When Rigveda mentioned about The Big Bang (?)

Science and religion are often perceived as the two opposites, which ideally should not strike any sort of similarity. While religion is said to be based on beliefs, science questions – that’s where all the conflict starts. A conflict probably greatest of all this planet has witnessed over centuries, a conflict that is so deeply rooted inside us we tend to believe anything which is related even in the farthest possible way with the idea of religion, cannot have a scientific base.

Ironically in most cases, science and religion have tried to address some similar problems since the dawn of mankind. One such problem was the mystery of creation. This one by most of the religions though been attributed to God, like all other unexplainable or hard to explain ones – however, there are some unique places where the explanation in religion and science for this has uncanny similarities. One such is between the Big Bang and the Indian Creation theory according to the Nasadiya Suktam in Rigveda (10.129).

Big Bang, a revolutionary idea proposed by a Belgian physicist named Georges Lemaitre first in 1927, the proposition indeed answered a significant number of unanswered questions at that time. In 1929 the basic observable evidence of increasing intergalactic distance by American astronomer Edwin Hubble immediately multiplied the fan base of the theory.

At the base in layman’s term, the Big bang model said the whole universe expanded from an infinitely high density, high-temperature substance. After Hubble - Lemaitre law estimated the current rate of expansion of the universe, scientists extrapolated backward in time and recommended the idea of singularity state. The singularity state could be identified as the whole universe having been contracted in a very high (tends to infinity) density primeval nucleus – the moment which started expanding (or exploded), the universe came into being.

Before it exploded, what was there is beyond human imagination, it might have been an atomic substance with infinite mass and infinite energy density, where any rule of physics would not be applicable – hence the existence of the constructs based on those rules was also not possible e.g. space and time. Physicists would say mathematically, space and time both came into existence after the explosion happened.

The Nasadiya Suktam, composed some 4000 years ago starts similarly, describing what existed or not existed before the creation of the universe – no sky, no air, no water still there was or wasn’t something. This, in a surprisingly similar way, points towards the singularity state, which theoretically can be imagined but in the absence of time and space – the existence might not have been the way we understand the existence to be.

Verse 2 of the hymn further directs towards the state or singularity from the time angle, it says there was neither the time-bound attributes nor timelessness. The only thing that we know is "that One thing, non-existent, existed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever."

Verse 3 tries to imagine what could have been inside the state of singularity, inside the primeval nucleus the condition could have sported a similarity (but with much higher extremes) with the core of the black-holes as they are the highest density zones known to mankind – The hymn says, in the eternal darkness existed all that is there in the universe in the formless and void form – as the extreme gravity would have compressed the finiteness of the matters into infinitely small particles, close to being formless and nonexistent.

The way “Big Bang” was conceived – from singularity state there was an explosion for some unknown reason, causing cosmic inflation, at this point and the universe grew exponentially along with a drop in temperature at a similar rate.

While science could not explain much on the fact, why at all from the singularity state, the expansion itself might have started, the scripture calls it a “desire to begin” in Verse 4. As the hymn goes further to state “When the desire has risen, what is existent today started to come into existence from the nonexistent”. The rise in desire is dramatically similar to the extremely brief and dramatic period of expansion within a few fractions of a second after the expansion started. 

The scientists would say just one full second after the Big Bang, the universe was filled by neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons, photons, and neutrinos moving directionlessly in a sort of chaotic way. During the first three minutes of the universe, the light elements were born during a process known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Temperatures cooled from 100 nonillions (1032) Kelvin to 1 billion (109) Kelvin, and protons and neutrons collided to make deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen. Most of the deuterium combined to make helium, thus was formed the first two elements of the periodic table, followed by the others. 

The 5th verse of Nasadiya Suktam captures something uncannily similar to this, it says just when the expansion of the universe started it expanded in a directionless way. There were mighty forces, free action, and endless energy generated from this stage.

The 6th and 7th verses of Nasadiya Suktam however are the most interesting ones, it says we are free to anticipate that this must have been how the universe came to existence – but no-body knows, what happened and it’s not even quite possible to know as even Gods came into being later than the concept of existence (time & space) coming into existence. It goes on to say even then it’s really hard to comprehend by the Human mind as even the cosmic mind might or might not comprehend what happened at the time of creation.

Science unconditionally agrees here, the state of singularity and hence the big bang theory can exist only within the premises of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, when we move to Quantum Theory the state of singularity becomes unexplainable. Indeed this is still according to even science is an area beyond human comprehension, there are models which point toward situations (e.g. no space, no time), which are not the concepts yet not ready to be absorbed by human intellect.

Read how quantum theory disproves The Big Bang 

In all the cases be it through logic (science) or contemplation (religion) wherever mankind would try to comprehend something which is beyond the capacity, it would end up exactly in the way the Nasadiya Suktam concludes eloquently with the intricate most metaphor - “Whose eye controls the world in the highest heaven, he verily knows it or perhaps knows not”.  

-Avirup Chakraborty