A curious thing happened on the Nova program, Death Star, aired in Portland tonight, January 08, 2002.  If I heard right, the narrator, Stacy Keach, near the end of the program, said that the first light in the universe appeared when the first sun assembled from the clouds of gas created by the Big Bang.

If that is what was said it would be a good idea if Nova's producers had a talk with their technical advisors.  One assumes when PBS does a program on  astrophysics they have at least one astrophysicist as an advisor.

At the instant of the Big Bang, the expanding universe was filled with mostly hydrogen gas.  No suns.  Just gas.  But, unless there has been a major shift in physics in the last week or so, that original gas was glowing hot.  The universe was a ball of light from the very instant of creation -- billions of years before the first star formed and turned on.

So, if Stacy Keach said what I think he said, it was either a stupid mistake or a natural one in that an anti-Christian bias permeates the people's socialist network.  If the latter, it's a shame, since it seems that this prejudice has now reached the point where it causes the presentation of bad science.  When it comes to what was first, the Old Testament told it like it was at least five thousand years before M.I.T., Stanford or Cambridge figured it out.  (See In the Beginning: Genesis and Science )  PBS had best add a Christian minister or a Jewish rabbi to their science staff so that their next program on the cosmos has the facts correct.  (LL)

(C) 2002 Oregon Magazine