When I take a break from reading about economic theory, I dive into theoretical physics. I've been reading about physics since I was a freshman in high school. As it was typical for me, I would skip class to read about the oddities as well as complexities of our universe.
I am currently reading a book that in my opinion is a first of its kind. The usual structure of a book on physics coincides with television documentaries. It starts with thinkers during The Enlightenment (Capernicus, Galileo) and works its way through their concepts to modern day thinkers like Einstein and Stephen Hawking. However, this book is taking a whole new approach.
This book travels to the various remote areas of the world that have been given the task of providing experimental data of our universe. Experiments range from detecting dark matter to lightning fast murons.
I wanted to share with you an excerpt from this book.
[Source
Ananthaswamy, Anil. The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. 88-89. Print. ]
"The discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) cemented the notion of a big bang. But for all its elegance, that theory had thrown up some intractable problems. Soon after the CMB was discovered, Dicke went to Cornell to talk about an aspect of the big bang that was seriously bothering theorists: the flatness problem. According to measurements at the time, the density of matter seemed almost equal to the so-called critical density - the density that was needed to make the curvature of the universe flat. (A flat universe is one in which two parallel lines remain parallel all the way to infinity, whereas in a "closed" universe the line will converge. In an "open" universe, two parallel lines will eventually diverge. The two-dimensional surface of Earth is closed: Two lines that start off parallel at the equator will touch at the poles. A saddle provides an example of an open surface on which two parallel lines will diverge.)
As Dicke pointed out in his talk, if the matter density had been greater, then the universe's curvature would be closed, and if it had been lower, the universe would be open. But the universe seemed to be flat, meaning that the ratio of the actual matter density to the critical density, which is denoted by a parameter called Omega, was very close to 1. And for today's universe to have Omega anywhere near 1, its value just one second after the big bang would have had to be exactly 1 to a precision of about fourteen decimal places."
And so I ask, how do you perceive this? Is this evidence for or against a Creator?
For me, when I read that about thirty minutes ago for the first time, I had chills throughout my body, with tears welling up in my eyes. For me, this is undoubtedly evidence that we coexist with an all powerful being.