(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You can also listen to the podcast of the interview on WCPN 90.3 about the book.)
For previous posts in this series, see here.
Although the universe is mostly empty space (leaving aside for the moment dark energy and dark matter), there is quite a lot of matter in it. Some of it is in dense clumps that we call planets, stars, and galaxies. The rest is far more dilute and consists of interstellar gases and dust. And quite a lot of it is in the form of massless photons. So the question naturally arises: where did all this stuff come from? Doesn’t it require a massive input of energy right at the beginning that violates the law of conservation of energy (also known as the first law of thermodynamics), one of the bedrock principles of science? The answer is simple: No.
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