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The Joe Rogan Experience so um James Webb James Webb Telescope and James yeah there's been a lot of media uh reports suggesting that the findings of the James Webb Telescope have undermined the case for The Big Bang or the Big Bang Theory but there's an interesting backstory on this most of these media reports were based on the writings of a single uh physics researcher named Eric Lerner who's been since 1990 kind of carrying a torch to refute the Big Bang and Lerner in one of his his articles quoted a University of Kansas astrophysicist uh saying that she stays up late at night wondering if based on the on the the James Webb that everything that we know is turning out to be false turns out that that researcher uh that astrophysicist disclaimed his use of the quote explained that he took it completely out of context that she was talking about theories of Galaxy formation not about whether or not there had been a big bang and not about whether or not the universe is expanding as we would expect so he's confirmation bias yeah and and in a sense also taking somebody way out of context to make a point of his own you know he he misused the quotation on purpose apparently apparently um so here's here's uh and there have been a number of leading astrophysicists in fact people who would like you know to know more about this I'd recommend the uh what Brian Keating from University of California San Diego great astrophysicist has been writing about this and but here's the short story I wrote a an op-ed in the daily wired just distilling some of this stuff um what what the James Webb Telescope is able to do is to in fact was what it was constructed to do was to detect extremely long wavelength radiation stuff that's outside the visible range I call it Uber redshifted that it's actually in the infrared range is the more uh accurate physics uh term so it's looking for very long wavelength uh radiation coming from galaxies that are very very far out there now why would it be looking for that well because if the universe is expanding as we would expect based on The Big Bang Theory then the the radiation coming from things very
very far out in space and therefore very far back in time should be very stretched out more stretched out than stuff that's closer at hand uh so the James Webb was constructed in hopes of detecting that type of radiation if it existed it's not assuming that it necessarily would but it would be a way of confirming the expansion of the universe has been going on for a very long time and in order to do that the NASA people created some amazing technology they super cooled the detection technology or the detection apparatus to I think five six seven degrees above absolute zero so that the heat coming off of the instrument itself was not creating infrared that would that would interfere and what they were in fact able to detect from these very ancient very distant galaxies was super redshifted radiation Uber redshifted stuff out in the infrared and were able on the basis of that to synthesize images of these very very distant remote galaxies now the very fact that they were able to do that confirms that you have that what you would expect on the basis of The Big Bang Theory that you would that the amount of red shift that you would expect to be present if in fact the Galaxies have been expanding throughout that vast stretch of time was in fact present and was detected now that didn't get reported there were what the whole Focus was on the fact that there were galaxies that were more mature there were more of them early on than we would have expected based on our theories of Galaxy formation and so those are anomalies that need to be addressed and have not yet been explained as I understand it maybe the astrophysicists have made more progress on that in even recent recent days but the basic picture of an expanding Universe outward from a beginning has not been undermined but rather confirmed in a very dramatic way at very great distance and with it and for Galaxies that are a very far Look Back Time way way back in time so I think it's a rather dramatic confirmation there have been many others the cosmic background radiation that was discovered in 1965 the Kobe radiation of George the George Smoot discovered in the 90s so there's been this pattern of
confirming evidence of this basic picture of an expanding Universe out from the beginning in in observational astronomy from the 20s right up till now and so that I think gives us good reason to think best we can tell the universe at a beginning can I pause you on that what is the when she's discussing the the formation of galaxies what what had thrown that into question like what what was about the formation of galaxies that undermined previous ideas I'm going to answer tentatively because I I don't know this as well as the other that I just described but as I understand it it's that there were are more galaxies that formed earlier and are more mature than we would have expected because they were able to do look back to 13.5 13.6 billion years ago they think the origin of the universe is about 13.8 billion years ago so apparently galaxies were forming faster than we would have expected and I think that's the anomaly that is on the table does that just push the timeline further back but still come up with the data that points to the idea of a beginning that I I've wondered that I I don't that seems to me a logical possibility maybe maybe the origin of the universe was further back but it's still you're still getting this picture of a of a of a collapsing sphere in the reverse direction of time back to a point but is it possible that with further further detection we can with new data have a better understanding of what is actually going on rather than just saying it all points to this thing because it seems like there's there's data but it's what you're what you're describing seems like it's possible at least in the future to get better detection methods yeah it's always possible that we can change our minds on things because science is always provisional but there are many stable um uh theories that have persisted because of a preponderance of evidence that points to and continues to point to the same conclusion and I think we've had a hundred years now where we've had repeated new types of observations that point towards a beginning and there were there are two other classes of of um two other developments and theoretical physics that also I think reinforce this that I also wrote about
in the book uh one is um the the one one is the the the the singularity theorems that Hawking and Penrose and uh George Ellis approved in the 1960s and 70s and then there's something called the um board guthval income theorem which I think is even a tighter uh physics proof of a beginning I think there is a loophole with the Hawking Penrose Ellis Singularity theorem although it's it's I think very suggestive and highly indicative of of the beginning let me run it just please briefly because it's a fun thing to think about so Hawking is uh doing black hole physics for his PhD in the 1960s and he's at Cambridge and he's having these neurological symptoms and he's he's diagnosed with ALS he gets very very discouraged he thinks he's going to quit and he's encouraged to press on by uh close friends and he does and he ends up uh writing This brilliant thesis where he has one chapter where he's thinking about what the cosmologists are talking about is that we've got this expanding universe and if the universe is expanding in the forward direction of time then matter is getting more and more diffuse over time now um general part of his thesis involves general relativity Einstein's theory of gravity and according to Einstein uh the a massive body actually curves the fabric of space or space time so if you're going in the forward direction of time space is getting less and less curved and matter more and more diffuse but if you're going in the reverse direction of time the matter is getting more and more densely concentrated at every successive point in the finite past until again you reach a limiting case where the matter gets so densely concentrated that space gets so tightly curved that it can't get any more tightly curved it can't get any more densely concentrated and you move towards a point of infinite density and infinite curvature you get to a limiting case now infinite curvature corresponds to zero spatial volume and so the picture of the origin of the universe that sort of intuitively flows from this is one where you get not just matter and energy arising but space and time come into existence at that at that zero point
and um he presents this in his PhD thesis uh it's the story of this is told really nicely in the little film the the the the um uh Theory of Everything and he's fear and trepidation getting examined but one of his examiner they're nitpicking all these different things but then they say hey the idea of a of a black hole at the beginning of the universe a space-time Singularity this is brilliant congratulations Dr Hawking and they shoved the thesis book back over to him and he's passed but one of them says now go work out the maths and he ends up working out the math of this intuitive proof that he develops with uh sir Roger Penrose with whom you have done a wonderful interview and and George Ellis who I've had the occasion to meet and and so they end up producing several of these Singularity theorems suggesting that if general relativity is true then there must have been a beginning this is an independent on grounds independent of all the things from observational astronomy now there's a loophole with that and that is that in the very tiniest smidgens of space-time um inside 10 to the minus 43rd of a second or what they call Planck time Quantum effects might have been such that we would have to alter our ideas of how gravity worked and so out of that has come something called an Impulse or a our different theories of what are called quantum gravity or Quantum cosmology and um I think you've had some conversations on this show about that as well sure um in my book I show that that's that is a possible another possible cosmological model but like the conclusion that the Universe had a definite beginning I think those models also have theistic implications and I can explain why okay um maybe as we bracket that okay then the third there's a yet a third proof though of a beginning that com by um three physicists board Guth and Alexander velenken and it's not based on general relativity it's not based on ideas of what gravity was like in the early universe but based on ideas of special relativity it's a little tricky to explain easily but basically they show that they're
again a limiting case and therefore a definite beginning uh to to time and uh and therefore and that it does not have the same loophole that the The Singularity theorems of Hawking and Penrose so what I've said in my I what I argue in the book is that a body of evidence from observational astronomy a strong indicator from theoretical physics namely The Singularity theorems of Hawking at all and then a very compelling proof from board Guth and velenken all point to the same conclusion that as best we can tell the universe had a beginning and I think that's the best we can do in science but that is a pretty weighty um range of testimony uh supporting the same conclusion did you ever read any Terence McKenna I haven't Terence kind of had a very funny thing that he said about science he said science wants you to believe that it's all about measurement and reason if you allow them one miracle but one Miracle's the Big Bang Yes that all things come from the most Preposterous idea ever yeah that everything came from nothing in one big miracle that's right I completely paraphrase this was this was her Fred hoyle's objection to the Big Bang he was he said he was a democracy and he didn't believe and he said nothing comes from nothing and I did I simply refused to believe that that the physical Universe came from nothing physical and moreover he said it smacks of the Genesis account which he detested and so he rejected the big bang and formulated this steady state model um that was later I think decisively refuted by the discovery of the cosmic background radiation his uh it happens I've had funny coincidental meetings with Hoyle Hermann Bondi and Thomas gold all three of the The Architects of the steady state model I met Bondi and Hoyle when I was a PhD Student in Cambridge and Hoyle held on to his dying day for the the steady state but uh Bondi uh uh actually we had a conversation about it and he said that that well it turned out that it was a brilliant idea it was a beautiful idea just that it turned out that everything about it was wrong and he rejected it so uh but uh later Hoyle had his own conversion to a kind of quasi-theistic world view because of his
Discovery the fine-tuning parameters but the the point is that the materialists did not expect to have this evidence for the beginning Hoyle thought that you know the laws of physics were the the first law of uh conservation of matter and energy uh you know matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed except at the Big Bang and he didn't like that but eventually I think the physics Community came around there was so many indicators of that beginning event