The Dancing Universe: From Creation Myths to the Big Bang

Epilogue: Dancing with the Universe

rom the ancient chants of creation rituals to complex mathematical equations describing primordial energy fluctuations, humankind has always looked for ways of expressing its fascination with the mystery of Creation. In this book we have shared the awe of mythmakers and scientists alike, as they tried to bridge being and becoming with their stories and theories. We have traced the long path leading from myth to science, a path embellished by the many tales of courage and despair, failure and success of those who helped shape our ever-changing view of the Universe. Hopefully, I have given you a glimpse of what is known, and of what is not known or knowable. As we have seen, cosmology is the only branch of physics that deals with questions asked outside science. That causes cosmology, and cosmologists, to be perceived somewhat differently from other scientists. (Biologists studying the origin of life have similar social roles.) The general public will read far fewer books about the properties of magnetic materials or lasers than they will about the Universe , even though their everyday lives are much more dependent on magnetic materials and lasers than on ideas coming from the big-bang model or black holes. F Epilogue DANCING WITH THE UNIVERSE While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. —William Wordsworth Certainly, many cosmologists are committed atheists. They don’t (and shouldn’t!) look for God or any religious connection in their equations or data. Still, they are attracted by the “grand” questions , ranging from the origin of the Universe and the origin of matter to the distribution of galaxies in the Universe at large. It would be very foolish of me to try to understand why certain physicists decide to become cosmologists; their reasons will be as varied and diverse as there are cosmologists across the world. We are the product of our choices, and what we choose to do with our lives is as subjective as it can be. But at least I can speak for myself. In my case, the decision to become a cosmologist was inspired by the classic popular book by Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes . I was a junior at the Catholic University of Rio and had to present a seminar on a topic of my choice, when I became completely fascinated by Weinberg’s book. I learned that there was a scientific way to approach questions of origin, to the point of having a model, the big-bang model, that actually makes quantitative predictions about the first moments of existence of the Universe. And even more spectacularly, some predictions were actually verified by experiments ! Cosmology was no hocus-pocus, it was a quantitative science. I realized with tremendous excitement that it was possible to be a physicist and still work on these “grand” questions. Inspired by Einstein ’s “cosmic religious feeling,” I decided that this was the only path for me. I could actually get paid to think about the origin of the Universe or the origin of matter! (And to teach, of course.) The more I learned about relativity, quantum mechanics, and how they are applied to the study of cosmology, the more I wanted to learn. And as usual, the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know, how limited we are when facing the infinite creative power of nature. Science is a process, it has often been said. I would add that science is an endless process, that we will never reach an end, simply because there is no end. Whenever I hear pronouncements claiming “the end of science,” asserting that all great discoveries that should have been made have already been made, I shudder with disbelief. Can people be so blind to history and to our vast ignorance? Just think of Laplace’s “supermind,” or the state of confidence of many late-nineteenth-century physicists, and how completely wrong and taken aback they were in their illusions. I DANCING WITH THE UNIVERSE 311 wonder how much of this confidence of having reached an end is an expression of unrealized dreams and fantasies. Nature will never cease to surprise and to amaze us. Our theories of today, of which we are justifiably proud, will be child’s play for future generations of scientists. Our models of...