More Than Meets the Eye

by Richard Swenson

  Hawking’s concluding paragraph in his best-selling A Brief History of Time reads: “If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.”29

  Hawking, who refers often to God in his writings, nevertheless does not believe in a personal deity or an afterlife. (“I believe that when I die, I die, and it will be finished.”30) With such a brilliant and inquisitive mind, I would wish instead for Dr. Hawking the opportunity to sit for an eternity and discuss physics with the “mind of God” Himself.

  FISSION AND FUSION

  These four forces reveal to us that God has a power dimension to His creative abilities. Again, we do not know exactly why these forces exist—only that they do. God, however, has an intimate understanding of how they work and why they work. He could have created only two forces or two hundred. But for reasons known only to His own counsel, He decided to give the universe four.

  As the human mind deepens its investigation of these forces we have learned to manipulate them. In so doing we have tapped into a vast universal power source that is almost infinite. (Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke predicts our new millennium will enjoy access to “infinite energy”—a concept that, because of fallenness, frightens me.) That we have access to such a resource should not make us haughty, for we created neither the force, the power, nor the energy. We are only using it—borrowing it from God, if you will. God has no objection. As a matter of fact, He wants us to use this power as a gift. But at the same time, we must always remain humble and realize He is the Giver. If we forget such a lesson, tears await us. When playing on a stack of dynamite it is always best to obey the rules and have a gentle heart.

  This brings us to the rapidly escalating potential of unlimited power from nuclear fission and fusion. While neither one of these power sources yields as much pure energy as antimatter, nevertheless they are astronomically powerful. The tremendous release of energy in these two processes results from the binding energy of the nucleus and Einstein’s famous E = mc2. This equation, which we will explore further in the following chapter, reveals that a small amount of mass is equal to a very large amount of energy. The conversion, therefore, of mass to energy yields phenomenal and explosive energy levels.

  Both fission and fusion sources are made possible because nature prefers the stability of mid-sized elements. The most efficient way to store mass energy in a nucleus is in the nuclei of iron. Therefore an essentially continuous gradient of energy storage efficiency exists from the lightest elements up to iron, and from the heaviest elements down to iron. Any process in which lighter nuclei can fuse or heavier nuclei can split is favored.31 For this reason, the lightest element, hydrogen, is used in nuclear fusion, and the heaviest naturally occurring element, uranium, is used in nuclear fission.

  Fission was the process used in the first atomic bomb, developed in 1945, and has already been used commercially for decades. The release of energy in an atomic bomb is rapid, whereas the release of energy in a commercial nuclear reactor is dampened and controlled. Uranium-235 or plutonium is used in fission reactions.

  The fission, or splitting, of this heavy uranium nucleus is accomplished by hitting it with a neutron. When the nucleus splits, it gives off two or three neutrons, each of which strikes another nucleus, giving off yet more neutrons. A chain reaction results. With every split, a small amount of mass is converted into a large amount of energy. The fission of every nucleus in one kilogram of Uranium-235 releases the same amount of energy as burning three million tons of coal.

  Fusion is the process used in hydrogen bombs, first developed in 1952. These bombs are also called thermonuclear bombs because of the tremendous heat involved in the process. They are the most powerful explosive devices ever developed by humankind, prompting a gloomy Einstein to predict: “The next World War will be fought with stones.”

  The fuel used for fusion is hydrogen or occasionally helium—the two most common elements in the universe. When two hydrogen atoms fuse, the fused mass weighs less than the original two particles. Just as in the case with fission, the lost mass appears as energy.

  Fusion is constantly occurring in the stars. This means that our sun is essentially a gigantic continuous hydrogen bomb. Every second it converts 650 million tons of hydrogen into 645 tons of helium, with the extra 5 million tons being converted into energy and released.

  The controlled use of fusion is technically very difficult to achieve, requiring extremely high temperatures. Any practical use of fusion as an energy source still appears to be decades away. Cynics have quipped that nuclear fusion is the energy source of the future—and it always will be. To date, the United States has spent over twenty-five billion dollars on fusion research without a successful harnessing of the process.

  ON THE OTHER SIDE OF IMPOSSIBLE

  Think for a moment about the kind of power God has buried within the nucleus. Through all the years of human existence we never expected the tremendous hoards He had stockpiled beneath E = mc2, waiting for scientific man to discover what faith already knew. Think of the four forces He allows us to borrow for a season, seldom realizing there is even more if we but ask in faith. Think of the fleeting nanosecond subatomic particles discovered during the twentieth century. God knows each. Fleeting particles, but an enduring God. What is there not to believe or trust?

  Although He lives in the land beyond comprehension, it is both comforting and frightening to realize that He is not far from each one of us.32

  The NEW PHYSICS

  SIR ISAAC NEWTON, a brilliant scientist and devout Christian, was born in 1642 and died 85 years later. His life and work changed the world of science as few had before him. Not until Einstein, 200 years later, would a similar force enter the world of physics.

  Newton took the earlier work of Galileo and Kepler, co-invented the calculus system of mathematics, got hit on the head by an apple (probably not), and derived his law of universal gravitation. This law explained how the force downing the apple was the same force keeping planets in orbit and even ruling the entire universe.

  Newton went on to propose his three laws of motion (Table 1). These laws established the foundations of classical mechanics that are taught in physics classes today, and also anchored what came to be called the Newtonian worldview. Science increasingly came to be understood as a mechanistic, lawful process. The concepts of physics—work, power, force, pressure, torque, energy, inertia, mass, motion, momentum, velocity, acceleration, heat, charge, current, field—were all reduced to equations. Life was predictable, mathematical.

  Other laws followed, all binding on reality and constrictive of choice. The famous laws of thermodynamics (Table 2) arrived in the mid-1800s, summarizing the startling facts that energy is fixed (it cannot be created or destroyed), and increasing entropy is inevitable (the universe is running down). There were laws for electromagnetism, gases, optics, light, and waves. Everybody was getting a law named after him, while all the world was increasingly girdled by restrictive scientific fact.

  By the end of the nineteenth century, however, a new band of prodigies began mischievously playing with theoretical dynamite, led by a young man named Albert. They scratched their precocious heads with one hand and wrote provocative theorems with the other. In the process they overturned Newton’s apple cart, upset long-held scientific sensibilities, threw certainty into reverse, and exposed a startling mysticism in the universe. Now, instead of everything being fixed and certain, it looked like the entire universe was up for grabs.

  This was the world of the new physics. It was not that Newton’s order had passed away. But the new physics peeled back enough layers on the universe’s onion to reveal that the less visible world�
��both the world of the very small and the world of the very large—was thoroughly weird. Before we explore this fascinating domain, however, let’s linger within the classical paradigm to take a better look at the interesting first and second laws of thermodynamics. They have something to teach us about the creative sovereignty of God.

  CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

  FIRST LAW:

  Energy cannot be created or destroyed.

  When the law of energy conservation was first proposed in the mid-1800s, it was still fifty years before Einstein informed us that energy and matter were actually two forms of the same thing (E = mc2). Today, however, we understand Einstein’s principle, thus allowing us to comfortably expand the first law of thermodynamics to say that the total of both energy and matter are conserved. We can’t make them; we can’t get rid of them. We can move them around, transform them, or convert them from one form to another. But the total amount always stays the same.

  This fundamental law teaches us important lessons about God’s creative efforts. Scripture says that in the beginning, God created ex nihilo —out of nothing. He took nothing, and out of nothing He made something. When He stopped, creation itself froze in its tracks. No more. The universe became thermodynamically closed. In a very real sense, nothing more has since appeared or disappeared. Everything that changes is simply rearranging itself.

  To explore the implications of this topic more closely, consider two questions: (1) How much mass-energy did God create out of nothing? (2) How much mass-energy have humans created out of nothing?

  Question 1:

  How much mass-energy did God create out of nothing?

  In order to get a better handle on this first question, let’s consider energy and matter separately. First, matter. How much matter did God create? The universe contains approximately 100 billion galaxies. In total, this is estimated to equal a trillion trillion trillion trillion tons of matter.1

  Now let’s consider how much energy this represents. Remember: to convert mass to energy, we multiply the mass by a very large number, namely the speed of light squared. In other words, another way of illustrating E = mc2 is to say that a small amount of matter equals a very, very large amount of energy. For example, the tremendous destructive power of a nuclear explosion is the release of energy trapped inside a relatively small amount of matter.

  The amount of matter God created in the universe is impressive. But the energy equivalent of this matter is much, much greater. And that is not all. Not all the energy in the universe exists in the form of matter. Much of it exists freely in the energy state rather than the matter state. Adding these two amounts together (the amount of energy existing within matter, plus the amount of energy existing in the energy state) yields an energy figure that is incomprehensibly large.

  This is what God created, from nothing. And since that time of creation, nothing more has been added to it.

  Now let’s move to a second question:

  Question 2:

  How much mass-energy have humans created

  out of nothing?

  In all the laboratories, all the universities, all the military installations, by all the scientists with all their sophisticated, expensive equipment and Ph.D. degrees—how much mass-energy have they created out of nothing? Zero. Not one joule, not one gram.

  For those keeping track of the score, it stands:

  God >>100,000,000,000 galaxies

  Humans Zero. Embarrassingly, not even a single atom.

  For the unbelieving scientist, to explain how something as massive as the universe popped into being out of nothing is a formidable task. The most considered theory has to do with what is called a quantum fluctuation. This theory proposes that our universe exploded out of a dimensionless point called a singularity (with help from the zero energy point, virtual particles, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and the quantum vacuum—“a place so bizarre that it makes the Twilight Zone look like a clothing store”2). Yet how such a thing could happen is not well explained, because the singularity—although perhaps dimensionless—is still not “nothing.”

  We can summarize the first law and its implications by saying that in the beginning, God created a massive universe out of nothing; that since the creation event the total amount of energy + matter in the universe has been fixed; and that it lies beyond human ability for us to create even a small amount of either matter or energy out of nothing.

  What does this teach us about God?

  That He is powerful at a level beyond human comprehension.

  That He alone has the ability to create mass-energy out of nothing.

  That He formed us with the ability to observe mass-energy—but not to create it.

  That if we need a source of energy, it is better to connect to God’s energy source (infinite) than to humanity’s energy source (nonexistent).

  ENTROPY

  SECOND LAW:

  Entropy always increases.

  The second law of thermodynamics is equally interesting, and again reveals something of spiritual importance. This law, known as the law of entropy, implies that the universe as a whole is irreversibly running down and cooling off. Even though the total amount of energy + matter in the universe is fixed, it always tends in the direction of increasing disorder.

  In essence the law states that the universe flows irrevocably in the direction of hot cold and order chaos. Heat naturally dissipates. Order decays. All things naturally wear down. As order flows to disorder and heat flows to cold, the energy involved ceases to be available to perform work. Entropy is the name given to this overall quantity of unavailable energy.

  The second law lies at the heart of all thermodynamics. Indeed, Einstein called it the premier law of all science. This law is not reversible. “It imprints upon the universe an arrow of time, pointing the way of unidirectional change,” states physicist Paul Davies. With this law in hand, scientists have concluded that the universe is “engaged in a one-way slide toward a state of thermodynamic equilibrium.”3 This tendency will ultimately force the universe into a condition known as heat death, where its final temperature will be uniform and its final state will be chaos.

  As with the first law, the second law also has theological implications. Because entropy flows only in one direction, we can trace both its history and its future. Going backward, we can deduce from the law of entropy that the universe had a beginning—a highly ordered beginning. If the universe had a beginning, how did it begin? And if the universe was highly ordered, where did this high level of order come from? Those questions are scientifically compelling, yet not answerable by science. The most reasonable and intuitive answer, of course, is that a beginning implies a Beginner, and order implies an Orderer.

  Traveling forward into the future, on the other hand, we notice that such order is vanishing and the universe is on a one-way trip to the deep freeze. Why? Apparently God does not intend for this universe to be eternal. Our present home, it seems, is not to be the final domain of His creative effort. I am not implying that entropy is a reliable guide for dating the beginning and ending of the world. But I am implying that the law of entropy is theologically suggestive—it points to a beginning and an end, and thus to God.

  The law of entropy leads to other important spiritual questions as well. For example, why did God create the universe with this entropic “bondage to decay”? In addition to the law of conservation of energy, why is there not a similar law for the conservation of order, or the conservation of available energy? God could have designed the laws of physics without requiring increasing entropy. For example, when we build an automobile, rather than it falling apart over time it could have remained stable at both the atomic and molecular level.

  This tendency toward increasing entropy and disorder is reminiscent of the decay we associate with fallenness. If we build houses and don’t expend energy to keep them maintained, the houses fall apart. Any order that we create will fall apart under the weight of the entropy law. We must live under
the weight of entropy every day, just as we must live under the weight of fallenness every day. I am not necessarily asserting that the entropy of physics is synonymous with the fallenness of theology. But I am suggesting there is a connection. In a perfect world—a world without fallenness—I doubt we would be required to endure such a hefty burden of daily decay. I look forward to that eventual Time when both weights—the weight of entropy and the weight of fallenness—will be removed.

  ENTER EINSTEIN’S RELATIVITY

  In 1905, Einstein shook the world by the cranium, forever rearranging the synapses of science. Without warning, the undiscovered genius advanced from five sides at once, producing an intellectual earthquake of the first order.

  Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879, and attended public school in Munich and later in Aarau, Switzerland. His disdain for the German military prompted him to relinquish his citizenship at age sixteen, although he did not become a Swiss citizen until ten years later. He graduated from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1900, but was refused jobs in academic institutions throughout Europe. In addition, his marriage to an older physics classmate was not well accepted by his family on ethnic principles—she was Serbian.

  In the five years following his graduation he was either unemployed or underemployed, and always poor. From 1902 to 1909 he worked as a patent examiner in Bern, Switzerland, a job that allowed him enough extra time to do physics in his off hours. An embattled loner working in obscurity, in 1905 he published five papers that redefined reality.4 One of those papers, explaining the photoelectric effect by describing light as a stream of tiny particles called photons, won him the Nobel Prize in 1921 (the only paper of the five that Einstein himself called “revolutionary”). But it was his paper on the concept of relativity that most firmly secured his lasting reputation.