WSJ excerpt by MANJIT KUMAR
‘The theory is beautiful beyond comparison” is how Albert Einstein modestly described his theory of gravity, known as general relativity. He believed that “scarcely anyone who fully understands this theory can escape its magic.” In the years since 1916, when he published a paper setting out the theory, few have disagreed, yet buried within his greatest achievement was also what Einstein considered “my greatest blunder.”
The equations of general relativity can be solved in a number of different ways, with each solution representing a model of a possible universe. Like everyone else at the time, Einstein believed that the universe was eternal and unchanging, so he incorporated a mathematical term, the “cosmological constant,” to ensure that that was exactly how it remained. This fixing of the equations was Einstein’s great blunder, for he failed to grasp the full magic of his theory. It was left to others to take seriously the solutions that pointed to a universe that was not static but expanding.
In his previous book, “How it Ends” (2010), Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona in Tucson, outlined the ultimate fate of our expanding universe. It was a somber scenario in which galaxies sail apart at an ever-increasing rate as the stars within them fade to dark embers, with the structure of the universe eventually unraveling.
In his latest book he tackles the more difficult question of how the universe began. In clear, enthusiastic and occasionally lyrical prose, Mr. Impey takes the reader on a mind-blowing tour back through eons, stopping along the way to explain the formation of the solar system, the birth and death of stars, white dwarfs, supernovas, spiral galaxies, cosmic inflation, string theory, black holes and M-theory—an extension of string theory featuring 11 space-time dimensions that can be curled up into the four we’re familiar with in 10500 (1 followed by 500 zeros) ways. Each such solution leads to another potential universe, but ours is the one that interests Mr. Impey. …
According to the Big Bang model that has grown from Lemaître’s insight, the moment of instantaneous creation was 13.75 billion years ago and began with a singularity, a point of infinite mass and density where our present understanding of physics simply breaks down. …
The Big Bang model also says nothing about what banged, why it banged or what happened before it banged. So in the 1990s cosmologists began to take seriously the idea that our universe is but part of a “multiverse” of different universes, each with its own laws of physics. It’s a step too far for Mr. Impey, who suggests that “with the multiverse we seem to have taken leave of our senses and entered into wild speculation.” …
see full WSJ article HERE
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Notice the reviewer states that cosmologists attempt to explain what happened before the BB by positing the metaphysical and weakly supported multi-universe even though in their web of speculations “physics breaks down.”
Better to go with the solid truth of Christian theism that provides the rational pre-essentials, apropos immutable universals, required for rational pursuits including science.
see my Book Truth, Knowledge, and the Reason for God Here
or in E-book format for Kindle and all E-readers Here
