The Grand Creation - Universe

The Universe

Debi Prasad Choudhary

Los Angeles

11/4/2014

The priest in our village used claim that the temple in which he worshiped the Goddess for all of us is the center of the universe. When, I started thinking on my own, I started doubting, since in our neighboring village also there was a temple with Goddess, which was better built!! After taking a modern cosmology course, I realized how correct he was, since every point in the universe can claim to be the center.

The story of the universe starts with a simple, innocent looking question: Why the night sky is dark? The answer is because the universe was created at some point of time in the past and expanding ever since. I know the language of the previous sentence is loaded with words like “created”, “point of time”, but let us keep it that way for the time being. If the universe existed forever, extend to infinity and not expanding the entire sky would be glowing due to dense stars and galaxies heating up the interstellar matter over past infinity time. We can think it of as looking the continuous trees of a thick forest. Since the universe was created and expanding, lot of light has not reached us yet. As the universe expands, the light waves are stretched such that the luminosity due to them is diminished.

There are four robust observational results that clearly show that the universe began with an extreme hot state and expanding for past 13.6 billion years.  In 1920s, Edwin Hubble measured the speed of far away galaxies and found that they move away from us. The distant galaxies move faster than the nearer ones. This is a direct consequence of the expanding universe, which was predicted by intellectual ingenuity of Albert Einstein, who considered the mass of matter and energy that moves them are manifestation of the same stuff.

In 1976, Penzias and Wilson from Bell laboratories discovered that all the empty space in the sky is uniformly cooled to about -455 F (or 2.3 K). The expanding universe means in the distant past it was compact, dense and hot. The relative amount of light elements such as hydrogen, Helium and Lithium suggest such as condition of the life of the universe. Most type of hydrogen with and without a neutron, helium with 3 and 4 neutrons and lithium with seven neutrons in their nucleus were produced when the universe was very hot and dense, in first few minutes after its existence.

Se we know that the universe came to exist as an compact, dense and hot object about 13.6 billion years back, where the space was created and time started. Intense fire produced matter and suddenly extinguished as the light clumped and converted into matter. The clouds of matter collapsed become stars and galaxies and illuminated the universe again.  We can actually trace the distribution of galaxies into groups and mega groups that correspond to the lumpiness of radiation in early stage of the universe.

This is the story of the universe told by the modern scientists who has access to large telescopes, sophisticate instruments and powerful computers. They think, measure, verify and conclude. The questions are the same, so ancient wise man without such privilege of modern professors and scientists tried to answer that “God said let there be light”¹, and others mysticism² of this sacred knowledge.

¹"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Genesis 1 and 3:1).

²“No body can know how the creation came to exist, and if he has or has not produced this." (Rig Veda 10. 129)