When scientists (or theologians, for that matter) discuss the origin of the universe, they often talk of the impossible. It is a world of ideas, speculation, and hypotheses, not concrete facts.
One impossibility is the singularity. You have likely heard of the Big Bang Theory. It is the dominant theory of the origin of the universe. The idea is that all matter in the universe was at one time compressed into a tiny dot. They call this a singularity. Of course, it is impossible for a singularity to exist. It breaks all the known laws of the universe. We cannot duplicate it in the lab. There is no mathematical formula to explain it. There is simply no rational reason to believe that everything in the universe could be compressed into one small dot. Still, despite all the evidence against it, scientists believe it existed because they need a source of all matter.
Another impossibility that puzzles scientists is where all the oxygen in the early universe came from. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research at the University of Tokyo have this to say:
…a significant discovery emerged among the most distant galaxies: among the seven galaxies discovered from 13.1-13.3 billion years ago, all seven displayed an oxygen abundance level of roughly half or less than expected. For six of the 7 galaxies, there was a 95% or higher probability of a deficit of oxygen abundance. Nakajima emphasizes, “This demonstrates a dramatic increase in the abundance of oxygen in galaxies during the first 500-700 million years after the birth of the universe.”
Prof. Masami Ouchi, a member of the research team from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research at the University of Tokyo, remarks, “The process of how oxygen was created and stored in galaxies has long puzzled scientists. The discovery of a rapid increase in oxygen abundance in the early universe, approximately 13.1 to 13.3 billion years ago, suggests that life in the universe might have emerged earlier than previously believed.”
The amount of oxygen in the early universe is uncertain, but it appears there was a dramatic increase only 500-700 million years after the Big Bang. Much of this oxygen is in the form of water, and there is an incredible amount of it.
The largest reservoir of water discovered so far appears less than 2 billion years after the Big Bang:
Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away.
To give you an idea of how much water that is, it would cover a space one million miles long by a million miles wide and 45 trillion miles deep. To travel through it at the speed of light would take you over nine months. So where did all this oxygen and water come from?
Oxygen is currently being produced through nuclear fusion in stars. This complicated process involves compressing hydrogen under extremely high temperatures and forcing it to fuse into the hydrogen isotope, deuterium. The deuterium then fuses with another hydrogen atom to produce helium-3. Two helium-3 atoms then fuse to become helium-4 and two protons (hydrogen nuclei).
This is where it gets tricky. It takes three helium-4 atoms to produce carbon-12. If only two helium-4 atoms fuse, you get beryllium-8, which is unstable and immediately decays, so it pretty much has to be three helium-4 atoms to get carbon-12.
Now that there is a stable carbon-12 atom, it must then fuse with another helium-4 nucleus to form oxygen.
“But the chances of this reaction occurring naturally in a star are incredibly slim, due to the fact that both an alpha particle and a carbon-12 nucleus are highly positively charged. If they do come in close contact, they are naturally inclined to repel, in what’s known as a Coulomb’s force. To fuse to form oxygen, the pair would have to collide at sufficiently high energies to overcome Coulomb’s force — a rare occurrence.” https://news.mit.edu/2019/experiment-oxygen-universe-082012.
Perhaps you can see why this is such a puzzle. Getting three helium-4 atoms to form carbon is a pretty big hurdle to jump. But an oxygen atom has to cross not only that hurdle but an even bigger one because of the above-mentioned Coulomb’s force.
Logically, there should be more carbon than oxygen because it is a simpler process, but that is not the case. There is more than twice as much oxygen as carbon in the universe. But even more puzzling is why there is so much oxygen in the very early universe. Remember, the universe started out as a tiny dot and is expanding. Therefore, the vast reservoir of water (hydrogen and oxygen) from 12 billion years ago would take up a much bigger percentage of the universe than today.
Scientists have proposed a solution to this problem: hypothetical population III stars. Since the stars we currently observe in the universe do not create oxygen fast enough, it is theorized that there were millions of gigantic, population III stars in the early universe. These were 100 to 1000 times more massive than our sun, and are the source of this early Oxygen.
Today, there are no population III stars. None have ever been observed, and we can’t find any light they left behind. If they did exist in the early universe, they vanished without a trace.
Now I am not a scientist, and I am no theologian. I am just a painter who likes to read the Bible and explore topics that pique my interest, but I think that the Bible may offer a solution to these problems. Let’s go back to Genesis 1:1-2:
“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 hovering over the waters.”
The passage talks about water being there from the beginning. The Spirit was hovering over the waters, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, which was the chaotic watery abyss. This precedes the formation of the stars and planets, and may be part of a possible solution.
Current thinking is that the Big Bang happened in a vacuum and created space, time, and matter. But what if the Big Bang occurred in the chaotic watery abyss? What if the deep were the source of everything in the universe, and not the singularity?
This would eliminate the impossibility of the singularity, yet the raw materials of the universe would be the same. The only difference would be that the fundamental particles of the universe would originate from outside the Big Bang instead of inside, as the explosion broke down the watery deep into quarks, photons, electrons, etc.
Some time after the initial explosion, the universe would cool enough that, as it expanded through the deep, the water entering the universe would break down into protons, neutrons, and electrons instead of the smaller particles. As in the Big Bang model, these would form into hydrogen and helium.
However, as the universe cooled even more, water from the deep would no longer break down into protons, neutrons, and electrons, but rather oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen would just be added to the mix, but the oxygen level would spike. This would account for the sudden increase of oxygen 500-700 million years after the Big Bang.
As the universe cooled down even more, water entering the universe would no longer be broken down at all. This would explain why water is so abundant in the universe, especially early on.
Perhaps this would also explain why carbon is not more abundant than oxygen. Might I suggest that carbon did not start from the bottom up with hydrogen and helium producing it, but rather from the top down, with stars breaking oxygen down into carbon?