Adam Small
In my newspaper reading, I am always happy to discover snippets of scientific information. The past few weeks have provided much more than bits and pieces, especially as far as astronomy is concerned. A real feast.
Today, then, I take to thoughts on these ideas, removing ourselves (as far as possible) from the obfuscating political noise around, promoted as it is by disrespect for great perceptions – and distancing ourselves also from the irritating ongoing din of student inanities (in protest about this and that).
These fragmented(?) thoughts are not entirely untested. I have a good soundboard: a scientifically trained son. My own interest is more encompassing, extending to literature – poetry in particular. (I find the confluence of science, philosophy and poetry entirely natural.)
Some of the content of the recent reports is obviously pure guessing. There is nothing wrong with this, science being a matter of conjecture anyway (and the testing of it, of course).
Professor of cosmology at the University of Arizona, Lawrence Krauss, has come up with a story about what Einstein called “gravitational waves”. Einstein only surmised these waves to exist, but their actual existence has now been confirmed (by Krauss)! He later retracted, telling Science Magazine he merely tried “to get people talking again” about Einstein’s idea.
These “waves” are seen as the tremblings or vibrations (spasms) that resulted a split-split second after the Big Bang, which, “in the beginning”, started the universe. They moved out then, “exponentially”, faster than light, “up and down and in and out”, like ripplings on the surface of a pond when a stone is dropped in it – the pond, in this case, being the universe. (Einstein’s conjecture clearly remains the only substantial “fact” in this regard.)
Supposing these post-Big Bang waves are still awash to the various shores of the universe, understandably, we will, from time to time, hear about “new” planets and stars being found. One such planet apparently appeared in our sun-system recently and, since it did not have a name yet, has been called Planet Nine (one more, that is, than the eight we have and, until now, thought there were). The new planet seems to be a truly massive body which, says the Astronomical Journal, “takes between 10 and 20 thousand years to circle the sun once”! It lies on the very outskirts of our solar environs, beyond tiny Pluto.
(Pluto is problematic because of its smallness, and mainstream cosmologists do not consider it a planet. But what is it, then?)
The discovery of Planet 9 was made by cosmology researchers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, of the California Institute of Technology. The projected body they thought to be ten times the size of Earth. They admit to not having sighted it directly, but it “must be there” (given the cosmological detail of that part of our solar surrounds), and calculate the chances that it isn’t there to be only 0.007 percent (whatever that might mean).
Gobbledygook thinking? Not necessarily. And the scientific situation at the moment is that “astronomers from all over the world” are telescopically seeking the new planet, hoping to confirm its reality.
Exploration and discovery are “as old as man”. Stone Age people were engaged in it. Later came the Marco Polos, Ferdinand Magellans, James Cooks and Christopher Columbuses, the Bartholomew Diazes and Vasco da Gamas and, in our time, the Neil Armstrongs and Edwin Aldrins. All these explorers would, to start with, mostly not know where they were heading and, when they did arrive somewhere, what it was they had discovered. The instruments of discovery, over time, were, variously, man’s feet, or sailing ships he built (or, like in the demonstration by Thor Heyerdhal, rafts of wood) and, in our time, telescopes (visual or, mainly, virtual).
Some explorers, tragically, died in their effort – like, once or twice so far, American and other astronauts, men and women.
Away from seeking out literal places, psychologists are another type of explorer. They journey inward, curious about the human “soul” and brain, and have made important discoveries (which also often beg the question: of what exactly?).
In their own way, poets are explorers, their kind of seeking being to find new ways of using words. Sometimes (in the case of poets of stature) they succeed, and sometimes not (being deluded to think – just like hapless critics of their work – that they have found something when, in truth, they have found nothing).
Returning to the skies, another exciting recent report was about the “alignment” of planets happening right now (between 20 January and 20 February). From Mercury onward, during this time, the five planets closest to the sun would, to an “objective” observer, form a straight line and be observable with the naked eye, around three-quarters of an hour before sunrise.
Doomsday people believe this will cause earthquakes, volcanic outbursts and the like. However, the vice-president of the South African Astronomical Society, Case Rijsdijk, thinks differently: “The effect on Earth will be immeasurably small (and) poses no danger to people at all”, and it would be “pseudo-science” to believe otherwise.
Some people even thought “the fate of children” born during this time would be determined by the alignment. Rijsdijk sensibly reminds us that “the stresses of childbirth are far worse” than whatever might transpire because of this planetary happening.
A book published in 1974 by an astrophysicist, John Gribbin, contributed to people’s anxiety. It predicted bad things to follow the alignment. Gribbin later apologised for his scaremongering. (There are, indeed, scientists and scientists!)
Rijsdijk, furthermore, is right to think that many people simply “love claims leading up to doomsday prophesies”: it is part of “human nature”. Darkness in the offing seems to offer exhilaration.
We may also note that planets and stars have a lifespan. Like all beings, they live and later die – that is, return to non-being, which, in turn, opens on to new existence. Non-being, then, appears, meaningfully, also to be being. Credible scientists a while ago published a (supernova) finding about a “unique” star, known only as AS-ASSN-151, this being one illustrative example of the death of a star (sun) – a “supernova” being an exploding star or a star in death throes.
AS-ASSN-151, we are told, is the biggest supernova observed to date. The happening could not be confirmed outright: it was taking place too far away, 3.8 milliard light years! Our South African SALT (the great telescope at Sutherland) helped to determine its distance out from Earth, and its brightness (20 times the light in our entire Milky Way galaxy!).
According to Professor Stanek, of the University of Ohio, the energy required for such brightness emanated from the star’s rotation, a thousand times per second and, in the process, transforming this energy to light (a mini-Big Bang, that is, with all its consequences).
All these magnitudes – of distance, light, and so on – mean little to the “ordinary mind” (or any mind). We can only go by the “facts” as provided by the radar (so to speak), which is in order, for the good reason that it makes us aware of the frightening, yet wonderful greatness of our world (and galaxy and universe). Again, the unanswerable but always meaningfully askable question is: How did all of this come about?
Creation, the way all Scripture speaks of it, is as good an answer as any. And does evolution really contradict the idea of Creation?
When still very young, I wrote about Creation, trying to communicate the idea in a verse, Aloe and Wild Rose:
… in the measureless
vast Nothingness
there was a sudden stir:
a first fire sprung
from Nowhere
on what was there.
The fresh new flames
spread on the unending curve
of the primal wind,
and there was heard
the first soft sound
of a fish’s fin,
and flapping
of the wing of a bird:
all of this at last
loosed by God’s
formerly tight fist
opening, at last, to Life…