OM 1-7: Missing Mass

The big bang theory is supposed to explain the universe, but a major problem is that many features of the universe are not understood clearly enough to be the subject of such explanation. One big mystery is the problem of missing mass. Physicist David Schramm of the University of Chicago explains, "From all the light being emitted by the Milky Way, we can estimate that our galaxy contains the mass of about one hundred billion suns. But once we take this same object [the Milky Way] and see how it interacts with another galaxy, such as our neighbor Andromeda, we find that our galaxy is gravitating toward Andromeda as though it had a mass almost ten times as great."22 It thus appears that over 90% of the mass of the universe is missing. Ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos have been put forward as the solution. Originally, however, the invisible neutrino was assigned no mass by physicists, but now it has suddenly been assigned mass sufficient to account for the missing matter in the universe as a whole. How convenient.

So even when we leave aside the questions of primal origins and get down to the picture of the universe as it is today, there are still many unanswered questions. The scientists will assert to the public with an air of absolute conviction that they know the universe extends x millions of light years and that it has existed for a total of y billion years. They say that they have identified all the major bodies in the universe for what they are-distant stars, galaxies, nebulae, quasars, and so forth. Yet even the local Milky Way galaxy is not clearly understood.

For example, in Scientific American noted astronomer Bart J. Bok wrote, "I remember the mid 1970s as a time when I and my fellow [Milky Way] watchers were notably self-assured … we did not suspect it would soon be necessary to revise the radius of the Milky Way upward by a factor of three or more and to increase its mass by as much as a factor of 10."23 If such basic measurements recently had to be drastically revised after so many decades of observation, then what might the future hold? Will there be even more drastic revisions?

Even when we get down to our own solar system, we find there are fundamental problems. The traditional account for the origin of planets-that they have condensed from clouds of cosmic dust and gas-is on very shaky ground because the equations for the interactions of the gas clouds have never been satisfactorily solved. William McRae, professor of astronomy at England's Sussex University and past president of the Royal Astronomical Society, states, "The problem of the origin of the solar system is perhaps the most notable of all unsolved problems in astronomy."24

It should be clear at this point to any impartial onlooker that the strategy of materialistic reduction followed by cosmologists has not allowed them to arrive at firm conclusions about the origin and nature of the universe, despite their public posturing. There is certainly no compelling reason for anyone to insist that the ultimate answers to cosmological questions must be contained in simple mathematically expressed physical laws. Indeed, the quantitative method has proved inadequate for explaining many phenomena very close at hand, what to speak of explaining the vast universe. Therefore it is certainly too early to exclude alternative approaches, approaches that may involve nonphysical explanations-explanations involving principles that go beyond the known laws of physics.