Why such a Vast Universe?
Many have asked this question, and there is a good answer, if one just takes the time to look for it.
The question:
“We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?” ― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time 1988
Carl Sagan in 1985: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
“If God created the universe as a special place for humanity, he seems to have wasted an awfully large amount of space where humanity will never make an appearance.” Victor Stenger in 2007 (by 2007, the answer to the question was known, so why is he asking this question?)
Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second (or about 186,282 miles per second) in space. Thus, looking farther out into space is looking further back in time. While traveling at a very high speed, light still takes time to travel the vast distances of space. The closest star is 4.37 light-years away. Closest galaxy 2.5 million light-years away. With the Cosmic microwave background radiation, we can “see” back 13.787 billion years ago. Hubble Deep Field images are just a little less. Hubble eXtreme Deep Field Image contains about 5,500 galaxies, the oldest of which are seen as they were 13.2 billion years ago. Many of the smaller galaxies in the image are very young galaxies. The Hubble photo was taken over 23 days. The 2018 Planck Collaboration puts the age of the universe at 13.787 ±0.020 billion years. The universe is vast. Cosmic Microwave Background is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. It is the remains of the creation of the universe. Creation of a small, very hot, origin. But Why?
The universe has been expanding since creation (Singularity, now called the Big Bang). This expansion is accelerating. After the Big Bang, the universe expanded and then slowed down due to gravity. However, about 9 billion years after the Big Bang, the expansion started speeding up again, driven by dark energy. Size, mass, expansion, and age of the universe all must be correct for stars to make all the elements essential for life. A smaller universe – too many black holes and too many heavy elements, (too hot). A larger universe – no heavy elements that are essential for life, (too cool). The universe is just the right size to have life not only here on Earth, but anywhere in the universe. There is NO waste, it is the prefect size.
"The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.” Freeman Dyson - 1979, Dyson was a theoretical physicist and mathematician who worked in quantum field theory, astrophysics, mathematical quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, and engineering. See Anthropic Principle page.
The space (size), time (age), and expansion of the universe, coupled with Earth's placement (one of the darkest places in the universe), has given us the ability to observe most of the observable universe. Or as the Bible put it long ago: Psalm 19:1 "The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship."
Given the fixed law of physics, the universe has just the right size, age, mass, and expansion rate for life here on Earth. As the Bible put is 3,500 years ago: Genesis 1:31 “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
The observable universe is the universe we can see and study. Because light takes time to travel and the universe is expanding, the actual universe is much larger, but is still 13.787 billion years old and finite in size. The universe of the past was smaller.
The required fine-tuning is so extreme (one part in a quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion) that if one were to remove or add a single dime’s worth of mass to this vast cosmos, the balance of the observable universe would be thrown off and physical life would not be possible. Such amazing fine-tuning suggests the involvement of a supernatural, superintelligent Creator.
Why wait so long to have Life on Earth?
Not only does it take 13.787 billion years to get stars to produce the elements needed for life. But life also needs protection from the stars that made these needed elements! Earth's core has long-lived radioactive isotopes. These help protect life on Earth and drive the necessary plate tectonics. Core isotopes: Uranium-238,Uranium-235, Thorium-232, and Potassium-40. Earth's Magnetic Field shields Earth from harmful solar particles and cosmic rays. Plate tectonics recycles nutrients from the ocean floors and the Earth's interior up onto dry land. Earth is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years old, which is about one-third the age of the universe. This wait time is needed to prepare Earth for advanced life. No advanced life is possible earlier in the universe and no advanced life will be possible later in the universe. Not only was the early universe lacking the correct amount of advanced life-required elements, it was also a dangerous place. Many gamma-ray bursts were present in the early universe. The young Sun was unstable, it is only now in it most stable state. The early Earth had heavy bombardment. The early days of Earth were too short. The early Earth lack of oxygen. The early Earth lack of landmass. See the Earth age page and Creation model for more info.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was brooding over the waters.” Genesis 1:1-2 - Early Earth described correctly, 3,500 years ago.
Then where is an Atheist to go?
With the design of life and the complete universe from its creation (Big Bang) to today, all fine-tuned for life as the Bible stated thousands of years ago (3,500 BC to 90 AD (CE), where is an atheist to escape to ? 1) Abanding the law of cuase and effect, some say life cuase the univeres to be the way it it, this is a form of eastern mysticism. The universe has some kind of "mind" or consciousness. 2) The observer is the creator, again abandoning the law of cause and effect. 3) There are many universes, see the Multiverse page.
Also see the Life page and Anthropic Principle page
For more info, see the links to the two videos: Why the Universe is the Way it is: Why Part 1 and Why Part 2
Ref:
Beth A. Reid et al., “Cosmological Constraints from the Clustering of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7 Luminous Red Galaxies,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 404, no. 1 (May 2010): 60–85, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16276.x; Max Tegmark et al., “Cosmological Constraints from the SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies,” Physical Review D 74, no. 12 (August 2006): id. 123507, doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.74.123507.
P. A. R. Ade et al., Planck Collaboration, “Planck 2015 Results. XIII. Cosmological Parameters,” Astronomy & Astrophysics 594 (October 2016), id. A13, doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201525830.
Gary Hinshaw et al., “Nine-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Parameter Results,” Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 208, no. 2 (October 2013): 1, id. 19, doi:10.1088/0067-0049/208/2/19.
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Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries Reveal God, 4th ed. (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2018), 69.
Kevin Dowd et al., “How Unlucky is 25-Sigma?” Preprint, submitted March 24, 2008. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.5672.pdf.
https://www.imlcarbon.com/interesting-facts-about-carbon-the-vital-element-that-changed-the-world/
https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/climate-change/the-carbon-story/
Alexey Burov and Lev Burov, “Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe,” in Trick or Truth? The Mysterious Connection between Physics and Mathematics, edited by Anthony Aguirre, Brendan Foster, and Zeeya Merali (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2016): 157–70, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-27495-9.
Alexey Burov and Lev Burov, “Metaphysical Status of Physical Laws,” in Plato in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times: Selected Papers from the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, held in Ottawa, Canada (2019), edited by John F. Finamore and Mark Nyvlt (Lydney, UK: The Prometheus Trust, 2020): 130. This paper is available free in its entirety at http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/Metaphysical_Status_of_Physical_Laws.pdf.
Andrew Szanton, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner: As Told to Andrew Szanton (New York: Plenum, 1992), 60–61.
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Burov and Burov, “Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe,” p. 168.
See Stanley L. Jaki, The Savior of Science (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1988).
J. P. Moreland, The Creation Hypothesis (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 17.
J. R. Petit, et al., “Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past 420,000 Years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica,” Nature 399(1999): 429-36.
C.P. Sonett and M.A. Chan, “Neoproterozoic Earth-Moon Dynamics: Rework of the 900 Ma Big Cottonwood Canyon Tidal Laminae,” Geophysical Research Letters 25 (1998): 539-42.
Guillermo Gonzalez, “Wonderful Eclipses,” Astronomy & Geophysics, (June 1999): 3.18-3.20.
Guillermo Gonzalez, “Is the Sun Anomalous?” Astronomy & Geophysics 40 (October 1999): no. 5, 25-29.
Francesco Riva, “A Third Way to Explain Fine Tuning,” Physics 14 (November 15, 2021): 157, https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/157.
2. Nima Arkani-Hamed, Raffaele Tito D’Agnolo, and Hyung Do Kim, “Weak Scale as a Trigger,” Physical Review D 104, no. 9 (November 15, 2021): 095014, https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.095014.