Citations

Chapter 6 - Hostile Witnesses, Cosmology, and Biogenesis

[1057] Book: Finding Darwin's God. By Kenneth R. Miller. Cliff Street Books, 1999.

Page 15: "My particular religious beliefs or yours not withstanding, it is a fact that in the scientific world of the late twentieth century, the displacement of God by Darwinian forces is almost complete."

[1058] Article: "Lemaitre, Georges." Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2004.

"Belgian astronomer and cosmologist who formulated the modern big-bang theory...."

[1059] Article: "Lemaitre Follows Two Paths to Truth." By Duncan Aikman. New York Times Sunday Magazine, February 19, 1933. Pages 3, 11. Page 3:

"There is no conflict between religion and science," the Abbé Lemaitre has been telling audiences over and over again....

"... Genesis is simply trying to teach us that that one day in seven should be devoted to rest, worship and reverence—all necessary to salvation." ...

"... The idea that because they [the writers of the Bible] were right in their doctrine of immortality and salvation they must be also be right on all other subjects is simply the fallacy of people who have an incomplete understanding of why the Bible was given to us all."

[1060] Book: The Evolutionary Process: A Critical Review of Evolutionary Theory. By Verne Grant (Ph.D. in botany and genetics from Berkeley, Professor of Botany at The University of Texas at Austin). Columbia University Press, 1985.

Pages 13-14: "Creationism and evolutionism are not in the same league. Creationism is not a scientific theory that can be weighed against the evolution theory. It is a religious dogma. There is no independent evidence to support its account of the origin of plant, animal, and human life. The acceptance of the creationist story depends on faith rather than reason."

[1061] Home Page: Mount Wilson Observatory. Accessed May 2006 at http://www.mtwilson.edu/

"Mt. Wilson Observatory ... [is] one of the world's premier astronomical observatories. ... In the twenty-first century, the Observatory hosts several of the most technologically advanced facilities in the world for studying astronomical objects with unprecedented resolution and clarity."

[1062] Web page: "Robert Jastrow." National Space Society. Accessed May 2006 at http://nss.org/about/bios/jastrow.html

[1063] Book: God and the Astronomers. By Robert Jastrow. W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.

Page 11: "In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters."

Page 113: "There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe, and every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event, every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause."

[1064] Correspondence: "A View from Kansas on that evolution debate." By Scott C. Todd (Department of Biology, Kansas State University). Nature, September 30, 1999. Page 423.

[1065] Article: "Billions and Billions of Demons." By Richard C. Lewontin. New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997. Pages 28-32. http://www.nybooks.com

[1066] Entry: "Harold, Franklin Marcel." American Men and Women of Science. Edited by Pamela M. Kalte and Katherine H. Nemeh. Gale, 2003. Volume 3.

Page 508 reviews Dr. Harold's background and notes he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California.

[1067] Web page: "Creative Retirement Institute Instructors." Accessed May 2006 at http://cri.edcc.edu/

"Dr. Frank Harold is a basic scientist with 40 years of experience in research on cell biology and microbiology. He holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry and is Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University. He has authored two books and many papers on science."

[1068] Book: The Way of the Cell. By Franklin M. Harold. Oxford University Press, 2001. Page 250.

[1069] Web page: "George Wald – Biography." Accessed December 2007 at http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1967/wald-bio.html

[1070] Article: "The Origin of Life." By George Wald. Scientific American, August 1954. Pages 45-53. Page 46.

[1071] Book: George Washington Carver: In His Own Words. Edited by Gary Kremer. University of Missouri Press, 1987. Pages 129-130 (in a letter dated November 24, 1924).

[1072] Article: "Lister, Sir Joseph." Contributor: Audrey B. Davis (Ph.D., Former Curator of Medical Sciences, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution). World Book Encyclopedia, 2007 Deluxe Edition.

"Lister's application of antiseptics so revolutionized surgery that its whole history can be divided into two periods, pre-Listerian and post-Listerian. The use of Lister's techniques virtually eliminated post-surgical infections."

[1073] Book: The Collected Papers of Joseph, Baron Lister. Clarendon Press, 1909. Volume I. Address: "On the Relations of Micro-Organisms to Disease." Delivered before the British Medical Association on August 12, 1880. Published in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, April 1881. Page 387:

The relation of micro-organisms to disease is a subject of vast extent and importance. If we compare the present state of knowledge regarding it with that of twenty years ago, we are astonished at the progress which has been made in the interval. At that time bacteria were little more than scientific curiosities... That they were the causes of putrefaction, or other fermentative changes, was a thing scarcely thought of; and the notion that they had special relations to disease would have been regarded as the wildest of speculations.

[1074] Book: Joseph Lister: The Man who Made Surgery Safe. By Frederick Fox Cartwright. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963.

Page 117 contains data showing that Lister's techniques brought about a tremendous reduction surgery death rates.

[1075] Book: Joseph Lister: The Friend of Man. By Hector Charles Cameron. William Heinemann Medical Books, 1949. Page 151:

One of his students, Lucas Championniére remarked: "Lister gave a scientific basis to surgery. ... His genius showed itself in this, that starting from a fundamental observation, verified scientifically, he succeeded in determining the general laws of repair."

Pages 175-6: "It has been said that there is but one division to be made in the history of surgery, surgery before Lister and surgery after Lister."

[1076] Book: Lord Lister. By Sir Rickman John Godlee. Oxford University Press, 1924. Third Edition, Revised. Page 390 (in an August 1876 graduation address at the University of Edinburgh).

[1077] Same as above.

[1078] Book: Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography. By Carl Seelig. Translated by Mervyn Savill. Staples Press Limited, 1956.

Page 63: "On October 19th, 1900, the 42-year-old Max Planck informed members of the German Physikalische Gesellschaft of his discovery of the laws of radiation. On December 14th of the same year he was able to give the same Society the theoretical derivation of this law. This day can be considered as the birthday of the quantum theory."

[1079] Book: The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin. By John Farley. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Page 154.

NOTE: A 1955 German source for this quote is cited on page 213. Planck passed on in 1947.

[1080] Book: God and the Astronomers. By Robert Jastrow. W.W. Norton & Company, 1978. Page 16.

[1081] This article provides a very good summary of a recent, widespread, and egregious example: "Will Smith, Hitler and the Diminishing Value of Truth." By Dennis Prager. Jewish World Review, January 2, 2008. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0108/prager010208.php3

[1082] This press release is a prime example of such a case: "The Estrada Nomination: The Misquote Of Senator Patrick Leahy, On Filibusters." Office Of U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, March 3, 2003. http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200303/030303a.html

This press release asserts that the following quote of Senator Leahy on was taken out of context: "I have stated over and over again ... that I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or supported. (June 18, 1998)"

The full quote reads: "I have stated over and over again on this floor that I would refuse to put an anonymous hold on any judge; that I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or supported; that I felt the Senate should do its duty."

Since these comments were made when a procedural tactic known as an "anonymous hold" was being used in the Senate, Leahy's office claims he was misquoted. This is what I call the "censorship ploy." In essence, the perpetrator insists: "If the main topic is _______, there can be no implications for any other subject." On its face, this is sheer nonsense. Furthermore, it is not as if speakers and writers always adhere to narrow topics and never comment about broader or tangential issues. The quote above reveals that Leahy did exactly this, which is indisputably confirmed by his own words four months later:

I have heard rumors that some on the Republican side planned to filibuster this nomination. I cannot recall a judicial nomination being successfully filibustered. I do recall earlier this year when the Republican Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and I noted how improper it would be to filibuster a judicial nomination. [Congressional Record: October 14, 1998 (Senate). Pages S12578-9. http://frwebgate2.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/...]

[1083] Book: Studies on Fermentation: The Diseases of Beer, Their Causes, and The Means of Preventing Them. By Louis Pasteur. Translated with the author's sanction by Frank Faulkner & D. Constable Robb. Macmillan & Co., 1879. Kraus Reprint Co., 1969. Page 42:

When we see beer and wine undergo radical changes, in consequence of the harbor which those liquids afford to microscopic organisms that introduce themselves invisibly and unsought into it, and swarm subsequently therein, how can we help imagining that similar changes may and do take place in the case of man and animals? Should we, however, be disposed to think that such a thing must hold true, because it seems both probable and possible, we must, before asserting our belief, recall to mind the epigraph of this work: the greatest aberration of the mind is to believe a thing to be, because we desire it.

[1084] Book: Making Sense of Research Papers in Life Sciences and Medicine. By Ben Yudkin. Routledge, 2006.

Page 14: "Peer review is the gold standard of scientific credibility."

[1085] The following five examples are merely a few of countless papers I have seen with citations dating back to decades before the papers were written.

[1086] Paper: "Biofilms in the large bowel suggest an apparent function of the human vermiform appendix." By R. Randal Bollinger and others. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2007. Accepted manuscript was published online 9/7/07.

This paper cites a source from 1978.

[1087] Paper: "Genetic Factors in Parkinson's Disease and Potential Therapeutic Targets." By Jian Feng. Current Neuropharmacology, Volume 1, Number 4, 2003. Pages 301-313.

Reference number 11 is from 1974.

[1088] Paper: "Genetics of Peanut Allergy: A Twin Study." By Scott H. Sicherer and others. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, July 2000. Pages 53-56.

Reference number 14 is from 1974, reference 18 is from 1971, and reference 19 is from 1973.

[1089] Paper: "Neuronal Transcriptome of Aplysia: Neuronal Compartments and Circuitry." By Leonid L. Moroz and others. Cell, December 29, 2006. Pages 1453-67.

This paper cites a source from 1966.

[1090] Paper: "Congenital absence of the vermiform appendix." By Simon L. L. Greenberg and others. ANZ Journal of Surgery (the official journal of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons), March 2003. Pages 166-7.

Reference number 8 is from 1946.

[1091] Book: Evolution. By Colin Patterson. Comstock Publishing (a division of Cornell University Press), 1999. Second edition. First published in 1978.

Back cover: Patterson was "employed in the Paleontology Department of The Natural History Museum of London from 1961 until 1993."

Page 122: "When I published the first edition of this book I was hardly aware of creationism but, during the 1980s, like many other biologists I learned that one should think carefully about candor in argument (in publications, lectures or correspondence) in case one was furnishing creationist campaigners with ammunition in the form of 'quotable quotes', often taken out of context."

[1092] Article: "Evolution Opponent Is in Line for Schools Post." By Cornelia Dean. New York Times, May 19, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/19/education/19board.html

"There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth."

[1093] Article: "U.S. Beliefs in Pseudoscience Worry Experts." By Randolph E. Schmid. Associated Press, February 17, 2007. http://news.aol.com

"But there also has been a drop in the number of people who believe evolution correctly explains the development of life on Earth...."

[1094] Article: "A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash." By Amy Harmon. New York Times, August 24, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/education/...

"Just this summer, religious advocates lobbied successfully for a Louisiana law that protects the right of local schools to teach alternative theories for the origin of species, even though there are none that scientists recognize as valid."

[1095] "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism." Center for Science and Culture, Updated October 2007. http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org

List of signatories: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/...

[1096] Article: "Stephen Jay Gould, 60, Is Dead; Enlivened Evolutionary Theory." By Carol Kaesuk Yoon. New York Times, May 21, 2002. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=...

One of the most influential evolutionary biologists of the 20th century and perhaps the best known since Charles Darwin....

In 1967, he received a doctorate in paleontology from Columbia University and went on to teach at Harvard, where he would spend the rest of his career.

[1097] Book: Ontogeny and Phylogeny. By Stephen Jay Gould. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977. Page 6.

[1098] Article: "Cosmology: Myth or Science?" Hannes Alfvén. Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy, March 1984, Pages 79-98. http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ckank/fringe/alfven/alfven1.html

Pages 90-91.

[1099] The primary source of this quotation is a foreign book I was unable to obtain. Therefore, I wrote Dr. Arp to see if this statement was and still is an accurate reflection of his view. He responded affirmatively in a correspondence dated April 11, 2006.

[1100] Article: "Why Only One Big Bang?" By Geoffrey Burbidge. Scientific American, February 1992. Page 120.

[1101] Paper: "Magnitude-Redshift Relation for SNe Ia, Time Dilation, and Plasma Redshift." By Ari Brynjolfsson. February 22, 2006. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0602/0602500v1.pdf

Page 7: "The very best data by the supernova researchers are consistent with the magnitude-redshift relations predicted by the plasma redshift. The data indicate that there is no time dilation; that is, the data indicate that the contemporary big-bang hypothesis is false."

NOTE: Dr. Brynjolfsson's advanced degrees include Mag Scient, which is equivalent to a Ph.D., and Dr. Phil, which is "about equal to the qualification of a full professor at major university (MIT) in USA." [As explained in an email from Dr. Brynjolfsson dated April 13, 2006.]

[1102] Article: "Cosmology: Myth or Science?" Hannes Alfvén. Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy, March 1984, Pages 79-98. http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ckank/fringe/alfven/alfven1.html

Page 87: "The popular creationism in the South in the United States derives from religious fanaticism."

[1103] Book: Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science. By Halton Arp. Apeiron, 1998.

Page 270: "Their establishment science [big bang] is the most blatant form of creationism. The claim is that not just humans, but the whole universe was created instantly out of nothing."

[1104] Article: "Why Only One Big Bang?" By Geoffrey Burbidge. Scientific American, February 1992.

Page 120. "The big bang ultimately reflects some cosmologists' search for creation and for a beginning. That search properly lies in the realm of metaphysics, not science." 

[1105] Paper: "Magnitude-Redshift Relation for SNe Ia, Time Dilation, and Plasma Redshift." By Ari Brynjolfsson. February 22, 2006. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0602/0602500v1.pdf

Page 1: "The plasma redshift, which follows from exact evaluation of photons interaction with hot sparse electron plasma, leads to a quasi-static, infinite, and everlasting universe."

NOTE: This type of cosmological model extends indefinitely into the past, thus, there is no creation in a Biblical or religious sense.

[1106] Web page: "Creation scientists and other biographies of interest." Accessed May 2006 at http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/

This page contains a list of more than a hundred creationists who "possess a doctorate in a science-related field." All of the physicists I have listed appear on this page along with some of their biographical details. Information regarding the specific degrees they hold was gathered through various other sources including papers they have published and university websites.

[1107] Article: "Bucking the big bang." New Scientist, May 22, 2004. Page 20.

The full statement and list of signatories is available at http://cosmologystatement.org/. The three scientists mentioned above who signed it are Halton Arp, Geoffrey Burbidge, and Ari Brynjolfsson. Note than none of these are among the creationists listed above.

[1108] Textbook: University Astronomy. By Jay M. Pasachoff & Marc L. Kutner. W.B. Saunders Company, 1978.

Pages 726-727: "Basically, these cosmologies say that once upon a time there was a great big bang that began the universe. From that moment on, the universe expanded, and as the galaxies formed they shared in the expansion."

Page 728: "Actually, gravity has been slowing down the expansion."

Page 727: "Astronomers use a quantity called the deceleration parameter ... to describe how fast the expansion is slowing down."

Page 742: "If gravity is strong enough, then the expansion will gradually stop, and a contraction will begin. If gravity is not strong enough, then the rate of expansion might slow, but the universe would continue to expand forever...."

NOTE: There is no mention in this book of the difficulties or alterations to the big bang theory we will be discussing.

[1109] Book: Cosmic Questions. By Richard Morris (Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Nevada). John Wiley & Sons, 1993.

Page 85: "A universe that was very far from critical density, for example, would most likely never produce life. Either it would collapse into a big crunch long before life had a chance to evolve, or its expansion would be so rapid that matter would never have a chance to condense into galaxies, stars, and planets."

NOTE: The term "critical density" is directly related to the expansion rate, as explained in the forthcoming paragraphs of supplemental material.

[1110] Press Release: "Princeton Physicist Robert Dicke Dies." Princeton University Communications and Publications, March 4, 1997. http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/97/q1/0304dick.html

Dicke is widely known for his leadership in developing experimental tests of gravity physics and of the standard gravitational model for the large-scale evolution of our universe. He was responsible for the famous 1965 paper which proposed that radiation detected near one centimeter wavelength is left over from the hot Big Bang start of expansion of the Universe. Dicke invented the instrument used to detect this radiation (the Dicke radiometer, now a standard astronomical tool) that has been key for transforming cosmology from a theoretical to a more experimental science.

[1111] Book: Gravitation and the Universe (Jayne Lectures for 1969). By Robert H. Dicke. American Philosophical Society, 1970. Page 62:

The puzzle here is the following: how did the initial explosion become started with such precision, the outward radial motion become so finely adjusted as to enable the various parts of the universe to fly apart while continually slowing in the rate of expansion? There seems to be no fundamental theoretical reason for such a fine balance. If the fireball has expanded only .1 per cent faster, the present rate of expansion would have been 3 X 10³ times as great. Had the initial explosion rate been .1 per cent less and the Universe would have expanded to only 3 X 10^-6 of its present radius before collapsing. At this maximum radius the density of ordinary matter would have been... over 10¹⁶ times as great as the present mass density. No stars could have formed in such a Universe, for it would not have existed long enough to form stars.

[1112] Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997. Page 176:

[O]mega [is] the ratio between the actual mass density of the universe and the critical density. (The critical density, calculated from the expansion rate, is the density that would put the universe just on the borderline between eternal expansion and eventual collapse.) ... [I]f omega differed from one by only a small amount in the early universe, then the deviation would grow with time, and today omega would be very far from one. Today omega is known to lie between 0.1 and 2, implying that at one second after the big bang omega must have been 0.999999999999999 and 1.000000000000001.

Page 287: "It may seem a bit hypothetical to extrapolate the universe backward to one second after the big bang, but the extrapolation requires only the physics of gravity and low-energy nuclear physics. The calculations are very simple, and among my fellow scientists I have heard no real skepticism about their validity."

[1113] Textbook: Foundations of Modern Cosmology. By John F. Hawley & Katherine A. Holcomb. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Pages 298, 301-302, 420-421 reiterate and further detail certain aspects of the previous citation.

[1114] Book: Gravitation and the Universe (Jayne Lectures for 1969). By Robert H. Dicke. American Philosophical Society, 1970.

The equations on pages 58-59 are pertinent to whether the universe collapses or expands forever.

[1115] Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997.

Pages 167-179 explain how Guth came to the idea of inflation.

Page 174: "After 100 doubling times—which is only about 10^-35 seconds—the universe would be 10³⁰ times its original size."

NOTES: Page 185 shows a graph of a possible inflation scenario in which the universe expands by about 10⁵⁵ times in less than 10^-35  seconds, but the author explains that the "precise numbers are highly uncertain."

[1116] Article: "The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe." By Andre Linde. Scientific American, November 1994. Pages 48-55. Page 51:

The main difference between inflationary theory and the old cosmology becomes clear when one calculates the size of the universe at the end of inflation. Even if the universe at the beginning of inflation was as small as 10^-33 centimeter, after 10^-35 seconds of inflation this domain acquires an unbelievable size. According to some inflationary models, this size in centimeters can equal ... 1 followed by a trillion zeros. These numbers depend on the models used, but in most versions this size is many orders of magnitude greater than the size of the observable universe, or 10²⁸ centimeters.

[1117] Book: Cosmic Questions. By Richard Morris. John Wiley & Sons, 1993. Pages 84-85.

[1118] Book: Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists. By Alan Lightman & Roberta Brawer. Harvard University Press, 1990. Page 225.

NOTE: Pages 214-231 contain a transcript of an interview conducted with James Peebles on January 19, 1988. An overview of Dr. Peebles' credentials is given on page 156 of Rational Conclusions.

[1119] Article: "Scientists Get Glimpse of First Moments After Beginning of Time." By Dennis Overbye. New York Times, March 16, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/science/16cnd-cosmic.html?pagewanted=all

Using data from a new map of the baby universe, astronomers said today that they had seen deep into the big bang that allegedly started the universe and had got their first detailed hint of what was going on less than a trillionth of a second after time began. ...

The new map was produced by a NASA satellite known as the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe [WMAP]. ...

Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, called the results, "the first smoking gun evidence for inflation."

[1120] Article: "Ringside Seat to the Universe's First Split Second." By Christopher Wanjek. NASA, March 16, 2006. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/wmap_pol.html

This article pertains to the results mentioned in the citation above. It begins: "You don't get much closer to the big bang than this. Scientists peering back to the oldest light in the universe have evidence to support the concept of inflation...." However, the author later admits that "smoking-gun evidence" for inflation has not been found:

WMAP detected E-mode polarization but not B-mode yet. B-mode detection could provide smoking-gun evidence for inflation. But with the temperature map plus the E-mode polarization map, the WMAP team can say several things about inflation. For example, scientists now have an upper limit on the energy of inflation. Also, WMAP data support basic predictions of inflation about the size and strength of spacetime fluctuations and how they get weaker on smaller length scales.

[1121] I would also argue that even the citation above – which is far more candid than the citation above it – still greatly overstates the case for inflation. This is because there are numerous models for inflation, all of which are designed in the light of available cosmological data. As this data pores in, models are eliminated and scientists continually create new models.* † ‡ § Thus, regardless of what the data shows, there is always a model that can be pointed to with the claim of "evidence of inflation."

Furthermore, there are reasons not to be overconfident in the WMAP results. Despite the great fanfare that has accompanied the release of WMAP data in 2003 and 2006, inconsistencies have already reared their head. In 2003, the WMAP team determined that the first stars ignited 200 million years after the big bang,¶ and as reported in the Washington Post:

Scientists are highly confident in the new measurements because every one fits perfectly into what would have been expected based on existing theories, and matches precisely complementary measurements gathered independently by other instruments, including the powerful Hubble Space Telescope. "What we find when we do this is remarkable -- it all fits," said David Spergel, a Princeton scientist involved in the project. "It's a lot like matching fingerprints."#

First of all, the claim that every measurement "fits perfectly" with existing theories is undermined in the very same article, which states:

One of the biggest surprises from the new data is that the first generation of stars to shine in the blackness of space ignited just 200 million years after the big bang. Previous estimates were that the first stars were born perhaps as many as 1 billion years after, but no sooner than about 500 million years.#

Second, only three years later, the date dramatically changed again when WMAP altered it from 200 to 400 million years. Even though this is still 100 million years below the lower limit of the previous range, the New York Times reported that this new date was "comfortably in line with mainstream theories."£ Obviously, these theories enjoy considerable flexibility to accommodate whatever new data comes in because three years earlier, the New York Times reported that "most astronomers suspected" a date of about 800 million years.¥

The WMAP website also skirts around such issues. It states that the oldest known stars are somewhere between 11 and 18 billion years old and this constitutes a "potential crisis" because by one method of calculation, the age of the universe is about 9 billion years old. Then it states that WMAP can "help resolve this crisis" because it has determined that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and since this age is greater than that of the oldest stars, "the Big Bang theory has passed an important test."¢ Not so – by their own range of dates for the age of the oldest stars (11-18 billion years old), the big bang theory has not passed this test, but received a grade of incomplete. In fact, as the textbook Foundations of Modern Cosmology (1988) points out, the best age estimate for the oldest stars is 15 billion years, and were it not for the fact that this creates a problem for the big bang theory, "there would be near agreement" that these stars "are at least 14 billion years old."€

* Book: Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries. By Steven Weinberg. Harvard University Press, 2001. Page 178:

A critical test of these new theories will have to wait until new microwave telescopes [referring to WMAP] can study finer details in the cosmic microwave radiation. Even then, it may not be possible to decide for or against inflation, both because these observations are clouded by radio noise from our own galaxy and because by now there are so many versions of inflationary cosmology. As we make progress in understanding the expanding universe, the problem itself expands, so that the solution seems always to recede from us.

† Article: "Scientists Get Glimpse of First Moments After Beginning of Time." By Dennis Overbye. New York Times, March 16, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/science/16cnd-cosmic.html?pagewanted=all

"But astronomers and physicists admit that they still have no idea what might have caused inflation, because it happened at temperatures and energies unattainable by any particle accelerator on Earth. As a result, there are a welter of models describing how it might have worked."

‡ Article: "For Astronomers, Big Bang Confirmation." By Dennis Overbye. New York Times, February 12, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/12/science/12COSM.html

"Dr. Andrei Linde, a cosmologist at Stanford and one of the fathers of inflation theory, and the inventor of the model that was ruled out, said that it was 'great' that theories were getting culled." {Compare this 2003 statement with the next note from 2006.}

§ Article: "Scientists Get Glimpse of First Moments After Beginning of Time." By Dennis Overbye. New York Times, March 16, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/science/16cnd-cosmic.html?pagewanted=all

"Although inflation is not yet conclusively confirmed, it is now in better shape than ever, many astronomers said, and many models can be eliminated. ... Andrei Linde of Stanford, one of the leading inflationary theorists, noted that his own favorite model was still in the running...."

NOTE: The four sources above are a mere sampling of evidence showing how inflation models fall by the wayside and are replaced by a never-ending supply of new models. Many other sources and examples can be cited, but I think the point is sufficiently made.

¶ Web page: "Understanding the Evolution of Life in the Universe." Responsible NASA official: Gary Hinshaw. Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Last updated 02/06/2006. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/

"WMAP determined that the first stars in the universe arose only about 200 million years after the Big Bang."

# Article: "A Picture Worth a Thousand Answers: Scientists Capture Best Image Ever of Universe's Beginning." By Rob Stein. Washington Post, February 12, 2003. http://www.washingtonpost.com/

£ Article: "Scientists Get Glimpse of First Moments After Beginning of Time." By Dennis Overbye. New York Times, March 16, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/science/16cnd-cosmic.html?pagewanted=all

Using the new map, the Wilkinson team has been able to revise an earlier estimate of the time at which the first stars began to form and shine through the primordial murk that followed the cooling of the big bang fires. Those stars appeared when the universe was about 400 million years old, they said today. The previous estimate of 200 million years, based on earlier Wilkinson data, had been seen as surprisingly early by many cosmologists and the new date is comfortably in line with mainstream theories.

¥ Article: "For Astronomers, Big Bang Confirmation." By Dennis Overbye. New York Times, February 12, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/12/science/12COSM.html

"Most astronomers suspected that this [ignition of the first stars] had happened at about the time of the most distant and early quasars, around 800 million years of age."

¢ Web page: "How Old is the Universe?" Responsible NASA official: Gary Hinshaw. Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Last updated 12/15/2005. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/

This observation suggests that the oldest globular clusters [groups of stars] are between 11 and 18 billion years old.

... If we compare the two age determinations, there is a potential crisis. If the universe is flat, and dominated by ordinary or dark matter, the age of the universe as inferred from the Hubble constant would be about 9 billion years. The age of the universe would be shorter than the age of oldest stars.

... Measurements by the WMAP satellite can help resolve this crisis. ... [W]e are able to determine an age for the universe closer to an accuracy of 1%. ... The expansion age measured by WMAP is larger than the oldest globular clusters, so the Big Bang theory has passed an important test. ... [T]he Universe is about 13.7 billion years old!

€ Textbook: Foundations of Modern Cosmology. By John F. Hawley & Katherine A. Holcomb. Oxford University Press, 1998. Page 346:

The oldest stars of which we are aware are located in globular clusters; their inferred ages range from perhaps 10 to around 18 billion years old, with the stellar modelers favoring something more towards 15 billion years. If that is so, then stellar ages are a fairly severe constraint cosmological models. ... In fact, the cosmological imperative is the only reason that some stellar modelers are seeking mechanisms to reduce the derived ages of globular clusters. Otherwise, there would be near agreement that the globular clusters are at least 14 billion years old.

[1122] Calculation performed with information and data from the following sources:

a) Textbook: Foundations of Modern Cosmology. By John F. Hawley & Katherine A. Holcomb. Oxford University Press, 1998. Page 454: "There are perhaps 10⁸⁰ baryons in our visible universe, and about 10⁹ photons per baryon."

b) Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997. Page 108: "Since we believe that the observed universe has a baryon number of 10⁷⁸, the conservation of baryon number would imply that it always had a baryon number of 10⁷⁸."

c) Book: Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained By Its Most Brilliant Teacher. Addison-Wesley, 1995. This book is comprised of six chapters taken from the book, Lectures on Physics, by Richard Feynman. Page 85: "There are a number of strange particles, a neutron and a proton are examples, which are called baryons."

d) Article: "Atom." World Book Encyclopedia, 2007 Deluxe Edition. "Tiny as atoms are, they consist of even more minute particles. The three basic types are protons, neutrons, and electrons. Each atom has a definite number of these subatomic particles."

NOTE: As shown above, all atoms contain at least one baryon, and thus 10⁸⁰ represents a rough maximum for the number of atoms in the visible universe.

[1123] Article: "Scientists Get Glimpse of First Moments After Beginning of Time." By Dennis Overbye. New York Times, March 16, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/science/...

"But astronomers and physicists admit that they still have no idea what might have caused inflation, because it happened at temperatures and energies unattainable by any particle accelerator on Earth. As a result, there are a welter of models describing how it might have worked."

[1124] Book: Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries. By Steven Weinberg. Harvard University Press, 2001. Page 168:

All fields can carry energy, so these scalar fields can give an energy even to an otherwise empty space. ... The strengths of the scalar fields considered by Guth [as the mechanism to cause inflation] were different under the conditions of the early universe from what they are now; they gave "empty space" an enormous energy, quite unlike the zero-energy space we live in now.

Page 178: "We don't even know for sure whether the scalar fields really exist or, if they do, what different types there may be."

[1125] Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997.

NOTE: On pages 167-176, Guth explains how Higgs fields [a type of scalar field] were supposed to drive inflation. Pages 196-200 detail what is wrong with this theory.

Page 208: "The Higgs fields that drive inflation are a theoretical invention, so the nature of these fields cannot be deduced from known physics."

[1126] Textbook: Foundations of Modern Cosmology. By John F. Hawley & Katherine A. Holcomb. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Page 438: "Originally, the Higgs boson was thought to be the particle responsible for inflation. ... Further investigation showed that a potential which could be associated with a Higgs boson was not sufficiently flat to cause inflation without also disrupting the CBR."

{In other words, observations of the Cosmic Background Radiation are incompatible with the possibility that the Higgs boson could cause inflation.}

[1127] Article: "Scientists Get Glimpse of First Moments After Beginning of Time." By Dennis Overbye. New York Times, March 16, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/science/...

"But astronomers and physicists admit that they still have no idea what might have caused inflation, because it happened at temperatures and energies unattainable by any particle accelerator on Earth. As a result, there are a welter of models describing how it might have worked."

[1128] Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997. Page 238:

Even today there are a wide variety of grand unified theories under consideration, with no clear favorite. An inflaton field—a field with an energy density diagram suitably flat for driving inflation—can be included in any of them [the grand unified theories]. It must be admitted, however, that the ad hoc addition of such a field makes the theory look a bit contrived. To be honest, a theory of this sort is contrived, with the goal of arranging for the density perturbations to come out right. We still appear to be a long way from pinning down the details of the particle physics that underlies inflation.

Furthermore, on page 235, Dr. Guth says that he considers "still valid today" the following statement made by Frank Wilczek in 1982: "I think it is fair to say that while the general idea of an inflationary universe is extremely attractive, the specific models so far put forward do not inspire confidence in the detail."

[1129] Textbook: Foundations of Modern Cosmology. By John F. Hawley & Katherine A. Holcomb. Oxford University Press, 1998. Page 438.

[1130] Book: Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists. By Alan Lightman & Roberta Brawer. Harvard University Press, 1990. Page 485 (interview conducted with Andrei Linde on October 22, 1987):

About three years before the paper by [Alan] Guth, I had studied similar problems with one of my colleagues.... We understood that the universe could exponentially expand, and bubbles would collide, and we saw that it would lead to great inhomogeneities in the universe. As a result, we thought these ideas were bad [i.e., didn't agree with observations] so there was no reason to publish such garbage. But at that moment we did not realize main advantages of this exponential expansion, that it could possibly solve the flatness and horizon problems.

[1131] Book: Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists. By Alan Lightman & Roberta Brawer. Harvard University Press, 1990. Interview conducted with Andrei Linde on October 22, 1987. Page 486.

[1132] Same as above. Page 488.

[1133] Book: Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe. By D. Russell Humphreys. Master Books, 1994.

NOTE: Page 67 is the original source of these Biblical references in addition to another nine similar ones. In all references I cite, the Hebrew word "natah" ("to stretch out, extend, spread out, pitch, turn, pervert, incline, bend, bow") is the operative verb and "shamayim" ("heaven, heavens, sky") is the subject.*

* Dictionary and Word Search: Strong's Concordance. Word numbers 05186 (http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H5186&t=KJV) and 08064 (http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H8064&t=KJV).

[1134]

a) Textbook: University Astronomy. By Jay M. Pasachoff & Marc L. Kutner. W.B. Saunders Company, 1978.

Page 727: "Astronomers use a quantity called the deceleration parameter ... to describe how fast the expansion is slowing down."

b) Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997.

Page 57 states that the "basic features of big bang cosmology fell into place during the 1920s."

[1135] Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997.

The chart on page 185 shows the radius of the universe versus time according to the inflation theory.

[1136] Web page: "Steven Weinberg: The Nobel Prize in Physics 1979." Accessed April 29, 2009 at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/...

[1137] Book: The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. By Steven Weinberg. Basic Books, 1977. Page 35.

[1138] Book: God and the Astronomers. By Robert Jastrow. W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.

NOTE: As shown on page 142 of Rational Conclusions and in citations 1061-1062, Dr. Jastrow is an agnostic and his scientific credentials are extraordinary.

Page 92: "According to the picture of the explosive birth of the Cosmos, the Universe was expanding much more rapidly immediately after the explosion than it is today."

Page 95: "Allan Sandage ... compiled information on 42 galaxies, ranging out in space as far as six billion light years from us. His measurements indicate that the Universe was expanding more rapidly in the past than it is today. This result lends further support to the belief that the Universe exploded into being."

[1139] Book: The Creation of Matter. By Harald Fritzsch. Basic Books, 1984.

Page 211: "We can visualize this beginning only as a gigantic explosion—the Big Bang. The Big Bang, like any other explosion, hurled matter about. Its consequences are still apparent in the galaxies' ceaseless effort to pull apart."

[1140] Book: The Moment of Creation. By James Trefil (currently a professor of physics at George Mason University). Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983. Page 12:

The only force that now acts on an outward-moving galaxy is the gravitational attraction of the rest of the galaxies.... [I]t has become accepted that the expansion we see now began about 15 billion years ago, from a situation in which all matter was in a highly condensed state. The term Big Bang is applied to this event, and the picture this term conveys of a universe consisting of fragments hurled out from an exploding center is essentially accurate.

[1141] Documentary: "Runaway Universe." PBS, November 21, 2000. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2713universe.html

NARRATOR: What could possibly be causing the whoosh? Something must be countering gravity, pushing all the galaxies apart, some mysterious repulsive force, unlike anything we've encountered on Earth. ... Scientists have different names for it: vacuum energy, dark energy, quintessence. But they have little idea of what it consists of or where it comes from. One highly speculative theory is that the force comes, quite literally, from nothing.

STEVEN WEINBERG: Now this is pretty mysterious. It is an energy that is present everywhere in space. We are normally not aware of it. There is no way of tapping into it that we can imagine. You know empty space is not so empty. In empty space there is a continuous creation of particles, matter and anti-matter, continually being created in pairs and destroyed. It is a seething stew of particles and radiation whose effects we can sometimes observe.

[1142] Article: "To Infinity and Beyond." By Robert Matthews. New Scientist, April 11, 1998. Page 26:

These three sets of cosmic missives all suggest that instead of collapsing in on itself in a big crunch, our Universe will go on expanding forever. And that's not all. They also hint that the expanding Universe is in the grip of a mysterious force that is fighting against gravity—a force that pervades the entire cosmos and springs literally from nothing.

[1143] Book: Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. By Abraham Pais. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Page 524 states that the theory of general relativity was published in 1916.

Page 286: "In 1917, no large-scale galactic motions were yet known to exist."

[1144] Book: The Principle of Relativity. Notes by A. Sommerfeld. Translated by W. Perrett and G. B. Jeffery. Dover Publications, 1952. First published by Methuen and Company, 1923.

Pages 175-178 contain a translation of Einstein's 1917 paper, "Cosmological Considerations of the General Theory of Relativity."

Page 180: "The conclusion I shall arrive at is that the field equations of gravitation which I have championed hitherto [general relativity] still need a slight modification...."

Page 188: "In order to arrive as this consistent view, we admittedly had to introduce an extension of the field equations of gravitation which is not justified by our actual knowledge of gravitation. ... That term is necessary only for the purpose of making possible a quasi-static distribution of matter, as required by the fact of the small velocities of stars."

[1145] Book: Revealing the Universe: Prediction and Proof in Astronomy. Edited by James Cornell & Alan P. Lightman. Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 1982. Second Printing. Chapter 7: "A Tale of Two Theories." By William H. Press. Page 186:

It is impossible to write down a consistent set of equations in Einstein's theory without its smacking one in the face that the universe has to be either expanding or contracting. Einstein recognized this fact within the first year or so after he wrote his theory, in about 1917. This was twelve years before Hubble's announcement; Einstein could not bring himself to believe his theory's own straightforward prediction. He therefore added an extra term to the equations of the theory, called the cosmological constant term. This term has no basis in experiment whatsoever. Its only purpose is to allow a static universe: it adds a repulsive part to gravitation (I intend the pun) so that the matter in a static universe can repel itself just enough to avoid collapse.

[1146] Book: The Creation of the Universe. By George Gamow (Professor of Physics at Colorado State University). Viking Press, 1961.

Page 27: "The mathematical expression for this repulsive force acting on a particle of mass m can be written as F = -1/3 c² Λ mr, where c is the velocity of light, Λ the new cosmological constant, and r the distance to the particle."

NOTE: Since stars and planets are held together by gravity, Einstein's hypothetical force couldn't simply cancel out gravity because it would result – for example – in the sun and the earth falling apart. Thus, the equation above is such that antigravity gets stronger as the distance between objects (r) increases, which unlike gravity, gets exponentially weaker as distance (r) increases. (The force of gravity is proportional to 1/r².) In other words, at smaller distances, gravity would be the stronger of the two, but at greater distances, anti-gravity would dominate.

[1147] Book: The Meaning of Relativity. By Albert Einstein. Princeton University Press, 1946. Page 127:

The introduction of the "cosmological member" into the equations of gravity, though possible from the point of view of relativity, is to be rejected from the point of view of logical economy.¹ ...

¹ If Hubble's expansion had been discovered at the time of the creation of the general theory of relativity, the cosmological member would never have been introduced. It seems now so much less justified to introduce such a member into the field equations, since its introduction loses its sole original justification, –that of leading to a natural solution of the cosmological problem.

[1148] Book: Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. By Abraham Pais. Oxford University Press, 1982. Page 288:

1931. Referring to the theoretical work by Friedman [who proposed a "big bang" model for the universe in 1922] ... and the experimental discoveries of Hubble [who showed galaxies receding from each other] ... Einstein formally abandons the cosmological term, which is "theoretically unsatisfactory anyway" (E48). ... He never uses the [cosmological term] term again (E50).

NOTE: The references (E48 & E50) are listed on page 293.

[1149] Book: My World Line: An Informal Autobiography. By George Gamow. Viking Press, 1970.

Page 44: "Much later, when I was discussing cosmological problems with Einstein, he remarked that the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest blunder he ever made in his life."

See citation 1151 for Gamow's credentials.

[1150] Book: The Creation of the Universe. By George Gamow. Viking Press, 1961. Professor of Physics at Colorado State University. Pages 30-31:

In order to find the date in the past at which all galaxies were packed tightly together, we only need to divide their present mutual distances by the velocities of their recession. Since the recession velocities are proportional to the distances, the result of the division is always the same, no matter whether we take two neighboring or two distant galaxies. ...* Comparing this figure with the various other estimates for the age of the universe, we find that it falls uncomfortably short of the average. In particular it is only about one-half of the figure obtained by ... [using radioisotope dating on the crust of the earth.] How could the universe, which is less than two billion years old, contain the rocks which are over three billion?

This discrepancy pestered proponents of the theory of an expanding universe for several decades, from the original work of Hubble until the early nineteen-fifties. One possibility suggested by Lemaitre [principal founder of the big bang theory] was to introduce the cosmological constant originally used by Einstein.... The presence of such a force would make the universe expand with ever-increasing velocity and shift the position of the zero point in time. Assuming such a small numerical value as 10^-33  sec^-1 for the cosmological constant Λ, one could bring Hubble's original value into agreement with the geological estimate.

NOTE:

* Here, Gamow performs a simple calculation and comes up with an age for the universe of 1.7 billion years. This amounts to taking the distance between galaxies and dividing by the speed at which they move away from each other:

distance/velocity = distance/(distance/time) = time.

Note that this is simply the inverse of the Hubble constant 1/H. The calculation fails to account for gravity, which would make the universe even younger than 1.7 billion years.

Pages 33-34:

In the early nineteen-fifties however, it developed that neither of the two previously described possibilities [cosmological constant and steady state theory] is required to remove the discrepancy between the value of Hubble's constant and the other estimates for the age of the universe. ... Mount Wilson astronomer W. Baade, revising previous work on the intergalactic distances, has found an error in the method used in their measurement. ... Baade found that the earlier estimates for the distances of various galaxies were too small by a factor of 2.5. ... What is more important, the time necessary for the galaxies to recede to their present distances went up from [1.7 billion] years to [4.3 billion] years. The disagreement between the age of the universe obtained on the basis of galactic recession and that obtained by other methods exists no more.

This progress killed the theory of the accelerated expansion of the universe [i.e., the cosmological constant/antigravity]...."

[1151] Article: "Getting a Bang out of Gamow." By Eamon Harper. GW Magazine, Spring 2000. Page 14. http://www.gwu.edu/~physics/gwmageh.htm

Gamow had already made quite a name for himself among physicists in Europe, but not many in the United States knew much about him in 1934. Few could have predicted that he would achieve worldwide renown as an astrophysicist and as the chief proponent of a bizarre theory of cosmic evolution called the "big bang"....

He also laid the foundation for the theory of thermonuclear reactions, and his formula describing the temperature dependence of fusion reactions has been a cornerstone of thermonuclear bomb and reactor work.

[1152] Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997. Page 279:

[In 1994] ... a team of astronomers known as the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project ... announced what was regarded by many astronomers as the most reliable determination ever of the cosmic expansion rate. Their value for the expansion rate, or Hubble constant, was 25 kilometers per second per million light-years. This was much lower than Hubble's original measurements of 150 to 170, but it was nonetheless uncomfortably high.

Pages 280-281:

For the value found by the Hubble Key Project team, the age would be 11.0 billion years if the mass density is one tenth of the critical value (omega = 0.1), and only 8.1 billion years if the mass density is equal to the critical value (omega =1). {As the graph on page 280 shows, the omega = 0.1 scenario equates with the oldest possible age.} ... The estimates of stellar ages have been rather consistent in recent years... The authors concluded (with 95% confidence) that the age of the oldest stars is at least 12 billion years, in clear conflict with the age of the universe that is inferred from the Hubble Key Project measurement of the expansion rate.

Inflation plays an important role in this issue, because the simplest versions of inflation predict a critical density of matter, or omega = 1. This corresponds to the lowest curve shown in Figure E.1 [8.1 billion years], aggravating the age crisis by forcing us to consider the most discrepant case. ...

The age crisis probably the most pressing unsolved problem in cosmology at this time. There are, however, several possible ways that the issue could conceivably be resolved in manner that would be consistent with inflation. These are exciting times for cosmology, and it seems likely that in the next five years we will know the answer to this riddle.

Page 283:

Another way to deal with the age crisis, within inflationary theory, is to resurrect the cosmological constant that Einstein had introduced and later discarded. ...

... Has the time come for it [the cosmological constant] to play a proper role in physics, or is it once again merely a "fudge factor" that gives enough flexibility for invalid beliefs to persist?

[1153] Article: "Balloon Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Strongly Favor a Flat Cosmos." By Bertram Schwarzschild. Physics Today, July 2000. Pages 17-19. http://www.physicstoday.org/

Page: 18: "But in 1998, [the cosmological constant; i.e., anti-gravity] was revived to explain the startling observation—by two groups looking at very distant supernovae—that the Hubble expansion [i.e. – the rate at which the universe expands] appears to be speeding up."

[1154] Documentary: "Runaway Universe." PBS, November 21, 2000. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2713universe.html

ALEX FILIPPENKO: The original goal of our project was to measure the rate at which the expansion of the universe is slowing down. ...

NARRATOR: ... Several months will pass before they find out what the supernovae are trying to tell them. And even then, they won't believe it. The team expected the supernovae to confirm that the expansion of the universe was slowing down. But when the results finally came in, something seemed terribly wrong. ...

NARRATOR: The data showed that the distant supernovae were dimmer and therefore much farther away than the team expected. Instead of slowing down, the expansion of the universe has been speeding up with galaxies moving apart at greater and greater velocities. ... Brian's [i.e., Brian Schmidt's] colleagues, along with the entire scientific community, might have discounted his results, except that Saul Perlmutter's group—working separately—announced the exact same conclusion. The discovery seemed to contradict everything we thought we knew about gravity and its impact on galaxies and stars.

[1155] Book: The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. By Steven Weinberg. Basic Books, 1977. Page 28.

[1156] Book: Gravitation and the Universe (Jayne Lectures for 1969). By Robert H. Dicke. American Philosophical Society, 1970.

Equation (1) on page 58 defines the deceleration rate of the universe due to gravity.

[1157] Book: Measuring the Universe: Our Historic Quest to Chart the Horizons of Time and Space. By Kitty Ferguson. Walker and Company, 1999.

Page 297: "[B]y May [1998] a straw vote at a workshop at Fermi National laboratory indicated most scientists present agreed the two teams had made strong cases for an accelerating expansion rate and the existence of something resembling a cosmological constant." 

[1158] Article: "From Space, a New View of Doomsday." By Dennis Overbye. New York Times, February 17, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/17/science/...

In six years it [dark energy/antigravity] has become one of the central and apparently unavoidable features of the cosmos.... "In five years we've gone from saying it looks like a mistake to something that everyone is claiming evidence for," said Dr. Robert Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was part of the original discovery.

[1159] Article: "Einstein's Mistakes." By Steven Weinberg. Physics Today, November 2005. http://www.physicstoday.org/

Einstein made what from the perspective of today's theoretical physics is a deeper mistake in his dislike of the cosmological constant [anti-gravity]. ...

... Our experience in elementary-particle physics has taught us that any term in the field equations of physics that is allowed by fundamental principles is likely to be there in the equations. ...

... Regarding his introduction of the cosmological constant in 1917, Einstein's real mistake was that he thought it was a mistake.

[1160] Article: "Very Dark Energy." By Karen Wright. Discover, March 2001. http://m.discovermagazine.com/2001/mar/featdark

"And unlike Einstein, Weinberg and his fellow theorists had never quite given up on the old idea of the cosmological constant— some widespread energy loitering in empty space." {As is evidenced by the next two notes, this is not true.}

[1161] Book: The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. By Steven Weinberg. Basic Books, 1977.

Page 35: "The galaxies are not rushing apart because of some mysterious force that is pushing them apart... Rather, the galaxies are moving apart because they were thrown apart by some sort of explosion in the past."

Page 158: "COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT: A term added by Einstein in 1917 to his gravitational field equations. Such a term would produce a repulsion at very large distances, and would be needed in a static universe to balance the attraction due to gravitation. There is no reason at present to suspect the existence of a cosmological constant."

Page 158: "DECELERATION PARAMETER:  A number which characterizes the rate at which the recession of distant galaxies is slowing down."

[1162] Book: Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists. By Alan Lightman & Roberta Brawer. Harvard University Press, 1990.

Pages 451-466 contain transcripts of interviews conducted with Steven Weinberg on May 6th and 10th, 1988.

Page 457: "[T]he mid-1970's was the time when the theoretical work in constructing our standard view of elementary particle physics was essentially completed. ... Then, by 1978, the experiments had all fallen in line."

NOTE: Throughout this interview, Dr. Weinberg makes no mention of anti-gravity, even when asked (page 463), "What do you think are the outstanding problems in cosmology today?" He also takes for granted that the expansion of the universe is slowing down due to gravity (page 463): "We don't know the deceleration parameter, other than to say it's not enormous."

[1163] Articles: "Standard Model" and "Electroweak Theory." Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2004.

NOTE: Electroweak theory is one of two components that make up the standard model of particle physics. Dr. Weinberg was one of three people who received the Nobel Prize in physics for developing electroweak theory.

[1164] Article: "Supernovae, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Universe." By Saul Perlmutter. Physics Today, April 2003. Pages 53-60. Pages 57-58:

The story might stop right here with a happy ending—a complete physics model of the cosmic expansion—were it not for a chorus of complaints from the particle theorists. The standard model of particle physics has no natural place for a vacuum energy density of the modest magnitude required by the astrophysical data. The simplest estimates would predict a vacuum energy 10¹²⁰ times greater. (In supersymmetric models, it's "only" 10⁵⁵ times greater.) So enormous a [cosmological constant] would have engendered an acceleration so rapid that stars and galaxies could never have formed. Therefore it has long been assumed that there must be some underlying symmetry that precisely cancels the vacuum energy. Now, however, the supernova data appear to require that such a cancellation would have to leave a remainder of about one part in 10¹²⁰. That degree of fine tuning is most unappealing.

The cosmological constant model requires yet another fine tuning. In the cosmic expansion, mass density becomes ever more dilute. Since the end of inflation, it has fallen by very many orders of magnitude. But the vacuum energy density ... a property of empty space itself, stays constant. It seems a remarkable and implausible coincidence that the mass density, just in the present epoch, is within a factor of 2 of the vacuum energy density.

Given these two fine-tuning coincidences, it seems likely that the standard model is missing some fundamental physics. Perhaps we need some new kind of accelerating energy—a "dark energy" that, unlike ... [the cosmological constant], is not constant. Borrowing from the example of the putative "inflaton" field that is thought to have triggered inflation, theorists are proposing dynamical scalar-field models and other even more exotic alternatives to a cosmological constant, with the goal of solving the coincidence problems.

[1165] Book: Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries. By Steven Weinberg. Harvard University Press, 2001. Pages 80-81:

[O]ne constant does seem to require an incredible fine-tuning: it is the vacuum energy, or cosmological constant.... Although we cannot calculate this quantity, we can calculate some contributions to it.... These contributions come out about 10¹²⁰ times larger than the maximum value allowed by our observations of the present rate of cosmic expansion. ... Thus the existence of life of any kind seems to require a cancellation between different contributions to the vacuum energy, accurate to about 120 decimal places.

[1166] Web page: "What is a Cosmological Constant?" NASA Official: Gary F. Hinshaw. Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), NASA. Last updated October 14, 2008. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_accel.html

The main attraction of the cosmological constant term [antigravity] is that it significantly improves the agreement between theory and observation. The most spectacular example of this is the recent effort to measure how much the expansion of the universe has changed in the last few billion years. Generically, the gravitational pull exerted by the matter in the universe slows the expansion imparted by the Big Bang. Very recently it has become practical for astronomers to observe very bright rare stars called supernova in an effort to measure how much the universal expansion has slowed over the last few billion years. Surprisingly, the results of these observations indicate that the universal expansion is speeding up, or accelerating! While these results should be considered preliminary, they raise the possibility that the universe contains a bizarre form of matter or energy that is, in effect, gravitationally repulsive. The cosmological constant is an example of this type of energy. Much work remains to elucidate this mystery!

[1167] Article: "Supernovae, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Universe." By Saul Perlmutter. Physics Today, April 2003. Pages 53-60.

See chart on page 57.

[1168] Book: Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists. By Alan Lightman & Roberta Brawer. Harvard University Press, 1990.

Pages 214-231 contain a transcript of an interview conducted with James Peebles on January 19, 1988.

Pages 214-215:

Ph.D. in physics in 1962 from Princeton University, where he was the student of Robert Dicke. Remaining at Princeton for his professional career, Peebles has been the Albert Einstein Professor of Science there since 1984. ... Peebles, in collaboration with Robert Dicke and others, predicted the existence of the cosmic background radiation in 1965. In 1966, Peebles did one of the first detailed calculations of the cosmic helium abundance expected from nuclear reactions in the early universe. The agreement between these theoretical calculations and the observed helium abundance constitutes one of the major supports of the big bang model. ... Peebles has played a major role in bringing cosmology to the attention of physicists. [Two academic awards are listed.]

[1169] Web page: "2000 Cosmology Prize Recipient: Phillip James E. Peebles." Prepared by Michael S. Vogeley. Peter Gruber Foundation. http://www.petergruberfoundation.org/Site/peebles.htm

"Phillip James E. Peebles is the world's foremost theoretical cosmologist. He has led our quest to understand how the universe evolved from a hot, dense, nearly uniform state just after the Big Bang to the highly structured cosmos that we see today."

[1170] Article: "Making Sense of Modern Cosmology." By P. James E. Peebles. Scientific American, January 2001. Pages 54-55.

Page 55 contains this biographical information from the editor: "P. James E. Peebles is one of the world's most distinguished cosmologists.... He has received some of the highest awards in astronomy...."

[1171] Article: "Astronomy." Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2004. The section entitled "Cosmology" states:

The currently accepted cosmological model is the big bang. ...

The observational support for this general model comes from several independent directions. The expansion has been documented by the galactic redshifted spectra. The radiation left over from the original fireball would have cooled with the expansion. One of the most striking discoveries of the 20th century came in 1965 with the observation of a widespread cosmic radiation corresponding to a temperature of close to 3 K. ... Additional support for the big-bang theory comes from the observed cosmic abundances of deuterium and helium.

[1172] Book: The Refrigerator and the Universe: Understanding the Laws of Energy. By Martin Goldstein and Inge F. Goldstein. Harvard University Press, 1993. Page 377:

There are three primary pieces of evidence for a beginning to the universe and for the current state of expansion:

1. The stars and galaxies are moving away from us here on the earth, and those that are farther away are moving away faster. Their speeds of recession were measured by the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who detected the "red shift" of the light they radiate to us. ...

2. Space is filled with radiation whose energy is distributed according to the black-body curve corresponding to a temperature of about 2.7 kelvins....

3) The abundances of hydrogen and helium in the universe, estimated spectroscopically, fit very well the values that would be expected if the universe were once so hot that no helium nuclei but only the separated particles, neutrons, and protons (hydrogen nuclei), of which they are composed could have existed.

Page 378:

The general theory of relativity ... predicts specifically that the universe could have once consisted of a highly curved space with a very high density of energy, which all at once began to expand at the definite moment in time. If it did, we would expect the three essential experimental observations we described above.... This picture of the universe is called the "big bang" theory.

[1173] Lecture: "Problems with the Standard Cosmological Model." By Jim Peebles. Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, September 25, 2002. http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/peebles1/

[1174] Same as above.

[1175] Textbook: Foundations of Modern Cosmology. By John F. Hawley & Katherine A. Holcomb. Oxford University Press, 1998. Page 454:

Even an open or flat universe will end in a state of relatively high entropy, due to the increase in entropy as star burn out and galaxies fade away. This is a remarkable arrangement. Why did the universe begin in such a low entropy state? Since, as we have asserted, systems seek the state in which their entropy is maximized, we can assume that the "natural" state of the universe is the aforementioned black hole. This leads to the conclusion that our universe is "special," in that it actually began from zero entropy, to one part in 10¹²³. This implies a specialness of the initial conditions to an almost incomprehensible degree. No physical theory known at present is able to account for this phenomenon; the resolution, if any, may be buried in the Planck epoch. 

[1176] Textbook: Foundations of Modern Cosmology. By John F. Hawley & Katherine A. Holcomb. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Page 339: "If the background radiation has redshifted to lower temperatures throughout most of the history of the universe, with a corresponding decrease in the energy of each photon, what happened to all that photon energy? Isn't energy, taken in all its forms, conserved?"

NOTE: After the text above, discussion ensues about a possible way to get around what appears to be a violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics (see below and the next citation).

Page 440: "So what are we to make of this? Does the universe violate the conservation of energy? The principle of conservation of energy that is familiar to physicists is a local statement, known to hold only for finite regions. ... Unless and until we reach this summit, the missing energy of the redshifted photons must remain unexplained."

NOTE: This potential escape hatch is inconsistent with what is stated on page 453 regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics: "The universe is certainly a closed system; thus in any process, the entropy of the universe as a whole increases." Thus, I wrote Dr. Hawley regarding this statement, and he was kind enough to reply, confirming my interpretation:

The term "closed system" in this context refers to the thermodynamical concept that there are no external sources of energy input or output. The entropy of the system must be determined solely from the state within the system. Even if the universe is spatially infinite a representative volume will have a given entropy and energy content that is not subject to change due to work being done on it, or work it does on some system external to the universe. If the volume is large enough to be representative in the sense of the cosmological principle, then there will be no net exchange of energy with even the rest of the universe. [February 7, 2006]

[1177] Book: Mother Nature's Two Laws: Ringmasters for Circus Earth. Lessons on Entropy, Energy, Critical Thinking, and the Practice of Science. By A.D. Kirwan, Jr. World Scientific, 2000.

Page 4: "A simple qualitative statement of the First Law is: 'The total mass and energy of the universe doesn't change.'"

[1178] To understand this problem requires grasping the next seven notes. To merge them into a short statement: If the big bang theory is true, there should be as much antimatter as there is matter in the universe, and there clearly is not. Moreover, all attempts to get around this problem have been futile.

[1179] Book: Cosmic Questions. By Richard Morris. John Wiley & Sons, 1993. Page 75:

For every particle that physicists have discovered, there is a corresponding antiparticle. ... Antiparticles can easily be created in the laboratory. According to Einstein's equation, E = mc², it should be possible to create matter out of energy. Indeed, scientists accomplish this feat every day. But antiparticles never appear alone. Whenever mass is created, it is always in the form of particle-antiparticle pairs. A proton will appear in the company of an antiproton for example.

[1180] Textbook: Foundations of Modern Cosmology. By John F. Hawley & Katherine A. Holcomb. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Page 356: "If the early universe was filled with particles, from where did they originate? ... In the early universe, creation of matter from energy was one of the most important effects."

Page 358: "In the 'ordinary' matter creation from photons, which we have described, both a particle and its antiparticle must be created.... Since our present universe is made of matter, at some point in the early temperature epoch, the symmetry between matter and antimatter must have been violated."

Page 364: "Furthermore, when a particle and its antiparticle collide, they destroy one another, converting their rest masses entirely into photon energy. This corresponds to a rule called conservation of baryon number...."

[1181] Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997.

Pages 108-109: "Experimentally, the conservation of baryon number is as well demonstrated as any conservation law in physics. Although physicists have looked very hard, no one has ever observed a process in which the baryon number has changed."

[1182] Book: Cosmic Questions. By Richard Morris. John Wiley & Sons, 1993.

Page 75: "This raises the question of why the universe should be made predominantly of matter, and why antimatter should be rare or nonexistent."

Pages 75-76:

[S]cientists have not observed significant quantities of antimatter in our universe. And they are reasonably certain that they would see it if it were there. When a particle and antiparticle come in contact with one another, they mutually annihilate one another and disappear in a burst of energy. Thus if two objects came in contact with one another and one happened to be made of matter while the other was antimatter, the quantity of energy released would be enormous. For example, if an antimatter meteor entered the earth's atmosphere, all of its mass—and an equal quantity of matter—would be converted into energy. The result would be an explosion many times more powerful than the largest existing hydrogen bombs.

Page 77:

They [grand unified theories] imply that when the universe was something of the order of 10^-32 seconds old, there existed certain massive particles, known as X particles, which had the unique property that they decayed into particles more often than they decayed into antiparticles. ... After the X particles disappeared, they may have been something like a billion and one particles of matter for every billion articles of antimatter. The particles and antiparticles began annihilating one another (remember that the universe was very compressed at this point and that collisions would have been very frequent); only the matter particles remained.

No one knows if something like this really happened. The X particle has not been discovered in the laboratory. ... If it really existed, it would be some massive—10¹⁴ or 10¹⁵ times heavier than a proton—that only a particle accelerator the size of our galaxy could produce it. ... But at least that scenario seems plausible, and no other convincing explanations for the preponderance of matter over antimatter exist.

Pages 74-75:

Although none of the GUTs [grand unified theories] has been confirmed by experiment, and although these theories seem to be plagued with certain theoretical difficulties as well, physicists still find the ideas on which they are based to be quite appealing, in part, because they seem to represent the next logical step in the unification of the forces. They also seem capable of explaining why the universe should contain so little antimatter.

[1183] Book: The Inflationary Universe. By Alan Guth. Helix Books, 1997.

Pages 237-8: "Most grand unified theories predict that the proton is not completely stable, and Georgi-Glashow theory in particular predicted a half-life between 10²⁷ and 10³¹ years."

[1184] Article: "Rock Solid." By Robert Matthews. New Scientist, May 22, 1999. Pages 48-52. Page 49:

GUTs ... predict that every proton ... should be slowly but ineluctably disintegrating. Or, to put it more poetically, diamonds may not be forever after all.

Yet theorists are now admitting that there's something pretty bizarre about the prediction. For despite their very best efforts to catch protons in the act of falling apart, matter looks as rock-solid as ever. For years, researchers have been looking for even the merest hint of proton decay. And so far, they have found diddly-squat.

NOTE: The article reviews the experimental evidence indicating that protons do not decay and offers some possible escape hatches. It concludes by stating that "the decay of the proton is emerging as one of the biggest challenges facing those trying to forge a Theory of Everything. Who knows—perhaps the world's most brilliant theorists are wrong, and the admen were right all along. Maybe diamonds really are forever."

[1185] Book: Quantum Field Theory: A Modern Introduction. By Michio Kaku. Oxford University Press, 1993. Page 15:

So far, elaborate experimental searches for proton decay have been disappointing. ... [T]here are, however, more complicated GUT theories that can accommodate longer proton lifetimes.

Although GUT theories are a vast improvement over the Standard Model, they are also beset with problems. First, they cannot explain the three generations of particles that have been discovered. Instead, we must have three identical GUT theories, one for each generation. Second, it still has many arbitrary parameters (e.g., Higgs parameters) that cannot be explained from any simpler principle. Third, the unification scale takes place at energies near the Planck scale, where we expect the gravitational effects to become large, yet gravity is not included in the theory. Fourth, it postulates that there is a barren "desert" that extends for twelve orders of magnitude, from the GUT scale down to the electro-weak scale. (The critics claim that there is no precedent in physics for such an extrapolation over such a large range of energy.) Fifth, there is the "hierarchy problem," meaning that radiative corrections will mix the two energy scales together, ruining the entire program.

To solve the last problem, physicists have studied quantum field theories that can incorporate "supersymmetry," a new symmetry that puts fermions and bosons in the same multiplet. Although not a single shred of experimental data supports the existence of supersymmetry, it has opened the door to an entirely new kind of quantum field theory that has remarkable renormalization properties and is still fully compatible with its basic principles.

[1186] Article: "Making Sense of Modern Cosmology." By P. James E. Peebles. Scientific American, January 2001. Pages 54-55.

Page 54: "For all the talk of overturned theories, cosmologists have firmly established the foundations of our field. ... Fourth, galaxies billions of years ago look distinctly younger, as they should if they are closer to the time when no galaxies existed."

NOTE: As evidenced by the next four notes, this "firmly established" foundation has crumbled in less than five years from the date this article was written.

[1187] Article: "Recent galactic births surprise astronomers." By Maggie McKee. New Scientist, December 22, 2004. http://www.newscientist.com/article/...

Several dozen baby galaxies have turned up in galactic retirement communities near the Milky Way, new observations reveal. ...

Most galaxies blinked into life more than 10 billion years ago...But now, a space telescope has found about three dozen of these galactic "building blocks" just 2 billion to 4 billion light years away. These relatively nearby finds appear eerily similar to the universe's first galaxies. ...

"It's almost like looking out the window and seeing a dinosaur walking by," says Tim Heckman, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland....

[1188] Article: "Massive young galaxy surprises astronomers." By Kelly Young. New Scientist, September 28, 2005. http://www.newscientist.com/article/...

A massive galaxy has been discovered early in the history of the universe, a time when such mature galaxies were not thought to exist. The find calls into question current thinking on galaxy formation. ...

The galaxy, HUDF-JD2, is one of the most distant ever observed. Its light, captured by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, began its journey towards Earth a mere 800 million years after the Big Bang.

"That's a very short timescale to form such a massive galaxy," says Bahram Mobasher, an astronomer with the European Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, US."

[1189] Article: "New-Found Old Galaxies Upsetting Astronomers' Long-Held Theories on the Big Bang." By Kenneth Chang. New York Times, January 8, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/us/...

Gazing deep into space and far into the past, astronomers have found that the early universe, a couple of billion years after the Big Bang, looks remarkably like the present-day universe.

Astronomers said here on Monday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society that they had found huge elliptical galaxies that formed within one billion to two billion years after the Big Bang, perhaps a couple of billion years earlier than expected. ...

"The universe is growing up a little faster than we had thought," said Dr. Povilas Palunas of the University of Texas, one of the astronomers who found the string of galaxies. "We're seeing a much larger structure than any of the models predict. So that's surprising." ...

"We think it disagrees with the theoretical predictions in that we see filaments and voids larger than predicted," Dr. Woodgate said. ...

"Massive galaxies seem to be forming surprisingly early after the Big Bang," said Dr. Roberto Abraham of the University of Toronto and a co-principal investigator on the team. "It is supposed to take time. It seems to be happening right away."

[1190] Press Release: "Glimpse at Early Universe Reveals Surprisingly Mature Galaxies: Observations challenge standing view of how and when galaxies formed." Johns Hopkins University, July 1, 2004. http://www.jhu.edu/news/home04/jul04/earlyuni.html

A rare glimpse back in time into the universe's early evolution has revealed something startling: mature, fully formed galaxies where scientists expected to discover little more than infants. ...

"This was the most comprehensive survey ever done covering the bulk of the galaxies that represent conditions in the early universe," Glazebrook said. "We expected to find basically zero massive galaxies beyond about 9 billion years ago, because theoretical models predict that massive galaxies form last. Instead, we found highly developed galaxies that just shouldn't have been there, but are."

These findings challenge the dominant theory of galactic evolution, which posits that at this early stage, galaxies should have formed from the bottom up, with small pieces crashing together to build small and then ever larger galaxies. Called the "hierarchical model," this scenario predicts that normal-to-large galaxies such as those studied by GDDS would not yet exist. ...

... Some new ingredient {here we go again} is required to make more stars form earlier in the big galaxies. But what that ingredient is, we don't yet know."

[1191] Press release: "Big Bang's Afterglow Fails Intergalactic 'Shadow' Test." University Of Alabama at Huntsville News Center, September 5, 2006. http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=480

In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background. ...

If the standard Big Bang theory of the universe is accurate and the background microwave radiation came to Earth from the furthest edges of the universe, then massive X-ray emitting clusters of galaxies nearest our own Milky Way galaxy should all cast shadows on the microwave background.

[1192] Book: God and the Astronomers. By Robert Jastrow. W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.

NOTE: As shown on page 142 of Rational Conclusions and in notes 1061-1062, Dr. Jastrow is an agnostic and his scientific credentials are extraordinary.

Pages 115-116:

A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe; but if it does, science cannot find put what the explanation is. ... It is not a matter of another year, another decade of work, another measurement, another theory; at this moment it seems though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

[1193] Article: "On Creating Something from Nothing." By David Darling (Ph.D. in Astronomy from Manchester University). New Scientist, September 14, 1996. Page 49:

It's the simple questions that usually tax science the most. For instance, why should there be something instead of nothing? ... Well, I've read the party manifesto on this and I don't buy it. I can go along with the quantum foam stuff, the good news (for once) about inflation, the quark soup and so on. But, as far as I am concerned, the fact that the universe was an incredibly weird place 10^-43 seconds after "time zero" is no big deal. What is a big deal—the biggest deal of all—is how you get something out of nothing.

Don't let the cosmologists try to kid you on this one. They have not got a clue either—despite the fact that they are doing a pretty good job of convincing themselves and others that this is really not a problem. "In the beginning," they will say, "there was nothing—no time, space, matter or energy. Then there was a quantum fluctuation from which..." Whoa! Stop right there. You see what I mean? First there is nothing, then there is something. And the cosmologists try to bridge the two with a quantum flutter, a tremor of uncertainty that sparks it all off. Then they are away and before you know it, they have pulled a hundred billion galaxies out of their quantum hats.

I don't have a problem with this scenario from the quantum fluctuation onward.... But there is a very real problem in explaining how it got started in the first place. You cannot fudge this by appealing to quantum mechanics. Either there is nothing to begin with, in which case there is no quantum vacuum, no pre-geometric dust, no time in which anything can happen, no physical laws that can effect a change from nothingness into somethingness; or there is something, in which case that needs explaining.

[1194] Article: "The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe." By Andre Linde. Scientific American, November 1994. Pages 48-55. Page 48:

The first, and main, problem is the very existence of the big bang. One may wonder, What came before? If space-time did not exist then, how could everything appear from nothing? What arose first: the universe or the laws determining its evolution? Explaining this initial singularity—where and when it all began—still remains the most intractable problem of modern cosmology.

[1195] Book: Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries. By Steven Weinberg. Harvard University Press, 2001.

Page 174: "About the Big Bang theory we can be quite confident."

Page 178: "As we make progress in understanding the expanding universe, the problem itself expands, so that the solution seems always to recede from us."

[1196] Textbook: Foundations of Modern Cosmology. By John F. Hawley & Katherine A. Holcomb. Oxford University Press, 1998. Page 17.

[1197] Article: "Watson and Crick, Both Aligned and Apart, Reinvented Biology." By Nicholas Wade. New York Times, February 25, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/25/science/...

NOTE: This article details Crick's achievements and quotes from a molecular biologist who states that Crick and his partner Watson "will be remembered as the biologists of the 20th century."

[1198] Book: What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery. By Francis Crick. Basic Books, 1988.

Dust jacket: "[Crick & Watson's] discovery of the structure of the genetic material of virtually all life is regarded as the greatest biological advance of the twentieth century."

[1199] Entry: "Crick Francis Harry Compton." American Men and Women of Science. Edited by Pamela M. Kalte and Katherine H. Nemeh. Gale, 2003. Volume 2. Page 467.

NOTE: Listed are numerous awards and honors bestowed upon Dr. Crick.

[1200] Article: "DNA Pioneers Lash Out at Religion." By Roger Highfield. Washington Times, March 24, 2003. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2003/mar/...

The two scientists who discovered the structure of DNA in Cambridge 50 years ago have used the anniversary to mount an attack on religion. ...

...Mr. Watson and Mr. Crick are both outspoken atheists.

Speaking recently, Mr. Crick, 86, said: "The god hypothesis is rather discredited." His distaste for religion, he said, was one of his prime motives in the work that led to the 1953 discovery.

"I went into science because of these religious reasons, there's no doubt about that. I asked myself what were the two things that appear inexplicable and are used to support religious beliefs: the difference between living and nonliving things, and the phenomenon of consciousness."

[1201] Book: Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. By Francis Crick. Simon and Schuster, 1981.

Page 7: "The idea of directed panspermia ... forms the skeleton of this book...."

Page 141: "Directed Panspermia—postulates that the roots of our form of life go back to another place in the universe, almost certainly another planet; that it had reached a very advanced form there before anything much had started here; and that life here was seeded by microorganisms sent on some from of spaceship by an advanced civilization."

NOTE: On page 15, Dr. Crick rejects the idea that microorganisms could have simply drifted onto earth from another planet because they would have been killed by radiation during the journey through space. I would add that the suggestion that these spores might have been resistant to radiation like the bacteria found in nuclear reactors doesn't hold up either. If the spores could survive floating for long periods through the harsh conditions of interstellar space, they would almost certainly be able to live on the moon, which has been found to be devoid of life.

[1202] Same as above. Pages 119-121, 155-160 [circumstances and motivations]; 131-140 [design of the rocket]; 158 [aliens secretly watching us].

[1203] Same as above.

NOTE: That Crick takes this idea extremely seriously is evident throughout the book, particularly in Chapter 13, where Crick reviews the evidence for and against the theory and concludes on page 153: "The kindest thing to state about Directed Panspermia, then, is to concede that it is indeed a valid scientific theory, but that as a theory it is premature." Also, on page 149 he write: "Each of the details [of Directed Panspermia] which contributed to the required scenario are based on a fairly solid foundation of contemporary science...."

[1204] Book: Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. By Francis Crick. Simon and Schuster, 1981. Page 88.

NOTE: Crick's quote concerning "the problem" is in the book, Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth. By Robert Shapiro. Summit Books, 1986. Pages 227-228 contain Crick's explanation to Shapiro as to why he wrote Life Itself:

We thought of this theory but we're not all that sold on it. ... The object [of the book] is to give the intelligent person an idea of what the problem is, and this is just a tag to sing it on. ... Everybody, as they say in California, can relate to certain ideas and things like an unmanned rocket—or even bacteria, they think they can relate to.

[1205] Book: Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. By Francis Crick. Simon and Schuster, 1981. Page 49. 

[1206] Same as above. Page 153.

[1207] Textbook: Biology: Concepts & Connections. By Neil A. Campbell, Lawrence G. Mitchell, Jane Reece, Larry Mitchell. Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, 1997. Second Edition. Page 322.

[1208] Book: The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin. By John Farley. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Page 7: "That Darwinism, with its implication of a spontaneous origin of life, appeared at the very time when many felt the doctrine of spontaneous generation had been destroyed, introduced mass confusion into the debate."

NOTE: This assertion is substantiated in numerous ways throughout this book. For example, page 150 cites an address given by George Bentham to the Linnaean Society in 1872, in which he said that spontaneous generation was "still supported by so many naturalists whose opinions are entitled to consideration...."

[1209] Book: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. By Charles Darwin. John Murray, 1859. http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species/

Chapter 14: "Recapitulation and Conclusion": "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one...."

[1210] Book: Landmark Essays on Rhetoric of Science: Case Studies. Edited by Randy Allen Harris. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997. Chapter 1: "Charles Darwin: Rhetorician of Science." By John Angus Campbell. Pages 4-5.

[1211] The second edition was published on January 7, 1860 – only 6 weeks after the first edition. Also, despite Darwin's letter to Hooker referenced in the next note, he kept this language in future editions. For example, Chapter 15 of the sixth edition states: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one...." [Book: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. By Charles Darwin. Sixth edition. John Murray, 1872. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2009]

[1212] Book: The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. Edited by Francis Darwin (his son). John Murray, 1888. Volume 3.

Pages 17-18 (in a letter was written to J.D. Hooker on March 29, 1863): "But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal [Biblical] term of creation, by which I really meant 'appeared' by some wholly unknown process."

[1213] Book: Cladistics: Perspectives on the Reconstruction of Evolutionary History. Edited by Thomas Duncan & Tod F. Stuessy. Columbia University Press, 1984. Chapter 3: "Monophyly: Its Meaning and Importance." By Peter D. Ashlock. Page 39.

[1214] Article: "Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Gale, 1998. Volume 7.

Page 61 states that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Haeckel was as famous as Charles Darwin...."

Page 62: "Throughout his life he received many honors and was elected to many scientific societies...."

[1215] Book: The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin. By John Farley. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Page 75.

[1216] Entry: "Perrier, Edmond." New Century Cyclopedia of Names. Edited by Clarence L. Barnhart. Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1954. Page 3144.

[1217] Book: The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin. By John Farley. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Pages 119, 207.

[1218] Entry: "Nägeli, Karl Wilhelm von." Cambridge Biographical Dictionary. Edited by Magnus Magnusson. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

[1219] Book: The Origin of Genetics: A Mendel Source Book. Edited by Curt Stern and Eva R. Sherwood. W.H. Freeman and Company, 1966. Letter from Gregor Mendel to Carl Nägeli, December 31, 1866. Translated by Leonie Kellen Piternick and George Piternick.

Page 56: "The acknowledged preeminence your honor enjoys in the detection and classification of wild-growing plant hybrids...."

[1220] Book: Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species. By Jeffrey H. Schwartz. John Wiley & Sons, 1999.

Page 179: Nägeli was one of the "giants in the field of cytology-the study of cell...."

Page 186: "Nägeli was the premier botanist of the time...."

[1221] Book: The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin. By John Farley. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Pages 142, 143, 211.

[1222] Book: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. By Charles Darwin. John Murray, 1859. http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species/

Glossary:

PROTOZOA - The lowest great division of the Animal Kingdom. These animals are composed of a gelatinous material, and show scarcely any trace of distinct organs. ...

SARCODE – The gelatinous material of which the bodies of the lowest animals (Protozoa) are composed.

NOTE: The language above is the same in the sixth edition. [Book: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. By Charles Darwin. Sixth edition. John Murray, 1872. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2009]

[1223] In addition to the quotes above:

Book: Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. By Francis Crick. Simon and Schuster, 1981. Page 125 states that bacteria are "remarkable creatures" and the pages that follow explain why.

[1224] Article: "Building a Virtual Microbe, Gene by Gene by Gene." By Carl Zimmer. New York Times, August 16, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/16/science/16coli.html

Michael Ellison has a dream: to reconstruct a living thing inside a computer, down to every last molecule. ...

... They have chosen to recreate Escherichia coli, the humble resident of the human gut that has been the favorite species for biology experiments for decades.

"We picked the simplest organism about which we know the most," Dr. Ellison said. ...

...E. coli contains an estimated 60 million biological molecules. Simulating all of them at once was an absurdly difficult task.

... Despite decades of research, many of E. coli's genes still remain a mystery - "probably around 1,000 genes," Dr. Thomas said. ...

They want to begin by simulating a simplified E. coli. "We're going to strip E. coli down to about one-quarter of its original size," Dr. Ellison said. ...

There is one major catch, however. Even a stripped-down E. coli is so complex that no existing program can simulate it. "Our gamble in this is that computers are getting more powerful, so we build the framework and within 5 or 10 years the computers will be able to deal with this," Dr. Ellison said.

[1225] Book: A History of Medicine. By Lois N. Magner. Marcel Dekker, 1992. Page 310:

Pasteur and his followers created the sterile techniques that made modern microbiology and surgery possible. ...

Pasteur was convinced that a revolution in medicine would only become possible when the defenders of spontaneous generation were totally defeated; the development of rational methods for the prevention and treatment of disease depended on rejecting this erroneous doctrine. ... For example, Pasteur's studies of a microbe found in victims of childbed fever led him to warn hospital personnel that they carried the microbe from infected women to healthy women, but like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis, he failed to convince the medical community.

[1226] Book: The Collected Papers of Joseph, Baron Lister. Clarendon Press, 1909. Volume I. Address: "On the Relations of Micro-Organisms to Disease." Delivered before the British Medical Association on August 12, 1880. Published in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, April 1881. Page 387:

The relation of micro-organisms to disease is a subject of vast extent and importance. If we compare the present state of knowledge regarding it with that of twenty years ago, we are astonished at the progress which has been made in the interval. At that time bacteria were little more than scientific curiosities... That they were the causes of putrefaction, or other fermentative changes, was a thing scarcely though of; and the notion that they had special relations to disease would have been regarded as the wildest of speculations.

[1227] Book: The Life of Pasteur. By Rene Vallery-Radot. Translated by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire. Garden City Publishing, 1927.

Page 256: "Do you know why I desire so much to fight and conquer you? it [sic] is because you are one of the principle adepts [adherents] of a medical doctrine which I believe to be fatal to progress in the art of healing—the doctrine of the spontaneity of all diseases."

[1228] Book: The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin. By John Farley. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Page 87 states that Bastain was a "professor of pathological anatomy at University College and Britain's foremost advocate of spontaneous generation."

[1229] For example:

Textbook: Biology. Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph Levine. Prentice Hall, 2000. Fifth edition. First published in 1991. Page 346:

In Section 16-1 you read about some experiments that disproved the hypothesis of spontaneous generation. "Hey, what's going on?" you might exclaim. If we just said that life did arise from nonlife billions of years ago, why couldn't it happen again? The answer is simple: Today's Earth is a very different planet from the one that existed billions of years ago.

[1230] Article: "A Production of Amino Acids Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions." By Stanley L. Miller. Science, May 15, 1953. Pages 528-529.

[1231] I estimate that more than 90% of the writings I have read on this topic do not mention any of the pitfalls that follow.

[1232] Book: Researches on Molecular Asymmetry of Natural Organic Products. E. & S. Livingstone Limited, 1948.

This book contains the contents of two lectures given by Louis Pasteur to the Chemical Society of Paris in 1860. The Preface (written in 1948) states that these lectures "are remarkable for three things ... [T]hey contain scarcely a statement that would be changed if they were written today...."

Page 29: "All artificial products of the laboratory and all mineral species are superposable on their images. One the other hand, most natural organic products (I might even say all, if I were to assume only those which play an essential part in the phenomena of vegetable and animal life), the essential products of life, are asymmetric...."

Pages 31-32: "Artificial products have, therefore, no molecular asymmetry; and I could not point out the existence of any more profound distinction between the products formed under the influence of life, and all others."

NOTE: See the next two notes, wherein the terms "optically active" and "homochirality" are used in reference to the asymmetric molecules mentioned here.

[1233] Textbook: Organic Chemistry. By Robert Thornton Morrison & Robert Neilson Boyd. Prentice Hall, 1992. Sixth edition.

Page 1214: "These synthetic amino acids are, of course, optically inactive...."

Page 152: "[O]ptically inactive reactants yield optically inactive products."

Page 159:

We eat optically active bread and optically active meat, live in houses, wear clothes, and read books made of optically active cellulose. The proteins that make up our muscles and other tissues, the glycogen in our liver and glucose in our blood, the enzymes and hormones that enable us to grow and regulate our body processes—all these are optically active. Naturally occurring compounds are optically active because the enzymes that bring about their formation—and often the raw materials from which they are made—are themselves optically active. As to the origin of the optically active enzymes, we can only speculate.

[1234] Article: "Getting All Turned Around Over The Origins of Life on Earth." By Jon Cohen. Science, March 3, 1995. Pages 1265-1266.

NOTE: This article describes a heated dispute between origin-of-life scientists regarding whether or not life had to be preceded by optical activity, which as we have seen, is not characteristic of non-living processes. The article is very informative and worth reading in full.

Page 1265:

The meeting participants did agree on one thing: Homochirality—the total predominance of one chiral form, or "enantiomer"—is necessary for present-day life because the cellular machinery that has evolved to keep organisms alive and replicating, from microorganisms to humans, is built around the fact that genetic material veers right and amino acids veer left.

[1235] Book: The Way of the Cell. By Franklin M. Harold. Oxford University Press, 2001. Pages 238-239 (regarding the atmosphere of the Miller-Urey experiment):

The pioneers of planetary history favored a strongly reducing atmosphere containing methane, ammonia, and hydrogen gas in addition to nitrogen and CO₂. Such an atmosphere would encourage the formation of reduced organic substances, including some of biological relevance, and it underpins the widespread belief that the primordial ocean consisted of a dilute broth of ready-made biological precursors. By contrast, contemporary work suggests a nearly neutral atmosphere produced by volcanic activity and consisting of primarily CO2, nitrogen, and water vapor. Organic substances do not readily form under these conditions; the new findings call into question the "myth of the primordial soup" (as Robert Shapiro puts it), and undermine all scenarios of genesis that call for a long period of chemical evolution to generate the building blocks of life.

Page 244: "[I]n truth, there is not (and perhaps cannot be) convincing evidence that there ever was a rich broth of organic substances, or that it played the role assigned to it by the theory."

[1236] Book: Origin and Development of Living Systems. By J. Brooks & G. Shaw. Academic Press, 1973. Pages 359-360:

Now if we assume that a primitive organic soup was first formed as a precursor requirement for the living system and that it formed and accumulated organic matter over millions of years, then there should be evidence for such matter in the earliest of sediments. ... In fact no such materials have been found anywhere on earth. Indeed to the contrary, the very oldest of sediments, ranging from somewhere like [3.7 billion] years and consequently very close to the basement figure of [4 billion] years mentioned earlier, contain organic matter very much of the sporopollenin-type*.... There is, in other words, pretty good negative evidence that there never was a primitive organic soup on this planet that could have lasted but for a brief moment.

It is possible of course to assume that the various chemical and organizational changes which took place in those early days occurred over a very short period of time, so short in fact that no trace of the happenings remain. However, once one begins to make assumptions of this type one is biting into the very fundamental requirements of the abiogenic theory, namely the requirements of large amounts of organic matter and of time that chance processes have neither the opportunity nor the time to operate successfully.

The other requirement of the abiogenic theory is that the primitive earth contained a reducing atmosphere. ... Again, there is no evidence for such a reducing atmosphere, although such evidence may be difficult to find since reduced minerals, for example, might have been subsequently reoxidized. The sort of "evidence" sometimes forwarded, namely the reduced iron beds, is somewhat absurd since the existence of living systems was well documented before such beds were deposited and the beds themselves are very likely reduced by living organisms.

* Entry: "sporopollenin." American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin, 2000. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sporopollenin

"A polymer that constitutes the outer wall of spores and pollen grains."

[1237] Textbook: Biology. Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph Levine. Prentice Hall, 2000. Fifth edition. First published in 1991.

Page 344: "In fact, one of Miller's most recent experiments (in 1995) produced cytosine and uracil, two of the bases found in DNA and RNA."

NOTE: See the next citation for data concerning the implausibility of this experiment.

[1238] Paper: "Prebiotic cytosine synthesis: A critical analysis and implications for the origin of life." By Robert Shapiro. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 13, 1999. Pages 4396-4401. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=16343

Page 4396: "No reactions have been described thus far that would produce cytosine, even in a specialized local setting, at a rate sufficient to compensate for its decomposition."

Page 4397:

The synthesis of cytosine from cyanoacetaldehyde (Fig. 1, IV) and urea (V) was reported by Robertson and Miller ... [citing a 1995 paper by Miller and Robertson in Nature]. ... It is clear that the yield of cytosine would fall to 0% if the reaction were extended for a number of half-lives. This provides no difficulty in the laboratory, where one can start with a urea concentration of one's choice and monitor the time carefully. On early Earth, the following circumstances would be needed.... This sequence cannot be excluded as a rare event on early Earth, but it cannot be termed plausible. The above circumstances do not provide the only barrier to the success of the reaction.

[1239] Textbook: Biology: The Dynamics of Life. By Alton Biggs, Dan Blaustein, Chris Kapicka, Albert Kaskel, and Linda Lundgren. Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 1998.

Page 412 (Figure 17.13): "The 'life-in-a-test-tube' experiment of Miller and Urey remains the cornerstone of the theories of the origin of life."

[1240] Book: The History of Creation. By Ernst Haeckel. Fourth Edition, 1873. First published in 1868. Translated by E. Ray Lankester. D. Appleton and Company, 1879. Volume 2. Page 342:

Not fifty years ago, all chemists maintained that we were unable to produce artificially in our laboratories any complicated combination of carbon, or so-called "organic combination." ... When, therefore, in 1928, Wöller, in Göttingen, for the first time, refuted this dogma, and exhibited pure "organic" urea, obtained in an artificial manner from a purely inorganic body (cyanate of ammonium), it caused the greatest surprise and astonishment. In more recent times, by the progress of synthetic chemistry, we have succeeded in producing in our laboratories a great variety of similar "organic" combinations of carbon, by purely artificial means—for example alcohol, acetic acid, formic acid.

[1241] Book: The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin. By John Farley. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Page 177 states the following with respect to the Miller-Urey experiment:

In a sense, this synthesis differed little from 19th century productions of organic substances. Had such a synthesis been possible at that time, only the materialists would have seen it in terms of the origin of life question. To most chemists and biologists of the nineteenth century a clear distinction existed between organic matter and living organisms. After Oparin [Soviet biochemist who developed a scenario of chemical evolution in the 1930's], however, any production of organic material was viewed as a step on the long evolutionary road, particularly when the ingredients from which the amino acids arose seemed similar to the reducing atmosphere presumed to exist on the prebiotic earth."

NOTE: As is shown in citation 1236, it is highly questionable that such a reducing atmosphere even existed.

[1242] Entry: "Harold, Franklin Marcel." American Men and Women of Science. Edited by Pamela M. Kalte and Katherine H. Nemeh. Gale, 2003. Volume 3.

Page 508 reviews Dr. Harold's background and notes he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California.

[1243] Web page: "Creative Retirement Institute Instructors." Accessed in May 2006 at http://cri.edcc.edu/

"Dr. Frank Harold is a basic scientist with 40 years of experience in research on cell biology and microbiology. He holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry and is Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University. He has authored two books and many papers on science."

[1244] Book: The Way of the Cell. By Franklin M. Harold. Oxford University Press, 2001. Page 244.

[1245] Book: The Life of Pasteur. By Rene Vallery-Radot. Translated by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire. Garden City Publishing, 1927.

Pages 95-96: "After introducing into a series of flasks ... a very easily corrupted liquid, such as yeast water, he submitted each flask to ebullition [boiling]."

[1246] Book: Louis Pasteur. By Patrice Debré. Flammarion, 1994. Translated by Elborg Forster. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Page 172:

To this effect, a way had to be found to place into the flasks, under sterile conditions, a biological product "taken from living matter" and therefore capable, according to Pouchet, of producing spontaneous generation if left in the open air. ... He [Pasteur] had the idea of placing a blood sample taken as aseptically as possible from a dog into a sterile flask. The blood gathered in this manner did not undergo any alteration. There was neither fermentation nor putrefaction. Better yet, there was not even a change in the oxygen within the flask. ... This finding about living matter that decomposed and did not generate life was more than Pasteur had hoped for.

[1247] Book: Studies on Fermentation: The Diseases of Beer, Their Causes, and The Means of Preventing Them. By Louis Pasteur. Translated with the author's sanction by Frank Faulkner & D. Constable Robb. Macmillan & Co., 1879. Kraus Reprint Co., 1969. Pages 51-52:

It is almost superfluous to remark how greatly the results of these experiments on blood, urine, and the components of the egg are opposed to the doctrine of spontaneous generation, as also to most modern theories on the generation of ferments. As long as experiments relating to the question of so-called spontaneous generation were made on heated substances, the advocates of heterogenesis had some grounds for asserting that such materials could not satisfy the conditions of spontaneous life, and that we should obtain different results by using natural organic liquids, which, if exposed to contact of pure air would doubtless serve for the production of new beings which did not issue from parents which resembled them. This novel annunciation of the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, the only one, we think, that could be defended after the publication of our Memoir, in 1862, is condemned by the preceding facts.

[1248] Book: The Way of the Cell. By Franklin M. Harold. Oxford University Press, 2001. Page 235-236:

Biology textbooks often include a chapter on how life may have arisen from non-life, and while responsible authors do not fail to underscore the difficulties and uncertainties, readers still come away with the impression that the answer is almost within our grasp. My own reading is considerably more reserved. I suspect that the upbeat tone owes less to the advance of science than to the resurgence of primitive religiosity all around the globe, and particularly in the West. Scientists feel vulnerable to the onslaught of believers' certitudes, and so we proclaim our own. In reality we may not be much closer to understanding genesis than A. I. Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane [two leading origin-of-life scientists] were in the 1930s; and in the long run, science would be better off if we said so.

[1249] Book: The Way of the Cell. By Franklin M. Harold. Oxford University Press, 2001. Pages 244-245.

[1250] Book: The Way of the Cell. By Franklin M. Harold. Oxford University Press, 2001. Page 251.

[1251] In addition to all the quotes we have examined thus far:

Book: The Way of the Cell. By Franklin M. Harold. Oxford University Press, 2001. Pages 236-237:

Life arose here on earth from inanimate matter, by some kind of evolutionary process, about four billion years ago. This is not a statement of demonstrable fact, but an assumption almost universally shared by specialists as well as scientists in general. It is not supported by any direct evidence, nor is it likely to be, but it is consistent with what evidence we do have. The contrary claims of Biblical fundamentalists can, for the most part, be clearly refuted on the geological evidence.

NOTE: We'll see about that in the chapter on the fossil record. Also, see Dr. Harold's quote on page 195 of Rational Conclusions regarding the absence of evidence for the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system.

[1252] Paper: "The Origin of Life: A Critique of Current Scientific Models." By Aw Swee-Ang. CEN Technical Journal, December 1996. Pages 300-314. http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/tjv10n3_origin_life.pdf

[1253] Paper: "Origin of life: Instability of Building Blocks." By Jonathan Sarfati. CEN Technical Journal, November 1999. http://creation.com/origin-of-life-instability-of-building-blocks

[1254] Paper: "Protein families: Chance or Design?" By Royal Truman and Michael Heisig. CEN Technical Journal, December 2001. Pages 115-127. http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/...

[1255] Paper: "Origin of Life: the Chirality Problem." By Jonathan Sarfati. CEN Technical Journal, December 1998. http://creation.com/origin-of-life-the-chirality-problem

[1256] Article: "Richard Feynman." Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2004.

In addition to the points already made in the main text of Rational Conclusions, this article provides a good overall review of Feynman's breakthroughs and accomplishments.

[1257] Book: Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained By Its Most Brilliant Teacher. Addison-Wesley, 1995.

This book is comprised of six chapters taken from the book, Lectures on Physics, by Richard Feynman. Addison-Wesley, 1963. Page 2.

[1258] Book: The Life of Pasteur. By Rene Vallery-Radot. Translated by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire. Garden City Publishing, 1927.

Page 93: "On one copy of that communication [written in 1858 by an advocate of spontaneous generation named M. Pouchet] ... Pasteur had underlined the passages which he intended to submit to rigorous experimentation. The scientific world was discussing the matter; Pasteur set himself to work."

[1259] Book: The Life of Pasteur. By René Vallery-Radot. Translated from the French by R. L. Devonshire. Doubleday, 1919. Page 107.

[1260] Book: The Life of Pasteur. By René Vallery-Radot. Translated from the French by R. L. Devonshire. Doubleday, 1919. Pages 108-9. This lecture was at "the Sorbonne," which is what the University of Paris was and sometimes is still is called.

[1261] Web page: "Germs from Nowhere, Spontaneous Generation." Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2002. http://www.chemheritage.org/educationalservices/...

"Pasteur's original flasks still exist at the Pasteur Museum in Paris, complete with uncontaminated broth in those containers designed to prevent microbial growth."

NOTE: I wrote to the Pasteur Museum in July 2007, and they confirmed that these flasks are still present.

[1262] Article: "Science on verge of new 'Creation': Labs say they have nearly all the tools to make artificial life." By Ronald Kotulak. Chicago Tribune, March 28, 2004. http://www.chicagotribune.com/

One of the tricks they [Martin Hanczyc of Massachusetts General Hospital and Jack Szostak of Harvard] learned is how to use the remarkable properties of clay, thought to have been abundant on the early Earth. Clay has natural catalytic properties--it speeds up the assembly of lipid membranes a hundredfold, for example, and also hastens the assembly of genetic material called ribonucleic acid.

[1263] Book: Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth. By Robert Shapiro. Summit Books, 1986.

Pages 311-313:

I myself was quite taken by an area I observed while on vacation in Yellowstone National Park.... I walked past deep blue hot pools, spouting geysers, and boiling springs. ... Steam bubbled through the thick mud, made of kalonite clay.... As I watched this busy, almost sensual display, I thought, This must be the place. It was rare to see inanimate matter act so animate. ... Surely, many sites like this were present on the primitive earth, and at one or more of them, something happened. Many others have had this idea before me.... Clays were present; we have discussed their possibilities. ... If the above account turns out to be accurate, I would be quite surprised. ... Science is not a place for those who want certainty.

[1264] Article: "Darwin's warm pond theory tested." By Rebecca Morelle. BBC, February 13, 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4702336.stm

The quote is from Professor David Deamer, who is also quoted in this article as stating that "in our experiments, the organic compounds became so strongly held to the clay particles that they could not undergo any further chemical reactions."

[1265] Textbook: Biology. Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph Levine. Prentice Hall, 2000. Fifth edition. First published in 1991. Page 346.

[1266] Article: "Chemical Reactions." Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2004.

The section entitled "Chemical kinetics" explains that the rates of chemical reactions can be increased exponentially by increasing the concentrations of the reactants and using catalysts.

[1267] Article: "The Origin of Life." By George Wald. Scientific American, August 1954. Pages 45-53.

The quotes are from pages 46 and 48. Dr. Wald's credentials are given on page 143 of Rational Conclusions.

[1268] Article: "Probe ends historic Mars mission." By Jonathan Amos. BBC News, November 10, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/7721032.stm

"Nasa's robot rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, continue to work at their equatorial landing sites five years after arriving at the planet."

[1269] Book: Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. By Francis Crick. Simon and Schuster, 1981. Page 150.

[1270] Book: The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin. By John Farley. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Page 111: "As Pasteur himself recognized on numerous occasions, 'In the observational sciences, unlike mathematics, the absolute, rigorous demonstration of a negation is impossible.'"

[1271] Textbook: Biology: Concepts & Connections. By Neil A. Campbell, Lawrence G. Mitchell, Jane Reece, Larry Mitchell. Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, 1997. Second Edition. Page 322.

[1272] Book: Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. By Francis Crick. Simon and Schuster, 1981. Page 90.

[1273] Textbook: Biology. By Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph Levine. Prentice Hall, 2000.

[1274] Web page: "George Wald: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1967." Accessed April 29, 2009 at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/...

[1275] Article: "The Origin of Life." By George Wald. Scientific American, August 1954. Pages 45-53. Page 46.

[1276] Web page: "Robert Shapiro: Biography." Accessed April 29, 2009 at http://robertshapiro.org/

[1277] Book: Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth. By Robert Shapiro. Summit Books, 1986. Page 130.

[1278] Article: "Science on verge of new 'Creation': Labs say they have nearly all the tools to make artificial life." By Ronald Kotulak. Chicago Tribune, March 28, 2004. http://www.chicagotribune.com/

It is a dream long pursued by scientists who now believe that it may be possible to create the first artificial unit of life in the next 5 to 10 years. "We've been saying that for the last 50 years," said David W. Deamer, a pioneering professor of biomolecular engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "What makes it different now is that we have a critical mass of people interested in the field and some recent breakthrough discoveries.

[1279] Article: "Creating First Synthetic Life Form." By Carolyn Abraham. Globe and Mail, December 19, 2005. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/...

The [Craig] Venter team is starting small, working to construct a simpler version of the bacteria known as Mycoplasma genitalium ... [which is] is a single-cell bacterium with just one chromosome and 517 genes. But the Venter team is paring the recipe down and believes their version will be able to survive with as few as 250 to 400 genes -- each of which they are making themselves, one chemical piece at a time.

But even if the team can assemble all of the bug's 500,000 DNA chemicals (roughly 35,000 has been the record so far), no one knows if the organism will be viable. Will simply synthesizing a chemical sequence spark life? "Nobody has ever done it before so absolutely it is a key hurdle," Dr. Venter said.

[1280] Article: "Creating First Synthetic Life Form." By Carolyn Abraham. Globe and Mail, December 19, 2005. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/...

The quote is from "U.S. scientist Craig Venter, who gained fame in his former job as head of Celera Genomics, which completed a privately-owned map of the human genome in 2000."

[1281] Article: "Creating First Synthetic Life Form." By Carolyn Abraham. Globe and Mail, December 19, 2005. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/...

"One option for sparking life in a lab-made genome, he [Robert Holt] explained, is to transplant the synthetic DNA into the shell of an existing microbe. ... 'That's the strategy, though we don't know if it will work,' Dr. Holt said."

[1282] Article: "Science on verge of new 'Creation': Labs say they have nearly all the tools to make artificial life." By Ronald Kotulak. Chicago Tribune, March 28, 2004. http://www.chicagotribune.com/

"[A]rtificial life now seems so attainable that the number of U.S. labs working in the field jumped from about 10 four decades ago to more than 100 today."

[1283] Article: "Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms." By Rick Weiss. Washington Post, December 17, 2007. Page A01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/...

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding.

[1284] Article: "Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms." By Rick Weiss. Washington Post, December 17, 2007. Page A01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/...

"[W]hen a faux chromosome gets plopped into a cell, it will be able to direct the destruction of the cell's old DNA and become its new "brain" -- telling the cell to start making a valuable chemical, for example, or a medicine or a toxin, or a bio-based gasoline substitute."

[1285] Book: In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation. Edited by John F. Ashton. Master Books, 2002. Third edition. First published in 2001. Page 117. http://creation.com/timothy-g-standish-biology-in-six-days