Reeling from a divisive and turbulent election season, many of us are seeking spaces of comfort, light, unity, and worship as we look toward the winter holidays. The cosmos and its reflection in us shelter such spaces.
By observing and embracing scientific knowledge through the lens of humanity, you connect with your place in the universe. And when you do, a window opens into the sacred space of our deeply united existence.
Earlier this year, a celestial event cast its splendor along a belt crossing our nation: total solar eclipse. During totality, day turned to night. The solar corona shone around its dark disk. A moment so visceral and involuntary that the animals could feel it palpably. Transcending age, backgrounds, race and politics, the eclipse brought millions together in a communion of cosmic wonder.
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In my family of three generations, some drove from Illinois to Indiana, while others traveled from India in time for the event. Our shared experience created 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, would have liked to share, a solar eclipse was necessary to demonstrate the bending of light around the sun, thus sealing Albert Einstein’s predictions of relativity in 1919. As for the quantum revolution , its technological marvels are part of our daily lives: lasers, semiconductor circuit elements, MRI machines, etc.
As a practicing quantum physicist, I rejoice in the unity of our common quest. Researchers 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 a heightened admiration for the phenomenon that sparked this revolution.
Humans and stars emit light in the same way. An omnipresent miracle on Earth: we are all perfectly brilliant beings in our unhindered bestowal!
What is this universal light? “Black body radiation,” as physicists call it, is the common type of light that emanates from stars, from heated metal, from the universe, from you and me.
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We are all radiant black bodies. Our radiation pattern depends only on the intrinsic body temperature. For a star, it peaks in the visible range and, depending on its temperature, appears from red to blue in the rainbow spectrum. For mammals, reflecting similar body temperature across species, radiation peaks in the infrared. Thanks to an infrared camera, we can perceive our radiant heat.
Our Earth is also almost a black body. Save for the atmosphere: a thin plating traps heat and balances a temperature range that supports life. A delicate balance that we humans can disrupt by pump that veneer with emissions.
Quantum physics was born from the contemplation of this universal model. To understand it, we had to rethink light not as a wave, but as a beam of energy, a photon. This seed gave birth to mind-boggling notions and theories that explain much of the world, starting with our current description of the atom. Today, quantum science is thriving all over the world. For the future, the US National Quantum Initiative passed by Congress with bipartisan support, meaning that throughout 2025 the world will celebrate an International Year of the United Nations, commemorating a century of quantum science and its wonders.
The seed that gave birth to all of this revives a luminous sacred space. The universe, the stars, humans – all reflected in their brilliance. A sacred space of respect and care like you might find in nature: lying in a pine forest, walking along a mountain range, immersed in the infinity of the ocean. Or in an act of worship – praying together under a spire or dome, meditating in a shrine, dancing in spiritual ecstasy, feeding a child, creating patterns of colored chalk powder that will be blown away by the wind. We are here as a single shard in space and time. By contemplating our mortality, do we not hold the sacred all the more precious?
In the glow of Christmas, I invite you into this space. An invocation that can bring joy, universal love and gratitude. A contemplation that presents itself as a prayer. On the varnish of the Earth, just as the celestial sphere is riddled with a billion blazing stars, we form a human galaxy of luminous beings. Nodes of a complex interconnected network. Connecting in the smiles of strangers who pass by, in our exchanges, our altercations included, in a shoulder to lean on in moments of deep pain, in a shared meal, in an embrace.
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The stretches of darkness lengthen in winter and we light fires. We illuminate our festivities with clusters of light. In all of this, each of us carries within us a lamp that shines. Each of us is a radiant and radiant being.
Smitha Vishveshwara is a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project. She is co-author of the upcoming popular physics book “Two Revolutions: Einstein’s Relativity and Quantum Physics,” written with her late father in dialogue form.