Editorial Comment
I don’t usually let this guy out in the world
The sorcerer’s apprentice is now the sorcerer
Something amazing is happening on Sunday [8/30/2026]
How a Canceled Spy Satellite Became NASA’s New Window Into the UniverseThe Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch on Sunday, will study dark energy and discover a multitude of planets
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/29/science/nasa-roman-telescope-origins.html
The Roman Telescope Promises a New Era of Cosmic Exploration
NASA’s latest offering to the stars comes from a legacy of great observatories that enabled decades of discovery and unearthed new mysteries about the universe
NASA began experimenting with orbiting astronomical observatories alongside its Apollo program in the 1960s, and by the end of the next decade, Congress had approved funding for what would become known as the Hubble Space Telescope. That was in large part due to efforts by Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer, who played a pivotal role in building out the agency’s space astronomy program.
Nahmanides and the Big Bang
The Big Bang theory is believed to have been first proposed in the 20th century, but was actually proposed much earlier by biblical scholars, taken from information in the Old Testament.
The earliest existing reference is in a commentary on the book of Genesis written by Nahmanides (1194-1270) Of course, Nahmanides never referred to it as the ‘big bang’, but this is basically how he described the first moments of the universe. Here it is in Schroeder’s own words:
From Gerald Schroeder: Genesis and the Big Bang
“In the thirteenth century, Nahmanides quoted a commentary on Genesis written 600 years before him, noting that prior to the existence of the universe, time did not exist. This was learned from the wording of Genesis 1:5, “. . . and there was evening and there was morning, day one.” It is not stated “the first day.” For the use of first would have implied an already existing series of days or a continuum of time when in fact on this “day one” there had been no prior time to this one day. Not a before and not an after. There was nothing to which one could relate this day. It stood alone as “day one.” For all the remaining days in that week of Genesis, the ordinal terms, second, third, etc., are used and. logically so. By day number two, and thereafter, a series of days had been established. Although it is difficult to comprehend, the creation of the physical universe brought with it a concurrent creation of time…
Nahmanides’s account of the first seconds of the universe reads like this:
At the briefest instant following creation, all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was so thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it. From this initial act of creation, from this ethereally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed.
Back to Schroeder:
“Nahmanides’s reference to a grain of mustard is the traditional way of saying, “in the language of man,” the tiniest imaginable speck of space. Nahmanides taught that at the beginning, all that is on and within the Earth and all the heavens, in fact all the universe, was somehow packed, compressed, squeezed into this speck of space, the size of a mustard grain.”…
The sorcerer is a metaphor for how the Universe began.
I happen to be the guy who opened a door…
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 