Heaven Has a Physical Location, a Physicist Claims—And He Thinks He Knows Where in the Universe It Is
Drawing on basic cosmological ideas—such as Hubble’s law, which holds that distant galaxies recede faster than nearby ones as space expands, and the cosmic horizon, the theoretical limit of what we can ever observe—Michael Guillén, PhD, a former Harvard physics lecturer extended that relationship to the edge of the observable universe. Pushing that reasoning outward, he wrote that what many religious traditions call “heaven” could lie roughly 273 billion trillion miles away (about 439 billion trillion kilometers), beyond the cosmic horizon.
The claim fused modern cosmology with biblical imagery—and set off a rapid scientific backlash. Multiple outlets published follow-up pieces quoting astronomers who expressed disbelief at efforts to drape the observable boundary with physical or theological significance. Alex Gianninas, PhD, an associate teaching professor of astronomy at Connecticut College, is one of the scientists pushing back.
“The cosmic horizon is not a physical place, but a finite boundary beyond which we simply cannot see or communicate,” Gianninas says. That limit exists not because the universe ends there, but because light takes time to travel and the universe has a finite age, he explains. The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and light moves at roughly 300,000 kilometers per second—meaning we can only observe regions whose light has had enough time to reach Earth. Some regions are simply too far away: their light hasn’t arrived yet—or never will.
Guillén treats the cosmological limit as a natural stopping point for the physical universe—after which a “divine realm” may begin.
Gianninas says precisely the opposite: that space almost certainly continues beyond it. “Likely as a continuation of the universe filled with planets, stars, and galaxies, but there is no scientific basis to claim that it is the realm of God, the gods, or the peak of Mount Olympus.”
In a recent Popular Mechanics feature, University of Nevada physicist Michael Pravica, PhD, imagined concepts like heaven or hell—and even religious figures such as Jesus—as potentially hyperdimensional or liminal, emphasizing that he was speaking in metaphysical, not testable, terms. When I asked him about attempts to locate heaven beyond the farthest visible limit for this article, Pravica “had a little bit of a chuckle.”
Pravica is explicit that ideas about hyperdimensional spiritual realms belong not to physics but to metaphysics, a philosophical branch that deals with concepts so abstract they may have no foundation in reality, such as identity and the nature of being. “In the future, perhaps, if we develop techniques for accessing hyperdimensional tunnels or connections—absolutely, perhaps [we could measure heaven], " he says.
But not at the present time. “I cannot measure an energy that exists outside our spacetime bubble. We live inside the bubble. We’re talking about what’s outside it.” It would be great to pinpoint the postal code of the great hereafter using cosmological tools, but such attempts are destined to fail, because “heaven wouldn’t be tethered to normal energy or matter at all,” Pravica says. It wouldn’t obey gravity or ordinary physical interactions, because “it’s a different energy, one that exists outside the universe we know,” he says.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science...of-heaven/
Drawing on basic cosmological ideas—such as Hubble’s law, which holds that distant galaxies recede faster than nearby ones as space expands, and the cosmic horizon, the theoretical limit of what we can ever observe—Michael Guillén, PhD, a former Harvard physics lecturer extended that relationship to the edge of the observable universe. Pushing that reasoning outward, he wrote that what many religious traditions call “heaven” could lie roughly 273 billion trillion miles away (about 439 billion trillion kilometers), beyond the cosmic horizon.
The claim fused modern cosmology with biblical imagery—and set off a rapid scientific backlash. Multiple outlets published follow-up pieces quoting astronomers who expressed disbelief at efforts to drape the observable boundary with physical or theological significance. Alex Gianninas, PhD, an associate teaching professor of astronomy at Connecticut College, is one of the scientists pushing back.
“The cosmic horizon is not a physical place, but a finite boundary beyond which we simply cannot see or communicate,” Gianninas says. That limit exists not because the universe ends there, but because light takes time to travel and the universe has a finite age, he explains. The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and light moves at roughly 300,000 kilometers per second—meaning we can only observe regions whose light has had enough time to reach Earth. Some regions are simply too far away: their light hasn’t arrived yet—or never will.
Guillén treats the cosmological limit as a natural stopping point for the physical universe—after which a “divine realm” may begin.
Gianninas says precisely the opposite: that space almost certainly continues beyond it. “Likely as a continuation of the universe filled with planets, stars, and galaxies, but there is no scientific basis to claim that it is the realm of God, the gods, or the peak of Mount Olympus.”
In a recent Popular Mechanics feature, University of Nevada physicist Michael Pravica, PhD, imagined concepts like heaven or hell—and even religious figures such as Jesus—as potentially hyperdimensional or liminal, emphasizing that he was speaking in metaphysical, not testable, terms. When I asked him about attempts to locate heaven beyond the farthest visible limit for this article, Pravica “had a little bit of a chuckle.”
Pravica is explicit that ideas about hyperdimensional spiritual realms belong not to physics but to metaphysics, a philosophical branch that deals with concepts so abstract they may have no foundation in reality, such as identity and the nature of being. “In the future, perhaps, if we develop techniques for accessing hyperdimensional tunnels or connections—absolutely, perhaps [we could measure heaven], " he says.
But not at the present time. “I cannot measure an energy that exists outside our spacetime bubble. We live inside the bubble. We’re talking about what’s outside it.” It would be great to pinpoint the postal code of the great hereafter using cosmological tools, but such attempts are destined to fail, because “heaven wouldn’t be tethered to normal energy or matter at all,” Pravica says. It wouldn’t obey gravity or ordinary physical interactions, because “it’s a different energy, one that exists outside the universe we know,” he says.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science...of-heaven/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
