No! A Billion Light Years?
Ah, the supreme majesty of the night-time sky. It's there, the unimaginable colossus of space high above us as we lift our heads once the sun descends (or, more correctly, earth's face turns in its orbit around that heavenly body whose tremendous pull glues us to that orbit) and we marvel at the immenseness, the twinkling stars and other heavenly bodies, the occasional shooting star wasting itself, burning into our atmosphere, the satellites that spin the cerulean space and send down all those signals, convincing us of the quality of our intelligence.With a backyard telescope, some patience and a modicum of knowledge about the placement of the heavenly bodies the amateur star-gazer can pick out galaxies other than our own, faint but present. We can observe Jupiter, along with some of its satellites, and dream about the vastness of space, cold and alien to us, yet familiar through constant and casual observation, night by night. It's all up there, and we're down here. And not as though never the twain shall met, as we have, in a sense, from time to time, in our careful and costly explorations.
Now we're informed that astronomers have identified the largest emptiness ever yet discovered in our sky, a tremendous void hosting nothing at all, merely space with nothing in it to crowd out anything at all - a total absence of matter. Like our minds, totally absent, an irritating void when we attempt to comprehend the immenseness and activities out there in the firmament, replete with stars, gaseous and mineral, laden with metals; ice-laden dust, and mysterious dark matter; collapsars, giant stars, heavenly dwarfs heavier than our sun.
The void, it would appear, exists - can a void exist? - in a region of the universe far from where we exist. In contemplating the vastness of the universe is not anywhere far from where we exist? In explaining the size of this emptiness, this nothingness, this gigantic void, we are informed: "travelling at the speed of light it would take about a billion years and there wouldn't be much to see. A pretty boring journey", according to Lawrence Rudnick, professor of astronomy at University of Minnesota.
Consider: Minnesota is a large state. It is as nothing in size to the distance between the earth and its satellite, the moon. Yet think of the time warp in travelling a billion years, for in that space of time what once existed may certainly no longer be in existence. That which we see before us through the medium of powerful, polished lenses are merely items which are travelling to our senses through primordial time and in the travelling have ceased to exist; imploded, exploded, become dust of the universe to reassemble into another form.
A light year's distance equates to nine trillion kilometres. Can we conceive of such impossible distances? Can we equate such vast tracts of space with any kind of experiences we might be familiar with in our little planet? Upon which we have a plenitude of experiences including the travel of great distance - but in comparison to what? The size of that impossible void is analogous to great galaxies each holding in their gravitational grasp billions of stars; impossibly huge clouds of space dust.
Can we wrap our futilely minuscule minds around this immensity? Do our personal trials and tribulations in such a context have any meaning whatsoever? And the constant strife and horrendous upheavals both through natural phenomena and the indifference of man-made incompetence which we experience on this globe of ours, how do they fit into the greater scheme of the universe at large? Piffle. We are, in effect, ourselves as nothing.
In the words of the discoverer of this gargantuan void who claims not to have experienced any problems in contemplating the immensity of this Nothing: "I've been thinking about nothing for a long time, unrelated to this research." Is that what we are so busily engaged with, upon this earth, thinking of nothing, perceiving nothing, accomplishing nothing...? Which leads to yet another line of enquiry; as we do nothing, think of nothing, do we in fact exist?
Whose imagination are we a figment of?
But let us think then, that the world is both full and finite. And let us try to conceive the Nothingness that comes after the world has ended. When we think of that Nothingness, can we perhaps picture it as a wind? No, because it would have to be truly nothing, not even wind. In terms of natural philosophy - not of faith - is an interminable nothing conceivable? It is much easier to imagine horned men or two-tailed fish through composition of parts already known: we can only add to the world, where we believe it ends, more parts similar to those we already know (an expanse made again and always of water and land, stars and skies). Without limit.
But if the world were finite, Nothingness, inasmuch as it is nothing could not be, and what then would lie beyond the confines of the world? The Void. And so, to deny the infinite we affirm the Void, which can only be infinite, otherwise at its end we would have to think again of a new and inconceivable expanse of nothing. Thus it is better to think at once and freely of the Void and people it with atoms, reserving the right to think of it as empty, emptier than any emptiness. The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco
Labels: Environment, Nature
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, August 26, 2007
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