Asked at Aeon, “Are we part of a dying reality or a blip in eternity? The value of the Hubble Constant could tell us which terror awaits”:
What determines our fate? To the Stoic Greek philosophers, fate is the external product of divine will, ‘the thread of your destiny’. To transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau, it is an inward matter of self-determination, of ‘what a man thinks of himself’. To modern cosmologists, fate is something else entirely: a sweeping, impersonal physical process that can be boiled down into a single, momentous number known as the Hubble Constant.
The Hubble Constant can be defined simply as the rate at which the Universe is expanding, a measure of how quickly the space between galaxies is stretching apart. The slightest interpretation exposes a web of complexity encased within that seeming simplicity, however. Extrapolating the expansion process backward implies that all the galaxies we can observe originated together at some point in the past – emerging from a Big Bang – and that the Universe has a finite age. Extrapolating forward presents two starkly opposed futures, either an endless era of expansion and dissipation or an eventual turnabout that will wipe out the current order and begin the process anew.
That’s a lot of emotional and intellectual weight resting on one small number.
Corey S. Powell, “Fate of the Universe” at Aeon
Bet on them all being wrong. That’s probably the only thing that has happened lots of times before.
“… and begin the process anew.”
Just how certain are you the process will begin anew? (As if that were something to put your hope in anyway.) If it just ends in a big crunch with no new bang, it wouldn’t be the first time physicists were wrong about something. But it would be the last.
On the timescales involved, it’s not a fate we need worry about. If we are still around in some far distant future – a big “if” – we will probably have evolved into something largely unrecognizable and which we almost certainly wouldn’t like.
Haha! Exactly.
And the imminent collapse of the human genome from an unsustainable genetic load will easily block the evolutionary thumbsuck from ever happening.
-Q
Mandy Moore – Only Hope (Official Music Video) – ( A Walk to Remember Soundtrack)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qReHGDNKC0c
First off, there are good scientific reasons to believe that the cyclical model is incorrect.
As Bruce Gordon explains in the following video, “And if there were a pre-Big Bang state and you had some bounces, then that (1 in 10^10^123) fine tuning (for entropy) gets even finer as you go backwards if you can even imagine such a thing.”
As well, the cyclical model was seriously brought into question with the results of the Boomerang experiment.
Moreover, and more importantly, the existence of a ‘true cosmological constant’, (no matter what the number turns out to be (67 or 73) for the expansion rate), is evidence for God.
Don’t take my word for it, in the following article three atheistic astrophysicists argued against there being a ‘true cosmological constant’ since if we lived in a universe with a ‘true cosmological constant’ then, in their opinion, that would mean “Arranging the universe as we think it is arranged would have required a miracle.,,,”, and they also stated a true cosmological constant would indicate that, “A unknown agent [external to time and space] intervened [in cosmic history] for reasons of its own.,,,”
Astrophysicist Hugh Ross comments on the ‘disturbing implications’ that “dark energy” had given those three atheistic astrophysicists at the 6:09 minute mark of the following video
Also of note: Atheistic astrophysicists also imagine that the expansion of the universe is driven by ‘dark energy’ which they believe to be ‘vacuum energy’ and/or ‘zero point energy’
Small problem for atheistic cosmologists who believe that vacuum energy is driving the expansion of the universe,, no one can seem to detect this zero point energy, vacuum energy, and/or ‘quantum foam’ that they believe to be driving the expansion of the universe.
Here are quite a few negative results that seriously question the atheistic cosmologist’s belief in “quantum foam’ and/or vacuum energy
This leaves the atheistic cosmologists in quite the pinch in regards to ever giving an adequate explanation for why the universe in expanding in such a finely tuned (1 in 10^123) way as it is.
Whereas the Christian Theist is, once again, found to be sitting quite comfortably in regards to the evidence we now have in hand.
The following site list several verses that speak of God ‘stretching out the heavens’
The following verse is my favorite out of the group of verses:
Might it be too obvious to point out the fact that, since God is real and the entire universe is firmly in His control, then the ‘fate’ of humanity, and the fate of the entire universe, is not nearly as bleak and dire as the author in the OP portrayed it to be?
Indeed, we have a firm hope in Jesus Christ that death will not have the final say in our own personal lives
Of supplemental note:
People who believe in vacuum energy, usually point to the Casimir Effect as supposedly definitive proof for vacuum energy (and/or zero point energy, and/or quantum foam).
Yet, the Casimir Effect is not definitive proof for virtual particles and/or quantum foam. Far from it.
As the following article states, ““Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be computed without reference to zero-point energies.,,, In fact, the description in terms of van der Waals forces is the only correct description from the fundamental microscopic perspective,[20][21] while other descriptions of Casimir force are merely effective macroscopic descriptions.”
Bottom line, atheistic cosmologists simply have no physical/material mechanism to explain why the universe is found to be expanding in such a finely tuned (1 in 10^122) fashion as it is. Whereas, on the other hand, the Christian Theist expected, via numerous bible verses, the heavens to be ‘stretched out’ by God Himself.