Jesuit astrophysicist says science can enrich spiritual world, too

Published: 2005-01-28

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The alarm clock rings, you turn on the bedside light, you walk to the bathroom, turn on the shower -- all of these things revolve around physics. "Physics focuses on the makeup and behavior of matter, of the material world, of physical reality," said Jesuit Father Bill Stoeger, a Vatican scientist. But another reality is that most students tend to avoid physics, thinking it too difficult or nerdy a subject. The lack of young people getting into the field prompted the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to designate the year 2005 as the International Year of Physics in the hopes of revamping physics' image from frumpy to fun. "It's also celebrating some landmark discoveries made over the past 100 years," said Father Stoeger, a staff astrophysicist at the Vatican Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. The year 2005 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Albert Einstein's major breakthroughs in special relativity, quantum mechanics and Brownian motion -- theories that radically changed the way people see the world, and, say some physicists, the way people see God.

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