Since Yom Kippur is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, it makes sense that we use this time to contemplate big things.
As we pray, fast and seek atonement, we hope also to be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. That is the typical time frame within which we operate: roughly one year at a time. Beyond that, we may stray into territory best described by the joke, “How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans.”
During the same week we pray for another year of health and happiness, the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Dr. Saul Perlmutter, a U.C. Berkeley physicist who deals in time frames considerably longer than a year. More like infinity.
We congratulate the professor on his prize. How wonderful it must be to spend one’s life investigating the deepest secrets of the universe.
Upon winning, Perlmutter said his work reflects “humanity’s long quest to understand our world and how we got here.” One physicist colleague called Perlmutter’s work “the biggest discovery in the history of science.”
Perlmutter headed a team that proved the universe is expanding at a velocity too great to ever slow or reverse. This means that, rather than contracting over time to the point of another Big Bang, the galaxies will forever wander away from each other. Eventually all the stars will die, and the universe will grow cold.
So apparently T.S. Eliot was right: The world really will end not with a bang but with a whimper.
At first glance, the scene is reminiscent of the biblical version of creation, when the Earth was empty and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Only this time, according to the astrophysicists, there will be no second chance at creation. That is certainly a discomfiting thought. And yet we arrive at another Yom Kippur to take stock.
In the U’netaneh Tokef prayer chanted on Yom Kippur, we wonder who shall perish by water, who by fire, who by sword, who by beast. We never know when our time is up. However, thanks to the work of Perlmutter and his Nobel-winning colleagues, we now know even the very universe has an expiration date.
Where does this leave us? Right where we were. There is still a lot of life left in this universe, a lot of life left on planet Earth, within humanity and the Jewish people. If anything, Perlmutter’s discovery should quicken our desire to make the most of every living moment.
How small is our place in the universe, yet how magnificent our yearning to comprehend it.
We wish our readers an easy fast and a meaningful Yom Kippur.