Dark Energy and Bible Prophesy
Part I: When scientific explanations come up short and we can't shake ancient premonitions
Several weeks back I tried sharing something particularly intriguing with Amy. Intriguing to me. To Amy? Not remotely, as it turned out. No exploratory conversation ensued in the space between us. No conversation of any sort. More like communication breakdown that day weeks back.
“It’s so interesting,“ I had said.
“What is?” she asked – as intended and expected.
“How it’s finally becoming revealed who Gog and Magog actually are.”
Now, before going on, let me just say I don’t hail from the Isle of Crete. As such – a non-cretin – I was fully prepared for utter skepticism, sarcasm, even ridicule.
I wasn’t prepared for her to just deadpan, “No, that’s not interesting at all.”
Better had I stopped to consider my conversational options at that point. Didn’t, though. Too distracted by how interesting I thought the revelation was. Was and is.
“But it is,” I insisted. “You see...”
“I am so sick and tired,” exclaimed Amy, “of this shit. Nothing but lies, propaganda, extremism, ideology, fundamentalism and conspiracy theories everywhere. You go on and participate in that shit. Do not spew it at me!”
And that was that. She literally shouted me down.
[Amy here, interjecting to say I didn’t actually shout. But yeah; it’s true: I’ve had it up to here with ideologically coloured conspiracy bullshit. Not from Peter, or not usually, but Book of Revelations? Ugh.]
Several weeks back, that was. Did it bother me? Sure – extremely frustrating, at the time. Not like I haven’t thought about anything else since, though. It hasn’t been preying on my mind. But nor has the revelation [Amy: Revelation, eh?] ceased being interesting, either. Too intriguing to just let go and forget.
Frustrating as this interaction was, Amy can’t really be blamed for shouting me down. It’s not that unreasonable to reject anything remotely faith-based and place all our faith in science and technology – in evidence-based knowing, as some call it – instead these days. These days that’s mostly reasonable. But is it desirable? Isn’t it detrimental to have lost all faith in faith? Important question remaining to be explored – later. Not now. Better not delay the subject of dark energy and bible prophecy longer. For in these particular instances, the complete reverse appears to obtain. Scientific reasoning grows increasingly unreasonable – while a thousands years old, ancient biblical premonition clings to enshroud present times like suffocating nightmares. Isn’t that too intriguing to ignore -- however much it may sound like yet another fundamentalist conspiracy theory?
[Amy: Hokaay. I’m intrigued. No need to caricature my supposed fixation with science vs your alleged openness to faith; certainly not between us — after all, I’m the sole church-going person in a household of Atheists — but you hint at a question both profound and important: what do we do when scientific explanations fall short in the context of crucial cosmological questions? Shutting up to listen.]
Dark Matter and Energy
Dark matter answers the question why galaxies do not fly apart and disperse as they should given the insufficient observable mass holding them together at prevailing rates of rotation. Clearly there must be some mass we cannot observe. Over four times more dark matter than regular is required to account for regular matter motion. That’s alright, though. There are several viable candidates to account for dark matter – not all hypothetical exotic particles, either – nor is the notion of matter we cannot directly observe too outlandish. We cannot directly observe black holes, for significant instance. It’s fine – we keep learning by observing their effects.
Dark energy, on the other hand, answers the converse question – not what holds our universe together but rather what is causing it to disintegrate. Why the expansion of our universe does not slow and reverse as it eventually should but, to the contrary, accelerates. In all creation no question is more puzzling than that of dark energy. Under influence of sufficient gravity, what goes up must come down and, similarly, what expands should eventually contract. Yet the expansion of the universe speeds instead of slowing. Like a ball thrown into air never falling but forever speeding ever faster away. Clearly then, there must be some supreme force powerfully governing the dynamic of universal expansion – in opposition to and over-riding the force of gravity. Some kind of anti-gravity. Some sort of levity. Some type of nowhere detected yet everywhere active, utterly mysterious, totally dark force governing our entire universe.
That’s a problem. How can anything govern the whole universe in every large part – yet produce no discernible effect in any smaller parts? Seems like a contradiction. As if the whole were no sum of its parts, had no relation to its parts and the parts formed no part of the whole. Consequently, cosmologists find themselves speculating for candidates – exotic particles, topographies, self-creation mythologies – capable of fundamentally influencing everything while affecting particularly nothing.
It gets worse. The expansion rate of the universe is sometimes referred to as the Hubble constant. Constant not because its value has been settled – failure to settle the rate of expansion is part of the spreading quagmire. Nor because it’s expected to remain constant for all times – it doesn’t. But, because we expect fundamental forces and structural features of the universe to not change like wind, the Hubble constant cannot be too unpredictably variable. Rates of change should remain constant – orderly and linear over time. If dark energy is indeed structural, fundamental, then it cannot change on winds of contingency. There can’t be any dark energy weather patterns. Not unless dark energy were itself somehow, inconceivably, contingent. Thus, if the Hubble constant were to turn out unpredictably and disorderly variable – inconstant like weather – it would mean we haven’t got much clue concerning what is or is not fundamental. It would mean not only dark energy but all our cosmology and perhaps physics are broken.
Indeed, this does seem to be the case. Universal expansion rates increase and decrease anomalously – accelerating sometimes, decelerating at other times. It would make perfect sense in relation to the highway velocity of a mediocre long-haul driver. Not in relation to the structural effect of a fundamental, hypothetically universal force. Not at all.
Consequently, cosmologists have been leaving no distant galaxies unturned in collective efforts to determine what might account for dark energy inconstinence – going so far as asking whether it might all be gravity’s fault. Could gravity be altering over time, out of keeping with conduct expected from fundamental structural forces? If so, the good character of dark energy might be saved and some deception or corruption of gravity blamed instead. Attempting to save dark energy at gravity’s expense, though – what a disturbing stretch. Can anything be considered both more structurally fundamental and fundamentally structural than gravity? What if gravity did turn out to be at fault? Would that safeguard existing paradigms – other than the hypothetical dark energy? To the contrary. Arguably, investigating whether gravity can be blamed reflects only scrupulous thoroughness by cosmologists. But it is difficult not to suspect they are merely grasping at theoretical straws when prepared to throw gravity under the drunkenly driven universal expansion bus.
Gravity turns out to be just fine as it is and ever was, of course. Still, cosmologists are not generally prepared to contemplate the Hubble constant could be unpredictably inconstant. Not yet. For now they only question other underlying assumptions and whether our tools require recalibrating. None of which should be considered trivial given how, for one instance, the tools in question include JWST. Rather opposite, having to keep questioning the dark energy quagmire has come to be referred, not all tongue in cheek, as the Crisis in Cosmology.
But, while not trivial, the cosmology crisis will only continue itself expanding until scientists finally grow willing to consider universal expansion inconstinence from a completely different perspective. Why? How could anyone possibly know that? Several ways, actually – but largely by recalling when cosmology was in this very position once before. Just about identical.
No mere metaphor, this. The iconic paradigm shift from Ptolemaic geocentrism to Copernican heliocentrism sheds full lighting over today’s cosmology crisis. For just as cosmic expansion inconstance currently demands ceaseless rationalization and qualification to account for deviations from what is expected and conceived as a fundamental structural force, so Ptolemy’s geocentrism required somewhat absurd geometric qualifications to account for observed planetary motion prior the 16th century.
So long as it remained inconceivable in pre-Copernican times for Earth to not be central throughout creation, the variety of retrograde planetary motion could not be recognized as refuting geocentrism. Equivalently, so long as the non-universality of our universe remains inconceivable today, inconstant expansion variance cannot be recognized as refuting any structurally fundamental dark energy force.
Why can scientists not conceive our universe non-universally? Two reasons most stand out. First, the prevailing notion of the big bang as creation’s space-time absolute – outside, prior and beyond the influence of which all, including time and space, are undefined. Undefined, undefineable, inconceivable. Fortunately, there are highly respected scientists challenging this definitive view. Second, there is an issue of jurisdiction. When a theory cannot be tested it belongs not to science, certainly not to physics – but rather to theology or metaphysics. Thus, scientists tend to gravitate away from even speculating beyond the big bang in fear of falling into metaphysics.
Fears of falling into metaphysics are diminishing, however. Due to the recent detection of gravitational waves, prior boundaries between physics and metaphysics, between science and religion will blur and fade at least somewhat.
Imagine an ocean of gravitational waves with our universe a vessel upon it. We are beginning to see – detect – the most moderate, local waves. We cannot yet detect far longer wave-lengths such as may be caused by tectonic heaving or tidal influence over the entire ocean. We can’t detect those yet – but we will. Nor can we detect the shortest wave-lengths such as may be caused by relative gravitational minnows and butterfly wings. But we will. And when we do? Then, very plausibly, we will find the vessel of our universe cradled within an arcology of vastly greater dark matter attractors than had previously been possible to conceive. We will find plank remnant – evaporated black hole – capillaries of dark matter vastly older than our universe. We will soon find so much we cannot now imagine.
Is this a metaphysical story? Philosophical inquiry? Scientific theory? None of the above -- though incorporating elements of each. Hard to tell. And perhaps that’s a good thing, sometimes. For now, let’s just repeat the central suggestions, with emphasis, for this record. First: we require dark energy only so long we remain fixated on the universality of our universe. The moment we even conceive our universe under potential influence from beyond — that moment the logical requirement for internally structural inflating levity gets punctured like a Ptolemaic balloon. The increasingly evident implausibility of dark energy, on every empirical test, should surprise no one. Second: dark matter is a terrific candidate not only when it comes to the structure of our universe galactically and intergalactically — but perhaps the warping and wefting of it from beyond as well. Speculating an expanding role for dark matter is hazardous, though — it gets not only metaphysical but potentially theological too fast. Let’s stop here for now, then — satisfied with a good Occam Razor swipe.
Up next: Part II will expand upon potential alternatives that mess with received notions about what counts as science—as well as faith.