God, Universe and everything between them – Part I

Whenever I look at the stars they make me feel very happy. More than making me feel happy, they also make me wonder about many things. I look and admire at the stars but likewise will they be able to look back at me over this vast distance? Am I not just a tiny grain of sand in this Earth?

I am just a living organism, living in mere less than 600 sq feet of land on Earth which is about 510,072,000 km2 in area and is only the fifth largest of the 8 planets of our Solar System which in turn has planets ranging to about more than 50 AU (an AU is equal to 149,597,870.7 km) from the Sun. I won’t feel surprised if your getting Goosebumps now. If you haven’t got it yet, you’ll get it now. Solar System is like just a baby in our Milky Way galaxy which contains about 200-400 billion stars and is estimated to have at least 50 billion planets, 500 million of which could be located in the habitable zone of their parent star. Hold on your breath, The Milky Way is not the only one left to mention, it has its own family, the Local Group of galaxies and Milky Way is one of around 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.  I can feel my head go whirling now. Ohooooo…..gee whiz!!

‘Universe’ by itself is the most mysterious of all and many scientists are still working to uncover it. Theologists believe that “God” created the universe; But, how will they prove the existence of “God”? There has been constant tug of war between Scientists and theologists regarding the Origin and existence of Universe. There have also been many theories form both the sides but non have been able to completely prove themselves in this regards. Some believe that both scientists and theologists are trying to prove the same thing.

Johannes Scotus Eriugena a medieval philosopher and theologian defined ‘Universe’ as ‘Everything’; “everything that is created and everything that is not created”. Time is not considered in Eriugena's definition; thus, his definition includes everything that exists, has existed and will exist, as well as everything that does not exist, has never existed and will never exist.”

The same thing has been retold scientifically in ‘Path-Integral Formulation’ of Feynman in Quantum Physics,

“The probability amplitudes for the various outcomes of an experiment gives a perfectly defined initial state of the system are determined by summing over all possible paths by which the system could progress from the initial to final state. Naturally, an experiment can have only one outcome”

In simple words something that exists is complemented by even the once that does not exists or even in more simple terms, Universe was created by and from nothingness.  

Let us look at what theologists say, “God is the supreme being, who has created all Matter and he is the source of all energy. He governs the world with is power and facilitates all life activities.” When we further dig into religions we find that “God” is perceived as a “Human” having extraordinary or superlative powers who can create, protect and destroy things. I would like to take you thousands of years behind, when religions did not exists and there were no telescopes to see the outer space. Man during that time lived in harmony with nature. He believed that nature by itself is powerful. Man “feared and worshiped” nature and he considered himself to be just a trivial being compared to Natures Majesty, these people were called “Pantheists”. Pantheist is a one who believed Nature and God are identical. The word is derived from “Greek” word πάν(pan) meaning “all” and θέόs(theos) meaning “God” in the sense of theism. Over ages, man evolved and started dominating the Nature. He started building his own philosophies for Truth of Universe and considered himself as a being capable of controlling all nature. Different believes and religions started to spring and few of the most prominent religions are Abraham’s religion (Judaism, Christianity), Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism etc. out of these Hinduism is the most ancient religion which has Pantheistic ideologies. Each religion had their own version of the Origin of Universe and Form and Presence of God as the Supreme being ruling over the universe. 

Belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification for believing it is true. Scientists work towards knowledge more than just believing in what is told. Scientists have done lot of research and had proposed many theories based on the formation of the Universe. Georges Lemaître a scientist put forward a theory which latter was called as the “Big Bang” theory. According to this theory Universe at beginning was a extremely hot and dense mass of matter which later exploded (hence the name Big Bang). The exploded parts of the matter broke from the parent mass and started receding away from it due to the intensity of the blast, this lead to the theory of expanding Universe. The age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years (433.6 x 1015 seconds in SI units, or 13.75 Gigayears) within the Lambda-CDM concordance model. This is however only the estimated time since the Big Bang.  Still researchers are trying to find out how That Hot matter which such magnificent density was created. Quantum mechanics is playing a significant part in finding out this. From macro physics scientists have moved towards the study of the micro physics; composition of matter, structure of nucleus, elementary particles, symmetry and so on. As of now, Scientists have found that The universe appears to behave in a manner that regularly follows a set of physical laws and physical constants. According to the prevailing Standard Model of physics, all matter is composed of three generations of leptons and quarks, both of which are fermions. These elementary particles interact via at most three fundamental interactions: the electroweak interaction which includes electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force; the strong nuclear force described by quantum chromodynamics; and gravity, which is best described at present by general relativity.

Scientists and theologists are still warring on each other but who’s theory is true, this only time will show us, until then ill keep enjoying the Mystery in which am living, the magnificent ‘Universe’.

'Anything and Everything including Nothing'

 

Right from how life springs from the fusion of a needle shaped sperm as small as having head of about 5 µm(micrometer, which is 1/1000 of a millimeter, or 0.001mm ) by 3 µm and a tail of 41 µm length with the ovum of size 120µm which then grows into a fetus, then comes out of the mother’s womb as a baby, grows up stage by stage with all it’s physical and mental developments and till it gives up the body during death; natures enigmatic works are proven time and again. Not only this but in every field like, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Geography, catastrophes, theology, spirituality etc., many philosophers, scientists and religious people are still befuddled before the magnitude of Nature’s mysteries. Every answer to nature’s mystery gives rise to couple of more baffling questions. Human mind by itself is a wonder. Why some things happen, who had planned it and how was it planed are still some of the prominent unanswered questions. Religious people declare that these are the handiworks of the “Supernatural being”, while scientists argue against it. Am here, not to take any sides but to exult and admire mysteries as they are. It brings me Goosebumps to even think that am also a part of this wonderful nature., a master piece so unique. This blog is dedicated to the Nature’s Enigma and to all the baffling questions that have triggered the neocortex of my brain which consists of about a half-million of neocortex columns (diameter of about 0.5 mm and a depth of 2 mm), each of which further contains approximately 60,000 neurons.