Is the universe expanding?

Although ordinary people may not be interested in cosmology or the scientific study of the universe and its origin and development, scientists, astronomers and philosophers down the ages have paid close attention to it. In fact, before thinking of the universe, they tried to understand what the world was like. The great Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that the Earth was a round ball and not a flat plate. One reason for his theory was that the Earth’s shadow on the Moon was always round. However, Aristotle mistakenly believed that the Earth was a stationary planet. Ptolemy, on the other hand, said the Earth stood at the centre of the universe.

Much water has flowed under the bridge since then. In 1514, Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish priest, said the Sun was stationary and the Earth and other planets moved around it. Although his theory was not taken seriously by the scientific community at the time, years later Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei supported his views. In 1687 Newton postulated his theory of gravity. He was one of the early scientists who suggested that the universe might be expanding.

Origin of the universe

There are many theories about the origin of the universe. According to the Book of Genesis, the creation of the universe had taken place about 5000 BC. However, Aristotle was not ready to accept the theory of creation. While the creation of the universe was shrouded in mystery, Edwin Hubble made a landmark observation in 1929. He too said the universe was expanding. Stephen Hawking, widely believed to be one of the world’s great minds said, “One could still believe that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang.” According to him, the discovery that the universe is expanding was one of the great intellectual revolutions of the 20th century.

A new theory of the universe suggests that space and time may not have started in a big bang, but they may have always existed in an endless cycle of expansion and rebirth. Princeton physicist Paul Stein Hardt and Neil Turok of Cambridge University who propounded the theory said that in each cycle the universe refills itself with hot, dense matter and radiation which begins a period of expansion and cooling quite similar to the big bang scene.

Cosmos

The big bang model of the universe has been developed to explain a wide range of observations about the cosmos. Scientists also have been forced to augment the standard theory with a component called the “dark energy” to account for the recent discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

Here, it is interesting to note how Buddhism views cosmology. According to Buddhism, no one created the universe. It has been in existence with no beginning and no end with infinite space and time. The universe is believed to arise and fall in accordance with causes and conditions in a rhythmic process that takes billions of years to go through just one cycle. This is quite similar to the modern scientific idea of a big bang and then a big crunch. Buddhism also says that the universe expands and contracts repeatedly over countless eons.

Expansion

Although modern science and Buddhism agree on the expansion of the universe, the Buddha has taught that we should not concern ourselves with speculation concerning the ultimate beginning or end of the process. The Enlightened One expected His followers to strive relentlessly to extinguish suffering by living a noble life. What the Buddha meant was that we should practise loving-kindness, compassion, generosity, virtue and patience.

Therefore, any engagement in cosmological speculation was a fruitless exercise. This is because we should give precedence to practical issues of suffering and liberation from them.

There are descriptions of other worlds and beings living there in Buddhist literature. The Buddhist picture of the cosmos is what the Buddha saw through His “divine eye”. As such, cosmology in Buddhism has to be understood symbolically. However, the Buddhist view of cosmology is divided into spatial cosmology and temporal cosmology. Spatial cosmology describes various arrangements of the worlds within the universe. Temporal cosmology describes how worlds come into being and disappear.

The separate world systems explained in Buddhism are compatible with current scientific observations. Modern scientists believe that the universe was born out of the big bang and it will end in the big crunch followed by a period of empty state. Buddhism also suggests the continuation of the birth and destruction cycle extending to infinity.