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<!g>Stephen Hawking and the Growth of Quantum <!g>Cosmology

Since around 1980 cosmological interest has shifted to the first ten million, billion, billion, billion, billionth of a second (10-43 second) of the universe’s history, when the developing universe was so small as to be significantly affected by <!g>quantum theory. Stephen Hawking records that he was at a conference at the Vatican in 1981 at the end of which:

the participants were granted an audience with the Pope (John Paul II). He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the <!g>big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference - the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation.[FTEXT]

The physicist continues, ironically, ‘I had no wish to share the fate of <!g>Galileo...’ However, Hawking has ventured various theological comments much more extreme than any uttered by Galileo, most famously that:

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose that it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?[FTEXT]

To understand Hawking’s new idea for a universe with no beginning see the Hawking-Hartle proposal for the early universe. See also <!g>theological responses to quantum cosmology.

Email link | Feedback | Contributed by: <!g>Dr. Christopher Southgate
Source: God, Humanity and the Cosmos  (<!g>T&T Clark, 1999)

Big Bang Cosmology and Theology

Index - God, Humanity and the Cosmos, 1999 T&T Clark

Stephen Hawking and the Growth of Quantum Cosmology

Related Book Topics:

The Beginnings of Big Bang Theory
Evidence for a Big Bang?
Is the Big Bang a Moment of Creation?
The Hawking-Hartle Proposal for the Early Universe
Theological Responses to Quantum Cosmology
The ‘Anthropic Coincidences’
The Remarkable Uniformity of the Universe
The Weak Anthropic Principle
Anthropic Design Arguments
Many-Universes Models
The Strong Anthropic Principle
Analysing the Anthropic Arguments
Big Bang Cosmology and Theology

Source:

Dr. Lawrence Osborn and Dr. Christopher Southgate in God, Humanity and the Cosmos. Published by T&T Clark.

See also:

Big Bang
Albert Einstein
Kitt Peak Telescope
Physics and Cosmology
History
Origins
Does God Act?
Was the Universe Designed?
Did the Universe Have a Beginning?
Books on Physics and Theology