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The James Webb Space Telescope vs The Big Bang | The Creation Podcast: Episode 111
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- [00:06]
A
When you look into the night sky, you're seeing light that has traveled incredible distances to reach you. For centuries, astronomers have used telescopes to study the universe. And with each new discovery, the story of the universe gets more and more fascinating. One of the newest and most sophisticated telescopes, the James Webb Space Telescope, is stirring up big questions about how the universe began and whether the Big Bang is an accurate the. I'm your host, Mary Claire, and welcome to the Creation Podcast, the show where we discuss how science confirms scripture. Today we're talking about what the James Webb Telescope is showing us and how those discoveries fit or don't fit with the Big Bang model. Joining me today is Dr. Jake Hebert. Thanks for being on the show, Dr. Hebert.
- [00:51]
B
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [00:53]
A
So excited to have you here. So, Dr. Hebert, could you please share just a little bit about your professional training and your background before we get started?
- [01:01]
B
Sure. Well, I'm a physicist, and pretty much all my degrees were in physics, my bachelor's degree, my master's, and then also my doctorate. And so, you know, I do a lot of different things here at icr. One of the things I do is I try to keep up with developments in cosmology and space physics and things like that. It's not really my primary area of research, but I work hard to keep up on that because obviously that's relevant to the creation evolution controversy. And, you know, so I'm constantly reading, trying to keep up on that. And also I participate in the Day 4 Astronomy Club. We have a creation astronomy club called Day 4, and we meet at the ICR Discovery center every third Saturday of each month at 5 o'. Clock. So if you happen to live in the DFW area and you'd like to join us, feel free to come. It's open to the public, and I usually, when I'm around, I usually participate in those meetings. So I've got some astronomy back in cosmology. And so, in fact, I've been working on a book for about four years on evidences for a young universe. And so hopefully we'll get that printed up here pretty soon.
- [02:16]
A
Yes, that's super exciting. And I'm sure you have an interest in astronomy, too.
- [02:19]
B
Yeah, I've always been interested in it. Even as a kid, I think I just, you know, I would see pictures of these galaxies, these spiral galaxies, and even though they were often black and white pictures, they were just fascinating. And so I think most people who get interested in astronomy because of the sheer beauty of what they're seeing. And I think that's true for most people.
- [02:42]
A
So before we dive into Webb's discoveries, I'd love to take a little bit of a step back for a moment and talk about these telescopes themselves. So Hubble is probably the telescope that most people think of whenever they picture the incredible images that are in deep space that we've all seen throughout the years. So could you share a little bit of background about the Hubble telescope and then explain how the James Webb Telescope is detailed and why that's such a significant step forward?
- [03:10]
B
Okay. Well, the Hubble Space Telescope, it was launched in 1990. It's about the size of a school bus, and its mirror is almost 8ft across, which is pretty good for a telescope. The reason Hubble was such a big deal is that it's above most of the atmosphere. So, you know, the atmosphere, we need it. There's a lot of design features in our atmosphere. But it's problematic if you're an astronomer because light from those stars can often be bent slightly by subtle changes in temperature. And so what happens is the stars appear to twinkle, and that distorts what you're seeing. So ideally, you would like to be able to get above that. And so that's what the Hubble telescope did. And, of course, we got some fantastic images from the Hubble Space Telescope. One of the first ones that was really spectacular was the Hubble Deep Field. And what they did was they focused on a tiny patch of sky. I mean, we're talking about, if you can imagine, a little square where each square is about a tenth the width of the full Moon. Okay, that's what they were looking at. And they kept it on that for quite some time. And when they looked at it and developed it, you had about 3,000 galaxies there that they counted that you didn't see them there before. And so that started to give us a feel for just how many galaxies are out there, and. And the universe is even bigger than we thought.
- [04:38]
A
That's awesome. So you talked a little bit about Hubble itself, but how did it initially transform astronomy as a whole?
- [04:47]
B
It was also, I think, a big boon for NASA in the public relations sense because people were able to see these fantastic images that they had not seen before. I mean, we had good images before, but we're getting even better images now. And the James Webb Space Telescope is getting even better images than that. So, like, James Webb is a little bit different than Hubble. Hubble is mainly for visible light. The James Webb Telescope is primarily infrared. There's a reason for that, okay, we're trying to see very distant galaxies. And when you hear astronomers talk about these distant galaxies, they will talk about something called redshift. And basically, when you have these very distant galaxies, that light, it's been shifted to the infrared. And so if you want to get the best possible picture, you want to use an infrared camera. Now you also want it to be above the atmosphere because it's hard for infrared radiation to penetrate the atmosphere. That's actually a design feature that helps keep the Earth warm. But if you're wanting to look at things in infrared, you need to get your telescope up above the atmosphere. And so that's why they did that. They've got it way at what they call the second Lagrange point. They have to keep it very cold because it's trying to measure this infrared. And so you gotta keep it cold. Otherwise just the thermal energy from the telescope itself could mess it up. So. But they're getting spectacular images that are even better than Hubble. And, you know, we're finding out even more using that telescope.
- [06:21]
A
Gotcha. So before we go deeper, how do these scientists even know that these galaxies are so far away? I think I'm having a hard time understanding really what redshift is. Okay, so can you break down what redshift is just for the average everyday lifestyle?
- [06:37]
B
Sure, sure. Imagine that if you're looking at light from the sun, you will see this nice, beautiful rainbow like spectrum, okay? But you will also see these dark bands they call absorption bands, and they're at a particular place in that spectrum. Now, if, say, the sun were moving away from us, those bands would get shifted toward the red part of the spectrum. Okay? That's called a redshift. And usually redshifts are caused because the light source is moving away from you or you're moving away from the light source or a combination of the two. And so it turns out that the redshift is sort of a stand in or proxy for distance. Okay? So the greater the redshift, the farther away it is. And so as creationists, we don't dispute these great distances. We don't dispute that these things are in some cases billions of light years away. Obviously, that raises the question of how we see distant starlight in a young universe. And we're working on that. In fact, we may talk about that a little bit later, if you like. But the answer to that question is not that the galaxies are close, okay? They really are that far away. Now, the redshift, I'm pleased to say that creationists are really starting to. We're testing the data for ourselves and not just accepting the mainstream explanation. Most people, most mainstream astronomers, and even some creation astronomers would say that this redshift is caused because space itself is expanding and the galaxies are kind of embedded in the space. They're carried along for the ride. And that's why you have this galaxy recession and you get the redshifts. Now there's other people, though, who are saying, you know, that may not be the right explanation. Maybe it's what we call a true Doppler shift. You know, everybody's familiar with the Doppler effect, where if you have an ambulance moving away from you, you hear the change in pitch, okay? If it's coming toward you, the pitch goes up. If it goes away, the pitch goes down. Well, light does the same thing. Okay, it's very similar. And. But you can't really tell just by looking whether it's caused by a true Doppler shift or whether it's caused by an expansion of space. But there are tests that you can conceivably do to test for that. And there's a lot of creationists out there, myself included, who are starting to think that maybe the redshifts, they may be a true Doppler shift. Maybe it's not an expansion of space itself. You've got guys like physicists Philip Dennis, astrophysicist Jason Lyle, John Hartnett, he's another creation physicist and myself included. A lot of us are leaning that way. And Jason Lyle has done some tests that's that where he thinks you can make better sense of the data if you assume it's a true Doppler shift and that the galaxies all have pretty much the same brightness. So I'm really pleased that creationists, that we're doing our own test on this kind of thing. But most, I think most people would agree that it is because the galaxies at. At the time they emitted their light, they were moving away from us.
- [09:43]
A
I see. So basically what I'm gathering is like, the more redshifted the light is, the farther away.
- [09:49]
B
Correct.
- [09:50]
A
Older, according to mainstream sciences, the galaxy is.
- [09:55]
B
Yes.
- [09:55]
A
So I guess my question for you would be, how does that challenge these mainstream scientists idea of the Big Bang?
- [10:02]
B
Okay, well, the redshift in and of itself doesn't. They would argue that redshifts are an argument for. For the Big Bang. Now, if it turns out that the galaxies are moving through space or were moving through space or still are, to me, that makes a little more sense in a creation framework. You know, why would God make a volume that just keeps getting bigger and bigger? The reason the James Webb telescope has been sort of problematic for the Big Bang is they're finding galaxies that are at very, very great distances. Okay, very high redshifts. Redshifts like maybe 12, 13, 14.
- [10:39]
A
And what's the greatest redshift?
- [10:41]
B
They would claim that what they call the cosmic microwave background radiation, they'd say it has a redshift of 1100. Now, we're not necessarily accepting their interpretation of that, but for like, if you're talking about galaxies, the most distant galaxy that we know of has a redshift of about 14.4, 14.44. And remember, the argument is that we're not seeing those galaxies as they are now, but as they were when they emitted their light. Now, we creationists think that God somehow got that distant starlight to us quickly. They don't believe that. So for them, if they're looking at a very, very distant galaxy many, many billions of light years away, they think you're seeing the galaxy again not as it is now, but as it was shortly after the Big Bang. So for that very most distant galaxy that we know of, that to them corresponds to a time about 280 million years after the supposed Big Bang. Now, here's why that's potentially a problem. You're getting galaxies, big, mature looking galaxies, and according to theory, they should not exist because there hasn't been time for them to form. Okay, remember, they think these things are formed through an evolutionary process. It's slow and gradual. As recently as 2012, there's a famous poster that NASA made that shows the Big Bang timeline. And on that timeline they say the first stars formed 400 million years ago. Now, most evolutionary astronomers will tell you that the stars had to form first, then the galaxies. Well, now you've got a galaxy that, according to their reckoning, is already existing 280 million years after the Big Bang. Okay, so that's too early. And so they are very troubled by this. When they first started getting the results from the James Webb telescope, there was all this angst. People were talking about how this bothered them. There was one guy who said, it slightly bothers me that we're seeing these monsters. In the first few frames, there was another astronomer who said, you know, right now I'm lying awake at three in the morning wondering if everything I've ever done is wrong. And it's kind of funny because people were saying, is the Big Bang wrong? So on her Twitter handle, she said, her name. Her name's Allison Kirkpatrick. She goes, allison, the Big Bang happened. Kirkpatrick. So there was a lot of emphasis on this. Okay. This seems to be a problem for the Big Bang. So. But understand, it's mainly a problem for their timeline, Right? Okay. It's not necessarily a problem for the idea that the universe is expanding, but it's a problem for their timeline, you know, because of evolution, because this is a slow, gradual process. You need a certain amount of time for these structures to form, and they're seeing well developed structures. It's too early.
- [13:36]
A
Yeah. So what you're saying really does make a lot of sense. But also, some scientists argue that this just means that they need to adjust their galaxy formation models. So do you think that that's enough
- [13:46]
B
to solve the problem that sort of oversimplifies things? You know, first of all, if you read the headlines that were coming out at that time, they were really bothered by this. In fact, one physicist out there suggested that maybe they could resolve the problem by doubling the age of the universe. You know, just like that. Of course, as a creationist, that makes me wonder, well, how firm are these ages you're giving us? If you can just change it, double it like that? Okay. So they were very bothered by this. Now, I actually saw a podcast yesterday where a very famous secular astronomer was saying, oh, this just means we don't understand galaxy formation, which is kind of what you're getting at. But it's sort of disingenuous. Okay. Because they would argue the Big Bang itself just refers to the primeval fireball and the formation of hydrogen and a few other light elements right after that, shortly after that. But the thing is, the universe is made up of billions and billions of galaxies. I mean, that's what's inside the universe. So it's really misleading to make it sound like you've got everything figured out. If you can't explain galaxy formation, they've got a real problem. And can they? And by the way, look, how do we know James Webb may find galaxies that are even farther out? What happens if we get to a redshift of, say, 15 or 16 or what? In fact, that was one the guest that this astronomer was interviewing. He said, basically, if you have to have stars first before galaxies, we're in trouble. We're in trouble. We're already in trouble. That's a little bit of happy talk on their part. This is really a problem for them.
- [15:30]
A
Yeah, that makes so much sense. So for people who might be listening to this, who might not really think about space very in your shoes. Like, why should this matter to them? Why should Christians or creationists pay attention to what the James Webb space Telescope is showing us?
- [15:47]
B
Right. Well, as the scriptures say, you know, the heavens declare the glory of God, and you want to pay attention to that because often when you read even these popular science articles, you can tell when something bothers the evolutionists, when something isn't fitting their ideas. And, you know, I guess they don't think we creationists can read, I guess. I don't know. So they're a little more candid when they're in the technical literature or when they're in the popular level, secular scientific literature, you know, and so they'll talk about, oh, this is a problem, but then they get mad when we point out that it's a problem, even though we were reading the stuff they published. You know, you want to keep up with this because the more we learn, the more problems we see with the Big Bang, the more problems we see with the evolutionary story and, you know, evolution, the less, you know, the more plausible it seems. Yeah, but the more, you know, the less plausible it is. And so it's good to just keep up with this and to keep up with what's going on.
- [16:46]
A
Yeah, yeah, I fully agree. So what we're seeing is that the James Webb telescope is uncovering a universe that appears more formed and complex at much greater distances than the Big Bang model would initially predict. So from a creationist perspective, this is incredibly exciting news because it lines up with what we see in scripture, which is a purposeful creator who made a functional universe right from the start. Right.
- [17:11]
B
Yeah. The Lord did not need the permission of mainstream astronomers about what kind of galaxies he could make and where he could make them. He can put them anywhere he wants. And so we should be encouraged by this. And, you know, we touched on this issue of distant starlight earlier, and that's something creationists are still working on. But I can tell you this. I've been closely working with a creation astronomer, and we may already have the solution to that question. In fact, this creation physicist presented a paper at the 2018 International Conference on Creationism, where he presented this model where you can get distant starlight to Earth quickly. The problem was it was very technical and not too many of us really understood it, myself included.
- [18:00]
A
If you can't understand it, that's going to be a tough one for me.
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B
But what's interesting is he's found a way to express it that's a little bit easier to Understand. And so I'm hoping that we're going to be. I think even a layperson can follow the gist of what he's saying. And I'm hoping that if we play our cards right and we do a good enough job explaining it, that people who have a strong math background, even if they're not necessarily physicists or cosmologists, can follow the argument in detail. And so we've been working on that. We have made strides in astronomy and cosmology. Okay. We've been working. We haven't been stagnant. There are things going on, but sometimes it takes a while. Some of these are hard problems, and it takes us a while to find the answers.
- [18:45]
A
Yeah. Well, Dr. Hebert, thank you so much for taking the time today to be on this podcast and to break down the story. Super interesting topic. Like, I feel like I've learned so much from this, and so I really do hope that the viewers who are watching also learn a lot, too. But before we wrap up, is there anything that you want to share with our audience? Any sort of key takeaways from this particular episode?
- [19:08]
B
Don't panic if there's a question you don't know the answer to. As a Christian, Biblical skeptics sort of have an unfair standard. Their argument is, if you don't know the answer to a question, you're irrational and you should immediately give up your Christian faith. The problem is they don't hold themselves to that same standard. Okay? You know, they will often, you know, and this is unfortunate, but it's a reality. In a classroom, they will often hit the Christian students with all these objections to Christianity and give them the impression that if you can't answer those questions, you're being irrational for being a Christian. The problem with that is they don't hold themselves to that same standard. Okay? If they were interested in being fair, which most of them aren't, they would let the Christian students put them in the hot seat and start asking them a bunch of tough questions. And I think we would quickly find there's a whole bunch of questions they don't know the answer to as well. But it's like, it's a diversionary tactic. Okay? It's like, and I'm sure it's because Satan came up with it. The idea is to keep the Christians off balance so that they're on the defensive and they don't realize how weak the other guy's position is. It's kind of cunning. But the point is, don't panic, okay? Don't panic. If You're a Christian and you don't know the answer to the question. A lot of these questions have already been answered. You just need to get on the Internet and find them. And some of these even very hard questions like distant starlight in a young universe, we're much closer to answering those questions than we were even maybe 10 years ago. This did not start with the James Webb Telescope. Okay. For a long time now, mainstream astronomers have been seeing very distant galaxies that look too mature at the distances they are, because again, they think if you're looking way off in space, you're looking way back in time shortly after the Big Bang. So you were starting to see this even before the James Webb Telescope. Hubble was showing stuff like this. But the James Webb telescope is just making it worse. The problem's getting worse and worse for those who hold to a Big Bang timeline.
- [21:19]
A
Gotcha. So before you go, hit like and subscribe and share this episode with someone who loves asking big questions about creation science. Also, you might notice these names on screen right here. These are members and patrons. If you'd like to join our members and patrons community, just click the link below to sign up. One of them actually had a question for you, Dr. Hebert. So Stu Griffin wants to know, should miracles, that is violations of the laws of physics, not just incredibly unlikely events, be taught in the science classroom?
- [21:57]
B
Okay, I would say no, but here's the problem. For the evolutionists, that means spontaneous. You can't teach spontaneous generation. You can't teach inflation theory in the Big Bang because that is a secular miracle, whether they want to admit it or not. Now, I do believe miracles happen. The thing is, they just need to be consistent. Okay? If you're going to say that you can't have miracles in the classroom, then a lot of the stuff the evolutionists push should not be included because it's not really science and it is arguably a miracle. Now, by the way, I mentioned this distant starlight explanation earlier, the one that I'm thinking of, the most recent one. It does involve a miracle. Okay, it does involve a miracle, but is very similar to inflation theory in the secular model, except in our case, we don't have any problem saying that God did it. Okay? They have to just kind of hand wave and try to argue that somehow this is allowed, even though, as far as we know, inflation violates the laws of physics as we know them.
- [23:03]
A
What is that inflation theory that you're talking about right there?
- [23:06]
B
Okay, Inflation is the original. I say original. The early versions of the Big Bang model Had a lot of problems, okay? One of them was its own version of a distant starlight problem. Because in the Big Bang model, the universe is supposed to be what we call isotropic. In other words, one direction in the sky should be pretty much the same as any other direction in the sky. Now, that means, you know, you've got this background microwave radiation we see coming to us from all directions in space. They interpret that as an afterglow from a time about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Now, because it's supposed to be isotropic, okay, it should be very uniform. All right? Now you're allowed to have non uniforms patches, okay, as long as they're about no more than a degree across. You can characterize this by a temperature, okay? But there are subtle variations in temperature, and they think that these variations in temperature served as seeds for, like, galaxy formation and things like that. But the problem is, In a even 13.8 billion years, there's not enough time for light from this direction to get over here. So what they said was, okay, originally the universe was much smaller. There was time for the light to get travel great distances, and then, boom, the universe went through this growth spurt. So now these spots are too far apart. They can't interact with each other. But that's how you explain the fact that, you know, you do have some uniformity there. And there were other reasons too. Okay? There's a problem. The Big Bang, you ought to expect there to be magnetic, what they call monopoles. You know, all magnets have north and south poles, okay? But in theory, you should have just monopoles, okay? No one's ever really seen one. But the argument is, well, the reason we don't see them is because when the universe underwent this great big increase in size, the density of all these monopoles went down so much that we just don't see them. You know, it's kind of. And there was another argument about what they call the flatness problem. But this inflation was designed to solve those problems. And it's really a miracle. I mean, it's a secular miracle. They can call it what they want, but they're invoking a miracle. And the other thing is, inflation theory doesn't really work. In fact, it's actually made things worse. Inflation theory has gotten so weird that some former proponents are now harshly criticizing it. Paul Steinhardt at Princeton is an example. You know, this idea of a multiverse where you get all these universes, that's coming from inflation theory. All right? So this is all. It's all tied together. And so this is an example of how secular scientists really cheat. Okay. And they invoke a miracle, but they don't call it a miracle.
- [26:05]
A
I see. So basically they're already doing this in the classroom.
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B
They're already doing it.
- [26:11]
A
Right.
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B
And it's if you say that life arose from non living chemicals, you are advocating spontaneous generation. As far as we know, that's scientifically impossible. So you're basically advocating a miracle and we just wish they would be more honest about it.
- [26:25]
A
Yeah. That makes so much sense. I do, too. Well, that is actually all that we have today. So thank you again for just joining this podcast, breaking down these topics, and for answering that final question from one of our viewers. We really appreciate it. And thanks again to all of you for watching. We will see you next time on the Creation Podcast.