Georges Lemaı̂tre: Life, Science and Legacy

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 Astrophysics and Space Science Library
EDITORIAL BOARD
Chairman
W. B. BURTON, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville,
Virginia, U.S.A. (bburton@nrao.edu); University of Leiden, The Netherlands
(burton@strw.leidenuniv.nl)

F. BERTOLA, University of Padua, Italy

C. J. CESARSKY, Commission for Atomic Energy, Saclay, France
P. EHRENFREUND, Leiden University, The Netherlands
O. ENGVOLD, University of Oslo, Norway
A. HECK, Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory, France
E. P. J. VAN DEN HEUVEL, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
V. M. KASPI, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
J. M. E. KUIJPERS, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
H. VAN DER LAAN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
P. G. MURDIN, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK
B. V. SOMOV, Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University, Russia
R. A. SUNYAEV, Space Research Institute, Moscow, Russia
Rodney D. Holder • Simon Mitton
Editors

Georges Lemaı̂tre: Life,

Science and Legacy
Editors
Rodney D. Holder Simon Mitton
The Faraday Institute St. Edmund’s College
St. Edmund’s College Cambridge, United Kingdom
Cambridge, United Kingdom

ISSN 0067-0057
ISBN 978-3-642-32253-2 ISBN 978-3-642-32254-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-32254-9
Springer Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012956159

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Cover figure: Abbé Georges Lemaı̂tre, Rome 1962, photographed by Thomas Gold FRS
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Foreword

I’ll begin this Foreword with a text from Georges Lemaı̂tre:

The evolution of the universe can be likened to a display of fireworks that has just ended –
some few wisps, ashes and smoke. Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of
the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds.

Lemaı̂tre lived just long enough to learn about the evidence for that ‘vanished
brilliance’ – the cosmic background radiation, sometimes called the afterglow of
creation, and also to learn a great scientific as well as poetic truth that links us to the
stars – that each of us contains carbon, oxygen and iron atoms forged in thousands
of different stars from all over the Milky Way that lived and died before the solar
system formed. We are the ‘nuclear waste’ from the fusion power that makes stars
shine.
But Lemaı̂tre would have been even more elated had he been alive today to have
learnt about current discoveries and debates, especially as they impinge on issues
that would have engaged him as a Catholic philosopher as well as a scientist. The
crescendo of discovery is owed primarily to advancing instrumentation – more
powerful telescopes in all wavebands, better sensors for faint radiation, and space
technology. Equally important have been powerful computers. Armchair theorists
deserve little credit. We can now specify conditions one second after the Big Bang
with more confidence than a geologist has when talking about the early history of
our Earth. However, this progress brings into focus some questions that Lemaı̂tre
couldn’t even have posed – about what happened still earlier – and how, from
amorphous beginnings in what he called the primeval atom, the cosmos evolved to
its present complexities.
There were a set of key steps in the evolution of the cosmos: the first particles,
protons and neutrons; the first stars and galaxies; the synthesis of the chemical
elements in stars; the formation of planets around later-generation stars; and then of
course, on at least one planet, the formation of a biosphere, which led to the
emergence of brains capable of pondering their origins.
This chain of events is sensitive to some cosmic numbers – key parameters. Had
they been different, the universe would have been sterile or stillborn. These

v
vi Foreword

numbers were all imprinted in the first tiny fraction of a second, when energies and
densities were so extreme that our experiments offer no direct guide to the relevant
physics.
The cover of Discover magazine one month had a nice image: it showed a circle,
beneath the caption ‘the universe when it was a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth
of a second old – actual size’. According to a popular theory, the entire volume we
can see with our telescopes ‘inflated’ from a hyper-dense blob no bigger than that.
And in our time we’ve an enlarged perspective on another question:
How big is the universe? We can only see a vast but finite volume, a finite number of
galaxies. That’s essentially because there’s a horizon, a shell around us, delineating the
distance light can have travelled since the Big Bang. But that shell has no more physical
significance than the circle that delineates your horizon if you’re in the middle of the ocean.
We’d expect far more galaxies (or ocean) beyond the horizon.

There’s no perceptible gradient across the visible universe, which suggests it

stretches thousands of times further. But that’s just a minimum. If it stretched
far enough, then all combinatorial possibilities would be repeated. There would,
far beyond the horizon, be replicas of you, and indeed replicas of our entire Hubble
volume. The volume of space-time within range of our telescopes, what
astronomers have traditionally called ‘the universe’, could be only a tiny fraction
of the aftermath of our Big Bang. But that’s not all. “Our” Big Bang may not be the
only one: one option is brane worlds in which many universes are embedded
in a higher-dimensional space. Other space-times alongside ours – 1 mm away.
Another scenario is ‘eternal inflation’, which is a grander version of old steady-state
cosmology, with big bangs that are continually popping off within an expanding
substratum.
What we’ve traditionally called ‘the universe’ could be just one patch of
space-time in a vast cosmic archipelago.
A challenge for twenty-first century physics is to decide whether there have been
many big bangs rather than just one, and (if there are many) whether they are
governed by different physics, so that what we call the laws and constants of
physics are just parochial bylaws in our cosmic patch. Many theorists suspect
this. If these theorists are correct, the big bangs might ring the changes, and then
it would occasion no surprise that there was one big bang fine-tuned enough to
allow the chain of events that led to the emergence of a biosphere.
We don’t know – but one day we may. It’s speculative science, not metaphysics.
Four hundred years ago, Kepler thought that the Earth was unique, and its orbit
was related to the other planets by beautiful mathematical ratios. We now realise
that there are zillions of stars, each with planetary systems. Earth’s orbit is special
only insofar as it’s in the range of radii and eccentricities compatible with life.
Maybe we’re due for an analogous conceptual shift, on a far grander scale. Our Big
Bang may not be unique, any more than planetary systems are. Its parameters may
be ‘environmental accidents’, like the details of the Earth’s orbit.
Will there be such a theory? We’re still groping for the truth – in the fashion of
ancient cartographers, we must still inscribe ‘here be dragons’. And there
Foreword vii

are questions that we can’t yet formulate: Donald Rumsfeld’s famous ‘unknown
unknowns’.
Einstein averred that “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe
is that it is comprehensible”. He was right to be astonished. Our minds, which
evolved to cope with life on the African savannah, can also comprehend the
microworld of atoms, and the vastness of the cosmos. Humans are more than just
another primate species. We are special: our self-awareness and language were
a qualitative leap, allowing cultural evolution, and the cumulative diversified
expertise that led to science and technology. But some aspects of reality – a unified
theory of physics, or of consciousness – might elude us simply because they’re
beyond human brains, just as surely as Einstein’s ideas would baffle a chimpanzee.
This raises another question. Is there life out there? Is there perhaps advanced
life to whom the problems of string theory are a doddle? We don’t know, but we’ve
now learnt something that’s relevant to this question, and which makes the night
sky far more interesting than it was to our forbears. Many stars – perhaps even
most – are orbited by retinues of planets, just like the Sun is.
Most planets are not detected directly but inferred. The first technique was to
look for any wobble in the star’s motion. The evidence up till now pertains mainly
to giant planets – objects the size of Saturn or Jupiter. But we’ll be especially
interested in possible twins of our Earth: planets the same size as ours, orbiting
other Sun-like stars, on orbits with temperatures such that water neither boils nor
stays frozen. Detecting Earth-like planets via their gravitational pull on their parent
stars is a real challenge. Being hundreds of times less massive than Jupiter, they
induce motions of merely centimetres per second. But there’s another technique
that can do this: we can look for their shadow. A star will dim slightly when a planet
is in transit in front of it. And these dimmings would repeat at regular intervals.
The Kepler spacecraft is finding dozens of planets no bigger than the Earth by this
technique
But we’d really like to see these planets directly – not just their shadows. And
that’s hard. To realise just how hard, suppose an alien astronomer with a powerful
telescope was viewing the Earth from (say) 30 light years away, the distance of
a nearby star. Our planet would seem like, in Carl Sagan’s memorable phrase,
‘a pale blue dot’, very close to a star (our Sun) that outshines it by many billions of
times: a firefly next to a searchlight. The shade of blue would be slightly different,
depending on whether the Pacific Ocean or the Eurasian land mass was facing them.
The alien astronomers could infer the length of the day, the seasons, whether there
are oceans, whether the water on those oceans is rough or smooth, the gross
topography, and the climate. By analysing the faint light, they could infer that it
had a biosphere. In 20 years, we’ll have telescopes that can do this.
Will there be life on any of these planets? We still know too little to say whether
alien life is likely or unlikely – indeed the origin of life on Earth is another big
unsolved problem. And we shouldn’t restrict attention to Earth-like planets. Science
fiction writers have other ideas – balloon-like creatures floating in the dense
atmospheres of Jupiter-like planets, swarms of intelligent insects, nanoscale robots,
viii Foreword

and so on. (And, it’s better to read first-rate science fiction like than second-rate
science.)
Even if simple life is common, it is of course a separate question whether it’s
likely to evolve into anything we might recognize as intelligent or complex. There
are SETI searches for artificial signals. Perhaps one day they will succeed. We’d
then be one in a huge number of intelligent beings, which would not have surprised
people in the eighteenth century. Thomas Wright of Durham was an early believer
in a plurality of worlds: “In the great Celestial Creation, the catastrophy of a world,
such as ours, or even the total dissolution of a system of worlds, may be no more to
the great author of nature than the most common accident of life with us. And in all
probability such final and general Doomsdays may be as frequent there as even
birthdays or mortality with us upon the Earth.”
On the other hand, perhaps ET doesn’t exist. Earth’s intricate biosphere may be
unique. That may be disappointing. But it would have its upside: it would entitle us
to be less cosmically modest. Our tiny planet could then be the most important place
in the Galaxy. It could perhaps even be a seed from which life could spread through
the entire Galaxy.
Finally, let’s focus back closer to the here and now. I’m often asked: Is there
a special perspective that astronomers can offer to philosophy and our general view
of our place in nature? Thomas Wright thought so: “I can never look upon the
stars without wondering why the whole world does not become astronomers, and
reconcile them to all those little difficulties incident to human nature without the
least anxiety.” This doesn’t reflect my impression of my colleagues, nor indeed
myself. We’re not specially serene and relaxed. Astronomers worry just as much as
anyone about what happens next year, next week, or tomorrow.
But I think our subject does give us a special perspective. We view our home
planet in a vast cosmic context. And in coming decades we’ll know whether there’s
life out there. But, more significantly, we’re mindful of the immense future that lies
ahead. The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common
culture (but maybe not in Kansas). Our present biosphere is the outcome of more
than four billion years of evolution. But most people still somehow think we
humans are necessarily the culmination of the evolutionary tree. That hardly
seems credible to an astronomer.
Our Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, but it’s got six billion more before the fuel
runs out. It then flares up, engulfing the inner planets. And the expanding universe
will continue, perhaps forever, and is destined to become ever colder, ever emptier.
To quote Woody Allen, “Eternity is very long, especially towards the end”. Any
creatures witnessing the Sun’s demise six billion years hence won’t be human –
they’ll be as different from us as we are from a bug.
Posthuman evolution, here on Earth and far beyond, could be as prolonged as the
Darwinian evolution that’s led to us, and even more wonderful. Darwin himself
realised that no species would preserve its unaltered likeness into distant futurity.
And of course this evolution is even faster now. Machines may take over.
Even in this concertinaed timeline – extending billions of years into the future, as
well as into the past – this century may be a defining moment. It’s the first in our
Foreword ix

planet’s history where one species (ours) has Earth’s future in its hands, and could
jeopardise life’s immense potential.
This pale blue dot in the cosmos is a special place. It may be a unique place. And
we’re its stewards at a specially crucial era. That’s a message for us all, whether
we’re interested in astronomy or not.

Cambridge, United Kingdom Martin J. Rees

.
Contents

Georges Lemaı̂tre: A Brief Introduction to His Science, His Theology,

and His Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Rodney D. Holder and Simon Mitton
Georges Lemaı̂tre: The Priest Who Invented the Big Bang . . . . . . . . . . 9
Dominique Lambert
‘The Wildest Speculation of All’: Lemaı̂tre and the Primeval-Atom
Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Helge Kragh
Georges Lemaı̂tre and Fred Hoyle: Contrasting Characters in Science
and Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Rodney D. Holder
Lemaı̂tre, the Big Bang and the Quantum Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Michael Heller
Georges Lemaı̂tre: Science and Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
George V. Coyne
Aquinas and Contemporary Cosmology: Creation
and Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
William E. Carroll
Georges Lemaı̂tre and Stigler’s Law of Eponymy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
David L. Block
Building on the Legacy of Georges Lemaı̂tre
in Contemporary Cosmology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
William R. Stoeger
Multiple Reasons for a Multiverse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Don N. Page

xi
xii Contents

Multiverses, Science, and Ultimate Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

George Ellis
Lemaı̂tre’s Prescience: The Beginning and End
of the Cosmos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Bernard Carr
Modern Cosmology and Anthropic Fine-Tuning:
Three approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Robin Collins
Some Theological Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
John Polkinghorne
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197