Author:
Publication: sify.com
Date: June 12, 2005
URL: http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=13870206
Eastern religious traditions can
provide new cosmological insights as the methods used by ancient cosmologies
for predicting solar and lunar eclipses yield results almost as accurate
as our modern ones, and in the case of India, the Hindu pundits still use
them, says Dr Paul Utukuru, a retired medical physicist in the Science
and Theology News, a French monthly
newspaper.
"Some ancient astronomers
seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that the creation of the universe,
its growth, its eventual decay and regeneration are eternal processes without
a beginning and without an end, repeating in endless cycles," he says.
The Hindus named each half cycle a night or day of Brahma in symbolic terms.
There is also the mention of a transition or a twilight zone referred to
as Yugasandhi between these half cycles.
The point of interest is that the
"metaphor extends to some amazing mathematical details." According to the
Hindu scriptures, Dr Utukuru says, each half cycle is said to last for
4.32 billion years. The Sun, too, revolves around the centre of our galaxy
once in 325.5 million years.
Modern science pegs this in the
range of 225 to 270 million years. "The point of departure between ancient
Hindu cosmology and modern cosmology is that unlike modern cosmology, ancient
Hindu cosmology relates the rotational speed of our own galaxy to the period
of oscillation of the endless cycles of creation, growth and eventual decay.
Our known galaxy is known as Parameshti
Mandala, and it is said to rotate around Svayambhu Mandala, the centre
of all galaxies with a time period of 4.32 billion years, also. Interestingly,
the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant suggested that the universe
might actually consist of rotating systems rotating around larger rotating
systems."
Pursuing this chronology further
in detail, "It can be shown that the present day of Brahma began exactly
5 Brahma hours, 28 minutes and 40 seconds ago as of April 1, 1986. Going
a step further, they calculate the age of our present universe is 19.252
billion years, amazingly close to the modern-day estimate."
Modern historians have also documented
that "according to some ancient Hindu scriptures, the Sun is 108 Sun-diameters
from the earth and the moon 108 Moon-diameters away. The modern values
for these figures are 107.6 and 110.6, respectively".
Parenthetically, the number 108
has special significance in astrology and in most Hindu rituals even today.
The rosaries used in many Hindu
and Buddhist chanting routines contain exactly 108 beads. Also, the number
108 is exactly one quarter of 432, the most important number in the ancient
Hindu and Babylonian cosmologies. Today, we are still faced with issues
such as the singularity problem, the horizon problem, the magnetic monopole
problem, the smoothness problem, the flatness problem, anisotropy of the
3º K cosmic ray background and the recently-discovered phenomena of
gamma ray bursts by satellites and space telescopes. "We have not yet figured
out whether the big bang is a one-time affair or a cyclical affair. Proton
decay is yet another unresolved issue," he said.
Cosmologists are also not sure whether
the universe is open, flat or closed.
Quantum mechanics and the theory
of relativity have still to be reconciled. The most recent development
in this regard has been a return to a cyclical theory of expansion and
contraction of our universe by Paul Steinhardt at Princeton and Neil Turok
at Cambridge University, he said.
In their view, the big bang is a
bridge to a pre-existing contracting era. The universe undergoes an "endless
sequence of cycles in which it contracts in a big crunch and re-emerges
in an expanding big bang, with trillions of years of evolution in between,
almost exactly as outlined in ancient Hindu cosmology."
