QUaD Confirms Biblical Creation Model
Data collected by a team of 31 astronomers known as the QUaD Collaboration has strengthened the biblically predicted big bang creation model.1 QUaD is an acronym for QUEST at DASI. It’s a ground-based cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) experiment located at the South Pole. QUEST (Q and U Extragalactic Sub-mm Telescope, see figure 1) was the original name attributed to the bolometer detector telescope, while DASI (Degree Angular Scale Interferometer, see figure 2) is a CMBR interferometry experiment credited with the first detection of CMBR polarization. QUaD uses the existing DASI mechanical infrastructure but replaces the DASI interferometric array with a bolometer detector at the end of a cassegrain reflecting telescope.
One measure of the scientific security of the biblically predicted cosmic creation model is the very specific detail astronomers can now attribute to their explanation for the origin, history, and design of the universe. Over the last 50 years, astronomers have progressed from establishing the big bang model to establishing the LCDM cosmic model. This latest model describes an inflationary hot big bang universe that is dominated primarily by dark energy and secondarily by exotic dark matter where most of the exotic dark matter is in a cold state (that is, where the particles making up the exotic dark matter are moving at low velocities relative to the velocity of light).
What sets the LCDM model from all other cosmic models is that it predicts the CMBR will be polarized at approximately the 10 percent level due to the motions of cosmic matter during very early epochs after the big bang. In a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal, the QUaD Collaboration published their latest and much improved measurements of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the CMBR.2 The Collaboration compared their results with five other CMBR detectors, including one high altitude balloon experiment (BOOMERANG) and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite.3 They found the consistency to be exceptionally tight.
By itself, this remarkable consistency strengthens the case for the inflationary hot big bang LCDM model. The Collaboration moved beyond confirmation of the LCDM model, however, to establish new values for the most important cosmological parameters. After performing a best fit for the results from all six CMBR experiments, they established the following values: Ωbh2 = 0.0224 ± 0.0005, H0 = 70.6 ± 2.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec, ns = 0.960 ± 0.013, and an age for the universe = 13.6 ± 0.2 billion years. Ωbh2 refers to the fraction of the total stuff of the universe that is comprised of baryons (protons and neutrons) multiplied by h2 where h = the Hubble constant, H0, divided by 100. The Hubble constant, H0, is a measure of how rapidly the universe is undergoing continuous expansion. The scalar spectral index, ns, determines what kind, if any, inflation the universe experienced when it was between 10-36 and 10-33 seconds old. Ωbh2 = 0.0224 ± 0.0005 translates into baryons making up 4.494 ± 0.100 percent of all the stuff of the universe. (The remaining constituents of the universe, namely dark energy and exotic matter, each comprise about 73 percent and 23 percent, respectively, of the total.)
The measurement of the scalar spectral index is particularly important. Cosmic models without an inflationary expansion episode predict a scalar spectral index equal to or greater than 1.00. Cosmic models invoking simple inflation predict a scalar spectral index exactly equal to 0.95. For cosmic models with complex inflation the scalar spectral index will manifest a value between 0.96 and 0.97. The QUaD Collaboration’s determined value for ns = 0.960 ± 0.013 means that astronomers are now 99 percent certain that some kind of inflation must have occurred during the first split second after the creation of the universe.
Thanks to the efforts of the QUaD Collaboration team, even stronger evidence now exists that the more astronomers learn about the universe, the more specific a big bang creation model they can identify as remaining consistent with their observations of the universe. New observations continually and consistently provide stronger proofs for a big bang creation event and its Creator described thousands of years ago in the Bible. In this context the biblically predicted big bang creation model and the biblical Creator have passed yet another scientific test.
Endnotes
- Hugh Ross, A Matter of Days (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2004), 139–48.
- S. Gupta et al., “Parameter Estimation from Improved Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background from QUaD,” Astrophysical Journal 716 (June 20, 2010): 1040–46.
- C. Bischoff et al., “New Measurements of Fine-Scale CMB Polarization Power Spectra from CAPMAP at Both 40 and 90 GHz,” Astrophysical Journal 684 (September 10, 2008): 771–89; T. E. Mountroy et al., “A Measurement of the CMB (EE) Spectrum from the 2003 Flight of BOOMERANG,” Astrophysical Journal 647 (August 20, 2006): 813–22; J. L. Sievers et al., “Implications of the Cosmic Background Imager Polarization Data,” Astrophysical Journal 660 (May 10, 2007): 976–87; D. Barkats et al., “First Measurements of the Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation at Small Angular Scales from CAPMAP,” Astrophysical Journal Letters 619 (February 1, 2005): L127–L130; M±. R. Nolta et al., “Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Observations: Angular Power Spectra,” Astrophysical Journal Supplement 180 (February 2009): 296–305; L. Page et al., “Three-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Polarization Analysis,” Astrophysical Journal Supplement 170 (June 2007): 335–76; J. M. Kovac et al., “Detection of Polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background Using DASI,” Nature 420 (December 19, 2002): 772–87; A. C. S. Readhead et al., “Polarization Observations with the Cosmic Background Imager,” Science 306 (October 29, 2004): 836–44.