1

. The analogy of “stretching out heaven like a tent curtain” (Ps 104:2 and Is 40:22) suggests that the heavens existed in a smaller, denser, finite form before the stretching began. The evidence cited in this section titled “Stellar Velocities,” “Speeding Galaxies,” “Dwarf Galaxies,” “Strings of Galaxies,” “Star Streams,” “Colliding Galaxies,” and “Helium-2 Nebulas” implies a finite universe before stretching began.

2

. Andrei Linde, “The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe,” Scientific American, Vol. 271, November 1994, p. 48.

3

. “According to inflationary cosmology, the universe [began] growing from a patch as small as 10-26 m, one hundred billion times smaller than a proton, ...” Alan H. Guth and David I. Kaiser, “Inflationary Cosmology: Exploring the Universe from the Smallest to the Largest Scales,” Science, Vol. 307, 11 February 2005, p. 885.

4

. See “Interstellar Gas” on page 87.

5

. “The masses of these early black holes are inferred from their [quasar] luminosities to be >109 solar masses, which is a difficult theoretical challenge [for the big bang theory] to explain.” Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, “Spectral Signature of Cosmological Infall of Gas Around the First Quasars,” Nature, Vol. 421, 23 January 2003, p. 341.

“The daunting problem for theories of structure formation in the Universe is to understand how such huge black holes [3 billion solar masses] and the vast reservoirs of gaseous fuel were assembled so soon after the Big Bang ...”  Edwin L. Turner, “Through a Lens Brightly,” Nature, 27 June 2002, p. 905.

“... such black holes indeed formed early in the history of the universe and were already devouring matter voraciously a mere billion years after the Big Bang.”  Ron Cowen, “Mature Before Their Time,” Science News, Vol. 163, 1 March 2003, p. 139.

6

. “But the standard model [the big bang theory] still can’t easily account for a large number of mature or massive galaxies in the early universe.”  Ibid.

“But this uniformity [in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation] is difficult to reconcile with the obvious clumping of matter into galaxies, clusters of galaxies and even larger features extending across vast regions of the universe, such as ‘walls’ and ‘bubbles’. ” Ivars Peterson, “Seeding the Universe,” Science News, Vol. 137, 24 March 1990, p. 184.

“Gravity can’t, over the age of the universe, amplify these irregularities enough [to form huge clusters of galaxies].” Margaret Geller, as quoted by John Travis, “Cosmic Structures Fill Southern Sky,” Science, Vol. 263, 25 March 1994, p. 1684.

“Yet how could the universe have gone from homogeneous plasma to pancakes to galaxies so quickly? Gravity alone was simply not strong enough to do it.”  M. Mitchell Waldrop, “The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe,” Science, Vol. 219, 4 March 1983, p. 1051.

Robert Irion, “Early Galaxies Baffle Observers, but Theorists Shrug,” Science, Vol. 303, 23 January 2004, p. 460.

7

. “The black hole’s inactivity [today] suggests that the central few light years doesn’t contain enough raw material to make stars. And the enormous gravitational tidal forces around the black hole would seem to prohibit stars from forming even if the material were there: it’s hard for a cloud of gas to contract into a star under its own gravity when something that weighs as much as four million stars is sitting next door.” Jeff Kanipe, “A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Not So Far Away,” Nature, Vol. 446, 5 April 2007, p. 601.

8

. “In principle, this could have occurred if the density of the gases in the centre of the Galaxy was much higher in the past. Higher density would allow clumps in the clouds to collapse to form stars, even in the presence of a strong gravitational field [of a black hole].” Ibid., p. 602.

9

. “The discovery of massive, evolved galaxies at much greater distances than expected—and hence at earlier times in the history of the Universe—is a challenge to our understanding of how galaxies form.” Gregory D. Wirth, “Old Before Their Time,” Nature, Vol. 430, 8 July 2004, p. 149.

A. Cimatti et al., “Old Galaxies in the Young Universe,” Nature, Vol. 430, 8 July 2004, p.  184.

David Shiga, “Nursery Pictures,” Science News, Vol. 167, 5 March 2005, pp. 148–149.

10

. “Thirty-seven of the brightest galaxies were detected, including a quasar, but thousands of galaxies were probably in the string, according to astronomer Dr. Paul Francis who heads the team. But none of the existing computer simulation models were able to reproduce galaxy strings as large as the one the team found. ‘We are looking back four-fifths of the way to the beginning of the universe and the existence of this galaxy string will send astrophysicists around the world back to the drawing board to re-examine [big bang] theories of the formation of the universe,’ Francis said. The simulations tell us that you cannot take the matter in the early universe and line it up in strings this large. There simply hasn’t been enough time since the Big Bang for it to form structures this colossal.”  Science & Space, “Galaxy Find Stirs Big Bang Debate,” www.cnn.com on 8 January 2004.

Paul J. Francis et al., “An 80 Mpc Filament of Galaxies at Redshift Z=2.38,” presented to the American Astronomical Society (Atlanta, Georgia), 7 January 2004.

      [80  Mpc =  1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000  miles                        =  2,400,000,000,000,000,000,000  kilometers                        =  261,000,000  light-years]

M. Mitchell Waldrop, “The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe Gets Larger—Maybe,” Science, Vol. 238, 13 November 1987, p. 894.

M. Mitchell Waldrop, “Astronomers Go Up Against the Great Wall,” Science, Vol. 246, 17 November 1989, p. 885.

11

. Robert Irion, “The Hunt for Stealth Galaxies,” Science, Vol. 308, 20 May 2005, pp. 1104–1106.

“The existence of quiescent, extended gaseous disks around a handful of dwarf irregular galaxies is puzzling.”  Liese van Zee, “A Large Gas Disk Around a Small Galaxy,” National Radio Astronomy Observatory Newsletter, Issue 103, April 2005, p. 13.

12

. “Hundreds of small galaxies have been ripped apart by our galaxy, creating tenuous streams of stars that slowly mix into the Milky’s indigenous population.” Rodrigo Ibata and Brad Gibson, “The Ghosts of Galaxies Past,” Scientific American, Vol. 296, April 2007, p. 41.

13

. Sidney van den Bergh, “Clumps That Survive to Tell a Tale,” Nature, Vol. 402, 4 November 1999, pp. 31–32.

14

. “Violent encounters between galaxies appear surprisingly common.” Joshua Barnes et al., “Colliding Galaxies,” Scientific American, Vol. 265, August 1991, p. 40.

“... merging two spiral galaxies to make an elliptical [galaxy] is statistically improbable.” James E. Gunn, as quoted by Karen Hartley, “Mixing It Up in Space,” Science News, Vol. 135, 8 April 1989, p. 219.

15

. “Other studies of elliptical galaxies have found additional signs of recent merging. In some ellipticals, for example, the central region rotates in one direction, while the outer parts spin the other way. Such a countervailing rotation pattern would be difficult to explain if these galaxies formed all of one piece but could come about quite naturally from a merger.”  Barnes et al., p. 41.

16

. “Hotter stars ‘are not predicted by normal stellar evolution, so the presence of the He II nebulas is a bit of a mystery’ comments Garnett ...”  Donald R. Garnett, as quoted by Ron Cowen, “Gorgeous Gas,” Science News, Vol. 163, 24 May 2003, p. 328.

17

. “No one knows what dark matter is, but they know what it is not. It’s not part of the ‘standard model’ of physics that weaves together everything that is known about ordinary matter and its interactions.”  Jenny Hogan, “Welcome to the Dark Side,” Nature, Vol. 448, 19 July 2007, p. 241.

“We know little about that sea. The terms we use to describe its components, ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy,’ serve mainly as expressions of our ignorance.”  David B. Cline, “The Search for Dark Matter,” Scientific American, Vol. 288, March 2003, p. 52.