"The fabric of the world has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere." —Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, fifteenth century The attempt to understand the origin of the universe is the greatest challenge confronting the physical sciences. Armed with new concepts, scientists are rising to meet that challenge, although they know that success may be far away. Yet when the origin of the universe is understood, it will open a new vision of reality at the threshold of our imagination, a comprehensive vision that is beautiful, wonderful, and filled with the mystery of existence. It will be our intellectual gift to our progeny and our tribute to the scientific heroes who began this great adventure of the human mind, never to see it completed. —From Perfect Symmetry BANTAM NEW AGE BOOKS This important imprint includes books in a variety of fields and disciplines and deals with the search for meaning, growth and change. They are books that circumscribe our times and our future. Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed. THE ART OF BREATHING by Nancy Zi BETWEEN HEALTH AND ILLNESS by Barbara B. Brown THE CASE FOR REINCARNATION by Joe Fisher THE COSMIC CODE by Heinz R. Pagels CREATIVE VISUALIZATION by Shakti Gawain THE DANCING WU LI MASTERS by Gary Zukav DON'T SHOOT THE DOG: HOW TO IMPROVE YOURSELF AND OTHERS THROUGH BEHAVIORAL TRAINING by Karen Pryor ECOTOPIA bv Ernest Callenbach AN END TO INNOCENCE by Sheldon Kopp ENTROPY by Jeremy Rifkin with Ted Howard THE FIRST THREE MINUTES by Steven Weinberg FOCUSING by Dr. Eugene T. Gendlin THE HEART OF HEALING by Bruce Davis and Genny Wright Davis HERE I AM, WASN'T I!: THE INEVITABLE DISRUPTION OF EASY TIMES by Sheldon Kopp HOW TO IMAGINE. A NARRATIVE ON ART AND AGRI- CULTURE by Gianfranco Baruchello and Henry Martin I CHING. A NEW INTERPRETATION FOR MODERN TIMES by Sam Reifler IF YOU MEET THE BUDDHA ON THE ROAD, KILL HIM! by Sheldon Kopp IN SEARCH OF SCHRODINGER'S CAT by John Gribbin IN SEARCH OF THE BIG BANG: QUANTUM PHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY by John Gribbin INFINITY AND THE MIND by Rudy Rucker KISS SLEEPING BEAUTY GOODBYE by Madonna Kolbenschlag THE LIVES OF A CELL by Lewis Thomas MAGICAL CHILD by Joseph Chilton Pearce THE MEDUSA AND THE SNAIL by Lewis Thomas METAMAGICAL THEMAS: QUESTING FOR THE ESSENCE OF MIND AND PATTERN by Douglas R. Hofstadter MIND AND NATURE by Gregory Bateson THE MIND'S I by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett ORDER OUT OF CHAOS by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers PERFECT SYMMETRY by Heinz R. Pagels PROSPERING WOMAN by Ruth Ross SPACE-TIME AND BEYOND by Bob Toben and Alan Wolf SUPERMIND by Barbara B. Brown SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS: REFLECTIONS ON PHYSICS AS A WAY OF LIFE by K. C. Cole THE TAO OF LEADERSHIP by John Heider THE TAO OF PHYSICS, Revised Edition, by Fritjof Capra TO HAVE OR TO BE? by Erich Fromm THE TURNING POINT by Fritjof Capra THE WAY OF THE SHAMAN: A GUIDE TO POWER AND HEALING by Michael Harner ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE by Robert M. Pirsig [This page was intentionally left blank] Perfect Symmetry __________________ The Search for the Beginning of Time __________________ Heinz R. Pagels BANTAM BOOKS TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hard-cover edition. NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED. PERFECT SYMMETRY A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with Simon & Schuster PRINTING HISTORY Simon & Schuster edition published June 1985 Bantam edition / July 1986 New Age and the accompanying figure design as well as the statement "a search for meaning, growth and change" are trademarks of Bantam Books, Inc. Illustrations by Matthew Zimet. Cover design by Henrietta Condak All rights reserved. Copyright © 1985 by Heinz Pagels. Cover art copyright ® 1985 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. ISBN 0-553-24000-5 Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada __________________________________________________________________ Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103. __________________________________________________________________ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA O 098765432 FOR ELAINE Acknowledgments __________________ In preparing this book I have been fortunate in having friends and colleagues who can offer open criticism or who have made suggestions that found their way into the text. I have benefited from comments by Jeremy Bernstein, John Brockman, Malcolm Diamond, John Faulkner, Randall Furlong, George Greenstein, Alan Guth, Edward Harrison, Joseph H. Hazen, Nicolas Herbert, James McCarthy, Richard Ogust, Jim Peebles, Anthony Tyler and Anthony Zee. I am especially grateful for the detailed criticism of George Field and Engelbert Schucking in the sections of the book dealing with astrophysics and cosmology. Alice Mayhew and Catherine Shaw did the major editorial work on the text and helped turn my English into English. Matthew Zimet's inventive illustrations delight the eye and do much to enhance the text. Finally, I want to thank the Board of Governors of The New York Academy of Sciences for their sympathetic appreciation of my interest in science writing. Contents _________ FOREWORD xiii ONE HERSCHEL'S GARDEN 1 1 Herschel's Garden 3 2 The Birth and Life of Stars 11 3 The Death of Stars: Astronecroscopy 38 4 The Discovery of Galaxies 69 5 Radio Galaxies and Quasars 101 6 Why Is the Universe Lumpy? 117 7 Classical Cosmology 132 TWO THE EARLY UNIVERSE 155 1 The Early Universe 157 2 Fields, Quanta and Symmetry 169 3 The Standard Model 208 4 Thermodynamics and Cosmology 234 5 The Big Bang 244 THREE WILD IDEAS 269 1 Unified-Field Theories 271 2 Magnetic Monopoles 296 3 Unifying Gravity 313 4 Before the Big Bang: The Inflationary Universe 331 5 Before Inflation: The Origin of the Universe 353 FOUR REFLECTIONS 369 1 The Cosmic Computer 371 2 First-Person Science 380 BIBLIOGRAPHY 392 INDEX 399 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. —Genesis [This page was intentionally left blank] Foreword __________ The children's books that were my first contact with the universe opened my imagination to thoughts of voyages to the moon, planets and stars. When I was older, however, I visited the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia and the Hayden Planetarium in New York, and that simple, self-centered perception was shattered. The drama and power of the dynamic universe overwhelmed me. 1 learned that single galaxies contain more stars than all the human beings who have ever lived, and I saw projections of clusters of such galaxies moving in the void of space like schools of fish swimming in the sea. The reality of the immensity and duration of the universe caused a kind of "existential shock" that shook the foundations of my being. Everything 1 had experienced or known seemed insignificant placed in that vast ocean of existence. While my sense of awe at the size and splendor of the universe is a feeling that has never quite left me, reflecting back on my childhood experience I see that the universe provided a screen upon which I could project my feelings about the immensity of existence; that external ocean mirrored the one within me. Later, as I pursued the study of theoretical physics at Princeton and Stanford Universities, my attitude toward the universe altered. The universe became less a screen for the projection of my feelings and more a puzzle challenging me as a scientist, a puzzle which left scattered, complex clues to its solution. The universe, in spite of its size, is a physical entity governed by the laws of space, time and matter. Someday (and that day is not xiii xiv PERFECT SYMMETRY yet here) physicists may know the laws that describe the creation of the universe and its subsequent evolution. The logical account of the foundations of physical existence will then be complete. As we embark on the study of the universe, it is worth reminding ourselves that not so long ago, at the beginning of this century, physicists were puzzled by the properties of atoms. Atoms were so small (a few eminent scientists even doubted their existence) and behaved in such sporadic, uncontrollable ways that some people thought they lay beyond the power of scientific comprehension. Yet after major experimental and theoretical discoveries, physicists in the 1920s invented the quantum theory which explicated the weird world of the atom. New and unfamiliar physical concepts were incorporated into the quantum theory, concepts that have survived to the present day. Similarly, as physicists attempt to comprehend the origin and evolution of the universe, they will certainly need to invent new and unfamiliar concepts. Scientists do not yet understand the fundamental laws that describe the very origin of the universe, at least not as well as they understand the laws describing atoms. But many scientists today are excited because such an understanding is currently in the making, a result of the intellectual synthesis of two scientific disciplines: quantum theory, which specifies the laws of the smallest things—the quantum particles—and cosmology, which specifies the laws that govern the largest thing—the entire universe.