Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 26

At Evolution News: Meyer and Klavan: How the Multiverse Ruins Science…and Storytelling

David Klinghoffer writes:

Stephen Meyer had a fascinating conversation with podcaster Andrew Klavan and his son Spencer Klavan. The topic: how the multiverse theory destroys not only science (as Meyer explains in Return of the God Hypothesis) but storytelling. The younger Klavan is Associate Editor at the Claremont Review of Books and an Oxford PhD in classics. Impressive guy. He wrote an essay there analyzing the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), of which “the multiverse has become the central governing concept.” 

Klavan nails it in his essay:

“In the infinite multiverse there’s a cure for every illness. A solution to every problem,” says the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. She’s exactly right, and that’s exactly the issue: two and a half hours of pointless carnage will end us right back where we started if the dead shall be raised as soon as the credits roll. The multiversal MCU is a world without narrative stakes, moral meaning, or tragedy, because it is a world without consequences.

Now that is something I had not thought of. In a multiverse where no possibility is excluded and everything does and does not happen, every which way, any story we can tell is deflated by the realization that in another universe the tale has turned out differently. For example, if we suppose there is another version of Anna Karenina, taking place in a parallel reality in which the freight train stops just in time, that would drain a considerable amount of the interest from Tolstoy’s novel.

Read the rest of “Worlds Without End” at the Claremont Review of Books. Find the interview here. The segment with Meyer starts at 51:12:

Evolution News

The infinite multiverse concept is not a God substitute. It is said, “God is not mocked by nonsense”; on the other hand, the multiverse breeds nonsense.

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At Sci News: Ancient Retroviruses Make Up 8% of Human Genome, Researchers Say

Like modern HIV, ancient human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) had to insert their genetic material into their host’s genome to replicate.

Viruses insert their genomes into their hosts in the form of a provirus.

There are around 30 different kinds of HERVs in people today, amounting to over 60,000 proviruses in the human genome.

They demonstrate the long history of the many pandemics humanity has been subjected to over the course of evolution.

Scientists think these viruses once widely infected the population, since they have become fixed in not only the human genome but also in chimpanzee, gorilla and other primate genomes.

Research has demonstrated that HERV genes are active in diseased tissue, such as tumors, as well as during human embryonic development. But how active HERV genes are in healthy tissue was still largely unknown.

Role of HERVs in Human Health and Disease

The fact that thousands of pieces of ancient viruses still exist in the human genome and can even create protein has drawn a considerable amount of attention from researchers, particularly since related viruses still active today can cause breast cancer and AIDS-like disease in animals.

Whether the genetic remnants of human endogenous retroviruses can cause disease in people is still under study.

The new study adds a new angle to these data by showing that HERV genes are present even in healthy tissue.

This means that the presence of HERV RNA may not be enough to connect the virus to a disease.

Importantly, it also means that HERV genes or proteins may no longer be good targets for drugs.

HERVs have been explored as a target for a number of potential drugs, including antiretroviral medication, antibodies for breast cancer and T-cell therapies for melanoma.

Treatments using HERV genes as a cancer biomarker will also need to take into account their activity in healthy tissue.

On the other hand, the study also suggests that HERVs could even be beneficial to people.

The most famous HERV embedded in human and animal genomes, syncytin, is a gene derived from an ancient retrovirus that plays an important role in the formation of the placenta.

Pregnancy in all mammals is dependent on the virus-derived protein coded in this gene.

Unknowns Remain

The new study reveals a level of HERV activity in the human body that was previously unknown, raising as many questions as it answered.

There is still much to learn about the ancient viruses that linger in the human genome, including whether their presence is beneficial and what mechanism drives their activity.

Seeing if any of these genes are actually made into proteins will also be important.

Answering these questions could reveal previously unknown functions for these ancient viral genes and better help researchers understand how the human body reacts to evolution alongside these vestiges of ancient pandemics.

Full article at Sci News.

The presence of HERV’s in the human genome doesn’t necessarily demonstrate an evolutionary history of humans, just a history of humans. The relevant question to consider is where did the virus acquire the information to produce proteins in the first place?

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At Live Science: 3.5 billion-year-old rock structures are one of the oldest signs of life on Earth

Stephanie Pappas writes:

Fossils called stromatolites from Western Australia were created by microbes 3.48 billion years ago.

A sample of Dresser Formation stromatolite, showing a complex layered structure formed of hematite, barite, and quartz, and a domed upper surface. (Image credit: Keyron Hickman-Lewis)

Layered rocks in Western Australia are some of Earth’s earliest known life, according to a new study. 

The fossils in question are stromatolites, layered rocks that are formed by the excretions of photosynthetic microbes. The oldest stromatolites that scientists agree were made by living organisms date back 3.43 billion years, but there are older specimens, too. In the Dresser Formation of Western Australia, stromatolites dating back 3.48 billion years have been found. 

However, billions of years have wiped away traces of organic matter in these older stromatolites, raising questions about whether they were really formed by microbes or whether they might have been made by other geological processes. 

The new study’s verdict: It was ancient life. 

“We were able to find certain specific microstructures within particular layers of these rocks that are strongly indicative of biological processes,” said Keyron Hickman-Lewis(opens in new tab), a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, who led the research.

Microbial mats 

The findings could have implications for the search for life on Mars, Hickman-Lewis told Live Science. The stromatolites in the Dresser Formation are encrusted in iron oxide from the reaction of iron with oxygen in the atmosphere. Mars’ surface is similarly oxidized — thus the rusty orange color — but its rocks could hold similar structures left behind by ancient Martian life, Hickman-Lewis said. 

Hickman-Lewis and his team examined Western Australian stromatolites first discovered in 2000 by study co-author Frances Westall(opens in new tab) at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France. They used a variety of high-resolution 2D and 3D imaging techniques in order to peer into the layers of the stromatolite at a fine scale. 

What they saw hinted at biological growth in all its messy glory. The researchers observed uneven layers, including little dome shapes that are indicative of photosynthesis, since microbes with the most access to the sun will grow more vigorously than those not as high in the structure. They also saw columnar structures that are typical in modern stromatolites, which are still found in a few locations around the globe. 

“Microbial mats give you layers that are uneven in their thickness and tend to be wrinkly or crinkly or go up and down on very small spatial scales,” said Linda Kah(opens in new tab), a sedimentologist and geochemist at the University of Tennessee who was not involved in the new study. Putting all the structural clues together, she told Live Science, “you end up with what looks like the characteristics of a microbial mat.”

Martian microbes? 

The evidence that the Dresser Formation stromatolites are signs of ancient life doesn’t make them the oldest life on the planet. That (possible) honor may go to stromatolites found in 3.7 billion-year-old rock in Greenland, or possibly to microfossils from Canada that might be as old as 4.29 billion years. It’s very difficult to distinguish biological life from non-organic processes in these very old rocks, however, so these finds and others from a similar timeframe are controversial.  

Based on the minerals in the stromatolites, the Western Australia microbial mats probably formed in a shallow lagoon fed by hydrothermal vents that was also connected to the ocean, the researchers reported Nov. 4 in the journal Geology(opens in new tab).

The techniques used to study the Western Australian stromatolites could be useful for seeking life on Mars, Hickman-Lewis said, especially if Mars samples can be returned to Earth. 

Scientists should “consider some of the analyses here as a trial run of the analyses we will have to do in around a decade’s time when we have materials from Mars.” 

Live Science

The timing of the earliest life signatures on Earth points to a non-natural origin of life. The time window for life’s appearance is geologically very short. As described in the excerpt below from Reasons.org, as soon as Earth’s surface could support life, life appeared “immediately.”

A growing body of evidence points to a period of intense meteoritic activity on Earth between 3.8 and 4.1 billion years ago. Known as the late heavy bombardment (LHB), this era included hundreds of impacts rivaling the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago (the Chicxulub crater). As dramatic as that sounds, some of the impacts liquefied the top mile or so of Earth’s crust, sterilizing the surface of all life. Although scientists find evidence for life appearing immediately after the LHB ended, new data indicates that these large impact events continued for another two billion years—though at a much slower pace.

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At SciTech Daily: Artemis I: Mega Moon Rocket Ready for Launch

The Artemis I mega Moon rocket is on the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is getting ready to launch the Orion spacecraft and its European Service Module. The first opportunity for launch is November 16 at 1:04 a.m. EST/local time (07:04 CET, 06:04 GMT).

Artemis I mission overview. Orion is NASA’s next spacecraft to send humans into space and is part of the Artemis program. It is designed to send astronauts farther into space than ever before, beyond the Moon and to the lunar Gateway. Credit: ESA–K. Oldenburg

Artemis I is the first mission in a large program to send astronauts around and on the Moon sustainably. This uncrewed first launch will see the Orion spacecraft travel to the Moon, enter an elongated orbit around our satellite, and then return to Earth. The Orion spacecraft is powered by the European-built module that supplies electricity, propulsion, fuel, water, and air in addition to keeping the spacecraft operating at the right temperature.

Artemis to the Moon

The European Service Modules are made from components supplied by over 20 companies in ten European Space Agency (ESA) Member States and the United States. As the first European Service Module sits atop the SLS rocket on the launchpad, the second is only 8 km (5 miles) away, as it is currently being integrated with the Orion crew capsule for the first crewed mission – Artemis II. The third and fourth European Service Modules – that will power astronauts to a Moon landing – are in production in Bremen, Germany.

The Artemis program is an international endeavor to build a permanent outpost around and on the Moon. Modules for the lunar Gateway are being built in the United States and Europe, with the first European module – International Habitat – in production in Turin, Italy, and set for launch on the fourth Artemis mission alongside the Orion spacecraft.

The first Artemis launch this week is without humans, but three mannequins have been placed in the spacecraft’s seats to conduct scientific research. Fitted with more than 5600 sensors, two mannequins will measure the amount of radiation astronauts could be exposed to in future missions with unprecedented precision. ESA is also including active radiation dosimeters in the Crew Module to get more data on how radiation levels change on a mission to the Moon – building on the leadership developed over decades of radiation research on the International Space Station.

Dates

With a November 16 launch, the three-week Artemis I mission would end on December 11 with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The European Service Module detaches from the Orion Crew Module before splashdown and burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere, its job complete after taking Orion to the Moon and back safely.

Backup Artemis I launch dates include November 19. Watch the launch live on ESA Web TV.

SciTech Daily

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At Evolution News: There Is No Settled “Theory of Evolution”

Cornelius Hunter writes:

Photo: Galápagos finch, by kuhnmi, via Flickr.

What is evolution? The origin of species by: natural selection, random causes, common descent, gradualism, etc. Right?

Wrong. Too often that is what is taught, but it is false. That’s according to evolutionists themselves. A typical example? See, “The study of evolution is fracturing — and that may be a good thing,” by Lund University biologist Erik Svensson, writing at The Conversation.

Evolutionists themselves can forfeit natural selection, random causes, common descent, etc. How do I know? Because it is in the literature. 

So, what is evolution? In other words, what is core to the theory — and not forfeitable? It’s naturalism. Period. That is the only thing required of evolutionary theory. And naturalism is a religious requirement, not a scientific one.

Aside from naturalism, practically anything is fair game: Uncanny convergence, rapid divergence, lineage-specific biology, evolution of evolution, directed mutations, saltationism, unlikely simultaneous mutations, just-so stories, multiverses … the list goes on.

But this is where it gets interesting. Because if you have two theories, you don’t have one theory. In other words, you have a multitude of contradictory theories. And you have heated debates because nothing seems to fit the data. In science, that is not a good sign. But it is exactly what evolutionists have had — for over a century now.

There is no such thing as a settled theory of evolution. On that point, textbook orthodoxy is simply false.

Evolution News

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At Phys.org: Chemists create an ‘artificial photosynthesis’ system ten times more efficient than existing systems

Louise Lerner writes:

For the past two centuries, humans have relied on fossil fuels for concentrated energy; hundreds of millions of years of photosynthesis packed into a convenient, energy-dense substance. But that supply is finite, and fossil fuel consumption has tremendous negative impact on Earth’s climate.

A study from six chemists at the University of Chicago shows an innovative new system for artificial photosynthesis that is more productive than previous artificial systems by an order of magnitude. Above, an artistic illustration of the process. Credit: Peter Allen

“The biggest challenge many people don’t realize is that even nature has no solution for the amount of energy we use,” said University of Chicago chemist Wenbin Lin. Not even photosynthesis is that good, he said: “We will have to do better than nature, and that’s scary.”

One possible option scientists are exploring is “artificial photosynthesis“—reworking a plant’s system to make our own kinds of fuels. However, the chemical equipment in a single leaf is incredibly complex, and not so easy to turn to our own purposes.

A Nature Catalysis study from six chemists at the University of Chicago shows an innovative new system for artificial photosynthesis that is more productive than previous artificial systems by an order of magnitude. Unlike regular photosynthesis, which produces carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water, artificial photosynthesis could produce ethanol, methane, or other fuels.

Though it has a long way to go before it can become a way for you to fuel your car every day, the method gives scientists a new direction to explore—and may be useful in the shorter term for production of other chemicals.

“This is a huge improvement on existing systems, but just as importantly, we were able to lay out a very clear understanding of how this artificial system works at the molecular level, which has not been accomplished before,” said Lin, who is the James Franck Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago and senior author of the study.

‘We will need something else’

“Without natural photosynthesis, we would not be here. It made the oxygen we breathe on Earth and it makes the food we eat,” said Lin. “But it will never be efficient enough to supply fuel for us to drive cars; so we will need something else.”

The trouble is that photosynthesis is built to create carbohydrates, which are great for fueling us, but not our cars, which need much more concentrated energy. So researchers looking to create alternates to fossil fuels have to re-engineer the process to create more energy-dense fuels, such as ethanol or methane.

In nature, photosynthesis is performed by several very complex assemblies of proteins and pigments. They take in water and carbon dioxide, break the molecules apart, and rearrange the atoms to make carbohydrates—a long string of hydrogen-oxygen-carbon compounds. Scientists, however, need to rework the reactions to instead produce a different arrangement with just hydrogen surrounding a juicy carbon core—CH4, also known as methane.

This re-engineering is much trickier than it sounds; people have been tinkering with it for decades, trying to get closer to the efficiency of nature.

Even with the significantly improved performance, however, artificial photosynthesis has a long way to go before it can produce enough fuel to be relevant for widespread use. “Where we are now, it would need to scale up by many orders of magnitude to make an sufficient amount of methane for our consumption,” Lin said.

Complete article at Phys.org.

Perhaps the reason that “the efficiency of nature” is so far beyond our ability to duplicate is that living systems are unnatural, in the sense that they were not made by natural processes.

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At Big Think: How reality is shaped by the speed of light

Adam Frank writes:

KEY TAKEAWAYS

When you look at a picture of a galaxy that is 75 million light-years away, you are seeing that galaxy at a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Distance translates into time because the speed of light is finite.  What you perceive as “now” is really layer after layer of light reaching your eye from many different moments in the past.Credit: LeArchitecto / Adobe StockLight from the time of the dinosaurs

When you look at a picture of a galaxy that is 75 million light-years away, you are not seeing it as it is right now, but as it was when that light you are seeing left it 75 million years ago. That means you are seeing that galaxy at a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and you were nothing but a dream in the tiny mind of the tiny mammals that existed back then.

[Or, to override the materialistic worldview of the author, we could say that 75 million years ago, we were nothing but a dream in the vast mind of God, who has existed from all eternity.]

I think everyone is familiar with this idea, and it is mind-blowing enough that everyone is happy to explore it again each time an image of a distant galaxy is released. Distance translates into time because the speed of light is finite. Therefore it always takes some time for light to cross the distance between a galaxy and your eye. A galaxy 75 million light-years away has had 75 million years to evolve since that light left and may no longer look like what we see in the image. That is incredible. (Actually, 75 million years is not enough time for galaxies to evolve much. Galaxies 10 billion light years distant are, however, another story).

So yes, everyone loves this idea. But here is the thing. You don’t need objects to be billions, millions, thousands, or even one single light year away to experience how distance translates into time. It is a constant part of your life. You are trapped in time.

False simultaneity

Consider an object sitting two meters away from you. Look up now, find one, and focus your eyes on it. Let’s say it’s a chair. Because the speed of light is 2.99 x 108 meters per second, the light your eye is detecting left that chair exactly 660 picoseconds ago. A picosecond is one trillionth of a second, and while I will grant that 660 trillionths of a second ago is pretty recent, it is still in the past. You are not seeing that chair as it is now, you are seeing it as it was. The same is true for everything else your eye detects. You never ever see the world as it is.

[Sorry to have to correct his math, but if the object is two meters from your eyes, you would be seeing it about 6700 picoseconds in the past, not 660 picoseconds.

The author continues, and raises some interesting questions.]

What you perceive as the “now” is really layer after layer of light reaching your eye from many different moments in the past. Your “now” is an overlapping mosaic of “thens.” What you imagine to be the real world existing simultaneously with you is really a patchwork of moments from different pasts. You never live in the world as it is. You only experience it as it was, a tapestry of past vintages. 

Chairs, tables, houses, the moon, the stars, and the Milky Way. They are all living in different pasts, but when you stand in their assembled midst, they make up this fleeting moment of your life. How could something so real be built from such a potent illusion?

Full article at Big Think.

If we could imagine moving at the speed of light (which is not actually possible for material objects), we would be decoupled from the time experienced in this physical universe. All events in the physical universe would seem to us to be happening simultaneously–we would effectively be outside of time. Perhaps light is more fundamental than space, and the only reason we are “trapped in time” is that we have been rotated into a spatial-temporal reality in which light is only ever a fleeting visitor.

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At Science Daily: How magnetism could help explain Earth’s formation

A peculiar property of the Earth’s magnetic field could help us to work out how our planet was created 4.5 billion years ago, according to a new scientific assessment.

www.nasa.gov

There are several theories about how the Earth and the Moon were formed, most involving a giant impact. They vary from a model where the impacting object strikes the newly formed Earth a glancing blow and then escapes, through to one where the collision is so energetic that both the impactor and the Earth are vaporized.

Now scientists at the University of Leeds and the University of Chicago have analysed the dynamics of fluids and electrically conducting fluids and concluded that the Earth must have been magnetized either before the impact or as a result of it.

They claim this could help to narrow down the theories of the Earth-Moon formation and inform future research into what really happened.

Professor David Hughes, an applied mathematician in the School of Mathematics at the University of Leeds, said: “Our new idea is to point out that our theoretical understanding of the Earth’s magnetic field today can actually tell us something about the very formation of the Earth-Moon system.

This new assessment is based on the resilience of Earth’s magnetic field, which is maintained by a rotating and electrically conducting fluid in the outer core, known as a geodynamo.

Professor Fausto Cattaneo, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, said: “A peculiar property of the Earth’s dynamo is that it can maintain a strong magnetic field but not amplify a weak one.

The scientists therefore concluded that if the Earth’s field were to get switched off, or even reduced to a very small level, it would not have the capability to kick in again.

“It is this remarkable feature that allows us to make deductions about the history of the early Earth; including, possibly, how the Moon was formed,” added Professor Cattaneo.

Professor Hughes added: “And if that is true, then you have to think, where did the Earth’s magnetic field come from in the first place?

“Our hypothesis is that it got to this peculiar state way back at the beginning, either pre-impact or as an immediate result of the impact.

“Either way, any realistic model of the formation of the Earth-Moon system must include magnetic field evolution. “

Science Daily

Scientists have previously shown (Reasons.org) that shortly after the formation of the moon, the combined Earth-Moon magnetic field provided a sufficiently strong shield against the intense solar wind that would have sputtered away Earth’s atmosphere and been damaging to early microbial life.

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At Phys.org: New study finds our ancient relatives were not so simple after all

Researchers at the University of Nottingham have solved an important piece of the animal evolution puzzle as their new study reveals that our ancient ancestors were more complex than originally thought.

Way back in our distant evolutionary history, animals underwent a major innovation. They evolved to have a left and right side, and two gut openings. This brought about a plethora of significant advantages in terms of propelling themselves directly forward at increased speed through the early seas, finding food, extracting nutrients, and/or avoiding being eaten.

However, a research team, led by Dr. Mary O’Connell at the University of Nottingham has found that Xenacoelomorphs branch much later in time, they are not the earliest branch on the bilaterian family tree, and their closest relatives are far more complex animals like star fish. This means that Xenacoelomorphs have lost many of the complex features of their closest relatives, challenging the idea that evolution leads to ever more complex and intricate forms. Instead, the new study shows that loss of features is an important factor in driving evolution.

Note: Lacking a naturalistic mechanism for the generation of the new information of novel features, the idea of the “loss of features” is put forward as a driving factor for supposed evolutionary advance.

“There are many fundamental questions about the evolution of animals that need to be answered… many parts of this family tree that are not known or not resolved. But what an exciting time to be an evolutionary biologist with the availability of exquisite genome data from the beautiful diversity of species we currently have on our planet, allowing us to unlock secrets of our most distant past,” says Dr. Mary O’Connell, associate professor in life sciences.

The paper, titled “Filtering artifactual signal increases support for Xenacoelomorpha and Ambulacraria sister relationship in the animal tree of life” has been published in Current Biology. It details the application of a special phylogenetic technique to help in extracting signal from noise over deep time, showing increased support for Xenacoelomorphs being sister to ambulacraria (e.g. star fish) rather than being the deepest diverging of the bilateria.

The research team at the University of Nottingham will now explore other challenging family trees and other connections between genome changes and phenotypic diversity.

Full article at Phys.org.

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At Evolution News: To Avoid a Cosmic Beginning, Physicist Paul Steinhardt Goes to Extraordinary Lengths

Brian Miller reports:

On the YouTube channel Closer to Truth, Robert Lawrence Kuhn recently interviewed physicist Paul Steinhardt about his cyclical cosmological model. The model has proven very attractive to atheists since it avoids the philosophical implications of the universe having a beginning. I have written previously about why the model actually does not avoid a beginning and how it requires high levels of fine-tuning to generate a life-permitting universe (here,here). What struck me with renewed force in the recent interview is the model’s layer upon layer of assumptions unsupported by any empirical evidence.

Renouncing Inflationary Cosmology

Steinhardt is one of the most interesting and influential figures in cosmology. He was one of the original architects of inflationary cosmology. He later rejected the theory for reasons he detailed in his Scientific American article “Pop Goes the Universe.” He argued that all the major predictions of the simplest and most tractable versions of inflationary theory have failed. And current versions are so contrived and flexible that they could fit nearly any data, so they have no real explanatory power: 

A common misconception is that experiments can be used to falsify a theory. In practice, a failing theory gets increasingly immunized against experiment by attempts to patch it. The theory becomes more highly tuned and arcane to fit new observations until it reaches a state where its explanatory power diminishes to the point that it is no longer pursued … A theory like the multimess does not exclude anything and, hence, has zero power. 

The Basic Framework 
Steinhardt proposes that his cyclic model of cosmology better explains the structure of our universe and avoids many of the pitfalls of inflationary cosmology. The basic framework for his theory includes the following components:
Our universe resides in a multidimensional brane that resides in a higher dimensional space containing other parallel branes hosting other universes.

The branes collide periodically due to an interbrane force drawing them together.

The collisions result in big bang events in the branes. The universes in the branes then expand due to the energy of the collision causing a contracting universe to bounce into an expanding one. The branes reset to their original separation. 

The collision transfers energy into a scalar field. That energy then transfers from the scalar field into the production of matter and energy uniformly filling the universe. 

The universe expands as in standard Big Bang cosmology with galaxies, stars, and planets forming as the universe cools. 

The expansion of the universe eventually accelerates. 

The expansion phase ends, and the universe begins to slowly contract. The slow contraction smooths out the universe.  

The contraction ends in a bounce, and the universe again expands starting a new cycle. 

The expansion, contraction, and bounce are directed by the energy of the scalar field whose value corresponds to the distance between the branes. 

Multitude of Assumptions

The cyclic cosmological model purportedly explains such features of our universe as the near uniformity of the cosmic background radiation and the lack of curvature of space as well as other models, but it can only do so by relying on numerous speculative assumptions. The entire framework is founded on string theory which many physicists are starting to seriously question (here, here). It also assumes the existence of parallel multidimensional branes containing separate universes — a questionable application of string theory, even if true. The collision of the branes must occur in just the right manner to generate universes with just the right amount of inhomogeneity to birth galaxies with stars and planets. 

Even if all of these assumptions were true, the level of fine-tuning required in the bounces would still be immense. Cosmologist Andrei Linde stated about an earlier version of the model the following:

By evaluating the initial amplitude of quantum fluctuations on the scale corresponding to the observable part of the universe one finds that the branes must be parallel to each other with an accuracy better than 10−60 on a scale 1030 times greater than the distance between the branes.

In addition, even if branes existed and collided properly, justifying the dynamics of such highly orchestrated expansion, contraction, and bounces requires postulating a very particular scalar field. Its value must depend upon the distance between the branes, and its energy must be described by a very specific mathematical form. And the transfer of energy from the field into the production of common matter and energy requires the proper coupling of the scalar field with the fields underlying the matter and energy. 

The irony is that Steinhardt’s criticisms of inflationary cosmology likely apply with equal force to his own theory. No empirical evidence supports any of the theory’s essential components. The numerous ad hoc features of his model are likely flexible enough to explain any observed data with the right choice of fine-tuned parameters and initial conditions. And the only testable predictions of string theory, which forms the bedrock for the entire framework, have failed. Claims that cyclic cosmology offers a compelling explanation for the structure of our universe is considered by most cosmologists dubious at best. 

A Simpler Explanation

The most obvious conclusion about our universe is that it was created by a transcendent mind who designed it for the purpose of supporting life. This hypothesis is further supported by the evidence for design we see in our planetary system and throughout life. Denying the conclusion of design has forced scientists to propose the most arcane and contrived theories filled with multiverses, mysterious fields, and other wild speculations. Such efforts by many scientists are perfectly reasonable given their materialist framework. But an honest evaluation of the evidence should at some point inspire them to question their philosophical assumptions. [Emphasis added]

Evolution News

“No empirical evidence supports any of the theory’s essential components.” In contrast, the empirical evidence in nature that is consistent with a transcendent mind (God) who gave rise to the big bang and designed the physical laws and parameters of our universe to support life, and guided the formation of Earth to be habitable throughout its history, and brought forth millions of species of life on Earth, and imparted consciousness to higher organisms and gave a mind with metacognition abilities and a sense of morality and a longing for eternal life to humans and has revealed himself in various ways to people throughout history–evidence supportive of this conclusion is pervasive.

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