Originally published 26 March 1984
A creation myth from the ancient Mediterranean has God bring all things into being with seven laughs. Here is how Charles Doria and Harris Lenowitz translate the first laugh: Light (Flash) / showed up / All splitter / born universe god / fire god. Those lines are two thousand years old, but they aptly describe the modern scientific view of Creation. The Big Bang, astronomers call it. A better name might be the Big Flash, the all-splitter. Fifteen billion years ago there was nothing. Then God laughed. Energy sprang into being from nothingness and flowed instantly into matter. According to current cosmologies, that first laugh took a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, and when it was all over, the universe was off and running.
In 1929, the astronomer Edwin Hubble announced a discovery that would come to be considered as important as any in the history of astronomy. The galaxies are moving away from us. All of them. Moreover, the speeds of recession are proportional to the distances of the galaxies. The meaning of this remarkable discovery soon became clear. The universe is expanding! Space is blowing up like a balloon, rising like dough in the pan. Like dots on the inflating balloon or raisins in the rising loaf, the galaxies are carried away from each as space expands.
If the galaxies are flying apart, then they must have once been together. If we run the movie in reverse, the galaxies fly back together, accelerating. They wring out the vast empty spaces between them. They crush their stars together like wet sand in a fist. Matter is squeezed into matter. The density of the universe soars. The film ends in a blinding flash of pure energy, infinite, singular, born universe god / fire god, the Beginning.
The explosion primeval
Contemporary cosmologists can calculate the conditions of the universe at every instant of its history from well-known laws of physics. Let’s run the movie forward. The universe begins fifteen billion years ago in a blinding flash, the primeval fireball, from an infinitely dense seed of pure energy. A ten millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second later elementary particles, quarks and electrons, flicker in and out of existence against a background of radiation, dissolving and reappearing, dissolving and reappearing, fragments of the all-splitter, Creation struggling to be born.
A millionth of a second after the Beginning, the quarks join in a dance of threes to form protons and neutrons. Another thousandth of a second and protons and neutrons stick together to create the nuclei of the light elements. Matter and anti-matter annihilate each other in an orgy of self-destruction. A flood of neutrinos go flying into the future.
Time passes, the universe cools. Atoms form. Then galaxies and stars. Space expands. A few billion years after God’s first Hha the universe begins to look like home, although it will be another eight billion years before the Solar System condenses from galactic cobwebs in a dusty corner of the Milky Way.
Not long ago physicists and astronomers despaired of ever knowing what came before the instant of the Big Flash. At that singular moment in the universe’s history, their equations shot off to infinity like skyrockets. The numbers for the density and temperature of the universe increased without limit, mathematical mountains that could not be climbed or seen over. Space and time collapsed into a dread singularity, a numerical bottomless pit that became increasingly narrow and increasingly deep until it was a thread of calculation too long and thin to follow. There is a street in my town like that. In the words of a local historian, the street becomes an unpaved road, then a track, then a path, then a squirrel trail that runs up a tree. Tracing the universe mathematically back to the Beginning is like following that street until you find yourself up a tree with no place to go. The question of what caused the Big Bang was considered intractable, if not meaningless. Creation out of nothing seemed to violate the law of conservation of matter and energy. Physicists shrugged and said there was nothing more they could say about it. A laugh on the part of the Creator was a good an explanation as any other.
A froth of universes
Lately, a new generation of young cosmologist have become bolder in the speculations, and have begun to wring from their theories a glimpse of the world beyond the Beginning. They draw upon recent discoveries about the behavior of matter at high temperatures. They twist their equations of cosmic space and time into new designs that will encompass what we have learned about quarks and neutrinos, the elusive W and Z particles, and the other subatomic building blocks of the universe. And out of all this comes an astonishing prediction: Our universe, the universe that began 15 billion years ago in a Big Flash, may be just one among many. Universes may boil like bubbles from some greater matrix of space and time, popping into existence as quantum fluctuations in superspace, with the positive energy of stars and galaxies balanced by a negative gravitational potential, bubbles of Creation that add up to zero, bubbles that explode from nothingness without violating the laws of physics. One of those bubbles is our space and our time, and contains the Milky Way and its billions of sibling galaxies. If the new cosmologists are right, then universes are popping into existence all the time, and our starry night is the interior of a single bubble in a frothy ongoing spontaneous Creation.
If this stuff makes your head spin you are in good company. Having a head that can spin is a requirement of all great science. Copernicus’ head was spinning when he recognized that the earth is one planet among many. Newton’s head was spinning when he told us the sun was just another star. Hubble’s head was spinning when he proved that the spiral nebulas are Milky Ways.
Whatever else we have learned about the universe, this much is clear. The universe is rich and strange beyond our imagining. It does not hold back on scale or structure. God’s first Hha was no snicker, but a roaring belly-laugh.
Thank you Tom! The return of Chet’s musings means so much to me, and to many of my fellow porch sitters. I am so relieved to have my daily touch point back as balm in this seemingly crazy world, and I look forward to connecting with old friends.
Glad to have you back!
Thank you! Climbing Brandon is a constant on my reading table. I was able to climb on Mt. Brandon this spring, I’m wondering if Mr. Raymo is still traveling to that beautiful Dingle Penninsuala. Thank you for all the archiving, but especially for our ability now to languish in your Father’s words and thoughts.
Dad is not doing much traveling these days, content with the view from his porch. Enjoy the archive!
What a joy to find that so much wonderful and enlightening writing is not lost. To be able to read, and sometimes reread, Chet’s musings is a wonderful thing to discover. As the (sole?) from Fiji, I sat on the “porch” almost from its beginning. Tom, you have performed a Herculean labor of love to bring all this back to us. As an old porch sitter, thank you for turning the light back on. And please tell your father there are many of us rejoicing today.
Thanks so much for putting this all together, Tom! I love the format, the musings being grouped by category is fantastic! *asks sheepishly* How’s Chet doing?
Than you Tom, for this labor of love, and to Chet for a lifetime of elucidating and uplifting writing. Like others, I have missed this space. I trust that on some days, your father is still enjoying the view. I would have liked to have had him as a professor (alas, he did not teach at UConn!). I suspect I would not have received a “D”, like I did in HS physics! Best for a beautiful season in New England.
Cheers,
Geo.