Did time have a beginning?
Einstein’s toppling of Newton’s theories remains a staggering achievement for humanity, let alone science. But even Einstein did not grasp the full implications of his own work. It took the courageous insight of Belgian cleric and astronomer Georges Lemaître for Einstein to realise that his conception of a static, non-evolving Universe must change as well. In 1927 Lemaître, an outstanding mathematician, discovered in Einstein's equations a daring new idea: a changing and expanding Universe. If the Universe is expanding, it must have been smaller in the past. Did the Universe, and perhaps even time itself, have a beginning?
Lemaître’s poetic proposal envisaged the origin of the world as a ‘primeval atom’ or ‘cosmic egg’. He imagined it as a single quantum of astounding density, smaller than the head of a pin, whose disintegration gave rise to space, time, matter and eventually the complex cosmos we see today.
The astonishing diagrams Lemaître produced to see how the newborn Universe would grow, sit alongside Constantin Brâncuși’s photograph The Beginning of the World, created in the same time period.
Although neither knew about the other’s work, Brâncuși also evokes what a beginning might be using an abstract egg-shaped form. Other artworks connect to the sense of experimentation, bold intellectual pursuit, and collective effort that this scientific journey personifies. Take your own journey of discovery with a frozen moment of sunlight or a spiralling sculptural representation of the movement of time. What happens when you immerse yourself in the colours of a slow-bleed rainbow explosion, view the Milky Way through a cluster of naked-eye drawings or imagine living in alternative dimensions?