http://www.humanevol.com/doc/doc200302100470.html

The linchpin in Teilhard de Chardin's interpretation of both universal history and the history of the universe is evolution. Whereas for Darwin evolution was merely an explanation of the "origin of the species" and at its most ambitious the "descent of man," for Teilhard de Chardin, evolution is a paradigm. Evolution is, in short, a way to understand how in which primordial matter, turned into particles, particles unified through forces and atoms gathered themselves into molecules and molecules on their turn eventually polymerized and became a self-replicating organized structure. To many evolutionary biologists, this application of Evolution to non-organic entities immediately betrays a failure in Teilhard de Chardin's ideas. The reason for their rejection of Teilhard de Chardin is simple. Evolution, many biologists claim, has no direction, has neither purpose nor reason. We will deal with this in a later chapter. For the moment, we should look at the number one assumption that Teilhard de Chardin's system makes in order to argue evolution as the modus operandi of universal history. This assumption involves not so much the existence of two kinds of energy, as some people have mistakenly argued, but of two different manifestations of the same energy. The distinction is crucial and we underline it, because both critics and advocates of Teilhard de Chardin, in failing to make it, have also failed to understand the implications and arguments Teilhard de Chardin made.

To ask the reader to imagine two different manifestations of the same energy is not to stretch his imaginative powers. What we know as electromagnetic energy, for instance, can be visible as in the whole gamut of colors, or invisible as in the radio signals that we tune to when we want to listen to music or the news. And just as scientists have distinguished between radio and light waves, measuring and labeling them, Teilhard de Chardin made the crucial distinction between the two manifestations of the same energy, calling one tangential and the other one radial. To Teilhard de Chardin, tangential energy was all the energy, or energies that could be measured or tallied in some form, whether using a gauge, a Geiger counter, or a micro-wave telescope. In other words, for Teilhard de Chardin, tangential energy includes all the forces that we have seen constitute the framework of physics.

Before we define and try to explain what radial energy is, we should interpolate a bit. As we saw in the previous chapter, Teilhard de Chardin formulated many of his ideas, after many of the scientific revolutions of modernity had occurred. Einstein had postulated his two relativity theories, quantum had been formulates, and of course, Darwin and Wallace had written up their versions of evolution. Despite the fact of Teilhard de Chardin's apparent belatedness, one has to understand that, while the theoretical basis of modern science had been set, some still awaited further clarification, while the practical ramifications off others had yet to be explored. So if Teilhard de Chardin might sound at points tentative, one should remember that he was working with tentative material. Furthermore, unlike the physicists who huddled around the Manhattan project who surrounded by their intellectual peers, Teilhard de Chardin formulated many of the ideas not in some cultural center but in at a remove from the west. In China, of course, he was not completely isolated. Nevertheless, unlike other places, China was also not the cultural center or scientific center of the world, like Vienna and Berlin were at the beginning of the century or like American academia would become during the war and the post war years.

Under such biographical light, Teilhard de Chardin's insights seem even more daring and either brilliantly prescient and intuitive or, as we prefer to think, incredibly insightful and synthetic. For the central assumption in his arguing two manifestation of a same energy is that all the forces, whether gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces or the electromagnetic force, are merely manifestation's of the same force. Teilhard de Chardin assumes, in other words, what we have introduced previously as the TEO (Theory of Everything). Of course, whether the assumptions Teilhard de Chardin made were merely foolish or daring and intelligent is irrelevant to us. Since, the method by which scientists come upon their work is not really as important as the way in which their work stands to prove.

So one of our central concerns here, before moving on and dealing with the accuracy of Teilhard de Chardin's history or his interpretation of evolution, is to check whether this assumption, that all the forces are simply manifestations of one kind of energy, is correct or not. We have seen in previous chapters some of the attempts to subsume all of these forces under one mathematical rubric. Both, Super strings and Super symmetry have attempted the task and are the two theories that have come closest to solving the quandary. Nevertheless both theories remain merely theories: there has not been many proofs to confirm either. However, both theories, while closely aligned to quantum and particle physics, work in that very region where particle physics converges with cosmology. Theirs, in other words, is a theory that requires the history of matter. Their sole proof, when it comes, will more likely come from celestial observation than from a super-collider .

So, the question that arises is: as far as we can tell from our current cosmological models, is there any evidence that the different forces were one at some point? In science, nothing is final, of course. And one of our arguments throughout the book is that this uncertainty is one of science's strengths. It has been, academic dogmatism and narrow mindedness that have shut the doors to many alternatives and possible courses of action. So just as Einstein's relativity supplanted classical Newtonian physics by revising some of its assumptions, many of today's theories, many of today's explanation's will be supplanted and revised. As we have seen, few have been the scientists who have followed an unorthodox route even when considering the implications of their ideas. The surprising part is that if the current theories prove accurate, Teilhard de Chardin and a Teilhardian interpretation of science will also prove not only valid, but, maybe, even the savior of science, or at least, science's social role. For if a Teilhardian interpretation allows, for anything, is in its ability to give urgent relevance to events that socially might seem irrelevant.

One of the central tenets in modern cosmology is the model of the Big Bang. The Big Bang does not explain the origin of the universe, but like any beginning, determines the fate of the universe. The theory came around as an implication of Einstein's relativity. For the space-time continuum to function and explain the structure of the universe, Einstein had to consider a dynamic universe. Einstein, like so many of the scientists at the time, believed in what was called the steady state theory, the theory that argues that the universe was, is and will be exactly the same. Such was Einstein's insistence and believe on the steady state theory, that he inserted a variable to his equations in order to make relativity subscribe to the steady state. This constant in his equations is referred to as Lambda. After Edwin Hubble showed Einstein observational evidence of the expansion of the universe that relativity predicted without lambda, Einstein called Lambda the biggest mistake in his career.

In the last few years, one of the biggest news in physics was the come back of lambda as a concept to be reckon with. The new argument for it will be central to us in a little bit. But for the moment let us leave it behind and look closer at the Big Bang theory. The origin of the Big Bang theory is in itself interesting. As we have seen, scientists were at first resistant to the idea of a dynamic universe. In 1929 though, Edwin Hubble, who since he was not familiar with Einstein's theory of relativity could not have been familiar with its implications, discovered that the universe was expanding. This discovery was made possible by the spectroscope. Spectroscopy involves an entire branch of physics and it studies the electromagnetic radiation or spectral lines. Despite its rather mundane appearance, spectroscopy has been seminal in the development of both particle physics and cosmology. What spectroscopy allows scientists to do is break down light into its constituent frequencies. These frequencies convey information about luminous objects from their atoms up. As we saw in a previous chapter, light consists of subatomic particles called photons. An atom releases a photon when one of its electrons drops from a higher to a lower orbital shell. In other words, the atom becomes less energetic and the energy it looses is transformed into a photon.

By studying the spectral lines, scientists are able to tell an awful lot of things about objects, especially astrological objects. They can deduce the elements that compose stars, the temperature of celestial bodies and their rotation as well. In just such fashion, German physicist Gustav Kirchhoff managed to detect the elements of the sun and William Huggins identifies, sodium, iron, calcium and magnesium in large stars. The most important discovery by far, however, was Hubble's. By looking at the displacement of the spectral lines of galaxies, he managed to show that most other galaxies were rushing away from the Milky Way and from one another.

Hubble's discovery did not postulate a Big Bang theory. It merely proved that the universe was dynamic, expanding. The implications of an expanding universe were tremendous. If any object expands, it follows that the expansion had to have a trajectory and more importantly, an origin. Like many of the theories that have stood the tests, the Big Bang seems now almost commonsensical. If the universe is and has been expanding, then, in the past, the universe must have been smaller that now. So scientists began to think about the universe not merely as a steady entity, but as an entity with a history, an entity, not unlike others, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Placed in such "historical" perspective, the questions about the constituents of the universe turned to particle physicists. The radius of the universe is 15 billion light-years. If the universe was in the past smaller, a light year radius, lets say, what would it be like if the universe and all its contents were much more condensed at the universe's infancy. Compressed matter gets hotter. So the model that we have for the infant universe tells us that the universe was very denser than stone and hotter than the center of any star.

The experimental proof of such a claim was difficult to attain. From the late forties on, George Gamow was already espousing the Big Bang theory. It wasn't until the early sixties, and quite by accident that the first experimental proofs were attained. Up to date, there are three important kinds of evidence for the big bang. The first and the one that spurred the theory to the forefront was of course the expansion of the universe. The proof if logical: if the universe is moving in one direction, then it must have had a starting point. The second piece of evidence was a bit more difficult to attain. We have seen that because of the nature of matter, if the universe was at some point compressed, then its contents were extremely hot and dense. So to prove that the universe had emerged from a "fireball,' scientists argued that one had to still see or observe the residues from that fireball. The capacity to observe the deep past is inherent to the observation of celestial bodies. Once distances stop being kilometers per hour and become light years, the signal that reaches us from outer space is a signal that originated years ago. So when astronomers witness the death of a star, for instance, they witness something that happened sometimes thousands, if not millions, of years before the observer was born. Because astronomy is by nature this strange glancing into the remote past, scientists figured that if what we look at occurred millions of years ago, then it should have been possible for us to detect, at least, the remnants of the event that created the universe, the "explosion" that began the universe. After 15 billion years, though, this signals are of course, faint, their wave length too long to be detected as light, or sound.

In the 60's as Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, two astronomers, were conducting experiments in the Bell Telephone labs, they kept hearing a strange noise in their radio telescope. They cleaned the antenna, suspecting the pigeons that were cooping there were creating the noise. They checked for radio transmissions nearby. After eliminating every possibility and quite unaware of the implications of their finding, they published a paper where they presented their findings. There was a constant microwave noise. This noise is now known as the cosmic microwave background radiation. The name itself implies the origin. It is referred to as background, because unlike the signals from stars or pulsars, this radiation has no particular source: it permeates everything. And microwave radiation is the name given to radio waves that are shorter than one meter. This signal, in other words, has red shifted - weakened - and is always the same. Its nature seems in many ways to confirm its origins. If one expected to see the detritus of a primeval fireball that emitted light 15 billion years ago, one would not expect to see light. Light, after traveling through vast amounts of space fades.

What the confirmation of the big bang gave scientists was more than a mere history of the universe. Just as the seed predicts the tree and its fruit, or just as any origin will determine the end, the Big bang theory determines or predicts many things about the fate of our universe. Most important for us now, in this chapter though is that the Big Bang also tells us a lot about matter and about the forces that govern it. First and foremost, the big bang scenario and the echoes that we can gather through telescopes tell us about the origins of matter. To understand these origins, we should look, if only cursorily, at the chronology of the universe, from the creation event to the at least 4.5 billion years ago. The latter "date" marks the formation of suns and planets. For the sake of continuity, we will present the facts first and then, discuss their import.

The creation event has been debated over and over. Some scientists argue that the best way to understand the phenomenon is to use zero, as the notation for the moment. There was no time and there was no space. Some scientists have shown their lack of understanding not of math but of the connotations of math and have transposed that zero so that it means nothingness. The claim is of course absurd. Zero is one of those perfect designs whose semantic value is too wide to interpret in one way, especially when its role is to stand as a moment. Much of what happened in between zero and 10-43 is still unknown to us and will probably remain a mystery despite more and more powerful accelerators. That phenomenon is referred to as the Plank epoch. At the end of the plank epoch, however, we know that gravitational radiation came out of thermal equilibrium with the rest of the universe. At 10-34 the universe, in a vacuum state, began to inflate. Inflation is a crucial moment that we will discuss later. For the time being, it suffices to say that the word inflation means what it says. The universe at this stage grew at exponential rates, and owes its vastness to this growth. The inflation was, in human time virtually imperceptible, ending at 10-30.

The end of inflation propelled a symmetry-breaking phase. Of all the moments that point out to the validity of Teilhard de Chardin's ideas about energy, this one seems to validate them the most. In fact, these three stages which we have discussed might be the very confirmation that allows the Teilhardian theory of the evolution to work as such, since it does hinge upon a single energy with different and multiple manifestations. So we should understand the quantum fluctuation that gave birth to the universe, inflation and the breaking of the symmetry.

The universe as we know it must have been born at an age equal to the plank time. The latter is the smallest measure of time that exists. The seed of such universe could only have occurred as a quantum fluctuation. Like much in quantum, quantum fluctuations seem to defy common sense. But as we have seen, despite its nonsense appearance, the quantum world is much more accurate than the relativistic or the classical world in its predictions. What happens in a quantum fluctuation is the sudden, temporary appearance of energetic particles out of nothing. These particles can be either bosons or fermions. The archetypal model of the boson is the photon. Photons are not conserved. Millions of them can be created and are created for instance when we turn on a light and they disappear as they are absorbed by atoms. Where bosons carry energy and seem to govern the electromagnetic force, the fermions are the particles we usually think of as the material world. Whichever type of particle appeared, it probably did from a vacuum. The one thing that is certain about this quantum fluctuation is that mass energy to create a universe of such protean scale was, if not infinite, then tending to the infinite. In short, what most physicists would argue would be that prior to the quantum fluctuation that gave birth to the universe, there were not differentiated forces as manifestations of energy, but only one Mass-energy. In other words, what we had is unimaginable outside the mathematical world. It is a super dense world where the energy level is so high, matter and particles do not exist as we know them, but exist as energy.

Grand unified theories, then, tell us that under the extreme conditions existing at the early age of the universe, all the forces of nature were on equal footing. In other words there was just one universal force. The quantum fluctuation though disturbed the balance of this universal force and gravity split off from the other forces just at plank time. Considering the density of energy of an entity like the universe at Plank time one would imagine it would crush under its own gravitational field. A pure quantum field theory has resolved that paradox. Inflation argues that as forces split from the universal force scalar fields acted as a kind of anti-gravity, pouring energy into the expansion of the universe. In other words, from 10-34 to 10-30, the universe, or the seed to the universe expanded at exponential rate. To get some idea of the growth, imagine, if possible a something smaller than a proton being blown within 10-32 of a second into a 10 inch ball. Once the inflation worked, the scalar fields had done their job and disappeared. What they left was a fireball of energy the size of a grapefruit which contained everything that would become our visible universe.

For a quantum fluctuation and inflation to work as models for the genesis of the universe, physicists agree that one cannot think of the nascent universe as governed by different forces or even apply the matter/energy dichotomy. What they ask us to think is that the forces as we know them be thought as sort of manifestations of that energy acting in a less energized and much less dense universe.

If quantum cosmology confirms what Teilhard de Chardin espoused, the question of course is, to what extent can we validate the view that energy did not merely break down into electromagnetic, weak and strong forces and gravity, but into these forces and yet another form, another force? Science is less helpful here. Nevertheless an understanding of the symmetry breaking in the early stages of the universe might give us some idea as to how this might have happened and might even provide, if not enough evidence, enough of an idea as to how we can begin to look for evidence of this other facet of energy.

Symmetry is a crucial concept in physics. The word symmetry is a conjunction of two Greek roots. Sym means coming together and is the same root from which we derive our word for symphony. Metron on the other hand means measurement. So the word describes something of equal measure. Symmetry however involves more than the repetition of a measurable quantity, or at least it did so for the Greeks who thought the repetition had to be harmonious and pleasing. Scientists, while somewhat concerned with symmetry's aesthetic aspects, have mainly focused on the first definition of the word and think of symmetry as an invariance, as an unchanging quantity under any transformation.

Most of us became familiar with symmetry through its visual manifestations. Whether in art history or elementary geometry, we recognize symmetries when we split anything in the middle and check whether one half fits the other half. The symmetries which scientist addresses are not always the steady geometric ones, but transitional ones. To understand transitional symmetries, it would suffice to look at many of the scale progressions that musicians employ. For instance Haydn's 53rd piano sonata opens with a four note figure (EGBE) These semi-quavers are repeated through the first four bars. As such, they provide a grounding symmetry from bar to bar. When the sonata gets to the fourth bar, however, the figure moves a fifth up from E to C (CEGC). The tempo is identical; the intervals are too. So as we hear different sounds coming out of the piano, what we are experiencing is a transitional symmetry.

Transitional symmetries are everywhere in nature and art. The spiral patterns found in the chambered nautilus, in pinecones and in the arrangement of a sunflower's seeds are mathematically represented by the Fibonacci series, an arithmetic operation in which each succeeding unit is equal to the total of the preceding two units: (1,1,2,3,5,8,13...) The Fibonacci series is only one among many of the transitional symmetries that describe or abstract the phenomena we find in nature. In fact, as mathematicians early in the century began to probe the concept of symmetry much deeper they realized that all of the physical laws, all the laws that governed nature implied an inherent symmetry because they were affirmations of an invariance, of an unchanging unit or measure. As we have seen, however, as each law requires a different explanation, there is not a single symmetries, but many symmetries. Super symmetry and Super string theories are the ones attempting to find an underlying symmetry in the forces of nature.

Super symmetry and Super string theories do not necessarily conflict as many people believe. While their postulated differ in many instances, the two theories, taken away from the contentious camps of fundraising and grant funds, actually complement each other. The problem again here is institutional. In order to continue research, scientists need funds, government funds and academic funds. The committees which award these funds do so because the labels which are tagged to the research. Hence, many of the theories if they are to be furthered have to make extravagant claims as to what they would accomplish were the theory proven.

In truth, Super symmetry is not as far reaching in its scope as Super strings. Super-symmetry argues that every force can be subsumed in the geometrical description of everything through one great symmetry. Like its counterpart, Super strings, Super symmetry assumes that this complete symmetry, this great symmetry was complete or subsumed every force at higher energies. In other words, Super symmetry and string theory concur that in the very early universe, there was one force that organized everything and the forces of nature that we know now are merely consequence of the expansion, of the cooling down and its tantamount, lower energy.

If both of the theories which purport to explain the very early universe argue that there was a breaking down of symmetries, then what does the breaking down of symmetries entail? The phenomenon is easy to visualize and occurs every day, every time that things go awry or get tangled. It occurs in something as simple as a game of pick-up sticks. Imagine that you sort of the pick up sticks by color and arrange them so into a cylindrical bundle, just as people do to begin the game. The reds are at the center, the greens around the reds, the purples and oranges alternate around the reds, etc. While you hold the bundle, you can observe symmetries, from the top, there is that particular arrangement of colors; from the side, there is the same length and with of each stick contributing its bulk to the bundle. The symmetry, granted that one would not want to play any further could be preserved indefinitely. But that is not the point of the game. No, the point of the game is to let go of the cylindrical bundle. There will be an infinitesimal instant in which the pick-up sticks will remain together. But it is an instant and the sticks will so quickly be jumbled that the stuff strewn on the table seems to have lost all pattern.

For centuries, physicists have attempted to glean the patterns that might have been left over from the initial bundle. In other words, the laws and forces that we know about are akin to two or three red sticks laying beside the other or a purple and an orange being nearby. Scientists, in other word have attempted to identify the deeper symmetry beneath the broken symmetry. Like any attempting to fit a broken vase without never having seen its shape or decorations, the task is a daunting one.

Super symmetry has attempted to perform such a task, albeit unsuccessfully as yet. Super strings, while holding similar ambitions, actually really picks up where Super symmetry just leaves of and might in fact be much more useful in finding whether, it is possible to see another force beyond the ones we know within the workings of matter and by implication of the universe. As we have seen, the basic postulate of Super string theory is that our conception of particles has been mistaken. The basic assumption, in other words, is that the elementary particles are not the "points" that earlier physicists understood them to be and which the standard model also assumes, but are actually loops of strings. The tenet seems at first extremely simple. Nevertheless, like any of those tenets that involve a complete shift in out paradigm, Super string goes to the very essence off language. The paradigm shift it asks from us is similar to that which the Copernican universe demanded of the medieval mind and which has not as yet been completely cleansed out of the language as words like sunset and sunrise attest. Similarly, Super string theory asks us to take the very root of the word particle, which entails a body, a point, and dismiss it.

Like Super symmetry, Super strings argues that the creation event destroyed a great symmetry that bundled all the forces and gave them equal measure. What is compelling about the theory is what it does with the broken up symmetries. Instead of dealing with an arbitrary salad of particles, with color spin and flavor, Super string tells us that those elements are merely manifestation of a particular vibration pattern of each fundamental sting. What the theory hypothesizes, in other words, is that the visible universe is not merely composed of tense strings, but of strings tensed up and behaving similarly than the stings of a violin, a piano or a guitar. Like in a musical instrument, the strings which we thought as particles before are constantly vibrating, their vibration, like the vibration that produces a distinctive note in the piano is determined by the tension and the vibration patterns. So as with a piano, where each C derives its particular characteristic not merely from the thickness of the string but also from the tension, then in Super string theory the vibration and the tension ultimately will determine the way in which our measuring tools, whether they are particle splitters or accelerators will interpret the string as a particle. In other words what we call particles are merely manifestations of a vibration; like notes, they are aftermath of energy which has gelled is its traversal through space.

Super string theory solves various impasses in physics. The most important one is the seemingly unbridgeable gap between quantum and relativity. As Brian Green, one of his most eloquent advocates has argued:

The unified framework that string theory presents is compelling. But its real attraction is the ability to ameliorate the hostilities between the gravitational force and quantum mechanics. Recall that the general problem in merging general relativity and quantum mechanics turns up when the central tenet of the former - that space and time constitute a smoothly curving geometrical structure - confronts the essential feature of the latter, that everything in the universe, including the fabric of space and time undergoes quantum fluctuations that become increasingly turbulent when probed on smaller and smaller distant scales. On sub-Plank scale distances, the quantum undulations are so violent that they destroy the notion of a smoothly curving geometrical space; this means that general relativity breaks down.

String theory softens the violent quantum undulations by "smearing" out the short-distance properties of space.

Super string theory has not merely attempted to resolve the impasse between relativity and quantum. In arguing that matter "is not made out of particles" but rather that what we know as particles are mere manifestations of the vibration of a string it has revealed a central problem science and lay a direction toward which scientific inquiry will have to move if the theory is to be proven right. This direction we believe is a more de Teilhardian view of matter and the universe.

Let us explain. If matter is not constituted of particles, but rather particles are the manifestation of the vibrations of infinitesimal strings, then it follows that like any string in the macro-world, each of these strings can execute and infinite number of vibration patterns. If each vibration pattern determines the elementary "particle" which will manifest, then why is it that our standard model does not contain a corresponding never ending sequence of elementary particles.

If string theory is right, in other words, each vibration corresponds to an elementary particle. And if each string can vibrate at an infinite variety of ways, then we should have an infinite number of elementary particles. Why does this not happen? Why do we only have the elementary "particles" of the standard model?

As we have seen, in one of his essays, Teilhard de Chardin presciently envisioned the radial force as a springs radiating from a sphere and vibrating not at random but as determined to their relation to the sphere that kept them together and the vibration of other springs. For Teilhard de Chardin the radial force, in other words worked as the monitor, the adjust to all other forces. Super string theory has not gone so far, nor has science, timid as always. Nevertheless, ironically, Super string tells us why, despite the possibility, there is not an infinite number of vibrations producing an infinite amount of elementary particles: The stings are so tense that only a few of this vibration patterns will correspond to the extremely heavy particles we can detect. In other words, the strings, like the stings in a piano, do not vibrate at random, and though like the strings in a piano they might produce an infinite range of timbres, the tension to which they are tuned manages to ward off the out of tune sound.

Science, of course, is not yet speaking of a universal tuner. Nor are many Super string theorists running to dust their Teilhard de Chardin to check their findings against his theories. Still, Super string theory, as far as it has been proven, has determined that something regulates the tension of the strings. After the symmetry broke down and once the forces began to gel something managed to allow for only a limited number of elementary particles which behave in a certain, symmetrical way under the influence of the forces of nature. In fact, to validate Teilhard de Chardin's vision of that sphere which held the vibrating springs, for Super string theory to work scientists have to envision something like an invisible pegboard which controls the tension of each string.

Teilhard de Chardin imagined such thing. Nevertheless, to give credit where credit is due, contemporary science has gleaned it. In fact, for Teilhard de Chardin the latter was merely a vision and inference for which he had no proof. He didn't need any, or so he thought. Since for him the proof of a radial force, of an energy which tunes the behavior of particle and force and in doing so determines their outcome was in the cosmos itself, in its history. If he saw a tuning peg box to the universe, it was in the macro-world as it evolved. Hence, our next chapter will see the cosmos and its history, attempting to comb out hints of an evolutionary cosmos.