Expert: James Gort - 10/10/2006

Question
O K,  thanks......  Just how old is the cosmos/universe ? I have read where it's anywhere from 15 billion years old to 55 billion years old. Which , if either,  is more correct ?......... The answer will bring me to the next question........ If the universe is about 15 billion light years old,  then what lies at 15.1 billion light years away ?.......
I've been puzzling over these questions for years,  and the answers I can find on the web  and in text books aren't very enlightening.  By the way,  I am a Creationist.
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Followup To

Question -
How can astronomers say they are looking at the universe only a few billion years old if we were also present at the big bang ? I understand how light takes billions of years to travel to us from so far away, but how can that light be so close to the beginning of the universe, if we were also part of that beginning ? How did we get so far out, before the light did ? It seems like a paradox to me.

Answer -
Hello Dwayne,

You've asked a very profound question.  And one I've not seen raised very often.  I wish I had an answer for you.  But it's the subject of some current research I'm doing, because I, too, found it a paradox.

Cosmology is not yet a very self-consistent science.  There are many alternative theories, most of which are very difficult to prove.  I'm looking at many of them to see if there's a consistent (and reasonable) explanation for that seeming paradox.

Keep asking those thought-provoking questions!  Wish I could have helped more.

Prof. James Gort

Answer
Hello Dwayne,

This one's easier to answer.  One current model (the most widely accepted) puts the universe at between 13 and 15 billion years old.  Assuming 15 billion years is "right", you ask about the conditions 15.1 billion light years away.  For that, I'll have to explain a little about what most people think the Big Bang was.

It wasn't a Bang at all.  It was the beginning of space-time.  Outside the Big Bang, there was no space-time - the "bang" was the expansion of space-time into what was previously "nothing".  So we can't go back 15.1 billion light years, because space-time didn't exist at that distance.  That's a little difficult to understand (for everyone!), but that's the basis of the Big Bang theory.

But since you're so interested and asking very relevant questions, I'm going to recommend a book to you.  There are many books on the popular market, but this one was written by three of the most respected astronomers/cosmologists in the world.  And they have major problems in accepting the Big Bang.  According to these authors, the background microwave radiation at about 2.7 degrees Kelvin (which some people say is evidence of the Big Bang radiation) could easily be accounted for as the remnants of energy created in stellar nuclear fusion.  They argue very convincingly for "continuous creation", whereby matter is being continually created from the universe's energy (and some of that matter decays back to energy).  And the redshift of galaxies (which seems to indicate galaxies are receding from the Big Bang) could have other explanations.  In fact, there are too many problems with the Hubble Redshift that there MUST be other explanations.  That book is "A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a Static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality" by Hoyle, Burbidge, and Narlikar, available for $50 from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Different-Approach-Cosmology-Universe-towards/dp/052101926

That book gives the entire history of cosmology from 1914 to the present, and they insist that today, many former physicists became cosmologists for the funding, and behave like sheep, blindly following the Big Bang theory.  It requires only first year calculus (in some chapters only).

If you're still interested, I recommend "Seeing Red" by Halton Arp, another very respected astronomer, who insists that galaxies' red shifts do have other explanations - and he describes them in detail.  In particular, he describes how the "accepted" velocity-distance relationship can't be correct.

I hope I've given you some food for thought.  There are many paradoxes in cosmology, and alternative theories.  But as scientists, we must have an open mind until irrefutable evidence points to one preferred theory.  I don't think we're there yet.

Prof. James Gort