The cultural conversation about science and religion has become a barroom brawl. A growing chorus of scientists may lead beyond this polarization. The View from the center of the universe features stunningly beautiful images.
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The View From The Center of The Universe: by Elizabeth Debold
The cultural conversation about science and religion has become a barroom brawl. A growing chorus of scientists may lead beyond this polarization. The View from the center of the universe features stunningly beautiful images.
The cultural conversation about science and religion has become a barroom brawl. A growing chorus of scientists may lead beyond this polarization. The View from the center of the universe features stunningly beautiful images.
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The View From The Center of The Universe: by Elizabeth Debold
The cultural conversation about science and religion has become a barroom brawl. A growing chorus of scientists may lead beyond this polarization. The View from the center of the universe features stunningly beautiful images.
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Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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the view from the
center of the universe
Magazine Reprint Series by Elizabeth Debold Issue 40 May - July 2008 2008 What Is Enlightenment? Press www.wie.org PO Box 2360, Lenox, MA 01240 USA 800.376.3210 63 What Is Enlightenment? www.wie.org The View from the Center of the Universe I n the last few decades, the cultural conversation about science and religion has become less a scholarly debate and increasingly like a barroom brawl. Atheists and theists are wrangling on the radio, in print, and on every possible bandwidth. The prize is a big one: Who are we? Where do we come from? Our core identity as humans is at stake. Are we Gods children, or are we random accidents in an indifferent universe? In other words, does our existence matter to something larger than ourselves? In the midst of this polemical slugfest, something quite remarkable is emerging from a growing chorus of scientists whose love for and appreciation of our creative cosmos may eventually lead beyond this polarization. The Hubble and other space probes have brought us stunningly gorgeous An Interview with Joel R. Primack & Nancy Ellen Abrams By Elizabeth Debold feature 63 What Is Enlightenment? www.wie.org MayJuly 2008 64 The View from the Center of the Universe 65 What Is Enlightenment? www.wie.org thE viEw from thE cEntEr of thE univErsE pictures that inspire wonder at what we are a part of: incandescent nebu- lae that are the cradles of stars and glowing supernovae that forge the elements from which we are formed. The universe is far more vast, explo- sively creative, eerily beautiful, and mysterious than anyone could ever have imagined. The scale of what we are in the midst ofthe vast dark expanses of space, the infnitesimally small distances traced by subatomic particles, and the stretch of space- time that extends back for billions of light-yearsis nothing less than awesome. As astronomer Carl Sagan once said: A religion that stressed the magnifcence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of rever- ence and awe hardly tapped by tradi- tional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. But for such a religion to bind itself to the human heart, it has to tell us how to relate to this overwhelming picture that science shows us. Where do we ft in? Are we merely passive witnesses to the unfolding drama of the distant stars? Most materialist scientists demur at this point, believ- ing, as Sagan did, that although the universe can be central to us, we are not central to it. Thats why we were more than a little intrigued when Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams tour de force of contemporary cosmology, The View from the Center of the Universe, landed in our offce some time ago. These authors are saying that human beings actually are central to the cosmos and that the latest research in sci- ence can show us how. They dont mean that we are at the geographical center of the cosmos but that we are central along a variety of fascinat- ing dimensions that we are only just beginning to be aware of. This dynamic husband-and-wife team is uniquely qualifed to awaken us to a new view of the cosmos. Primack, a noted physicist, was one of the principal originators of Cold Dark Matter theory, which is part of the accepted understanding about how structures form in the universe. Dark matter is invisible stuff that, according to the theory, flls most of the cosmos and exerts a gravita- tional pull on the matter we do see. In 1988, Primack was made a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has recently served on a National Academy of Science committee to defne the next phase of research that NASA should undertake. Abrams is a philosopher, historian of science, law- yer, policy analyst, and songwriter. She has consulted globally on how nations can make intelligent policy decisions in areas where scientifc research is crucial but controversial. But it is her interest in the boundary between myth and science that has led to such a fruitful partnership with Primack. For the last decade, the two have co-taught a popular course at the University of California at Santa Cruz called Cosmology and Culture, which was the basis for their book. Primack and Abrams aspire to change culture through this new cos- mology. They are on a heroic quest to create a new, scientifcally accurate creation story that will inspire us to leap beyond the confict and divi- sion that threatens this planet. If we intend to navigate Earths coming transition . . . with sanity and justice, we will need to inspire high creativity, intense commitment, and immense stores of enthusiasm and raw hope, they write. To perform what look like miracles, humans need big and inspiring ideas. Abrams and Primack assert that their work can give rise to a new spiri- tuality. According to their defnition, to be spiritual means experiencing our connection to the cosmos through scientifc understanding. Yet the sheer awe at the miracle of existence that these two committed materialists tap into and convey breaks the boundaries of science and leads us beyond. While they would never use the word God themselves, the majesty of their vision brings us in touch with the kind of wonder that humans throughout his- tory have always associated with the timeless realm of the transcendent. MayJuly 2008 66 A nEw thEory of thE cosmos What IS EnlIghtEnMEnt: In your work, you explain that, for the frst time in history, we are developing a picture of the universe that might actually be true. What are we learning about the cosmos? nancy EllEn abRaMS: Let me frst step back a little to say what were trying to do. Every culture we know of has always assumed that theyre at the center of the universe. What does that mean? It means they understood something very deep about themselves, but they never understood anything very deep about the universe. They just looked out, saw the stars, and interpreted them in accordance with what worked for their culture. They didnt have any knowledge of what was beyond the visible stars. They put themselves at the center of the uni- verse because thats what works for human beings. In every culture, this is the basis for understanding how reality is put together, how we ft in. Now for the last four hundred years, since the time of Newton and Galileo, people have not been able to do that. In the Newtonian view, Earth is just a random planet of a random star in a place that is nothing special. So we couldnt see ourselves as central to the universe anymore. Though we still have religions that go back to much earlier pictures of the universe, they have been, to a great extent, in confict with Newtonian science. For several centuries, weve had this confict between what science has told us about our place in the universe and the need of human beings to explain our world in a way that makes us central and, therefore, makes us matter. JoEl PRIMack: But now were beginning to have a theory that makes sense of what science has observed about the cosmos, so we can ask the question that people are really interested in: What does this all mean for us? WIE: What is this new theory? How did it come about? PRIMack: Cosmology was for centuries the laughingstock of science. It was the feld in which the ratio of fact to theory was practically zero. There were lots and lots of theories and hardly any information that would enable us to validate those theories. This has been true throughout almost all of the twentieth cen- tury, up until the mid-1990s. Then a huge amount of new data started to come in through our wonderful new instruments not just the famous Hubble Space Telescope but, for example, the Hipparcos satellite. It isnt as well known, but it allowed us to reliably age date the oldest stars. As the data came in, we real- ized that many of our assumptions had been wrong. For one thing, the distance of the oldest stars and therefore their age had been overestimated; it turns out that they are about twelve billion years old, not sixteen billion years as we had thought. And in 1997 and 1998, two independent teams unexpectedly discovered that the universe has been expanding faster and faster for about the last fve billion years. This led us to theorize that there must be something we cannot see that is making the universe expand so quickly. We call this dark energy, which is a property of space itself, a repulsion of space by space that speeds up the expansion of the universe. We have inferred from this and lots of other evidence that the universe is composed mostly of invisible stuff: dark energy and dark matter. WIE: If dark matter is invisible, how do we know that most of the universe is made of it? PRIMack: People realized as early as the 1930s that the visible matter could not possibly be all there is. The galaxies rotate much too fast to be held together by the gravitational attraction of the matter that we are able to see. Many discoveries, by Fritz Zwicky, Vera Rubin, Mort Roberts, and others, have convinced us that most of the matter in galaxies and clusters of galaxies is invisible. Thats the stuff we call dark matter. Ive been working on dark matter for quite some time. Im a coauthor of the basic paper, published in 1984, that pro- posed the Cold Dark Matter theory. We had very little data to support it until the 1990s. Now as the data comes in, the detailed predictions of the Cold Dark Matter theory are being confrmed again and again. Theres no data thats inconsis- tent with this theory on the large scale of the universe.* All the data confrm what the theory predicted about things like the big bang radiation, the distribution of galaxies, galaxy for- mation, and so on. The predictions of the theory were usually made well in advance of observation, and the observations as theyre coming in keep confrming the predictions in tremen- dous detail. The universe is more vast, explosively creative, eerily beautiful, and mysterious than anyone could ever have imagined. * Not all cosmologists would agree with Primacks statement. For a variety of views on dark matter and dark energy, see page 80. thE viEw from thE cEntEr of thE univErsE 67 What Is Enlightenment? www.wie.org This is the frst time that cosmology has been in this kind of situation. Its normal for a fairly advanced science, where it can make predictions and the predictions usually come true. But in cosmology this is absolutely revolutionary. Every few months we get major new observations, and these observa- tions keep confrming the predictions. This is what gives us scientists confdence that we just might be on the right track. WIE: What is dark matter? And how does it work? PRIMack: First of all, theres nothing very mysterious about how dark matter worksit works just like ordinary gravity. The mysterious thing is that most of the mass in the uni- verse is this invisible stuff. Dark matter is our friend. Dark matter starts in the very early universe with very slight dif- ferences in density from one spot to another spot. Theyre so slight that theyre like the difference between the surface of a soccer ball and a bacterium on that soccer ball. Its a very, very slight difference. We think that those differences were caused by phenomena that occurred on a quantum scale in the very earliest stages of the big bang, the period that we call cosmic infation. But anyway, gravity has the effect that it tremendously amplifes small differences in density. A region thats slightly denser than its surroundings expands more slowly. A region thats slightly less dense than its surroundings expands slightly faster. While the dark matter in those regions that are a little denser than average does expand with the expansion of the universe, it happens more slowly so that it eventually gets signifcantly denser than its surroundings. And the part that becomes denser than its surroundings collapses a little bit and becomes a lump of dark matter that stops expanding. The universe continues to expand around it, but that dark matter lump stops. Within that region, ordinary matter can fall to the center of the dark matter. As it falls in, it can rotate faster and faster, like an ice skater pulling in her arms. Physicists call this conservation of angular momentum. It makes the galaxies rotate. Thats how we get these beautiful spiral galax- ies that are obviously rotating. Since the universe has been expanding for billions of years, those regions that start out slightly denser become galaxiesor clusters of galaxies on a bigger scale. Those regions that start out slightly less dense than average become voids, regions where the universe doesnt seem to have any galaxies. Dark energy is causing the expansion to go faster and faster on a large scale. And dark matter is preventing galax- ies from expanding. Its protecting the galaxies against the tremendously destructive force of the dark energy that pulls things apart. Thats why I like to say that dark matter is our friend. Dark matter keeps our galaxy and all the other galax- ies together. WIE: Is there a correlation between what youre calling dark energy and the original creative impulse that initiated the big bang? PRIMack: We think so. But thats one of the big mysteries, because we dont really know what dark energy is. We are pretty sure that in the very earliest stages of the big bang, the universe was expanding extremely rapidlythis is cosmic infation, which I mentioned earlier. Its not like ordinary expansion but is an exponential expansion where in a given amount of time the size of a given region doubles, and then, in the same amount of time, it doubles over and over. Now the universe is starting to do this again under the infuence of dark energy. So we think that there may very well be a connec- tion between the tremendously strong dark energy that may have been driving cosmic infation at the very beginning of the universe and the dark energy thats operating today. WIE: So while the dark energy is causing the universe to expand, the dark matter pulls the star dust in the universe together to create the stars and the galaxies. Is that right? PRIMack: Thats right. The dark matter lumps are holding everything together. The special thing about ordinary atoms, as opposed to dark matter, is that when they bang into each other, which naturally happens once in a while, they radiate away some of their energy and thus fall into the center of a dark matter lump. The very frst stars were created this way out of hydrogen and helium, which came from the big bang. Clouds of atoms fall together, get very dense, and thus become stars. At the end of their lives, a tiny fraction of their mass becomes star dustparticles of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and other heavier elements. Then in the next generation, the heavier elements can form into planets that circle the stars. We actually see this process going on now. Thousands of planetary systems are actually forming. We can see this with our space telescopes. So were quite sure that this is in fact what happens. This is probably how our own planetary sys- tem formed around a late-generation star. This only happens Dark matter is our friend. Its what holds all of the galaxies in the universe together. MayJuly 2008 68 The Invisible Texture of the Universe This extraordinary image shows the projected distribution of dark matter in a 3-billion-light-year cross-section of the universe. Each level of magnifcation gives us a closer look at the cosmic web of dark matter flaments (blue), which string together billions of small and large galaxy clusters (yellow). 3
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2 0 0 4 This cosmic cluster is made up of more than a thousand galaxies, each of which contains hundreds of millions of stars. thE viEw from thE cEntEr of thE univErsE 69 What Is Enlightenment? www.wie.org in the middle of giant dark matter halos, which are spherical blobs of dark matter. When you think about a galaxy, you see these beautiful spirals, but you should imagine that on a scale ten times bigger than the galaxies that we see, there are these giant dark matter lumps that are actually holding the galaxies together against the destructive force of the dark energy thats pulling things apart on bigger scale. Nancy has a beautiful way of describing this with a nautical analogy. abRaMS: Sometimes in my talks I explain it in this way because it brings it all a little closer to home: Imagine that the entire universe is an ocean. The ocean is dark energy, which flls the entire universe. On that ocean, there sail billions of ghostly ships made of dark matter. At the tops of the tallest masts of only the largest ships are tiny little beacons of light. Those bea- cons of light are what we see when we look out at the stars and galaxies in the universe. We cant see the ships and we cant see the ocean. But we know theyre there through theory, through Joels theory specifcally, the theory of cold dark matter. Because we have this theory and this new picture of the universe, we can know that those invisible things are there and that those little bits of light are not just hanging there. They are the beacons on the ships, which represent the galaxies that we actually see. At thE cEntEr of thE cosmos WIE: In this new scientifc picture that you are presentingwhat you sometimes call the Double Dark theory, which includes dark energy and dark matteryou say that we are cosmically central and that were living at a pivotal time. This cosmic centrality is what you mean by the view from the center of the universe. Can you explain some of the key ways that we human beings are central to the cosmos? PRIMack: Let me give you a brief list. First, were made of the rarest stuff in the universe. Atoms only make up less than fve percent of the stuff of the universe. Dark matter has at least fve times more mass than all the ordinary matter that we know. The rest is dark energy. At least seventy percent of the mass-energy of the universe is this dark energy stuff, which is really mysterious. So it turns out that atoms are relatively rare. And almost all of the mass of atoms consists of hydrogen and helium. All the heavy elementscarbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, iron, and all the way up to uraniumthese are made in stars and in supernovae, when stars explode at the end of their lives. As I said before, these heavier elements are spewed out as star dust. We are made of these heavy elements. People like to call it CHON, which stands for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitro- genthe most common elements in living organisms. Of course, you cant make living creatures without a fair amount of the other heavier elements too. All of those were made in stars and have been collected together into very special places, like our planet Earth. Thats what we are made of. All of the heavier elements put together represent only one-hundredth of one percent of whats in the universe. Were the rarest stuff in the universe. abRaMS: To show how important our place is in the universe, we have created what we call the Cosmic Density Pyramid. Its based on the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill. The base of it is thirteen rows of bricks, and then theres a foat- ing capstone with an eye in the middle of it. Everyone knows this symbol. It was put on the back of the dollar bill to rep- resent something completely differentthe thirteen original colonies with the Eye of Providence looking favorably on this venture of a new country. But the pyramid was an even older symbol when the U.S. government started using it. We have taken this symbol and reinterpreted it. The age of the symbol refects the fact that symbols like this really work for human beings. People like them; they resonate with them. But our interpretation makes them realistic and accurate. Weve reinterpreted the pyramid to represent all of the vis- ible matter in the universe. The heavy base of the pyramid is just hydrogen and helium, which is what the stars are made of. Thats almost all the atoms in the universe. Even though theyre very, very light, they still weigh far more than all the star dust, which is what that tiny foating capstone is made of. The eye in the capstone represents intelligent lifethe portion of the star dust that is able to see this whole thing, refect on it, to fnd some meaning in it. That eye is far out of proportion to the All of the heavier elements represent only one-hundredth of one percent of what exists. Were made of the rarest stuff in the universe. MayJuly 2008 70 Hydrogen & Helium 0.5% Invisible Atoms 4% All Other Visible Matter 0.01% Cold Dark Matter 25% Dark Energy 70% Imagine that the entire universe is an ocean of dark energy. On that ocean, there sail billions of ghostly ships made of dark matter . . . nancy Ellen Abrams MayJuly 2008 71 amount of star dust that exists. If we did represent intelligent life in scale with everything else, it would be almost invisible, a little tiny point at the top. But that eye is really the most impor- tant part of the pyramid. Its us. Then weve expanded this picture from the back of the dol- lar bill to be much, much bigger. Below ground, theres an immense hidden dark pyramid, which represents the invisible atoms, dark matter, and dark energy. So even though we are tiny, tiny, tinywere up at the very topmost point of the pyramidwe are supported by everything below us. We could not exist without the huge amount of dark matter thats below the surface or without the dark energy that is responsible for keeping this whole universe growing. PRIMack: Were also in the middle of all possible size scales. The human size scale is almost exactly in the middle between the smallest possible size, something physicists call a Planck length, and the entire visible universe, the largest thing we can see. This must be true of all intelligent life. WIE: Why do you say that? PRIMack: Well, all atoms are about the same size, and you need to have an awful lot of atoms to have the complexity of the human mind, which is the most complicated thing weve ever discovered in the universe. You cant have that kind of complexity if youre as small as, lets say, an ant. You have to be pretty big; you have to have a lot of atoms. You might think that bigger is betterthat if humans are smart, then a creature the size of a mountain would be even smarter. But large creatures like dinosaurs or whales are so big that theres a noticeable delay from when information is sent out from their brains and when it gets to their tails. Its cru- cial that information be transmitted quickly. You cant think faster than information can be transmitted. The way thinking is done, both in brains and also in supercomputers, is that the really intense processing is done in small regions where the data can be transferred back and forth very rapidly. If you want to build a big supercomputer, you hook together a lot of chips. But all the hard work is being done in the chips. What that means is that if theres a large thinking organism, its going to be basically a community of smaller minds. The thinking will be done by the smaller minds. The speed of communication ultimately the speed of light, which is the fastest that data can be transmittedlimits the size to about that of a human. To summarize, were made of the rarest stuff in the uni- verse. Were on the midsize scale where things are really inter- esting. Were a lot smaller than galaxies and the universe. Were a lot bigger than the really small size scale of atoms and the interiors of atoms. abRaMS: We decided to give a name to this middle range of size scales that humans are a part of. We chose the name Midgard. We wanted to give it a name because it is so special. Its the range of size scales that we have intuitive understand- ing offrom about the size of an ant up to about the size of the sun. For most people, that range is reality, even though it actually is not reality; its only a tiny patch of it. We picked the name Midgard because in Norse mythology it is the realm of civilization and stabilitythe human world in the middle of the world sea. Off to one side is the realm of the giants, and off to the other is the realm of the gods. Now this is, of course, metaphorical. Nobody should ever imagine that were trying to take this literally, but metaphori- cally, its really quite a good description of the size scales in the universe. Outside this midrange of size scales, there really is the land of the giantsgiants of galaxies and superclusters of galaxies on the cosmic horizon. These are things that we can really only think about; we cant ever experience them directly. The same is true in the small realm. We are totally dependent on the very small realm of individual living cells and the much smaller realm of atomic particles and so forth. Those were here frst. They are what we are made of. In that sense they are, as we like to call them in our book, the wee gods. We really are sandwiched in between these two other realms. For most of human history, no one knew about these two realms. They only knew about Midgard. Its only with the advent of great scientifc instruments and theories, like quantum the- ory, that we have actually been able to say, This is really what the universe is like on these other size scales. This has only happened in the last century. We now know about the realm of the wee gods and the realm of the giants. We know about this through science. PRIMack: Let me continue with the ways humans are central by jumping to time. It turns out that we live at the midpoint of cosmic time. We live very close to the time when the universe is switching over from slowing down its expansion to speeding up its expansion. This is the best time for observation of the distant universe. As the universes expansion speeds up, the distant galaxies are disappearing from our sight. We scientists Human beings are central to the cosmosand the latest research in science can show us how. thE viEw from thE cEntEr of thE univErsE 72 What Is Enlightenment? www.wie.org like to say that this is the best possible time to observe the dis- tant universe, so fund us quick! Actually, of course, this will remain true for millions of years, but its something that were just beginning to appreci- ate. We live at the midpoint of our solar systems life. It began about four and a half billion years ago; it will end in fve or six billion years when the sun turns into a red giant star and then ultimately a white dwarf. Were also living in the middle of the best time for Earth. Earth only got an oxygen-rich atmosphere about half a billion years ago thanks to microorganisms. The sun is steadily heating up, which is what midsize stars like the sun always do as they age. In about half a billion years, the sun will become so hot that, quite apart from global warming due to greenhouse gasses, it will evaporate all the oceans, and Earth will lose its water. The hydrogen will be separated from the oxygen at the top of the atmosphere, the hydro- gen will be lost, and Earth will become a dune planet. Incidentally, this fate could be averted, or at least postponed, if our distant descendants fgure out how to move Earth farther away from the sun. My astronomical colleagues just fgured out how to do this in principle. It involves reorienting the orbits of some large comets. This isnt something that we need to worry about right away, because were talking about many hundreds of millions of years in the future. But this shows that were in the middle of the best period of our planet. Were also at the end of the exponential expansion of humans on Earth. During the last century, humanity increased its num- bers by a factor of four. The size of the human population dou- bled not once, but twice, over the last hundred years, which is the frst time in the history of humanity that ever happened. It can never happen again. In fact, there are strong doubts that Earth could handle a doubling of the current human popula- tion. So weve reached the end of this rapid increase of our pop- ulationand were obviously reaching the end of the even more rapid increase of our impact on the planet. Thus, were living at a very special moment from all of these different perspectives: from cosmic to the solar system to Earth to human. This brings us to a total of six different ways that were in a central position in the universe, starting with being made of the rarest stuff, plus the fact that were in the middle of all size scales, and then the four different ways that were living in a central moment in time. Let me just mention one more: Were at the center of the observable universe. Now thats nothing special, because any A spherical representation of cosmic time This diagram shows us how, from the perspective of time, were at the center of the universe. As Abrams reminds us, When we look up at the night sky, we are not just looking out into spacewere looking back in time. The image of a distant galaxy that we see through a telescope is actually the light that this cosmic form emitted billions of years ago. In the fgure, each concentric sphere, moving outward from today, represents an earlier epoch in the evolution of the universe. The farther away from us a sphere is, the farther back in time are the galaxies and other objects that we observe in that sphere, until we reach the outermost layer, which represents the background radiation generated by the big bang itself. 1. YOU ARE HERE! (Today) 2. Our Sun Forms (4.5 Billion years ago) 3. Big Galaxies Form 4. Bright Galaxies Form 6. Cosmic Background radiation (400,000 years after the big bang) 7. Cosmic Horizon (big bang) MayJuly 2008 73 observer is at the center of their observable universe. We all see a spherical universe around us, and in that sense, the old medieval cosmology with Earth at the center of a set of crystalline spheres was right. But the way we understand this now is that were at the center of spheres of time. We dont just look out in space; we look back in time. Looking out, we see the galaxies as they were longer and longer ago. The same would likely be true of other intelligent creatures in other places in the universethey would see themselves at the center of the observable universe too. But were realizing these things for the frst time. WIE: In your book, you call this perspective the cosmic spheres of time. Nancy, youve said that we are in a special place in the uni- verse in relation to these cosmic spheres of time. Our special place arises from the relationship between space, time, light, and con- sciousness. You also note that without consciousness, there is no visible universe. Could you say more about what you meant by this and how it relates to our centrality? abRaMS: The visible universe is what we see. Its what were conscious of. Theres something out there, and we humans have to interpret what it is. Now that we actually have a serious scientifc theory and a lot of data to support it, were in a posi- tion to tie our need to give a meaning to the universe to what we actually know about the universe. This is whats really so extraordinary about this point in time for us. Astonishingly, in this new picture, in all the ways Joel mentioned, we actually are central. Were just not central in the way people assumed, which was a geographic centrality. That is obviously not true. There is no geographic center to an expanding universe. But nevertheless, were central in all these really interesting, subtle, and very meaningful ways that, of course, no one could even conceptualize before we had mod- ern cosmology. So were in an extraordinary position from the point of view of human meaning because were now at a place where we can satisfy this deep need to understand ourselves as central to the universe. We can make it scientifcally rigorous and accurate at the same time. Thats what has never been possible before. Thats what we really need to develop now. Its not obvious how to do this. Weve given an interpre- tation in our book of one way to look at it, but this is really going to require the whole cultureartists and writers and so forthto collaborate with it. We need to interpret this new picture of the universe in ways that are meaningful to us, that inspire us, and that really light our fre. k harvardeducated aeurosureoa revea|s h|s exper|eaces~|a aad out of the operat|a room~w|th appar|t|oas, aae|s, aad afterdeath surv|va|, aad shares the |essoas he |earaed. "ham||toa's vo|ce soars." Pub||sbers Wee||y "k||aa ham||toa |s a aatura| storyte||er." L|rda K|e|r, R.N., Producer, rey's Aratoy ard N|p/Iuc| foreWord by ArdreW We||, N.D. K?<J:8CG<C8E;K?<JFLC8ccXeA%?Xd`ckfe#D%;%#=8:J Iarcber/Peru|r, a eber of Peru|r roup (USA) WWW.peru|r.co nnn%jZXcg\cXe[k_\jflc%Zfd thE viEw from thE cEntEr of thE univErsE 74 What Is Enlightenment? www.wie.org consciousnEss in thE cosmos WIE: As you have been explaining, the cold dark matter theory tells us that most of the universe is invisible. Youve said that without consciousness, we couldnt see anything. What is the role of con- sciousness in the universe? abRaMS: The frst thing that I think people dont realize is that everything we say about the universe is really about our understanding of the universe. We dont really have any way of knowing anything out there, except through our own minds. PRIMack: All we see is light. We make the interpretation that there are stars out there rather than tiny holes in the dome of the sky through which the light of heaven shines. The idea that those are distant stars was a discovery, as was the realiza- tion that those stars themselves have a life and a death and that the really distant things are galaxies and quasars. All of these are discoveries. Theyre not the least bit obvious. We basically construct the universe as we discover more things to interpret. Now we have the ability with our satellites above the atmosphere to see parts of the spectrum of radiation that could never be seen by our senses: gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, and even radio waves. We depend on a combination of fancy technology and theo- retical interpretation to make sense of this universe. If that isnt human consciousness, I dont know what is. abRaMS: Consciousness is what makes all this real for us. Everything that we are doing is for us. Everything we say about the universe, even the word universe, is a human construct. We couldnt possibly know anything without using our own abilities to metaphorically create meaning. WIE: I believe you have said that human beings are the perfect size in the cosmos. Does this relate to our capacity for consciousness? abRaMS: I dont know that we said were perfectbut we are the right size to have complex thoughts. Whether you consider that perfect or not is really a matter of taste. There are actu- ally a lot of people out there today, environmentalists particu- larly, who think that Earth would be better off without human beings. The animals would survive, and the planet would be greener. All of the bad things that were doing wouldnt be happening. I personally think that thats a terrible misunder- standing of our entire species and what our potential is. Were not perfect by a long shot, and we make terrible mistakes. But we are able to do something that nothing out there that we have ever encountered anywhere in the whole universe can do. We may be the frst. It may just be that Earth is the planet that is going to have to support this astonishing experiment, for better or for worse. The experiment of intelligent life is giving the universe its own way of looking at itself. All of us togetherwe and any intelligent aliens that might be out therewe are the con- sciousness of the universe. We are the way the universe refects on itself, and without us, the universe is utterly meaningless and will forever be meaningless. A beautiful planet could be here with animals and plants, but the whole thing would be meaningless. Those environmentalists who imagine this planet from their point of view as a pristine beautiful Eden are giving the planet meaning. Without us, no ones going to be imagining that. PRIMack: On the other hand, we also have the ability to think through the implications of our actions. One of the things that we learn from cosmology is the enormous time scale before us and into the future. We are the product of 13.7 billion years of cosmic evolution. Our planet has billions of years to go before the solar system is destroyed by the sun turning into a red giant star and then a white dwarf. There will be many thou- sands of billions of years of evolution in the future of the galax- ies. In fact, our own galaxy will get brighter and brighter for approximately six trillion years. The future before us and our descendants, if were smart enough to have any, is immense. What we do in this brief period at the end of the human infa- tionary expansion on Earth can make a tremendous difference in the long run. Weve just begun to appreciate this, but its not too late to have the results come out in good ways rather than bad. WIE: So this is another way that we are living at a pivotal time on this planet? abRaMS: Were living at a pivotal time only if you understand how big time actually is. Were always living at a pivotal time from some sort of political point of view: Is it going to be the Democrats or Republicans? Is the Iraq War going to end or is it going to go on another ten years? Those are pivotal events on some size scale. But the size scale were talking about is far, far larger. In the very distant future, the Milky Way is going We are the way the universe refects on itself. Without us, the universe is utterly meaningless. MayJuly 2008 75 to merge with the Andromeda galaxy. In fact, our local group of thirty-some galaxies is going to come together and merge. During that period of time, the rest of the universe is going to be expanding so fast that we are hardly going to be able to see any other galaxies at all. Thus in the very distant future, our visible universe may really consist of only one huge galaxy, which Joel and I like to call Milky Andromeda. If the human race has gone on to solve these little short- term problems that we are facing now, and has continued to evolve in order to colonize the Milky Way, then we will, in effect, have colonized the entire visible universe. Thats future number one. Now lets assume, because we dont know about them, that there arent any intelligent aliens. Lets assume that the fate of the universe is up to us. So future number two is that the Republican Party continues to debate whether Jesus and the devil were brothers or not and people are completely dis- tracted from seeing whats happening as Earth warms up. We dont cut back on our use of resources because of greed and short-term views. We have huge wars, plagues, and so forth, and the human race is reduced again to where it was thou- sands of years ago. We have to start all over again, or maybe we are totally wiped out. In that case, future number one is completely wiped off the possibility charts. This is what we mean by a pivotal moment, because we, right now, are the people who are going to be deter- mining which of those two immensely different futures could actually come about. Unless you can see cosmic time, unless you can see a really long time into the future and realize how important our existence may be, you cant possibly appreciate future number one as a possibility. WIE: Ive heard you say very eloquently that our time seems ordi- nary to us but its going to be mythic to future generations if we act responsibly. abRaMS: Either way its going to be mythic. Either way. PRIMack: Our descendants will never forgive us if we mess up Earth. abRaMS: If we dont save itbecause were already messing it up. We have a huge responsibility. Were acting as though Earth is just hereas if we found it and it belongs to us. But we are here because of billions of years of other animals fght- ing and struggling so that their children could grow up and A brilliant synthesis of science and wisdom from the worlds greatest spiritual traditions, both ancient and modern, translated into practical tools for anyone who is seeking more depth and meaning in their life. I highly recommend this book. DEEPAK CHOPRA, author of Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment $16.95 / ISBN: 978-1572245334 $24.95 / ISBN: 978-1572245396 New Book! Copublished by: We Live in an Exciting Time of Transformation thE viEw from thE cEntEr of thE univErsE 76 What Is Enlightenment? www.wie.org SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE is Cindy Wigglesworth denes Spiritual Intelligence as the ability to behave with Compassion and Wisdom, while maintaining inner and outer Peace, regardless of the circumstances. This language transcends religions and makes everyone comfortable. This skill set is proven to work in organizations as well as for individuals. To learn practical tools to shift from ego self to Higher Self take a Spiritual Intelligence Assessment or become a certied coach. Contact Cindy at [email protected] or go to www.consciouspursuits.com. reproduce. All of life is a struggle. We are benefting from the struggles of our ancestors going all the way back to that frst cell. We were not handed this Earth. Thats why some of these religious myths are so terribly destructive. Oh, God handed it to us and said to us, Okay, its up to you now, take care of it. No, it wasnt handed to us. We have arisen out of it. Were part of this enormous fow, and we have every obligation to pass it on to our children and to our very, very distant descendants who can take over the whole galaxy. A cosmocEntric viEw on BEing humAn WIE: Part of what youre alluding to is a point that you make in your book about how our moral and ethical frameworks are not appropriate to the scale of time and the consequences that were actually working within. abRaMS: Thats right. We have to realize that all human beings are essentially the same, if you look at it from a cosmic point of view. We are completely preoccupied today with very, very triv- ial differences. The Shiites versus the Sunnis. The Mormons versus the Evangelicals. Blacks versus whites. These are silly, trivial differences. Yet our entire culture is completely preoc- cupied with these trivial differences between human beings and is not seeing that, as human beings, we have this immense potential. But we really need to see ourselves as one. Another thing that we say in the book is that there is an us versus them, but its not my civilization versus your civilization or my race versus your race. Us versus them is intelligent life ver- sus the laws of physics. Thats what we really have to deal with. WIE: What do you mean by that? abRaMS: Its not between us; its between all of us humans and nature. Thats what we really have to negotiate with; thats what we really have to take seriously. We need to identify our- selves with a much larger group. We need to identify ourselves with intelligent life and not with some tiny little ethnic group. As long as we identify ourselves with tiny little ethnic groups, we cannot see how precious this incredible experiment is on planet Earth. All we see are the little differences. When you appreciate your place in the real universe, these little things really subside in importance, and we can fnd the unifying ele- ments that could really save our planet. WIE: It gives a lot of dignity to being human. MayJuly 2008 77 abRaMS: Yes, we have to see the dignity in it. All of us humans are bunched up on one planet, so we look extremely common to ourselves. Humans are incredibly precious. There are so few intelligent beings in this immense universe. Just because we happen to be bunched up on Earth, doesnt make us any less precious. WIE: When you say that its between human beings and nature, are you saying that human beings are separate from nature? abRaMS: No, were talking about human beings realizing that we have to live in harmony with nature. We have to pay attention to nature. We have to learn to understand her ways. Thats science. WIE: Earlier you spoke about Midgard, the midsize realm of cre- ation that is between the infnitely small and the unimaginably large. In a talk that you gave to NASA, you said that the only way we can know these larger cosmic realms and the subatomic realms is through science, and the only way we can experience them is spiritually. What do you mean when you say that we have the capacity to experience these realms spiritually? abRaMS: Basically, what were saying is that you cannot experi- ence these things directly. You can learn about them and know about them intellectually. Scientists do this. We are trying to fnd what our place is in this universehow do we understand our place in the expanding, double dark universe? Throughout all of history, people have needed to experience their place in the universe because it gave them grounding, made them feel that their lives were real and that they mattered. It was the basis of their various religions. We still are the same kind of peo- ple. We really do need meaning. And we need meaning that is grounded in the best picture of reality available to us in our time. Now, for the frst time, we have a new picture of reality, and our meaning has to be grounded in that. We can experience the entire universe spiritually if we real- ize that, by Joels and my defnition, what spiritual means is experiencing our connection to the cosmos. That is all it means; it has nothing to do with anything supernatural. The universe itself is so much grander than anyone imagined. If we even attempt to feel that were part of it, that is a spiritual action. WIE: Because the enormity of it utterly shatters any notion of self that would merely be personal, ethnic, or cultural? abRaMS: I dont think it shatters it. I think it greatly expands it. We can now realize that we are cosmic beings in a very defnable sense. We have a place in this cosmos, and we could have a huge effect on the cosmos, if we play our cards right. WIE: How do we make meaning from this new view of the cosmos? As you say in your book, we have the choice to fnd meaning in our extraordinary place in the cosmos or to continue with the modern- ist, Newtonian, existential view that were insignifcant specks in the middle of this vast, meaningless universe. PRIMack: We give a number of examples in our book of apply- ing ideas from modern physics and cosmology to human affairs. Take the concept of emergence. We love to teach our students what we call phase transitions. Thats what hap- pens when, for example, ice melts and turns into water or water evaporates and turns into water vapor. These are com- plete changes of basic physical phenomena, and they simply dont make any sense on the scale of an individual atom or molecule. You cant talk about a molecule of water being fro- zen, liquid, or vapor. It only makes sense when you talk about large numbers of molecules interacting with one another. abRaMS: There is a very simple way of putting this in human terms. Something similar to a phase transition happens when human beings are in groups. For instance, individuals who may be very nice on their own, when they are with too many other people who all think one way, can become fanat- ics. Theres this strange thing called group think that hap- pens to us, and there are some evolutionary explanations for why this happens. People in these groups are extremely differ- ent than they would be as individuals. PRIMack: Of course, an example of emergence that we humans are particularly interested in is the phenomenon of human consciousness. Its a deep mystery how this wet organ in our skulls, our brain, somehow creates the experience of being conscious beings. This is a deep question of neuropsychology that great progress is being made on, but its such a tough question that its going to take a lot of further understanding before we get there. Clearly, something like emergence must be happening. Consciousness is not just individual interac- tions between neurons or the individual things that happen in neurons. Its some kind of very complicated collective phe- nomenon that happens through the interaction of billions of neurons, just as phase transition describes what happens You never fnd meaning without looking at the big picture. And cosmology is the biggest picture we have. MayJuly 2008 79 through the interaction of billions of atoms or molecules. Were trying to illustrate the idea that physics and cosmol- ogy can be an important new source of metaphors. Once you have the idea of metaphorical thinking, you can apply that to very different realms, including human experience and human interaction. Thats a way that we can fnd meaning. Basically, the bottom line is that you never fnd meaning without looking at the big picture. You cant understand what a little piece of a picture means until you see the big picture; you see how the little piece fts in. Cosmology is the biggest picture we have. It can help us fnd meaning by letting us see ourselves as part of a grand story. abRaMS: Id like to say one more thing about the question of meaning. Every culture has had some kind of meaning- ful story, a story that meant something for them. But what is meaningful changes with the times and with changes in the political and economic and social situations. Today we have far too many people looking for meaning in stories that were useful to their ancestors in earlier times, which cannot create a coherent picture of reality today. The big challenge today is to fnd the kind of meaning that our ancestors may have found in their stories in a way that is coherent with what we actually know now. Science has to be the bottom line. We need to take the best science of our day and build our meaning on that. Because what were looking for is not just meaning to make us feel good so we can stay home. Its meaning so that we can have an accurate map of reality to save this planet. We have to build on the best picture of our time and then give that adequate meaning so it motivates us and brings us together, so that when we do work together, we are working in harmony with nature. We have not changed as human beings. We need meaning today just as much as we ever needed it. We also desperately need science because we arent going to succeed without it. The huge challenge is to pull those two things together so that we have meaning and it is accurate. WIE: In the last chapter of your book, you write: If we take on the cosmic responsibility, we get the cosmic opportunitythat rarest of opportunities for the kind of transcendent cultural leap possible only at the dawn of a new picture of the universe. Could you say some fnal words on that? PRIMack: There have been only a few real changes to our cos- mic picture. First, the fat Earth was the standard picture of the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and the Old Testament Hebrews. This changed to the picture of a spherical Earth in the middle of a spherical universe. Thats the Greek view, which was standard throughout the Middle Ages. Then there was the transformation from that to the Newtonian picture, which led to this curious situation where, for the last three or four hundred years, most people in the West never even thought about the universe without a certain discomfort. Now we have the transition to the double dark universe thats based on dark matter and dark energy, where quantum mechanics and relativity are also important. This is a strik- ingly different picture from any of the earlier ones. Evolution is also key. The universe changes fundamentally in time and on different size scales. These are characteristic features of our latest picture of the universe. Now that were beginning to understand how this picture fts together, this challenges us to reconceptualize everything. Thats a fantastic opportunity for our particular moment in time, and people have not had such an opportunity for many centuries. Part of the point of our book is to give people the back- ground to start thinking about it and creating new art and lit- erature, and so forth. Weve attempted to show some of the ways that this can be done. If were successful, people will go far beyond what we propose. abRaMS: The amazing thing is we have this opportunity right when the world is falling apart. There are a lot of people who are scared of these ideas. Theyre scared partly because they feel they cant understand the science. We have to understand how the universe works and make our spirituality as real as possible. The whole idea of trying to spend your life under- standing your spiritual connection to the universe but not hav- ing any interest in how the universe actually works seems to me absolutely bizarre. We need to be coherent beings. Thats how its going to matter. Far too many people are looking for meaning in stories that were useful to their ancestors, but which cant create a coherent picture of reality today. Listen to the full interview at wie.org/View