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ANO
THE
ASTRONOMERS
The universe began with a big bang, according to modern science. But the origin and
ultimate fate of that primordial cosmic egg remains an embarrassing riddle that has
brought astronomers-unexpectedly anda bit reluctantly-straight into the problem of
bert Einstein once observed
that "the most incomprehen–
sible thing about the uní–
verse is that it is comprehensible."
Not everyone would agree with that
statement, for, although man has
been fascinated by the grandeur
and mystery of the universe for
many millennia, its ultimate size,
structure, and origin have remained
an intriguing but unsolved riddle.
Historically, it seems that every
culture has created a myth
10
ex–
plain the nature of the cosmos. The
Greeks intertwined the creation of
the world with the whims and fam–
ily disputes of the gods. But our
more sophisticaled civilizalion may
also have generated sorne myths of
its own, impelled by our conviction
thal physical laws are universal and
our hope lhal the universe, on a
grand scale, is fundamentally simple
and, as Einstein believed, compre–
hensible.
From ancient times until only
half a century ago, lhe prevail ing
cosmological belief was lhal the uní–
verse must be unchanging. The uní–
verse, according lo convenlional
wisdom, was essentially static-a
system of planels, stars, and nebulae
which. in the large, was somehow
held in a fixed and orderly arrange–
ment. Indeed, when Einstein first
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the existence ofa Creator God.
by
Robert A. Ginskey
proposed his relativity model of the
universe, he added a special factor
known as the "cosmological con–
stant," which allowed the universe
to remain static despite the mutual
gravitational attraction which would
tend to make the universe collapse.
An Expanding Universe
hen, in the late 1920s, as–
onomer Edwin Hubble dis–
overed thal in every direction
all the distant galaxies appeared
10
be moving away from the earth .
This conclusion was based on lhe
famous "red shift" in lhe spect rum
of the light coming from the galax–
ies. Just as the sound coming from a
train whistle or ambulance siren is
lowered in pitch or frequency if the
train or ambulance is traveling
away from the hearer, so the light
from distant galaxies is Jowered in
frequency (reddened) if the galaxy
is traveling away from the earth.
When Hubble plotted the esti–
mated distances to the various gal–
axies as a function of their apparent
velocilies (as implied by the "red
shift"). he found an amazing corre–
Jation: The more distant a galaxy.
the greater its velocity. The implica–
tion was clear: The universe was not
slatic; the universe was expanding.
But if the universe was ex-
11/ustrstíon by Morrís Scott Dollens
panding, it must have been smaller
in the past. By working backwards
in time, it was easy to show that the
universe must at one time have been
highly compressed. From such rea–
soning carne the concept that the
universe started from a great ex–
plosion sorne billions of years ago.
Astrophysicist George Gamow put
it more poetically. "The universe,"
he said, "began wilh a big bang."
Steady State?
O
f course, olher models for the
expanding universe were also
possible. Astronomer Fred
Hoyle, for example, accepted the
expansion of the universe (the evi–
dence seemed overwhelming), but
he argued that new matter may be
constantly introduced (by sorne as–
yet-unknown process), so that new
galaxies are consta ntly being
formed. Thus creation was viewed
as a "continuous process," and a
specific unique "origin" of the entire
universe was precluded.
Philosophically. Hoyle's steady
state cosmology had a great appeal.
THE ORIGIN AND FATE
of the starry
heavens has intrigued mankind for
millennia. Now, modern astronomy is
providing some startling answers to
the riddle of creation.
The
PLAIN TRUTH December 1978