Science, the Iconoclast

The following article is the first in a two-part series submitted by Des Connolly, a retired school principal of St Catherine’s Primary School Gymea and Star of the Sea Primary School Miranda and parishioner of St Patrick’s Church Sutherland.

Eight years ago, I wrote an article for The Swag entitled “O. M. G. How You Have Changed Since I was a Boy”. It was a tongue-in-cheek attempt to chronicle how my image of God had changed over the course of my then 82 years of life experience. That Schuster’s Bible History image of an angry old man up in the clouds marking down the wrongs his creatures were doing below was typical of my early boyhood.

Now, eight years on, I feel compelled to extend and update that article. What has changed in that time? Well, it has become increasingly evident to me that we have entered what our recent Pope Francis repeatedly called “a change of epochs”. And the force I see as spear-heading this new epoch is the iconoclastic behemoth of science.

Discoveries, new understandings and breakthroughs are funnelling in from the many branches of science at an increasing and overwhelming rate. And there appears to be a widespread scramble to keep up with the developments let alone understand their consequences and ramifications.

Across the science spectrum from the micro world of Quantum Mechanics to the macro world of Cosmology, science is challenging ethical, moral, theological and philosophical views and debunking many ideas and beliefs. It is a new world that says not only is the world stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.

Just a few years ago three scientists (Alain Aspect, John Clauser, Anton Zellinger) were awarded the Nobel prize for their work in the Quantum realm proving that pairs of sub-atomic particles are able to “communicate” with each other instantaneously, no matter the distance. This disproved something Einstein said could not happen. He called it “spooky action at a distance” that would require something travelling faster than the speed of light. And already this “entanglement” discovery is being applied in computer technology.

Staying with the micro world, one has to marvel at what is unfolding in the Quantum computer field. Here, scientists tell us that these revolutionary machines, that utilise the reason-negating fact that a particle can be in multiple places at any one given moment, will operate at a speed and capacity a million times beyond present computers. Interestingly, two Australian computer scientists have shunned offers to work overseas and are well on the way to producing this machine here in Australia. They are confident it will happen in the next few years and say that such a device will have more capability than all of the present computers in the world put together. What a shattering moment that will be!

Then there is the fast-developing field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which will be linked to Quantum computer development. Here, science has mapped out several stages of progress from simple automation to a creative, self-determining super brain. A recently developed AI model recorded an IQ of 160. This is 10 points higher than that of Einstein.

The leaders in this field assure us that AI is only in its early developmental stage and that based on the current trajectory, the development of that creative even “conscious” super brain is not far off.

Already at this infant stage, AI is being widely utilised in medicine, universities, commerce, etc. I am told even a creditable homily here and there has been produced this way. Obviously, the potential for this technology will be enormous, leading to revolutionary societal change. It is being likened to the introduction of electricity.

Now, moving the focus to the macro world I home in on the brilliant James Webb Telescope (JWT). This $10 billion marvel of scientific engineering sits in its sun-orbiting, neutral-gravity position 1.5 million kilometres from Earth beaming down exceptionally clear pictures that go back in time further than any previous telescope and almost to the Big Bang (13.8 billion years).

Capturing the world’s attention by making the frontier of space so readily accessible, the JWT continues to show
a spectacular panorama of the Cosmos with its two trillion galaxies, each containing up to a billion stars.

This is a BIG, BIG world. A numinous, mystical world. A world whose dimensions and numbers alone are so incomprehensible we can only respond with wonder and awe. Here we are reminded that light, the fastest entity known, could zip around our earth 7.5 times in one second but would take 100,000 years just to cross our Milky Way galaxy and 2.5 million years to reach Andromeda, our nearest galaxy.

And just when cosmologists were feeling somewhat confident in the Big Bang theory the JWT delivers evidence of oddities regarding some stars and galaxies that do not fit this understanding.

This has sparked speculation that the Big Bang is just one of a continuous (eternal) series of such events. Other serious speculation has been about multiple universes, all with their own different physical laws.

Part Two of Des Connolly’s article will appear in the Summer edition of  The Swag.