The Way We Were, 15 Billion Years Ago : Astronomy: A ‘snapshot’ of the universe’s embryonic state is profoundly enlightening.

Ever since our earliest ancestors gazed in wonder at the night sky, humans have wondered: What is the universe? Where did it come from? How will it change?

Last week, the science team for NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft announced new findings about the infancy of the universe, findings that provide partial but extremely important answers to these ages-old questions.

The new answers are the fruit of decades of work and involve many technicalities; as always, they will be viewed by scientists with skepticism until confirmed many times. Nevertheless, there is excitement about COBE’s accomplishment in taking the clearest snapshot ever of how the universe looked 15 billion years ago, when it was a mere 300,000 years old.

Astronomers are historians. Light and radio waves travel at “only” 186,000 miles per second. Thus we see the sun as it was eight minutes ago and distant objects as they were millions or even billions of years ago; 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, or even 10 billion years ago, before the sun and Earth existed, the universe looked much as it does now--vast collections of stars separated by vast empty spaces. But the light from 15 billion years ago shows a completely different scene. We see not points of light on a black background but a uniform glow from every direction. Thus we know that the universe at the youthful age of 300,000 years was filled with gas not much hotter than a candle flame. This once-bright glow, dimmed and stretched into radio waves by its journey across an ever expanding universe, is what COBE sees.

For 28 years, since the glow was first recognized, scientists have tried to see in it the embryos of the stars and galaxies that were soon to form. For 28 years, ever more sensitive measurements were still not sensitive enough to find anything.

Until COBE. Now we see for the first time the tiny origins of the gigantic structures to come. This will help us to understand not only what came later, but also what must have come before, even in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. And, just as with life on Earth, understanding only increases our awe at the majesty of the universe.

Much remains to be learned from the ancient glow. Those who see the hand of God at work in the first cry of a baby will surely see it at work in the birth of the universe. Those who value only knowledge that relieves human suffering, or that makes a profit, will just as surely consider COBE a wasteful frill. Yet if COBE has not shown us man’s place in the universe, it has shown us a great deal about the universe in which man has a place.