim, “Weak Scale as a Trigger,” Physical Review D 104, no. 9 (November 15, 2021): 095014, https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.095014.

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