Cosmology then and now

June 10, 2005

East meets west: cosmology then and now Eastern religious traditions can provide us with new cosmological insights if we have eyes to see them. By Paul Utukuru(June 6, 2005)

http://www.stnews.org/articles.php?article_id=608 & category=commentary

Symbolism is a common feature in all religious traditions. Bread and wine symbolize the flesh and blood of Jesus in the Christian Eucharist. Jesus himself spoke in parables. The ancient Hindu and Greek mythologies personify stars, planets and the elements. While this may seem strange now, a quick look around will show you that science and technology does the same thing.

Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are said to be the creator, sustainer and the destroyer respectively of the universe in Hinduism. Setting aside the personified symbolism here, the idea can be seen as an extrapolation of what is observed on earth to the universe at large: birth, growth, decay and recycling are central to everything we observe in the world within us and around us. Extrapolation from the particular to the general is commonly done in science, especially physics.

Based on similar considerations, some ancient astronomers seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that the creation of the universe, its growth, its eventual decay and regeneration are eternal processes without a beginning and without an end, repeating in endless cycles. The Hindus named each half cycle a night or day of Brahma in symbolic terms. There is also the mention of a transition or a twilight zone referred to as Yugasandhi between these half cycles. Similar cosmologies evolved in ancient Babylon and Greece also during pre-Christian times. Whether the Hindus developed their ideas on their own, or borrowed them from Babylon and Greece, is still a matter of debate among historians.

In any case, the point of interest to us here is that the metaphor extends to some amazing mathematical details. According to the Hindu scriptures, each half cycle is said to last for 4.32 billion years. The Sun, too, revolves around the center of our galaxy once in 325.5 million years. Modern science pegs this in the range of 225 to 270 million years. The point of departure between ancient Hindu cosmology and modern cosmology is that unlike modern cosmology, ancient Hindu cosmology relates the rotational speed of our own galaxy to the period of oscillation of the endless cycles of creation, growth and eventual decay. Our known galaxy is known as Parameshti Mandala, and it is said to rotate around Svayambhu Mandala, the center of all galaxies with a time period of 4.32 billion years, also. Interestingly, the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant suggested that the universe might actually consist of rotating systems rotating around larger rotating systems.

Pursuing this chronology further in detail, it can be shown that the present day of Brahma began exactly 5 Brahma hours, 28 minutes and 40 seconds ago as of April 1, 1986. Going a step further, they calculate the age of our present universe is 19.252 billion years, amazingly close to the modern-day estimate. Modern historians have also documented that according to some ancient Hindu scriptures, the Sun is 108 Sun-diameters from the earth and the moon 108 Moon-diameters away. The modern values for these figures are 107.6 and 110.6 respectively.

Parenthetically, the number 108 has special significance in astrology and in most Hindu rituals even today. The rosaries used in many Hindu and Buddhist chanting routines contain exactly 108 beads. Also, the number 108 is exactly one quarter of 432, the most important number in the ancient Hindu and Babylonian cosmologies.

Today, we are still faced with issues such as the singularity problem, the horizon problem, the magnetic monopole problem, the smoothness problem, the flatness problem, anisotropy of the 3º K cosmic ray background and the recently-discovered phenomena of gamma ray bursts by satellites and space telescopes. We have not yet figured out whether the big bang is a one-time affair or a cyclical affair. Proton decay is yet another unresolved issue. Cosmologists are also not sure whether the universe is open, flat or closed.

Quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity have still to be reconciled. The most recent development in this regard has been a return to a cyclical theory of expansion and contraction of our universe by Paul Steinhardt at Princeton and Neil Turok at Cambridge University. In their view, the big bang is a bridge to a pre-existing contracting era. The universe undergoes an endless sequence of cycles in which it contracts in a big crunch and re-emerges in an expanding big bang, with trillions of years of evolution in between, almost exactly as outlined in ancient Hindu cosmology. Steinhardt and Turok contend that the visible universe exists within a three-dimensional membrane, or brane, that is like a stretched rubber sheet. Another brane separated from ours by only a microscopic thickness contains a universe in which there is only dark matter. In each periodic cycle, a collision between the two membranes results in enormous amounts of matter and radiation.

I am by no means suggesting here that the cyclical model is right and the one-time big-bang model is wrong. Rather, my point is that since birth, growth, decay and recycling are universal phenomena throughout nature, their extrapolation to the universe at large, following the tradition of the ancients, might give us newer insights. Likewise, it may be worthwhile to recognize the similarities between the atom and the solar system and see if the extrapolation of this might lead us to a more elegant cosmological model involving rotation of systems within systems in an endless fashion.

I will close with one final note. Whether or not we take ancient cosmologies such as the one discussed here seriously, it is interesting that their methods for predicting solar and lunar eclipses yield results almost as accurate as our modern ones. In the case of India, the Hindu pundits still use them.

Paul Utukuru is a retired medical physicist.

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