With all the chatter about scientists having broken the 'light barrier' like the sound barrier was broken in October, 1947, this immediately prompts today's 'Question Everything' - "How can we see where we're going, if we're going faster than our equipment is capable of detecting and delivering information on what's ahead?"
And that probably calls for a new definition of 'ahead'. How do we determine a safe distance in front of our craft, for accident avoidance and navigation, if we're unable to 'see' anything that's out there? So if you're thinking that all that seems like some kind of suicide mission, you may be absolutely right.
As long as we're contemplating things like this, how about those guys who talk about parallel universes, and black holes? I don't doubt the possibility of the existence of parallel universes, because truth is stranger than fiction, but if as they say, black holes are gobbling up matter in our universe, and probably spewing it out at the other end of that inescapable vortex within its event horizon, then why doesn't that process in our neighboring parallel universe result in their own black holes spewing out 'new' matter into our universe here? If we're sending them the hearts of our galaxies, what are they sending us?
Or maybe we're looking at this all wrong - maybe this is the inevitable conclusion to the original Big Bang. Maybe those black holes are how everything in our universe will eventually fade away again into wherever it originated from in the first place. Something like the way a cloud of steam evaporates into thin air.
On the subject of the Big Bang, and the fact that hydrogen is said to be the commonest element in the universe, is it just me, or have any of you put those two thoughts together and come up with 'hydrogen bomb'? Is our universe the product of someone else's nuclear testing program in some gigantic parallel universe? Old Uncle Albert was working towards a "theory of everything", and so far, that remains undiscovered. Maybe if we had it, we could 'reverse-engineer' whatever's here now, and work it backward to that original Big Bang, and compare it to whatever happens within a really big hydrogen bomb during its explosion. So I guess what I'm asking is: are we the product of God, or the product of some unknown madman in some other universe unleashing forces best left in their natural state? We'll never know for sure, of course.
In a lighter moment, Old Uncle Albert once said: "The commonest element in the universe is not hydrogen, but rather stupidity." He followed that up by saying "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Gee, I didn't know we were talking about the speed of light. But then your memory must be better than mine. :-)
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some interesting points Ray. Since I was in high school, I've wondered if we could be nothing more than an experiment in some kid's fish bowl. Reality isn't always as it seems. Did you see the movie "The Matrix"? There is an excellent example of this..
On a lighter note, you quote "Uncle Albert" as saying "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." And as the great Lily Tomlin once asked "Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
@ Tommy -
ReplyDeleteI was scratching around for something to yap about, and saw in the news where the speed of light may or may not have been exceeded, so I thought I'd do a little thing about that...
Since we were in high school, there have been some wonderful changes, but we're still no closer than we were then to knowing the true nature of this huge reality we're inside.
If our solar system was one atom in an elephant's toenail, for example, there's no way we'd ever be able to figure out that we were actually part of an elephant. The distances involved for our size scale are just
too great for us to make sense of the surrounding macrocosm out there.
So it's anybody's guess, really.