´óÏó´«Ã½

Good morning. Today, more than a million kilometers away, a small spacecraft will burn the last of its fuel, park itself in a long term stable orbit and die. Its death will be barely noticed, but will bring to an end a short but profound contribution to our understanding of our place in the cosmos.

The European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope had only four years to study the 13.8 billion year history of the universe - from a fraction of a second after its beginning through to the development of stars and galaxies. It’s done this primarily through surveying the cosmic microwave background, a type of radiation formed early in the Big Bang and now pervading the whole of space.

It leaves a legacy of insights and unanswered questions. It confirms our current understanding of this massive expanding universe, but it also highlights that we know only 5% of what that universe is made of, the rest being made up of dark matter and dark energy – and we’re not sure what they are.

Yet does this fundamental science tell us anything about humanity or has it any significance for daily life? The science fiction author Ray Bradbury once wrote that such discovery ‘is only worth our hyperventilation if we allow it to lead us to the larger metaphor: Mankind sliding across the blind retina of the Cosmos, hoping to be seen, hoping to be counted, hoping to be worth the counting'.

Last week here in Durham, I was part of a discussion with physicists, biologists and theologians on our place in such a vast universe. Some wondered whether we were just a meaningless blip in cosmic history, observing it for a short time before being ‘parked’ in the orbit of death. It is a question of course echoed by the psalmist, ‘When I look at the heavens…what are human beings’. The response, which is a central to the Judeo-Christian tradition, is that human beings are significant not because of their place nor longevity in the universe but because God has chosen freely to form relationship with us. For me, the seeming cosmic insignificance of my daily life is given meaning by the perspective of a God who loves me.

The great 20th century German physicist Max Planck, after whom the telescope is named, had a complex religious belief that was battered by war, personal tragedy and the rise of fascism. Yet in a famous 1937 lecture, ‘Religion and Science’ he argued that both should be fully committed to pursuing truth together and that for him the directing motto which runs from the remotest past to the distant future is ‘On(wards) to God!’

Show less