--:-- [Upbeat music fades out, and the host, Georgia Howe, begins speaking]
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Newly released photos from the James Webb Space Telescope have allowed scientists to view farther into space and farther into the past than ever before. The images emerging are raising questions about what we thought we knew about the early universe. One viral article from independent scientist and author Eric Lerner made the rounds on social media in recent weeks with its provocative claim that the Big Bang never happened. Lerner claims that the images provide evidence that the Big Bang theory is flawed. He also leveled accusations at the astronomy community of censorship and refusal to acknowledge contradictory evidence to the widely accepted theory.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: In this episode of Morning Wire, we speak to UC San Diego professor of cosmology Brian Keating about what the images show and what we can and can't conclude from them. I'm Georgia Howe. It's September 18th, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, right off the bat, for listeners who are interested, Lerner's article is widely available online as well as numerous detailed critiques. And we were not able to reach him for comments, but his claims are fairly straightforward. So I'm going to do my best to sum them up. He basically says, the images of galaxies we're seeing don't match predictions made by the Big Bang theory for a few reasons. First, he says they're too small. He cites an optical illusion that we would expect to see given the expansion theorized by the Big Bang. He says, because the light would have left these distant galaxies when they were much closer to us, they should appear much larger than they do. The fact that they appear quite small, he says, suggests that they're either extraordinarily small intrinsically so as to overcompensate for that optical illusion, which he says would make them implausibly small, or the Big Bang prediction itself is wrong.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: He also says these galaxies appear too mature to have formed just four to five hundred million years after the Big Bang. He says the fact that the galaxies are tidy and round rather than chaotic suggests that they're older than four to 500 million years, which again, he says, suggests that they predate the supposed birth of the universe. He says there are also way too many ancient galaxies in the images, and that given the lifespan of stars this again, doesn't match up with the presumed timeline of the Big Bang 13 billion years ago.
--:-- [Guest, Brian Keating, begins speaking]
--:-- Brian Keating: I think it's worth taking a step back and explaining what is the Big Bang theory. And it's as close to a scientific fact as one can achieve in an observational study that only has one experimental, if you will, element to test. In other words, when you do experiments in chemistry, there's, well, there's many different types of chemicals. Or maybe you remember from high school biology, you might do a dissect a worm or something like that. But how do you do an experiment or make an observation in a science that is predicated on the very notion that objects that we are able to encounter are physically completely remote from us? We can never touch or do a real experiment and say change the temperature of a star or, in fact, change the composition of a galaxy.
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--:-- Brian Keating: So we are even in a worse situation because we only have one universe. You know, there's many types of worms, but there's only one universe. So when we talk about the universe, it's very challenging to make an observation because you're relying on light or, in very rare cases, some exotic particles to come to Earth. And then we can study those particles. Now, what was known for almost 100 years now is that the universe is large. It wasn't actually appreciated that the universe, what we now call the universe, extended beyond our solar system until about 150 years ago.
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--:-- Brian Keating: Once the observations started to become more and more precise, there began a revolution in our understanding of what the cosmos is structured like. And in fact, it was inescapable, according to all scientists, since the early 1920s and 30s, that the universe was not only large, but it was dynamic. It was changing. The galaxies that we see with a literal handful, we can see about 100 billion galaxies in what's called the observable universe. Every single one of those galaxies, Georgia, except for about a dozen, are actually moving away from us. They exhibit what's called a red shift.
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--:-- Brian Keating: Now, if every galaxy is moving away from us, we would have to have one of two different conclusions. Either we're the center of the universe and everything is moving away from us for some reason. Maybe we didn't apply cosmic deodorant or something. Or the universe is dynamic and expanding. What Mr. Lerner is claiming is that those claims, which we've known about for 100 years and have matched all observations, are incorrect, that that is wrong. And in fact, luckily, from his perspective, he has a theory that explains every single observation better than he claims the Big Bang, except he has no way to account for the seeming expansion of space and time, so he just denies it.
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--:-- Brian Keating: And for the last 30 years since he first published a book by almost the exact same title as this recent article, The Big Bang Never Happened, he has been writing about this since 1991, I believe. And in that time, every time some new observation comes out, this claim resurfaces. So needless to say, astronomers are quite miffed at him. But I think it's fun and fair to criticize a theory. Nothing is sacrosanct.
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--:-- Brian Keating: Now, imagine Georgia, you don't have a telescope so you look up there, and only one galaxy external to the Milky Way local environment that the human eye can see. So if your model is that the universe is filled with galaxies, your eyes will betray that fact. They will show you that there's only one galaxy, and that's called the Andromeda Galaxy. It's the only and most distant object the human eye can see on a very clear night from a dark location.
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--:-- Brian Keating: Now, if you then attach your eye to a telescope, you can see hundreds or thousands of galaxies. And then if you attach your eye to the Hubble Space Telescope or your brain to the Hubble Space Telescope, you see a vast tapestry of galaxies, almost like they're wallpaper on the wall. And then finally, if you go and build a James Webb Space Telescope, which is 10 times more powerful than Hubble, you'll see even more galaxies. So the fact that we see more and more galaxies is in fact not proof at all that the Big Bang didn't happen. It's proof of the limitations that your previous technology presented to you.
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--:-- Brian Keating: Now, what do you make of Lerner's claim that the galaxies seen in the James Webb appear too old and too well established to be the age they're purported to be? He says they should not be so well formed at 400 to 500 million years old, and therefore they must predate the hypothesized timeline for the Big Bang. How would you respond to that claim?
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--:-- Brian Keating: So the process of galactic evolution is actually a totally separate and distinct field, as distinct and separate as the physiology of anteaters is from the study of DNA. And so he's trying to predicate the invalidation, if you will, of the theory of evolution or of the DNA origin of genetic information. And he's trying to use a specific example which has large uncertainties, which he never quotes, by the way. So a good scientist should always quote his or her lack of knowledge and lack of confidence in their own model.
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--:-- Brian Keating: So basically what you're saying is we don't actually know how long it takes for galaxies to form, so it's not a valid benchmark to measure time by?
--:-- Brian Keating: Yes. In fact, it's actually true that we do not see galaxies beyond a certain age of the universe. And we push back the age at which galaxies can start to form with each successive iteration of technology. And the James Webb Space Telescope is no different. But he does make the point, again, that refutes his own claims. He says there should be a time in which in the Big Bang model there are no galaxies. And in fact, that's my area of study. That's called the cosmic microwave background or the cosmic dark ages. And in fact, we do not see any galaxies at that point.
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--:-- Brian Keating: So what does Mr. Lerner do? He dismisses the existence of the cosmic microwave background, which is a very tool that allowed cosmology to become a precision science when it was discovered in 1965. And he says that's an artifact of our own galaxy. So he doesn't really even believe that the most precisely measured, the most ancient light in the universe, that it actually exists.
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--:-- Brian Keating: And it is kind of a shame that the media always pick up on his ideas and give them credibility as if astronomers are truly as he said, in crisis and panic. So it all has sort of left a distaste in many astronomers, and some have been much less kind than I have in taking his credibility at face value.
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--:-- Brian Keating: So are there currently any observations from the new James Webb Space Telescope that are at odds with predictions made by the Big Bang Theory?
--:-- Brian Keating: The James Webb Space Telescope is primarily designed to do observations of ancient stars of ancient galaxies. It's really a stretch to say that it can comment on the existence of the Big Bang or not any more so than the observation or assessment of a single individual can cast doubt on the theory of evolution or that the Earth, you know, in one part of its surface appears flat. Therefore, it can cast doubt on the existence of a spherical Earth.
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--:-- Brian Keating: The Webb Telescope can do a great many things. One of them is to help refine our understanding of how the universe has evolved, but it does not have the capabilities to speak about the moment of creation or even the age of the universe, if you will. That's not within its purview. That doesn't mean that you can't attempt to do it. There are things that you can attempt to do, but you always have to classify your limitations, and that's something that Mr. Lerner stubbornly seems to refuse to do.
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--:-- Brian Keating: Now, if you could build a telescope that's capable of viewing 13.8 billion years into the past, what would you expect to see?
--:-- Brian Keating: Well, we do have a telescope, Georgia. We have many telescopes that have seen back not only to millions or billions of years back in time. We've seen, so the universe is believed to be 13.8 billion years old. We have been able to see, so let's call it today, 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang. We can see back to 370,000 years after the Big Bang. Not millions, not billions, but thousands already. Today, right now, my telescopes, my colleagues' telescopes, we are taking pictures of the infant universe. That's truly when the universe was about a half a day old out of a 50-year-old lifespan.
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--:-- Brian Keating: So we're already seeing the true baby pictures. And the goal of science right now, in my scientific field of study, I should say, is to see can we push that back almost to time equals zero. Now, for philosophical reasons, it may never be possible to get to time equals to zero. If you think about it, imagine how do you characterize time when time comes into existence? So there are theories that suggest the universe is as much older than 13.8 billion years, but they also feature a big bang. In other words, there was an earlier universe that collapsed and compounded in what's called a big crunch. And that type of model can be ruled out, not proven.
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--:-- Brian Keating: That's what we do in science. We're trying to rule out alternatives. And by doing so and ruling out as much as possible, what we're left with is a kernel of what we think is approximation to truth. You'll never get actual proof, like in a mathematical sense, that one plus one equals two. But you'll get as close to it as you can in the physical sciences. And what we're doing, we're already doing way beyond what Mr. Lerner and his type are claiming is impossible. We're already taking the infant baby pictures of the universe when it looked nothing like the universe of even the Webb telescope.
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--:-- Brian Keating: There were no stars, no galaxies. It was just a massive pool of protons and neutrons and electrons and photons. Very different from the universe that we inhabit today and certainly different from the universe that the Webb telescope has shown. That's why it has no bearing these data and these claims on the existence of the Big Bang and the infant universe itself. The one thing it shows that the universe is dynamic and changing, which Mr. Lerner largely is rejecting.
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--:-- Brian Keating: Professor Keating, thanks so much for coming on today.
--:-- Brian Keating: Yes, it's been a pleasure, Georgia. Thanks again.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Brian Keating, professor of cosmology at the University of California, San Diego. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Bye.
