Joan’s Jewels

Merry Christmas from science. And a happy Hanukkah, too. Both seasonal holidays share the symbolism of light in the darkness, hope in times of gloom – the reminders of lights past from the miracles of the star of Bethlehem and the oil lamps of Jerusalem.

Today, as our bulbs and candles illuminate the night, we can sense the presence of another light that, like the star and the oil lamps, illuminated the darkness. I speak of the light of the miracle of creation, the “Let there be light!” of Day One of Genesis.

Modern astronomers have detected that very same light, although it is faint today. This past year, in fact, two astronomers received the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics for measuring this radiation.

Theirs was no small achievement. For centuries, from the time of the Maccabees until the 1930s, virtually all theologians and scientists adopted a Greek view of creation: The universe is eternal and unchanging.

But in 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies are moving away from us, and Einstein’s theory of relativity explained those motions as cosmic expansion. These breakthroughs led to the realization that universe is neither eternal nor static. It was created in a “big bang,” a blaze of light from an infinitesimal speck that has expanded and evolved into today’s cosmos.

Matter in that initial blaze was fantastically hot and dense, and violent interactions prevented atoms from coalescing out of the inferno. Only light and fundamental subatomic particles existed. The light was scattered by the particles like headlights reflected in a fog.

As the early universe expanded, however, it cooled. Scientists calculate that about 380,000 years after creation, the temperature had dropped enough so that atoms could assemble from the particles and light could travel freely without being scattered. That light, dating from about 8 billion years before the birth of the sun, is observed by astronomers today as “cosmic microwave background radiation.”

Last March, scientists using NASA’s latest small satellite announced their latest results from analyzing this cosmic light, including a more precise age of the universe: about 13.7 billion years since the big bang.

Like the holiday bulbs and candles, the radiation of creation reminds us of another occasion when light emerged from darkness.

The lights of Christmas and Hanukkah are rooted in historical events that represent to us the possibility that humans can, by good deeds, shine figurative light into the darkness of the world – just as the light of creation was one early step in the evolutionary process that resulted in life on Earth.

The mystical Jewish Kabbalists of 16th-century Israel developed a cosmology with striking similarities to that of modern science. In clear contrast to the Greek philosophy that denied the universe could have come into being from nothingness, the Kabbalists weaved an intricate account of how the universe was created with light from an infinitesimal speck that evolved with light into today’s universe. By our goodwill and good deeds, in their view, we make the world a better place, bringing light to the darkness and invoking the spirit of the light of creation.

Modern science offers us a deeper way to explicate scriptural symbolism. Whether from the creation, starlight, bulbs or candles, light is much more than just a visible glow. It is electromagnetic radiation. Our instruments can measure light across nearly 80 octaves in frequency, from the longest radio wavelengths to the shortest X-ray wavelengths. Visible light is merely one octave. If light were music of a truly grand piano, the notes of the octave that our eyes can perceive would come from only 12 keys of a keyboard stretching nearly the length of a football field.

There is much more to the season’s light than meets the eye. May our good deeds, like the lights of trees, menorahs and the wondrous creation, illuminate the darkness: Let there be light.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.