Understanding the cosmos

Looking into the blossoms

When I was walking back home from the coffee shop, I looked across the street and saw the most beautiful blossoms on a tree. Right now many of them around town are in bloom, but this one looked particularly wonderful to my eyes, so I stopped underneath it, looked up and captured this picture. It was a couple of days ago, so what I saw then and what you see now doesn't exist any more. The blooms are already beginning to fade, petals falling to the ground. Nothing stays the same from one moment to the next.

Gradually, I am beginning to have a different sense of what time is, or at least what is measured by our conception of it. According to many sages, it doesn't exist at all. Our lives are so bound by the concept of time, that thinking of stepping outside of its boundaries makes my head spin. But I'm getting used to it. Sort of.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.—Stephen Hawking

Just for fun, I watched a documentary about Stephen Hawking today, made in the early nineties, which explores his theories about time and space. Fascinating! His mother thought that he would probably not have come up with his scientific breakthroughs if he had not been disabled, because his brilliance was hard to contain and channel. Once he learned that he would have to work hard just to communicate, his studies took off and we all know what his synthesized voice sounded like as he gave lectures and wrote books with the help of his computer. I think it's amazing he lived to the age of 76, even though he suffered from ALS. Most people with the disease don't make it nearly that long, but he was not willing to stop trying to figure things out. Diagnosed in his early twenties, he was only given two-and-a-half years to live. He lived for another half-century.

Now that I have managed to live almost to the projected average age of someone born in 1942, as I've said before: I won't be dying prematurely, will I? Without that magnificent brain that Stephen had, nobody will be mourning my passing, other than those of my immediate family and friends. Change is usually gradual, rather than sudden, so I note my aging body with some satisfaction, happy that I'm doing as well as I am. But nobody can tell me that age is just a number.

Old age can be broken into three stages: young old (55–65 years of age), middle old (66–85), and old old (85 and older). I don't feel my age, most days anyway, but there's no getting around the fact that I am moving from middle-old and approaching old-old. Looking back, I've had a very good life, and I'm not unhappy to still be able to dance, walk, and wrangle my old body into some yoga postures. When I wake up in the mornings, I stretch and feel where any aches and pains might be needing some attention. There are very few days I wake with no pain at all, but they are minor and can be dealt with just by getting up and moving around.

One thing that Stephen Hawking and I have shared is a fascination with quantum mechanics. He studied how it affects black holes and came to the conclusion (which of course can never be shown for certain) that some subatomic particles can actually escape a black hole, although it was believed for a long time that nothing, not even light, can escape the event horizon of a black hole. Stephen believed that there are probably as many black holes in the universe as there are existing stars. There is one in our own galaxy; they are formed when a star collapses into itself. It's all fascinating stuff, and my own fascination comes from thinking about time and whether it's something other than just a linear process. 

After all, when I read the other day about the Hubble telescope having discovered a star at the outer edges of the universe, the light of which takes more than 12 billion light years to reach our telescopes, it just boggled my mind and made me wonder what it is that we don't understand about our existence. How is that even possible? I am looking forward to the new James Webb telescope beginning to show us even more distant stars and maybe teach us something about the universe we don't already know. If I had my life to live over again, I think I'd like to have been an astronomer. The cosmos draws my interest like little else does.

I feel so very fortunate to have been born in the middle of the twentieth century. When I think of the world that existed at my birth and compare it to the world of today, so much has changed that I think an adult from 1942 who could be transported into the present would not believe so much could have changed in such a short period of time. But it sure has! I'm sitting here with an amazing portable computer in my lap, writing almost instantaneously to a virtual community, and I will soon finish this post and press "publish" and reach YOU, my dear reader. How cool is that?

And a little while after I finish, I'll get up and start my day in this wonderful world, filled with magic. My friend John will pick me up in an hour or so and transport me in his fabulous truck to where we will be graced with a wonderful breakfast, and I'll pull out my little iPad (another tiny computer) and play with it for a short while before coming back home to enjoy watching the rain from inside my safe and warm living room.

My dear partner still sleeps quietly next to me, my tea is gone, and the sun will be coming up soon, starting another revolution from dark to light, and back again. I'm hoping that your day will be a good one, filled with love and joy. Why not? If we can choose between realities, I choose a happy one, for me and for you, dear friends. Until we meet again next week, I wish you all good things.