Well the good old Hubble telescope did it again. Astronomers using images from Hubble have discovered the oldest object in the universe (at least the oldest so far). The remote galaxy was born 13.2 billion years ago, about 500 million years after the Big Bang (BB) that started it all. Will we discover something older than this in the future? Probably. Especially when NASA launches the James Webb Space Telescope sometime later this decade. JW’s 6.5 meter diameter mirror dwarfs Hubble’s (2.4 meter) and will expand our visual possibilities. Maybe the accepted age of the universe will be proven wrong. So what does this all mean? How does one deal with a finite number like 13.7(10^9) as the age of everything? If BB started the formation of all matter, what was there before? As discomforting as the concept of infinity can be, a finite age for the universe is equally troubling. There’s a lot of good science behind the 13.7 billion year number. It is a mathematical singularity that is calculated from astronomical observation data and is derived from the expanding universe theory. If reading that sentence tires you, it might be better to consider an alternative Big Bang Theory.
Can a believer in God accept this science? Certainly the scientific community has more than its share of atheists, but there are plenty of believers in this group as well. Georges Lemaitre, one of the originators of the Big Bang theory was also a priest. Francis Collins, the former director of the Human Genome project, makes a wonderful case for the coexistence of science and faith in his book, The Language of God.
The more questions that are answered by science, the more are posed. BB can explain how stars, planets, moons, comets, and asteroids were created, but it can’t explain what existed a moment before the singularity. Nor can it answer why. Faith can fill that void. If one can accept a premise that God might use a natural physical process to create the universe and subsequently, to create humans, then there is no reason why a believer cannot accept scientific discovery as truth. It’s good to keep searching for answers, but we’ll never understand everything. Discovering a galaxy whose light traveled for 13.2 billion years to reach us, gives us a perspective of how small we are in relation to everything else around us. Surely a power greater than we can imagine was responsible for it all.
Good thoughts, Charlie. I always like to hear a scientist who can talk shop and make it understandable for we layfolk.
ReplyDeleteYou know what has always impressed me about the singularity in that moment before time and space? How small it was. Some say a dime, some a pinhead. Others say that "size" had no meaning in that instant before it all exploded into existence. Whatever the case, it's enough to make you shake your head in wonder, whether you're a theist or not.
You're right, there is plenty of room to hold faith and science in constructive tension. The problem is we are caught in the middle as people on both extremes, many of whom have a financial or emotional investment in their position, fire rhetorical broadsides at each other.
It's a recipe for both poor science and poor theology.
I can only think about creation for a few minutes before my brain overloads with the seeming impossibility of it. The vastness of the universe and the relative insignificance of us within it does give me comfort.
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