Einstein’s Self-Professed Greatest Blunder and the Existence of God

Part II The Existence of God

Ironically it turns out that there really is a Cosmological Constant! Its value determines the expansion of the universe and it has to be very precisely set to allow for complex biological life.  If the universe expands too quickly, stars won’t form and there is no life.  But if it expands too slowly, the universe collapses back on itself with the same result: no life.  I don’t know about you, but I take this kind of personally!

In fact, science has learned that many of the constants in nature are not arbitrary, but have to be fine-tuned in order to make life possible.  The mass of the proton, the strength of the electromagnetic force, and many others all must be set to tight tolerances to support life. (more…)

Einstein’s Self-Professed Greatest Blunder and the Existence of God

Part I – The Blunder

Around 1905, as Einstein completed his relativity equations, he could see they predicted that the universe was expanding.  But because at that time everyone believed that the universe was eternal and stable, and there was no physical evidence of expansion, he added another term to eliminate the prediction.  That term came to be called the Cosmological Constant.

Unfortunately for Einstein, over the next 25 years that was about to change forever.

In relatively short order, astronomers discovered other galaxies where they had thought that the Milky Way galaxy itself was the universe.  They determined that these galaxies were ALL moving away from us and at fantastic speeds – some at 2-3,000 miles per second.  And they discovered that the further away they were, the faster they were moving.  This was very puzzling.

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