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W.R. STOEGER S.J.
65
1 (2008) 64-77
and death produced all the heavy elements (heavier than helium) which make up our
bodies, to the Big Bang in which our possibility was first initiated and expressed.
1. Cosmic Evolution and the Mystery of the Beginning
Before life could originate in our Universe, its building blocks and suitable environments
for its emergence had to be fashioned. In particular, the 92 natural chemical
elements had to be manufactured, and cool, stable, chemically rich places like our earth
near – but not too near – a reliable sources of energy like our Sun needed to be put in
place. This took of the order of 9 billion years after the Big Bang.
As we peer out into the far reaches of our universe, what do we see? We see hundreds
of billions of stars, of great variety – some like our Sun but others very different –
aggregated to clusters, some having as many as 100,000 stars (like in the beautiful, spherically
symmetric arrays we call globular clusters). These clusters of stars are further
organized into spiral, elliptical and irregular galaxies. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way,
for instance, is probably a barred spiral consisting of about 100 billion stars, and stretching
about 100,000 light years in diameter. The galaxies themselves, in turn, are often grouped
into clusters – some having as many as 2,000 galaxies swarming together through
intergalactic space – gravitationally interacting, sometimes colliding and merging, thus
triggering spectacular bursts of star formation. Our Milky Way is part of a very small
cluster of galaxies called the Local Group, which consists of several large galaxies like
the Milky Way itself, Andromeda, the Large and Small Magellanic clouds, which can be
seen clearly in the southern hemisphere with the naked eye, and about 40 or 50 dwarf
spiral and elliptical galaxies. The clusters of galaxies in turn are grouped into long filametary
superclusters which span hundreds of millions of light years.
At the other extreme, as we look at the microscopic organization of Nature, we see
similar hierarchical clustering. We see fundamental particles, like quarks, grouped into
the basic baryons like protons and neutrons under the action of the strong nuclear
force, and the leptons, the most famous of which is the electron. These together constitute
atoms through the strong nuclear and the electromagnetic forces. And with these
are particles of light, photons, which provide some of the energy and communication
among the atoms. The atoms in turn can be clustered into molecules, with millions of
different properties, and supermolecules which are the important basic constituents of
living organisms. These molecules can be organized in highly intricate ways into systems
like cells, which contain all the information needed for their reproduction and metabolic
functioning. At higher levels the cells are organized into richly differentiated multicellular
organisms and animals, some of which possess highly sophisticated neural systems
and brains. In some of these the brains are so advanced that they manifest intelligence,
creative, free will, and the capacity for abstract communication, personal relationship
and culture.
Was the earth and the universe always this way? It is very obvious to us now that it
was not! The earth and Sun are about 4.6 billion years old, and it is clear that human
beings have only been present for maybe a five hundred thousand years at most, and our