Discoveries Of Creation
Definition of Matter
Its literal meaning is to expand and to enlarge. In a more wider sense, it implies a substance out of which a thing is made and sustained by it.1 It is also said to be an abode (Mahall) in which it is transmigrated.2 Some philosophers have signified it a fundamental which accepts the bodily form (Surat-i Jismaniah).3
Today, scientifically, it means that which occupies space and with which we become acquainted by our bodily senses.
The First Discovery
Albert Einstein in 1905 proposed his theory of special relativity. He abolished an old law that said that matter cannot be created or destroyed. Matter is not eternal. It can be created from energy. Electromagnetic rays have the only kind of energy that can exist in empty space. From weaker to stronger these are heat rays, light rays, ultraviolet rays, soft and hard X-rays, and gamma rays. To materialize, the rays must be at least as energetic as the hard X-rays generated by cyclotrons.
All rays except light rays are dark. When a X-ray picture is made, a powerful pulse of energy goes through the subject and exposes the film, yet the subject sees nothing. Gamma rays come to the earth from the most distant and oldest parts of the universe. Two rays must collide to materialize. When gamma rays collide, they convert most of their energy into particles. The particles are components of atoms, such as protons, neutrons, and electrons (or other, heavier particles). The leftover, unconverted energy makes weaker rays, like light or heat. Dark rays become visible when they collide, partially materialize as particles, and continue as light rays.
Einstein's discovery showed that all the material of the universe could have come from the energetic darkness of gamma rays. When the rays collided they would have produced a fiery mass of incalculable energy, temperature, and pressure. The pressure would have made the whole universe expand and cool. But Einstein's discovery does not explain the source of energy of the darkness. A very powerful agency must have done the work necessary to generate so much energy.
The Second Discovery
Edwin P. Hubble found in 1929 that the universe is indeed expanding. Most of the galaxies are spreading out, moving away from each other. This movement cannot have been going on forever in the past. If it had, then by now all other galaxies would be infinitely far from us, and we couldn't see any. But the sky is full of galaxies. Therefore we know that at a certain moment, not infinitely remote in the past, all the material and energy of the universe was together in a fiery mass, without dark empty spaces between. This moment marks the beginning of the universe. It was about ten thousand million years ago.
The Third Discovery
In 1964 two scientists at Bell Labs, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, used a microwave antenna to detect the light coming from the fiery mass. Anyone can detect the same light with equipment as commonplace as a television set. Turn it on and select a channel with no clear picture from any nearby television station. The picture will be a dance of black and white dots. According to Penzias and Wilson's measurements, seventy percent of those dots are electronic noise from man-made artifacts. They come from TV stations far away, electric motors, and other man-made apparatus. Most of the rest of the dots are random emissions from the sun, other stars, and distant galaxies. But one in a hundred of those dots comes from the original light of the early universe. It strikes the TV antenna after traveling across the universe from the earliest moments of time.
The light comes from regions whose distance in light years from the earth is equal to the number of years since the beginning. (Now that I understand the dance of dots, it has become my favorite program!)
A television set doesn't give a clear picture of the beginning of the universe. The interference is 100 times stronger than the original light. To see better, in 1989 N. A. S. A. launched the Cosmic Background Explorer. In outer space this satellite was far from man-made interference on earth, and outside the atmosphere, which absorbs much of the signal. From there the instruments studied the "background." It has cooled considerably by the expansion of the universe, and when it reaches the earth it is no longer visible. But when it started out, it was ordinary light of a reddish color.
Some researchers recognize that they are facing the fundamental secrets of the universe. The principal investigator for the Cosmic Background Explorer, George Smoot, presented the data obtained in April 1992. The primitive universe was shown to be almost uniform. When the small differences of temperature between regions were calculated, one saw a patchwork map. Some regions were denser and hotter than others. The other regions were slightly more rarefied and cooler. These temperature fluctuations have great significance, to be explained shortly. Smoot was so enthusiastic about the fluctuations that he said, "If you are religious, it is like looking at the face of God!"
Separation of the light from the darkness:
Our life cannot exist at temperatures of millions, or even thousands, of degrees. But the early universe was a mass of fire, nearly uniform throughout, at elevated temperature and pressure. Expansion under pressure brought down the temperature. But the fluctuations had to exist if the fire was to separate into concentrated regions of heat, light, and matter, leaving dark, cold empty spaces between. The expansion also dispersed the matter. Later the dispersed matter contracted again under its own gravity into dense regions separated from each other. Each region became a galaxy containing stars and planets. The hot dense regions, in other words, had to separate from each other. The fluctuations made this separation possible. The gravitation of a region is proportional to the mass and energy contained within the region. Dense, hot regions had more gravitational attraction than rarefied, cool regions. Therefore the dense regions attracted matter from the rarefied regions. As they did so, the dense regions became even more dense and compact. The spaces between them became increasingly rarefied.
Not a "big bang" explosion but an expansion:
The dense and rarefied regions were established in the first instants of the universe. The expansion was not like an explosion. An explosion destroys whatever order may be present. The expansion was orderly because it preserved the established arrangement. We now know that the rate of expansion was finely tuned to produce a habitable universe. If the expansion had been a little less rapid, the expanding material would have lost its outward impulse very quickly. Soon it would all have fallen back in to make a black hole. Not even light could have escaped from it. But if the expansion had been a little more rapid, the particles would have dispersed outward into empty space. They would have moved quickly so far from each other that their mutual gravity could never bring them together again in dense regions. Galaxies, stars, and planets would never have formed.
Evidently the rate of expansion was caused by a physical change in the hot material of the early universe. Alan Guth and others have shown that the right physical change could cause the universe to expand at exactly the right rate. Very many physical changes are possible. The right one has not yet been identified. Even when it is identified, physicists will still have to explain why that change occurred instead of any other. The rate of expansion and the physical change that caused it seem to have been chosen carefully so the universe could support life. Choosing wisely requires intelligence. An agency was mentioned before, the one that did the work necessary to generate the energy of the cosmic rays. Now it appears that the agency was also intelligent and acted with an apparent purpose. It was not merely a very powerful agency. It was also very intelligent. Therefore it was not an agency but an agent. An almighty and all-wise agent is usually called God.
The emerging picture of the beginning of all things:
An empty, formless darkness full of energy collides, partially materializes, and continues in a burst of light and heat; then dense, hot regions seeded from the beginning separate into isolated galaxies, stars, and planets in the vast void of cold, dark, empty space. Are we living human beings the first to contemplate the birth of the universe in its true aspects? Or did any ancient people have the same vision?
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