Thursday 14 February 2013

Thinking to Scale.

I watched a bit of a documentary tonight on The Size of the Universe. It made me want to laugh again. The theoretical cosmologist said ‘When you consider the size of the universe, it makes you feel small.’ Erm… yeah, just a bit. I wondered whether he’d read my blog, or even Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which august work pre-dated my blog by a few years. Did you know, for example, that our galaxy is just one of 170 million known galaxies in the observable universe? And the observable universe might not be all there is. There might be an unobservable universe which is unobservable because the light coming from it hasn’t had time to reach us yet since time itself began.

Whoa.

Meanwhile, back in The Shire, I was pleased to see that Orion has moved into the southern sky at the time I go out for a walk, and is at just the right height to be standing on my shed roof. The baby moon, on the other hand, was lying on her back and looked asleep. That sort of reality I understand.

And while I was perambulating in the darkness under Orion’s watchful gaze, I took to considering whether the human race really has a great deal of use for theoretical cosmologists. I know what the theoretical cosmologists would say and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with them, but it’s still a moot point.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"That sort of reality I understand."

In reality, that's the only reality we need (harhar). There are enough confusing things posed to us by the natural world as a whole and by others of our own species to mystify us for this lifetime and many more.

Although, I could certainly do without people being so confusing.

JJ said...

Numbers can be fun, though, can't they? I mean, coming down from your tree only once a week to use the toilet is a pretty interesting number.

Anonymous said...

I was never very good at math. That's why it'd have to be only once a week -- I can't count any higher.