The Universe: How Is It Observed Here and Now? Its Past and Possible Future

Abstract

We will attempt here to describe the Universe using the well-established language of physics.

God is complicated but wicked he is not … he doesn’t play dice with us.

Der Herrgott ist kompliziert aber boshaft ist er nicht … und spielt mit uns nicht mit Würfeln.

A. Einstein (1879–1955)

The Universe is everything: both living and inanimate things, both atoms and galaxies, and if the spiritual exists as well as the material, of spiritual things also; and if there is a Heaven and a Hell, Heaven and Hell too; for by its very nature the Universe is the totality of all things.

F. Hoyle (1910– )

Modern scientific man has largely lost his sense of awe of the Universe. He is confident that, given sufficient intelligence, perseverance, time, and money, he can understand all there is beyond the stars. He believes that he sees here on earth and in its vicinity a fair exhibition of nature’s laws and objects, and that nothing new looms “up there” that cannot be explained, predicted, or extrapolated from knowledge gained “down here”. He believes he is now surveying a fair sample of the Universe, if not in proportion to its size-which may be infinite-yet in proportion to its large-scale features. Little progress could be made in cosmology without this presumptuous attitude. And nature herself seems to encourage it, as we shall see, with certain numerical coincidences that could hardly be accidental.

W. Rindler (1924– )