The universe is to go on for ever, it was announced last week to audible sighs of relief worldwide. No bang, no whimper. If the researchers' claim is proven, it will take its place as a paradigm shift in our understanding of reality.
Paradigm shifts occur in religion, too. The Reformation is referred to by historians as a "Copernican revolution" because the recovery of an accurate working text of the New Testament by Renaissance philologists led inadvertently to a massive re-evaluation of the meaning of salvation.
That revolution in the church led to sweeping changes in every discipline, and contributed to the rise of modern science.
Tomorrow, the Gospel reading continues to confront us with a more fundamental revolution, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is among those rare stories that overthrow our most cherished opinions.
St Luke reports that Jesus of Nazareth, in a resurrected body still bearing the marks of crucifixion, stood among the disciples eating a fish supper (Luke 24: 3648) - proof that he was no ghost or disembodied spirit.
Most civilisations have held the view that the soul is immortal but the idea that the body will also share in the post-death system is unique to the Christian faith, and indeed revolutionary.
Ancient religions and philosophers despised the body but the Bible gives it an honourable role. It was made directly by God himself in the Genesis account, and taken by the Son of God into his own person in the incarnation when "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14), thus bringing deity and materiality into the closest possible union.
The bodily resurrection of Jesus underscores why Christian theology has a profound concern for the welfare of the body, whether that be in embryo in the womb, or at the other end of life in its decrepitude in a hospice. Abortion on demand and euthanasia are equally anathema to biblical ethics.
Scrutiny of the available information about Jesus's post-resurrection body arouses our legitimate self-interest. In his Letter to the Philippians, St Paul announces that since believers are already citizens of heaven, the Saviour's return inevitably predicates that "he will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3:21).
In extended teaching on this theme in his First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, the apostle identifies four distinct ways in which the Christian's resurrection body will parallel the Lord Jesus's "glorious body" which the disciples scrutinised and touched at his invitation in the post-Easter appearances.
First, it will be imperishable. Now, we are subject to the law of entropy and, as part of the cosmic energy system, our bodies run down. In the world to come, there will be no entropy; the body will know no corruption.
Secondly, it will be glorious. Created in the image of God, but fallen, we shall be restored not only in spirit but also in the realm of the physical. We will have glorious bodies modelled on Christ's resurrection prototype.
Thirdly, it will be powerful. Dead bodies respond to no stimulus, they are unable to initiate or effect anything. But if heaven is to be a physical universe, God's people then will have physical bodies with more energy, more stamina, more co-ordination, more durability than ever.
Fourthly, it will be a spiritual body - an imperishable, glorious, powerful, material body which is fully amenable to the Holy Spirit, offers him no resistance and is in complete harmony with his purposes.
The perspective which all of this opens on present suffering and heartache is nowhere offered in Scripture as a placebo or panacea but as revolutionary thinking, a massive paradigm shift, about the way things really are.
Resurrection hope transfuses otherwise unbearable present realities with the awareness that one day we will experience a resurrection in glory guaranteed by, and commensurate with, what Christ achieved on the cross of Calvary.
The final maternal flourish of God's pastoral care of his redeemed people at the doorway to the presently unimaginable scenario of a renewed heaven and earth is that "he will wipe every tear from their eyes" (Revelation 21:4).
Then, at last, the resurrected Saviour will be one with his resurrected community at the end of salvation history. Which is why Bishop Wallace Benn of Lewes, a Dubliner, makes a prediction in his latest book which is at least as safe as last week's eternal universe theory: not until heaven will Kleenex go out of business!