| |
ZL2VAL > SETI 22.10.04 12:18l 119 Lines 5550 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : FB0319ZL2VAL
Read: GUEST
Subj: What's it all about?
Path: DB0FHN<DB0RGB<OK0PPL<DB0RES<ON0AR<ZL2TZE<ZL2TZE<ZL3VML<ZL2BAU<ZL2AB
Sent: 041022/0928Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:50188 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : SETI@WW
*Life, the Universe and Everything:
How Astronomy Addresses the Big Questions*
By Seth Shostak
The SETI Institute
posted: 21 October, 2004
7:00 a.m. ET
There are some questions that have curdled the brains of hominids ever
since they developed the power to ponder. Questions like "what is the
nature of evil?" or "what caused the Cambrian explosion?" not to mention
Freud's famous stumper, "what does a woman want?"
There's no doubt, however, that the query most universally posed is the
big one: "what's it all about?" What is the point of our existence,
where `our' refers not just to you, your kith, and your kin, but to
Earth, the stars, and the entire ball of cosmic wax?
In the interests of mental equanimity, most of the time you're going to
sail this question to the dark basement of your mind. After all, you've
got appointments to make and deadlines to meet. Not many of us can
afford the luxury, nor withstand the frustration, of constantly asking
ourselves "what's the point?" It's easier to defer that question either
to theologians or to philosophers who, presumably, are paid a salary to
think of such matters.
Could astronomy help us figure out the meaning of it all? Well, it can't
actually answer the question, but it can supply a context, much the way
surrounding seas give context to the history of Britain.
So what does astronomy say? As recently as the dawn of the twentieth
century, most people figured that the universe had been around forever,
and always would be. We were just a piece of cosmic flotsam, adrift in
an endless river. Then, only a single lifetime ago, Edwin Hubble showed
that the universe is expanding - thinning out at a rate that adds 20
billion miles to the distance between your driveway and the nearby Virgo
Cluster of galaxies every year. Indeed, as most learned readers will
know, recent astronomical measurements show that this cosmic stretching
is `speeding up'.
But never mind that. The important point is that an expanding universe,
perforce, must have had a start - a beginning. This has a nice
consonance with most religions, of course, which may explain why Hubble
took less heat for his discovery than did Copernicus or Galileo.
The kicker, however, is what happens next. Our Sun, a relative newcomer
to the Galaxy, will, like your least favorite uncle, go funny as it
ages. In another five billion years or so, it will swell up, swallow
a few inner planets, and boil away all that's interesting on our world.
Our descendants (presuming we have any) will relocate to a better
neighborhood - bringing along photos and artifacts for future museum
exhibits on "Earth: the Planet That Was."
They'll be able to do this a few times before running out of steam.
After all, most stars are older than the Sun, and the stellar population
boom is definitely over. The Galaxy is graying (although the actual
color change is to the red). The stars are going out. In about 100
billion years, the once-brightly spangled arms of the Galaxy will be
riddled with Sun-sized carbon clinkers, black holes, and quiescent
neutron stars - a hundred billion mute, stellar hulks.
The fun will be over, but the decay will go on. Chaotic encounters will
eventually strip planets from the corpses of their erstwhile suns, and
galaxies will slowly evaporate - spewing their dark and lifeless
contents into the ever-expanding void. Even massive black holes will
someday melt away, adding their mass to the inert and keenly cold fog
that the universe will become.
The cosmos will be a deathly silent graveyard, cloaked in perpetual night.
As best we can deduce from measurement, this somber scenario will play
out endlessly. There will be no reversal, no Big Crunch to start the
cycle anew. The cosmos - dark, uninteresting and inactive - will simply
continue to expand and thin.
So here's the big picture: the universe begins with a 100 billion-year
blip of activity, and then flatlines to endless paralysis. All our works
- all the poetry, the science, the tenderness, and the rock-and-roll -
all will be stilled and lost. The death of the universe is not just long
- it's eternal. The short, bright spurt at the beginning where we now
find ourselves is not only insignificantly short in the cosmos? history,
it's `infinitely' short.
There's a short breath, a quick bump, and then a line of nothingness
that stretches across the room, out the door, and down the street forever.
Given our seeming lack of importance, and the fact that there will be no
legacy in this universe, it's tempting to choose to live for the moment
(like your cat). Maybe thinking about why we're here is useless and no
more than a temptation to madness. On the other hand, perhaps one day
we'll learn something that will change this bleak picture, either by
dint of our own efforts, or possibly via wisdom sent to us by other,
yet-to-be-discovered cosmic beings.
Freud said "anatomy is destiny." His subject was women, but it could
have been the universe.
* The Big Rip: New Theory Ends Universe by Shredding Everything
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/big_rip_030306.html
-=###=-
73, Alan, ZL2VAL @ ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC (Sysop)
IP: zl2val@qsl.net
APRS: 3906.34s/17406.45e]
Message timed: 22:26 on 22-Oct-2004
Message sent using WinPack-AGW V6.80, by Roger Barker G4IDE, SK 9/9/04.
Zen Wisdom
----------
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
Then, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their
shoes.
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
