Space & Time


The Cosmos In Recent Popular Culture





Reading many, many articles from a vast amount of sources on a daily basis is something that I find to be extremely gratifying and rewarding. The discovery of knowledge only increases my desire to pursue it even more intensely -- a positive feedback mechanism for any biology geeks who may stumble upon this post. And of all the different types of things I enjoy reading about, I cannot think of a topic that is more cerebrally thought-provoking and makes you contemplate Life itself (life at it's most fundamental levels -- removing the societal lens and our internal biases to attempt to understand the meaning of our existence on a much higher level of consciousness) than the cosmos.

As a brief aside, I'd like to mention that the recent film Interstellar, despite my disdain for Matthew McConaughey, was, in my opinion a brilliantly done film, and definitely one of the best modern sci-fi films I've seen. While Hollywood has never been known for it's scientific or realistic accuracy, this movie was able to avoid that. It managed to feel very realistic and certainly represented a world in the not-too-far-out future in which there was a strange wind that seemed to have ill effects on human population, and Matthew is tasked to find another planet sustainable for human life. All the concepts and scenarios that play out throughout the film seemed to be very plausible and encouraged the viewer to form their own informed opinions regarding our subsequent action for ensuring the perpetuity of our species.

After watching the film, I started browsing through the NY-Times articles relating to the space and cosmos. (Note: if you do not already, I'd highly suggest reading the NY-Times, as their comments are some of the most insightful and well thought-out comments on the web). The article was discussing some new super telescope that would be capable of seeing many, many more planets very deep into our galaxy, and it was suggesting that as our capability for viewing interstellar space increases, we have continuously found more and more planets that seem like they have similar atmospheres and proximity to their star, and therefore we deem as potentially habitable.  Some of the comments were examining the possibilities of reaching these far away planets -- and after reading many comments -- I learned that our effort to see further into the galaxy at this point is relatively futile at this point, as we are not nearly close enough to having the technological capability of reaching any of these places. Currently, we can travel at only a fraction of the speed of light (something like 1% I believe), and even if we were able to travel at the speed of light, it would take us 26000 years to reach them.

This is where you will begin to see that what I have said previously reigns true: the acquisition of knowledge only increases the appetite for pursuing it. The proceeding comments began to discuss the nature of space and time and their interaction -- which was seemingly the only problem that Einstein couldn't even fully grasp -- although he did give us plenty of insight and theories. Interstellar touched on this idea as well -- they mention in the movie that there is a discrepancy between time experienced at different levels of gravity (i.e. 1 year in space was actually 7 years of time on Earth). This led me to conclude that the galaxy is an infinite and continuous cycle, whereby black holes both serve at absorbing matter and marking the end of life, but also creating violent bursts of energy which spawn entire galaxies. Thus, Time is the only truly limiting factor that renders different forms of life isolated from each other in space. Time impedes our ability to contact another form of life elsewhere, as well as their ability to contact us. This leads me the the conclusion that the universe and life are essentially infinite and perpetual, recycling and regenerating transfers of energy throughout time, forever.

So next time you're not satisfied with your selfie, rest assured.. cause when it all comes down to it, odds are, our existence is, for all intensive purposes, entirely meaningless anyways in terms of the overall framework of nature.

For movie buffs, specifically sci-fi, Lucy was also a fantastic film that is sure to stimulate your mind a bit.

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