Astronomers and Astrophysicists have powerful instruments at
their disposal for peering out into the universe. They have drawn some very clever conclusions
from their observations. A less fuzzy
model of our universe is emerging - how it was shaped, its dynamic motion; and
by deduction, how old it is.
Philosophers understand best how the universe holds many more
secrets, more than we can imagine. Humans
have only scratched the surface of what exists.
Many scientists may not quite see it that way. Nevertheless, scientific progress will
continue unabated far into the future, barring a natural catastrophe affecting
the entire planet. Already astrophysicists have described the big bang that
marked the beginning of existence as we know it, an existence with space, time,
matter and energy. Before this genesis,
one can imagine an earlier existence. If so, it may have been very different from
the one we are familiar with.
When the big bang theory entered the public consciousness
several decades ago, it was at first difficult to grasp how all the vast amount
of matter could possibly fit into one single point of time and place. Impossible, it seemed to the average person. But as the astronomers and astrophysicists
gathered more information from their instruments, we began to see the enormous
black holes in space, where gravity has sucked in millions of suns.
It is entirely possible the mass of a million stars has
collapsed into a single point in time and space, a point so small and so dense,
all of our customary laws of physics are not operative. One can imagine these singularities are not
all that different from what existed at instant of the big bang. Do black holes ever suddenly reverse
direction and blow up, like some miniature big bang? Perhaps quasars are the result of two or more
super-massive black holes colliding and triggering an explosive stream of
energy in two directions along the same axis.
What in creation is going on there?
Following this line of reasoning, one can readily accept the
big bang theory. I’m not sure the follow
on sequence is only 14.5 billion earth years old. There may be some surprises there, but by any
measure the universe is very old. All
the while, physical processes have been combining matter into stars, triggering
extreme releases of energy and transmuted material elements across space and
time. This process of converting lighter
elements into energy and heavier elements is still underway and appears to have
a long way to go.
Recently the Pope in Rome wrote to a group of distinguished
astrophysicists and encouraged them to continue studying the nature of the big
bang, but instructed them to not speculate on what came before it. In this respect, philosophy is superior to
science and religion, unbounded by any preconceptions or dogmas. Cosmology is first and foremost a branch of
metaphysics. Scientific inquiry into the
beginning is relatively recent and is ultimately guided by the philosophers.
So that brings us to our little corner of the universe, our solar
system - our sun and its attendance planets, asteroids, comets and other
orbiting debris. Astronomers have a much
better understanding of these nearest celestial bodies. They believe our solar system and our planet
to be approximately 4.5 billion earth years old. Most of the large bodies have been probed by
our instruments, in the case of Mars, extensively. What are they most looking for? Signs of life, of course.
For most of these 4.5 billion years, our planet was way too
hot and violent to support any form of life.
After about 3.5 billion years had passed, our planet cooled and stabilized. It became hospitable to living things. Imagine a sterile environment, akin to a huge
Petri dish, with all the right ingredients of heat, water and material
elements. Into that environment came a
spark of life, a little single celled organism, possibly blue-green algae, ready to reproduce. How did that happen? Such is the subject for our next post, on
life.
