THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM

70 Falmouth Street      Portland, Maine 04103

(207) 780-4249      usm.maine.edu/planet

43.6667° N    70.2667° W  Altitude:  10 feet below sea level Founded January 1970

2021-2022: XLIX

"Let your heart lead and your shoulder blade is sure to follow."

An artistic impression of the Big Bang which, like all impressions of the Big Bang, is utterly inaccurate.  Our finite minds are ill equipped to visualize the birth of the Universe.  All the same, the image is captivating.

It's preposterous, isn't it?

Let's ponder this notion for a moment.    Everything in the Universe, including the ten million galactic superclusters, the unfathomable quantities of energy, the vast expanse of space and the intangible stretches of time all originating in a "micro-kernel" smaller than an atom.   (How large are atoms?   Well, as the revered Richard Feynman explained, if one were to enlarge an apple to the volume of the Earth, the atoms within the apple would be the size of apples.)   According to the Big Bang model, everything arose out of nothing approximately 13.8 billion years ago.      Moreover, we cannot even ask the question, "What preceded the Big Bang" because time itself began.    Literally nothing existed.     

Can you imagine any scenario more absurd, shocking and surreal? 

The Big Bang concept brings us to our next intriguing question,

"The Big Bang idea is really out there!    I know that scientists believe in the Big Bang, but they don't believe in ghosts, which, to me, is easier to believe in than the Big Bang.    Why do they believe in the Big Bang, but think that ghosts aren't real?"

                                    -S.M.H,  Brunswick, ME

First, ghosts might exist* and so I am not about to claim they absolutely do not exist.    Yet, our focus should be the Big Bang.     Most scientists accept the Big Bang model because of the immense amount of evidence researchers have collected to support it.        Scientists do not refuse to accept theories merely because they might seem absurd.  If they did, quantum mechanics would never have come into vogue.    Instead, theories are accepted when they explain observations.     The "Big Bang" theory does precisely that.   

Observations of distant galaxies show that the galaxies all appear to be moving away from us.   In fact, the galaxies are moving away from each other as a consequence of the Universal expansion.   Cosmologists know that this expansion was caused by an "eruption" and then inflation of the infant Universe which occurred about 13.8 billion years ago.    

Penzias and Wilson       The first to hear the Big Bang's "echo."    Physicist Arno Allan Penzias and radio astronomer Robert Woodrow Wilson discovered the pervasive "static hiss" indicative of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation through their radio antennae.    These scientists received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.       

Another piece of compelling evidence was the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the "echo" of the Big Bang.     Physicist Arno Allan Penzias and radio astronomer Robert Woodrow Wilson detected this radiation in 1964.      This detection provided strong proof of the Big Bang.  The radiation pervading the Universe in its infancy was unfathomably hot.  As the Universe expanding, the radiation was attenuated and cooled down to the 2.7 K level.  (2.7 degrees above absolute zero.)

The observation of the galactic motions and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation support the Big Bang Theory.   For this reason, it is a widely accepted model of the origins of the Universe.         Even though the notion of the Big Bang seems completely preposterous, it does fit all our observations up to this point.

It is true that many people have reported sightings that they believe are ghosts.  The problem is that these reports are anecdotal. Moreover, the visual evidence, including photographs of spirits, are inconclusive as such photos could result from double exposure, trickery or some other cause.       More problematic is the thermodynamic aspect:     According to accounts, ghosts are translucent, composed solely of energy, instead of matter.     The second law of thermodynamics is quite clear:   something composed of energy would quickly dissipate through loss of heat unless the energy could draw on another source for its replenishment.     So far, no such source has been identified.    If physics has one unbreakable rule it is that you cannot ever contradict the laws of thermodynamics.

Perhaps such an energy source does exist that we haven't yet identified.   (Although some physicists claim that the Large Hadron Collider would have found it by now.)   Also, perhaps these apparitions do exist, but might not necessarily be the spirits of departed people.       The issue of paranormal phenomena hasn't been discounted entirely as some events haven't yet been explained.  We recall that at one time, electromagnetic phenomena were considered quasi-paranormal.

The Big Bang is absurd and wonderful.   To my mind, ghosts are absurd and wonderful, as well, for they would provide evidence that we persist after material death.   Unfortunately, the observations support the Big Bang, but, as of now, they don't support the concept of ghosts.  Believe me when I say that I wish I could say otherwise.   

*Yes, the planetarium has a poltergeist, or, at least, we think it does.   On occasion, something causes one of the gallery doors to shake violently.  The shaking generally subsides after a few seconds.     Many of our young work-study students have reported this phenomenon to me, although I've never experienced it.     According to paranormal investigators, such poltergeist activity tends to be centered around young people, which explains why I haven't been present at any of these manifestations, darn it.    Some wet blanket facilities people have explained the shaking as resulting  perhaps from unequal air pressure in the mechanical room corridors concealed behind these doors.  Someone suggested that perhaps a worker is being a bit playful and is shaking the doors himself.   (If true, some people don't get enough entertainment.)    We don't truly know if some mischievous spirit is haunting our subterranean star dome.   If this shaking were ascribable to mortal behaviour or physics rather than a supernatural agency, we'd be profoundly disappointed.

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