Introduction: Why Does Cosmology Matter?

In the first episode, Eric Lerner introduces the podcast series and describes what will be discussed. What is the connection between the cosmos and us? A big part of the connection between cosmology and society is that, over the centuries, people have generally projected their ideas about society onto the structure and history of the cosmos—and conversely have used ideas about the cosmos to understand what is happening, or even what should happen in society. There is also a real scientific connection. We ourselves are a product of cosmic evolution—our sun and earth emerged from this process and biological and social evolution are also part of the evolutionary processes occurring in the universe. Learning in an accurate way about cosmic evolution can help us understand the evolution of our own society in the here and now. We’re not separate from the cosmos—we’re part of it.

Since we are part of the universe, the physical processes we observe in the universe are the same ones that can occur here on earth on a much smaller scale. In the hugely important effort to harness fusion energy as the next source of energy for humanity, what we learn from cosmic phenomena are the key to success. Indeed, the very existence of fusion energy was first discovered in the search for the source of energy of the sun and other stars.

The Big Bang theory tells a story of a universe that was “wound up” at the beginning by a giant explosion and has been running down like an old watch since then. A universe whose future is preordained as one of expansion and cooling to nothingness, to a state of final equilibrium. But once we realize that the Big Bang story is simply not true and not supported by scientific evidence—which we detail in our video series—then we are looking at a very different story. We are instead looking at a universe that observations tell us is “running up”, a universe characterized by accelerating evolution.