this argument: Beings like us who see only in visible light deduce that everyone in the entire Universe must see in visible light. Knowing how our history is rife with chauvinisms, I can’t help being suspicious of my conclusion. But as nearly as I can see, it follows from physical law, not human conceit.
* These are among the reasons that “African-American” (or equivalent hyphenations in other countries) is a much better descriptive than “black” or—the same word in Spanish—“Negro.”
CHAPTER 5
FOUR COSMIC
QUESTIONS
When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name …
No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared,
When no god whatever had been brought into being,
Uncalled by name, their destinations undetermined—
Then it was that the gods were formed …
Enuma Elish
,
the Babylonian creation myth (late third millennium B.c. ) *
E very culture has its creation myth—an attempt to understand where the Universe came from, and all within it. Almost always these myths are little more than stories made upby story tellers. In our time, we have a creation myth also. But it is based on hard scientific evidence. It goes something like this …
We live in an expanding Universe, vast and ancient beyond ordinary human understanding. The galaxies it contains are rushing away from one another, the remnants of an immense explosion, the Big Bang. Some scientists think the Universe may be one of a vast number—perhaps an infinite number—of other closed-off universes. Some may grow and then collapse, live and die, in an instant. Others may expand forever. Some may be poised delicately and undergo a large number—perhaps an infinite number—of expansions and contractions. Our own Universe is about 15 billion years past its origin, or at least its present incarnation, the Big Bang.
There may be different laws of Nature and different forms of matter in those other universes. In many of them life may be impossible, there being no suns and planets, or even no chemical elements more complicated than hydrogen and helium. Others may have an intricacy, diversity, and richness that dwarfs our own. If those other universes exist, we may never be able to plumb their secrets, much less visit them. But there is plenty to occupy us about our own.
Our Universe is composed of some hundred billion galaxies, one of which is the Milky Way. “Our Galaxy,” we like to call it, although we certainly do not have possession of it. It is composed of gas and dust and about 400 billion suns. One of them, in an obscure spiral arm, is the Sun, the local star—as far as we can tell, drab, humdrum, ordinary. Accompanying the Sun in its 250 million year journey around the center of the Milky Way is a retinue of small worlds. Some are planets, some are moons, some asteroids, some comets. We humans are one of the 50 billion species that have grown up and evolved on a small planet,third from the Sun, that we call the Earth. We have sent spacecraft to examine seventy of the other worlds in our system, and to enter the atmospheres or land on the surfaces of four of them—the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. We have been engaged in a mythic endeavor.
—
Prophecy is a lost art. Despite our “eager desire to pierce the thick darkness of futurity,” in Charles McKay’s words, we’re often not very good at it. In science the most important discoveries are often the most unexpected—not a mere extrapolation from what we currently know, but something completely different. The reason is that Nature is far more inventive, subtle, and elegant than humans are. So in a way it’s foolish to attempt to anticipate what the most significant findings in astronomy might be in the next few decades, the future adumbration of our creation myth. But on the other hand, there are discernible trends in the development of new instrumentation that indicate at least the prospect of goosebump-raising new
* These are among the reasons that “African-American” (or equivalent hyphenations in other countries) is a much better descriptive than “black” or—the same word in Spanish—“Negro.”
CHAPTER 5
FOUR COSMIC
QUESTIONS
When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name …
No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared,
When no god whatever had been brought into being,
Uncalled by name, their destinations undetermined—
Then it was that the gods were formed …
Enuma Elish
,
the Babylonian creation myth (late third millennium B.c. ) *
E very culture has its creation myth—an attempt to understand where the Universe came from, and all within it. Almost always these myths are little more than stories made upby story tellers. In our time, we have a creation myth also. But it is based on hard scientific evidence. It goes something like this …
We live in an expanding Universe, vast and ancient beyond ordinary human understanding. The galaxies it contains are rushing away from one another, the remnants of an immense explosion, the Big Bang. Some scientists think the Universe may be one of a vast number—perhaps an infinite number—of other closed-off universes. Some may grow and then collapse, live and die, in an instant. Others may expand forever. Some may be poised delicately and undergo a large number—perhaps an infinite number—of expansions and contractions. Our own Universe is about 15 billion years past its origin, or at least its present incarnation, the Big Bang.
There may be different laws of Nature and different forms of matter in those other universes. In many of them life may be impossible, there being no suns and planets, or even no chemical elements more complicated than hydrogen and helium. Others may have an intricacy, diversity, and richness that dwarfs our own. If those other universes exist, we may never be able to plumb their secrets, much less visit them. But there is plenty to occupy us about our own.
Our Universe is composed of some hundred billion galaxies, one of which is the Milky Way. “Our Galaxy,” we like to call it, although we certainly do not have possession of it. It is composed of gas and dust and about 400 billion suns. One of them, in an obscure spiral arm, is the Sun, the local star—as far as we can tell, drab, humdrum, ordinary. Accompanying the Sun in its 250 million year journey around the center of the Milky Way is a retinue of small worlds. Some are planets, some are moons, some asteroids, some comets. We humans are one of the 50 billion species that have grown up and evolved on a small planet,third from the Sun, that we call the Earth. We have sent spacecraft to examine seventy of the other worlds in our system, and to enter the atmospheres or land on the surfaces of four of them—the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. We have been engaged in a mythic endeavor.
—
Prophecy is a lost art. Despite our “eager desire to pierce the thick darkness of futurity,” in Charles McKay’s words, we’re often not very good at it. In science the most important discoveries are often the most unexpected—not a mere extrapolation from what we currently know, but something completely different. The reason is that Nature is far more inventive, subtle, and elegant than humans are. So in a way it’s foolish to attempt to anticipate what the most significant findings in astronomy might be in the next few decades, the future adumbration of our creation myth. But on the other hand, there are discernible trends in the development of new instrumentation that indicate at least the prospect of goosebump-raising new
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