Dr George John

I recently received a meme with a picture of the galaxy, and in it was an arrow pointing to a barely visible dot with the label “This is you, praying”. While “praying” may or may not be true, I found the underlying message disturbing. We are all so small in an unimaginably vast universe where our hopes, fears, dreams, and even sincerely held religious beliefs are trivial. If that isn’t a comforting thought, think about when NASA released images of the universe from the Hubble telescope fifteen years ago and the images from the newly functioning James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These were among the most profound pictures of a universe of countless galaxies and solar systems that seemingly spread across the limitless expanse of space that goes on forever. For most thoughtful people, that gives a moment to introspect our cosmological insignificance. Yet everything we do is in defiance of that reality.
Whilst Albert Einstein’s landmark Theory of Relativity and the Quantum Theory are the two major branches of physics that help us understand what physical reality is, the question that we should ask ourselves is whether and to what extent these foundational theories accurately reveal to us what we need to know to understand better the universe we live in and whether human consciousness is the primary reality in the universe.
There is now an active scientific quest for a possible unification and juxtaposition of the General Theory of Relativity and Quantum theories in science and technology. Yet and despite the credo of how modern physics and the science of cosmology perceive physical reality, will the ‘universe-in-a-frame’ give us sufficient relevant information that is contextual to form an informed opinion?
The central paradox of either theory is that when the duality of the Particle versus the Wave theory is compared, a clear pattern emerged in the 27 Km long ring of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in northern Europe, using superconducting magnets in which individual particles of protons and neutrons were bombarded at high velocity. As a result of these experiments, scientists concluded that the motion of a particle is affected by both its conventional (classical) and its quantum potential. Because scientists now also know that considerably more subtle creative processes are involved in understanding reality, they admit that the above explanation about the motion of particles is still insufficient and imprecise.
Recent developments in cosmology explain Gravity in a Time-Space continuum model. In our current understanding of the “muIti-ness” of the “uni” verse and it’s coming into existence (including our tiny planet, earth) is thought to have happened as a consequence of a dense fireball explosion of the ‘Big Bang’ that is estimated to have occurred around 13.8 billion years ago and ever since the universe has been expanding. It was the Belgian Catholic priest and theoretical physicist Georges Lemaitre, who, in 1924, first noted that an expanding universe could be traced back in time to a single originating point and in the next couple of years, the American astronomer, Edwin Hubble confirmed Lemaitre’s findings.
After the indefinite period of expansion of planets over billions of years, a big crunch and implosion occur, which result in their ultimate and inevitable death. Stars disintegrate into their gravitational fields, thus developing a Black Hole, which in a small area creates unimaginably high density incorporating a singularity with zero-volume, where gravitation is so strong that no light can be emitted; hence they are called “Black Holes”. It is now thought that such singular cosmic events are primed to occur in regions of the infiniteness of the limitless space in which concepts like ‘Time & Space’ ceases to exist. Such an overall proposition about the totality of the universe sounds strangely similar to the idea implicit in what humans in their evolved pre-modern and modern understanding of divinity as a power referred to as God. And such a God – be that god be he/she or it, may have no preference for style but may regard human motives and outcomes of human actions very highly.
In the limitlessness of time, if one attempts to answer questions like “What was god doing before the differing versions of the biblical Old Testament and Indian Vedic ideas about creation?” it may sound a silly and improper question to the religious person, but hopefully even they will not find it too offensive if it is posed as a legitimate intellectual enquiry. When serious scientific study and the search for the universe’s origins started, it remained a continuing quest. We now see the emergence of ideas that the mind & matter and energy & consciousness are all intimately intertwined, going some way in explaining why a vacuum of seemingly empty space in the outer expanse of space is, in reality, packed with natural energy and how all perceivable matter is actually formed.
That is quite apart from other manifestations, including energy fields in which our thoughts and emotions could even exist within it. Such concepts become real through the use of rapidly evolving modern technologies, which could, in the future, among other things, be able to provide virtually unlimited sources of cheap and safe energy, ending the present-day energy crisis the world is facing now. That promises to uncover more of the universe’s hidden self-creative potential.
For such possibilities to become real, humans need to understand the realities in the universe better. Attempts are being made to uncover its origins with the help of modern modelling techniques about how the multi-universe came into being and how it works. An understanding of the processes involved (which can only be imagined now) is likely to include experiments in space involving unimaginable speeds and distances. Ultimately, it will mean that every human action will result in specific local consequences.
That constitutes an underpinning and the basis of the laws of morality, to only do things that are just and fair to others. But the American science writer Cory Powell wrote in The Guardian, “Quantum physics is “chunky” with events occurring in jumps of quantum leaps that have probabilistic outcomes, not definite ones”.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) delivered astounding images of what goes on in deep space beyond light years in distant galaxies. But what we all saw on TV weren’t photographs. They were data visualisation, and that data was the impact of photons (which are light energy) from millions of miles away from us. The sensors onboard JWST measure that energy and send that data back to earth, where other processes render them into something the human eye can see. But can we be sure that we are seeing what is out there when the rendering process transforms light energy into a visible form to the naked eye? Scientists have data on spreadsheets and spectrographs which is to be translated on charts that show the presence of specific elements based on the frequency of light that is reflected, absorbed or emitted by distant objects. That is somewhat similar to seeing crime-scene photos while spectrograms and DNA analysis make the interpretations. The latter gives minute details, while the former only shows the image of how the land lies.
Scientific impact comes from overcoming challenges to accurate data analysis because the precise measurements of distant objects drive science forward. Although it sounds insane to say that there is water on a planet that is thousands of light years away, the first of only five images that we all saw on TV from the JWST images was the spectrograph of the atmosphere 1,150 light years away from Earth. The sensors on JWST even detected the signature of water. The transformation of numbers into visuals is what we saw from JWST’s “deep field” images that gave us a glimpse of a world of thousands of galaxies in various stages of development and destruction in a part of the cosmos that only thirty years ago was considered empty.
To be sceptical and have doubts about the veracity of new imagery about the goings on in the deep field of the universe is now just as it was in the days of the exploration of the American wild west when early photographers first captured on film the awesomeness of original landscapes of the Grand Canyon, which looked otherworldly at first due to our unfamiliarity with such sights.
It is a liberating thought that the beautiful gift of life and the great act of living it makes our existence a foxtrot dance of endlessly expanding, contracting, dying and being reborn.
Today art historians argue that the latest images from space telescopes should be credited as the current era’s landscape art of exquisite beauty and agony, as its literal depiction fills us with awe, humility and reverence for our place in the grand design. If and when future generations come to view the universe as a distinct entity in which human consciousness is considered the primary reality, where will the concept of the existence of a “great architect of the universe” fit in such a concept? If human consciousness is accurate, we should remind ourselves of our insignificance and how critical we are in the unending drama of creation and destruction in which we need to be kind and empathic but not hatefully seeking revenge. We are all made of stardust.
docgjohn@aol.com
(the author is a freelance essayist and formerly
an Emeritus Consultant Psychiatrist from London)