What I really want to highlight, though, is that this paragraph contains one of the most fascinating, to me at least, and, in some ways, baffling—scientific observations of the century on the origins of the universe.
The author makes the astonishing claim that all space, energy, and matter came into existence in a single moment from—nothing! Yes, you read that right. According to Hazen, before the Big Bang, there was nothing, and then, in a flash, there was everything needed to create...well, everything we know today.
This is where I raise an eyebrow and give Mr. Hazen (and his astrophysicist colleagues) a skeptical look. Why? Because we’ve all heard a thousand times that scientists only trust ideas backed by evidence. And yet here these guys are, asking us to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothing—no evidence, just… belief.
But that’s not the real point I want to dive into today. I know your time is valuable, and I don’t want to waste a moment of it. The real punchline comes when Hazen drops this gem:
This is where I raise an eyebrow and give Mr. Hazen (and his astrophysicist colleagues) a skeptical look. Why? Because we’ve all heard a thousand times that scientists only trust ideas backed by evidence. And yet here these guys are, asking us to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothing—no evidence, just… belief.
But that’s not the real point I want to dive into today. I know your time is valuable, and I don’t want to waste a moment of it. The real punchline comes when Hazen drops this gem:
“The concept—nothing one moment, everything the next—is beyond our ability to craft metaphors."
It was after reading that sentence, that I had my own Archimedes moment. You know the story: Archimedes, splashing around in his bath, suddenly shouting "Eureka!" Not that I wouldn’t have done the same.
In fact, that’s exactly what I did when my mind clicked into place, sorting through the data and finding the perfect metaphor for the very concept Hazen thought was beyond our grasp.
How had I not seen it sooner? The metaphor was right in front of me—actually, it was right in front of the paragraph. Another best-selling book contains the perfect metaphor for explaining how everything in the universe came from nothing in an instant. It too begins with the words:
“In the beginning…”
Those words, so simple, so familiar, are actually one of the clearest metaphors for the mind-bending concept of creation ex nihilo. I can't help but think that Hazen knew this all along—that the metaphor was hiding in plain sight. He wasn’t asking us to understand it but to marvel at the mystery of it all. Maybe that’s the real lesson here.
It's all a marvelous mystery and we will probably never fully understand it.