Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 28, 1995 TAG: 9509280020
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The screw-up certainly was a blow to the space program, as well as to complacency about America's technological pre-eminence.
Yet, much gnashing of teeth and many lampoons later, the construction errors were found and, amazingly, fixed, and scientists were able to peer into the depths of the universe from outside Earth's atmosphere. These facts, dutifully reported, have caused barely a ripple in the stream of public comment.
Such is the crisis nature of day-to-day news. What is of immediate impact gains rapt, if short-lived, attention. Truly momentous developments can attract scant notice, their ultimate significance not readily capsulized for easy consumption.
Well, is anything more momentous than finding out about the origin of our universe? Is anything more sensational than scientists' growing capacity to address questions once presumed the permanent domain of religious speculation?
Part of the problem here is our tendency to focus on conflict. When discoveries challenge the conventional wisdom, they often are framed in the most dramatic terms possible so as to register at all on the public-interest meter. Thus, when a team of Hubble scientists last year released preliminary findings indicating that the universe is billions of years younger than previously thought, the ensuing scientific controversy led to reports that the "big bang" theory of the origin of the universe had been blown apart.
In fact, reports of its death were greatly exaggerated. Ninety-nine percent of scientists concur that the universe started with a bang. What is thrown into question - and in the wild world of cosmology, this is a passionate debate - is the rate of the universe's expansion. That is the key unlocking the mystery of its age.
Excuse us for saying "wow," but cosmologists are now gathering and sifting information that may answer this fundamental question, one that theologians and philosophers have pondered from time immemorial. It is an astounding prospect.
Within the controversy, moreover, lies a lesson about science that deserves more attention. It is about a limitation that can frustrate Americans who demand immediate results and absolute answers, yet is profoundly powerful. In a word, science is tentative. Its method doesn't stake out Truth. It works toward truth.
So the conflicts on which news stories focus suggest neither that scientists are unable to get their act together nor that their enterprise is but an irrational succession of contradictory theories.
Plenty of room remains for speculation: about what preceded the big bang, for example, and about what occurred immediately after it, before laws of physics as we know them came into play. The big bang itself, for that matter, may prove one day incorrect.
Even so, cosmologists are debating against a backdrop of increasing consensus on an amazing amount of knowledge that has been, by scientific method, verifiably accumulated. In this light, evidence that contradicts a belief is not a crippling blow. It is a step on a journey.
We haven't the foggiest, of course, where all this is headed. But with respect to discovery, we are confident of one thing. While those demanding static answers to universal mysteries may grow disillusioned, those who enjoy the trip can look forward to a wondrous ride.
by CNB