I'm currently reading (and listening to on CD -- I go back and forth) Bill Bryson's book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. I love his description of the beginning of the universe. Not only did it strike me that he holds to the idea of ex nihilo, but he also captures so well the grandeur and beauty of "Let there be light...." It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no "around" around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be. We can't even ask how long it has been there -- whether it has just lately popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there forever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time doesn't exist. There is no past for it to emerge from.
And so, from nothing, our universe begins.
In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory much too swift and expansive for any form of words, the singularity assumes heavenly dimensions, space beyond conception. In the first lively second (a second that many cosmologists will devote careers to shaving into ever-finer wafers) is produced gravity and the other forces that govern physics. In less than a minute the universe is a million billion miles across and growing fast. There is a lot of heat now, ten billion degrees of it, enough to begin the nuclear reactions that create the lighter elements -- principally hydrogen and helium, with a dash (about one atom in a hundred million) of lithium. In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe. It is a place of the most wondrous and gratifying possibility, and beautiful, too. And it was all done in about the time it takes to make a sandwich.
And so, from nothing, our universe begins.
In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory much too swift and expansive for any form of words, the singularity assumes heavenly dimensions, space beyond conception. In the first lively second (a second that many cosmologists will devote careers to shaving into ever-finer wafers) is produced gravity and the other forces that govern physics. In less than a minute the universe is a million billion miles across and growing fast. There is a lot of heat now, ten billion degrees of it, enough to begin the nuclear reactions that create the lighter elements -- principally hydrogen and helium, with a dash (about one atom in a hundred million) of lithium. In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe. It is a place of the most wondrous and gratifying possibility, and beautiful, too. And it was all done in about the time it takes to make a sandwich.
Just started reading The Creator and the Cosmos by Hugh Ross, an astrophysicist. The wonder of it all, goes far beyond my grasp. But so far, it is a great book.
ReplyDeleteDid I tell you that I got a copy of In the Beginning by Henri Blocher? I think it's another book that's been mentioned along with the ones you're reading. I haven't started reading it yet, though.
ReplyDeleteLet me know when that other book you read is available. I still have to finish this book by Bryson, so I'm not in a rush. But I do want to read that one you read.
I finished it, you can have it any time.
ReplyDeleteI thought your neighbor was reading it.
ReplyDeleteShe is still reading the Francis Collins one
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