In January, a team of researchers led by a PhD student in the UK announced the discovery of the ‘Big Ring’ – a distant giant structure of galaxies roughly 1.3 billion lightyears in diameter (1). This is larger than what has been predicted to be possible in the Universe, although there are several previous discoveries as well (e.g. the distant ‘Giant Arc’ by the same team, or the local ‘Sloan Great Wall’). The team presented their results at the American Astronomical Society meeting press conference and it was picked up widely – with many headlines along the lines of “Huge ring of galaxies challenges thinking on cosmos” (2) or “Newly discovered cosmic megastructure challenges theories of the universe” (3). Where do your thoughts go when you read headlines like that?
News articles are often a bit overhyped to gain the attention of the reader, so it is good to investigate further what really has been discovered and what it might imply for our current theories. Do new discoveries that do not fit within the current theories discredit these theories completely? Could they be evidence for something – or someone – outside the models, maybe God? Might they be an opportunity to enrich and improve our understanding of how nature works?
In the case of the ‘Big Ring’, the new discovery does not completely overhaul our current cosmological model. There are many independent lines of evidence for the Big Bang (4). It was first proposed to account for observations showing that the Universe is expanding, and it was described mathematically by the Catholic priest Georges Lemaître in 1927, using general relativity. The beauty is that the model makes predictions that can be tested. One of these is that there should be a background of “afterglow” radiation that is left over from the early, hot period just after the Big Bang – this radiation was discovered in 1964. Another is that the Universe should be made up of roughly 75% hydrogen and 25% helium – this is now well-established thanks to measurements of the composition of stars and interstellar gas. The Big Bang model also predicts the gradual formation of structures in the Universe, with galaxies growing over time and forming larger and larger structures – we can now confirm this with many observations.
One assumption in the cosmological model is that on large scales, the Universe is homogeneous (smooth) and isotropic (the same in all directions). If this assumption is correct, only structures up to a given size can form. This is why the discovery of the ‘Big Ring’ and the other large structures is interesting – they are a few times larger than what we expected the maximum size to be. Does that mean the Big Bang model has been invalidated? No; all the other evidence still supports the theory. Is there reason for excitement? Certainly! When we discover things that do not fit within our models, it means we can expect to learn something. This is how we make progress in science!
What should we think about using new discoveries that current models cannot explain (such as the ‘Big Ring’) as evidence for the existence of God? Could they be hinting at God’s special intervention in Nature? There are good reasons to be cautious about this. History teaches us that gaps in our theories often close over time as science progresses. For example, Isaac Newton thought that God needed to sometimes intervene in the orbit of planets in our Solar System in order to keep them on track, but we now have adequate models which don’t require this. The ‘Big Ring’ is likely no different – while Sauron might be particularly interested in a Big Ring, it is difficult to come up with a reason to think that God would have chosen to reveal himself through this particular distant cosmic structure. God created the natural laws, and their regularity is grounded in His faithfulness (Jeremiah 33:25). Nature following God’s laws is bringing Him glory!
Does that mean we cannot appeal to God as a likely explanation for any observed phenomenon? That is not necessarily the case. Some things are either “too big” or “too odd” for science to explain (5) and make more sense if God is the ultimate explanation – for instance of laws of nature, the existence of the Universe, the applicability of mathematics, consciousness, ... (but going into detail on this is better saved for another time).
Whatever we learn about the Big Ring, the Universe itself will still declare the glory of God the Creator.
References:
1. https://www.uclan.ac.uk/news/big-ring-in-the-sky
2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67950749
4. See e.g. “The Cosmic Revolutionary’s Handbook (Or: How to Beat the Big Bang)” by Luke A. Barnes and Geraint F. Lewis for a nice popular level overview. Luke Barnes is a christian.
5. Richard Swinburne, “The Existence of God” - p. 74
