In Memoriam

“In the beginning,

God created the heaven and the earth.

Now the earth was unformed and void,

And darkness was upon the face of the deep,

And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.

And God said: ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” (Genesis I: 1-3)

This lecture is dedicated to the memory of the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia, who

perished in service to all humanity on February 1, 2003 – 13 days prior to this talk:

 Commander Rick D. Husband, a U.S. Air Force colonel and mechanical engineer

 Pilot William C. McCool, a U.S. Navy commander

 Payload Commander Michael P. Anderson, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and

physicist

 Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-born aerospace engineer

 Mission Specialist David M. Brown, a U.S. Navy captain, aviator and flight surgeon

 Mission Specialist Laurel B. Clark, a U.S. Navy commander and flight surgeon

 Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli Air Force

“There is no way that you can look at the stars, at the Earth, at the moon, and not come to

realize that there is a God out there who has a plan and who laid out the universe and the

heavens.”

– Rick D. Husband, Commander, Space Shuttle Columbia

“Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the

longing to understand.”

– President George W. Bush, in his February 1, 2003 address to the nation mourning

the loss of the seven crew members of the Shuttle Columbia
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Dr. Raymond L. Orbach

Director

Office of Science

U.S. Department of Energy

Plenary Lecture

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Annual Meeting

Denver, Colorado

14 February, 2003

ABSTRACT

Humankind has always been concerned with its origins, its place in the universe, and its

future prospects. The Bible, a sacred epic, begins with: “B’reishit bara’ Elohim et hashamayim v’et ha-aretz,” or “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” The

first three lines, Genesis I:1-3, are an inspiring statement of creation. Modern science is

attempting to understand in its own terms the evolution of our universe from “the beginning.”

This talk will explore what has been learned to date, and what more we hope to learn, using

observation, theory, and computational simulations for our beginning, existence, and future.

The author thanks Dr. Jonathan M. Dorfan for his gracious permission to reproduce

The BIG Questions graphic that appears on the cover, on page 2, and in Figure 1a of this booklet.

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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Introduction

Since the earliest humans first noticed the stars above us, we have longed to

understand the heavens. They are still mysterious, but in the last century, we have substantially

advanced our understanding. The purpose of this talk is to describe the discoveries,

interpretations, and speculation that currently illuminate our perspective. We are privileged

to live in an era where these fundamental questions can be addressed through experiment,

theory, and computational simulations: “...greatly advancing our understanding of the

universe, the laws that govern it, and perhaps even our place within it.”1

We shall start as close as we can come to the “Beginning,” the origin of our universe,

proceeding through the steps that modern science believes map the path from the beginning

to the present to the future. We pass through epochs where observation and theory describe

events critical to the evolution and future of our world. These epochs represent “The BIG

Questions,” which we are now able to place in theoretical perspective, and in many cases, to

probe experimentally. That the consequences of these primordial events are evident today

shows how fortunate we are to live in this exciting period of discovery. There is so much

more to learn, much of which will undoubtedly correct our conventional wisdom, if the

future is anything like our past!
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Figure 1a

The BIG Questions are set out in Fig. 1a. Our subsequent discussions will refer to

each of the eight epochs that describe the physical path from the beginning to the present.

The time periods are remarkable for their span: from the earliest, ten billionths of a trillionth

of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the beginning, the “Big Bang,”2 to the latest, the

present era, some four-hundred thousand trillion seconds (13.7 billion years) later, or a

relative time scale of sixty-one orders of magnitude!

The BIG Questions (courtesy of Jonathan M. Dorfan). The epochs (Eras) are ordered

by their time after the instant of the “Big Bang.” Scientific units are used for the

time of the beginning of each epoch. To translate to decimals, 10-10 s would equal

0.0000000001 sec, while 3.8 x 105

 yr would equal 380,000 years (or 1.2 x 1013 s,

equal to 12,000,000,000,000 sec, or 12 trillion seconds). GUT stands for Grand

Unified Theory. The strong force (red “S”) and the unified electroweak force (orange

“E” joined with the blue “W”) are manifest in the GUT Era. The electroweak

symmetry is broken in the Electro-weak Era, hence the separation of the joined

orange “E” and blue “W” into separate orange “E” and blue “W.” The BIG Questions

are associated with their respective epoch.

Fig. 1a.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Figure 1b

The table (courtesy of Jonathan M. Dorfan) translates time into more common

language and exhibits the temperatures for each epoch. To relate to our present era,

the temperatures for each epoch are also given in terms of the temperature of the

center of our sun.

Fig. 1b.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Figure 2

The road map, outlining the universe’s journey from its origins, is illustrated in Fig.

2. It has not always been a smooth journey, from an initial period of cosmic inflation; to the

origin of ordinary matter as we know it, comprising only 4% of the known energy of the

universe; to the origin of dark matter, comprising another 23% of the known energy of the

universe; to the birth of the first few elements of the periodic chart (H, He, Li); to the

formation of the galaxies; to the origin of the chemical elements as we know them; to the

present period where 73% of the known energy of the universe is dark energy, which we

have only very recently discovered; to destiny. These momentous events have taken place

over 13.7 billion years, with positions in time as shown in the upper part of the figure. The

tools on earth and in the heavens that we use to stake out these cosmic signposts are listed in

the lower part of the figure, along with the accelerators and telescopes of the future that will

be needed to further guide our understanding.

Fig. 2. Deep Connections: Quarks & the Cosmos (courtesy of Michael S. Turner). The

time scale of Fig. 1 is used. The epochs, characterized by their physical characteristics

(above the time line) have consequences for us in our epoch. Those

consequences are being measured by experiments (below the time line) currently

underway or planned. SNAP stands for SuperNova/Acceleration Probe, an orbiting
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

The logarithmic time scale of Figs. 1 and 2 illuminates the richness of the earliest

moments of our universe. Inflation took place perhaps ten trillionths of a trillionth of a

trillionth of a second after the Big Bang; the origin of ordinary matter, a hundredth of a

millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang; the birth of the lightest

elements, three minutes after the Big Bang; and the formation of the galaxies and the heavier

elements, two hundred million years after the Big Bang.

It has been a momentous ride from the primordial fireball to our world of today. As

we learn more of the richness of our creation, there will surely be surprises ahead. Destiny

will follow from the present composition of the universe – dark energy, dark matter, and

ordinary matter will inexorably determine our fate.

The epochs exhibited in Figs. 1 and 2 will be treated individually, with reference to

experiments underway or planned that probe the present consequences of those events that

transpired so long ago. Our insatiable curiosity drives these investigations [“Almost in the

beginning was curiosity” (Isaac Asimov, 1965)]. Their consequences will change the way

we think, aspire, and dream. They contribute to the fabric of our philosophy, and to the very

meaning that science can provide to our existence.

For decades, the questions of how the universe evolved from t = 0 has touched the

intellectual core of the fields of astronomy and physics. The size, age, and shape of the

universe have been measured and its major constituents catalogued. In both astronomy and

physics, the scientific focus is shifting from discovering “What” to understanding

space telescope with a two meter mirror and a wide-field camera of a billion pixels

(a conventional electronic camera might have four million pixels). SLAC B Factory

stands for the Department of Energy, Office of Science, Stanford Linear Accelerator

Center, located in Palo Alto, California, which produces large numbers of B mesons.

Tevatron stands for the proton/anti-proton collider located at the Department of

Energy, Office of Science, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), in

Batavia, Illinois, outside of Chicago. Currently, this machine is the world’s highestenergy physics user facility. LHC stands for the Large Hadron Collider, currently

under construction at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research,

located near Geneva, Switzerland. CDMSII stands for Cryogenic Dark Matter

Search. It is a search for the nature of dark matter, looking for the Weakly Interacting

Massive Particle (WIMP), and is located in the Soudan mine, near Ely, Minnesota.

RHIC stands for Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Department of Energy, Office

of Science, Brookhaven National Laboratory, located in Upton, New York. SDSS

stands for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the most ambitious astronomical survey

project ever undertaken, located at Apache Point Observatory, in New Mexico.

RIA stands for the Rare Isotope Accelerator, a proposed project to probe unstable

isotopes with an overabundance of protons or neutrons, which tend to decay quickly.

It would serve as a roadmap for the creation of the heavy elements through the

furnaces of supernovae.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

“Why.” It has become apparent that many of the new frontiers for both fields lie at the

astronomy-physics interface. The Department of Energy’s Office of Science research

programs in high energy and nuclear physics have led many of the advances we have made

so far, and they are strategically positioned to sharpen our understanding as we move forward.

In addition, they are driving the development of many of the tools that will allow us to make

progress in the decades to come. “The study of the very large (Cosmology) and the very

small (Elementary Particles) is coming together.” 3

I. The Beginning: Superstring Era

“Prior to the existence of the universe, time did not exist.” (Nahmanides4

)

We now believe that our entire visible universe began as a tiny dot5 containing all of

the energy that we see in the galaxies of brightly shining stars, and much more energy that

we do not see. This incredibly hot dense state and its subsequent expansion is what we call

the “Big Bang.” The expansion was extremely rapid for the first tiny fraction of a

second – an “inflationary” period. Space continued to expand more slowly for another 13.7

billion years, has grown immensely large, and is still expanding today.

It is important to note that it is space itself that is expanding. Albert Einstein taught

us that space and time are properties of the universe, rather than a separate place in which

the universe resides and an independent timeline along which events occur. A space-time

continuum was created at the moment of genesis and has been expanding ever since. There

was no time before the universe began and there is no space beyond it. The space-time of

our universe is curved by the matter and energy it contains, a curvature whose effects we

perceive as the force of gravity.

In these earliest times of our universe, the temperature was extremely high, ten trillion

trillion times the current temperature of the interior of our sun, what we call the Planck

temperature. At this stage, all forces were unified into a single force. In our current epoch,

we see four fundamental forces of nature – the strong nuclear force (which binds quarks

together to form protons, neutrons, and other particles), the weak nuclear force (with a very

short range, typically 1/100 the size of an atomic nucleus, responsible for some kinds of

radioactivity, such as beta decay), the electromagnetic force, and gravity. In the earliest

universe, the laws of physics were simpler: they obeyed a beautifully symmetric simplicity

called “supersymmetry.”

The temperatures in this primordial universe were so high that all of the elementary

constituents of matter – quarks, neutrinos, electron-like particles, even those that today we

can only produce with our highest energy accelerators and those that we cannot yet create

here on earth – were produced in abundance. The matter particles such as different quarks

could swap identities and were indistinguishable from each other. “Unification and simplicity

have been the eternal Holy Grail of physicists and artists: Aristotle wanted to reduce all

substance to five elements; Picasso said that a painter should work with as few elements as

possible.” 6
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Physicists are now developing string theory, a new theoretical understanding of this

primordial universe that promises to combine gravity with the three other fundamental forces

of nature, a unification long sought by Einstein himself, but in vain. To accomplish this

unification, extra spatial dimensions are required, in addition to our familiar three space

dimensions and one time dimension. String theory also tells us that at this earliest stage, the

universe was characterized by supersymmetry, and that each of the elementary constituents

of matter (fermions) and force-carrying particles (bosons) that we know today had a

supersymmetric partner of the other type that was copiously produced.

II. Grand Unified Theory (GUT) Era

“Now the earth was unformed and void,

and darkness was upon the face of the deep;

and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.” (Genesis I.2)

When the universe cooled below the Planck temperature, the elegant totally unified

world ended. Gravity was now distinguishable, but the other three of the four fundamental

forces of nature were still unified. That there is a temperature at which these three forces

come together is a central tenet of the efforts to develop a Grand Unified Theory (GUT).

Because a GUT represents only three of the four fundamental forces (gravity is

omitted), it cannot be the ultimate fundamental theory of nature. Further, “even the simplest

GUT contains over twenty free parameters (i.e., numbers such as the charge and mass of an

electron that must be measured experimentally before the theory can be used to make

predictions). Most particle physicists believe that the ultimate theory will be much simpler,

with few if any free parameters.”7 Nevertheless, this work provides grounds for the next

development: the transition to a state where the strong force separated from the weak and

electromagnetic, which remained together in the so-called electroweak force.

III. Inflation Era (the ultimate free lunch8

)

“...while a mighty wind (ruach elohim) swept over the waters.” (Genesis I.29

)

After the universe had expanded and cooled for just ten trillionths of a trillionth of a

trillionth of a second, and the temperature “dropped” to one billion trillion times the

temperature of the center of our sun, the elegant grand unified world ended. This cooling

caused the remaining non-gravitational single basic force of the GUT era to split into the

strong and electroweak [electromagnetic and weak] forces. This was a phase transition like

the transition from liquid phase to solid phase when water freezes. During this phase transition,

the GUT field in a region of the universe entered into a “false vacuum” state, for reasons not

yet established. A false vacuum is not a stable state (we call it metastable) because it can

tunnel quantum mechanically to an energy density minimum (a stable true vacuum state),
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

but nevertheless can endure for a period long by early universe standards. Because the energy

density in a false vacuum changes little, it corresponds to a negative pressure, which, by

general relativity, generates a repulsive gravitational force.

This antigravity force caused the region to inflate at an astonishing rate, its size

increasing enormously in an inflationary epoch of ten billionths of a trillionth of a trillionth

of a second (a thousand times the lifetime of the superworld, but still a very short time).

During this period, the energy density of the GUT field in the expanding region remained

nearly constant, so that its total field energy grew rapidly with its increasing

volume. The inflationary epoch ended when much of that field energy decayed

 into a hot “soup” of elementary particles. The universe then continued to expand, but at a

much slower rate. It is possible that the new accelerated expansion we see today is also

caused by a symmetry breaking, giving rise to a “dark energy.” 10

The huge growth in energy from nearly nothing seems to violate a key principle of

physics, conservation of energy. However, when you consider that the growth of positive

energy is balanced by the growth of negative energy stored in the gravitational field as the

universe expands, the total energy of the universe can be conserved even as we get all that

matter from nothing. It isn’t really from nothing – it’s “borrowed” from gravity. You could

call it the ultimate free lunch8 – or perhaps the ultimate long-term mortgage!

The corresponding inflationary influence of the more recent dark energy has been

observed directly by two groups independently,10 and may provide a window into the era of

inflation. This epoch is the horizon of our current experimental investigations, for we are

now making detailed maps of the next epoch called the electroweak era (see Sec. IV). We

cannot yet access earlier epochs although, with searches for proton decay and hidden

dimensions, we are beginning to try!

Between inflation and the electroweak era, the particles we know today parted

company with their supersymmetric partners. Most of the supersymmetric partners decayed

to lighter particles, but the lightest of them was presumably stable and should still exist in

the universe. Physicists are searching for evidence of this lightest supersymmetric particle

(LSP) in cosmic rays and are also trying to produce supersymmetric particles with colliding

beams at accelerators. The Office of Science Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s

Tevatron collides protons head-on with antiprotons, and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

being built at CERN with substantial U.S. participation, will start colliding protons with

protons in 2007. An electron-positron collider called the International Linear Collider is

now being considered by nations in America, Europe, and Asia for construction as the world’s

next major high energy accelerator and, if built, will provide a key resource in the coming

decades for detailed studies of such fundamentally new phenomena.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

IV. Electroweak Era

“Earth with its mountains, rivers and seas,

Sky with its sun, moon and stars:

In the beginning all these were one, and the one was chaos.

Nothing had taken shape; all was a dark swirling confusion,

Over and under, round and round.

For countless ages this was the way of the universe,

Unformed and illumined,

Until from the midst of Chaos came P’an Ku...”

(“Heaven and Earth and Man,” Chinese Myths and Fantasies11)

A “long time” (a tenth of a billionth of a second) later, the universe had cooled down

considerably, to only one hundred million times the temperature of the interior

of our sun. This cooling produced another important phase transition – the separation of the

unified electroweak force into its weak and the electromagnetic components. In addition,

the Higgs field appeared throughout space. This field has not yet been observed, but it is

expected to manifest itself in the form of a particle called the Higgs boson, responsible for

the mass of the elementary particles that make up the matter in our universe. The Higgs

boson has been the object of an intense search at the highest energy colliders. If its mass is

low enough, the Tevatron may have enough energy to produce it within the next few years.

If not, it could be found after the higher energy LHC begins operations in 2007. The discovery

of the Higgs field would be a profound advance in physics, as it is believed to be the source

of mass for all matter.

At about a millionth of a second, further cooling led to our very existence – the

dominance of matter over antimatter. In this era, there were large numbers of thermal quarkantiquark pairs, 30 million antiquarks for every 30 million and 1 quarks.

12 Most of the

antimatter has annihilated with matter, leaving only one part in thirty million excess of

matter to dominate the universe, as pictured in Fig. 3.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Figure 3

Fig. 3. The First 1/1000 Seconds After the Big Bang (courtesy of Jonathan M. Dorfan). A

diagram of how ordinary matter came to dominate the universe as we see it. In 1967

Sakharov enumerated the three necessary conditions for us to exist[from David

Brahm (www.weburbia.demon.co.uk/physics/baryogenesis.html)]:

1. Baryon number violation (A baryon is a massive, strongly

interacting elementary particle, such as a proton or a neutron.

Ordinary matter as we know it consists largely of baryons.) This

means that baryon number (B) cannot be conserved in all reactions

if matter is to dominate over anti-matter.

2. C (charge symmetry) and CP (charge times parity symmetry)

violation. There must be a preference for matter overanti-matter, or

the B-violation will take place at the same rate in both directions,

leaving only a tiny statistical excess, perhaps only enough matter to

make one star in the observable universe.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

How do we surmise this?13

1. The Moon: Neil Armstrong did not annihilate, therefore the moon is made out of

matter.

2. The Sun: Solar cosmic rays are matter, not antimatter.

3. The other planets: We have sent probes to almost all. The survival of these probes

demonstrates that the solar system is made of matter.

4. The Milky Way: Cosmic rays sample material from the entire galaxy. In cosmic

rays, protons outnumber antiprotons ten thousand to one.

5. The universe at large: If there were antimatter galaxies then we should see gamma

emissions from annihilation. Its absence is strong evidence that at least the nearby

clusters of galaxies (e.g. Virgo) are matter-dominated. Finally, causality prevents

the separation of large chunks of antimatter from matter fast enough to prevent their

mutual annihilation in the early universe.

Yet from accelerator experiments, we know that for each quark or lepton created in

a high energy collision, its antiparticle is also created. Thus when these matter particles

were created from energy in the early universe, an equal number of their antiparticles should

also have been created. The particles and antiparticles should all have collided and annihilated

each other, leaving only light, but in fact a net excess of matter survived. Something must

have caused more matter than antimatter to be created in the early universe.

We believe a tiny asymmetry (CP violation) observed in the fundamental interactions

of elementary particles played a key role in causing that matter-antimatter imbalance.

Studies of CP-violating processes are underway now at the SLAC B Factory and a similar

electron-positron collider in Japan. The challenge is to tie the CP violation we observe in

the laboratory to the creation of quarks and leptons in the early universe. We may also get

hints about the existence of the early superworld from high statistics experiments studying

very rare decays at the B Factory. With data from an International Linear Collider, we could

pinpoint the unification of forces and particles.

The net excess of matter took the form of extremely hot and dense plasma of quarks

and leptons, as well as gluons (bosons that carry the strong force). After a few millionths of

a second, the plasma had cooled sufficiently that the quarks could bind into separate hadrons,

combinations of quarks bound by gluons, and survive. Protons and neutrons are the most

familiar hadrons and combine to form the nuclei of atoms. We know that this phase change

3. Thermodynamic Nonequilibrium. Because CPT (charge times

parity times time symmetry) guarantees equal masses for baryons

and anti-baryons, chemical equilibrium would drive the necessary

reactions to correct out any developing asymmetry. Hence there must

be thermodynamic nonequilibrium conditions.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

from quark-gluon plasma to hadrons took place, because no isolated quarks have ever been

seen; they are prisoners for life inside hadrons. Experimenters at the Office of Science

Brookhaven National Laboratory’s RHIC collider are trying to give a few of these prisoners

a brief parole, heating up the hadrons enough by smashing nuclei together at high energies

to temporarily reverse the process and create tiny and short-lived samples of the quarkgluon plasma. Early results from this new research facility are encouraging nuclear physicists

to hope that microcosms of the quark-gluon plasma may soon be produced and identified.

V. Particle Era

“ Yes, my hand laid the foundations of the earth;

my right hand spread out the heavens.

When I call them, they stand forth at once.” (Isaiah 48.13)

When the universe reached the ripe old age of 1 second, and temperatures dropped

to a refreshing one-thousand times the current temperature of the center of our sun, another

important phase change took place – protons and neutrons fused together to form the light

nuclei such as deuterium, helium, and lithium. Heavier nuclei were not created until much

later (two million years), when the nuclear furnaces called stars were formed. The very

heaviest nuclei are only formed in the explosions of stars, brilliant supernovae whose light

can be seen from across the universe. Because humans need many of these heavy elements

for life, we can truly say that we are made of stardust. Experiments at accelerators are

essential to study nuclear reactions among the many nuclear varieties (isotopes) that

participate in fusion reactions in stars and supernovae. Many isotopes live only for very

short times, and a proposed new Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) facility would provide

beams of these rare isotopes to study how nuclei are formed in stars.

VI. Recombination Era

“And God said: ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” (Genesis I.3)

At three hundred and eighty thousand years after t = 0, the temperature of the universe

cooled to one ten-thousandth of the current temperature of the center of our sun, or about

3,000 degrees Centigrade. At this lower temperature, the neutral atoms that had been forming

from the combinations of nuclei and electrons, but immediately breaking up because of

collisions, could now recombine and survive. Prior to this point, photons of light scattering

off free electrons scrambled their directions and were trapped in local regions. However,

this scattering did not disturb their energy spectrum. After the recombination of nuclei and

electrons, the previously trapped light was free to propagate across the universe. This radiation

was discovered in 1965 as a microwave background radiation reaching earth from all

directions. Observing this Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation allows us to

compare the light coming from parts of the universe that are very distant from us and from

each other. The CMB reveals the distribution of matter in the universe as it was about half a

million years after the Big Bang, before the creation of stars and galaxies.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

We have unequivocal evidence for asymmetries in the CMB, on the order of one

part in a hundred thousand, or 0.001%, from the 1992 Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)

satellite and from the 2003 Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Such a small

deviation from perfect smoothness may seem unimportant, but it is absolutely critical: the

attractive effect of gravity acting over the past fourteen billion years has turned this tiny

lumpiness into the structure that exists today. Moreover, the level of lumpiness revealed by

COBE and WMAP is just what is needed to account for the structure observed today, one of

the great successes of hot Big Bang cosmology.14

VII. Galaxy and Star Formation

“And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.”

(Genesis I.17)

About two hundred million years after the Big Bang, the temperature had cooled to

15 Kelvin (- 258 degrees Centigrade), and the heavens as we know them took form. This

condensation into stars and galaxies resulted from tiny quantum fluctuations present at the

beginning and observable to us today from the fluctuations in the microwave background

radiation. Without this “granularity,” tiny though it was (0.001 %), our world would be a big

uniform soup without the structure we see as stars and galaxies. Thus, our world can be

traced back to the beginning, when the lumpiness of the early universe was the cause of our

very existence.

But the world we see, the ordinary matter and energy that we know and understand,

is only a tiny part of the mass and energy of the entire universe. Experimental evidence

overwhelmingly convinces us that there is much more matter and energy in the universe

than we can see. Fig. 4 displays the composition of the universe as we now think we know

it. The stars in the heavens, combined together, form less than one-half of one percent of the

mass and energy budget of the universe. Where is the rest of it? We know from the

acceleration of the expansion of the universe that dark energy comprises 73% of the total

mass and energy of the universe. But we do not know its physical origin or how it manifests

itself as anti-gravity.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Figure 4

Fig. 4. Composition of the Cosmos [(Illustration credit: Ann Field, Space TelescopeScience

Institute (STScI)]. The composition of the universe, as we now believe we understand

it. Dark energy (Sec. III), only recently discovered, accounts for 73% of the mass

and energy budget of the universe, while exotic dark matter (Sec. VII) comprises

23%. The visible universe, as we see it, contributes less than half of one percent!
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

We know from studying the rotation of galaxies that 23% of the mass and energy

budget of the universe today is in the form of dark matter, which affects the motion of

galaxies by gravity but emits no radiation. By studying the distribution of galaxies with the

Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a ground-based telescope, we are studying the structure of dark

matter on cosmic scales. With data from present and future ground-based telescopes, we

can see gravitational lensing, the subtle distortion of distant images by the gravitational tug

of dark matter. Dark matter cannot be explained as planets and burned-out stars, because

they are much fewer and lighter than stars. It must consist primarily of weakly interacting

massive elementary particles. Neutrinos are one example. They have recently been shown

to have a tiny mass and could contribute as much as ten percent of dark matter. The lightest

supersymmetric particle (LSP) mentioned above (Sec. III) may also contribute to dark matter.

Other experiments search for dark matter particles reaching earth as cosmic rays. Accelerator

experiments are searching for many kinds of dark matter, but it remains a mystery waiting to

be solved.

VIII. Present Era

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,

till thou return unto the ground;

for out of it wast thou taken;

for dust thou art,

and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Genesis III:19)

We believe the time of our modern era, the world as we now know it, is 13.7 billion

years after the beginning, at a temperature of 2.7 Kelvin, or – 270.4 Centigrade. In as short

a time as the last three decades we have, using accelerators and detectors in space and on the

ground, come to a fundamental understanding of the constituents of matter that make up the

visible universe. We have also come to realize that nearly all of the energy of the universe is

manifested in forms that we don’t understand: dark energy and dark matter.

The dark energy, possibly similar to that which caused the inflationary epoch described

above (Sec. III), now dominates the universe, contributing 73% of its energy. Its outward

push overcomes the inward pull of gravity and causes the expansion of the universe to

accelerate rather than to slow down as was long believed. This surprising discovery of an

accelerating expansion was recently made by studying supernovae,10 and there are plans to

launch a dedicated supernova telescope called the SuperNova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP)

into space to investigate dark energy much more thoroughly. By using supernova to map out

the history of the expansion of the universe we can learn about the ends of time – both the

earliest birth pangs like inflation, and the future destiny of our universe.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Figure 5

Our Changing View of the Universe (courtesy of Jonathan M. Dorfan). Conceptions

of the universe have changed sharply over the past few decades: from a comfort

zone in the 1970’s, where the universe was thought to be constructed entirely from

“ordinary” dark visible matter; to today where exotic dark matter and dark energy,

unknown thirty years ago, now comprise 96% of the total mass and energy budget

of the universe! Concomitantly, the kind of matter we are made of accounts for

only around 4% of the total mass and energy budget of the universe. “This may

imply, as the Ptolemaic epicycles did, that we are lacking a deep enough

understanding of the laws of physics underlying our universe. It is even possible

that what we call dark matter and dark energy are the signatures of some unknown

aspect of gravity or spacetime itself!” [Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven

Science Questions for the New Century].

Fig. 5.
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Most of the universe is invisible to us and full of mystery. There will be surprises as

we continue to probe the beginning from our vantage point 13.7 billion years later. Our

knowledge has evolved in discrete surprises. Thus, our very conception of the nature of our

universe has changed, even over the time scale of decades. Fig. 5 uses a color guide to

display the make up of energy and matter as we thought we understood it in the 1970’s

through the following decades to the present. The fact that dark energy and exotic dark

matter now comprise 96% of our universe, while the galaxies of bright stars that fill the

heavens are less than one half of one percent, is a good lesson, compelling humility. “Our

world,” the universe that we see directly, is a mere sprinkling of visible matter on the vast

reaches of dark matter and energy.

As we struggle to understand the mysteries confronting us, we are looking back in

time ever closer to t = 0. We are constructing and planning a variety of new experiments that

will allow us to probe ever closer to the moment of genesis. Telescopes and space probes,

coupled with frontier accelerator facilities on the ground, are allowing us to make enduring

and important scientific advances.

These are exciting times, and we anticipate that the investigations, led by the Office

of Science, are going to change the way we think about the world we live in. It may be that

in another decade, discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider (CERN in Switzerland) and the

International Linear Collider (not yet under construction, and site not chosen) will confirm

that we live embedded in a higher dimensional universe. Or, they may reveal new forces and

new particles that we cannot now imagine. Cosmic ray, neutrino, and gravitational radiation

observatories now under construction or being planned will open new windows to the

heavens. Probes in space such as SNAP will allow us to investigate the nature of the

mysterious dark energy that seems to surround us, and perhaps give clues as to its origins.

New telescopes on the ground may help us understand what dark matter really is.

* * *

What we know is overwhelmed by what we don’t know. We ask questions such as

“What are we made of?” and “Where did we come from?” It is the essential optimism and,

yes, fundamental arrogance of mankind that makes us believe we can discover the answers.

Finis origine pendent, wrote the poet Manlius. The end depends on the beginning.

This is especially apt for the cosmos, where the mysterious dark energy is now accelerating

the expansion of the universe, suggesting that the Big Bang may end with a lonely whimper.

“Every man prays in his own language, and there is no language that God does

not understand.” (Duke Ellington, 1965)
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Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

Acknowledgments

The author is indebted to a number of colleagues who have mentored him through

the labyrinth of cosmology and astro-particle physics. Special thanks are due to Drs. Persis

Drell, Jonathan M. Dorfan, Craig Hogan, Neil Baggett, and Saul Perlmutter for their patient

assistance with, and editing of, this manuscript. Appreciation is also expressed to Drs. J.

Lykken and P. Drell for their private communication, “Genesis: Science and the Beginning

of Time;” to Dr. Neil Baggett for his private communication, “The Genesis and Evolution

of the Universe;” to Dr. Michael S. Turner for a preliminary version of his paper with Dr.

Wendy L. Freedman, “Measuring and Understanding the Universe;” to Dr. Craig Hogan for

his paper, “New Beginning;” and to Drs. Peter Rosen and Robin Staffin for their crucial

assistance.

References

1. Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century,

Committee on the Physics of the Universe (National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.,

2003), Executive Summary.

2. Coined by F. Hoyle in a BBC radio series in the 1940s.

3. Ref. 1, xvi. “The Committee on the Physics of the Universe dedicates this report to a dear

friend and valued colleague, David N. Schramm. His vision, research, enthusiasm, and

energy helped to open this blossoming area of research, and his strong voice helped bring

it to the attention of astronomers and physicists alike.” The quote is from a viewgraph in

his own hand that concisely summarized his vision.

4. Genesis and the Big Bang, Gerald L. Schroeder (1992, Bantam Books, New York),

p. 58, referencing Nahmanides (Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, also known as Ramban, c.e.

1194-1270, Spain, Israel) Commentary on the Torah, Genesis I:4, 5.

5. Schroeder’s account (ibid, p. 65) of Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, Genesis I.1,

reads: “At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was

concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard.”

6. Alan Lightman, Foreword, The Inflationary Universe, Alan H. Guth (Perseus Books,

Cambridge, 1997), p. xi.

7. The Inflationary Universe, Alan H. Guth (Perseus Books, Cambridge, 1997), p. 135.

8. Ibid, Chapter 1.

9. The New American Bible, Catholic Version of the Bible in English (World Bible Publishers,

Inc., Iowa Falls, IA 50126, USA, 1987), p. 8. All other biblical quotations used in this

text are from Pentateuch & Haftorahs, Second Edition (Soncino Press, London, 1960).
21

Genesis: Science and the Beginning of Time

10. Two groups were responsible for the discovery of dark energy: the Supernova Cosmology

Project, led by S. Perlmutter at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and the HighZ SN Search, led by B. Schmidt at the Australian National University. Their first

indications of dark energy (from low mass-density evidence) were published in: S.

Perlmutter et al., Nature 391, 51 (1998); and P. Garnavich et al., Astrophys. J. Lett. 493,

53 (1998). The announcements of the discovery of dark energy can be found in S.

Perlmutter et al., (SCP), astro-ph/9812473; presentation at the January 1998, meeting of

the American Astronomical Society, also cited as AAS 29, 1351 (1997); and by A.V.

Filippenko et al., (HZSNS), astro-ph/9807008; presentation at the February 1998

Symposium on Sources and Detection of Dark Matter in the Universe, Proceedings

edited by D. Cline. Their final comprehensive analyses can be found in: A.G. Riess, A.V.

Filippenko, P. Challis, A. Clocchiattia, A. Diercks, P. M. Garnavich, R.L. Gilliland, C.J.

Hogan, S. Jha, R.P. Kirshner, B. Leibundgut, M.M. Phillips, D. Reiss, B.P. Schmidt,

R.A. Schommer, R.C. Smith, J. Spyromilio, C. Stubbs, N.B. Suntzeff, and J. Tonry,

Astron. J. 116, 1009 (1998); and S. Perlmutter, G. Aldering, G. Goldhaber, R.A. Knop, P.

Nugent, P.G. Castro, S. Deustua, S. Fabbro, A. Goodbar, D.E. Groom, I.M. Hook, A.G.

Kim, M.Y. Kim, J.C. Lee, N.J. Nunes, R. Pain, C.R. Pennypacker, R. Quimby, C. Lidman,

R.S. Ellis, M. Irwin, R.G. McMahon, P. Ruiz-Lapuente, N. Walton, B. Schaefer, B.J.

Boyle, A.V. Filippenko, T. Matheson, A.S. Fruchter, N. Panagia, H.J.M. Newberg, and

W.J. Couch, Astrophys. J. 517, 565 (1999).

11. Quoted in Beginnings, World Treasures of the Library of Congress, International Gallery,

2002.

12. The Early Universe, Kolb and Turner.

13. “Baryogenesis – Why Are There More Protons Than Antiprotons,” David Brahm,

www.weburbia.demon.co.uk/physics/baryogenesis.html.

14. Ref. 1, section 3.3.