The Prophet and the Astronomer: Apocalyptic Science and the End of the World

324 Pages·2003·5.45 MB·English

by  Marcelo Gleiser

P r o l o g ue
Nature from one thing brings another forth,
And out of death new life is born.
LUCRETIUS
Throughout the history of humankind, we can witness a persistent
longing to understand and make peace with the passage of time.
Humans, like all living things, are born, grow to maturity, procreate,
and perish. But we, alone, know it. Being conscious of our own mortal
ity is the ultimate mixed blessing. We create works of art and theories,
have children, and help those in need, attempting to produce a legacy
that we hope will survive our short lives. And yet, death is still the
cause of much despair, of cries of injustice and tears of pain, our final
defeat by nature's power to create and destroy.
Religions of the East and the West help relieve the fear of dying or
the pain of losing a loved one by turning death into an event transcend
ing physical reality. Some designate life and death as equally important
parts of an eternal cycle of existence; others promise eternal life in par
adise for those who abide by their precepts. In most, redemption from
the specter of death does not come lightly: the transition into a new
cycle of existence or into eternal life is often punctuated by horrendous
PROLOCUE
cataclysms that shake the very foundations of the earth and the sky.
The Druids believed in a succession of ages, each terminated when the
skies fell over their heads; the Zoroastrians believed in a final judg
ment day, when those of high moral standards would be granted eter
nal life while the wicked of spirit would be destroyed by floods of fire
and molten metal. The last book of the New Testament, the Revelation
to John, tells of the destruction of Earth and the lower heavens by a
succession of cosmic disasters, which include collisions with "blazing
stars," causing the Sun to darken, the Moon to turn bloody red, and the
stars to fall from the sky.
The skies, as active channels of communication between God and
the people, were watched with an intense mixture of anticipation and
fear, since portents of the impending end could appear at any moment.
In this book, I explore religion's assimilation of cataclysmic cosmic
phenomena and its influence on scientific thought through the ages,
from the pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece to modern-day
cosmologists. Our concerns with the stability of our environment, the
perpetuation of life on Earth, the reassuring sight of yet another sun
rise, or the fate of the cosmos as a whole, have permeated and inspired
scientific thought since its early origins. If huge asteroids did hit Earth
in the past, will they hit us again? Will the Sun shine forever? Will the
universe exist forever? What is our place in a changing cosmos, where
stars and solar systems are constantly created and destroyed? If Earth
will be destroyed, can we perpetuate our existence elsewhere in the
universe? Like questions about the origin of the universe, those related
to the fate of the cosmos are deeply interwoven with religious thought.
Indeed, I will argue that we create a scientific world as we do a spiri
tual one—in order to overcome fear, to defy time, to understand our
place in this world, and to justify our lives.
As a research scientist, I find that much of my motivation to study
the physical nature of the universe comes from these "big questions,"
even if my everyday routine is filled more with long technical calcula
tions and detailed computer programs than with metaphysical specula
tion. One of my goals in this book is to humanize science, to argue that
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PROLOGUE
our scientific ideas are very much a product of the cultural and emo
tional environment where they originate. It is my hope that the pres
ent exploration of apocalyptic ideas in religion and science will
elucidate some of the issues that polarize the science-religion debate, as
well as paint a fairly complete picture of scientific thought pertaining
to the skies, from our own planet to the universe as a whole. Draw
ing on the Book of Daniel, the Book of Revelation, and an investiga
tion of apocalyptic sects, art, and literature, we will examine the
formation and evolution of the solar system, the extinction of the
dinosaurs, Einstein's general theory of relativity, pulsars and black
holes, the big bang and the inflationary universe, all the way to the
latest ideas in cosmology.
Certain issues are essentially multidisciplinary in nature, and a full
appreciation of their scope requires that we examine their many facets.
The end of the world is one of them. The many answers humans have
proposed throughout the ages are expressions of the same universal
fears and expectations. It is my hope that by examining some of them
we will have a better chance of prolonging our presence on this planet
and, when the time comes, elsewhere in this vast universe.
This book is written for the nonspecialist, although I truly hope
some of my more specialized colleagues will be attracted by its broader
nature; every scientific concept introduced is explained in jargon-free
language and, whenever possible, illustrated by images and analogies
from everyday phenomena; it is my belief that the essence of their mes
sage can still be captured and its beauty appreciated. I hope that you
the reader, after finishing this volume, will agree with me. I am confi
dent your effort will be worthwhile, for the vistas opened by modern
cosmology are truly magnificent.
I should also emphasize that it would be impossible to do complete
justice to the rich history of apocalyptic ideas in religion and to the
whole of astronomical sciences in one single volume. In order to keep
my task (and yours!) within acceptable dimensions, I have had to
exclude several deserving topics, and limit the level of detail with
which some ideas have been treated. I ask my colleagues whose worthy
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PROLOGUE
ideas are not included here to forgive my brevity. As a partial remedy, I
append a fairly long bibliography of popular science books dealing
with topics of related interest. My wish is that the whole will be much
bigger than the sum of its parts, and that you will share my joy in par
taking in our endless quest for meaning.
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P A RT I
" T he E nd
Is N e a r !"
CHAPTER I
The S k i es Are
F a l l i ng
/ am all-powerful Time, which destroys all things.
— B HA CAVAD GlTA, I I. 3 2
We are creatures bound by time. Our lives have a beginning and an
end, a finite period of time, which we hasten to chop into equal seg
ments—years, months, days, hours—in the vain hope that through this
frantic counting we can somehow control its passage. But time always
has the upper hand: we do grow older and we die, not knowing when,
not knowing how. This well-known fact, which many people may
simply brush aside as obvious, some as too disturbing, or others as just
depressing, is the single most fundamental aspect of our existence. It is
what gives meaning to being human.
Death gives rise to our yearning for permanence, to our constant
struggle to create, be it a painting or a family, a mathematical theorem
or a new recipe, something that will stay after we go, something
beyond the mere memory of our existence in the minds of our friends
or relatives. Memories fade from generation to generation. A few years
ago, while exploring some forgotten corners of my parents' attic, I
bumped into my grandparents' photo albums, packed with hundreds
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THE PROPHET AND THE ASTRONOMER
of yellowed photographs of their parties, relatives, friends, celebra
tions, and speeches, frozen moments of a time long gone. "All ghosts
now," my brother Rogerio quipped, in his unique sardonic style. Look
ing at the pictures, I wondered how much of that laughter, of that wis
dom, of their many stories, is still alive in the minds of their
great-grandchildren. Feeling like the missing link of a four-generation
chain, I closed the albums with a deep sense of sadness, of having lost a
part of my own history, now buried in photos I can't recognize.
But wait! Close to the photo albums there was a large box, made of
golden cardboard. Inside I found dozens of letters my grandparents
wrote to each other, to their relatives in Ukraine and Russia, to my par
ents when my father was studying in Boston in the early 1950s.
Extremely excited, I asked Lenore Grenoble, a friend in the linguistics
department—a specialist in Eastern European and Slavic languages—
to help me translate the letters. But my initial excitement quickly
turned into disappointment; the letters were painfully boring, full of
endless details of everyday life. No deep existential message, no deep
secret revealed, nothing!
It dawns on me just how selfish we the living can be. I was not try
ing to get to know my ancestors better; the letters and photos could
have helped me with that. What I really wanted was to get to know
myself better through them. After all, their history is my history, their
lives part of mine, where I grew up, who my parents were. But we
can't expect the past to define our future completely. Our ancestors'
lives and lessons may teach and guide, but we are the ones who must
make choices.
We search for meaning, for help, for companionship. We need
something more than just memories and dreams: we need hope. Per
haps we can defeat the passage of time by elevating ourselves to a
supernatural level, by transcending life itself. In fact, if we beat time,
we may be once more with our long-departed loved ones, for it is when
time's passage is suspended that life and death merge, and the dead can
coexist with the living; in immortality we become godlike. Thus, we
create the infinite and the eternal. Belief soothes and justifies. It
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THE SKIES ARE FALLING
inspires us all, the painter, the teacher, the scientist, the priest, the
lawyer. As Saul Bellow once wrote, "We are all drawn toward the
same craters of the spirit—to know what we are and what we are for,
to know our purpose, to seek grace."
Our creations in pursuit of the eternal are many. In this book we
will examine some of the ways we humans have attempted to defy our
time-bound existence, inspired by a common link: the mix of terror
and awe of the sky above us. Because of the sacred character that all
cultures and religions attributed to the skies, celestial phenomena were
often viewed as a manifestation of divine power, a channel through
which the gods communicated with us. And the news from above
could be good or bad. In many religions, signs of impending doom or
punishment often come from the skies, be they celestial objects thrown
by angry deities on our homes and land, blankets of thick darkness in
the middle of the day, or floods that drown all but a few chosen ones.
In more extreme apocalyptic texts, falling celestial objects announce
the end of all terrestrial life, the end of all ends, which will bring eter
nal bliss for the virtuous and eternal suffering for the sinful.
Science, since its origins, has also been inspired by the sky and its
mysteries. From Plato to Einstein, many of the greatest philosophers
and scientists have studied the sky not just for practical purposes but in
an attempt to bring the human mind closer to that of the Creator, the
Great Cosmic Organizer, believing that knowledge of the natural
world lifted humankind to a higher moral sphere. The pursuit of this
knowledge through reason was turned into a passionate quest, worthy
of a lifelong devotion. As a consequence, our accumulated scientific
knowledge of celestial phenomena drove away many ancient sky-
related fears and beliefs. But in spite of all this progress or, better still,
because of it, many new challenges have appeared, and will keep
appearing. A scientist may refer to the continuous presence of the
"mysterious" as the amazing creativity of nature or—more cynically—
as an expression of our own limitations as rational beings, while a reli
gious person may call it a manifestation of the infinite nature of God.
By exploring thus our ageless relationship with the sky, whether
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THE PROPHET AND THE ASTRONOMER
through faith or reason, or both, we will find that religion and science
represent different, but complementary, facets of our struggle against
time, born of the same questing spirit. This chapter begins with a sur
vey of apocalypticism, dramatic narratives of the end of the world
according to several religions, from that of the Druids to Christianity.
These timeless stories provide the bare-bones imagery that will reap
pear throughout this book. I call them "archetypes of doom."
Celestial Messages
"Surely, our shaman knew what he was doing. Every day, he would
run up to the mountain, lifting his arms toward the skies and chanting
the sacred hymns of our elders, the ones that brought us health and a
plentiful harvest. He knew how to talk to the gods through the lan
guage of the night, written in the bright stars and the Moon. When
many stars fell, the gods were shedding diamond tears, saddened by
our lack of devotion to them. If a hairy star appeared one night and
stayed for many moons, something bad would happen, maybe even the
death of our king. Or worse, a giant sky-serpent could eat the Sun,
bringing on eternal night. We would bring fruits and animals and
clothes to the top of the sacred mountain, which was the place closest to
our gods, and dance and chant for as long as our shaman told us to.
The mountain connected the earth and the sky."
This fictional narrative, which combines elements of many differ
ent ancient cultures without being specific to any one in particular, is a
short allegorical tale of our ancestors' mysterious relationship with the
skies. The gods decide how things will be, but we can plead with them
and perhaps even change their minds if we know how to interact with
them, speak their language. The shaman, the holy man, is the inter
preter of the gods, the decipherer of their intentions as written in the
skies. His actions go both ways, from the gods to the tribe and from the
tribe to the gods. He possesses the knowledge needed to understand
the gods, being the bridge to the unknown. As such, he is more than
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