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| Gravitational waves may help us answer the biggest question of all | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| So what? I heard on the radio on Thursday that scientists had discovered gravitational waves and were thus closer to the dawn of time. I was walking past a newsstand shouting of a Syrian massacre and an NHS meltdown. A beggar asked me for a few pence. What really mattered? | So what? I heard on the radio on Thursday that scientists had discovered gravitational waves and were thus closer to the dawn of time. I was walking past a newsstand shouting of a Syrian massacre and an NHS meltdown. A beggar asked me for a few pence. What really mattered? |
| We can understand cancer cures and Alzheimer’s breakthroughs. We can cope with genetic engineering and crop improvement. But what of big bangs and black holes? They remind me of putting men on the moon and building Hadron Colliders, Big Science extracting vast sums from naive politicians with no clue of value for money in research. This is rich man’s science, and should probably be left to rich men to finance. That is what I thought as I walked down the street. | We can understand cancer cures and Alzheimer’s breakthroughs. We can cope with genetic engineering and crop improvement. But what of big bangs and black holes? They remind me of putting men on the moon and building Hadron Colliders, Big Science extracting vast sums from naive politicians with no clue of value for money in research. This is rich man’s science, and should probably be left to rich men to finance. That is what I thought as I walked down the street. |
| Then I began to wonder. The vastness of the universe has always been the greatest challenge to the human imagination. Gazing at the stars was the earliest manifestation of humanity struggling to rise above life on Earth. This was not just the search for extraterrestrial guidance, phoney or real. It was the overwhelming question, one that sent some people mad and others screaming into religion. It was the taxi driver who asked Bertrand Russell: “So what’s it all about then, Bert?” | Then I began to wonder. The vastness of the universe has always been the greatest challenge to the human imagination. Gazing at the stars was the earliest manifestation of humanity struggling to rise above life on Earth. This was not just the search for extraterrestrial guidance, phoney or real. It was the overwhelming question, one that sent some people mad and others screaming into religion. It was the taxi driver who asked Bertrand Russell: “So what’s it all about then, Bert?” |
| There is no bigger question than the Genesis one: how did it start? I read news of “ripples in the fabric of space-time”. I read that scientists had “listened for 20 milliseconds” as two black holes circled each other like wary boxers, then collapsed into “a dark and violent merger”. They had detected “a distortion one thousandth of the diameter of one atomic nucleus across a 4km strip of laser-beam”. I could only gasp. The verification of the gravitational waves emitted by the earliest cataclysm does not answer the Genesis question, but even a layman can see it as a building block of an answer. | There is no bigger question than the Genesis one: how did it start? I read news of “ripples in the fabric of space-time”. I read that scientists had “listened for 20 milliseconds” as two black holes circled each other like wary boxers, then collapsed into “a dark and violent merger”. They had detected “a distortion one thousandth of the diameter of one atomic nucleus across a 4km strip of laser-beam”. I could only gasp. The verification of the gravitational waves emitted by the earliest cataclysm does not answer the Genesis question, but even a layman can see it as a building block of an answer. |
| Our knowledge now stretches far beyond the bounds of the visual universe. We can deploy measuring systems at the outer limits of understanding. To explain their work astrophysicists have to rely, like theologians of old, on earthly metaphors. Adam and Eve are now wary boxers, bangs and mergers. | Our knowledge now stretches far beyond the bounds of the visual universe. We can deploy measuring systems at the outer limits of understanding. To explain their work astrophysicists have to rely, like theologians of old, on earthly metaphors. Adam and Eve are now wary boxers, bangs and mergers. |
| Curiosity is the essence of being human. Science, which systematises that curiosity, is programmed to plunge into the unknown, to marry reality to curiosity. We all want to know how we all came to be. It is the deepest question of all. | Curiosity is the essence of being human. Science, which systematises that curiosity, is programmed to plunge into the unknown, to marry reality to curiosity. We all want to know how we all came to be. It is the deepest question of all. |