From A Storehouse of Knowledge

The universe is everything that physically exists. It is a vast expanse of mainly empty space, in which exist galaxies made of swirling patterns of stars. One such galaxy is our own Milky Way. It is not known how big the universe is, but even if its limit could be fathomed, it would not be possible to travel even a tiny fraction of the distance between Earth and the edge of space's vast abyss.

A couple of recent creationist models are based on a universe bounded by an edge, but most cosmologists assume that the universe is unbounded. Even if the universe is unbounded, it could still be finite if space has positive curvature. Measurements of the curvature of space indicate that it is approximately flat, and versions of the Big Bang model that include inflation predict the flatness to be very nearly perfect. An unbounded, flat universe would be infinite. Some theorists have suggested that there may be more spatial dimensions than the three we perceive. They would be invisible to us either because they are "rolled up" to a very small size, or because there is some effect that constrains us to reside in a "brane" of only three dimensions.

Others have postulated that there may be more than one universe, or even an infinite number of universes; this would appear contrary to the very definition of a universe, but it may be that other universes exist in places, dimensions or planes entirely removed from our own, with which we cannot interact. This being the case, such postulations are not based on actual evidence, as any evidence of another universe would qualify as interaction.

Contents 1 Size 2 Age 3 Bounded or unbounded? 4 Bibliography 5 References

Size

We cannot determine the size of the universe with a single method but must use a "distance ladder". The lower rungs, providing a correspondence between laboratory standards of length and stars in our galaxy, are based on triangulation. The upper rungs, connecting stars to distant galaxies, are usually based on the apparent brightness of objects with known brightness. Finally, even larger distances can be estimated by assuming that Hubble's Law continues beyond the range where it has been directly verified. The most distant object yet observed,^[1] according to this methodology, is a gamma ray burst 13 billion light years away. Applying the Big Bang model to this data suggest that the visible part of the universe is approximately 93 billion light years in diameter. How large the universe is beyond the visible part is unknown.

Age

The exact time of the Creation of the universe is unknown, but calculations based upon Biblical chronology place it at approximately 6000 Earth years ago. The best-known date is 4004BC, based on the work of 17th century scholar James Ussher.

This compares to a date of around 14 billion years, about 2 million times older, as determined by various scientific methods based on assumptions that ignore the biblical evidence.

Recent attempts to resolve the starlight problem propose that time runs (or once ran) more slowly for the Earth than for the rest of the universe. In that case, the universe could be billions of years old, even if everything was created, as seen from the Earth, only 6000 years ago.

One straightforward method to calculate an age for the universe based on secular science uses redshift, the shift in the spectrum of light from distant galaxies towards the red end of the spectrum, given by the Hubble constant, measured^[2] to be H₀ = 70.6 ± 3.1 (km/sec)/Mpc. If the galaxies have always been moving at their current speeds, and the tangential components of the velocities are negligible (as they must be if the Earth does not have a special position in the universe), then all galaxies must have been very close to that common point 13.8 billion years ago. More detailed models do not significantly change this estimate.

Another approach scientists use is to date not the whole universe, but the oldest things they can find in the universe. This, of course, cannot provide an exact age of the universe, but at best a lower limit to the age, since the universe must be at least as old as the things in it. These might be

• groups of stars (The lack of high mass stars, which burn out more quickly than those of lower mass, in the globular cluster known as Messier 92 has been used to estimate the age of the cluster as 12-14 billion years.),
• individual stars (It is estimated^[3][4] that the white dwarf known as WD 0346+246 has needed at least 8 billion years to cool down to its current temperature.), or
• rocks (Multiple radiometric dating techniques applied to several meteorites and moon rocks have yielded^[5] an age of 4.5 billion years, while the age of a rock outcrop in Canada known as Acasta Gneiss has been reported^[6] to be 4.0 billion years.).

The age of 13.75 billion years is also argued using data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)^[7][8].

Bounded or unbounded?

A 'bounded' universe is one that has an edge, and therefore a centre. An 'unbounded' universe has no edge, and therefore no centre. Such an unbounded universe could either be infinite in size, or it could be due to space being sufficiently curved in a fourth spacial dimension to become a closed "loop". In the second case, the universe would be the surface of a four-dimensional object, similar to the two-dimensional surface of a three-dimensional sphere: while the sphere has a centre, its surface (analogous to our universe) does not.

Because we see approximately the same amount of matter in all directions when looking into space, it appears as though Earth is at the centre of the universe. However, if the universe is unbounded, this appearance would be an illusion; every other location would also see approximately the same amount of matter in all directions. The Earth being at the centre of the universe would, given the size of the universe, be either an extraordinary co-incidence or it would be by design, and thus be evidence for the existence of God. It being at the centre due to a co-incidence is extremely unlikely (the odds are less than one in one trillion),^[9] and Edwin Hubble along with other astronomers and cosmologists concluded that the universe must be unbounded, without addressing the possibility that the Earth is at the centre of the universe by design. ^[10]

A few scientific studies, however, have pointed to the Earth (or more accurately, the Milky Way) truly being somewhere near the centre (in comparison to the size of the universe).^[11][12] These studies have suggested that redshifts are "quantized", which would imply that the universe has a center, and that we are located somewhere near that centre. The first of these studies was published in 1973,^[13] with others following up to 1997 ^[14]. After these studies were performed, tremendous advances were made in redshift cataloging, so that there are several orders of magnitudes more data available today that can be used to look for such effects. Several groups^[Who?] examining the new data have concluded that the quantization previously reported was not real, but the result of noise or statistical effects^{[Citation Needed]}.

Bibliography

• Hartnett, John, Cosmologists Can’t Agree and Are Still In Doubt!, Journal of Creation 16(3):21–26, December 2002.
• Hartnett, John, New evidence: we really are at the centre of the universe, Journal of Creation 18(1), 2004, p.9
• Humphreys, Russell D., Our galaxy is the centre of the universe, ‘quantized’ redshifts show, Journal of Creation 16(2):95–104, 2002.

References