The Grand Basilica of the nature

The Grand Basilica of the nature Cambridge University theoretical physicist John D. Barrow, the winner of the 2006 Templeton Prize for progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities, is a man of many talents. The author of 17 books and over 400 periodicals, as well as a game about the importance of infinity, Barrow is perhaps best known as co-author, with Tulane University mathematical physicist Frank Tipler, the 1986 book "The anthropic principle cosmological, which examined whether the Earth is actually set up for life. Review of the book for the New York Times science joualist Timothy Ferris has written? I was exasperated by it, agree with him and loved to read. In the following essay, written for the occasion to win the Templeton Prize, Barrow reflects the majesty of nature, our growing knowledge of the universe and religion, because they have always a place in the table of science. Just over a year ago I was in a big church? Basilica di San Marco in Venice. Its predecessor was founded in Room 832 of the mortal remains of St. Mark the Evangelist, who was brought to Venice from Alexandria, four years earlier by two Venetian merchants. They are hiding the remains of the martyr St. under layers of pork, in order to avoid the attention of Muslim customs officials.The this Byzantine-style basilica, with its characteristic cluster low domes, was begun in 1063 and 1089. Today, located next to the Palazzo Ducale, on the outskirts of Piazza San Marco, tourists and pigeons, as a pilgrim, with a facade, a thousand postcards.I came to the church in the early evening with a small group of other scientists for a guided tour, after he had closed to visitors for the day. If there are, it was almost in complete darkness. There are some windows, and are small and not very transparent. We were asked to come in between, so that only a few faint lights and electric candles occasionally land us our seats. Before us there was only darkness.Then, very slowly, the light, the level has risen over us and around us, and the inside has started, with a discreet system of hidden sodium lights. The darkness around us gave way to a spectacular golden light. The cross-cap in front of us were in a spectacular gleaming mosaic of glass and gold. Between 11 and 15 century, nearly 11,000 square gold mosaic was a square of space, mixing with the gold-glass from a delicate process, which are not yet fully understood sparkling gold at this sanctuary. Appearances can deceptive.But, on reflection, what's eyes, for me was the creation of hundreds of teachers who had worked for centuries to this fabulous sight had never seen in all its glory. He worked in the gloomy interior, with the help of candle smoke and oil lamps illuminate the small area where they worked, but not one of them had never seen the full glory of the roof of gold. For them, as we are, 500 years later, were deceptive.Getting performance closer to starsOur universe is somewhat 'too similar to that. The old writer celebrated the heavens' declaration of the glory of the Lord has seen only through a dark glass. And without the countless others who followed them, the universe has revealed itself through the instruments that mode science has the possibility of far larger, more spectacular and humility that we have always thought that be.The universe appears big and old , dark and cold, against life as we know, dangerous and expensive to explore. Many philosophers of the past, that the universe is meaningless and antithetical to life: a bleak and black area in which our little planet, is a temporary result of the blind forces of nature. But appearances deceptive.Over May, the past 75 years, astronomers have illuminated the vault of the sky in a completely unexpected. The universe is not only large but also growing. It stretches. Large groups of galaxies are moving away from each other to increase the speed. This means that the size of a universe we can see is inextricably linked to his age. It 'great because old.These great periods are important for our existence. We are made of complicated atoms of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, along with many others. One day, perhaps, other forms of Terrestrial Intelligence, the silicon atoms. The nuclei of all atoms are not finished with the universe. They will be held jointly by a long series of slow-buing nuclear reactions in stars. It takes almost 10 billion years for this stellar alchemy to bu hydrogen to helium, and beryllium, and carbon and oxygen and beyond, before the dying stars explode in supeovae and their lives-the debris of the whole world, if it finds its way into grains of dust, planets, and ultimately to humans. The nucleus of every carbon atom in our bodies is indicated by a star. We are closer to the stars that we have always imagined.Driven a understandAstronomy is simply as the aversion to food, the universe of meaning philosophers skeptical. It breathes new life into so many religious questions of ultimate conce and never-ending fascination. Many of the deepest questions that we still have to deal with the nature of the universe have their origins in our search for purely religious meaning.The concept of a universe with the legal and can be understood to be largely based on religious views on the nature of God. " The atomistic picture of matter arose long before there was no experimental evidence for or against these beliefs come it.Out that there is an unchanging order behind the appearances that the study was worth it. Big questions about the origin and the end of the world, which may be sources to comply with all the complexities and the potential vastness of space is, in our religious focus on the major issues of existence and the nature of God.And, like all major issues, which may be based on an answer for us unexpected routes, increasingly distant from family and daily life: multi-verse, extra dimensions, the curvature of space and time? all may be that a universe with more than is necessary for life, even more than for speculation. Let's see how it is possible for a universe, the infinite complexity and exquisite structure is supported by some simple laws? perhaps only a right? The symmetrical and intelligible, the laws, the most important things in our universe: the populations of elementary particles? Particles? Which is perfectly identical.Reality everywhere? s logicIt hidden by this simple and beautiful world behind the appearances? in which the lawfulness of nature is very elegant and fully disclosed? Physicists who are, the hallmark of 'universe. All other bids for the results of these laws. The results are often complicated, difficult to understand, and of great importance? too? But the true simplicity and symmetry of the universe is in the things that are not seen. More specifically, we find that there are mathematical equations that little Squiggle on a piece of paper that tell us how the whole universe. E 'a logic that is more than universes is surprising, because we are able to understand a significant part of the SI, and then share appreciation.Once have thought of everything the material world was from what we find on Earth. Now we found this was only a first guess. More than 70 percent of 'universe consists of a form of dark energy whose precise identity is unknown. It shows its presence by its dramatic effects on the expansion of the universe. Unlike all other known forms of matter, which exert gravitational attractive forces on other forms of matter and with each other, this form of dark energy responds to the repulsive gravity, so that all the materials to which you delete, so that the acceleration of growth as the universe began, which occur when some 75 percent of its current size. This discovery about our universe as a surprise? as something completely unexpected discovery of an old friend. Also were deceptive.So appearances with the universe as it was at this evening in San Marco, things are not always as they seem, if we are at the top. Everything is much more than the sum of its parts. The architects of our religious and scientific images of the world, and many commentators on their importance, who followed them, could see only a small part of what is and knew only a small part of what they teach us our place in the cosmos. We begin to see once again the extraordinary nature of our local environment and the link that attaches to the life of the vastness of space and time. Deceptive.Knowing Appearances can indeed what don? T know there are some who say that just because our minds to the organization and the complexity of the world around us, there's nothing to sign, as this is required by the human mind. This is a serious miscalculation. Admittedly, we expect that our largest and most reliable understanding of the world in everyday life for millions of years of natural selection have sharpened our forces and our senses.And ready when we are in the direction space of blacks holes and galaxies or in an inner space of quarks and electrons, we should expect to find few resonances between our minds and how these worlds. Natural selection requires no understanding of quarks and blacks holes for our survival and multiplication.And again, we find these expectations on its head. The accurate and reliable knowledge about what we have in the world, events in a binary system of stars, more than 3,000 light years from Earth and in the subatomic world of electrons and light rays, although it is better than nine decimal places. And curiously, our greatest uncertainties relate to all the local problems to understand us? human society, human behavior and the human spirit? all things that are really important for human survival. But this is because they are too complex, our minds were simple enough to understand, would be too easy, all understand.In science we pursue, we are accustomed to that progress. Our first attempt to understand the laws of nature are often incomplete. They cover only a part of truth, or see through a glass darkly.Some just think that our progress is like an endless succession of revolutions, the overthrow of the old order and never convicted together on something more useful than one type of thinking . But scientific progress can not be? T appear to be from within. Our new theories and to subsume the old. The former theories are back in a few cases? slow, weak gravitational fields, large, or low energy? from the new. Newton? S 300-year-old theory of mechanics and gravity was developed by Einstein? S, which is managed by the M-theory or its followers in the unknown future. But in a thousand years? Now students still studying the theories of Newton and engineers are still on them, as they do today. They are the limit for the simple slow motion and weak gravity of the latest theory, what is be.In our religious conceptions of the world, we also use approximations and analogies to have understanding of the latest things. You are not the whole truth, but does not stop, a part of the truth? shadow, the artists in a limitation on the situation of some simplicity. Our scientific picture of the world has proved once again how our vision and foresight has often conservative, as well as review our image of the cosmos, as mundane our expectations, and how parochial our attempts to find or deny the links between scientific and religious approaches to the nature of universe.Sir John Templeton has sought to promote dialogue in this impartial firm conviction that religion and science, the mutual recognition of lighting and the wonders of the world and ourselves in search of truth and understanding in new ways? a truth which is always unpredictable and often not, as first appears.John D. Barrow is a theoretical physicist and research professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University and winner of the 2006 Templeton Prize for progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities. This article was written for Science and Theology News.