The Big Bang Theory and the Cosmic Crunch in the Noble Quran.

1- The Universe was formed from hot gaseous in the Noble Quran.
2- The Bible never mentioned anything about the formation of the Universe.
3- Articles and links of official web sites that confirm the Noble Quran's claims.
4- When the Cosmic Crunch to the Universe occurs, the Day of Judgment shall come.
Prophet Muhammad predicted that the Sun will rise from the West.

"Moreover He comprehended in His design the sky, and it had been (as) smoke: He said to it and to the earth: 'Come ye together, willingly or unwillingly.' They said: 'We do come (together), in willing obedience.' So He completed them as seven firmaments in two Days, and He assigned to each heaven its duty and command. And We adorned the lower heaven with lights, and (provided it) with guard. Such is the Decree of (Him) the Exalted in Might, Full of Knowledge. (The Noble Quran, 41:11-12)"

"Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe? (The Noble Quran, 21:30)"

The Arabic word for "sky" in Noble Verse 41:11 above is "samaa", which is the same word used for "heaven" and "Universe". Since the 7 heavens didn't exist yet (because the seven firmaments or heavens were mentioned in the next Noble Verse 41:12), then this CLEARLY MAKES the "samaa" be referring to the Universe, since the heaven was the entire Universe when GOD Almighty "comprehended in His design the sky". He then later divided it into seven firmaments or heavens.

Anyway, as we clearly see above in the Noble Verses, Allah Almighty initially created the Universe or the "samaa" with smoke (Dukhan). Dukhan in Arabic refers to the smoke coming from fire, which is always HOT GAS.

A new star forming out of a cloud of gas and dust (nebula), which is one of the remnants of the "smoke" that was the origin of the whole universe. (The Space Atlas, Heather and Henbest, page 50)
Allah Almighty said: "Then He turned to the heaven when it was smoke...(The Noble Quran, 41:11)"
The Noble Quran on the Origin of the Universe
Only Islam claims that the universe was originated from Dust and Hot Gas, or Smoke.

Now as to Noble Verse 21:30 above, according to the Big Bang Theory, the Universe experienced an unbelievable explosion from the hot gases that were forming it, which caused the Universe (which consisted of the ball of gases) to split and expand. The Earth was separated then from the gaseous mass that was forming the Universe. The gases according to the scientific articles below in this article made "the universe be consisted of compact ball of hydrogen -- protons, neutrons, electrons, and their anti-particles -- plus radiation. There were not differentiated planets, stars, suns, galaxies. Five billion years ago, the compact hydrogen soup blasted apart with huge force, matter was hurled in all directions, and the universe doubled in size. This expansion of the universe is still going on." [taken from "Ask Yahoo" web site at http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20001027.html]

It is really interesting to know that the Big Bang Theory suggests that the Universe is still expanding until today, because this is EXACTLY what Allah Almighty also claimed in the Noble Quran:

"And the firmament, We constructed with power and skill and verily We are expanding it. (The Noble Quran, 51:47)"

Again, the word "samaa" was used for "firmament". "samaa" as I mentioned above means either "heaven", or "Universe" depending on how it is used. Certainly, the meaning of the word "samaa" in Noble Verse 51:47 is "Universe".

Also, since Allah Almighty didn't have any names for the explosive gases (such as hydrogen) 1400 years ago, He summed them up by calling them "smoke (dukhan)", which is literally a hot gas. Smoke is also ball-shaped and compacted together while it is hot and in the air. This description perfectly fits what the big bang theory suggests from the shape of the "compact ball" of gases that formed the Universe.

No where in the Bible do we see any mention of the creation of the Universe. The Bible lacks a great deal of information about how GOD Almighty created things.

The following links and article prove that the Big Bang Theory existed in the Noble Quran 1400 years ago.

Note: The underlined in dark green words prove that the Universe was originally formed by hot gaseous.

The Big Bang Theory is currently the dominant scientific explanation for the origin of the universe. It was first proposed in 1927 by a Belgian priest named George Lemaītre.

We found a collection of sites about the Big Bang theory in a Yahoo! Astrophysics subcategory called Universal Origins by searching on "big bang." This mind-boggling array of resources proved a little too scientific, so we tried to find a simpler place to start.

A fascinating physics study module called Violence in the Cosmos provided us with some Big Bang basics:

Despite later discoveries by astronomer Edwin Hubble and Nobel Prize-winning scientists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson that appear to support Lemaītre's theory, the theory remains controversial and alternative explanations for the origin of the universe abound.

Big Bang Theory - Proof at Last
December 22, 2000 07:45 CDT

For the first time, an actual measurement has been made of the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation, at a time when the Universe was only about 2.5 billion years old. A team of astronomers from India, France and ESO achieved this fundamental and very difficult observation by obtaining a detailed spectrum of a quasar in the distant Universe, using the UV-Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) instrument at the ESO 8.2-m VLT KUEYEN telescope at the Paranal Observatory.

Most astrophysicists believe that the Universe was formed in what is known as the Big Bang. If this were true, the glow of this primeval fireball should have been warmer in the past - which is exactly what they found by the new measurements.

According to a recent press release by the European Southern Observatory: This analysis of the VLT spectrum of the distant quasar not only gives the definitive proof of the presence of the relict radiation in the early Universe, it also shows that it was indeed significantly warmer than it is today, as predicted by the theory.

American physicists Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, who were rewarded with the Nobel Prize in 1978, discovered the primeval fireball's relict radiation. Their discovery was made in 1964 by means of radio observations. Precision measurements by the COBE satellite later showed that this ancient radiation fills the Universe, with a present-day temperature of slightly less than 3 degrees above zero.

This radiation comes from all directions, yet it is extremely uniform. Slight temperature variations in different directions have been measured most recently by means of detailed observations from a balloon above Antarctica (the Boomerang experiment).

Since the universe is expanding, it must have been denser in the past. A particular prediction of the Big Bang theory is also that the temperature of the CMBR must have been higher at earlier times. However, although quite a few attempts have been made, no clear observational confirmation of this has been possible so far. In fact, the best observations until now have only been able to establish upper limits to the cosmic temperature at earlier epochs.

It was actually suggested more than 30 years ago that observing specific absorption lines in the spectra of distant quasars could test the predicted increase of temperature with distance (redshift).

The idea is simply that at earlier epochs, the CMBR was hot enough to excite certain atomic levels, and thus to give rise to particular absorption lines in the spectrum of a celestial object.

Some faint absorption lines of neutral carbon atoms were found to be especially promising, in the sense that they were predicted to be very sensitive to the surrounding temperature. However, previous generations of (smaller) astronomical telescopes were unable to achieve spectra of sufficient quality of these faint absorption lines in faint and remote objects in the early (more distant) Universe.

The advent of 8-m class telescopes has now changed this situation. A few years ago, the 10-m Keck telescope (Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA) obtained a spectrum of a quasar that was sufficiently detailed to determine an upper limit to the temperature of the CMBR at the corresponding epoch, about 3.4 billion years after the Big Bang.

However, a major difficulty of such observations is the necessity to exclude other sources of excitation (heating). It is well known that some other physical processes may also affect the observed absorption lines, such as collisions between the atoms and heating by the ultraviolet light emitted by young and hot stars.

The main problem is therefore to disentangle the various effects in order to "isolate" that of the CMBR. This can only be achieved by means of exceptionally "clean" and detailed spectra of these faint objects, a demanding task. For that reason all previous measurements have only led to upper limits on the CMBR temperature.

The new VLT spectrum of the quasar PKS 1232+0815 provides the long hoped-for break-through in this important area of cosmological research.

On its way to us, the light from this distant object is absorbed by intervening material, among other by a gaseous cloud in a galaxy at high redshift (z = 2.34). This distance corresponds to a cosmic time when the Universe was less than one fifth of its present age.

Another detailed analysis allowed the determination of the physical conditions in the cloud - the presence of molecular hydrogen lines was crucial for this to succeed. It clearly showed that the excitation process of atomic collisions couldn't be solely responsible for the shape and strength of the observed absorption lines. An additional source of heat must be present and this can only be the heating by the CMBR.

Moreover, it was possible to place constraints on the effect of other possible excitation processes. This made it possible for the astronomers to derive the temperature T of the CMBR at this large distance and early cosmic epoch and to place a very firm lower limit on this temperature. The final result is that T is hotter than 6 K and cooler than 14 K; this is in full agreement with the Big Bang prediction of T = 9 K.

"The Day that We roll up the heavens like a scroll rolled up for books (completed),- even as We produced the first creation, so shall We produce a new one: a promise We have undertaken: truly shall We fulfil it. (The Noble Quran, 21:104)"

The following article http://www.bigear.org/vol1no4/wheeler.htm, which contains an interview with a Scientist, Professor John Archibald Wheeler, who was a colleague of Albert Einstein, explains the Noble Verse above in good details.

Important Note: Before we go into the article, it is important to know that Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him had also talked about the "Cosmic Crunch" Theory by predicting that the Sun around the time of the Cosmic Crunch's occurrence would rise from the West and set in the East due to a change in our orbit's rotation. Who knows, perhaps the "Cosmic Crunch" would cause the Earth to flip upside down, which would cause the sun to rise from the West and set in the East, or perhaps it would change the rotation of the sun and its planets all together:

Narrated Abu Dhar: "The Prophet asked me at sunset, 'Do you know where the sun goes (at the time of sunset)?' I replied, 'Allah and His Apostle know better.' He said, 'It goes (i.e. travels) till it prostrates Itself underneath the Throne and takes the permission to rise again, and it is permitted and then (a time will come when) it will be about to prostrate itself but its prostration will not be accepted, and it will ask permission to go on its course but it will not be permitted, but it will be ordered to return whence it has come and so it will rise in the west. And that is the interpretation of the Statement of Allah: 'And the sun Runs its fixed course For a term (decreed). that is The Decree of (Allah) The Exalted in Might, The All-Knowing.' (36.38) (Translation of Sahih Bukhari, Beginning of Creation, Volume 4, Book 54, Number 421)"

Narrated Abu Huraira: "Allah's Apostle said, 'The Hour will not be established........and till the sun rises from the West. So when the sun will rise and the people will see it (rising from the West) they will all believe (embrace Islam) but that will be the time when: (As Allah said,) 'No good will it do to a soul to believe then, if it believed not before, nor earned good (by deeds of righteousness) through its Faith.' (6.158) And the Hour will be established while two men spreading a garment in front of them but they will not be able to sell it, nor fold it up; and the Hour will be established when a man has milked his she-camel and has taken away the milk but he will not be able to drink it; and the Hour will be established before a man repairing a tank (for his livestock) is able to water (his animals) in it; and the Hour will be established when a person has raised a morsel (of food) to his mouth but will not be able to eat it.' (Translation of Sahih Bukhari, Afflictions and the End of the World, Volume 9, Book 88, Number 237)"

"The Day ye shall see it, every mother giving suck shall forget her suckling-babe, and every pregnant female shall drop her load (unformed): thou shalt see mankind as in a drunken riot, yet not drunk: but dreadful will be the Wrath of God. (The Noble Quran, 22:2)"

Cosmic Search Vol. 1 No. 4

FORUM: John A. Wheeler

From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch

Scientist-philosopher, teacher-cosmologist, father of the Black Hole, Wheeler's thoughts encompass the entire cosmos from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch.

This exclusive interview with John A. Wheeler was made by Mirjana R. Gearhart of COSMIC SEARCH.

COSMIC SEARCH: You have often commented that the greatest discoveries of science are yet to come. What do you have in mind?

Wheeler: To me, the greatest discovery yet to come will be to find how this universe, coming into being from a Big Bang, developed its laws of operation. I call this "Law without Law" [Or "Order from Disorder"].

Wheeler: One of the biggest problems is how to state the problem. It's an old saying that the minute you can state a problem correctly you understand 90 percent of the problem. One of the greatest problems concerns the meaning of measurement or observation. According to quantum theory, measurements can influence what happens. The fact that it is difficult to talk about this problem in an easy way suggests that we have much to learn.

How can we possibly imagine the universe with all its regularities and its laws coming into being out of something utterly helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy and random?

If you were the Lord constructing the universe, how would you have gone about it?

Wheeler: It's inspiring to read the life of Charles Darwin and think how the division of plant and animal kingdoms, all this myriad of order, came about through the miracles of evolution, natural selection and chance mutation. To me this is a marvelous indication that you can get order by starting with disorder.

Wheeler: One of the conditions, I think, for advance in this field, as in any field, is believing that advance is possible. What I hope I'm creating is a sense of faith that it can be done. Faith is the number one element. It isn't something that spreads itself uniformly. Faith is concentrated in a few people at particular times and places. If you can involve young people in an atmosphere of hope and faith, then I think they'll figure out how to get the answer. Faith and hope are absolutely central to everything one does.

You need people who have imagination, daring and the ability to get somewhere. That, to me, is the way research works.

Of course another point to all of this is to keep in touch with key ideas, with what people are doing. Make sure you aren't overlooking something. Here's where it's so important to talk with the young people. Some modest young person comes along with some idea no one else is paying any attention to. His idea may just be the central point.

I'm very fortunate that at Austin, the University of Texas has been willing to finance this kind of work, bringing in two or three people each year for a period of time. So, we'll see what happens.

COSMIC SEARCH: You were a colleague of Albert Einstein. We are celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth this year. When did you first meet him?

Wheeler: October 1933, the month he took up permanent residence in the U.S. was my first meeting with Einstein. Then in 1953, when I first started to teach relativity at Princeton, he was kind enough to invite me to bring my students around to his house for discussions. So, we sat around the dining room table and his secretary, Helen Dukas, and his stepdaughter, Margot, brought tea and the students asked him questions.

Wheeler: Yes, his work revolved around three rules which apply to all science, our problems, and times:

Albert Einstein, Hidekei Yukawa and John A. Wheeler at Princeton in 1954. Yukawa received the Nobel prize in physics in 1949.

Wheeler: Yes, it was about the period 1952-53-54-55, Einstein's last four years, when l was just getting into relativity. The thing that really got me into it more than anything else was this concern about what happens to a cloud of matter when it collapses. What's the final state?

I had not yet invented the term "black hole". I hadn't yet realized how important it was to attach a name to this concept.

Wheeler: It was an act of desperation, to force people to believe in it. It was in 1968, at the time of the discussion of whether pulsars were related to neutron stars or to these completely collapsed objects. I wanted a way of emphasizing that these objects were real. Thus, the name "black hole".

Diagrammatic representation of a black hole suggesting how space is curved or warped by its enormous gravitational pull. All details of infalling material are wiped out in the black hole, only the net mass, charge and angular momentum remaining. A black hole is the ultimate trash compactor.

The Russians used the term frozen star -- their point of attention was how it looked from the outside, where the material moves much more slowly until it comes to a horizon. [Or critical distance. From inside this distance there is no escape.] But, from the point of view of someone who's on the material itself, falling in, there's nothing special about the horizon. He keeps on going in. There's nothing frozen about what happens to him. So, I felt that that aspect of it needed more emphasis.

COSMIC SEARCH: A few years ago you asked the question: "Are life and mind irrelevant to the structure of the universe, or are they central to it?"

Wheeler: No, I'm one of the most baffled men in the world on this subject. There is a line of investigation involving the anthropic (or man-related) principle -- the idea that the universe has to be much as it is or life would be impossible. Not only life as we know it, but any life at all would be impossible. On what else can a comprehensible universe be built but the demand for comprehensibility?

That, to be sure, was an old idea, going back not only to the Bishop Berkeley of the time of Newton, but all the way back to Parmenides, the precursor of Socrates and Plato.

But it was new in the form that Dicke put it. He said if you want an observer around, you need life, and if you want life, you need heavy elements. To make heavy elements out of hydrogen, you need thermonuclear combustion. To have thermonuclear combustion, you need a time of cooking in a star of several billion years. In order to stretch out several billion years in its time dimension, the universe, according to general relativity, must be several billion years across in its space dimensions.

Wheeler: You could put it another way: You can say there's an efficiency expert who's come to look over the Lord's shoulder. He says,

"Why, Lord, you're wasting a lot of money on this universe. See, you've put one hundred billion (10^11) stars in the Milky Way, and you've put one hundred billion (10^11) Milky Ways in the universe -- that's ten billion trillion (10^11) stars -- that's a mighty extravagant way to get one planet (the Earth) with life on it so there'll be somebody around to be aware of this universe. Now, Lord, we efficiency people want to cut you down, but we won't cut you down to one star. Instead of 10 billion trillion stars, we'll cut you down to one hundred billion stars -- that's enough to make one galaxy. This will be a great economy move."

"The universe starts with a Big Bang, expands to a maximum dimension, then recontracts and collapses (to the Big Crunch); no more awe-inspiring prediction was ever made." Quotation from Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne and John A. Wheeler in "Gravitation", W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1973, page 1196.

The only problem is, according to general relativity, when you cut the amount of mass down by a factor of 100 billion, you also cut the size of the universe down by the same amount, just enough universe for one galaxy. You also cut down the time from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch from 100 billion years to just one year which isn't time enough to evolve even one star, let alone evolve life.

Put it another way. There's no obvious extravagance of scale in the construction of the universe. The efficiency expert would have a right to complain if life had been created on several planets, in several parts of the universe, because then he could say that's more than you really need in order for somebody to be around to be aware of the universe. But, if you have life on one planet only (the Earth), then, it's not obvious that you're being extravagant.

The anthropic principle provides a new perspective on the question of life elsewhere in space. It puts in question the common view that the universe is a big machine; that man is unimportant in the scheme of things; that we're an accidental bit of dust that doesn't have anything to do with it all. From that point of view, it is not very important whether you're going to have life on a billion planets or on just one planet -- or no life at all. Life or no life still wouldn't matter in the scheme of the universe.

But, if we adopt this other perspective that Dicke suggests -- the anthropic principle -- then it's quite a different assessment that we make. Then the universe has to be such as to permit awareness of that universe; otherwise the universe has no meaning.

We are now nearer the Big Bang than the Big Crunch since the universe, as we observe it, is still expanding.

The anthropic principle looks at this universe, that universe and the other universe and rules out as mere meaningless machines all those in which awareness does not develop somewhere at some time. Stronger than the anthropic principle is what I might call the participatory principle. According to it we could not even imagine a universe that did not somewhere and for some stretch of time contain observers because the very building materials of the universe are these acts of observer-participancy. You wouldn't have the stuff out of which to build the universe otherwise. This participatory principle takes for its foundation the absolutely central point of the quantum:

No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed (or registered) phenomenon.

COSMIC SEARCH: You also collaborated with Niels Bohr. Could you tell us about him?

Wheeler: As a student in 1934, 1 applied for a fellowship to go to Copenhagen to study with Bohr. I remember writing down my reason on the application:

My fellowship was granted and the next year I went to study with Bohr, the great leader of physics and father figure of all physicists. There in Copenhagen, Christian Moller, just back from Rome, reported Fermi's results on the capture of slow neutrons. Bohr immediately became terribly concerned, and interrupting Moller, talked and talked while walking back and forth. All the while you could see the liquid drop model of the nucleus taking shape right there before your eyes. For him no physics was of any interest unless it yielded some paradox or some beautiful way of seeing things simply.

I do not remember anyone at Bohr's institute who ever succeeded in finishing a seminar talk, even though he was the invited speaker. He might be able to speak fifteen minutes, but soon Bohr would take over and would use the whole time discussing the meaning of the speaker's results and what they proved or disproved.

Wheeler: Yes, I was down at the pier in New York on January 16,1939, to meet him, and I had hardly said "Hello" when I learned that just before his ship left Copenhagen, he had been told of the discovery of nuclear fission by Hahn and Strassmann. So we dropped everything else and started to work on fission.

During the war I met Bohr in Washington at the time he was dividing his time between Los Alamos and Washington. He told me confidentially about his discussions with President Roosevelt about the future of nuclear energy. He told me about his efforts to work out some kind of control of nuclear energy after the war.

Bohr made a great impression on Roosevelt and they had several discussions. The last speech Roosevelt wrote -- he died while he was still working on it -- had in it some words, quoted by Roosevelt from Thomas Jefferson, about how scientists serve as indispensable means of communication for bringing peace between different countries of the world.

It was enormously impressive to me to see Bohr's courage in facing up to what the great questions were. I can vividly remember him saying to me:

Of course, that is a very modest way of saying that one is a pioneer, an explorer. If you are working on something new, then you are necessarily an amateur.

COSMIC SEARCH: Niels Bohr created one of the world's most influential schools of modem physics in Copenhagen. You, too, have educated many leading physicists, both in nuclear physics and in general relativity, at Princeton. Do you have some thoughts about educating students?

Wheeler: Shouldn't you rephrase your question? After all, I'm sure that it is really the students who educate me! We all know that the real reason universities have students is to educate the professors. But, in order to be educated by the students, one has to put good questions to them. You try out your questions on the students. If there are questions that the students get interested in, then they start to tell you new things and keep you asking more new questions. Pretty soon you have learned a great deal.

COSMIC SEARCH: What insights can one gain from the collapse of a star into a black hole as regards the ultimate collapse of the universe?

Wheeler: I would regard the black hole as a here-and-now model for the collapse of the universe. We've come to recognize that in the typical closed model universe, a black hole that forms at some point in the history of the universe is not a singularity -- a Gate of Time -- separate and distinct from the Big Crunch, but is part and parcel of the same thing.

"Think of yourself in an ice cave with time pointing upward from the floor (the Big Bang). The roof represents the Big Crunch and the icicles represent black holes. The water level represents the time where we are now, beginning to engulf a few icicles. That's when black holes are formed."

Let me put it this way. If you'll permit, let's imagine ourselves as in an ice cave, and let's think of time as pointing upward from the floor. The floor of ice represents the Big Bang. The roof of ice represents the Big Crunch -- and some spikes hanging down, icicles, represent black holes. Think of water gradually filling the cave as it comes up, representing the advance of time. No water, and you're back at the Big Bang; a little water, and you're in the early days of the universe. More water and your time level is where we are now. As the water rises -- as time goes on -- it engulfs a few of the spikes, the icicles -- that's the moment when black holes are formed. Keep the water level going on up and you get to the point where the spikes are completely immersed and the water even reaches to the top of the cave. Then you have arrived at the Big Crunch. From this point of view, you can see that the Big Crunch or final Gate of Time is not distinct in nature from the black hole. They're the same kind of animal. In that sense, learning about a black hole is learning about the final stages of the universe.

Although many articles are being written about the outsides of black holes, hardly any deal with the question of what happens inside the black hole, on the way to the Big Crunch. All the indications I can see point to it being the direct opposite of what happens on the outside. The outside settles down to a steady standard condition. If it's perturbed a little bit away from that ideal state, it once again reverts to the steady condition.

But, on the inside, the condition is the exact opposite, in the sense that if the collapse of matter is not exactly symmetric, then the perturbations from the infalling matter will get worse and worse, and bigger and bigger. There will be so-called "mixmaster" oscillations. Matter -- and space geometry as well -- will be driven into a gigantic chaos. If, as we believe, the black hole is really part and parcel of the final singularity, then these "mixmaster" oscillations should be a common property of black holes and the big crunch. We have much to learn from studying this chaos from the theoretical end. That doesn't mean these extreme conditions have no observational consequences; they certainly do.

One might question this point. One might ask, what sense is it to talk about the physics inside a black hole? Who's ever going to fall inside a black hole? But, here we are living inside -- if Einstein is correct -- a closed universe, and we will eventually head into a Big Crunch ourselves -- so the laugh's on us!

COSMIC SEARCH: If that is true -- that the last laugh is on us, how does that affect mankind's attitude?

Wheeler: If the universe is only going to last for a finite time, I think it's far too early in the scheme of things to try to draw conclusions about how we should react. We're still so much in the learning phase. We have to keep separate what we're learning from our attitudes.

To me to live a one-life-only in a one-life-only universe provides a poetic parallelism. How precious life is! Every day, every person one meets, every experience -- that's all we're going to have. It distresses me that so many people go through life in an alienated spirit, not realizing that this is the only opportunity they have -- they'll never have it again.

COSMIC SEARCH: We certainly are at a very important time in mankind's thinking about its place in the universe. Thank you, Professor Wheeler, for sharing with us a glimpse of these great discoveries yet to come.

John Archibald Wheeler has been at the forefront of theoretical physics for nearly five decades. In the 1930's, with Niels Bohr, he developed the first general theory of nuclear fission.

According to the "liquid drop" model of Bohr and Wheeler (1939), a slow neutron entering a uranium 235 nucleus causes it to split like a drop of liquid into two smaller drops representing the nuclei of a tellurium 137 atom and a zirconium 97 atom while emitting two neutrons. Energy released by this type of reaction forms the basis of nuclear fission power.

In the 1940's, with a student, Richard Feynman, he discovered a new approach to electrodynamics which has proven to be of great value. In the 1950's he found new solutions to Einstein's gravitational equations of importance in astrophysics. In the 1960s he pioneered studies involving gravitational collapse, neutron stars and Black Holes (a name he invented). More recently Wheeler has proposed and analyzed "delayed choice" experiments. In them a difference in what one measures on the particle -- or photon -- now makes an irretrievable difference in what one has the right to say the particle already did in the past. This effect, which makes it impossible to monitor the events of nature with complete detachment, he calls "observer-participancy".

Wheeler is a scientist-philosopher whose thoughts encompass the entire cosmos from its smallest microstructure to its astronomical maximum, while spanning its past and future between the two "Gates of Time": the "Big Bang" beginning and the "Big Crunch" ending. The Gates of Time is also a term he coined. Wheeler's dynamic career gives special meaning to the statement that scientists are even more interesting than science.

Wheeler is Director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Texas, Austin. Before going to Austin in 1976, he was the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics at Princeton University, where he had been a faculty member for 38 years.

Born in Florida in 1911, he received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1933. In 1938 he joined the physics faculty of Princeton University where he served until his move to Austin in 1976. Wheeler is past president of the American Physical Society, recipient of the Albert Einstein Prize of the Strauss Foundation (1965), the Enrico Fermi Award for his work on nuclear fission (presented by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968), the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute (1969), and the National Medal of Science (1971), as well as numerous honorary degrees.

He is the author of many scientific articles and author or co-author of six books. His famous, monumental 1280-page text "Gravitation" (1973) was written in collaboration with his former students Kip Thorne and Charles Misner; his most recent, "Frontiers of Time", appeared in 1979.

A man of great modesty, Wheeler radiates a contagious enthusiasm coupled with a charming informality. He has a fondness for paradox as epitomized by: "We will first understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is".

Cosmic Search Vol. 1 No. 4

FORUM: John A. Wheeler

From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch

Wheeler on Science