I can barely keep my eyelids propped open, but I wanted to share some thoughts before I lie down for some sweet, sweet rest.
We live in a stranger universe than anything we could imagine on our own. Recent science news give tiny little snapshots of this crazy reality:
- Scientists have discovered a black hole that has 18 billion solar masses. Apparently the average density of these special black holes can be lower than air.
- There is recent observational evidence for cosmic strings in the early universe, tubes narrower than a proton but so massive that a mile of it can exert more gravitational influence than the earth.
- There may be as many as 1024 –that’s a trillion trillion–primordial black holes (pinpoint black holes with the mass of an asteroid) in the center of our galaxy, wandering about.
We don’t even know what most of the universe if made of. The stars and light and gas and dust we observe make up around 4% of the density of the universe. The rest of it is dark matter (most of it non-baryonic–not the atoms and particles we’re familiar with) and dark energy. The Wikipedia article on dark matter has this to say:
Determining the nature of this missing mass is one of the most important problems in modern cosmology and particle physics. It has been noted that the names “dark matter” and “dark energy” serve mainly as expressions of our ignorance, much as the marking of early maps with “terra incognita”.
I’m not sure why, but I find all of this knowledge/ignorance simultaneously wonderful and sobering. I read a lot of speculative fiction, and this universe seems more fantasy than science. I’m going to retreat now into my constructed reality: a cozy bed, a down comforter and clean sheets, and the warm glow of Jana.
3 responses so far ↓
1 JoeR // Jan 24, 2008 at 5:26 am
I recently heard something that I found rather interesting and new to myself. It was actually rather counter to what popular (non-scientific, mass-media) thought is on the black hole. I think most people think of the black hole as a cosmic vacuum cleaner sucking in anything and everything that comes remotely near the black object and its vast reach.
What I heard was that when the star goes super-nova, the explosion sends out a large portion of the star’s mass, before collapsing onto itself forming a black hole whose event horizon is smaller than the original diameter of the star. Or so I’ve heard.
How does that affect me? Not at all, but I thought it very interesting, myself. Fun stuff, huh? Maybe they make good reminders that we humans shouldn’t be so high-and-mighty full of ourselves, in this vast unknown of a universe.
2 Rich // Jan 24, 2008 at 6:33 am
This post of course reminds me of the popular JBS Haldane quote: “Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
One of the things I’m very curious about is what forms of life we might encounter out there in the wide expanse of the cosmos. Does it fall into fairly predictable patterns? Does it vary only slightly within certain parameters governed by the same constraints (laws of physics?) that we see here on earth? Is DNA a common denominator? Carbon-based? One of the great things about SF is that imagination is the limit (meaning there is no limit to the diversity). Part of me hopes that is so. Or perhaps there are finite possibilities, at least within the ‘brane we call our universe… but what about the rest? :^)
3 Brian // Jan 24, 2008 at 8:22 am
B5 quote time!
“They are a mystery…and I am both terrified and reassured to know that there are still wonders in the universe…that we have not yet explained everything.”
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