• Now the big question remains: Is cosmology on the precipice of another reversal? Another revolution? If history is any guide, the answer is: Maybe.

By Nazarul Islam | USA

My interest in the science of astronomy was largely influenced by my elementary school teachers in Dhaka. In classrooms, we learned about planetary motion, revolutions and the stark reality of our universe that blinked in the shape of stars, on a clear sky at night. It was the Universe which connected us to faraway galaxies.

A race was on in the late fifties between the US and the Soviet Union. Both powers had focused to land men on the moon, and the neighboring planets. Cosmological things then, had included weather, earthquakes, and sharp changes in our environment. Over the years we learned more about Cosmology studies, how the history of the universe led to the stars, galaxies, and other features we can observe today.

Today we recognize Cosmology as the study of the origin, development, structure, history, and future of the entire universe. Nothing fascinates our minds more than the theory of the Big Bang, the event that created our universe. It was interesting to know —what was like a hot soup of particles (i.e. protons, neutrons, and electrons). Later on our universe started cooling, the protons and neutrons began combining into ionized atoms of hydrogen

Eventually, the observational evidence emerging most notably from radio source counts, began to favor the Big Bang which has dominated today as the best theory of the origin, and evolution of the universe.

Astronomers in the 1990s had accepted three facts quite happily, that were self-evident: The universe is expanding; all the matter in the universe is gravitationally attracting all the other matter in the universe; therefore, the expansion of the universe is slowing. Two scientific collaborations assigned themselves the task of determining the rate of that deceleration. Find that rate, they assumed, and the astronomers would know nothing less than the fate of the universe. Is the expansion slowing just enough that it will eventually come to a halt? Or is it slowing so much that it will eventually stop, reverse itself and result in a kind of big bang reversal—similar to a boomerang?

The answer, which the two teams reached independently in 1998, was precisely the opposite of what they had expected. Cosmology has often lent itself to unthinking assumptions that turned out to be exactly wrong. The earliest and original belief had laid down the concept of ‘geocentrism’.

Over the couple of millennia before the invention of the telescope in the early 1600s, the occasional philosopher suggested Earth orbits the sun and not the other way around. But the vast majority of astronomers could simply look up and see for themselves. The sun orbits Earth. The evidence was, well, self-evident.

But then, most of the history of astronomy had relied on an unthinking assumption: The heavens would always be out of reach. Like the prisoners in Plato’s parable, we would forever be at the mercy of our perceptual limitations, trying to make sense of the motions in a two-dimensional celestial realm that was the cosmic equivalent of a cave wall.

The invention of the telescope in the first decade of the 17th century overturned both those assumptions: Earth orbits the sun; the heavens are at our fingertips. More telescopic discoveries followed that, to varying extents, contradicted one self-evident “fact” after another: mountains on the moon, moons around Jupiter, new stars, new planets. Some assumptions turned out to have been not just unthinking but unthinkable.

How could anyone in the history of civilization ever have looked at Saturn and thought, “I’m assuming it doesn’t have rings”? That our universe is always expanding—the major premise leading to the 1990s search for the deceleration rate—was a revelation that nobody saw coming, including the two theorists who made the discovery not only conceivable but inevitable.

The first, Isaac Newton, would have had to make two counterintuitive leaps of logic to reach such a shocking conclusion. He would have needed to imagine that the universe was capable of doing what it self-evidently was not doing: collapsing. Then he would have needed to conceive of it as doing the opposite: getting bigger. Albert Einstein, the second theorist who paved the way for the expansion discovery, did conceive of it.

In November 1915 he presented the equations underlying his general theory of relativity; fifteen months later he applied those equations to, as he phrased the topic in the paper’s title, “cosmological considerations.” According to his math, the universe should be volatile over time, either expanding or contracting. To avoid that unsettling implication, he introduced a variable, L, the Greek symbol for lambda, to balance his equation. The value of lambda would be whatever it needed to be to satisfy Einstein’s preference for a universe in perfect balance.

Each theorist’s “blunder,” as Einstein characterized his own refusal to trust his math, was understandable. Newton and Einstein, however intellectually exceptional, were still only human. The universe was static. If evidence to the contrary existed, it certainly wasn’t obvious. And then it was. In the early 1920s American astronomer Edwin Hubble deployed the new 100-inch telescope atop Mount Wilson in California to observe some of the nebulous smudges at the farthest reaches of previous telescopes.

Using Cepheid variables (stars that brighten and dim with clockwork regularity) as a measure of distance, he inferred that at least some of those nebulae were actually “island universes”—galaxies—beyond our own Milky Way. Next he used the redshifts of those galaxies to infer not only that the galaxies are moving away from us and from one another—itself a science-redefining discovery—but also their rate.

When Hubble plotted those distances against those velocities on an x/y graph, he found a direct correlation: the more distant the galaxies, the faster they were moving away from us. Thus, the universe must be expanding. Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître independently reached the same conclusion, working not from his own data but from Einstein’s equations. Trace the expansion backward, he argued, and you would arrive at a “primeval atom.”

Evidence supporting the existence of such a “big bang” didn’t come until 1964, in the form of a background of microwave radiation that seems to pervade all of space. Theorists had predicted the existence of such a background as the relic of an explosive origin, although the two Bell Labs astronomers who first detected the radiation initially dismissed it as noise, possibly the result of pigeon droppings lining the giant horn of their radio antenna.

Four physicists at nearby Princeton University, however, recognized that the observation matched the key prediction of the big bang theory. Six years later American astronomer Allan Sandage cast cosmology as “the search for two numbers.” One number was the “rate of expansion” now. The other, however, harbored the unthinking assumption that would motivate two teams of researchers a quarter of a century later: “the deceleration in the expansion” over time.

Both teams trying to measure cosmic deceleration followed Hubble’s methodology of plotting velocity versus distance on a graph (using the magnitudes of a type of exploding star, or supernova, rather than Cepheid variables). The dual collaborations expected to find the same direct correlation that Hubble did—at least at first.

At some distance, though, they assumed that the line would depart from its 45-degree trajectory and dip, indicating that the apparent magnitudes of the supernovae were brighter, and therefore nearer, than they would be in a universe expanding at a constant rate. And depart from its 45-degree trajectory the line did. Only it didn’t dip. It rose. The supernovae were dimmer, and thus farther away, than they would be in a universe expanding at a constant rate. The expansion of the universe, the rival teams concluded, isn’t slowing down. It’s somehow speeding up.

Dark energy—as cosmologists came to call whatever was causing the acceleration—soon became part of the standard cosmological model, along with dark matter and “regular” matter, the stuff of us. Observations of the same cosmic microwave background that, back in the 1960s, helped to validate the big bang interpretation of cosmology have revealed the universe’s ingredients. By studying the patterns in the radiation, scientists have refined the contributions to the mass-energy density of the universe to an exquisite level of precision: 4.9 percent of it must be ordinary matter, 26.8 percent dark matter, 68.3 percent dark energy.

The model, cosmologists believe, is solid. But it wasn’t flawless. Not even complete. What is dark energy? What is dark matter? Indeed, even after all these years: What is the fate of the universe? Just this year the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument in Arizona provided evidence that dark energy may have changed over the course of the evolution of the universe.

Cosmologists have found the evidence compelling, though its meaning—let alone its implications for the standard model of cosmology—remains elusive.

Now the big question remains: Is cosmology on the precipice of another reversal? Another revolution? If history is any guide, the answer is: Maybe. For all today’s cosmologists know, they might be laboring under a seemingly unassailable, self-evident, yet incorrect assumption. Perhaps even an unthinking one.

Scientists confirm this has happened before.

Read: The truth behind retrospective laws

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The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his articles.

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What is death? It is going back to nothingness. Everything was created after the big bang. When we are alive and gathering consciousness, we are moving away from the center of the creative mass.

Dr. Jernail Singh Anand

I am the last man on this planet to doubt man’s intelligence, much less his wisdom, to think that he does not know what he is up to. It is too serious an accusation against a species who are considered highly evolved and imitating gods in their creative powers.

The reason behind this presumption is that a man’s life is a bundle of contradictions, and he is trying to rearrange a puzzle so that he could draw some meaning out of it.

But, we shall be able to make anything of this confused questing if we are able to understand the basics of our movement?

Century after century, scholar after scholar, has been served poison, or burnt for telling the secrets of this universe, and the sad and comic part of it is that in the very next century, another one would come to catapult everything. This is being done even today. A scholar comes up with one interpretation, which is proved wrong by some other person. Who has the last laugh?

The most confusing construct which baffles mankind is the concept of time. Is it going forward or moving backward? Can anyone tell?  We cannot go forward if it does not move backward.  Another intriguing thing is: We have been moving and moving into a particular direction, and how long will we continue moving in that direction?

Read: What is the Big Bang Theory?

I consider this entire movement as a movement backward. We are not going forward. We are turning back to the original.

After the big bang, the universe expanded into planets and galaxies. But the essential attraction of the contrived center keeps pulling at them, causing a friction which we happily call gravitation. We have been thrown away. And we are also being pulled back towards the center. The movement that appears to be forward, is in effect, directed towards the center from which we have been scattered around.

Cyclical Nature of Existence

In a sense, it can be said that our universe is expanding outward from the Big Bang’s singularity, but at the same time, we’re also being pulled inward by gravity toward the centers of massive objects like planets, stars, and black holes.

Read: From Big Bang to present: Snapshots of our universe through time

Extending this idea, one could metaphorically interpret our journey as a reverse motion toward the center, symbolizing a return to the singularity or even extinction. This perspective raises intriguing questions about the cyclical nature of existence and the ultimate fate of our universe.

The Reverse

According to the “Big Crunch” hypothesis, the universe’s expansion eventually reverses, leading to a collapse back into a singularity. Similarly, the “Cyclic Model” of the universe, proposes that our universe undergoes cycles of expansion and contraction, with each cycle ending in a “big bang” and a new expansion.

While these ideas are still purely theoretical, they do align with my philosophical perspective on our movement toward the center.

Death

What is death? It is going back to nothingness. Everything was created after the big bang. When we are alive and gathering consciousness, we are moving away from the center of the creative mass. The more we grow in consciousness, the farther we move. But this movement is like the movement of the sun in the sky. The higher it goes, the near it is to its setting. In the same way, man’s life too gathers momentum upto a point after which the decline starts and the move, which was going forward, suddenly takes a backward turn. The flower which was blowing in the wind, suddenly gets sucked by the winds, and declines. The living matter is then engulfed by the dead.

As the time passes, we are moving towards our end inch by inch. As our death approaches, we shall have reached back to the inert position from where we started. 

It seems this movement of the universe towards expansion which is always irresistibly on suddenly turns towards the end, in which the expanding consciousness turns back to its inert base. Dead, we have returned to that pristine state of existence, in which things lie unshaped, unstirred, and wait for the orders.

Read: MIRROR – Mystic Poetry from India

The Take

I am not so wise to say anything like a gospel truth. Looking at my life and the truths and quasi-truths that I have encountered, I have come to believe that everything is illusive. What now is, may not be there next moment. We are racing into time, and the background and foreground is changing fast. So fast that we cannot keep count of it. The greatest illusion is the illusion of time. Rather than cyclic, it would call its nature ‘dualistic’. What we gain, actually means we have lost it. The time that we think we are growing, is actually meant to decline us. Let us look at it with the help of a simple example. We have a bucket full of water, or just half of it. We do not know the quantity of water. Say, the quantum of time at our disposal. We are taking this water out of the bucket. The more the water we draw, the greater is vacant space left inside the bucket. And, as we enjoy the water on our body, we are also finishing the water. If we can happily confuse time with our breaths, then, the situation becomes clear. As the time passes, we are moving towards our end inch by inch. As our death approaches, we shall have reached back to the inert position from where we started.  It is another thing for what we were sent, and what we have done. It’s for God to keep the count. For me, it is enough to think that we are like the sun. The higher it is going, the sooner its race will be run. Every moment, we are not expanding, but getting closer to the center of existence.

Read – TIME-TRAVEL: ARE WE ONLY RE-LIVING OUR LIVES?

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Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, President of the International Academy of Ethics, is author of 170 books in English poetry, fiction, non-fiction, philosophy and spirituality. He was awarded Charter of Morava, the great Award by Serbian Writers Association, Belgrade and his name was engraved on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. The Academy of Arts and philosophical Sciences of Bari [Italy] honored him with the award of an Honorable Academic.  Recently, he was awarded Doctor of Philosophy [Honoris Causa] by the University of Engg and Management, Jaipur. Recently, he organized an International Conference on Contemporary Ethics at Chandigarh. His most phenomenal book is Lustus: The Prince of Darkness [first epic of the Mahkaal Trilogy]. Email: anandjs55@yahoo.com

Link Bibliography:

https://atunispoetry.com/2023/12/08/indian-author-dr-jernail-s-anand-honoured-at-the-60th-belgrade-international-meeting-of-writers/

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