The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis.
But plausibility itself, in my view, is a tremendous step forward as we continue to marshal the courage to live meaningful lives in a universe that likely came into existence, and may fade out of existence, without purpose, and certainly without us at its center.
The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place? – LOUISE BOGAN, Journey Around My Room.
For those who find it remarkable that we live in a universe of Something, just wait. Nothingness is heading on a collision course right toward us!
Finally, and inevitably, the flat universe will further flatten into a nothingness that mirrors its beginning. Not only will there be no cosmologists to look out on the universe, there will be nothing for them to see even if they could. Nothing at all. Not even atoms. Nothing. If you think that’s bleak and cheerless, too bad. Reality doesn’t owe us comfort.
More often than you might think, teaching science is inseparable from teaching doubt.
Indeed, in a strange coincidence, we are living in the only era in the history of the universe when the presence of the dark energy permeating empty space is likely to be detectable. It is true that this era is several hundred billion years long, but in an eternally expanding universe it represents the mere blink of a cosmic eye.
We need to live our experience as it is and with our eyes open. The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not.
But common sense is deceptive precisely because it is based on common experience.
Defining away the question by arguing that the buck stops with God may seem to obviate the issue of infinite regression, but here I invoke my mantra: The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent of our desires. A world without God or purpose may seem harsh or pointless, but that alone doesn’t require God to actually exist.
Curiosity-driven research may seem self-indulgent and far from the immediate public good. However, essentially all of our current quality of life, for people living in the first world, has arisen from the fruits of such research, including all the electric power that drives almost every device we use. Two.
And, just as with inflation, as described in the last chapter, our observable universe is at the threshold of expanding faster than the speed of light.
Why is there a universe at all? Why are we here?
But relying on invisible miracles is the stuff of religion, not science. To ascertain whether this remarkable accident was real, physicists relied on another facet of the quantum world. Associated with every background field is a particle, and if you pick a point in space and hit it hard enough, you may whack out real particles.
It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.
The tapestry that science weaves in describing the evolution of our universe is richer and far more fascinating than any revelatory images or imaginative stories that humans have concocted. Nature comes up with surprises that far exceed those that the human imagination can generate.
Forget Jesus. Stars died so you could live.
The Higgs is like a toilet. It hides all the messy details.
Nevertheless, all of these phenomena imply that, under the right conditions, not only can nothing become something, it is required to.
Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance.
The forces that govern our experience, electromagnetism and gravity, are blind to the distinction between left and right. No process moderated by either force can turn something such as your right hand into its mirror image. I cannot.