Two Themes

This discussion is intended to be nontechnical. Although some of the ideas may seem difficult, and nomenclature such as quarks, photons, or gravitons may be unfamiliar, two important themes can be appreciated without a mastery of the exotica of modern physics.

The first theme is that today, about twelve-billion years after the bang (AB), we have a pretty good idea what the universe was like earlier than one second AB,because we can understand the very early history of the universe by studying the present universe. All around us we see the evidence of what the universe was like at earlier times because the early universe left behind something analogous to a fossil record for us to examine. The fact that the universe is comprehensible at all is astounding. That we can speak with confidence about the universe one second AB is one of the proudest intellectual accomplishments of our species.

The second theme that runs through this discussion regards the unity of science. Although the study of science at schools and universities is organized into different departments for physics, chemistry, biology, and so on, nature is not so easily categorized. A single part of nature cannot be studied in isolation. This was eloquently stated by the great American naturalist and conservationist John Muir:

When one tugs at a single thing in nature,
he finds it hitched to the rest of the universe.

We will see that one cannot understand the largest things in the universe without understanding the smallest things, and to truly understand nature on the smallest scales, one has to understand it on the largest scales.

We call this link between the large and the small the "Inner Space/Outer Space" connection. In a very real sense, the largest telescope is also a microscope, and the most powerful microscope is also a telescope.

Contributed by: Dr. Edward Kolb