A Scientists Congress in 2008
|
A Scientists Congress in 2008 |
Subtopics |
#04 – Cosmic Space Visualizing the universe in two scale shiftsIris Magnólia Grandiflora –
Universidade Federal do Paraná – Brazil
|
|
I am sure we are reaching the threshold of a new phase in humanity's development, which will bring forth more cooperation between individuals, enterprises, peoples and nations. Presently we still behold pervasive conflicts of a distinct Darwinian character – which pursues the survival of the more powerful – that scatter the world with oppression, famine and genocide. In the future we foresee and this symposium anticipates it's my hope that these painful stains will be entirely cleansed and replaced by something entirely new, starting with a fresh conception of education for a non-competitive society. The new programs will be different and schools and television will teach mental improvement and the science of spiritual evolution under an atmosphere of brotherhood and cooperation, instead of rivalry and competition. Television – interactive and computerized – is presently in a path to discover its true function in society; however, newborn worldwide networks still suffer the ailments of youth. It's my belief that even non-interactive mass communication will assume a powerful role as a way to spread all over the world the joys of scientific knowledge and spiritual wisdom as two faces of the same coin. I even hope the word mass, as connected to people, soon becomes politically incorrect and offensive, in a new society likely to emphasize the individual – not individualism. School teaching isn't actually my profession, however I'm lively concerned with children education and youth formative practices in societies still characterized by adverse conditions for healthy and open minded psychological development. We still live in a pre-historical setting in face of the prospective possibilities for planet Earth, with the coming eradication of economical and moral poverty, destruction of arsenals and dissolution of armies, frontiers and hostility. This scenario may be a dream, but many have dreamed of it before me. Just remember John Lennon and Martin Luther King... The larger the number of people who believe and visualize such a fantastic utopia the nearer to it we will be. The more we spread among the youth of all countries the idea that it is not only possible but also desirable, more real and close it will become. If I declare my faith and my expectations so explicitly it's because I intend to make clear that I feel open hearted identification with this event's purposes, so well expressed in the papers issued in advance and in the lectures already given. Furthermore, is my intention to convey my worries about the Western world's lack of concern for human being's most important psychical resources. As I intend to explain, when I say psychical resources I don't refer to skills hard to acquire, or attainable only after years of meditation and intensive training. It's nothing like that, though progressive improvements only practice can provide are welcome and desirable. The visualization techniques I'll present today are fit to bring about quick and rewarding results, as far as we recognize them as useful to enhance our knowledge of the world and as a tool to achieve our aims more easily. It was already said that we live in the "age of image". Cinema, television, video-games and computer monitors for almost everything in our offices, schools, streets and homes replenish our senses and minds everyday with all kinds of pictures in such a way it disquiets me. This saturation of our brains turns to be a substitute to our own image producing ability and may damage some of the most important mental endowments we receive from nature. Studies have shown that children submitted to exaggerate television exposure get hindered in their capacity to read fiction literature due to the lack of training in forming mental images: why should they bother in creating mental pictures if television conveys them ready and finished? This problem should be treated as a serious illness, just like the atrophy of an essential organ of the body. By the way, movies and
television is not culprit of the low capacity of our imagination: they are ingredients
that worsen an old cultural bias. We should remember that Plato puts imagination in the
lowest level among the mental faculties and British philosopher David Hume once said that
"nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of imagination". Even the elder, whose education has taken
place in the years prior to this "age of image" feel difficult to visualize
clear and sharply. People who have such ability as a natural gift usually follow careers
as architecture, design or film production, which require visual imagination. In the other
hand, whoever is devoid of this boon certainly will be handicapped in such professions
because, as far as I know, there aren't techniques or exercises to teach students how to
improve that skill. Perhaps this explains the poor esthetic quality of most architecture
practiced today: atrophy of the visualization capacity goes hand in hand with the
impoverishment of sensibility and creativity. This pervasive oversight is evidence of
disdain regarding to mind resources in the Western educational systems. A difficulty to be overcome for the adoption of a more healthy policy on the development of imagination is to acknowledge importance to this mental function in the same level as intelligence, abstraction, memory or artistic keenness. At the time a sharp consciousness of this problem becomes widely spread, and the mercantile drives that pressure program conception and production turn to be replaced by a more responsible support, television itself will be the best medium to divulge such mental abilities. However, a requisite to build up and keep in mind these models is to be excited by this subject and cultivate a vivid intellectual concern to knowledge. I guess this happens to most of the participants of this meeting. From my personal view, I consider extremely pleasing to enjoy the fulfillment of making an idea in scale of the universe as it is conceived by science. I hope the same is true to all of you. We will build three models in our minds, in three different scales although related to each other. We will baptize them the Planetary Model, the Galactic Model and the Cosmic Model. Their real dimensions expand enormously from one model to the next, but all of them are perfectly fit to be visualized in the scales we are choosing. Almost everybody is afraid of the huge numbers that characterize astronomical measures, and this is understandable. If we can have a perceptive feeling of the twelve thousand kilometers of diameter of planet Earth, it becomes much more difficult to have a clear perception of the one hundred and fifty million kilometers that separate us from the Sun. It's an illusion to write a large number, of the order of billions or trillions and suppose we "know" what it represents. We know, for instance, that one light-year measures around ten trillion kilometers, but who can feel what in the hell a trillion kilometers is? The usual reply is that a trillion is a number represented by the digit 1 followed by twelve zeros. But this doesn't let us see what is a trillion; it only allows to see how to write it, not itself. In face of this problem, we will put aside all large numbers in the construction of the models. Millions and billions of kilometers or light-years will not be mentioned, unless they appear as auxiliary information, to be forgotten as soon as we view the models in our minds. We will work only with a few millimeters, meters and kilometers, measures that fit perfectly in our heads. As we will see, to be possible a visualization of our models it will be necessary to imagine something in a scale of kilometers, making impossible to physically build any of the three models. They can only be imagined, but this will be easy. The first model is the Solar System, which is to be mounted with familiar objects of daily life. Some of these objects are very small, but this is essential, otherwise the model would be too big for our purpose. We must visualize carefully some small articles usually seen in everyday life, and this will be a good exercise to viewing, once we cannot imagine well if we don't have the habitude of seeing well. Besides, small objects sometimes reveal a peculiar esthetic world usually disguised by our inattention. Whoever has already picked a pinch of fine white beach sand to attentively examine it and discover that not all the grains are white? Even without the help of a magnifying glass we can see that there are grains of several colors, mainly translucent-white and brownish. The first group is fragmented quartz, grounded by time since the origins of the sea and beaches, in our planet's infancy. The brownish are tiny pieces of shells and animal skeletons of organisms that lived tens or hundreds million years ago. Walking by a beach in a sunny summer Sunday, who does notice that he or she steps on millions and billions years of the Earth's history, even in its life history? To keep this in mind is a good way to remember that we are surrounded by eternity but we cannot see it, just because we are not attentive enough. However... let's leave eternity and dive into immensity, our trip and our goal. 2 – The Planetary Model
– Scale: 1 meter = 10 million Km To build the Solar System model, which we call The Planetary Model, the natural beginning is our home celestial body, the Earth, one of the most beautiful entities of all creation, the wondrous azure planet we have the privilege of living on. The astounding photographs of Earth, which flood with awe the most sensitive hearts, show us a blue and white sphere, shimmering with reflections and translucent colors: obviously a living entity, a floating goddess in spatial vastness. However, as we have to represent her in a scale consistent with her father, the Sun, her brothers and sisters, the planets, and her scores of satellite nephews, it shall be necessary to forget for a while some of her dazzling features. We have to take one of these tiny blue comfits we use to decorate our children's birthday cakes, a small sweet sphere a little more than one millimeter across to perform the Earth's role in the stage we are going to set up. When you pick that comfit with your enormous fingers please be careful! It's damp and inhabited by microorganisms, some of them thinking and pretentious, arrogant with their minute learning. To avoid a minuscule catastrophe it's better to touch it with the dainty fingers of imagination only. By the way, in building our models it will be the powerful force of imagination that will sustain everything, move everything and will allow every object to stay in its place, in its orbit. Everything will float effortless in space, as we will see. So, using these psycho-technological facilities, we pick up a minute round grain of sand only a fourth the size of the blue humid pellet and carefully put it at three and a half centimeters of that comfit. This grain of sand will be the Moon. At the time we bought our comfit-Earth in an imaginary candy shop, we also purchase another one of the same size but lemon-yellow and a smaller reddish one, a little bigger than the sand-moon: they will be our neighbor planets Venus and Mars. Before we set up all these tiny candies in their positions, we should drop by an electric appliances shop and purchase a ball shaped electric lamp made of milky white glass, without any support or wires, a perfect sphere with fourteen centimeters in diameter. Able to levitate, as all other components of our model, it will emit its light without any wires to feed it of energy. This shining ball will be father-Sun, King and center of our Planetary Model. Then, from our stock of sand we will chose another one, brown and similar to our moon but a little bigger, to represent Mercury. Now we have all the components of inner Solar System, we can set up each one of them in its right position. If among you all in this auditorium there is someone who is fond of rigor and mathematical precision, I must apologize, but in our models we are not using exact measures, only approximate to a number easy to remember. The loss in precision will be a gain as a memory facilitator; the difference will never be too big and the mental pictures we are going to draw will be entirely satisfactory. This way, let's set up the inner Solar System, this one astronomers' use to say is occupied by Terrestrial planets, whose dimensions aren't too far from the Earth's, unlike the larger Jovian planets, or similar to Jupiter, that form the outer Solar System. Right in the center we will set the ball shaped lamp, lit up and floating in our field of imaginary forces. At five meters from it, the sand grain Mercury, at ten meters comfit Venus, at fifteen the blue Earth with her microbes and their dramas, dreams and nightmares, escorted by her sand daughter, the Moon. At twenty-five meters from the lamp, the reddish comfit less than one millimeter across that represents Mars. It's necessary to put all these planets in diverse directions but in the same plane, however maintaining the indicated distances. Only in rare occasions they line up – this is said to be a conjunction – because moving in circles at different velocities, only by chance they will be lined up in a row (once more I must apologize: I know these orbits are ellipsis, not circles, but they are almost circles, isn't that so?). Anyway, whoever wishes to imagine them in a row, it's all right. I agree it's easier to create a mental image this way. As we finish the set up
of inner Solar System, let's go to the Jovian planets that orbit in further distances from
the central light. Jupiter, the biggest one, will be portrayed by a marble, one of these
little glass balls colored with stains or stripes that boys adore, and are called
"gude" balls – pronunciation good
– in To make planet Saturn we have to pick a pacifier, one of those rubber objects caring mothers use to calm their babies and lull them peacefully asleep, lovely in their little bassinets. It must be an old fashioned pacifier, with a simple round shield; nothing like one of these horrible imitations of lips or hearts that appeared later. The pacifier of my childhood, which I used to put in the mouth of my little brother Omar at the time he was just a pink and chubby baby, had just a round and small buckler. But none of them had the thin round concentric grooves that would make them look like a tiny laser disc only three centimeters across. To make planet Saturn we will use the delicate imaginary instruments we have to cut off the little ball at the end of it and proceed a surgical intervention to restore its former round shape. Then, in the middle of the shield we will open a hole a little larger than the ball we excised before and now will be inserted there. This ball, smaller than the marble we used to make Jupiter, won't touch the surrounding orifice by the arts of psycho-technology and imaginary levitation. There is Saturn, in its right size, with its beautiful rings and a dozen of minute sand grits, some almost invisible and others actually out of sight, none too far from it. By the way, I've forgotten that the marble also has sand granules around it, but only four are large enough to be seen; the others are too small. Uranus and Neptune will
be performed by peas, but not the biggest we can find. The first one, smooth and greenish,
measures only half a centimeter and the other, is a little smaller and colored blue, just
like our comfit, inhabited by presumptuous viruses. Did you ever see a blue pea? In our
model there is one, which is very good-looking, as blue as the sea, certainly because its
name is Now we can begin the
setting up of outer Solar System. The translucent marble, with its little red spot stays
at 75 meters from the central shining ball; it's a distance easy to remember once its the
width of a regular soccer pitch, from flag to flag, where the players kick the corner in
the World Cup. The laser-pacifier which represents Saturn will be placed at 150 meters
from the Sun, also easy to remember because its ten times the distance of comfit-Earth
from the Sun; ten astronomical units, as this standard measure is called. The green pea's
position which we call Uranus is to be placed at 300 meters from the center, twice the
distance of the laser-pacifier, and the charming ocean-blue pea will stay at 500 meters
from the lamp, receiving too little light and heat from it. In these far away outskirts of
the Solar System everything is dark and cold, everything longs for the warmer surroundings
which were left there, near to dad's cozy love. Here we arrive to the fringes of our neighborhood, the Solar System. Or should it be our planetary street? Maybe it's the size of our block or our house, in the galactic metropolis? We will see which one is the better metaphor when we change our scale to grasp the size of the Milky Way. But first let's study a little more the model we just finished. Its width, or its
diameter, is one kilometer. Pluto's orbit reaches further than Now, let's take a look at our work, the imaginary model one kilometer wide, to sense its harmony and beauty, to check if nothing is missing, if everything is in order and in its right place. In the very center, the lamp-Sun, lit up and blazing, gently cuddling his family of planets, satellites and so on with the force of love – which astronomers call gravitation – nurturing them with heat, light and unsuspected boons under the form of affectionate radiation, in a peaceful and conscious generosity which is pure donation, without expectation of any rewards. A perfect image of the father we all would like to have – and, in fact, we actually have. Five meters from it, a sand grain; at ten, the cake decoration comfit, yellowish and hot; at fifteen, the azure comfit, damp and settled by infinitesimal particles of sorrow, frivolity and arrogance which consume themselves in catastrophic micro-conflicts, or dream of eternal beatitude and ineffable grandeur. At thirty meters another comfit, a reddish one, which in remote past may have sheltered its own viruses and regrets. Then... a wide empty space until the handsome "gude" ball bearing its little red spot shining as a tiny ruby. Beyond that lies the ringed pacifier modified by our arts and further away the two peas, in the frozen fringes of our model. Is there anything missing? Sure! The asteroids are missing: small cold bodies which wander between Mars and Jupiter in lengthened and uneven orbits like that of Pluto, as if they were the remaining debris of an exploded planet. How should we make them in our scale model? By reason of their sizes, they won't be seen in the model, but we must find something to represent them, once they exist. Let's pick a granule of sand the same size of the Moon and carefully place it on a polished steel plate. Then, with a single hammer strike, let's merciless shatter it into minute fragments, as if we were revenging some unforgivable sin it had committed (how could we know he didn't commit in fact such a crime, to have exploded that way in thousands of tiny pieces?). What shall we obtain? We'll get a fine dust which will show in the microscope particles of diverse sizes, almost as inter-stellar dust. Now, with the psycho-technological tools we possess, let's spread this micro-powder throughout the space in between Mars and Jupiter, trying to occupy evenly a circle with a radius of 40 to 60 meter, where it's supposed to be scattered. If some of these specks escape to a further orbit, don't bother: they are prone to that. This tiny and rarefied dust won't be visible, but we will know it's there and that's enough. Now our Planetary Model is completed, except for a few minor components which we don't intend to represent. We can already appreciate its humbleness and beauty, but we will need to move in spirit to a place nearer to each one of its elements, once it's not possible to see a grain of sand or a comfit from hundreds of meters away. Not even a marble or a pacifier. One kilometer across but so scarce that a hurried star traveler surely would pass by the Sun without even noticing he has a handsome family of minuscule balls, most of them almost invisible. Only the showy lit lamp would be noted. So, this is our borough. Or maybe our block, in the enormous sidereal metropolis which is our cosmic address. Or even much less than a hut, in the gigantic proportions of magnificent Milky Way, as we will see. To make a clear idea of our extreme humbleness in the colossal ferris wheel we live in, it's necessary a great leap to the scale of the next model. A very big leap! When I was a teenager, I read a fascinating novel by Arthur Clark* where he describes the first descent of a man in Jupiter's atmosphere. After a long trip with a few companions in a large spaceship which parks in orbit around Jupiter, the hero plunges alone in a small individual egg shaped capsule in a spiral fall. Entering tangentially in the upper thin atmosphere, his speed is reduced by friction with a high pitch whistle, soon entering a phase of a hundreds-of-kilometers free fall, under the powerful pull of Jupiter's gravity, till the summits of the majestic colorful clouds. At that level, a parachute is released to brake the increasing acceleration, turning later into a balloon, initiating a mellow sightseeing navigation in that splendid panorama. The view of the cloud mountains down there is absolutely fascinating. The point I wish to stress is the hero's impression that it isn't the planet which is enormous; it's him who feels to have shrunk, when he gets aware that the clouds he sees are not at two kilometers, but twenty; and the bolts and lightning of a wondrous electric storm that seems to be twenty kilometers ahead are in fact much bigger, two hundred kilometers far away, according to his instruments. Then he feels, with uneasiness and anguish, he has reduced to the size of a sparrow, in the midst of that magnificent scenery. In our trip we will experience the subjective feeling of the relativity of our own dimensions, but in much larger scale leaps. As we go through and observe the Solar System model, we feel gigantic; when we visualize in a very realistic way the planets in their relative sizes and distances, it's our spirit which enlarges to amazing proportions. The spirit exists primarily in time: it comes to three-dimensional space only as a projection, according to Prof. Weisskopf explanation this morning hence it doesn't have a fixed size. The size of our spirit is the size of our thoughts. Now, we must prepare to vertiginously zoom out on the Solar System and lock in the next scale, which will allow us to get aware of the unbelievable proportions of the Milky Way, the cosmic metropolis where we live in. The sensation will be similar to that of a free fall into Jupiter's atmosphere. But much much greater and dizzying. As we depart to our galactic trek, we must say good bye to the star system where we live, with a last look at the lamp-Sun and his brood of planets, satellites and asteroids. With our spirit blown-up to a size compatible with the contemplation of these tiny celestial bodies, let's move around once more, floating on this one-kilometer disc and visit the blue and green peas, the beautiful iridescent pacifier and the translucent striped marble, the invisible fragments of the planet we smashed, the two comfits and the sand grains. Let's appreciate and memorize their sizes, their textures and colors, their relative distances and to the central light source. It's desirable to take with us some yearning in our hearts, once our travel will be a very long one, to very far away. Or, in other words: our spirit, which has already grown so much, is going to expand once more, this time in absolutely fantastic, nevertheless conceivable, proportions. * "Meeting with Medusa", in the book The Solar Wind. This novel was awarded the Nebula Prize, the
highest trophy for science fiction texts. 3 – The Galactic Model
– Scale: 1 meter = 1 light-year (10 trillion Km) Turning on the switch of our imaginary zoom, let's reduce the size of our Planetary Model to one millimeter of diameter. It's vertiginous but essential; otherwise we won't form a sharp idea of the incredible size of the Milky Way. In a few seconds, this operation is concluded. One millimeter is very small, but it's a dimension we can see and have under control of our imagination and consciousness. However, we cannot see what's inside our Planetary Model any more, but we know everything is still in there. Only the Sun-lamp remains in sight, infinitesimal but still shining and visible, since we don't go too far away. If we stay back only three hundred meters from it we won't be able to see it any more, even in the deep darkness of interstellar space. Almost everything we can see from the Earth in the night sky with unaided eye is nearer than five hundred meters from us. In this scale, the Galactic Model has a breathtaking diameter of one hundred kilometers. This is the size of the Milky Way if the Solar System, as measured by Neptune's orbit, is reduced to just one millimeter, in a staggering zoom out: the same Solar System which in our former model was one kilometer across. When I started my studies
in astronomy, I used to live in the city of Near the crossing point of the road to Santo Amaro remains the blazing galactic nucleus, a place where the stars are more closely together, around one meter from each other, unlike the average of four to five meters prevailing in the spiral arms where the Sun's neighborhood is placed. Right in the center of my imaginary galaxy, where the star density is highest, lurks a colossal but invisible black hole greedily devouring all reckless passing by stars, and all celestial bodies trapped in its deadly gravitational snare, which in desperate agony emit loud horror groans in the radio wave bands. Passing by this frightening place I used to break out in a sweat, thinking of the millions of cultured planets and countless advanced civilizations with their philosophers, poets, architects and children, plunging to death into the unfathomable throat of the dreadful black hole, leaving forever what we consider as existence. One hundred kilometers in diameter, hundreds of billion shining dots unbelievably small, most of them bearing an entourage of still smaller droplets – where something infinitesimal could be observing me with an instrument in that very instant. Sometimes, in my way, I passed by lovely fluorescent rings half a meter across, some of them measuring one, a few with two or three, meters of diameter. They are the beautiful remnants of large stars which exploded as supernovas a long time ago. Here and there sinister globe-shaped dark clouds of opaque matter less than a meter across, other larger and frayed into loose threads scattering the light of the stars beyond. Shining ionized hydrogen filaments, iridescent clouds containing carbon monoxide and dioxide, water, cyanide, ammonia, methyl and ethyl alcohol and many other more or less complex molecules. Such filaments measure twenty, forty, sixty meters in extent, some of them with more than one hundred meters. Mysterious regions of almost alive interstellar clouds perhaps hiding – who knows? – Loathsome creatures of colossal proportions. This is the enormous megalopolis where we live in as anonymous citizens. My buggy-spaceship is four light years in length, almost the same distance that separates the Sun from Alpha Centauri, his twin sister and nearest companion. Crossing the Milky Way's span in just an hour its velocity is ten million times that of light. The powers of psycho-technology effortlessly challenges and overtakes even the harsh laws of relativity... But the time has come to enter another frightening zoom, once our goal is to get aware of the size of the universe. Let's affectionately admire the Galactic Model, our beloved hometown, because it's time to proceed with our trip to the fringes of the universe, in the cosmic journey we decided to undertake this afternoon. It's important to memorize its contents and their relative distances, more fascinating and diverse than those we left in the Planetary Model. It's a joy of the spirit to be aware that we know the sizes and positions of the meaningful things of the world we live in, specially these majestic heavenly entities. Once more we have to press the start button of our imaginary zoom, in order to shrink our portentous Galactic Model to the modest proportions of a laser disc. Yes, just the size of the well-known cd, that dainty technological jewel where the most celestial chords of the great symphonic orchestras, or billions of information bits, can be recorded in the colors and reflections of an artificial rainbow. In less than one minute the reduction scaling down is completed. 4 – The Cosmic Model –
Scale: 1 meter = 1 million light years Now we are in the full cosmic realm. Our spirit has grown to extraordinary, nevertheless conceivable proportions, as much as conceivable and measurable are the new objects to be found here. In physical universe there are not infinite things. Everything that physically exists has its term and extent which – in spite of this sounding unbelievable – man is, or will be some day, able to measure. As long as it's something recognizable as physical, since the measuring of spiritual entities is a problem yet to be solved: these entities are not creatures of space, but of the higher dimensions of imaginary time, a riddle we doubt if science as we know it will be able to decipher some day. Here we are, citizens of a lovely laser disc, viewing from a very high standing point our cosmic city and its surroundings. Next to it we see another laser disc, similar to ours but a little bigger: it's Andromeda, another island-universe, as Immanuel Kant called it in his premonition that guessed the cosmos of many galaxies two hundred years before its actual discovery by Hubble, in the 20th century. From this place and in this scale we can see the objects that scatter the space around us better than inside the Galactic Model. Down there everything was microscopic or diaphanous clouds and we could only see the brilliance of extremely tiny dots. Here, instead, nearby galaxies have a discernible magnitude: they are objects, not dimensionless points or phantasmal clouds. Moreover, they are more closely together in relationship to their sizes than stars in the galaxy, which hardly could be called neighbors by reason of the enormous distances that separate them in comparison to their size. We are now in a specific region of the universe called the Local Group, formed by a score of small and large galaxies. Andromeda and the Milky Way are the largest galaxies in the Local Group, comprising seventy five per cent of its mass and stellar population. Both are examples of large galaxies, but there are sisters small as buttons, coins or cotton tufts, in larger amounts than the bigger ones. We are citizens of a metropolis but most galaxies are minor cities, towns or villages, just like the usual urban hierarchy in planet Earth. Soon we will notice that our metropolis has two large suburbs very close to it, almost united to the main urban area, distinguished from it by its irregular configuration resembling torn pieces of cloth or frayed flocks of cotton: they are called the Clouds of Magellan. Other distinguishable features next to our galaxy are the globular clusters, spherical and reddish, well planned neighborhoods in the surroundings of our city. They are suburban towns, rounded and organized, inhabited by aged stars only. The beautiful metropolis of Andromeda, just two meters from ours, also has two main suburbs and many smaller clusters in its vicinity, rounded and well-ordered as if a skilled urban planner had designed them. In the whole, everything comprised in the Local Group is contained in a sphere six meters across, which is part of the Virgo galactic cluster, a community of more than fifty clusters comparable to the Local Group in a radius of fifty meters around the Milky Way. The nearest group is the Sculptor Group, at only seven meter from us, which contains around six glowing spiral galaxies in an ideal sphere six meters wide, just like ours. Nine meters away stays the Ursa Major-Camelopardalis Group, with two large galaxies and several smaller gathering in a spherical volume six meters across, just like the Local Group. The scenery we see is scattered with galaxies of several shapes, mainly discs, spirals, ellipsoids and amorphous. They have also many different sizes, from buttons, olives, rings, cookies and golf and tennis balls till saucers, plates, ostrich eggs, rugby and soccer balls. In further regions we can see galaxies as large as platters, pizzas and even car wheels, but these are quite uncommon. The most beautiful of them are spiral shaped, like the Milky Way and our neighbor Andromeda, with their shining and curved arms where young hot and blue stars prevail. These arms are linked to an ellipsoidal central bulb crowded with old stars, orange and yellowish. Around these larger galaxies dozens of globular clusters gravitate, spherical or elliptical, with tens or hundreds of thousands very old reddish stars. The sizes of such clusters range from pinheads to match heads. Looking further, we will see as a tendency of galaxies to join themselves in clusters or shapeless groups, as it happens nearby, and that such groups and clusters also form long irregular filaments or loose tufts of wool which extend to very far away. Some galaxies, however, are individualists and prefer to stay apart, separate from any groupings, in scarcely settled regions. These long threads stretch out for many kilometers twisting and ramifying in fickle configurations that constitute the largest structures known. Where do they go? Where are the limits of the universe? There's no border or limit. Nor any place beyond. Nor anything like an outside of this Cosmic Model. In the former models we could assume an exterior standpoint and observe them from outside; now we cannot do that anymore once there isn't any outside to go. The Cosmic Model can be appreciated only from inside. Let's try to elucidate this. Sometime in between 1924 and 1929, Edwin Hubble made two significant discoveries that marked the beginning of modern cosmology and still form the basis of everything we know of the universe in its largest scale. First, he found that the universe is a colossal archipelago, constituted of "islands" so enormous that any of them could be taken as the entire universe, as in fact the Milky Way was supposed to be prior to his findings. Secondly, he verified, to his and the whole scientific community's astonishment that the archipelago was exploding. That is, although each island-galaxy remains normally in its size, they are running apart in great velocities, as faster as further from us they are. He observed that he seemed to be in the very center of a fantastic explosion, as if the galaxies were – blushing and frightened – running away as fast as they could, horrified by reason of being peeped through his telescope. Many scientists have taken Hubbles' discovery as a mistake – even Albert Einstein – once it implied instability in the universe: if the galaxies were desperately fleeing to all directions, they certainly were united somewhere, in the remote past. This meant that the universe had an origin and was under a process of evolution, contrary to the ever admitted notion that it was eternal and immutable, in its broadest lines. But Hubbles' findings were confirmed and the big bang theory, of the primeval titanic explosion, is the one which fits better the observed facts, assuming the condition of standard scientific theory of the origins of the universe. As to the fact that all galaxies run away exactly from the point where we are, the explanation is that if the entire space is expanding evenly, any of its points will have an illusion of being the center of this expansion. Although a doubt remains on the universe's age, it's usually admitted that the big bang occurred sometime in between ten or twenty billions of years ago. Thus, the Cosmic Model should be something in between twenty to forty kilometers across, the horizon of the visible universe that is the maximum distance light could have traveled since the origin till the point where we are. It's not too large, we should agree... And what will we see, if we approach the border of this sphere? Now we face a serious problem. While in the other model we could move from one side to the other, to get a better view of the objects in there, in the Cosmic Model this is not possible. Not even applying the extraordinary powers of psycho-technology we couldn't do that. Why? Because if we move the center of the universe will move with us and also the periphery would accompany the center changing its location accordingly. In a certain sense we could travel through the universe, mainly if psycho-technology give us an appropriate vehicle, but wherever we move the cosmic center will follow us. We could change our position in relation to the galaxies, but our relative position to the universe as a whole would continue to be central, and the fringes of the visible universe would be as far away as they were before our transit. To each galaxy we visit, whatever its distance from the Milky Way, the center of the universe would seem to be there, the same way it seems to be here where, astonished, we behold the cosmic blast around us. The radius of the universe would continue to be ten to twenty kilometers and its center would continue to be ourselves, who are observing it. I use to make an enlightening analogy, as I remember when we see a rainbow ahead, as we drive in a road: we cannot approach it nor the rainbow changes its size as we move towards it. The center of the rainbow is always the person who observes it, and it follows us wherever we go. With the universe it's the same. Each one of us – each subjectivity who observes – is the center of the rainbow and also the center of the universe. Resigned with the uselessness of our trials to reach the fringes of the Cosmic Model, let's go back to the point where we were, near to the Milky Way, and try to understand what we see at a great distance, once that remoteness will stay forever as far as it is. If we use the velocity of light as a standard to measure the cosmic distances in space-time, each kilometer we see further, in our model, is a region of the universe a billion years younger. Just like an onion which – as seen from its center – each outer shell is younger than its inner precedent and whose skin is its origin: the big bang. But remember: it's entirely forbidden to view such onion from its outside, once it hasn't any outside. Moreover, if we travel in our psycho-technological vehicle until a far away galaxy, when we arrive to that destination we will not see that galaxy as young as we saw it from the standpoint we left. It will be as many billions of years older as many kilometers we traveled: when we arrive there we will meet it with the same age of the Milky Way we left behind. As we peep further and further, thus beholding more and more ancient times, the scenery changes and other personages can be discerned in the outskirts of the universe. Four or five kilometers away more compact galaxies come into view, with their nuclei emitting energy intensively in the radio bands, in a way rather uncommon in our vicinity. Beyond that region, lots of very brilliant objects appear, as small as our Solar System (remember how tiny it is in relationship to the whole Milky Way?) but more energetic than a conventional galaxy. Around a distance of six to ten kilometers these objects that don't exist in our neighborhood, become the main inhabitants of the cosmos and, from then on, there are no more galaxies. In the fringes of the universe only these objects can be found. In spite of their comparatively minuscule sizes, some of them may be a hundred times more luminous than the most brilliant of the known galaxies. Such objects are called quasars. At these enormous distances we see the universe as it used to be five, ten or fifteen billions of years ago. We don't know much about these extraordinarily luminous objects that do not exist nearby or in other words, in our time, when the universe is aged fifteen to twenty eons* already. We see the quasars with the same astonishment we discover fossil bacteria of the archeozoic era when life was just settling down in planet Earth. Quasars are the fossils of the universe; something that appeared before galaxies and probably are their ancestors, or the ancestors of their nuclei. In that regions, unbelievably remote in time and distance, stops the range of the instruments of science to scrutinize the fringes of the cosmic sphere. But, what will happen when larger radio and optical telescopes enter in operation, powerful enough to look beyond that limit of twenty billion light years, possibly the maximum age of the universe? Will we see the big bang? Will we be able to watch the birth of everything in the primeval explosion of the fiat lux? No, unfortunately. Beyond a certain limit of visibility in any spectral band, before we can look at the big bang face to face, everything will disappear in darkness. In the monitor, connected to the radio telescope where we will be anxiously trying to unveil one of the greatest mysteries of existence, the furthest light we will be able to see won't be the primeval flash of Creation. That's because the universe was born in darkness, and the skin of the cosmic onion is black and opaque. In the beginning there wasn't any radiation, hence no light at all. Only the divine Consciousness soared high above the incipient cosmos. And the divine modesty of the Goddess doesn't permit us to open the ultimate curtain in the delivery room of the universe. In the cross tour we have done throughout the cosmos, the vehicle we used was imagination – the wondrous capacity we have of seeing with the eyes of our spirit. The fuel that supplied our psycho-technological spaceship was information, obtained from the instruments of science, in its experimental procedures. And the main resource we employed was the expansion of our spirit to extraordinary proportions, following step by step the sizes assumed by the objects and fields we imagined and explored. As a result we feel, with awe and surprise, that our spirit may have virtually the same vastness of the entire universe. And, in fact, it has –, we can be sure of that. As a conclusion, we verify, in the end of our journey, that the center of the universe is, unavoidably, our own being, the subjectivity each one of us forever is, not allowed to leave such privileged position, not to the outside of the universe, nor to the outside of ourselves. At the time we return
home, after visiting the most remote fringes of the cosmos, we have much to wonder. When
we get aware that everything we see in the outer world, everything we know and everything
we imagine in our minds, are just models inside our spirit, then we will see ourselves
with the free eyes of well informed imagination and conclude that the whole universe is
nothing more than an enormous mirror reflecting back our own spirit. * An
aeon is a large measure of time used in cosmology. Its value is one billion years. |
or go to print version CLICK HERE MS Word Format Rich Text
SECOND PHASE |
|
Last revision: jul-03