Where Did We Come From?
The question of creation has stirred the hearts of human beings since prehistoric times. As civilizations and cultures emerged around the globe, each took its turn explaining their own beginnings and that of the world around them. Many begin their tale from darkness and void.
According to the writer Xu Zheng, the ancient Chinese had one such myth–the story of Pangu. A formless chaos gave rise to a cosmic egg that contained two opposing principles, that of Yin and Yang. When these two came into balance, Pangu awoke and began creating the world. He separated the two, with Yin forming the Earth and Yang the heavens above. Each day as Pangu grew, he would push the sky (Yang) higher with the earth (Yin) beneath his feet growing wider. After 18,000 years had elapsed, Pangu, now confident that the earth and sky were firmly fixed, laid to rest. His body became the mountains, his blood the rivers, his breath the wind, his voice the thunder, and his eyes the sun and moon.
Likewise, the Ancient Greeks begin with a world in empty darkness, populated only by the black-winged bird, Nyx. After a time Nyx laid a golden egg, which hatched to reveal Eros, the god of love. The shell of the egg separated into two halves. One part ascended to become the sky and the other became the Earth. Eros named the sky Uranus and the Earth Gaia. Under Eros’ influence, Uranus and Gaia fell in love and produced children. Two of these, the titans Kronos and Rhea, in turn, produced grandchildren of which one son was the famed Zeus. Fearful that his infant children would one day usurp his position, Kronos swallowed them whole. Only Zeus managed to escape this horrible fate and upon growing to manhood tricked Kronos into releasing his brothers and sisters. Once together, they waged war against Kronos. Eventually, Zeus and his siblings triumphed, bringing life to Gaia and populating Uranus with stars. Zeus instructed his son Prometheus to create human beings and his son Epimetheus to create the animals. From this cast of characters, the Ancient Greeks created a mythology of interwoven stories that still captivates readers today.
The Ancient Egyptians of Heliopolis also believed the world began in chaos but a chaos consisting of turbulent waters called Nu. Eventually, the waters receded to expose dry land. Once land appeared, Re-Atum willed himself into being. As he was alone, he mated with his shadow and produced two offspring: Shu, his son, and Tefnut, his daughter. Shu represented the air and life, while Tetnut rain and the principle of order. Originally, Re-Atum was separated from his children in the great chaos. However, once re-united he created the world, with his tears of joy creating humankind. Shu and Tefnut bore Geb, the earth god, and Nut, goddess of the sky. The union of these two, in turn, produced Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys. Re-Atum took on many names as the sun-god began his ascent across the sky. When he reached mid-day, he became Ra and when he set in the west, Horus.
The followers of the Prophet Abraham placed such importance on explaining creation that they dedicated the first book of their religious text, the Torah, to its answer. Many know this as the first book of the Christian Bible, Genesis. Like the Greek and Chinese myths it describes a duality of creation:
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And just as with the Egyptians, waters represented the initial chaotic void, followed by the emergence of the sun.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Genesis recounts this as all happening on the first day of creation, with the following five days responsible for the creation of land, vegetation, the seasons, the stars, animals, and culminating with man and woman. Finally, the story concludes with:
…and he rested on the seventh day from all his work.
While these stories captivate with their picturesque narrative and perhaps even offer an intuitive inkling as to the actual origin of the universe, they tell us more about the values and beliefs of the myth makers then they offer a factual description of how things actually came to be. However, bit by bit, humanity has gained better insights into the origin of our universe, allowing us to see it as grander and ever more ancient than previously imagined. We now live in a most fortuitous time. In what is most likely the greatest testament to humankind’s curiosity and mental prowess, the scientific community has now managed to formulate and then validate–through a variety of innovative and sometimes quite sophisticated experimentation–enough interlocking theories that can now be assembled like so many jigsaw puzzle pieces, allowing us to finally peer back to the dawn of creation to see the sequential processes that resulted in the genesis of our world and the human species.
While centuries of astronomical observations laid the foundation for our current understanding, the “smoking gun” as to the origin of creation was discovered in 1965. For in that year, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, researchers at the then Bell Laboratories, observed a low-level background “noise” signal in their microwave receiver. No matter how many times they cleaned, recalibrated, or repositioned their equipment, the signal persisted. It finally occurred to them that maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with the equipment. Perhaps this ubiquitous signal represented something that was actually there. But what event would cause such a signal throughout the entire universe?
In 1927, Georges Lemaître, a Roman Catholic priest who also happened to be an astronomer and professor of physics, proposed a revolutionary theory to explain the recession of galactic objects (spiral nebulae). Using Einstein’s theory of general relativity, he suggested that the universe did not always exist as it does today but began with a violent explosion from a “primeval atom.” This theory later came to be known as the Big Bang, ironically named by its most prominent skeptic, Dr. Fred Hoyle.
Opponents to the Big Bang, such as Hoyle, dismissed the theory–partly based on its bizarre and far-reaching consequence and partly due to its inherent parallel to religious creation mythology. Hoyle instead proposed an alternate explanation, known as the Steady State theory. It envisioned a universe that always existed and always would exist in more or less the same condition as we observe it today.
In 1948, George Gamow, a Russian physicist and cosmologist, predicted that if the universe did start as Lemaître proposed, some remnant of this initial explosion should still exist today as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB). In much the same way as a fireplace retains warmth long after the fire has burned out and the cinders stop glowing, so should the Big Bang leave such a trace to its fiery past.
After some calculation and conference within the scientific community, Penzias and Wilson finally concluded that the radiation detected by their instrumentation was the very same proposed by Gamow–the afterglow from the Big Bang. In addition to earning them the Nobel Prize, their discovery supplied the conclusive proof that Lemaître had it right and not Hoyle. The universe had a definite beginning and a fantastically bizarre one at that.
Modern day astrophysicists, such as Dr. George Smoot of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, have further refined this understanding by taking extremely accurate measurements of this background radiation using sophisticated microwave sensors aboard satellites. Measurements by instruments such as COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) and its successor WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) have pushed the boundaries of experimental physics and revealed minute variations in the cosmic background radiation. These variations trace back to quantum mechanical fluctuations in the microscopic proto-universe and have exposed the skeletal frame upon which all observable matter clings, allowing scientists to finally piece together the story of the universe in amazing detail.
According to the Big Bang, the universe started out infinitely small and extremely hot. In this realm, our everyday notions based on the classical laws of physics did not yet apply, as these laws had yet to manifest themselves. However, at this earliest of times, it appears that the rules of quantum mechanics