The Outer Fringes

There are some well-known science terms such as the “Big Bang”, “Dark matter”, and the “Black hole” that conjure vague confounding notions for science neophytes as myself. We usually defer to post-post doctoral scholars to elucidate and despite their simplest of explanations we remain confused and  bewildered!  You can imagine how surprised I was to find out that  they too, though light-years ahead of us in understanding, are equally mystified! They have created these terms for cosmological quandaries about which they themselves scratch their heads. 

The “Big Bang” is a term that was coined to refer to the beginning of time and space. However, as more and more cosmological mysteries are being unfurled there are scholars who are saying that that term does not really refer to a singular time but rather to one of many “space -time bubbles”, and more specifically to the space-time bubbles that we occupy. They posit that our “beginning” was not the beginning of everything but of just this little corner of the cosmos that we occupy! Quite a change in perspective, isn’t it? To quote one such scientist, “there may not have been a beginning at all – at least not in the traditional terms”. Another astrophysicist suggests that they may even be able to gather data from the interaction between this and other “space-time bubbles”. Yet another suggest the event might not have been a ”Bang” but a “Bump”. 

If I may venture back to Genesis 1 it seems that that first verse is loaded with verifiable meaning. “In the beginning God” speaks of the beginning of our “space-time bubble’ where God did some wonderful things. He carved out a small section from “the face of the deep” and created air, water, matter, and time in the proportions needed to facilitate His creative genius. 

“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion” over this “space-time bubble”! He then celebrated the  experience by consecrating one day when His creatures and He could have uninterrupted communion— the Sabbath.

Man’s “dominion” has brought him to the discovery of other vast cosmological “bubbles” that are of greater beauty and complexity and exceed our dimensions. We are but a small part of the whole! The JW Science Telescope has started a 20 year exploration that according to one congressman, gives new meaning to “as far as the eye can see”!

I am no scientist but the more I listen in on these conversations between seasoned cosmologists and astrophysicists, the more I must join with Job in saying we are seeing “but the outer fringes of God’s ways!”