After a divisive and turbulent election season, many of us are looking for places of comfort, light, unity and worship as we head into the winter holidays.
The cosmos and its reflection within us contain such spaces.
By viewing and embracing scientific knowledge through the lens of humanity, you connect to your place in the universe. And when you do this, a window opens into the sacred space of our deeply unified existence.
Earlier this year, a celestial event cast its glare along a belt crossing our country – the total solar eclipse. During totality, day turned into night. The sun's corona glowed around its dark disk. A moment so instinctive and unsuspecting that animals could tangibly sense it. Across ages, circumstances, race and politics, the solar eclipse brought millions together in a community of cosmic wonder.
In my three-generation family, some drove from Illinois to Indiana, while others drove from India in time for the event. Our shared experience forged immediate bonds with previously unknown friends.
As a scientist, the eclipse also offered me spectacular connections to two modern revolutionary branches of physics that have completely changed our perception of nature: relativity and quantum physics. As my late father, a black hole physicist, was fond of sharing, a solar eclipse was needed to demonstrate the curvature of light around the sun, thereby sealing the predictions of Albert Einstein's 1919 theory of relativity. As for the quantum revolution, its technological wonders are a part of our everyday lives: lasers, semiconducting circuit elements, MRI machines, and more.
As a practicing quantum physicist, I am pleased about the unity of our common search. Scientists from around the world come together in the United States to collaborate, learn and mentor. Just like my parents – my mother, a biophysicist – did half a century ago. During the eclipse, I felt an even greater awe at the phenomenon that sparked this revolution.
People and stars emit light in the same way. An ever-present miracle on Earth – we are all completely luminous beings in our unhindered radiance!
What is this universal light? “Blackbody radiation,” as physicists call it, is the common pattern of light emitted by stars, heated metal, the universe, and you and me.
We are all radiant black bodies. Our radiation pattern depends only on the body's own temperature. A star has its peak in the visible range and, depending on the temperature, appears in all colors from red to blue in the rainbow spectrum. In mammals, which have similar body temperatures across species, radiation peaks in the infrared range. We can perceive our glowing heat through an infrared camera.
Our earth is also almost a black body. Save on the atmosphere – a thin veneer that traps heat and balances a temperature range that sustains life. A delicate balance that we humans can disrupt Pumping this veneer with emissions.
Quantum physics emerged from looking at this universal pattern. To understand it, you had to imagine light not as a wave, but as a bundle of energy, a photon. From these seeds emerged amazing ideas and theories that explain much of the world, starting with our current description of the atom. Today, quantum science is thriving around the world. Looking to the future US National Quantum Initiative It was passed as an act of Congress with bipartisan support, meaning that throughout 2025 the world will celebrate a United Nations International Year commemorating a century of quantum science and its wonders.
The seed that gave birth to all this brings to life a luminous sacred space. The universe, the stars, the people – all reflect each other in brilliant splendor. A sacred place of reverence and care that can be found in nature – lying in a pine forest, walking along a mountain range, immersing yourself in the immensity of the ocean. Or in an act of worship – praying together under a tower or dome, meditating in a sanctum, dancing in spiritual ecstasy, feeding a child, creating patterns of colored chalk powder blown by the wind. We are here like a single eruption in space and time. When we reflect on our mortality, don't we hold the sacred all the more precious?
In the afterglow of Thanksgiving—a relatively new holiday, cosmically speaking—I invite you to this space. An invocation that can bring joy, universal love and gratitude. A contemplation that comes as prayer. On the surface of the Earth we form a human galaxy of luminous beings, just as the celestial sphere is dotted with a billion luminous stars. Nodes of an interconnected complex network. We connect in the smiles of strangers passing by, in our exchanges, in our arguments, in a shoulder to rest on in moments of deep pain, in a shared meal, in a hug.
In winter the darkness grows longer and we light fires. We illuminate our festivities with bundles of light. In all of this, each of us has a shining lamp within us. Each of us is a radiant, luminous being.
Smitha Vishveshwara is a professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Public Voices Fellow at the OpEd Project. She is the co-author of the upcoming popular physics book Two Revolutions: Einstein's Relativity and Quantum Physics, which she co-authored as a dialogue with her late father.
Submit a letter to the editor of 400 words or less here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.