The Big Bang has always evoked a sense of mystery, awe and curiosity among scientists and laypeople alike. But while the Big Bang has been well-established and well-documented in the scientific community for over 50 years, the question of how the universe expanded from “minuscule” to “gigantic” in a fraction of a second was the subject of a variety of theories. One proposed idea was called “inflation theory,” and while it was theorized and generally supported, there wasn’t enough evidence to determine if it was true.
Until this week.
On Monday, scientists announced that they had discovered the proposed “gravity waves” that now provide us an understanding of what happened within the the first 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 second of the birth of the universe. To get a sense of just how important this finding is, consider that the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation — which helped us get to within 380,000 years after the Big Bang — led to a Nobel Prize for Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson.
But while the science itself is quite exciting, what’s even more powerful is how scientists are responding.
One video that has been making the rounds is Professor Chao-Lin Kuo telling Professor Andrei Linde (one of the people who helped develop inflation theory) that after many decades, his theory was now supported by hard evidence:
There are several moments that are wonderful here (my favorite is when Linde and his physicist wife Renata Kallosh nearly collapse over the news), but there is one line Linde uses that borders on the religious.
“This is a moment of understanding of nature of such a magnitude that it just overwhelms,” he says. “Let us hope it is not a trick. I always live with this feeling: ‘What if I am tricked? What if I believe in this just because it is beautiful? What if…’” — and he trails off.
In other words, Linde had faith his theory was true, but until Kuo knocked on his door and reported his results, he didn’t know if his faith would be justified. Linde had no idea Kuo was coming, so his wife thought it was a delivery and asked, “Did you order anything?” “Yeah,” he answers, laughing, “I ordered thirty years ago! Finally, it arrived!”
Andrea Denhoed nicely describes how Linde must have felt at that moment:
It’s rare enough for a person to have a life’s work; to be able to see the validation of that work firsthand is understandably an overpowering experience. Linde might not call those years of waiting “faith,” but what he describes sounds somewhat like it—the persevering hope in the face of doubt and self-questioning: “What if I believe in this just because it is beautiful?” Faith, after all, is not just a religious category, and science isn’t divorced from our human capacities for aesthetic appreciation and awe.
Belief, joy, awe, curiosity — these feelings are more than religious. They are more than scientific. They are reflections of the best of what it means to be human. They are the sources from which both religion and science spring.
Indeed, while we marvel at the cosmos and the mind-blowing nature of the early universe, we also need to marvel at the human side of these findings.
Yes, it is inspiring to consider the ingenuity that has helped us get closer and closer to the first few moments of our universe.
But what truly gives me hope, what truly makes this potentially Nobel-Prize-winning discovery so special, is the unbridled joy and excitement of seeing a person’s deeply-held belief system vindicated.
We may never come close to reaching Andrei Lin and Chao-Lin Kuo’s intelligence. We laypeople may never truly grasp inflation theory. But we can all understand just how Andrei Linde must have felt when Kuo knocked on his door and said, “Your evidence is here.”
