by Sir Bernard Lovell

Throughout the history of the human race there have been beliefs about creation and the beginning. The earliest records of such ideas emerge in the ancient states of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The hieroglyphic texts on the pyramids of the pharaohs of the fifth and sixth Dynasties (2480 -2137 B.C.) reveal a conception of a primordial state before the physical Universe existed. In one case, the Pharaoh Pepi is assured that he was engendered by the god Atum when "existed not the heaven; existed not the Earth; existed not men; before the birth of the gods; before the existence of death." Another declaration of that epoch proclaims that the king was "born in Nun, when heaven existed not, and Earth existed not, when existed not that which was to be established, when (the) disorder existed not." "Nun" was the primeval waste of waters and it is evident from these texts that the Egyptians envisaged the primordial state as a watery chaos or waste.1 For the last two millenia the Biblical story of the Creation has had a powerful effect on Western culture and imagination. The ancient texts imply a creation out of something. In the thirteenth century A.D. Saint Thomas Aquinas refuted this as being an error against God. In Book II of Summa Contra Gentiles he insists that God created the World out of nothing. In this he supported Saint Augustine, who centuries earlier (in Confessions, Book XI) had maintained that Creation occurred as asserted in Genesis, that is, out of nothing. The schools of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas sought to maintain the belief in Creation by God out of nothing, as opposed to the views of Plato and Aristotle, who believed God to be an architect giving form to primitive matter, rather than a Creator. In the seventeenth century the development of science began to exert powerful influences on these views of creation. Newton believed, as we have seen, that God "form'd Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable Particles" and "no ordinary Power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first Creation." The Newtonian laws provided an extremely powerful intellectual tool leading to the development of a cosmology which seemed capable of explanation by the physical laws of force and matter. In the twentieth century considerations of Creation and of a beginning have been unfashionable. Furthermore, science has become a powerful experimental and observational activity to the extent that although many issues remain without explanation the belief has emerged that the outstanding problems will yield to scientific inquiry in the future. Here we are not concerned with the generality of this issue but solely with the contemporary scientific outlook on the problem of creation near time zero, and the expression of this problem in the modern language of physics and astronomy. Today it is extremely doubtful that any cosmologist would claim the certainty of earlier beliefs when faced with this question, although in terms of nuclear physics, quantum theory and general relativity it is possible to construct a theoretical model for the early history of the Universe within certain limitations. These limitations are based on the observation of the microwave radiation, which we believe refers to the time a million years after the beginning of the expansion, and on a theoretical extrapolation to earlier moments in terms of the temperatures, densities and nuclear reactions which could give rise to this observed condition. This backward extrapolation becomes less credible as time zero is approached. At the extremely high temperatures and great densities involved in the first milliseconds of the expansion it is presumed that heavy fundamental particles were in a short-lived equilibrium with the intense radiation field. The process of production of the particles from the radiation field and of the photons by particle interaction are understood in principle. Since in the earlier and higher temperature stages of this period the photon would have the highest energies, the most massive particles-the baryons and anti-baryons-would be present. At temperatures in the range 1012 to 1033 deg K and at the densities appropriate to those epochs, no real understanding exists about the interaction or behaviour of these particles. Nevertheless the concepts of modern physics seem applicable to that stage in the expansion. Greater difficulties arise as the extrapolation continues. Earlier than 10-23 seconds after the beginning it is believed that the space curvature would be so great that pairs of particles would be created from the intense gravitational field (in a manner analogous to the creation of electron-positron pairs in strong electromagnetic fields). At 10-43 seconds the space curvature reaches the extreme value conceivable in terms of general relativity and quantum theory. At this stage we reach the barriers of physical theory, where further understanding, if possible in any physical sense, must depend on a quantization of the gravitational field-a unification of fundamental theory which has so far proved to be beyond the human intellect. For in dealing with the behaviour of matter and radiation under these extreme conditions scientists reach a curious confrontation with the fundamentals of gravity and particle physics. General relativity is concerned with gravitational forces. It is these gravitational forces, familiar in our everyday lives, and the theory of space-time associated with these forces, which determine the large scale nature of the Universe, and lead to the concept of a universe evolving from a singular condition. On the other hand, when we probe into the physical structure of the Universe, we deal with atoms and their constituent particles, where the predominant forces are not those of gravity. Three other types of force are recognised. First, there is the electromagnetic interaction between particles which have an electric charge-like charges repel and unlike charges attract. This electromagnetic interaction between two particles is millions of times stronger than the gravitational force. Electromagnetic forces, like gravitational forces, are well known in the macroscopic world. In the nucleus, however, quite different forces must predominate, because protons, for example, are held together strongly in spite of the electromagnetic repulsion between them. Two types of nuclear force are recognised the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. It is the strong nuclear force which binds protons and neutrons together in the atom. In the atomic nucleus this force is 1040 times stronger than the gravitational force; it is independent of charge and its influence extends only over distances comparable with nuclear dimensions. Two protons in a nucleus, for example, having the same charge suffer an electrostatic repulsion (equivalent in strength to the gravitational pull of the Earth on a mass of 25 kg at the surface), but when the distance between the protons is less than 10-13 cm, the nuclear attractive force exceeds this repulsive force. The weak nuclear force operates in certain processes where transformation of particles occurs-as in b decay-and is much weaker than the electromagnetic interaction. These nuclear forces are explained in terms of exchanges between fundamental particles, whereas the gravitational forces do not, as yet, have a physical explanation apart from the hypothetical gravitons. It is the reconciliation and the integration of these various forces into a coherent theory which presents a fundamental problem of such difficulty that there are contemporary thinkers who suggest that the real structure of space and time may lie completely outside our present concepts, or even that the very foundations of mathematics and its logical axioms are insecure. Modern physics and astronomy have transformed the problem of creation to new and erudite concepts. Particles may be created from intense fields of force. In the realms of the beginning which lie beyond the present descriptive limits of physical theory this may be the only type of scientific conclusion which is possible. We may well feel like the poet Hesiod that "Verily at first Chaos came to be. . 2