Religious scriptures across faiths have long offered descriptions of heaven and the path to reach it after death. Now, a former Harvard physics professor has reignited debate by claiming that science may
have identified where heaven is located.
Dr Michael Guillen, a physicist with doctorates in physics, mathematics and astronomy and a former lecturer at Harvard University, has argued that heaven exists at the “cosmic horizon”, the outermost edge of the observable universe. He outlined the claim in a recent opinion piece published by Fox News.
Citing Edwin Hubble’s landmark 1929 discovery that the universe is expanding, Dr Guillen explained that galaxies move away from Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. Drawing on Albert Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity, he noted that time effectively stops at the speed of light, which is approximately 1,86,000 miles per second.
According to his calculations, a galaxy located about 273 billion trillion miles away from Earth would be receding at light speed. This distance, he said, corresponds to the cosmic horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing can be observed because light has not had enough time to reach Earth since the universe began. At this boundary, time ceases to exist, Dr Guillen wrote, describing it as a realm without past, present or future, only timelessness.
He further linked this idea to Christian theology, arguing that it aligns with biblical descriptions of heaven as a three-tiered structure: the lowest level being Earth’s atmosphere, the middle being outer space, and the highest being the dwelling place of God. This highest realm, he said, exists “above” the physical universe, beyond human reach, and is home to non-material, timeless beings.
Dr Guillen also suggested that the continued expansion of the universe could symbolically represent heaven growing, as the number of souls increases over time.
Mainstream astronomers, however, define the cosmic horizon simply as the maximum distance light has travelled in the universe’s 13.8-billion-year history, with no scientific evidence of anything beyond it. Many scientists have dismissed Dr Guillen’s conclusions as speculative and outside the bounds of empirical science.
Dr Guillen, who has publicly spoken about his journey from atheism to Christianity, has previously explored the intersection of faith and science in his book Believing Is Seeing. His latest remarks have once again sparked discussion at the crossroads of cosmology and theology, drawing both interest and criticism.
