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One hour, not of cosmic time, but of my more mundane variety, has now passed in our journey to meet the Cosmos. Color me 'underwhelmed'. Been there and done that before. Stifling a yawn.
Maybe I ought to qualify all that critical evaluation. I'm 81, and I've been fascinated by the physical universe ever since I first looked up into a clear night sky and realized this was mind-boggling, and beautiful, and mysterious, and even yes, a little scary. But that was then, and this is now, and I'm as they say a little older and wiser now. And I've seen Carl Sagan's stuff, and read something which impressed me even more than a flashy TV series aimed at impressing the rubes and earning a few bucks from commercial sponsors. The somethings I've read have included a couple of very interesting books; one by the astronomer Paolo Maffei, who takes us on an imaginary flight in a mythical spacecraft (not unlike Neil Degrasse Tyson's imaginary machine) on a trip from here to the outer limits of the universe, making stops at various interesting places along the way - binary systems, colliding galaxies, and so on; the other notable book, smaller than Paolo Maffei's 'Beyond The Moon' is one titled 'God and the Astronomers' by Robert Jastrow. Among other things, it mentions how astronomers and others like Einstein reacted to the discovery that there was an abrupt beginning to the universe - The Big Bang. How did they rationalize such a beginning with the concept of God? You'll have to read the book...
The more we learn, the less we really seem to know for sure. When I was a kid, I read a comic book that imagined 'worlds within worlds' - the macrocosm of one being the microcosm of another. Fiction, right? In retrospect, maybe not...
It has always taken something to make other somethings. A something cannot be made from the combination of several nothings. There must be some other somethings to combine. So it seems logical to assume that our solar systems and galaxies may well be the atoms and molecules and cells perhaps of yet other macrocosms, in which we're part of their microcosm.
And a Big Bang involving almost unimaginable heat, pressure and expansion coupled with a resulting expanding universe comprised mostly of clouds of hydrogen gas would immediately suggest to me a Hydrogen Bomb explosion and its dissipating clouds of radioactive gases and dust and debris. Making us the products of a process of cooling and radioactive decay, and making our God somewhat further distant than we have traditionally chosen to believe... and this is what I mean by saying 'the more we learn, the less we really know for sure'.
The universe is so vast, and we so tiny in comparison, it's difficult to contemplate the immensity and complexity of it all, because we're unable to get it all into perspective, and 'get a good look at it'. So there comes a point where
religion and science and imagination all meld together into what's basically a primordial soup of theories and a hotbed of intrigue. Caution is advised.
I going to try and hold off with judging it, for now. Of course the animation puts me over the edge, as I think it might for Carl Sagan as well..
ReplyDeleteI'm reading you loud and clear, Tom.
ReplyDeleteI've been looking for two days for that book by Paolo Maffei, 'Beyond The Moon', and I can't find it anywhere. I must have loaned it to someone, because I wouldn't throw it away.
I think this Italian Astronomer did a more interesting story than we've seen on TV so far.
It may improve later on, but like you, I don't think the cartoony stuff adds anything to the science or the entertainment value of it. If someone's trying to teach me something about astrophysics, or nuclear radiation involving Alpha particles, Beta and Gamma Rays, etc., then they shouldn't dress it up like a Donald Duck meets
Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. Not even kids can learn much from that.
I got the impression he's recycling others' works, and not well either. At the risk of being repetitive, I have to say again "you don't get a second chance to make a first impression." And Carl Sagan and
others like Paolo Maffei have already covered this ground quite thoroughly, with the possible exception of the 'multiverses' concept, but that's only a logical progression from where we've been for decades now.
Once upon a time, the Flat Earth people believed that if you came to the edge, you could drop off into nothingness and be lost forever. In early times, they though much the same about the extent of the known universe, which we may rightly assume to be virtually endless.
If we experience 'bigger and smaller' in our known macrocosm/microcosm then it's logical to assume it's a progression that continues both
larger and smaller than we are able to detect. Our 'galaxies' may be someone's subatomic particles, and our Quarks may be someone else's galaxies, for all we're able to prove at present.
If I were devoutly religious, I might even be able to tie that theory to the concepts of good and evil being equated to larger and smaller, respectively. That would mean we might get to Heaven in stages, by progressing to higher or larger parallel universes, and to Hell by going downward in similar degrees to smaller and less pleasant types of environments. I'd bet there's a lot more to it than meets the eye of the beholder. We are certainly not privy to the secrets of the universe, no matter what the smooth talkers would have us believe.
And that means a PhD in Astrophysics may not be any better at 'guesstimating' answers than me and my PhD in Stupid.
I'm with you Ray. At least we have the PhD in the same subject.
ReplyDelete:-)