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Big bang goes pear-shaped?

A new research discovery eliminates a standard ‘escape clause’ from a huge problem for the big bangers.

by and David Catchpoole

Source: NASA

The ‘big bang’ idea of cosmic evolution is not only antibiblical, it has serious unsolved scientific problems that have, if anything, mounted over recent years.1 One of those problems that has been known for a long time is the matter/antimatter disparity.

A problem—and the ‘answer’ to date

According to the big bang, both matter and anti-matter popped into existence in equal amounts about 13.7 billion years ago. However, they should have annihilated each other almost immediately, leaving nothing but energy (light, heat). So why do we have a universe today which has enough matter left over to form the stars and planets we see today?

The answer given to date is that the laws of nature must have an ‘asymmetry’ (lopsidedness) to explain this. The asymmetry meant that when matter and antimatter annihilated each other after the big bang there was a very slight imbalance leaving some matter.2 On the basis of this answer, physicists predicted that small, subatomic particles such as neutrons would also be asymmetrical in a ‘‘pear-shaped’ fashion. It is only now, though, that experiments sensitive enough to detect such asymmetries, and therefore to test this theory, have been possible.

Bigger problem: the ‘answer’ doesn’t work

A team led by scientists from the University of Sussex has now reported the results of such experiments, which show that any such pear-shaped asymmetries in neutrons are overwhelmingly too small to be able to explain how the big bang could work to produce the universe we have today.

The report stated:

“The new result shows that the distortion in the subatomic particles is far smaller than most of the origin-of-matter theories had predicted—if the neutron were the size of the Earth, the distortion would still be less than the size of a bacterium.”3

If only more Christians were aware of how biblically unwise, as well as scientifically unnecessary, it is to compromise with notions of a ‘big bang’ so popular in ‘progressive creationist’ circles. Not only do its millions of years of slow cosmic evolution contradict a plain reading of Genesis, so does the order of events (big bang cosmology puts the sun existing before the earth, Genesis says the precise opposite).

For more on big bang problems, see our Q & A section on this topic.

Relevant resources

On the science of the big bang, this is the definitive book:

Dismantling the Big Bang: God’s universe rediscovered

   

On the huge problems with ‘progressive creation’ (the driving force behind ‘big bang theology’), this is essential reading for every full-on Christian:

Refuting Compromise

References and notes
  1. See Hartnett, J and Williams, A, Dismantling the Big Bang: God’s universe rediscovered.Return to text.
  2. Some suggest that this imbalance was only one matter particle more for every 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 x 1050) antimatter particles.Return to text.
  3. Pear-shaped particles probe big-bang mystery, Physorg.com, 16 June 2006.Return to text.
Published: 8 August 2006