2. Modern Cosmology:

Since Copernicus' time, our view of the cosmos has grown both larger and more accurate. It is not our purpose here to explain the modern complicated theories of cosmology, but simply to summarize the present picture of the cosmos as seen by scientists. Our modern picture of the cosmos dates back only to 1924, when Edwin Hubble showed that our galaxy is not the only one in space; many of the faint spots of light that we see in the sky are in fact other galaxies as large as our own, but we only see them so small because they are extremely far deep in space.

Due to the force of gravity, everything in the sky is moving or orbiting around some point in space. The moon orbits around the earth, and the earth and other planets orbit around the sun, which also orbits along with other hundreds of thousands of millions of stars around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, which is in turn one of thousands of millions of galaxies all flying through the vast distances of space.

In order to give a clear spatial view of this immense universe, it is better to use big units of distance instead of using big numbers. The best accepted units of distance in cosmology are the 'light year' (9,500,000,000,000,000 meters), which is the distance travelled by light in one year, and the 'parsec', which equals 3.26 light years. Light travelling at 300,000 km/sec can go seven times around the earth (which has a circumference of approximately 44,000 km) in one second, but it takes 8.33 minutes to reach us from the sun (150,000,000 km). Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to us apart from the sun, is about 4.24 light years away. Our galaxy, like most other galaxies, is a collection of about 200 billion stars plus thousands of clusters and nebulae that form together a disc of more than 100,000 light years in diameter, and that is about 15,000 light years thick. The nearest galaxy to us lies in the Andromeda constellation, and it is about 2.9 million light-years away. Then galaxies are grouped in somewhat irregular clusters that greatly differ in size between millions to hundreds of millions of light years. The most distant objects discovered so far are about 13 billion light years away. These numbers above are simply approximate, just to give an idea of where we are (Hartmann 1990: 413).

It is now also well established that everything in the world is moving: nearby stars have proper motion, because they are pulled towards the centre of the galaxy, and galaxies are moving away from us, because the universe is expanding. On the other hand, and despite these various motions, the universe doesn't have a centre or edges. It is hard to imagine, but the universe is contained or curved around itself so that if you fly straight in one direction and keep moving in a straight line you will one day, if you could live long enough, come back from the opposite direction to the same point (supposing no gravitational fluctuations), just as it would happen to a person travelling around the earth.

The stars that we see in the sky are, just like our sun, huge nuclear fusion reactors that are constantly converting hydrogen into heavier elements and hence producing heat and light. But not all stars are the same: some are big and some are small; some are young and some are old; some are bright and some are faint. Also, many stars are dying and many others are born all the time in a process of very complicated evolution (Seeds 1990: 134-281).

So how is all this explained according to the new cosmological theories? We can't discuss here all the different theories in physics and cosmology, but we want to note a quick summary of the basic principles of the different models of the cosmos so that we can understand the potential importance of the 'Single Monad model' which we are going to propose in the last chapter of this book, based on Ibn Arabi's unique understanding of time and his famous theory of the oneness of being.