Thursday, September 19, 2013

The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos

By ESO/S. Guisard (http://www.eso.org/public/images/milky-way-cactus/) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Gravity = 9.8.

This is the only thing I remember from high school physics. I don't even know what 9.8 stands for, but I do remember the number, because my teacher had repeatedly told our class "if you retain one thing from this semester, it's that gravity = 9.8." And I listened to and followed that instruction, to the letter.

I've always liked science but I'm no good at math, and I think I had some bad teachers who somehow were able to make science boring. This is hard to do! Science is amazing - at least certain kinds of it. The study of Cosmology - reality and the universe - is one of those amazing kinds of science. Heck, it's probably responsible for at least 25% of Cracked.com's "Mindblowing" listicles. Reality is a lot weirder than most people think it is. For example, there is a very small but non-zero chance that if you were to walk into a wall, you will pass right through it. It is not impossible, scientifically speaking. The particles in your body all just have to line up in exactly the right way.

One of the things I like about owning a tablet is that it's made it easier to read a lot more books than I used to. Lately I've been reading a couple from theoretical physicist Brian Greene. I like him because he panders to people like me that love science but suck at math. I wouldn't call his books "dumbed down" (we're still talking 557 pages per book about the big bang, entropy, the arrow of time, inflationary theory and string theory) but they are not written for other physicists, as so many physics books are. According to him, much of what makes up reality on the deepest levels is hard for even other physicists to understand. But he makes it accessible even for laypeople.


Here's another fun factoid: according to the inflationary model of the big bang (the only theory that really makes sense and is supported by evidence still around us), our universe at one time was not only smaller than a grain of sand, it was also very light. The standard big bang theory would hold that it was both incredibly dense and incredibly heavy, but the inflationary theory holds that it could have weighed less than a speck of dust. Greene believes it probably weighed more like 20 pounds. That's the kind of thing that makes me put the book down and just think for a little while, because it opens up all sorts of questions as to what the universe actually is. The entirety of everything that's out there, all that vast space and billions of galaxies and their suns and planets, was something somebody no larger than we are could have literally held in their hand.

My wife often asks "but how do they know?" This is a legitimate question about many of the larger theories of existence and matter. But Greene lays out logical arguments for everything, and presents competing viewpoints when appropriate. Everything that we actually know about the universe - especially the weirdest parts (because we'd never have come up with some of this stuff ourselves) - is supported by physical and experimental evidence that's laid out in these books, not to mention math. Much of it has been tested so thoroughly as to be indisputable precisely because it's so unbelievable. And in at least one case - the Higgs boson - a major theory described in these books was actually experimentally confirmed just after the book was published!

(String theory as it currently exists is just that - a theory - but many other subjects in these books are confirmed as real, including the Higgs ocean that gives all matter its mass.)

I'm at that age where I start to wonder what we're doing here. Is the accumulation of all this stuff our purpose in life? Think about humanity's lasting legacy. After your death, what will you have done that will be remembered in 100 or 1,000 years? Some marketing campaign you worked on? I highly doubt it. Some gadget you helped put together? I doubt that too. Even music or art - they can, in very rare cases, last a few hundred years, but that's about it.

Humanity's only real legacy is science. The discoveries we've made in science are the only truly lasting marks we make - the only building blocks of our civilization that don't disappear. And science inexorably marches forward - we never go backwards in science, or forget things we've learned. To me, this must mean something. This has to be somehow related to our purpose in life. On this planet, at least, we are uniquely able to comprehend the larger universe. And we're all made of the same atoms that make up the stars - as Carl Sagan said, "we are a way for the universe to know itself."

Humans have a tendency to get tunnel vision, and to lose perspective on all but their own little personal world. In some ways that may be necessary for short-term survival. But even as the internet has made global news and information easier to come by, you see people becoming indignant about things happening half a world away because those things don't fit in with their personal world view. How, then, can you expect the average person to gain a universal perspective, and to really intuitively realize their place in the universe?

There was an article on The Verge a while back about how most young kids today will never see a starry sky due to light pollution. The really distressing thing was the number of people in the comments who didn't understand why this was a problem. Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series doesn't get enough credit for its social commentary (I guess it was too funny for people to notice), but in the third book of the series "Life, the Universe and Everything", there is a planet called Krikkit (its similarity to the English word "cricket" not being coincidence) that's stuck in a dust cloud where no one can see the stars. The people are friendly and good-natured, but as soon as they discover that other stars and planets exist, they determine to wipe them out. The resulting war costs half the population of the galaxy.

(It's no small point that it turns out that these people, who had no universal frame of reference for their existence, were being intentionally and easily manipulated into their xenophobic and warmongering ways.)

It was obviously written as absurdist comedy but the point is perhaps unintentionally made that failing to understand or "feel" that we're part of a larger universe can have real consequences. At best, it severely limits a person's thinking and perspective - it starts to really matter if you get that new iPhone on day one, or if you can someday make more money in a year than any of your friends. And we've seen what kinds of real problems that can cause.

Despite living in New York for most of my life, I've been lucky enough to see a view of the Milky Way similar to that at the top of this post (many times, in fact), and I think it's important for everyone to do so. There are still many places in this country with a clear enough sky to see it. Once you do, it's hard to ever think about the world the same way again.

I recommend reading both The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos.

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About This Blog

This is increasingly not a blog about Alphabet City, New York. I used to live in the East Village and work on Avenue B, but I no longer do. Why don't I change the name if I'm writing about Japan and video games and guitars? Because New Yorkers are well-rounded people with varied interests, and mine have gone increasingly off the rails over the years. And I don't feel like changing the name. I do still write about New York City sometimes.

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