How Did the Universe Begin? — Science and God | 5 Minute Video — Transcript

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1. 0:02Was the universe always here? Or did it  have a beginning? If so, how did it start?
2. 0:09From ancient times, philosophers and  theologians have debated these questions.
3. 0:14But it wasn’t until the 20th century that  a series of stunning scientific discoveries
4. 0:19finally enabled us to get some answers.
5. 0:22The story begins in 1912 when American astronomer  Vesto Slipher observed that light coming from
6. 0:28distant “nebulae” (clouds of dust and gas in  outer space) appeared redder than expected.
7. 0:35Why was this important?
8. 0:37Here’s where your high school science pays off.
9. 0:40Remember learning about the Doppler effect?  The frequency of sound, light, or other waves
10. 0:45changes as the source and observer move toward  (or away from) each other. To demonstrate this,
11. 0:52your science teacher likely played a recording  of a train whistle:  the pitch of the whistle
12. 0:56lowers—that is, the sound wave stretches  out—as the train recedes into the distance.
13. 1:02Well, the same thing happens with light.
14. 1:05If a distant star or galaxy is moving away  from us, the light coming from that object
15. 1:10will also stretch out. Since in the spectrum  of visible light, red light corresponds to the
16. 1:16longest wave lengths physicists say light that  has been stretched out has been “red shifted.”
17. 1:24This evidence of “red-shift” suggested  the nebulae were moving away from us.
18. 1:29In 1924 astronomer Edwin Hubble, working  with a new 100-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson
19. 1:36in California, showed that Slipher’s “nebulae”  were not just clouds of gas around distant stars,
20. 1:43but actually distant galaxies  beyond our Milky Way.
21. 1:47Soon after that, the Belgian physicist  George Lemaître correlated Slipher’s
22. 1:53red-shift data with Hubble’s measurements of  the distances to other galaxies. Lemaître showed
23. 1:59that galaxies that were farther away were receding  faster than those close at hand. That suggested
24. 2:06a spherical expansion of the universe in all  directions of space, as if the universe were
25. 2:11expanding like a balloon from a singular  explosive beginning—from a “big bang.”
26. 2:18Oddly, Albert Einstein had earlier tumbled  to this idea but then dismissed it.
27. 2:24Einstein’s new theory of gravity known as  general relativity envisioned massive bodies
28. 2:30altering the curvature of space like a bowling  ball making a depression on a trampoline.
29. 2:36Einstein’s concept of gravity implied that space  would contract in on itself unless gravity was
30. 2:42continually counteracted by the expansion of  space. For this reason, Einstein posited a
31. 2:49constantly acting repulsive force—known as the  cosmological constant—to counter gravitational
32. 2:56attraction. But that implied a dynamic and  expanding universe. . . and also a beginning.
33. 3:03To avoid this conclusion, Einstein altered  his own equations by arbitrarily assigning
34. 3:09a precise value to the force of expansion  to ensure that the strength of gravity
35. 3:15and the repulsive force exactly balanced. Thus  he depicted the universe in a perfectly poised,
36. 3:21static state—neither expanding from a  beginning, nor contracting toward a collapse.
37. 3:28But then with Slipher and Hubble’s discoveries,  the heavens talked back. In 1927, Lemaître
38. 3:34informed Einstein (in a taxi cab, no less) about  the red shift evidence for an expanding universe.
39. 3:42In 1931, Einstein visited Hubble at the Mt.  Wilson observatory and viewed the evidence
40. 3:48for himself. Later, he announced, to his  great credit, that denying the evidence for
41. 3:53the universe having had a beginning was “the  greatest blunder of my scientific career.”
42. 3:59Throughout the 20th century, physicists proposed  other theories that denied a cosmic beginning.
43. 4:05One by one new evidence showed each to be  inadequate. By the 1990s, the Big Bang theory
44. 4:11had prevailed as the best explanation for  multiple lines of astronomical evidence.
45. 4:18So why was such evidence upsetting to Einstein  and to many other scientists?  Princeton
46. 4:24University physicist Robert Dicke, explained:  “[an infinitely old universe would] relieve us
47. 4:30of the necessity of [explaining] the origin  of matter at any finite time in the past.”
48. 4:35And so it would.
49. 4:37But if the physical universe of matter, energy,  space, and time had a beginning, it becomes
50. 4:42extremely difficult to conceive of a physical or  material cause for the origin of the universe.
51. 4:50After all, it was matter and energy that first  came into existence at the Big Bang. Before that,
52. 4:56no matter or energy would have yet existed  to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did
53. 5:03cause the universe to exist would need to be  immaterial and exist beyond space and time.
54. 5:10To many scientists and philosophers all  this sounds an awful lot like the first
55. 5:14words of the Bible: “In the beginning  God created the Heavens and the Earth.”
56. 5:20I’m Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute and  author of Return of the God Hypothesis, for Prager
57. 5:28University.