This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
(7th Edition) by Dr. Walt Brown. The online version of the book is designed to be read online.
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The Evidence
Accelerating Expansion. The redshift of distant starlight suggests an expansion. However, a big bang should produce only a decelerating expansion, not the accelerating expansion observed. [See “Dark Thoughts” on page 31.] Stretching, completed during the creation week, could have produced the accelerated expansion indicated by the light finally reaching Earth today from the edge of the visible universe.
Star Formation. Astronomers recognize that the densest concentrations of gas seen in the universe could not form stars by any known means, including gravitational collapse, unless that gas was thousands of times more compact than today.4 Apparently, stars were formed as, or before, the heavens were stretched out.
Black Holes. A black hole is at the center of at least every nearby galaxy. (Black holes are so massive that nothing can escape their gravity—even light.) Astronomers admit that black holes must have existed very soon after the universe began,5 but the big bang theory says that all matter was spread out uniformly after 300,000 years, before stars formed. That uniformity would prevent gravity from forming galaxies and black holes even over the supposed age of the universe.6 However, stars and black holes could easily have formed or existed soon after the creation of matter and the universe, when the universe was much smaller and the heavens had not yet been stretched out. Had this stretching not occurred, all the matter in the universe would have collapsed into a black hole. Life would not exist.
Central Stars. About forty stars are orbiting within a few dozen light-hours of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Those stars could never have evolved that close to a black hole, which has the mass of 4,000,000 suns. The black hole’s gravity would have prevented gas from collapsing to become a star.7 However, those stars could have formed in a much denser environment,8 before space was stretched out during the creation week.
Spiral Galaxies. If spiral galaxies formed billions of years ago, their arms should be wrapped more tightly around their centers than they are. Also, nearer galaxies should show much more “wrap” than more distant spiral galaxies. [See Figure 167 on page 328.] However, if space was recently stretched out, spiral galaxies could appear as they do.
Heavy Elements in Stars. According to the big bang theory, there are three generations of stars, each with increasing amounts of heavy elements. The first generation would have contained only hydrogen and helium. After hundreds of millions of years, second-generation stars would begin forming with heavier elements made inside first-generation stars that later exploded. Although some first-generation stars should still be visible, not one has ever been found. [See Endnote 56n on page 87.]
According to the stretching explanation, stars have always had some heavier chemical elements. Telescopes that can see the farthest back in time see stars, galaxies, and quasars containing these heavier chemical elements.
Stellar Velocities. Stars in the outer parts of spiral galaxies travel much faster than they should based on physical laws. However, if only thousands of years ago those stars were nearer the centers of their galaxies before the heavens were stretched out, they could have had the higher speeds we see. Those speeds would remain even after the heavens were stretched out. (So-called dark matter, which has not been directly measured or detected, would not need to be imagined to explain these velocities.)
Speeding Galaxies. A similar observation can be made about tight clusters of galaxies. Galaxies in clusters are traveling much faster than they should, based on their distances from their clusters’ centers of mass.
Distant Galaxies. Massive galaxies and galaxy clusters are now found at such great distances that they must have formed soon after the universe began. The big bang theory cannot explain how such galaxy concentrations could have formed so quickly and so far away.9 The stretching explanation says that galaxies and galaxy clusters began before the heavens were stretched out, when all matter was relatively confined.
Strings of Galaxies. It is widely recognized that gravity would not pull matter into long strings of hundreds or thousands of galaxies—even if the universe were unbelievably old. Instead, gravity, if acting over enormous time and distances, would form more spherical globs of matter. Yet, long, massive filaments of galaxies have been discovered.10
These strings of galaxies can be understood if galaxies were formed when all matter in the universe was initially confined to a much smaller volume. (In that small volume, stars and galaxies formed either by the direct acts of a Creator or by the powerful gravitational forces resulting from so much extremely confined mass.) Then, the heavens were rapidly stretched out. Just as one might pull taffy into long strings, the stretched out heavens might contain long, massive strings of thousands of galaxies. A surprising number appear connected or aligned with other galaxies or quasars, as prominent astronomers have noted. [See “Connected Galaxies” on page 40.]
Star Streams. Some stars within our Milky Way Galaxy are moving in paths and with velocities that show they were captured from neighboring dwarf galaxies. The stars in each stream also have common chemical characteristics. Most of these dwarf galaxies have been completely “consumed” by our galaxy.11 However, one of them, Sagittarius, is still visible, but its orbit and its core of tightly packed stars are too far away to be captured by the Milky Way’s gravity.12
All this can be explained in two ways: (1) before the universe was stretched out, Sagittarius and the consumed dwarfs were formed but much closer to the initial Milky Way Galaxy, or (2) dark matter (if it exists at all) was distributed in unknown ways that helped form these dwarf galaxies and placed them in different orbits that allowed them to be captured and cannibalized by the Milky Way Galaxy. Obviously, hypothesis (1) is the simpler of the two.
Dwarf Galaxies. Dwarf galaxies are sometimes imbedded in a smoothly rotating disk of hydrogen gas that is much larger than the galaxy itself. The mass (hidden or otherwise) of each dwarf galaxy and its surrounding gas is insufficient to pull the gas into its disk shape,13 but if this matter was once highly concentrated and then the space it occupied was recently stretched out, all observed characteristics would be explained.
Colliding Galaxies. Some galaxies contain two distinct rotating systems, as if a galaxy rotating one way collided with another rotating the opposite way. Based on the speeds of galaxies we see and their separation distances today, such mergers would take billions of years.
Does this mean that the universe must be billions of years old? No. Before the heavens were stretched out, galaxies would have been closer to each other, resulting in much greater speeds and frequent collisions. Today, galaxies are stretched so far apart that, according to astronomers’ calculations, collisions should rarely happen. However, past galactic mergings are surprisingly common.14
If some galaxies merged over billions of years, why haven’t the different rotations within a merged galaxy homogenized by now? Obviously, the mergings did not happen billions of years ago.15
Helium-2 Nebulas. Clouds of glowing, blue gas, called helium-2 nebulas, have been set aglow by something hot enough to strip two electrons from each helium atom. No known star—young or old—is hot enough to do so,16 but compressed conditions before the heavens were stretched out would do this.
Dark “Science.” The big bang theory must invoke unscientific concepts, such as “dark matter” and “dark energy,” to try to explain the “stretched out heavens.” What is dark matter and dark energy? Even believers in those ideas don’t know.17 [Dark matter, dark energy, and many other scientific problems with the big bang theory are discussed, beginning on page 30.]
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is often given as evidence for the big bang theory. Actually, that radiation, when studied closely, is a strong argument against the big bang and evidence for the sudden creation of matter within an immense universe. [For details, see pages 337–339.]