Just read the
typically excellent articles in Science
News on the recent confirmation of gravity
waves. The merger of two black holes that triggered the waves
that reached earth some 1.3 billion years later converted three solar
masses into sufficient energy to send a tiny but measurable ripple to
the two LIGO detectors. The total energy released “exceeded that
of all the stars in the universe combined.” But as SN notes, the
gravity waves did not travel through space – as does light – but
as a wave in the fabric of spacetime itself traveling at the speed of
light.
It is worth
pondering the fact that gravity and light – both seemingly very
different types of elementary vectors – both travel at the same
finite speed. What is it about the universe that is revealed by the
cosmic speed limit of 186,000 miles per second that even gravity
obeys?
I've previously
suggested that the speed of light measures “our awareness of
the distance traveled within spacetime” and that “the speed of
light may actually be the speed of consciousness.” At the speed of
light, time
stops. Someone surfing a photon would be everywhere that photon
would ever be at the same moment. We experience the universe as
spacetime. We move through it while, in a sense, the universe
itself must exist all at once outside space and time. Lots of
scientists are looking at ways to use string theory or supersymmetry,
positing extra dimensions and multiple universes, to try to explain
our universe through what might seem an updated version of efforts to
find how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. (Regrets to St
Thomas, whom I follow in the thought that when you reach the end of
reason, it's a finger pointing to god.) But these efforts beg a
question: whatever theory they come up with, why would the cosmos be
that way? Reality
may not be an infinitely peel-able onion. The fact remains that
we live in a universe where even gravity takes time to travel as
perceived by us. (I suppose a surfer riding that gravity wave would
also be everywhere that four-dimension wave would be at the very same
moment.)
Why ask what all
this means? The notion of deriving meaning from the fact that we
exist and in a world that seems perfect for us is basic to humanity.
But beyond this, facing up to these questions may be the way forward
to a new science. This would not mean abandoning quantum physics and
relativity but thinking
our way through them without trying to find dancing angels.
1 comment:
Most things we perceive in our daily lives have beginnings and ends. Causes and effects. That something might be Infinite is outside of our experience and hard to wrap our heads around. Perhaps we need to get past that and accept that it might be impossible to get to the bottom of this.
After all, it's turtles all the way down.
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