Lost Wonder

The Museum of Lost Wonder
By Jeff Hoke

Four Creation Tales

No one really knows where we come from, but as you’ll see, a lot of people had a good time imagining it. Some of these stories are theories, some are myths. The theories want to be facts. The myths want to be truths. Both are useful in combating the dreariness of the waking hours.

Ever since Hegel in the 1800s, philosophers seem to have given up worrying about first causes and ultimate purposes. We at the Museum of Lost Wonder think they’ve been missing out on a lot of fun. The following stories are provided to incur doubt, inspire wonder, help spur the imagination, and provide fodder for creating your own myth.

The Big Bang Theory Big Bang is a marvelous term coined as a joke by the astronomer Fred Hoyle. (He actually believed in a steady state theory.)

According to this popularly held theory, before there was anything there was less than nothing. Not only was matter and energy created at the first moment, but so was space and time. So there’s no sense in worrying about what, where, or when it was before it happened because those things didn’t exist, not to mention anybody to worry about causing it.

* Day One was the moment of the Big Bang. It was infinitely dense, and time didn’t exist yet.

* Day Two is called the “Particle Epoch” a period of expansion when subatomic particles were formed that lasted only an instant.

* Day Three is called the “Grand Unification Epoch” where four great forces organized matter. The weak, the strong, the electromagnetic, and gravity. Only 10-32 of a second had passed.

* Day Four is called the “Era of Nucleosynthesis” where particles formed into atomic nuclei. It lasted 1 to 100 seconds.

* Day Five, the “Era of Recombination” is when particles and energy linked together to form different matter. This day lasted a million years.

* Day Six is the “Era of Galaxy Birth.” Gravity condenses baryonic matter into clouds of gas. It lasted a billion years.

* Day Seven, the “Modern Era” is 10 to 20 billion years old. Superstructures of galaxies form, stretching as gigantic sheetlike filaments spanning hundreds of billions of light-years. It makes you wonder. If the universe is still expanding, Where is it expanding to? What’s on the other side of a hundred billion light-years?

Genesis Myth

Genesis is from the Greek “gignesthai,” meaning origin or birth.

This popular myth also holds that the universe was created in seven days. Myths, unlike theories, elaborate on feelings to explain how things happened. This story credits the beginning of the universe to a very human and moody creator, who, when done, takes the day off. It maps the first geography of the planet and goes on to describe how life began.