I’ve been reading about some cosmological theories that attempt to explain the origin of our universe of space and time, matter and energy. Most of these theoretical variants involve the supposition of an equation of physics that includes aspects of both quantum mechanics and general relativity. Attempts to solve this equation depend upon the assumption of specific boundaries and initial conditions to facilitate possible solutions that depend on additional simplifying assumptions. The whole process is far from an exact science!
However, so far, so good, if it keeps the theoretical physicists busy. But it’s important to remember that no amount of visualization on our part, even within the realm of mathematics, has power on its own to produce any physical outcome. This limitation also applies to all the laws of physics that scientists have visualized, discovered, or derived. These “laws” merely describe how things work in this universe, based on our observations and experiments on what already exists.
Physics is a mathematical exploration of the universe. We look for patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships. We use math to capture and describe those patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships.
Describing Reality
Whether math was invented or discovered, a mathematical description of reality is insufficient as a causal agent of reality. For example, Newton’s universal law of gravitation doesn’t cause an apple to fall from a tree, it simply describes the force between it and the Earth and the apple’s subsequent rate of acceleration towards the ground. No statement of the “law of gravity” has any power to produce the actors or the action in this simple drama.
Even in the more esoteric world of quantum mechanics, the wave function that describes a particular quantum state is merely that, a description, not a cause. Knowing all the factors in the Schrödinger equation that describes a hydrogen atom and obtaining its solution in terms of a correctly normalized wave function does nothing whatsoever to bring a hydrogen atom into existence.
An Applicable Injunction
These expostulations regarding the limitations of the utility of the laws of physics may seem obvious, but I emphasize them to describe an applicable injunction concerning cosmic origins theories. In the recently published book, Battle of the Big Bang1, the authors liberally describe the landscape of theoretical speculations vying to win acceptance for what happened before the Big Bang. They contend that the evidence pointing to the Big Bang origin of our universe may not extend back to a beginning with an absolute singularity.
The standard hot Big Bang model refers to the dense, hot, small state of the entire universe that began to expand and cool, eventually forming our more familiar universe with a vast array of galaxies and stars. This much of the scenario has been deduced from repeated observations and consistent predictions of known laws of physics.
Regarding an origin out of nothing, particle physicist Dr. Michael G Strauss comments on the primary theoretical framework affirming a true beginning of our universe.
One of the most often discussed papers dealing with our past was published by Arvind Borde, Alan H. Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin in 2003 and called the BGV theorem after the three authors. In this paper, the authors show that any universe which is on average expanding has a timeline that cannot be infinite into the past, it must have had a beginning when it started to expand. Since our universe is known to be expanding this theorem seems to require that it had a beginning.
A Problem for Skeptical Physicists
Pointing as it does to the need for a transcendent cause of our universe (affirming the “God Hypothesis”), the singularity at the beginning of our universe has been viewed as a problem by skeptical physicists who have attempted to again espouse a naturalistic origin scenario.
Regarding the beginning, the “problem” that these theoretical physicists struggle to resolve is knowing what mathematical theory of physics to apply to the unimaginably short initial moment of the universe, known as the Planck time. This moment comprises the first 10-43 seconds of the universe’s history, and the extremely small, dense, warped concentration of spacetime then prevailing requires a coherent combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity — something that has eluded the grasp of theoreticians ever since the time of Einstein.
Even if an internally consistent theory of “quantum gravity” were developed, its correctness would remain in doubt. The reason is that the universe is contingent — it doesn’t have to play by our suppositions, and the only way to know for certain if any theory or model of nature is valid is to see if nature behaves according to its predictions. Einstein’s theory of general relativity would even today remain a speculative flight of mathematical genius if not for observations that repeatedly showed quantitative agreement between the theory’s predictions and nature’s behavior.
Imagining What Could Be
Any theory of quantum gravity would have to describe such an extreme state of space, matter, and energy that the only places it might apply would be inside the event horizons of black holes or at the extreme initial pre-Planck time moment of our universe. Such states are not accessible to our observations, for either confirmation or refutation of putative theoretical descriptions.
…there are no experiments in quantum gravity, and little in the way of observations that might qualify as direct or indirect data or empirical evidence.
The equations employed in the brilliant imaginations of quantum cosmologists, attempting to explain what happened in the first 10-43 seconds of the universe, do not have the causal power to serve as a designer substitute. Equations and their solutions describe existing reality and how it may change, but they can’t create reality that doesn’t already exist. To achieve “something rather than nothing” requires more than an equation, more than mathematics — it takes an intelligent mind to imagine what could be and, it would seem, the power of God to bring it to pass.
Notes
- Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Halper, Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2025).