Big bang universe “should not actually exist”
Antimatter still missing!
The currently leading evolutionary cosmogony (Gk. ‘birth of the universe’) is the big bang theory. This basically says: nothing exploded and became everything. One part of this is energy turning into matter, as per the famous Einstein formula E = mc².
However, when this occurs, the standard laws of particle physics state that an equal amount of matter and antimatter must be produced. Yet our universe comprises overwhelmingly of matter, with only rare and fleetingly short-lived antimatter particles, produced for example in experimental high energy collisions. These are of the same mass but opposite charge (if the particle is charged) and magnetic moment1 as the corresponding matter particle, which they soon interact with and are mutually annihilated—antielectron (positron) with electron, antiproton with proton, antineutron with neutron, etc. How did matter survive annihilation from an equal amount of antimatter?
Well, according to big bang proponents, most matter was annihilated by antimatter, forming the photons of the cosmic background radiation. And there are a billion of those photons for every proton. Therefore, they believe that the early universe contained a billion and one protons for every billion antiprotons—leaving just that one proton surviving.2
But for energy to produce this slight imbalance, there would need to be asymmetry in the fundamental makeup of the universe. So researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN,3 in Meyrin, Switzerland, have been trying to find imbalances between protons and antiprotons.
The latest experiment has measured the magnetic moment of the antiproton 350 times more precisely than previously—to 1.5 parts per billion.4 This was a tremendously difficult experiment, because these antiprotons must be generated, then trapped by a powerful magnetic field to prevent them annihilating with a proton; and also because the magnetic moment is so tiny!
The experiment showed that the antiproton has an equal and opposite magnetic moment to the proton. I.e. not enough asymmetry to explain the overabundance of matter! This has so undermined the big bang cosmology that the lead researcher, Christian Smorra, said:
“All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist.”5
Well, not a universe that formed in some big bang, anyway. Discoveries like this and others which shake confidence in the big bang might well lead to the secular world abandoning this belief in future, in favour of some other naturalistic origins myth.6 This should therefore be a lesson to those misguided Christian apologists who ‘marry’ Genesis to the big bang—they might well find themselves ‘widowed’ in the future. So they will need to reinterpret their reinterpretations, which were in any case biblically untenable.7
References and notes
- Magnetic moment is the torque produced by interaction with a magnetic field. Despite having no charge, neutrons, too, have a magnetic moment. This is because a neutron comprises three charged quarks: two down quarks (charge −⅓) and one up quark (+⅔); the antineutron comprises two down antiquarks (+⅓) and one up antiquark (−⅔). Return to text.
- Lewis, G. and Barnes, L., A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos, ch. 6, Cambridge University Press, 2016. Return to text.
- From the old name in French, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research). Return to text.
- Smorra, C. and 16 others, A parts-per-billion measurement of the antiproton magnetic moment, Nature 550(7676):371–374, 19 October 2017 | doi:10.1038/nature24048. Return to text.
- Smorra, C., cited in Osborne, H., The universe should not actually exist, CERN scientists discover, newsweek.com, 25 October 2017. Return to text.
- Wieland, C., Secular scientists blast the big bang: what now for naïve apologetics? Creation 27(2):23–25, 2005; creation.com/bigbangblast. Return to text.
- Sarfati, J., Evolution/long ages contradicts Genesis order of Creation, Creation 37(3):52–54, 2015; creation.com/evolution-v-genesis-order. Return to text.
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