Explore
Also Available in:
This article is from
Creation 40(4):19, October 2018

Browse our latest digital issue Subscribe

Real particle physics disappoints big bangers

by

All matter in the universe seems to be built up of 17 named fundamental particles that interact by four fundamental forces. The particles and all forces apart from gravity have been described in the ‘Standard Model’, a remarkably elegant model that has also been very successful experimentally—and is fine evidence for a mathematically elegant Design. One of its latest triumphs was the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.1

However, its very success has been frustrating to big bang theorists. For example, it predicts that if energy is converted to matter, as is supposed to have happened in the alleged big bang, an equal amount of antimatter should be produced. But the big bang requires that matter and antimatter are opposite but not quite equal, because of the obvious observation that our universe contains mainly matter! Yet the latest experiments show no such imbalance between the proton and antiproton, even to a precision of 1.5 parts per billion.2 The Standard Model also doesn’t account for dark matter and dark energy, which in the big bang scenario should make up over 95% of the universe, but have not been observed directly.3

So over 100 physicists from over 20 institutions tried to find a ‘crack’ in the Standard Model with the ‘Q-weak experiment’, performed at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. This involved measurements of the weak force, which is responsible for the fusion reactions that power our sun and other stars, and for beta radioactive decay.4

The scientists shot very high energy electrons at protons, alternating the ‘spins’ of the electrons. The different electron spins were scattered by the weak force by a difference of a mere 226.5 parts per billion, with a precision of 9.3 parts per billion. This is like finding two identical twins 2 metres tall, differing in height by a single wavelength of blue light—with a precision the size of the smallest viruses.

The results found that the proton’s weak charge was 0.0719±0.0045, in fine agreement with the Standard Model. This was to the chagrin of many big bang advocates who were objective enough to realize that the experimental results were a problem for their theory. One of the researchers, Greg Smith, said:

We were just hoping this was one path to finding a crack in the Standard Model. … I was disappointed. I was hoping for some deviation, some signal. But other people were relieved that we weren’t far away from what the Standard Model predicted.5

This should also be a lesson to those misguided Christian apologists who ‘marry’ Genesis to the big bang. What happens if such experiments from real science undermine secular support for the big bang? They might find themselves ‘widowed’ in the future, further discrediting the misrepresentations of Scripture employed to try to fit it to the big bang.6

Posted on homepage: 25 November 2019

References and notes

  1. For more about the Standard Model in general, and the Higgs boson in particular. Mason, J., Has the ‘God particle’ been found? Scientists claim to have confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson—but fail to credit God who created it, creation.com/higgs, 7 July 2012. Return to text
  2. Sarfati, J., Big bang universe should not actually exist, Creation 40(2):55, 2018; creation.com/antimatter-missingReturn to text
  3. Hartnett, J., Big bang beliefs: busted, Creation 37(3):48–51, 2015; creation.com/big-bang-beliefs-bustedReturn to text
  4. The Jefferson Lab Qweak Collaboration, Precision measurement of the weak charge of the proton, Nature 557(7704):207–211, 10 May 2018 | doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0096-0. Return to text
  5. Cited in: Woo, M., Physicists just measured one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Now they’re bummed, livescience.com, 9 February 2018. Return to text
  6. Wieland, C., Secular scientists blast the big bang: what now for naïve apologetics? Creation 27(2):23–25, 2005; creation.com/bigbangblastReturn to text

Helpful Resources

Dismantling the Big Bang
by Alex Williams, John Hartnett
US $20.00
Soft cover
Refuting Compromise
by Dr Jonathan Sarfati
US $17.00
Soft cover
Exploring the World of Physics
by John Hudson Tiner
US $19.00
Soft cover