The science of eternity

> <!-- Blurb --><span class="smallHeader">A 2001 workshop called &quot;The Far-Future Universe: Eschatology from a Cosmic Perspective&quot; included commentary on the multiverse<span>
> <br> By Owen Gingerich
> <span class="dateText">(January 1, 2001)<span>

Who needs eternity? This was one of several provocative questions discussed at a two-day Templeton workshop in Rome at the beginning of November. With Martin Rees as lead organizer, the small conclave involved 20 cosmologists, theologians, philosophers, and geologists in a consideration of "The Far-Future Universe: Eschatology from a Cosmic Perspective." The discussions formed the backdrop for the awarding of the first two $150,000 Gruber Cosmology Prizes to Allan Sandage and Jim Peebles in a ceremony at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the evening of November 9.
> <br> The vigorous discussion was, for the most part, "off the record," but Mary Ann Meyers, the coordinator for the Templeton Foundation, indicated that they hope to publish the papers themselves in a symposium volume. In a handsomely frescoed room, part of a 16th century summer palace on the Vatican grounds, the sharply divided participants argued whether the ultimate fate of the universe had any religious implications at all.
> <br> As Paul Davies expressed it, "There is no plausible cosmological model on offer at this time that simultaneously satisfies two widespread but seemingly conflicting desires: that the universe has an ultimate destiny or purpose and that the universe will exist interestingly for eternity." When most people talk about an "eternal universe," George Ellis reminded the participants, they probably do not take eternity seriously: "They usually have in mind a very long time rather than a true eternity." He went on to argue that a time-like eternity, where we return to the same state again and again, is not necessarily preferable to a transient universe that has an ending. But, as Davies pointed out, it is hard to find purpose in a universe that ends in ruins.
> <br> One interesting possibility, defended by Rees, is the "multiverse" model in which many universes exist and form a vast steady state of individually transient universes. The empiricists dismissed these as forever unobservable, "mere metaphysics;" they demanded data. When the theists such as physicist Robert Russell or paleontologist Simon Conway Morris weighed in, with a mention of the resurrection as a central Christian doctrine, the debate waxed even more stridently. Religion has always embraced metaphysics, but theologians would not attach the word "mere." Keith Ward, with a generous sprinkling of English wit, helped defuse the palpable tension.
> <br> J rgen Moltmann, one of Europe's leading systematic theologians, argued that as a counter-concept to time, eternity could be understood as timelessness (as Plato did). Christian eschatology always brings a combination of two ideas, ending and consummation, or catastrophe and a new beginning; he quoted T. S. Eliot, "In my end is my beginning." Yet in the general discussion of the religious implications of cosmological eschatology, no one mentioned explicitly that Christian eschatology always accepted a multiverse metaphysics, a heaven with entirely different physical laws, clearly a new beginning that transcends the cosmological data of our observable universe.
> <br> As the second and final day of the symposium drew to a close, the main meeting room of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences was arranged for the formal presentation of the Gruber Cosmology Prizes. The five members of the advisory committee-George Coyne, Martin Rees, Owen Gingerich, Vera Rubin, and John Barrow-as well as Peter Gruber and Patricia Murphy from the Peter Gruber Foundation, each took a small role in the solemn ceremony. Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, blessed and presented the solid gold medals to the winners, Allan R. Sandage and P. J. E. Peebles.
> <br> The Vatican venue was chosen for the first two Gruber Cosmology Prizes because of the connection with a great cosmologist of history, Galileo Galilei. Some future award ceremonies will take place in locales associated with other great cosmologists, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, or Hubble, and others will occur at the triennial General Assemblies of the International Astronomical Union because the IAU will take a gradually increasing role in making the awards.
> <br> Owen Gingerich is professor of astronomy and the history of science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. <br/>