To: DLL who wrote (16025 ) 5/20/1998 9:39:00 PM From: DLL Respond to of 39621
The Beginning of Time All this evidence has become somewhat academic. In 1968 and 1970 three British astrophysicists, Stephen Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose, extended the solution of the equations of general relativity to include space and time.10, 11 Their papers showed that if these equations are valid for the universe, then, under reasonably general conditions, space and time also must have an origin, an origin coincident with that for matter and energy. In other words, time must have a beginning. In 1970 general relativity still had not been overwhelmingly established by observations. But by 1980 observations removed any doubts.12 Three independent lines of research (color-luminosity fitting of globular cluster stars, nucleochronology of supernovae nuclides, and the Hubble time for the expansion of the universe) yield a definite and consistent age for the universe of 16 +/- 3 billion years. With the knowledge that time has a beginning, and a relatively recent beginning at that, all age-lengthening attempts to save agnostic science should cease. Moreover, the common origin of matter, energy, space, and time proves that the act(s) of creation must transcend the dimensions and substance of the universe-a powerful argument for the biblical doctrine of God. 10. Hawking, Stephen W. and Ellis, George F. R. "The Cosmic Black-Body Radiation and the Existence of Singularities in Our Universe," in Astrophysical Journal, 152. (1968), pp.25-36. 11. Hawking, Stephen and Penrose, Roger. "The Singularities of Gravitational collapse and Cosmology," in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 314. (1970), pp.529-548. 12. Vessot, R. F. C., Levine, M. W., Mattison, E. M., Blomberg, E. L., Hoffman, T. E., Nystrom, G. U., and Farrel, B. F. "Test of Relativistic Gravitation with a Space-Borne Hydrogen Maser," in Physical Review Letters, 45. (1980), pp. 2081-2084.