I think this is just a copy of the original article, which can be found here:

http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Bojowald6-2007.htm

 That doesn't matter. However, the find is quite spectacular. I'm quite impressed by it. I was thinking maybe we should try to raise some money for this guy and either make him a spokesperson for atheism, or if he's unwilling, at the very least support him and his research, which clearly supports an infinite universe.

I had thought a long time ago, "If we could just show that there was a universe before this one, it's a massive blow to theism."

I haven't seen the models, but I'd certainly like to! Let's hope they're published. 

If you could answer this question you would get a Nobel Prize.  No body really knows.  There are lots of thoughts.  I think the big bang theory is the best we have, but it still leaves alot of problems.  It really feels like early moon origin theory, were they were using Newtonian physics to find out were the moon would be in the distance past having it flung off of the earth.

Not exactly. Currently, we DO NOT have evidence of enough dark matter-energy to confirm such models. This is not to say such does not exist. We find sorces of such regularly - for example nuetron stars. The blunt fact of the matter is, we have no idea how to observe the things we'd need to observe to confirm or deny such a model at this point.

Like it or not, the oscillating or eternal universe model is one well worth considering, especially when one considers variants of it like Smolin's model.

I've made my thoughts well know years ago, and may as well again, here's an excerpt:

Atheists are very well aware of the first law of thermodynamics, and it is this very concept that makes what theists propose, a creation ex nihlo, ridiculous.

Creation ex nihlo is a classic failure of human perception.

No painting comes to exist without a painter, no building is built without an architect, etc. Seems logical enough, but do these people create from literally nothing or is it more accurate to say they assemble existing materials? For no painter starts with nothing - they start with blank canvass and paint. No builder starts with nothing, they start with brick, mortar and blueprints. Something never comes from literally nothing.

Looking at things from the perspective of a First Cause argument, which theists are quite fond of, for something to exercise influence on the universe this causal agent must have already existed. Something nonexistent can't serve as a causal agent; thus causality must assume existence. Theists arguing for a creation of the universe ex nihlo, however have their logic backward - that existence assumes causation.

What the atheist can offer is a scientific explanation that meshes with conventional logic.

If we take matter-energy to be eternal, uncaused - as our best science seems to suggest (see the first law again), then existence is simply axiomatic. The universe just is, and the Big Bang becomes more or less a transitional event. The universe as we know it began with the Big Bang, but the matter-energy was always there, it must have been - to say otherwise turns all of physics as we understand it on its head.

We know that matter-energy is conserved - always, in every instance we have ever observed or theorized about. It is but a simple and very reasonable extrapolation to then say that matter-energy has always been, and it is empirically evident. There is no need to postulate a creator or a creation ex nihlo.

Not only does science point to existence being axiomatic, but simple logic does as well, because “nothing” is an incoherent concept. “Nothing” is not lack, not empty, not the void, not darkness, not the absence of anything, because the absence of anything would still be something. So again, the concept of creation from literally nothing makes no sense, because “nothing” quite literally cannot exist.

In the end, the theist is reduced to demanding to know why there is something rather than nothing – but this too begs the question, because it presumes that nothing or non-existence ought to be the natural state of things. This is like presuming the sky is supposed to be green and then citing the fact that it is blue as evidence for a Creator.

A scientist does not ask "why is there something rather than nothing", but rather "why SHOULDN'T there be something rather than nothing". There isn't anything about the universe that suggests it shouldn't be here and be exactly as we observe it be.

All of that aside, current quantum theories may in fact have room for our universe coming from what would be perceptually (not literally) nothing. Such theories included the universe arising from a quantum vacuum fluctuation that propagated itself, proposed by Ed Tyron in the early 1970s and a variation upon this proposed by Alex Vilenkin in the 80s that was dubbed quantum tunneling.

The most lucid theory going at the moment was proposed by Stephen Hawking and James Hartle, and is often dubbed the “no boundary proposal”. Their view provides a description of the universe in its entirety, viewed as a self-contained entity, with no reference to anything that might have come before it – pretty much what I’ve laid out above. For Hawking, this description is timeless, for as one looks at earlier and earlier times, they find that the universe is not eternal, but has no creation event either. Instead, at times of the order of Planck time (10-43 seconds), our classical understanding of space-time is reduced to quantum soup. In Hawking's exact words:

“The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.' The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.” - A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 136.

Smolin's theory of fecund universes illustrate what I'm trying to describe quite well, I think. He essentially theorizes that each black hole is the begininning of a new universe, and there is evidence to support this on the quantum level. What we believe happened at the big bang and what we observe to happen at black holes are quite similar. Now while this is an ad hoc theory to a certain degree, there is a distintinction that must be made:

In the end, naturalistic explanations of why and how we are here are infinitiley less ad hoc than supernaturalistic ones, and that's what should concern us as critical thinkers and scientists.

The Big Bang most certainly does not violate the second law of thermodynamics either, nor does evolution (I never get tired of hearing that one). Theists and creationists would do themselves a gigantic favor to stop pontificating on subjects they clearly have no understanding of.

First of all, entropy is not a measure of order or disorder, per se, nor does it stipulate that ordered systems are not possible, even for a closed system.

Let me assure you that what follows is greatly simplified, but I wanted to take a look at the actual energy states of the universe, pre and post Big Bang.

The total mass-energy of the universe is constant (1st law of thermodynamics). Entropy is a spread in the distribution of energy over quantum states (from a quantum standpoint) or phase space (from a classical standpoint) over time. In more basic terms, entropy is a measure of the "quality" of heat or available energy. It is essentially the thermodynamic principle that gives us equilibrium and states that systems tend to move toward equilibrium - i.e. a hot or cold object tends to reach the temperature of the environment it is in. (Note that while in general systems move toward equilibrium, it is still possible to move away from equilibrium at points within the system where there are energy gradients).

The only cosmological implication I can think of that results directly from the 2nd Law is the theory of the "heat death" of our universe - that once our universe reaches equilibrium it will be cold, dark and desolate (if there is not enough dark matter in the universe to halt its expansion and quantum fluctuations don't become large players, that is).

The theory goes that once the universe reaches maximum entropy that there will be no more free energy to sustain motion or life and the temperature of the universe would be around absolute zero. It is important to realize what "heat death" means here - we are talking about maximum entropy for a given state and temperature. It is very possible and indeed many theorize that before the universe began its current expansion that it was also at "heat death" - albeit at a different, state and temperature. We are not necessarily talking about temperature, but free energy - the amount of work that can be extracted from a system
If the system is at maximum entropy it is at equilibrium for that particular state by definition. Change the state (temperature, pressure, volume, etc) and you move away from equilibrium.

Now for some math and thermodynamics, brace yourselves:
Free energy is the amount of work that a system can do - you can think of it as the amount of useful energy in the system; energy that can cause motion, or heat things up. There are two kinds of free energy - Helmholtz and Gibbs.

Gibbs free energy is defined as:

G = H - TS

where G is the Gibb's energy, H is enthalpy*, T is temperature and S entropy.

Any natural process will occur spontaneously if and only if the associated change in G for the system is negative. This means that, a system reaches equilibrium when the associated change in G for the system is zero (ΔG = zero), and no spontaneous process will occur if the change in G is positive (ΔG > 0).

*-enthalpy is heat content.

Helmholtz free energy is defined as:

A = U-TS

where A is the Helmholtz energy, U is the internal energy of the system, T is the temperature and S is entropy.

The total work performed on a system at constant temperature in a reversible process is equal to the change in Helmholtz free energy.


Now, let's do some math.

(In the below <and>= will be greater than or equal too and less than or equal to. dX will be the partial derivative of the property X.)

The second law states that in a closed system, equilibrium is reached when entropy is maximized:

dS >= dQ/dT

Now, let's examine "heat death". Let's say for simplicity’s sake that prior to the universe expanding, it was at a constant temperature and volume.

A little algebra allows us to write the 2nd law as:

dQ - TdS = 0

One can combine the 1st and 2nd laws in a well known equation (I'll derive this if you are really interested, but it should be well known to people in engineering and physics fields):

dU = TdS - pdV

substituting in the Helmholtz equation:

dA = dQ - TdS - pdV - SdT

If the universe were at constant temperature and volume (say prior to the big bang) we get:

dA(T,V) = dQ - TdS <= 0

So at constant T and V the Helmholtz free energy will seek a minimum - this means that for a spontaneous process to occur the net change in free energy must be zero (equilibrium) or decrease (not yet at equilibrium). Alternatively, one could expand the system and reduce the temperature - and this is what we think happened and is happening now.

So now we have an expanding, cooling system. Similarly we can substitute the Gibb's equation and get:

dG(T,P) = dQ - TdS <=0

This means that as our universe cools and expands to a constant temperature the Gibbs energy seeks a minimum. For a spontaneous process to occur the change in Gibbs energy must be negative (if not yet at equilibrium) or zero (if at equilibrium).

In the two cases I've described - two states of the universe, there would be no free energy available to do work and the system would be essentially static.

That the universe will reach another state of heat death depends on whether or not there is enough dark matter-energy in the universe to halt its expansion. Why the universe began to expand in the first place is a bit of a mystery, but ample empirical evidence tells us that this expansion did indeed occur.
So no, “disorderly” helium and hydrogen didn’t form the stars, for these gases certainly aren’t what one could ever call disorderly from an entropic point of view. Helium and hydrogen did condense as the universe began to cool, and were coalesced into stars by gravitational forces between the molecules.

Here's another wrench to throw into the model. Could intelligent life forms such as man affect the destiny of the universe?

Suppose the human race doesn't allow irrational thinking to destroy all life on earth. Then technology could advanced to the point where humans could create stars, artificial gravity and black holes and move galaxies. Is there free will in humans and randomness at a quantum level such that one cannot predict the destiny of the universe? It's like predicting the stock market.

Is the fate of the universe tied to our destiny?