Eyeworld

EW NEWS & OPINION 28 March 2015 Insights by J.C. Noreika, MD, MBA nearest stars were trillions of miles away. It gets worse. Breaking through cosmology's glass ceiling in 1912, Henrietta Leavitt ingeniously used Cepheid variables to gauge inter- stellar distances. Our own crib, the Milky Way, was found to consist of 200 billion stars, our sun a fairly anemic example thereof. Then it gets spooky. A galaxy is thought to be the largest object in the universe. Ours is one of billions of galaxies, each on average about 2 million light years apart. The most dis- tant galaxy yet observed is UDFj- 39546284; it is 100 followed by 27 zeroes miles away. Scientists with presumably more than 3 pounds of neurons have computed this observ- able universe to be approximately 13.7 billion years old. It is "observ- able" because it takes light that long to get here from there. According to MIT's Alan Guth, the universe is growing bigger ever more quickly. This hypothesis of eternal inflation requires a lot of weird "dark energy." Lightman's first essay enquires of The Accidental Universe. Cosmic happenstance necessitates a super- ficial understanding of quantum theory. If the interaction of the 4 fundamental forces of nature— strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force and gravity —were ever so slightly discordant at the Big Bang, the universe could not exist and we the living would remain a gleam in creation's eye. But the universe exists, as do we. The Anthropic Principle is Brandon Carter's insight: "the universe must have many of the parameters it does because we are here to observe it." And religion? For some sci- entists, God is the architect, the Intelligent Designer. Our universe at the cosmological or quantum level is far too wondrous to have just happened. The problem is that many who believe in God reject his/ her/its hand in the universe's affairs after creation. Deists like Voltaire, Franklin, and Jefferson belong to this fraternity. Einstein fudged the results by giving God a speaking role as long as He complied with His own natural laws. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism subscribe to an in- terventionist God. They clash with the Central Doctrine of Science that states "all properties and events in the physical universe are gov- erned by laws, and those laws are true at every time and place in the universe." Divine intervention is impossible. It gets complicated. In order to explain the acceleration of the ever- expanding universe, dark energy is necessary. The Higgs boson first observed—by inference—in 2012 at CERN's Large Hadron Collider is critical. The Higgs lends credence to so-called String Theory, the plat du jour explaining the Theory of Everything. But String Theory falls down the rabbit hole to extra-di- mensional multiverses, essentially an infinite number of universes existing beyond our own. Because they are incalculable, science can never prove they exist. Sounds a lot like God. Guth took man's under- standing of the universe back to 1 trillionth of 1 trillionth of 1 tril- lionth of a second after T=0. And before that? Both science and theology can demand a leap of faith. The great 19th century polymath William James noted nothing is more subjec- tive, personal, and necessary than faith. If one postulates life elsewhere in the universe, the amount of all potentially living "stuff" sums to 1 millionth of 1 billionth of 1% of all matter. We are either a trivial afterthought of nature or, indeed, a miracle. Lightman does not acknowledge Blaise Pascal. He might have. "If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that He exists." Ultimate copout or prudent hedge? Each ad- vises it best to just keep the faith. EW Editors' note: Dr. Noreika has practiced ophthalmology in Medina, Ohio, since 1983. He has been a member of ASCRS for more than 30 years. Contact information Noreika: JCNMD@aol.com The accidental essay Thinking about really big things, Dr. Noreika reviews "The Accidental Universe" T he Enlightenment's em- brace of science really mucked things up. Before that, the world was the epi- center of everything and all one had to do was stay on the right side of, depending on your belief, God or the gods. The rest would take care of itself; if it didn't, a fatted calf's sacrifice might. In The Accidental Universe, Alan Lightman ponders really big topics. An MIT professor, he uniquely holds appointments in the physics depart- ment and the school of humanities. His writings advance subjects inap- propriate for family reunions: sci- ence, religion, immortality and God, for instance. The essays comprise a thought-provoking compendium of the history of science, theoretical physics, and considered treatises on religion and philosophy. Lightman is an atheist impa- tient with colleagues who refute the importance, no, the indispens- ability of faith. He celebrates Homo sapiens' capability with only its 3 pounds of neurons to grasp the enormity and majesty of creation. He is a theoretical physicist whose world is inconceivably small and incomprehensibly large. How large? When Eratosthenes in Alexandria measured the circumference of the earth in the third century BC by observing a deep well in Syene, Egypt so positioned that the noon- time solstice cast no shadow, the distance a camel traversed in a day was metric enough. The light year is a new construct; it measures about 6 trillion miles. Lightman confesses, "there is nothing in human experi- ence that allows us to relate to that number." Galileo was the game-changer. With his new-fangled telescope, he observed dark spots, blemishes on the sun. The belief of heaven's per- fection became moot. Later, when he was not trying to turn lead into gold, Isaac Newton showed that the J.C. Noreika, MD, MBA

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