We live in what cosmologists call a “flat universe.” Put another way, if we mathematically account for all of the matter, all of the dark matter, and all of the gravity, all virtual particles, and all of the positive and negative energy of the universe and add it together, how much energy would that total? The ICR Discovery Center for Science & Earth History recently celebrated the first anniversary of its grand opening. I have been perplexed by the idea of dark energy since my childhood. Well, I don’t know. So an eternal universe is mathematically possible. But if everything came from nothing, how can this agree with what we understand about the conservation of matter or the conservation of energy? How cool is that? New and challenging ideas, at the edge of my understanding, only make sense to me if I can think out loud. So when we turn this powerful mathematical model to the biggest questions of the universe, what is revealed? Even if the laws of physics and chemistry in every single one of these other supposed universes did allow for life to evolve, those laws from another universe could not explain the existence of life in this universe. However, because most professing atheists have accepted the big bang model of the universe, they have accepted the premise that our universe did indeed have a beginning. The universe is still expanding and even accelerating in its expansion based upon what we can measure. The Big Bang isn’t something that happened, it is something that is still happening, and we are seeing it happen from the inside! During the creation... Years ago, an attendee at an ICR Back to Genesis seminar approached me with a fossil he and his daughter had found while on a hike in Washington State.... Evolution Hopes You Don’t Know Chemistry: The Problem of Control, Evolution Hopes You Don’t Know Chemistry: The Problem with Chirality, Chemistry by Chance: A Formula for Non-Life. Do you agree with today’s message? Haven’t we heard that matter and energy can’t be created or destroyed, but they can only be changed into other forms? The opening chapter of Genesis makes a significant and scientifically accurate statement concerning the fixity of created kinds. It is for this reason that virtual particles appear and then disappear after very short intervals. According to this view, it is only our particular universe that began 13.7 billion years ago. For instance, some are claiming that the cosmos as a whole—the so-called “multiverse”—is eternal, but that it contains infinitely many individual universes (a consequence of modern inflation theory). Through mathematics and indirect observation of quantum fluctuations, scientists can now make the case that our universe did indeed come into existence out of what people call, “nothing.”. However, the HUP itself presents an apparent difficulty for this claim. According to the Big Bang theory, the universe did not begin with nothing in the sense that at first there was nothing and then the universe came into being. ), add them together, and then verify that the sum really is exactly zero. Quantum Physics is, in a way, the new kid on the block. Moreover, when virtual particles momentarily appear within a vacuum, they are appearing in a space that already exists. Why do mosquitoes attack humans? Does that mean that it is necessarily “less true” than more established science? That is all I have for you today, but the conversation continues across social media and in the comment sections below. Not really. Accordingly, how creatures get and use food matches how Scripture describes our world. Where has all that energy been all this time? To find a Free Thought Forum meeting near you, to start your own local group, or to become a member and support this program through monthly donations – please visit freethoughtforum.org. The laws of conservation are completely satisfied. The HUP places a limit on the time that a quantum fluctuation can persist. Secular scientists are obsessed with attempting to show that life on Earth is not unique and therefore must exist, if not elsewhere in our solar system... What is ICR’s vision for the next chapter of creation ministry? This statement is still true when we read it backwards: 1000 - 1000 = 0. It is actually one of the most robust and productive tools we have in the field of physics. However, the effects of these virtual particles can be detected; they are, for instance, responsible for a very subtle effect on the spectrum of the hydrogen atom called the “Lamb shift.” The short lifetimes of these virtual particles are governed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP), which says that a short-lived state cannot have a well-defined energy.