Has the Webb Telescope Disproved the Big Bang?

KEVIN HARRIS: Hey there! It’s Kevin Harris. Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. Today we get a chance to fill in some blanks perhaps on the Big Bang. How has the Big Bang held up over the years, and have some recent discoveries by the Webb Telescope undermined Big Bang cosmology? We are going to discuss that with Dr. Craig today. I want to remind you that you can give to Reasonable Faith and keep this work going forward all around the world. We get questions and interactions from people in Muslim countries, Europe, Asia, South America. All over the world people are interacting with Reasonable Faith, and you can partner with us prayerfully or financially. Any gift that you give is so appreciated and such a blessing. Go to ReasonableFaith.org – you can give online there – and tap into the many resources Reasonable Faith has just for you. ReasonableFaith.org.

This article is by Jeff Zweerink.^[1] He has a B.S. in physics and a PhD in astrophysics with a focus on gamma rays from Iowa State. He also is with Reasons to Believe. He gives us a chance to brush up on our Big Bang. He writes in this article,

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is just starting to reveal images of the universe never seen before. The amazing clarity of this new telescope will help scientists better understand how the universe developed from the big bang until now. However, one claim based on some of the early images generated controversy, and quite a bit of publicity. Specifically, physicist and science writer Eric Lerner argued that the JWST shows the big bang didn’t happen!

This isn't the first time Lerner has disputed the Big Bang. Are you familiar with him, Bill?

DR. CRAIG: Only secondarily. To tell the truth, he is such a marginal figure that I don't think it's worth spending valuable time on.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article continues,

Eric Lerner’s claim is nothing new. In fact, he articulated his claim 30 years ago in his book The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe! Instead of gravity driving the large-scale dynamics of the universe (as in big bang cosmology), Lerner’s plasma cosmology has electromagnetic forces dominating. According to Lerner, if plasma physics governs the formation of galaxies, stars, and all the features of the universe, the universe would have no beginning. And Lerner asserts that the big bang add-ons of dark matter and dark energy are unnecessary in his model.

Continuing he says,

As one might expect, the scientific community responded by acknowledging and addressing both the data Lerner used to argue against big bang cosmology as well as the evidence used to support his model. . . .

Lerner’s recent statements argue that the new JWST images refute the big bang and match the predictions of his plasma cosmology. However, we need to exercise caution. The strongest evidence for big bang cosmology arises from observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation . . . and from measurements of the distance/redshift relationship obtained by observing galaxies throughout the universe. None of the JWST images impact this evidence!

First, JWST was not designed—and has no capacity—to observe the CMB. Second, JWST was designed to investigate distant galaxies at high redshift to study their properties. None of the current JWST data undermines the copious evidence that redshift systematically increases with distance. JWST has found some distant galaxies that are larger and more developed than expected in many big bang models. Lerner claims these galaxy observations invalidate big bang models while matching predictions of his plasma cosmology.

You may want to go over cosmic microwave background for us, as well as a reminder of what the redshift is.

DR. CRAIG: Sure. There are three principal lines of evidence in support of the expansion of the universe from a Big Bang.The first is the redshift in the light emanating from distant galaxies. In 1929 the American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered through tireless observations in the Mount Wilson Observatory that wherever he trained his telescope in the night sky he observed that the light coming from distant galaxies is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. Hubble took this to be indicative of the recessional velocity of these galaxies – as they move away from us the light coming from them is stretched and so shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. The universal redshift that Hubble observed was taken to be confirmatory of the prediction of an expanding universe that had been made in the early 20s by Alexander Friedman and Georges Lemaître. In 1965 two scientists working for the Bell Telephone Laboratories, A. A. Penzias and R. W. Wilson, discovered a low-grade microwave background radiation that they could not get rid of. It turned out that the entire universe is permeated with this microwave radiation – the same kind of radiation that is in your microwave oven at home. This was explained as being the light that was emitted from a very early, very hot and dense state of the universe which has now been shifted into the microwave region of the spectrum. So this was dramatic confirmatory evidence that the universe has evolved from an early, hot, and very dense state. Thirdly, the heavy elements like carbon and iron are synthesized in the interior of stars. Then when the stars explode these heavy elements are distributed throughout the universe where they form planets and organisms on those planets. But the very light elements like helium and deuterium cannot be synthesized in the stellar interiors; rather these were apparently synthesized in the very dense, very hot early conditions present at the Big Bang. So these three lines of independent evidence make it plausible that, in fact, the universe not only is expanding but originated in this extremely dense, extremely hot, early state somewhere around 13.8 billion years ago. Now, the observation of the James Webb Telescope of mature galaxies much, much earlier in the history of the universe than expected does call into serious questions some of our models of galactic evolution. You've got to explain how these galaxies were able to form so soon after the Big Bang rather than billions of years later. And that is the challenge that remains. It doesn't call into question the Big Bang, but the data does call into question our models of galactic evolution.

KEVIN HARRIS: Zweerink continues,

One should remember that these types of discrepancies occur rather frequently in science. For most of the 1970s, 80s, and into the 90s, astronomers couldn’t even agree whether the universe was closer to 10 billion years old or 20 billion years old because different measurement techniques gave different ages! During my scientific career, I have read published papers with star dates older than the age of the universe, cosmic structures too large to form given the universe’s age, and measurements showing the CMB as too smooth to form stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies. Interestingly, that last item was part of the evidence that prompted Lerner to develop his alternative cosmology model. Yet, in every example just listed, further research by the scientific community resulted in a better, more precise understanding of big bang cosmology.

We now know that quantum fluctuations in the earliest moments of the universe produced the necessary ripples in the CMB that ultimately developed into the structure seen in the universe.

So if the cosmic microwave background is too smooth then stars and galaxies wouldn't form. We need ripples – we need the ripple effect?

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. Zweerink’s main point is that these kinds of anomalies regularly crop up in science, and so we shouldn't be too alarmed when we find anomalous results. What usually happens is that they get ironed out in time. I think he's confident that these observations of mature galaxies very early in the history of the universe will be resolved. But the cosmic microwave background radiation is incredibly homogeneous (or smooth) to one part out of a hundred thousand or so. There need to be little inhomogeneities which provide, as it were, the seeds which then can gravitationally attract matter to them and over time eventually form into galaxies. So the discovery that there are, in fact, these inhomogeneities was taken to confirm that the galaxies did in fact evolve from such a primordial condition.

KEVIN HARRIS: I think this is a lot of the point of this article even though, as you say, perhaps Lerner’s theory and his work in this area in the Big Bang does not need to be taken that seriously. Nevertheless, when it gets into the literature – when it is presented – then scientists have an opportunity to shore up the current model or get rid of it.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. I remember when I first began reading cosmology there was a maverick scientist named Halton Arp who regularly cataloged anomalous redshifts that would show the universe is not expanding evenly as was commonly believed, and would even claim that he detected some galaxies that had blueshifts. And Arp was a top astronomer. He was a good man, and he made many observations, but in fact now all of these anomalies have been ironed out with further study. Zweerink, I think, expresses the kind of confidence that is born out of that experience.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's Jeff's conclusion. He says,

Scientists routinely produce alternative models like Eric Lerner’s. Even with the tremendous experimental success of general relativity, a number of scientists favor a different approach known as MOND, where they modify Newtonian dynamics. Often MOND and GR (general relativity) calculations can both explain the data produced by observations of the universe. The fact that MOND solves the dark matter or dark energy problem by making them unnecessary makes MOND attractive to many scientists. That solution comes at the expense of MOND not providing a mechanism for explaining why gravity works. General relativity provided that mechanism as arising from the curvature of spacetime. Thus, for most scientists MOND introduces a larger problem than it solves.

Lerner’s plasma cosmology suffers a similar problem. Even if plasma cosmology predicted the CMB as well as the galaxy shapes and clustering and evolution with equal proficiency to big bang cosmology, it offers no workable explanation for the well-established redshift/distance relationship. Big bang cosmology provides a simple explanation—the universe is expanding.

The latest JWST images don’t justify the enormous attention Lerner’s model has recently received in the public sphere. Yet, Lerner’s plasma cosmology deserves a place at the table of models trying to explain our universe. Science advances when theory matches observation.

It looks like the redshift is a big ingredient in the Big Bang cake.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah! It is critically important. The irony of what Zweerink says here is that I don't think that the four-dimensional space-time interpretation of general relativity does give an explanation of why gravity works. I think this four-dimensional geometrical representation of space-time is just a heuristic device, and to interpret that realistically is just a gratuitous piece of metaphysics. No less a physicist than the Nobel Prize winner Stephen Weinberg has said construing gravitation in terms of the warping of four-dimensional space-time actually inhibits scientific progress because it prevents us from exploring gravitation as a force just like the other forces of nature like electromagnetism, strong force, and weak force. I'd really be interested in hearing more about this MOND. I'm not familiar with that. This stands for Modified Newtonian Dynamics. This is a hypothesis that proposes a modification of Newton's law of gravitation to account for the observed properties of galaxies. This piqued my interest because in my own work I found that certain scientists have been able to show that Newtonian physics can recover all of the predictions of general relativistic cosmology, and they can do it simpler with a simpler mathematics. So this MOND sounds to me as though it could be very interesting, and I'd like to learn more about it.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we wrap up the podcast today, the Big Bang model just really held up against alternative models and other things. It seems to be remaining on firm ground.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. Ever since it was first proposed in the very early 1920s by Friedman and Lemaître, there has been a parade of failed attempts to craft cosmogonic models of the universe that would avoid the absolute beginning predicted by the standard Big Bang model. Over and over again those models have been shown to be either mathematically inconsistent or fail to explain the empirical data. With each failure, the Big Bang model and its prediction of a beginning of the universe at a point in the finite past has been confirmed.^[2]