Why does the universe matter? Or our understanding
of the universe matter to us, as people? I
think a lot of people really want to know
the real story. Where did we come from? Why
is the universe the way it is?
During the last decade, remarkable series
of new telescopes became available. The results
are in fantastic agreement with the predictions
of the theory that my colleagues and I helped
to develop, which is cold dark matter with
a cosmological constant or dark energy. The
vast majority of the mass in the universe
is completely invisible. It’s not made of
atoms, in fact it’s not even made of the
things that atoms are made of, protons, neutrons
and electrons. It’s something completely
different. And so, for the first time in the
history of astronomy, we actually have a theory
of the whole universe that seems to work.
My background is in science policy and the
meaning of science for the larger culture.
That’s what I do. As I watched Joel and
his colleagues basically discovering the universe,
I kept asking myself “well, what does this
mean for the rest of us?” We’re not living
in the universe we thought we were living
in. This has got to have some implications.
What are they?
Are we just insignificant motes in no particular
place in the universe, or is there some grand
design. The answer is, now that we’re beginning
to understand how it all works, that there
is clearly a grand design and in many respects,
we’re not insignificant motes at all. It’s
turning out that our planetary system, or
solar system, is truly extraordinary in many,
many ways. We’ve now discovered over a thousand
planetary systems outside our own and we’re
discovering them very rapidly. But we’ve
never seen anything like ours.
The human species is not only central to the
cosmos, but the human species today is central
to the future of Earth. Those of us who are
alive today at this real turning point for
our culture, where we really have to stop
this enormous rate of growth and get into
a sustainable way of living. Those of us who
are alive today could be the most important
generation of humans ever because we are going
to have to manage this transition. That gives
us a place in time and space that’s really
astonishingly important and unifies everybody
around the Earth. So, that’s where I think
cosmology could play a huge role in really
changing our identity and possibly helping
us to change the dangerous trends on Earth.
