The Carina Nebula,\u00a0visible from the southern hemisphere \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
David Wilkinson, God, Time and Stephen Hawking: An Exploration into Origins<\/em> (London and Grand Rapids: Monarch Books, 2001), is discussing the question of what we mean by cosmic fine tuning:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Second, why is it that the universe is so near the critical rate of expansion? \u00a0To see what this means imagine you had a machine which made universes. \u00a0[On the facing page is a simple little illustration showing an \u201cAcme Universe Making Machine.\u201d]<\/span><\/p>\nOn this machine you would have two dials. \u00a0One dial would control the expansion force of the Big Bang. \u00a0The other would control gravity, the force which pulls everything back together. \u00a0Set the dials to whatever you wanted and out would come a universe. \u00a0After a few billion attempts you would find it to be a very boring experiment! \u00a0In fact in order to get a universe which would produce carbon-based life those two dials need to be set quite precisely. \u00a0If you set the gravitational force too high, then the universe would appear but within a microsecond gravity would pull everything back together into the opposite of a Big Bang, a Big Crunch! \u00a0If you set the expansion rate too high, then the universe would expand at such a rate that gravity would be unable to form stars and galaxies. \u00a0In fact in order to get structure within the universe these dials need to be balanced to within 1 part in\u00a01060<\/sup><\/span> (1 followed by sixty zeros!). \u00a0In Paul Davies\u2019 words, that is the same accuracy as shooting at a target 1 centimetre square on the other side of the universe \u2014 and hitting it! \u00a0Why is it that early in the expansion, the expansion force of the Big Bang was balanced so carefully with the gravitational force?<\/span><\/p>\nThird, what is the origin of galaxies? \u00a0Galaxies form by gravity amplifying density fluctuations within the universe. \u00a0After two years of observing the universe, the COBE satellite found evidence for such density fluctuations or ripples in the microwave background. \u00a0These ripples could be the embryos of superclusters of galaxies. \u00a0They give evidence of clouds some 500 million light years across when the universe was only 300,000 years old. \u00a0But where did the density fluctuations come from, what determines their size and how do they grow? \u00a0(90, 92)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
David Wilkinson is both an English Methodist clergyman and theologian and a scientist with a doctorate in cosmology. \u00a0Dr. Sam LeFevre has kindly called to my notice a not-quite-fourteen-minute-long video of Dr. Wilkinson speaking in Durham, England, in 2015, that some of you might find interesting:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGod and the Cosmos\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 David Wilkinson, God, Time and Stephen Hawking: An Exploration into Origins (London and Grand Rapids: Monarch Books, 2001), is discussing the question of what we mean by cosmic fine tuning: \u00a0 Second, why is it that the universe is so near the critical rate of expansion? \u00a0To see what this means imagine you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"The](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/02\/800px-Carina_Nebula.jpg\")
<\/a>