Perspective
So astronomers are very excited about being able, they think, to reconstruct from images from a satelite circling the moon, the first few seconds of time in our universe.
Yes, there seems to have been a big bang (what came before the big bang?) and in the following millisecond, a growth spurt so vast it would, in the words of one scientist, concern any child's parent. If I have even a remote notion of what they are saying, a dot too small for the naked eye to see, a dot that somehow enclosed all the matter present in our universe today, exploded and its contents flew into every corner of what we now call our universe faster than you can blink.
How did all that stuff fit in there? And where did it come from?
Apparently this is the other shoe astronomers have been waiting to see drop since the first pictures were seen from the satelite three years ago. The suspense has been nearly unbearable, while the rest of us have been focusing on earthly matters. One scientist, who was at a conference on an isalnd in the Pacific when the pictures were first distributed - over the internet I suppose - was said to be so pleased and thrilled that he was seen to be walking the beach singing happily to himself.
The earth - our tiny piece of all this - is undergoing some sort of significant climate change, some of which may well be part of some inevitable cycle, and part of which is undeniably of our own doing. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we have been poisoning our own nest, putting particulate matter and carbon dioxide into the air, and it has affected the amount of sunlight that gets through to us and the amount of heat that reflects back off our surface into the atmosphere.
Some say it is irreversible and we are headed - ironically since it is climate warming that gets all the press - for a new ice age that will last 150,000 years and make the earth uninhabitable for our species.
Now I would personally hate to see our species come to its end, even though I understand that nothing is forever and that our species, like virtually every phenomenon is transitory. And I have grandchildren whom I hope will live out their days as I nearly have mine.
But it cheers me up to think about all this in light of that instant all those billions of years ago in whcih whatever it looked like would not have caused the most optimistic among us to imagine the scene I see out my window.
We humans quite naturally read all the evidence as being focused on us, how we are doing and what our prospects are. This big old universe may well be onto the next big thing.
Yes, there seems to have been a big bang (what came before the big bang?) and in the following millisecond, a growth spurt so vast it would, in the words of one scientist, concern any child's parent. If I have even a remote notion of what they are saying, a dot too small for the naked eye to see, a dot that somehow enclosed all the matter present in our universe today, exploded and its contents flew into every corner of what we now call our universe faster than you can blink.
How did all that stuff fit in there? And where did it come from?
Apparently this is the other shoe astronomers have been waiting to see drop since the first pictures were seen from the satelite three years ago. The suspense has been nearly unbearable, while the rest of us have been focusing on earthly matters. One scientist, who was at a conference on an isalnd in the Pacific when the pictures were first distributed - over the internet I suppose - was said to be so pleased and thrilled that he was seen to be walking the beach singing happily to himself.
The earth - our tiny piece of all this - is undergoing some sort of significant climate change, some of which may well be part of some inevitable cycle, and part of which is undeniably of our own doing. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we have been poisoning our own nest, putting particulate matter and carbon dioxide into the air, and it has affected the amount of sunlight that gets through to us and the amount of heat that reflects back off our surface into the atmosphere.
Some say it is irreversible and we are headed - ironically since it is climate warming that gets all the press - for a new ice age that will last 150,000 years and make the earth uninhabitable for our species.
Now I would personally hate to see our species come to its end, even though I understand that nothing is forever and that our species, like virtually every phenomenon is transitory. And I have grandchildren whom I hope will live out their days as I nearly have mine.
But it cheers me up to think about all this in light of that instant all those billions of years ago in whcih whatever it looked like would not have caused the most optimistic among us to imagine the scene I see out my window.
We humans quite naturally read all the evidence as being focused on us, how we are doing and what our prospects are. This big old universe may well be onto the next big thing.
posted by Blayney at 10:45 AM
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