Stephen Hawking - The Scandalous Origin of the Universe
At first glance, there seems to be no connection between such a vast and scientific subject as the Big Bang theory and the degrading notion of scandal. Over the past 20 years, controversial scientist Stephen Hawking has given rise to real international scandals with repercussions in both the scientific and the religious world. Seen by some as an Einstein of our day, and by others as a researcher lacking in spirituality and attentive to media attention, Stephen Hawking has the merit of provoking society in the right sense. That is, that sense that raises questions and essential questions to a modern man conquered by consumerism and indifferent, equally, to science or religion.
Stories about Beginning
Since time immemorial man has been asked about the origin, size and destiny of the Universe. At first, as the support of primitive and naive religions, the notion of the Universe, of the unlimited space of the Cosmos in human imagination, was always associated with the concept of Heaven. Later, the symbolism of the world, with its three levels: heavenly, terrestrial and infernal, corresponded to three levels of existence, or three modes of spiritual activity.
Concerning questions about the origin of the universe, the primordial myths, later transformed into spiritual currents and religions, supported the central idea of a great Nothing, of which all and all sprang from the divine command.
Very bizarre and interesting at the same time, all the myths and legends of Creation present in most of the archaic civilizations and cultures of various continents insist on the notion of nothing original, from which the worlds seen and unseen, the Earth, the Moon and the stars, formed. Acted by a divine essence, a mythical ancestor or a mighty Word (as in the case of the Bible), the forces of creation gave birth to the universe ... bordered, apparently, only by the imagination of men.
Unhappy with the explanations given by mythology and religion, scientists, in particular physicists, chemists and mathematicians, have focused on both the origins of the Universe and the size issue of it only in the 20th century.
Big Bang theory was issued by ... a Christian priest!
To the surprise of those who think that Religion and Science are always in a tight conflict and are in antagonistic positions in obtaining Knowledge, the one who first delivered and supported the Big Bang hypothesis was a Roman Catholic abbot : Monsignor Georges Lemaître (1894 - 1966), Belgian priest and at the same time professor of physics and astronomy at the Catholic University of Louvain.
Georges Lemaître & Albert Einstein
Correctly, Big Bang is a scientific theory and, in this context, depends on direct observations and measurements. But the theory itself, by its involvement in the origins of reality, has always been fueled by theological and philosophical concepts (for example, 2300 and some years ago, Aristotle proposed the concept of Motor Prim, which is the origin of all things).
In the 1920s and 1930s, most astronomers still argued that the universe is eternal by definition, not having a beginning that can be tracked in time or delimited under the form of a historical period. They believed that the origin of Time, supported by the Initial Explosion Theory, improperly imported religious concepts into the science of physics.
Opponents of the Big Bang theory raised as the main reason for their rejection that the theory itself had been issued and sustained by (the climax!) Monsieur Lemaître. Paradoxically, his theory found acceptance and support in the Vatican, even from the highest level. Pope Pius XII declared on November 22, 1951, when the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences were meeting, that the Big Bang theory is consistent with all the Roman Catholic concepts of Creation.
Conform lui Lemaître, teoria originii Universului, lansata initial sub numele de "Ipoteza a Atomului Primordial", se bazeaza pe teoria relativitatii lansata de Albert Einstein, cu accent pe omogenitatea si izotropia spatiului. Ecuatia din spatele teoriei a fost formulata de catre matematicianul rus Alexander Friedmann (1888 - 1925).
According to Lemaître, the theory of origin of the Universe, originally launched under the name of "The Hypothesis of the Primordial Atomic," is based on Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, with emphasis on space homogeneity and isotropy. The equation behind the theory was formulated by Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann (1888-1925).
"The Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann assumed that the Universe is evolving." He started from an Einstein equation and found a gorgeous solution that the Universe is constantly expanding. "If such a thing is true, George Lemaitre concluded a few years later, the Universe originated at a point: Big Bang, which Lemaitre did not call the Big Bang, but the people who laughed at him. Lemaitre was a Catholic priest and assumed that this point was the beginning of his creation God, we now have an instrument for determining the geometry of the Universe. "According to the measurements so far, the universe is flat: Euclid was right, Lemaître supposed that if the universe was ever expanding, then we should be able to see how So, by observing the galaxies, let's see how it moves away. " declared, exclusively for DESCOPERA, Maurizio Tomasi, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Astrophysical Research in Milan.
Friedmann & Hubble
In 1929, the famous American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953), in honor of which he was baptized as the famous space telescope, confirmed - from a highly scientific perspective, Lemaître's hypothesis of 1927. Hubble discovered and confirmed the existence of the other galaxies in the Universe (except for ours) and gave the Law that bears its name, based on the observable effect in modifying the electromagnetic spectrum of the galaxies. It established a proportionality between the electromagnetic spectrum variation of a certain galaxy and its departure from Earth. This proportionality has correctly defined and measured the expansion of the universe.
Since then, the Big Bang theory has been accepted by the entire scientific community and has advanced tremendously in applications and details, along with technological advancements that have allowed unprecedented development of astronomy science along with a fascinating survey of endless abysses of the Universe.
The Big Bang theory depends on two great assumptions: the universality of the laws of physics and the Cosmological Principle. The latter claims that the universe is at the same time homogeneous and isotropic. The two assumptions originally appeared in the form of postulates, but efforts are now being made to be both demonstrated. For example, the first assumption was proven by observations that show that the greatest possible deviation of the constant structures over the age of the universe is of the order of 10 to the power -5. Also, General Relativity passed stringent tests at the scale of our Solar System and binary stars, while the extrapolation of cosmological scales was validated by empirical successes.
According to the Big Bang, the whole universe is initially in a very hot and dense state, a rapidly expanding state, ranging from that moment to the moment when it dilutes and continues to expand. The best performances made in 2010 claim that the Big Bang was about 13.7 billion years ago. With or without our will, Big Bang theory remains the most comprehensive and detailed explanation proven by scientific evidence and observation about the origin of the universe.
Hawking's revolt against God
The life, personality, and ideas of physicist Stephen Hawking are extremely well known at present, and the professor is perhaps, without a doubt, the most famous physicist in the world. Appreciated by part of the scientific world for its original and innovative hypotheses about physics, the British professor is strongly challenged by other prestigious scientists. Also, lately, Stephen Hawking has been the victim of raging attacks because of his stating statements and opinions. It all started from Hawking's view of the fact that God did not exist, and the Universe formed itself by itself.
In a challenging book titled "The Grand Design," written in collaboration with the American physicist Leonard Mlodinow and published on September 9, Professor Stephen Hawking states that modern physics that science must leave no place to God in the equation the emergence of the universe, and science can only explain the origin of all things.
Hawking & Mlodinow
The paper examines the history of scientific knowledge on the Universe, starting from the Ionian Greeks who believed that the nature of things is given by laws, not by the will of the gods. Hawking then recalls Nicholas Copernicus's work, among the first and greatest supporters of the assumption that the Earth is not at the center of the Universe and contradicts Sir Isaac Newton who was convinced that the Universe was created by God, unable to arise from itself from the primordial chaos. The central part of the paper is given by the quantum mechanics theory and the theory of relativity - the two explaining how the universe was created from nothing. "Because there are laws similar to gravity, the Universe can autocomplete from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, the reason why the Universe and the people exist." There is no need to invoke God to put The Universe in Motion ". Also, supporting Theory-M, the authors assert that just as Earth is one of the planets of our solar system, and the Milky Way one of the many universes in the Universe, the entire Universe we are in may be a universe of many others (or Multivers ). Following this reasoning, in the last pages of the book, the authors assert that some of the Multiverse universes can sustain life, which is not the exclusive exclusive of the Earth.
Hawking's latest work caught up well in the tabloid press, but received mixed criticism from the scientific community. In 1988, in the volume that made him famous, "Short History of Time," the physicist affirmed - implicitly - that God existed, and he accepted the role of Divinity in the creation of the universe: If we ever discover a complete and inaccurate theory from the beginning to the end, it will become the ultimate triumph of human reason, because from that moment we will know how the mind of God works. "
Stephen Hawking retains other unchanged opinions, physicists reaffirming their enthusiasm for the theory of several parallel universes, and claiming that the Multiverse can be a true "Grail of Holy Grail" that can explain at some point any universe notion known: "Theory- M is nothing but the unified theory that Einstein hopes to discover. The fact that we, the people, who are in our essence a constituent of fundamental particles of Nature, have been able to come so close to understanding the laws that govern us both we, and the whole Universe, are a great triumph ".
Hawking's objectors
Hawking's most relevant critics include the following:
Craig Callender, in New Scientist, is unconvinced by the inconsistent nature of Hawking's support for the Multiverse: "Theory-M is a draft far from being verified and complete - which does not prevent the authors from saying that through it explain the mystery of the essence of the universe. A non-sense! ".
Paul Davies, in an article published in The Guardian, ironically affirms that the laws of the Metavers, as they are said by Hawking: eternal, immutable and transcendent - which simply exist and must be accepted as such are identical to the attributes of God.
Dr. Marcelo Gleiser, in an article titled "Hawking and God: An Intimate Relationship," states that the invocation of a theory of theory is inconsistent with the very nature of physics - an empirical science based on the gradual discovery of more and more complex information. "Because we will never have instruments capable of measuring the entire universe, we can never be sure that we have discovered a final theory."
Finally, physicist Peter Woit of Columbia University accuses Hawking of formulating the postulate "God is not necessary" just as a marketing tool to advertise his books, and John Horgan of Scientific American demonstrates magistral how just Theory-M is an argument in favor of the existence of God. The researcher appeals to the "Alice's restaurant problem", a reference to a verse from an old American folk song: "You can have everything you want in Alice's restaurant." Horgan says: "A theory that predicts everything, does not actually predict anything," and in a Multivers, an infinity of practically universes, it is not excluded that none, one or all of them be created by God.
The above were well-informed points of view, coming from the scientific community. The tabloid press speculates that Hawking simply begins to lose his mind because of the many diseases he suffers from his youth and the terrible situation in which he is forced to live.
Other criticisms come from authorities with a philosophical or religious formation who accuse Hawking of making minor interpretations of religion, and the famous physicist does not have the most elementary theological notions when he thinks ultimately about religion. The views of the physicist have, as expected, thrilling storms among the three great monotheistic religions: in their native England, their representatives were in the same camp, forgetting the theological, historical, and cultural differences that separate them.
Archbishop Rowan Williams, the leader of the Anglican Church, came to the ramp ironing the physicist: "Faith in God does not focus on explaining the ways in which things are woven into the universe, but refers to the belief that there is a superior intelligence that is the basis of all of the things on which the entire Universe depends. "
The chief rabbi, Dr. Jonthan Sacks, gave a similar replica, the Jewish cleric saying, "Science has explanations, and the explanations of the human mind are limited and often mistaken. Religion is interpreting ... The Bible, he is simply not interested in the way the universe is born. In fact, God is absolute and omnipotent, for this reason He can create the Universe in an infinity of different horses or after a single recipe. "
Ibrahim Mogra, an Imam and a member of the Muslim Council of the United Kingdom, does not let it down: "I am delighted to look at so many respected people who are convinced that Professor Hawking is the brightest mind in the world. see the creation and the greatness of God in everything, especially in the unbounded universe? If we simply look at the Universe, we notice that someone created it under this form and not another.
Instead of conclusions
With the acceptance that Big Bang has become the dominant paradigm of current cosmology, theologians, religious leaders and common believers have responded in ways different from the theory in question. Some have accepted the scientific evidence as such, without asking other questions, others have tried to confuse the theory with their own religious convictions.
Currently, scientists are overwhelmed by the emergence of increasingly detailed information about the existence or non-existence of so-called black energy and black matter, notions that could radically change everything we know about the Big Bang and how it propagated. Depending on what we know so far about black energy, two scenarios are outlined: either the Universe will reach a maximum dimension, after which it will collapse, or its expansion will never stop, and the Cosmos will become infinite in the true sense of term. A last-minute theory that put the scientific community in the spring states that even if the space dimension of the Universe is unlimited, at some point time will stop.
The whole unfolding of events shows us how little we know about the world we live in, but even worse! - that almost everything we claim to know is based on scenarios, suppositions, hypotheses and theories that have never been demonstrated (or demonstrable) entirely. How did I get? Where do we go? Will the Universe ever die? Are there any other universes other than the one we are in? Can we at least go through the cosmic cosmic mind? Do we have the necessary tools? Or is our mental capacity incapable of such a journey?
Here science ends, and all empirically argued answers disappear in front of the concept of Infinity and of the Endless Beginning. Ironically and paradoxically, no matter what part of the barricade we find ourselves, facing the grandeur and mysteries of the Universe that surrounds us, we are in a position of faith that is (at least in manifestation) eminently religious.
The Great Journey of Deciphering the Mysteries of the Universe has begun! Come back tomorrow to find out if we are alone in the Universe and watch two outstanding Discovery series in October!
"The universe seen by Stephen Hawking" will premiere: Saturday, October 2, at 21:00, on Discovery Channel, the rest of the episodes being broadcast on Discovery Science every Sunday, starting October 10 at 21.10. "The universe seen by Stephen Hawking" demands imagination to the limit of the known universe. The most famous scientist still alive explores the splendor and grandeur of stars and planets, galaxies and supernovae that model and populate the cosmos. The first episode, The Story of All Things, tells the most controversial story in the world - the history of the Universe, starting with the amazing energy generated by the Big Bang until the end of mankind; while the other episodes explore the hypothesis of alien existence and the controversial theory of travel over time.
"Morgan Freeman and the Cosmic Space" will premiere on Monday, October 4, at 21.10 on Discovey Science. An Oscar-winning actor, passionate about space exploration, Morgan Freeman is the executive producer, presenter and narrator of this series that explores the greatest mysteries of the universe from the perspective of the average man. From the latest achievements of NASA and large private companies to the latest theories of scientists and researchers, this series studies black holes, planet colonization, string theory, and more.
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