Fundamental to Existence

Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope still sends astonishing photos of deep space back to Earth. Hubble images, such as those found in the May 2020 issue of National Geographic, are stunning. Peering deeply into the darkness of space, Hubble has found thousands of unknown galaxies, a surprising number of black holes, and witnessed the birth and death of far-off stars. This information and tons of other data transmitted to scientists for thirty years have aided in answering questions about the fundamentals of our existence. The stuff of our actuality is the universe itself; and now, thanks to Hubble, we know more about the origins, age, components, and evolution of our host than ever before. Hubble will continue to help us find our way around the cosmos for many years to come.

Hubble will soon have a companion in exploring the frontiers of space. In March 2021, the new and incredibly powerful Webb Space Telescope, which is two and one-half times larger in diameter than the current record-holding Hubble, will be launched almost a million miles into space to orbit the sun. From this platform, scientists will peer farther than ever into the realms of the universe. With the two telescopes working together, what they reveal will certainly again alter our understanding of existence.

The kind of reality shift we are experiencing with Hubble also happened about four hundred years ago with one of the first telescopes. Galileo Galilei, an Italian astronomer, crafted one powerful enough to see the heavens and pointed it skyward. Doing so changed the world’s thinking about the fundamentals of existence; so much so, that Earth shifted in thought from its lofty center of all creation to a minor position in a small solar system tucked among the stars. Galileo confirmed that Earth circles the sun instead of the sun circling Earth. This cosmic shift in thinking about what is fundamental in our existence was brought before the Inquisition as a grave threat to Catholic doctrine, the authority at the time. After surviving his trial by ceding ground, Galileo lived out his life in a villa in the hills above Florence knowing he had cracked the cosmic egg, even if it were heresy to say so.

Again, the cosmic egg is showing cracks. During the past few decades, with Hubble’s help, science has upended previous knowledge about the cosmos by probing deeper than ever into the origins of the universe. It seems that instead of always existing, the universe originated from a big bang and instead of being constant, it is expanding –it is larger than ever imagined. The origins of the Big Bang are not far from view with Hubble. They will be even closer with the Webb telescope, and there are many questions to answer.

Basic questions about the origins of the Big Bang are captured by Wendell Berry, a renowned American poet, in a short poem from his collection Leavings:

             On the Theory of the Big Bang
             As the Origin of the Universe

I.

What banged?

II.

Before banging
How did it get there?

III.

When it got there
Where was it?

Are there answers to Berry’s questions? Yes – while some are scientific, others are metaphysical.

Before the Big Bang, it seems that the whole of the universe was nowhere. The facts about pre-Big Bang are unknown. Scientists have yet to explore this realm, although Webb will bring them closer to the beginning of time than ever before. For now, that realm belongs to metaphysics, as it has for ages, where at least one ancient source, Tao Te Ching, speaks of it as the formless and perfect mother of the universe that is serene, empty, solitary, unchanging, eternal, and infinite. Herein lies the womb from which existence issues. It is a gestational field in which all thought is conceived; an eternal field of infinite emptiness that is intelligent and aware. There are no boundaries, no center, no dimensions, no substance, no space, and no time. It is eternal, infinite emptiness that is nowhere.

Metaphysics explains mysteries whose questions have not yet been answered by science. Metaphysics is a precursor of possibilities that may or may not be found to be true by later generations. It goes beyond knowledge to what is yet to be known using words to say what cannot be said. Until science finds a way to look back to the instant before the Big Bang, or even farther, words such as emptiness and nowhere help to describe where the universe was before it banged.

Although the womb that gestated the universe is a metaphysical construct, the birth of the universe is scientific knowledge. Currently, scientists theorize that fourteen billion years ago the universe blew out of an emptiness that is nowhere to become our world. The content of a hundred billion galaxies burst from a singularity smaller than an electron to become the ever-expanding storm of debris that we call home. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is one of these billions of galaxies, each with its hundred billion stars. The planet we inhabit is but a nanoscopic speck whirling in the utter vastness of this cosmic storm.

Our earthly home is a minute particle of debris spinning on a physical field called space. This field curves and bends under Earth’s weight, giving the planet an orbit around its star, the sun. The fusion of its travels with the field in which it lies forms spacetime, in which we sense our existence as bodies ticking along in unison with a myriad of objects on our wee planet inside the explosion that is the expanding universe.

The entirety of universal debris is made up of matter, from tiny quarks to giant stars. Matter forms from quanta, or discrete packets of energy. These packets are thought to be the smallest forms of energy and constitute quantum fields. It is from these fields that subatomic particles arise. Quarks, photons, electrons, etc., manifest from quantum fields like mushrooms popping up on the forest floor. (Okay, maybe not quite like that, but you get the idea.) The field grows the particles. The particles do not create the field.

Particles appear when they interact. Without interactions, they are non-existent. They are aroused when needed, otherwise they are nowhere until called upon in the creation of matter. Some physicists liken quantum fields to roiling oceans of dynamic space filled with random fluctuations of particles appearing and disappearing. The world we experience is a swarm of fluctuations far outside our senses to detect, so we see our bodies and the objects around them as solid when in fact matter is mostly continuous fluctuations of energy popping in and out of existence. We call these fluctuations rocks, trees, you, me, planets, stars, etc. Objects manifest through quantum interactions which are in flux, so their forms are in flux. This fluctuation is the play between particles leaping from one interaction to another. Particles do not exist unless they are interacting.

What might this mean? It could mean that the universe is a fluctuation going in and out of existence so rapidly that we cannot detect it with our senses. So far, this is a construct awaiting evidence, but its possibility is cracking the egg of reality. In the past few decades, with Hubble’s help, we have been introduced to:

• the entirety of existence exploding from a dot that was nowhere,
• subatomic particles popping in and out of existence to form objects in space,
• space itself being an object (a field of energy that holds all objects like they were rolling on a raised, out-stretched blanket), and
• fields of energy made up of discrete packets that act as particles when observed and waves when left alone.

Science has been chipping away at the shell of our confidence that the universe is a constant reality. Like Galileo revealing that Earth is not the center of creation, science is uncovering a universe that is not what it appears to be. Matter is not solid. Space is an object. Time is relative, if it exists at all. And there may be multiple universes. The egg of reality is cracking under the weight of growing knowledge. A new reality is hatching.

Physics and metaphysics are the parents of the constructs making up what we know as reality. Science provides a steady stream of factual answers to ontological and existential questions, while metaphysics fills in the gaps until facts catch up to the questions. Metaphysical answers are often mythological stories of godly realms of creation based more on philosophy and faith than on scientific fact. It isn’t that one set of answers is right and the other wrong. They share the truth as they see it. Scientific knowledge comes from observation and measurement while metaphysical truth arises from inner reflection and knowing. Science has given us Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics. Metaphysics has given us the foundations of being, as found in the reflections of the Kabbalah, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Tao, Greek philosophy, Existentialism, and many other philosophies and faiths. Answers from both disciplines bring us closer to the truth about our being. In a few years we may know even more as Hubble’s new partner, Webb, peeks behind the cosmic curtain at the beginning of time. The fundamentals that are revealed may once again alter the reality of our existence as we know it.

© May 2020 Darrell Clukey