Sense of Proportion
I enjoyed this piece by Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times which reflects on how insignificant we all are in comparison to the size and scale of the universe.
I wrote about this subject myself just a few days ago and it's amazing to think that if religion had had its way, we would all still be living in the dark ages as if the book of Genesis really is the literal word of God.
And astrophysics created all that without a day of rest?
By Dominic Lawson
Among the many delightful inventions in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the Total Perspective Vortex. This was attributed to a character called Trin Tragula, who had become infuriated by his wife’s constant demand that he get “a sense of proportion”.
The Total Perspective Vortex consisted of a chamber, inside which the victim would see a model of the entire universe with herself — or himself — also displayed to scale as a microscopic dot, marked “You are here”. On achieving this “sense of proportion” the subject would immediately go insane.
Many of us experience a version of this terror if we look up at the sky on a clear night in a part of the world without urban light pollution. We see the vicinity of our galaxy and are immediately aware of our own planet’s immateriality in this context — and, by obvious extension, of our own even lesser significance as an individual.
It is for this reason that I find it difficult to stare at this sight, beautiful though it is, for more than a few moments. Like many men with a highly developed sense of their own significance — why else would I imagine that millions of readers care what I have to say? — I find such graphic evidence to the contrary just too unsettling.
As Einstein was the first to explain, space and time are two aspects of the same thing. So — along, I suspect, with countless others — I have spent the past few days reeling at the news of the remarkable detection of gravitational waves emanating from the moment of the creation of the universe.
About 50 years ago astronomers discovered the cosmic microwave background: that was the earliest trace identified of the beginning of the universe, related to when it was almost 400,000 years old — which, in the context of its almost 14bn-year history, can definitely be described as close to the beginning. But as Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, was kind enough to explain to me, these gravitational waves “are an indirect detection of the universe when it was 10–36 seconds old — when it was squeezed into a size no bigger than a tennis ball”.
That’s right: reaching back across those 14bn years, using telescopes at the South Pole, the radio-astronomers of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics have found an imprint of the universe when it was a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old — and in so doing have apparently validated the theory known as “inflation”.
First formulated by the US physicist Alan Guth in 1979, this stated that the extraordinary uniformity of the known universe could only be explained by the fact that it went through the greater proportion of its growth to date in an unimaginably short time (and at temperatures far higher than anything achieved at Cern when in 2012 its multinational team of scientists detected the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle).
But if there’s one thing more disturbing than the almost inconceivably immense extent of the universe — there are billions of galaxies other than ours, each with billions of stars — it is the idea of all that matter contained within the size of a tennis ball. I had to sit down after Rees explained that to me.
It is much less troublesome to contemplate the now discredited theory — accepted cosmological wisdom until the 1930s — of the universe as in an eternal steady state. The idea that there was always “something”, with no sudden moment of unimaginably violent creation, was somehow itself restful; but not, it should be said, for those of a Bible-based religious outlook. While the trillionths of trillionths of trillionths of a second at the start of the universe are now the frontier of science rather than theology, orthodox Christians and Jews are on the whole comfortable with such discussions, seeing them as entirely congruent with the book of Genesis.
Thus last week’s announcement of the detection of primordial gravity waves was welcomed by an Israeli physicist who is also an Orthodox Jew. Professor Nathan Aviezer of Bar-Ilan University told The Times of Israel that while the news “isn’t going to make anyone who wasn’t a believer in God into one, or vice versa ... one thing it does do is make clear that the universe had a definite starting point — a creation — as described in the book of Genesis.”
Well, not exactly as described in the book of Genesis. Apart from a single reference to “the heavens”, it is entirely about the creation of our own planet: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters ... and God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear.’ God called the dry ground ‘land’ and the gathered waters he called ‘seas’.”
The events so described, even in such resonant language, seem parochial — almost trivial — set against the immensity of what we now know and continue to learn about the origins of the universe.
Yet the religious can comfortably reconcile the words of Genesis with whatever we are likely to learn from astrophysicists about the first moments of creation. Thus my Catholic wife seemed supremely unbothered by last week’s revelation of primordial gravity waves — it could all be credited to God. And if we can’t get our human heads around it, well, mysteriousness and religious faith are comfortable bedfellows.
We unbelievers tend to be more shaken up; and this is especially the case for those of us with no grasp of quantum physics. The idea of a particle — however sub-microscopic — being in several places at once is yet another reason to feel agitated about our own position in the scheme of things.
Lord Rees said I should pull myself together and it was all understandable if one only took the trouble to study — “it’s no different from learning Spanish”. But when this great astrophysicist went on to outline his own theory that there are a vast number of other universes and that what his colleagues from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics had detected was probably true only for our own universe, rather than “the multiverse”, it really was time for a stiff drink.
Perhaps the best medical advice for those of us astrophysics ignoramuses now undergoing metaphysical angst as a result of the data from those telescopes at the South Pole — the hottest of hot news of what actually happened 14bn years ago — is not to worry our little heads about it.
After all, it’s not as if it will all be coming to an end tomorrow. And this, at least, is where we can be more serene than the religiously minded, who suffer the anxiety that the God who created the universe will also be the personal judge of all that they ever have done and will ever do.
Compared with that prospect — the End of the World and the Day of Judgment — a sudden sense of one’s complete insignificance is no sort of terror at all.
dominic.lawson@sunday-times.co.uk
I loved the opening sentence of this article from The Times because while I find it completely impossible to imagine something as big as the universe being 'infinitely small', I can relate to the fact that it was once the size of a football - only to expand 100 trillion trillion times in the space of an instant.
Now that is mind bending stuff and it's amazing that scientists are able to predict such things and then go on, often at a much later date, to show that they are actually true.
Spectacular discovery provides new evidence of Big Bang theory for universe
The sun sets behind the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole which was used for research on the Big Bang AP
Tom Whipple - The Times
In the beginning, the Universe was infinitesimally small. An infinitesimally small period of time later, it was just finitely small, a bit less than a football.
This single event, in which space ripped itself apart to expand by 100 trillion trillion times in an instant, is arguably the most significant moment in history, and today scientists said they had at last proved that it happened.
It is this period of “inflation” a billion billion billion millionths of a second after the big bang that led to galaxies, planets and people. But while theories have been posited for the shape of our universe, until now no one had evidence.
Today, scientists working at an observatory in the South Pole said they had found the telltale signature that shows inflation did occur. They spotted a change in the polarisation of light they said could only have been caused by gravitational waves from the dawn of time, which themselves could only be caused by a phenomenal expansion in the Universe.
“The implications for this detection stagger the mind,” said Professor Jamie Bock from Nasa.
Professor Avi Loeb from Harvard said: “This work offers new insights into our most basic questions: Why do we exist? How did the universe begin?”
Even though it requires verification from other laboratories, it is a measure of the significance of the discovery that it was barely remarked upon that it also helped to prove the existence of gravitational waves, the last great untested hypothesis of Einstein.
Without inflation, everything would be very different. While the big bang theory can explain our expanding Universe, it cannot explain its structure, in particular the way matter is distributed. Inflation was posited as a way of explaining a more uniform universe in which galaxies could exist.
The researchers had thought that spotting this effect would be difficult. When they saw the signal, it was stronger than anyone had expected. “This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar,” said Professor Clem Pryke, from the University of Minnesota.
Dr Andrew Pontzen, from Oxford University, said it was a spectacular confirmation of previous theories. “The remarkable thing about the discovery is that it is telling us we can understand physics at a million million times higher energies than the Large Hadron Collider in Cern can reach,” he said.
“This is the most direct evidence for this you can hope for now. The amazing thing, the jaw-dropping thing, is that there are two incredibly important discoveries in one. It is also the most direct evidence yet that gravitational waves, an aspect of Einstein’s theory of gravity, exist.”
The theory of inflation was developed 30 years ago by physicist Andrei Linde, among others. Today, a video was released by Stanford University in which Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, one of the team who made the discovery, knocked on Professor Linde’s door to tell him the news.
“It’s 5 sigma at point 2, as clear as day,” said Professor Kuo.
It was all Professor Linde needed to hear. “We see the face of the big bang. If this is true, this is a moment of understanding of a nature of such magnitude that it overwhelms,” he said.
Dr Chris Lintott, from Oxford University, said: “If you were going to write a one sentence history of the Universe, it would be about inflation. The most important thing that ever happened was the Universe almost inexplicably grew. Our universe would be a much more boring place if this did not happen. Up until now, though, there was no evidence for this.
He added: “If inflation is real then our observable bit of the universe can only be a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole. Even if our marvellous species has worked out how it all happened, this should also make us feel a little insignificant.”
The Total Perspective Vortex consisted of a chamber, inside which the victim would see a model of the entire universe with herself — or himself — also displayed to scale as a microscopic dot, marked “You are here”. On achieving this “sense of proportion” the subject would immediately go insane.
Many of us experience a version of this terror if we look up at the sky on a clear night in a part of the world without urban light pollution. We see the vicinity of our galaxy and are immediately aware of our own planet’s immateriality in this context — and, by obvious extension, of our own even lesser significance as an individual.
It is for this reason that I find it difficult to stare at this sight, beautiful though it is, for more than a few moments. Like many men with a highly developed sense of their own significance — why else would I imagine that millions of readers care what I have to say? — I find such graphic evidence to the contrary just too unsettling.
As Einstein was the first to explain, space and time are two aspects of the same thing. So — along, I suspect, with countless others — I have spent the past few days reeling at the news of the remarkable detection of gravitational waves emanating from the moment of the creation of the universe.
About 50 years ago astronomers discovered the cosmic microwave background: that was the earliest trace identified of the beginning of the universe, related to when it was almost 400,000 years old — which, in the context of its almost 14bn-year history, can definitely be described as close to the beginning. But as Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, was kind enough to explain to me, these gravitational waves “are an indirect detection of the universe when it was 10–36 seconds old — when it was squeezed into a size no bigger than a tennis ball”.
That’s right: reaching back across those 14bn years, using telescopes at the South Pole, the radio-astronomers of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics have found an imprint of the universe when it was a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old — and in so doing have apparently validated the theory known as “inflation”.
First formulated by the US physicist Alan Guth in 1979, this stated that the extraordinary uniformity of the known universe could only be explained by the fact that it went through the greater proportion of its growth to date in an unimaginably short time (and at temperatures far higher than anything achieved at Cern when in 2012 its multinational team of scientists detected the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle).
But if there’s one thing more disturbing than the almost inconceivably immense extent of the universe — there are billions of galaxies other than ours, each with billions of stars — it is the idea of all that matter contained within the size of a tennis ball. I had to sit down after Rees explained that to me.
It is much less troublesome to contemplate the now discredited theory — accepted cosmological wisdom until the 1930s — of the universe as in an eternal steady state. The idea that there was always “something”, with no sudden moment of unimaginably violent creation, was somehow itself restful; but not, it should be said, for those of a Bible-based religious outlook. While the trillionths of trillionths of trillionths of a second at the start of the universe are now the frontier of science rather than theology, orthodox Christians and Jews are on the whole comfortable with such discussions, seeing them as entirely congruent with the book of Genesis.
Thus last week’s announcement of the detection of primordial gravity waves was welcomed by an Israeli physicist who is also an Orthodox Jew. Professor Nathan Aviezer of Bar-Ilan University told The Times of Israel that while the news “isn’t going to make anyone who wasn’t a believer in God into one, or vice versa ... one thing it does do is make clear that the universe had a definite starting point — a creation — as described in the book of Genesis.”
Well, not exactly as described in the book of Genesis. Apart from a single reference to “the heavens”, it is entirely about the creation of our own planet: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters ... and God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear.’ God called the dry ground ‘land’ and the gathered waters he called ‘seas’.”
The events so described, even in such resonant language, seem parochial — almost trivial — set against the immensity of what we now know and continue to learn about the origins of the universe.
Yet the religious can comfortably reconcile the words of Genesis with whatever we are likely to learn from astrophysicists about the first moments of creation. Thus my Catholic wife seemed supremely unbothered by last week’s revelation of primordial gravity waves — it could all be credited to God. And if we can’t get our human heads around it, well, mysteriousness and religious faith are comfortable bedfellows.
We unbelievers tend to be more shaken up; and this is especially the case for those of us with no grasp of quantum physics. The idea of a particle — however sub-microscopic — being in several places at once is yet another reason to feel agitated about our own position in the scheme of things.
Lord Rees said I should pull myself together and it was all understandable if one only took the trouble to study — “it’s no different from learning Spanish”. But when this great astrophysicist went on to outline his own theory that there are a vast number of other universes and that what his colleagues from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics had detected was probably true only for our own universe, rather than “the multiverse”, it really was time for a stiff drink.
Perhaps the best medical advice for those of us astrophysics ignoramuses now undergoing metaphysical angst as a result of the data from those telescopes at the South Pole — the hottest of hot news of what actually happened 14bn years ago — is not to worry our little heads about it.
After all, it’s not as if it will all be coming to an end tomorrow. And this, at least, is where we can be more serene than the religiously minded, who suffer the anxiety that the God who created the universe will also be the personal judge of all that they ever have done and will ever do.
Compared with that prospect — the End of the World and the Day of Judgment — a sudden sense of one’s complete insignificance is no sort of terror at all.
dominic.lawson@sunday-times.co.uk
Size of a Football (19 March 2014)
I loved the opening sentence of this article from The Times because while I find it completely impossible to imagine something as big as the universe being 'infinitely small', I can relate to the fact that it was once the size of a football - only to expand 100 trillion trillion times in the space of an instant.
Now that is mind bending stuff and it's amazing that scientists are able to predict such things and then go on, often at a much later date, to show that they are actually true.
Spectacular discovery provides new evidence of Big Bang theory for universe
The sun sets behind the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole which was used for research on the Big Bang AP
Tom Whipple - The Times
In the beginning, the Universe was infinitesimally small. An infinitesimally small period of time later, it was just finitely small, a bit less than a football.
This single event, in which space ripped itself apart to expand by 100 trillion trillion times in an instant, is arguably the most significant moment in history, and today scientists said they had at last proved that it happened.
It is this period of “inflation” a billion billion billion millionths of a second after the big bang that led to galaxies, planets and people. But while theories have been posited for the shape of our universe, until now no one had evidence.
Today, scientists working at an observatory in the South Pole said they had found the telltale signature that shows inflation did occur. They spotted a change in the polarisation of light they said could only have been caused by gravitational waves from the dawn of time, which themselves could only be caused by a phenomenal expansion in the Universe.
“The implications for this detection stagger the mind,” said Professor Jamie Bock from Nasa.
Professor Avi Loeb from Harvard said: “This work offers new insights into our most basic questions: Why do we exist? How did the universe begin?”
Even though it requires verification from other laboratories, it is a measure of the significance of the discovery that it was barely remarked upon that it also helped to prove the existence of gravitational waves, the last great untested hypothesis of Einstein.
Without inflation, everything would be very different. While the big bang theory can explain our expanding Universe, it cannot explain its structure, in particular the way matter is distributed. Inflation was posited as a way of explaining a more uniform universe in which galaxies could exist.
The researchers had thought that spotting this effect would be difficult. When they saw the signal, it was stronger than anyone had expected. “This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar,” said Professor Clem Pryke, from the University of Minnesota.
Dr Andrew Pontzen, from Oxford University, said it was a spectacular confirmation of previous theories. “The remarkable thing about the discovery is that it is telling us we can understand physics at a million million times higher energies than the Large Hadron Collider in Cern can reach,” he said.
“This is the most direct evidence for this you can hope for now. The amazing thing, the jaw-dropping thing, is that there are two incredibly important discoveries in one. It is also the most direct evidence yet that gravitational waves, an aspect of Einstein’s theory of gravity, exist.”
The theory of inflation was developed 30 years ago by physicist Andrei Linde, among others. Today, a video was released by Stanford University in which Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, one of the team who made the discovery, knocked on Professor Linde’s door to tell him the news.
“It’s 5 sigma at point 2, as clear as day,” said Professor Kuo.
It was all Professor Linde needed to hear. “We see the face of the big bang. If this is true, this is a moment of understanding of a nature of such magnitude that it overwhelms,” he said.
Dr Chris Lintott, from Oxford University, said: “If you were going to write a one sentence history of the Universe, it would be about inflation. The most important thing that ever happened was the Universe almost inexplicably grew. Our universe would be a much more boring place if this did not happen. Up until now, though, there was no evidence for this.
He added: “If inflation is real then our observable bit of the universe can only be a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole. Even if our marvellous species has worked out how it all happened, this should also make us feel a little insignificant.”
