The truest expression of love is the desire to know everything about the subject of that love. I love nature. That is why, as a scientist, I want to obtain as much experimental data about nature as possible. There are an infinite number of virtual realities, some of which are flattering to our ego. But merely expressing them without knowing whether they apply to reality is like imagining a possible love story with an idealized fictional character, similar to “Prince Charming” or “Princess Charming.”
This was my message to an audience of fifty spiritual leaders who were received by the “Harvard Law School program on Biblical law and Christian legal studies”. My Fireside Chat was moderated by Tim Dalrymple, president and CEO of “Christianity Today.” After Tim introduced me as a farm boy born in the Holy Land who became an astrophysicist, I added the disclaimer that my knowledge is limited to the observable universe. “What lies behind that is Tim’s expertise,” I replied.
During the next hour of conversation, I explained that science and spirituality both seek to understand the unknown. Our knowledge is an island in an ocean of ignorance. After a century of observational studies, cosmologists don’t even know the nature of 85% of the matter and 95% of the energy in the universe. Not to mention what happened before the Big Bang. A century ago, Albert Einstein thought that a static universe is philosophically more attractive than a universe with a beginning in time.
Between 1935 and 1939, Einstein also argued that gravitational waves do not exist. shouldn’t have spooky action at a distance, and black holes do not exist. The experimental teams that proved Einstein wrong by discovering the cosmic microwave background, black holes, gravitational waves and quantum entanglement received the Nobel Prize in Physics. These are all good reasons to stay humble and view science as a learning experience. Nature is not obliged to make us happy.
We tend to position ourselves at the center of the universe, but our default assumption should be that we are not important in the cosmic scheme of things. Nevertheless, it is our ability to know the richness of nature that makes life worth living. The more we learn, the harder it is not to be in awe of what nature had before we came into existence. It is humbling to realize how difficult it is for our modern technologies to imitate nature.
Our brain’s natural neural network consumes 12 watts, while artificial intelligence neural networks have fewer connections but consume gigawatts of power. In 2024, physicists demonstrated nuclear fusion at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore by producing a megajoule of energy, which the sun produces in a few thousandths of an attosecond (i.e. a few times 10 to the power of -21 seconds). Our current technologies are unable to produce a self-healing car or a self-reproducing device, while the human body heals after minor accidents and can produce new bodies just as well.
Nevertheless, science has the potential to fulfill our greatest spiritual ambitions. If physicists develop a predictive theory that unites quantum mechanics and gravity, they may be able to determine the conditions that led to the Big Bang. Having that recipe would allow science to create these conditions artificially in the laboratory and spawn a baby universe. This would fulfill the function requirement of the biblical God who, according to the opening of Genesis, created our universe.
This feat could take a very long time to accomplish, perhaps billions of years of science and technology instead of the century we had since the discovery of quantum mechanics. But there is a shortcut. Most stars formed billions of years before the sun, and another civilization may have discovered quantum gravity by now. Knowing what aliens already know would save us time. Forget the revelation of what our government knows about aliens. What really matters is the disclosure of what aliens know about the universe.
Having a smarter student in our class provides a future opportunity to bring science and spirituality together. The Messianic age could be ushered in by a visitor from another star. This will provide much-needed shock therapy to humanity, which is currently wasting resources in pointless conflicts on Earth, a small remnant of the formation of the sun.
Tim noted that Americans are less likely to believe that intelligent life exists on other planets, even though God, he believes, has the attention span to care for beings on multiple planets. I confirmed that I have two daughters and that the love I give to one does not take away from the love I give to the other. We often think in terms of zero-sum games, but the most satisfying aspects of our lives are infinite-sum games. A recent poll showed that more Americans believe in extraterrestrial intelligence than in the Biblical God. “You have the opportunity to get them into your community,” I suggested to Tim.
My hope is that in my lifetime humanity will encounter an interstellar messenger with an uplifting message. Just like in our private lives, finding a cosmic partner will give new meaning to our existence. After that, the night sky will no longer seem so dark and lonely. Standard cosmological knowledge will not view the universe as a meaningless mix of particles and radiation. If we find other actors on the cosmic stage, we can ask them what the play is about. We can visit their homes and witness their technological infrastructure, just like children visiting their neighbors and marveling at their toys.
To continue this quest scientifically, I lead the Galileo project which searches for objects near Earth that may have been manufactured by alien technological civilizations. After the discovery of the first interstellar object, `OmuamuaOn October 19, 2017, I became interested in the scientific study of anomalous objects visiting us from outside the solar system. The brightness of the sunlight reflected from ‘Oumuamua changed by a factor of ten as this football field-sized object tumbled every eight hours. These extreme brightness variations implied that `Oumuamua was shaped like a pancake.
This mysterious object accelerated away from the sun with no signs of cometary evaporation, retreating from Earth faster than any man-made rocket. A similar push by reflection of sunlight was detected for another object, 2020 SOwhich was verified to be a rocket booster from a NASA launch in 1966. To separate technological artifacts from rocks, astronomers can now collect better data on interstellar objects using the Webb Telescope and the upcoming Rubin Observatory in Chile.
My conversation with Tim and the spiritual leaders ended after an hour, because I had to teach a class of students from Harvard’s Astronomy department. Educating young students is critical to ensuring that we continue to learn more about our cosmic environment. Hopefully the Messianic message of peace and prosperity will arrive before humanity causes an existential catastrophe with its emerging technologies.
