You are here

A subtitle for this blog could be "The cosmos, spaceship earth, and the 9/11 boatlift." That sounds like a stretch, but here goes:

I know that not everyone is as fascinated as I am by the universe and all its complexity. But recently, I've come across a few items that I found really exciting. More to the point for this blog, some of them reminded me of a message I need to hear periodically. The capsule version is something like this: “You are here. In the scheme of things, the scale of your ‘here’ is seriously unimpressive. Share nicely.”

What first triggered this train of thought was this video, a narrated, 3D tour of the universe. It shows the many extraordinary massive “structures”—so-called “sheets,” “walls,” and “filaments,” each of which contains of hundreds or thousands of galaxies, each of which contains billions of stars. Just watch 5 minutes of it, and you’ll get a picture of this unimaginably vast and complex cosmos. (FYI: The video is narrated by someone with a pronounced accent, so it’s sometimes hard to pick up every word. But it doesn’t matter. Just look for familiar labels like “Milky Way” (our home galaxy) and notice the recurring features of the universe–the Great Wall, the Southern Wall, etc.–for hints about the relative importance of our corner of the universe.)

This video, in turn, brought to mind a session I attended at the Conference on World Affairs last April (which I wrote about here at the time). The discussion was about the first photos of the earth from the moon, pictures you likely remember, like this one:

For many folks, early photos of the earth from space were inescapable proof of the meaningless of boundaries and borders, of the inseparability of nations. And for some, the first photos of the earth from the moon evoked another message. The sight of the earth floating against a black, empty sky were stark announcements of how alone we are. How distant from anything else in the vast void of space. How we have to be kind to one another, because we are really all we’ve got. It’s this latter message I heard watching the tour-of-the-universe video. The “Our world is so minuscule” message. I’m reminded of a postcard I used to have sitting in a frame on my desk. This image also made the rounds for a while as a t-shirt. It looked something like this: 

Finally, to bring home the message of the vast cosmos and our collective place in it, a friend recently sent me a link to another video. This one is on a totally different subject, a distinctly earth-bound reality: the 9/11 boatlift. Although I’d heard plenty of stories about 9/11, I hadn’t heard this one—magnificent though it is. Regardless of whether you’ve encountered this tale, I encourage you to watch the video. I think it will surprise and touch you. And remind you that “here” is a space we all share. We somehow know that in times of crisis. But I, for one, easily forget it in my everyday life. A reminder never hurts: 

We are here. We need to play nicely with others.

The universe (as we know it)

Finally, the long-promised, long-delayed blog on all things cosmic.

As you might remember, I recently attended a weeklong course on the origins of the universe … well, to be more precise, the origins and current nature of the universe as we feeble human beings understand it. For those of you who have absolutely no interest in the origins of the universe, I’ll be back soon with other less … um … lofty topics. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of the Andromeda galaxy—the one closest to our own Milky Way—to tempt you to read on.

Rather than trying to tell you everything I brought away from my week, I’ll share a few particularly fascinating tidbits in hopes you’ll find them fun, too: Where did it all come from? Is there life elsewhere in our universe? Is there more than one universe?

How big is the universe and where did it all came from?

You’ve likely all heard of the “big bang.” The point about 14 billion years ago when the whole universe (as we know it) was created, when an unimaginably dense concentration of space/time/matter expanded with such suddenness that all of existence as we know it was created in an instant. Within seconds, time and space had expanded astronomically, spreading out enough that light could penetrate the mass, and the atoms that would become stars and galaxies began to coalesce. The atoms formed stars, the stars collected into galaxies, and the galaxies into galaxy clusters. Over a few million years, an eye blink in cosmic time, the structure of the universe as we know it had begun to emerge.

We now have the technology to see beyond our own galaxy and far, far into the distance (which is also into the distant past—nearly back to the big bang). What we see is billions upon billions of galaxies in various stages of evolution. For an idea of how many we’re talking about, try this. Hold up a quarter at arm’s length. Now, imagine a part of the sky the size of George Washington’s eye on that quarter. The Hubble space telescope stared a spot of sky that size—one eye’s worth—a part of the sky where regular telescopes saw no stars at all, and this is what Hubble saw. This is the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field or XDF. 

Here's the amazing part: each of those blurry spots and each of those pinpoints of light, even the tiniest and most faint, is a galaxy—not a star, but a galaxy containing many billions of stars, like the Andromeda galaxy shown above. Multiply the number of galaxies in this picture by the number of George Washington’s eyes it would take to cover the whole sky, multiply that by 2 to account for the southern hemisphere, and you have an idea of how many galaxies there are in the currently known universe. This picture looks back more than 10 billion light-years.

So, given those billions of galaxies, each of which has billions of stars, how likely is it that there is a star/sun somewhere with a plant that is home to life as we know it?

Is there life elsewhere in the universe?

The question of whether there is (or ever has been) life on other planets is much more complicated than it might seem at first. First, there’s the question of what me mean by “life.” Usually we mean intelligent life—someone we could communicate with, for better or worse. But bacteria and amoebas are also life. Then there’s the question of time frame. Do we mean is there life now, or has there ever been (will there ever be) life? And then we have to consider what stage of evolution we mean. Humans have taken about 7 million years to evolve to our present state … what are the odds that we’ll find intelligent life that is currently at precisely the stage of its evolution where it is able (and wants) to communicate?

Which raises the problem of distance. A signal travelling at the speed of light from (or to) the nearest known planet that might host life would take about 2,700 years to reach us (or vice versa). That’s a long wait for a reply. Actual space travel seems unimaginable. The fastest outward-bound spacecraft yet, Voyager I, has covered 1/600th of a light-year in 30 years. That means it would take a spaceship almost 50 million years to get to the closest known planet that might be able to harbor life. I’m guessing it would be hard to find volunteers for the trip.

Still, despite all this, folks are looking for other life in the universe. In our own solar system, they’re looking for signs of past or present life on Mars and on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. This search won’t yield “intelligent” (i.e., human-like) life, but it could tell us some interesting stuff about the history of our own solar system.

And then there’s the search for life on planets circling other stars, i.e., extrasolar planets or exoplanets. The first sighting of such a planet happened in 1988. Now, nearly 900 exoplanets have been confirmed, and almost 3500 other observations have been identified as likely exoplanets. (For a running count, click here.). Still, virtually all of these would be uninhabitable—too gassy, too hot, too cold, too massive.

The hunt for a planet that could sustain life—one of reasonable size located in a star’s so-called “habitable zone” (also called the “Goldilocks zone”)—continues. Over 250 “candidate” planets in the habitable zone have already been identified in the relatively few solar systems that have been studied to date. Considering that there are estimated to be about 100 billion planets in our Milky Way alone (one of billions of galaxies in the universe), it seems very likely that life exists somewhere out there.

An important question (even for non-astronomy buffs) was raised during the Q & A after a talk at my course. The questioner asked whether we should be “excited or afraid” at the prospect of contact with other life. The speaker, an astrophysicist who hunts for Earth-like planets as her day job, answered, “Maybe they should be afraid.” After the chuckles died, she said, more seriously, “We’d better get our house in order, because we’re going to have company.”

Hearing the question, I was first struck by the sort of xenophobic assumption it conveyed. Why would we assume that another civilization would be frightening instead of friendly, enlightening, helpful, wise? Also, why would we assume that another civilization, should such a thing exist, would be interested in contacting us? If they’re advanced enough to get here, they’d likely know a lot about us before they arrived. You have to wonder how eager they’d be to visit a world where the supposedly "intelligent" residents kill each other and destroy their own home planet. Indeed, maybe they should be afraid!

Are there multiple universes?

Physicists are on the hunt for a unifying theory that would join currently incompatible models of how the cosmos works—a so-called “theory of everything.” That search has led to complicated new theories (about strings, ‘branes, etc.), which have led, in turn, to suggestions that ours may not be the only universe.

Over the years, I’ve heard several arguments for the possibility that more than one universe exists. On one level, this seems nonsensical—how could there be something else outside of everything that is? Don't worry if you find it baffling. Famous physicists have publicly agreed that the notion is incomprehensible, if mathematically logical. Our brains, my astrophysicist teacher said, just don’t seem to be the right tools for understanding this notion. But “the math,” as physicists like to say, “is clear”: multiple universes are definitely possible.

During my week-long course, I heard a talk by Brian Greene, author of (among other things) The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and  the Laws of the Deep Cosmos. Greene’s candidate for a unifying theory is string theory. Whole books have been written about this, and although I learned a ton from his talk, I remain deeply confused and won’t even pretend to explain it here.

But this much I got: For string theory to work, a few things must be true. Most importantly, there have to be 11 dimensions (plus time) instead of the three dimensions we’re used to. These additional dimensions are not visible to us because they are so tiny. Greene uses the analogy of a wire that, at a distance, looks like it has just one dimension–length. But to an ant crawling around its circumference, it has three. The extra 10 dimensions, he says, are rolled up inside the ones we know, much as the ant’s path is rolled up in what we see as the “length” of the wire. These various dimensions exist as strings, and these strings vibrate at different frequencies. In fact, what we understand to be different particles (electrons, neutrons, quarks, etc.) are just strings vibrating at different frequencies.

And what, you may ask, does this have to do with multiple universes? Couldn’t those little ant spaces just exist here? Well, not exactly. If other dimensions are curled up as invisible strings, these strings could have an infinite number of potential shapes, each of which would have a different vibrational frequency. This infinite variety of vibrational frequencies would point to an infinite number of possible particles and an infinite number of possible laws to govern them.

So what? Well, Greene asks, why are we only aware of three dimensions if there are so many? Why only a finite number of elements and a finite number of laws to explain them? His answer: because this particular universe, with this particular set of laws is the one that allows us to exist. All the other possible types of existence—the other possible dimensions, frequencies, and laws—exist because there are other universes where those particular forms of reality operate.

Again, making sense of this may simply be beyond the ability of the typical human brain. Although Greene and his colleagues seem to get it, I, for one, am left scratching my head. So rather than belabor it further, I’ll just leave it to you to imagine how exciting it was to hear this from someone who explained it really well (with great visuals). And who sent the audience away not stuck in confusion about the science but instead wondering at the anthropocentrism that allows us to think that our universe is the only universe. Why would that be the case?!

Which takes me back to an earlier blog about reflections on being and nothingness, also evoked by this course. I refer you to that discussion for further mind-numbing exploration of who we are in the cosmos.

And with that, I’ll wrap up the topic of astrophysics with a grateful nod to the joy and privilege of retirement. It was such fun to be able to dedicate a week to the sheer joy of learning more about a life-long avocation. And as a bonus, I figure it may have helped to keep my brain lubricated.

On being and nothingness, which are enough

We just got home from a funeral service for a friend who died last week while we were at Chautauqua in New York. On Friday, we’ll be attending a memorial gathering for another friend who died on the same day. Not surprisingly, matters of mortality are on my mind. I’ve awakened the last few days feeling off balance, and songs about living and dying have been running through my head. I realize that this is likely how my life will often look from here forward—at least until it’s my turn. It is my peers who are dying now, not our parents (mostly) but ourselves. Despite my outwardly sanguine approach to the end of life, I think I have to consider that these events not only feel sad, they also feel frightening.

This is not a new train of thought for me. You’ve seen bits of it before in my discussions of aging and the meaning of death. But it came up again, big time, this past week. First, unexpectedly, during my course on astrophysics, “The Elegant Universe.” And then again with the news of these friends’ deaths.

Last time I wrote, I promised blogs about three topics from my trip to Chautauqua: the experience of Chautauqua itself, thrilling stories of the universe, and musings on Being and Nothingness (to borrow Sartre’s capitalization). I’ve actually started writing blogs on the first two topics, planning to save Being and Nothingness for last. But events of the past week and the encouragement of some friends prompted me to get on with it. So here you have it: musings on the meaning of Being and Nothingness, life, death, and community.

It all started with a speaker who got stuck in Chicago. First, some back-story: Chautauqua in New York has programming all day, every day, some of which follows the theme for the week. During the week I was there, the theme was “The Elegant Universe,” so several speakers addressed that topic from various perspectives. One of these speakers was Jim Holt, a philosopher, whose topic was “Why Does the World Exist?” I was excited to hear this talk. It promised an exploration of weighty matters of existence, chance, and purpose, and I’m an old philosophy buff, so I love this hyper-abstract stuff. But severe weather marooned him in Chicago. Still intrigued, I went to the local bookstore and bought his book by the same title.

The early chapters considered a series of positions on the question of why the world exists (as opposed to not existing—i.e., Being vs. Nothingness). Most suggested that without a divine entity to create reality, eternal nothingness (the void) would prevail. I skimmed the next  few chapters, which were full of “ps” and “qs,” attempts to answer the question of why the world exists through formal logic: Is there a logical reason for the world to exist (or not)? Old philosophy buff or no, my eyes glazed over during this part.

But then, reading around in the last part of the book, my attention was caught by this line:

“Although my birth was contingent, my death is necessary.”

And this:

“The world got on quite happily for eons prior to that unlikely moment when I was abruptly awakened to life out of the night of unconsciousness, and it will continue on quite happily after the inevitable moment to come when I return to that night.”

Holt’s talk was to be Wednesday morning, and by Wednesday evening, I was deeply into the book and reflecting on these ideas. Then, Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, we learned about our friends’ deaths. The near-simultaneous news of their deaths flashed against the background of these lines from the book, and I started thinking a lot about death. The song “May I suggest” (which I have talked about here before) played and replayed in my mind. Clearly, it was time to think again about existence—mine and ours.

Another speaker had made a point that got me thinking anew about a very old question, and these thoughts seemed especially important as I reflected on mortality. The question: How it is that the universe has precisely the characteristics that allow for and sustain human life—not just life, not just intelligent life, but the particular form of life that we embody? Why, in other words, does this particular world exist in this particular form, and what does that have to do with us?

For many people, the answer lies in an appeal to a higher power: Clearly, they say, a universe so precisely attuned to us must have been created by a supreme being who intentionally brought both the world and us into existence, who made the world explicitly for us. But my thoughts on this question took me in a different direction entirely. It seems to me that, framed this way, the question circumvents a profound (if perhaps uncomfortable) possibility: It’s not that the world was made for us at all. Why the world is this way has nothing to do with us. Instead, the point is that if the world were any other way, there would be no “us” to wonder about it why it’s here. We humans are an accident, I think, of the particular physical events that arose when the stuff of the universe came together in this particular way. To assume that it happened with a purpose—especially, with the purpose of being perfect for us—seems to me inescapably anthropocentric. Holt paraphrases one philosopher’s position, “Our universe arose by chance from a quantum fluctuation in the void”—and, I would add, it emerged with properties that, by chance, resulted in us.

The latter part of Holt’s book (parts of which are quoted above) spoke directly to these reflections. If neither the universe nor we were created for a purpose, then what is the meaning of Being? And does this mean that the end is simply Nothingness? Remarkably, Holt dared write about the struggle to name the Nothingness we fear (his words are in italics, mine aren’t):

“The dread of death goes beyond the fear that the rush of life will continue without us.” Yet, I must admit that when I read this line, I acknowledged (perhaps for the first time) that some part of my fear is precisely this—the awareness that the world will go on when I die, barely missing a beat.

“It is the prospect of nothingness that induces in me a certain queasiness… How to envision this nothingness? From the objective standpoint, my death, like my birth, is an unremarkable biological event, one that has happened billions of times to members of my species.” Again, he nailed it. How distressing to be reminded that on one level, my death will not be at all special, that it will have no more significance than that of billions of other people.

“But from the inside it is unfathomable—the vanishing of my conscious world and all that it contains, the end of subjective time.” Exactly. How can we grasp, how can we even imagine the end of consciousness. The fact that all experience will simply stop.

It seems to me deeply, personally, albeit painfully, true that our being here—collectively and individually—is a quirk of cosmic chance. Our individual existence is, in Holt’s words, contingent—it might never have happened. But once born, our death is inevitable. And, since I believe that my death will be simply the end of my experience and nothing more (OK, I’d like for my cells to feed some trees or worms or fishes or something), my Being becomes a fortuitous happenstance and my slide into Nothingness an inevitable winking out of that happenstance. Describing the moment when his mother died, with him at her bedside, Holt writes, “I had just seen the infinitesimal transition from being to nothingness. The room had contained two souls; now it contained one.”

Some folks might hear in this a fatalistic, even morbid perspective. But for me, it is the most hopeful possible one, because it reminds me every time I think about it that what happens in these moments between the fluke of my birth and the certainty of my death is my opportunity, my responsibility. I have this time—however long I have between chance and inevitability—to give meaning to my existence. It didn’t come with my birth, no agent had a plan for my life; meaning is mine to create or to squander.

This perspective and the reminder it brings has new substance in the aftermath of these friends’ deaths. Each of them in her own way lived well and fully, gave much to others, thrived on the challenges of a complicated world. And each gathered around herself a broad and deep community. The woman who was memorialized today had already lived a full, productive, generous professional life when she decided, late in her life, to come out as a lesbian and work for the betterment of the LGBT community. She left a remarkable legacy that’s expressed in the work she did and the people whom she loved and who loved her with equal depth. The woman who will be celebrated Friday loved to travel the world, and she always performed good works en route to “spend her privilege” well. The folks who will be singing in her honor Friday know well the importance of community and the gift she was to theirs.

From where I stand, theirs were lives that enriched the world while they were here, and those of us who knew them are the better for their time with us. I have no need to seek an extraordinary origin for them or for the world they inhabited. Nor do I need the reassurance that they continue in some way, other than in the impact they had while they were here and its continuing echo in the people they touched.

For me, the amazing miracle—quantum fluctuation though it may have been—that gifted them to us was enough. And the thought that they were once and will again be star stuff suits me fine.