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"I
am a retired Episcopal priest who has given Christmas sermons for
thirty years...It is refreshing to see the unnecessary
cleavage between science and religion denounced for the
illogicality that it is....Thank you for your sensitive treatment
of a dissonance that in reality is creating a spiritual/scientific
vision of the universe that even Maimonides
forsaw..."
--- Reverend Henry Jesse, Colorado |
"I
just finished reading [your] editorial in the Rocky Mountain News
in Denver about your book, "Let There be Light." It was one of the
best articles I can remember reading ever. I consider myself an
amateur astronomer and I try to keep up on current cosmological news.
Reading about the way your book combined cosmology and religion was
fascinating. I can't wait to get the book."
--- Mr. Curt R. Kneif, Denver |
"I
am writing to thank you for writing such a good book, and to say how
much your writing gets through to me. I am so pleased, and feel
so good reading your words, thoughts, and ideas... This
book is so meaningful to me, and I will tell others about it.
When I walk outside of town I am in intimate contact with the sky, and
the macro-worlds on the Earth– its flowers, insects, clay, and
rocks. At these times I feel in touch. A book like yours is for
these times. Great."
-- A. Cherney, Arad, Israel |
Book Reviews:
"Let There Be
Light" provides a sophisticated and lucid account of the
physics that underlies scientists' current understanding of the origins
of the universe. Indeed, Smith's discussion of cosmology is the best I
have ever encountered in the popular science literature. For this
reason alone, the book merits a place at the top any thoughtful
individual's reading list. However, this book is much more than a
soon-to-be-acclaimed popular science classic. For beyond the physics
and cosmology, Smith introduces topics from Kabbalah/religion and, with
the skill of a poet, weaves together concepts from these oft-opposing
disciplines (i.e., science and religion). From the complex tapestry
that emerges from these efforts, Smith demonstrates how the
perspectives and analyses of each of these disciplines can in fact
complement, illuminate, and shed light upon the other. The result is
nothing less than an intellectually and spiritually uplifting
experience. It will leave you trembling.
--- "The
BookDoctor" (from Amazon .com review)
"This past November, a
forum of world renowned scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological
Studies in La Jolla, California, proclaimed
that religion has no place in the modern world. I wish that Dr. Howard
Smith, senior astrophysicist at the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics and traditionally observant Jew, had been
there. In Let There Be Light,
instead of ‘dumbing down’ science, as in ‘Creationism,’ or taking a
kindergarten approach to the Bible, he compares the most recent
theories of cosmology with a sophisticated reading of the first lines
of the Torah, drawing on Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah. He deals with
two extremely esoteric fields, but by using a conversational tone, he
explains each in the simplest yet technically correct terms, and gives
examples and analogies. The reader is rewarded throughout with gems of
insight; for instance, the Bible says that light was created first, way
before the sun. Theologians puzzled over that for centuries, but the
startling truth is that light was the first thing in the universe
created, and the Kabbalists knew all along. By showing us the
intricacies of particle physics, and illuminating science through
religion and vise versa, Dr. Smith evokes a sense of wonder, and deeper
appreciation of this glorious universe, and its
Creator. Charts, index, notes and comments, recommended reading, references."
-- Jewish Book World, Spring 2007
"FIVE
STARS: An inviting dialogue
perfect for science-minded yet religious readers., December 14,
2006
Author
Howard A. Smith, Ph.D. is a senior astrophysist and former chair of the
Smithsonian Museum's astronomy department - so why isn't his LET THERE
BE LIGHT: MODERN COSMOLOGY AND KABBALAH reviewed in our science
section? Because it's packed with interactions between ancient Kabbalah
and modern astronomy and thus forms an important bridge between the
two. Learn how science and religion interact harmoniously and how an
understanding of the two can bring better understanding of Kabbalah in
an inviting dialogue perfect for science-minded yet religious readers."
-- Midwest Book Review
Frequently Asked Questions:
Caption: Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy (credit: NASA and
Hubble Space Telescope)
The
Size of the Universe
After my Op-Ed column in the Forward
newspaper, "In
the Beginning, 13.73 billion years ago..." , people wrote to ask
how a
universe that is only 13.7 billion years old can have a “current
dimension of about 46 billion light-years”?
The short answer is that the universe is not static. If it were, then
indeed the most distant realms we could see would be the ones whose
light departed 13.7 billion years ago, namely, those 13.7 billion
light-years away. As the universe ages, we would be able to see
more and more distant regions.
But the universe is expanding. Light from remote galaxies has
been traveling towards us, in some cases for over ten billion
years, and during that long time those galaxies have moved
farther away from us. The current
distance of the farthest regions,
assuming the expansion follows the most commonly accepted
interpretation, is about 46 billion light-years.
In these and all other scenarios, though, we have no idea what the
"real" dimension of the
universe is. It might be much (much!) larger than the universe we can
measure. Why not? In these and all those other reasonable
scenarios,
however, the age of the
universe is well determined at about 13 billion years old, because all
the regions -- in particular the ones we can study -- are presumably
the same age.
Chapters 2 and 5 of Let There Be
Light describe the non-intuitive expansion of space in more
detail; also be sure to check the explanatory comment on page
239.
What came before the Big Bang?
Numerous readers wrote to ask me what came before the big bang, the
event about 13.73 billion years ago that led to the universe as we know
it. I was interested to note that all of the questioners so far
have been religiously inclined, and seemed to ask the question in the
spirit (unstated, however) of probing whether God had a role to play in
setting this great process into motion. Of course, even athiests could
be asking this question, but perhaps they feel less comfortable asking
what might be seen as a meaningless question. My preliminary
comment is therefore to reassure you that the question is a perfectly
fair one, and as I discuss in Chapter 9 ("Before and After"), many
physical (and religious) ideas have been put forward to address it.
The most familiar notion is that of a eternally bouncing universe, that
is, a universe that has enough matter to be gravitationally "closed"
and expand only for a while -- it ultimately contracts because of
gravity until it shrinks to a point and rebounds again in another big
bang. It now appears from the data we have that this option is
ruled out: there is just not enough matter present, even including
effects of "dark matter" (Chapter 4). A more radical idea is that of a
universe in which time itself began in the big bang, a concept
originally developed by Stephen Hawking and James Hartle.
A novel and relatively new approach comes from attempts to explain the
wondrous, even miraculous suitablility of the universe for intelligent
life by invoking purely natural processes. This "many-worlds"
analysis argues that there are an infinite (or nearly infinite) number
of new universes continuously being created from the vacuum, each with
different sets of physical properties. Only in the few universes
perfectly suitable for life will life develop. A consequence of
this approach is that universes are constantly being created,
effectively for eternity as far as is known.
The Rabbis of the Talmud (and, following their lead, the Kabbalists)
speculated at length on what came before "In the beginning." In one
view, the governing principles of the universe (the nature of matter,
cause and effect, etc.) were present before the creation.
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