Introduction to History 1510

1. The Origins of the Universe
A Modern Creation Myth

2. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Questions common to human existence
– Who am I?
– Where do I belong?
– What is the totality that I am a part of?
• History as a map of time
– Using history to know where we are, where we
are going, and who we are traveling with

3. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Creation myths offer memorable and
authoritative accounts of how everything
began
– These universal accounts provide coordinates that
people can place themselves on to find their role
in the world
– They speak to our spiritual, psychic, and social
need for a sense of place and belonging in the
world

4. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Discussion Board Topic for Module 2
• “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and Genesis
– Sumerian and Hebrew creation myths
– Read the texts in the links above
• What similarities and differences do you observe?
• What do these creation myths tell you about the
structure of their society and the place of humans in
the world?

5. A Modern Creation Myth?
• The retreat of religion and the rise of
secularism has left our modern world without
any formal creation myth
– But it does not have to be so
• Integrating our accrued knowledge into a unified
narrative
• A creation myth based on knowledge with multiple
“origins”
– Such as the origins of the
Universe, Humanity, Communities, and States

6. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Unify knowledge and
move beyond the limits of
“disciplines”
– Physics
• Stephen Hawking and “grand
unified theory”
– Biology
• Charles Darwin and
evolution
– Geology
• Alfred Wegener and plate
tectonics

7. A Modern Creation Myth?
• Should historians look for similar unifying
structures?
– A “grand unified story”?
• And just what might it look like?
– The origins of the universe?
– The origins of human life?
– The origins of agrarian society?
– The origins of cities?

9. The First 300,000 Years
• How did everything begin?
– The first question for any creation myth
– Answers remain sketchy, despite all our scientific
knowledge
• Can something come out of nothing?
– “Nothing is nothing”
– Potent nothingness?
• Like clay in a potters hands?

10. The First 300,000 Years
• Are we thinking about time and space all wrong?
– Many religions point to a creator
• Dr. Lightfoot’s dating of 9:00 am October 23, 4004 BC
• Still, how does the creator exist?
– Stephen Hawking suggests we think of time not as a
line but as a circle, with no beginning or end
– Skepticism: Human knowledge is limited and some
mysteries must remain
• Many interpret this as God (or Gods) hiding answers from
humans
• Buddhism looks at it as an ultimate riddle
• Science points to a lack of information

11. The First 300,000 Years
• Early Science
– Aristotle and the Earth as the
center of the universe
• Surrounded by transparent
spheres revolving around the
Earth at different speeds
– Copernicus and the
Heliocentric model
• Observations and math illustrate
that the Earth is orbiting the Sun
• Giordano Bruno hypothesizes
that the stars were suns Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)

12. The First 300,000 Years
• Early Science
– Further research by Galileo and Newton
established basic “laws” which govern the physical
universe
• Strict and rational
– Thermodynamics claims that entropy was
constantly increasing
• Meaning that energy was decreasing
• Problem: If the universe is infinitely old, how is there
any energy left?

13. The First 300,000 Years
• Paradoxes
– Johannes Kepler and
“Olber’s paradox”: If
there are infinite
stars, why is the sky not
infinitely bright?
• Perhaps the universe is not
infinitely large
• New problem: If the
universe is not infinitely
large, gravity suggests that
all matter should be
collapsing to the center of
the universe…

14. The First 300,000 Years
• The Big Bang theory
– Proposed by Georges
Lemaitre
– The universe is finite in
both time and space
– The universe is expanding
too fast for gravity
• The universe has a
beginning
Belgian priest and
astronomer Georges
Lemaitre (1894-1966)

15. The First 300,000 Years
• The universe was created 13 billion years ago
– How long is that? If each person were to live
exactly 70 years it would take 200,000,000
generations to reach equal this number
• What was there before the Big Bang
– We have no idea!
• Time and space as we conceive them were probably
created at the same time as matter and energy in that
first moment

16. The First 300,000 Years
• What happened?
– Much of our account takes place in the first
fractions of a second after the big bang
• The first billionths of seconds may have been as active
and as significant as the billions of years which followed
– The universe was tiny
• Perhaps smaller than an atom*
– The universe was hot
• Trillions of degrees
– Matter and energy are interchangeable at such heats

17. The First 300,000 Years
• The tiny, hot universe expands
at amazing speeds
– Faster than the speed of light
for the first fraction of a
second
• The universe may have went
from as small as an atom to the
size of our galaxy in less than a
second!
• As the universe expands it
becomes less homogeneous
– Symmetry is broken, and
distinct patterns emerge

18. The First 300,000 Years
• After about 300,000 years the
rate of expansion and the
temperature fall enough for
matter to emerge
– First atoms are extremely simple
• Most are hydrogen (2/3)
• Others are helium (1/3)
– The universe is a large, empty
space with immense clouds of
hydrogen and helium
• And massive levels of radiation

19. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• We live in the an
undistinguished suburb of
the Milky Way Galaxy
– Which itself is a second-
rank galaxy* on the edge of
the Virgo super-cluster
• Which contains thousands of
galaxies
– In fact, these super-clusters
may be bit players in
cosmological history…
• More than 90% of the
universe is NOT visible

20. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• What created these
immense structures?
– Gravity
• The force of the Big Bang
pushed objects apart, gravity
pulls things together
– Pulling on matter and energy
gave the universe shape and
structure
• Shrinking gas clouds gather
mass and heat up
– In the core regions of these
“clumps” atoms began to move
faster and faster, colliding
violently causing nuclear fusion
reactions*

21. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• Stars represent a new level of complexity
– New entities operating under new rules
• What had been billions of independent atoms suddenly
became an organized structure that could last for
billions of years
– Gravity collected matter, which in turn caused
heat to increase until a threshold was crossed
• A pattern repeated through history…

22. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• Black holes, Quasars, Dark Matter, and the Life
cycles of stars
– Time may be immense in the universe, but it is
very limited for us

23. Origins of the Galaxies and Stars
• Birth of Sol
– Our sun was created 4.6
billion years ago
• It should have a shelf life of 9-
10 billion years, making Sol
middle-aged
– All the planets of our solar-
system were made from the
Sun’s debris and
constructed by its
gravitational field
• In addition, it provides nearly
all the light, heat, and energy
that sustains life on Earth

24. Before Our Next Week
• You should post your response to discussion
board topic for this module
– You should also check prior discussion board
threads
• You should begin reading WTWA