Blackhole and the Big Bang.

Sometimes, you wonder, if God created black hole, what was he thinking? A variant form of that question was asked by renowned scientists like Einstein and Hawking. 

For Hawking, at the point of singularity, at the core of the black hole, nothing exists or can ever exist in it.

The Big Bang was such a black hole of nothingness when it happened to just come into existence. The keyword is of course “when it happens”. What happens before that Big Bang then?

Here is how the late Professor Hawking explains it: -

“To understand this mind-boggling idea, consider a black hole floating in space. A typical black hole is a star so massive that it has collapsed in on itself. It is so massive that not even light can escape its gravity, which is why it’s almost perfectly black. It’s gravitational pull is so powerful, it wraps and distorts not only light but also time.”

“To see how, imagine a clock is being sucked into it. As the clock gets closer and closer to the black hole, it begins to get slower and slower. Time itself begins to slow down. Now imagine the clock as it enters the black hole - well, assuming of course that it could withstand the extreme gravitational forces - it would actually stop. It stops not because it is broken, but because inside the black hole time itself doesn’t exist. And that’s exactly what happened at the star of the universe.”

So, if you ask the good Professor whether God created the universe, that Big Bang, or at that point of singularity, he would say this: -

“When people ask me if a God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the Big Big so there is no time for God to make the universe in...No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in an afterlife is just wishful thinking. There is no reliable evidence for it, and it flies in the face of everything we know in science...I think that when we die we return to dust.”

Well, for the believer, it is a not-too-encouraging conclusion - that “returning to dust” part - that is, it implies a deflated promise of a resurrected life after death. 

I wrote that this morning because in the cosmology department, like finding the God’s particle by physicists years ago, they have finally managed to capture astounding photographic evidence of possibly the beginning of time and space and everything we can ever conceive on this earth.

If you look at it, it is all pitch black. It’s an image of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87, and it was taken by a team of scientists from multiple angles fitted together under the name of the Event Horizon Telescope on April 6, 2017. 

Mind you, this is huge news for the intellectual scientific community. 

One Professor Tan Meng Chwan said: -

“By studying the data of the event horizon (the boundary marking the limits of a black hole), we can potentially gain insight into the finer workings of the black hole, in particular, the singularity at its origin where all of space-time has collapsed to a point, which in turn can give us a better understanding of the Big Bang.”

“Black holes are ultimately the most mysterious and energetic powerhouses of our cosmos.”

And here is the facts about this black hole recently captured. 

The ring around the black hole, the event horizon, measures 40 billion km across. Its estimated mass is 6.5 times that of the Sun. It is 55 million light-years from Earth “and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world because no single instrument would have been powerful enough to perform that feat.”

Lesson? ...

Alas, reading the mind-boggling stats, as a believer, you can’t help but echo the sentiments of the Psalmist: -

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?“

The ultimate mystery of the black hole is nevertheless significant to my faith because, if space and time are non-existent because of the immense gravity at its core, and nothing of material is of material inside, then the question is: can we see the face of God beyond the horizon or the face of, well, nothingness? 

As Hawking puts it, “This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife. I think belief in an afterlife is just wishful thinking. I think that when we die we return to dust.”

Mm...at this point, I recall this quote from the physicist Brian Cox, who was recently interviewed by the Straits Times’ Sumiko. She asked him about death and life, and its meaning and here is what he said: -

“...whatever the meaning of life is, the more light you can shine on it, you will see the shadows, and the more light we can shine, the angles cast different shadows, and we can fill up more of a picture of what it means to be human.”

“That’s how I view philosophy and arts and science and theology and other things. I view them as people really trying to shine different lights on that central question, which is before we go, what the hell does it mean to exist?”

Sumiko asked him: “What if he dies and finds out God exists?”

“If I die and it turns out that I’m still around, l’ll be, oh well, there’s something fundamental I didn’t understand about nature...l’ll be the most surprised ghost that there’s ever been.”

Mm...”surprised ghost” sounds a tad patronising, but Brian has got a point about the different light shining on a subject and the different shadow casts, which forms a blurry picture of our understanding. 

At this point in history, we have had many scientific breakthroughs, and the one we once thought could never be captured is the blurry image of the event horizon of a supermassive black hole 55 million light-years away from us, and mind you, 40 billion km across. That thought alone boggles our mind immensely. 

Yet, we have captured it, and with our exceeding ingenuity, working as a team worldwide, we have done so brilliantly. 

Thus, the different lights shone on the subject of our origin and the meaning of life (with reference to the black hole discovered) tells us about the hunger of our tireless curiosity and search for the ultimate truth of life, the universe and our purpose. 

Where does my faith then enters into the many lights that are cast on this subject then? What does the Cross have to say about the seemingly insuperable black hole we have just captured on telescopic image? 

And mind you (again), according to the last count, there are about more than 100 galaxies that can be detected (ours is the Milky Way), and each of them has a black hole at the centre. 

So, there might easily be about more than 100 billion of these black-hole beasts gobbling millions of stars and planets in its destructive pathway, and alas, we as a tiny speck in this incomprehensible cosmo is blissfully going about our business trying to catch that last dollar from another man’s tattered pocket. 

Reading all that, you can’t help but feel insignificant in the larger (much larger) scheme of things, way way above the pathetically petty things we hold on to with arthritis-grip all the way to our lonely, morbid grave.

Where is my comfort, focus and anchor then? Where is the rock that is higher than I in the cosmological mess of all this? Where is the core of my understanding? Is it to be as black as the black hole, or is it to be the penetrating light that goes beyond it? 

I can’t give a good answer to all that, but I can give one that my limited understanding can personally embrace. Here goes. 

Just as the mystery of the black hole, the same intellectual mystery confronts my faith. And just as the almost-infinite vastness of the cosmos, seen and unseen, challenge the finitude of my human mind, the same almost-infinite vastness challenges my humanity when a man who claims to be the summation of all, that is, the cosmos, seen and unseen, offered himself at the Cross. 

While atheists see that as a form of excessive sentimentality arguing from a point of intellectual cowardice, I however see it as no different from a message in a bottle floating in the vast universe written just for me, and us, and meant to arrive at the place and time to reconcile us back to all that is seemingly incomprehensible in this world and the invisible beyond. 

But don’t ask me why omnipotence has not made itself more, well, omni-obvious. I have no answer to that. 

Maybe, just like the black hole, it was never meant to be fully comprehended by us. This is where my faith takes this leap and trust that the same person behind the core of the black hole and beyond, is the same person who declared, “It is finished.” 

And I can only say that if this gap is to be filled, it is to be filled, first and foremost, not so much by human knowledge, but love. 

That is, a love, I believe, far greater than the nothingness of the black hole that took the same leap of faith in us to come forward in the beginning of even time and space to form the somethingness that is me and us, and the endless yearning that possesses us to seek after the ultimate meaning of life, and the life thereafter.

Human Spirit and Quantum Physics.

I stood in awe of two news this morning. 

One has to do with the human spirit. The other has to do with quantum physics. 

The first news is a tragedy of sorts. A beautiful girl at 18 puts a hunting rifle below her chin and she pulls the trigger. Death is almost certain, but alas, she survived. 

Katie Stubblefield knew she was at the end of her life at 18 when he had to struggle with chronic gastrointestinal problems, which she has to undergo surgery for, and her boyfriend just broke up with her. 

To compound matters, her mother was "fired abruptly from teaching at the same school that she attended."

So, after she pulled the trigger, she "lost parts of her forehead, her nose and sinuses, most of her mouth and bones that made up her jaw and structures of her face. Her eyes remained but they were badly damaged." 

In other words, Katie literally blew her whole young pretty face off. 

Plastic surgeon Brain Gastman said: "Her brain was basically exposed and, I mean, we are talking seizures and infections and all kinds of problems. Forget the face transplant, we are talking about just being alive."

However, in a bid not just to save her life, but also her face (for what's left of it), Katie went through 31 hours of surgery which involved "replacing her full facial tissue - transplanting the scalp, forehead, upper and lower eyelids, eye socket, nose, upper cheeks, upper jaw and half of the lower jaw, upper teeth, partial facial nerves, muscles and skin." 

The surgery was nevertheless a success and mind you, there are only 39 surgeries of this kind. Hers is the 40th. 

Her donor (of the face) was a 31-year-old Ms Andrea Schneider, who died of a drug overdose. 

Snatching Katie from the jaws of death, with her life and face (more or less) preserved, Katie now has to take medication "to reduce the risk of organ rejection, and will do so for the rest of her life." 

She also has to continue physical and occupational therapy for as long it takes. 

Katie said: "I felt so guilty that I had put my family through such pain. I felt horrible."

Now, at 21, Katie can finally face the world and her future. It reports that "she hopes to go to college and eventually find a career in counselling and motivational speaking."

She said: "So many people have helped me, now I want to help other people."

Katie said she hopes "to speak to teenagers about suicide prevention, echoing what she told CNN: Life is precious, and life is beautiful." 

Hold it there, put a tag on that phrase, I'll surely come back to it. 

Here's the second news - for the science geek, which is out of my league (of course). 

Quantum physics - my god, who understands it? Currently, no one - exactly. 

In an article written by Prof Vlatko Vedral entitled "In search of the theory of everything", Vlatko attempts to crack the mystery of reconciling gravity of everyday life (the macro-world) and gravity of the atoms (the quantum world or micro-world).

At the moment, they are irreconcilable because while "gravity...can only be understood as a force emerging from an object that exists at only one well-defined position at any given time", in quantum space, all tiniest objects "can exist in two or more locations at the same time." 

It's like they are omnipresent. 

What then keeps them together? What kind of gravity holds them? 

Unlike the pull of gravity in quantum world, we know an apple will fall down (not up) in our world. That predictability helps us to understand the world at large. 

But in small quantum space, why are particles so sneaky, existing in a probability of different locations at one given time?

Not only that, Vlatko wrote that the macroscopic intuition about causality is different from the causality in the world around us. 

This is just another way of saying that in the real world, cause and effect are fixed. If you want to switch on the TV, press the button switch on th remote controller. 

The "cause" is the button being pressed, and the "effect" is viola! the TV is switched on. 

But in quantum world, causality plays trick on us. 

Here is how Vlatko describes the quantum phenomenon:-

"In quantum gravity, causes and effects could be reversed. The TV could go off before we touch the remote control. In fact, the two orders, TV goes off before or after the remote control was used, could even exist at the same time." Go figure?

So the holy grail of quantum physics is to merge the two (that is, gravity in the real world and gravity in quantum world) and to find a single theory that governs the two worlds. 

Scientists have been searching for it since Einstein's time - to no avail. 

Vlatko however thinks he has a shot at it by engaging in what he calls quantum entanglement which he had explained in the article, but it is not relevant to my post here. 

My point here however is to bring out the differences between the two worlds we confront everyday, or Katie confronts everyday. 

We have the world outside of us. The gravitational law that governs it is straightforward. The cause and effect is predictable. You switch on and off the TV and it does as you press the remote. It does not go "crazy" like in the quantum world. It is an ordered world. 

Metaphorically speaking, in the real world, these are the rules of the concrete jungle. You succeed, you are happy - people gravitate towards you. You fail, you are sad - people stay away from you. 

You are only as good as your last worst action. Should you fall, even once, all your good deeds are cast in the negative shadow of that fall - even if it was a folly on your part. 

The world out there tells you how to live your life. It is rigged in such a way as to program in you the need for the pursuit of fame, power and wealth. It spares no time for things and virtues that require time to cultivate like resilience, character and hope. 

Now, all that (resilience, character and hope) are what is within us. It is the world we face within our spirit. That is the quantum world for me. It does not go by the rules of the macro-world we live in.

They are invisible just like atomic particles. They defy earthly definitions and do not follow the causes and effects of the real world where the rules are this: To be happy, you have to be rich. To be whole, you have to be famous. To be fulfilled, you have to wield power. And no one will respect you if you have neither (that is, riches, fame nor power). 

Now, this is where Katie's phrase fits in. She said: "Life is precious, and life is beautiful." 

In her state now, needless to say, she is different from what she looks like before. Her one rushed act three years ago changed her life forever. 

By the world standards, losing her looks (as she was before) would mean losing everything that defines her. That's the logic of the macro-world. 

It is straightforward cause and effect - that is, the cause (pulling the trigger of the hunting rifle) and the effect (she should feel miserable in the state she is in now together with having to take lifetime medication).

Yet, thank god for the quantum world, that is, the spirit within us - that which defies the predictable causality or dictates of this world. 

Katie now treasures life. It is beautiful for her. Her beauty radiates from the inside. She now looks forward to her future and wants to be a positive impact to teenagers, a spokesperson against suicide. 

Her desire to end her life when she supposedly had everything by the standards of the world like youth and beauty is now turned upside down in the world within where different rules apply. She values life.

Her fortified spirit is inspiring because she now looks beyond the superficial, beyond the appearances, and towards the simple pleasures of life that leads to lasting fulfilment and contentment. 

Truly, how many youth her age can say the same thing and mean it with all their heart. 

Let me end with this quote that has always kept the two worlds for me in balance and in proper perspective. 

"What is beautiful is not always good. But what is good is always beautiful."

Indeed it is. 

Beauty in the flesh, in the possessions and in the worldly accolades do not define a person. They do not necessarily grow you, deepen your character or embolden your spirit. 

But what is good, what is the ageless beauty from within, is truly always beautiful because it can transform what at first sight seems to be a tragedy into strength you never thought you possess, into enduring hope that rises from deep within, and into a resilience that inspires many to push forward in their own lives. 

Indeed, we are like plane glass windows. In the day, we all shine out and reflect the brightness of the sun. But during the night, true and lasting beauty can only be seen when there is light within. Cheerz.