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carlsaganlunatic · 2 years ago

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Why is the night sky dark? According to the steady state model of a universe that is infinite and eternally filled with luminous objects, every line of sight from Earth must intersect some light source. The familiar night sky where constellations trace the horizon would thus cease to exist. Instead, in a steady state universe, there would be no night at all. In cosmology, this is Olber’s paradox, named after the German astronomer who first posed the question of a dark night sky. This particular paradox has been resolved by the discovery of universal expansion. As the universe expands at an accelerating rate, the light of faraway stars and galaxies is prevented from reaching us, allowing the night sky to remain mostly dark, just freckled with points of light. Like the night sky of Olber's paradox, my horizons are perpetually expanding through the irreconcilable paradoxes of my life.

I first learned about Olber’s paradox in a lecture for my Origin and Development of the Cosmos physics class at Stanford University as a rising junior in summer 2017. The paradox seems absurd to me now given that such fundamental facts about the universe such as expansion are so ingrained in my learning. But, the concept behind paradoxes in general remains with me today as a driving force in my understanding of the world, or should I say misunderstanding. Another fascinating paradox I have studied is the Fermi paradox: the contradiction between the lack of evidence for alien civilizations and the statistical Drake equation that predicts a high probability of them in existence. Also, this past summer in my Stars and Stellar Evolution class at Oregon State University, I studied the black hole information paradox: the controversy where black holes seemingly “consume” information when matter falls into their singularity. This violates the infamous quantum mechanical law of conservation of energy, further stressing the need for a unified theory of quantum gravity, but I digress.

When considering astronomical dilemmas such as these, the catch 22’s of my own life are illuminated as quagmires in my self-perception. I am an aspiring astrophysicist with an all-consuming passion for space, yet science is not my religion. I enthusiastically produce derivatives in calculus class while simultaneously clutching several of my meditation crystals that I use to channel the energies of the spiritual realm. My peers have come to know me as the yoga-loving astronomy nerd. It is confusing how I can balance a passion for studying general relativity and hobbies such as kundalini meditation. I have an adept math brain yet somehow maintain a romantic view of reality.

In the past two years of high school, desperately attempting to reconcile my clashing interests into an overarching sense of identity, I’ve come to an epiphany. Paradoxes don’t need to be resolved. The beauty of the field of astronomy is the never-ending horizon of unknowns waiting to be explored. In a universe teeming with questions and mystery, I have come to be comfortable with paradoxes. Why do we accept the normalcy of physical laws and facts in a world so complex? It now makes a lot more sense to me to have contradictions to mirror this complexity of the cosmos. My sense of self is defined by paradoxes, and I eagerly accept this. A passion for complexity leads me into a life full of adventure on a path towards understanding that may never be fully reached. Astronomy to me is not the quest for answers, but rather the search for more questions, forever expanding the capacity for comprehension, and so too the universe. Terence McKenna said, “Weird is the compass heading,” and I am in full agreement. I can be an astronomer and an idealist. I can be all of the paradoxes in the expanding universe. Unlike Olber, I don’t need to pinpoint why the night sky is dark; I just need the boldness to pose the question.

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carlsaganlunatic · 2 years ago

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6/18/21

So long to breast fed aquamarine

I only visit there now in my dreams

Did you notice when I left

Or did you leave it as it seems

I drop down to my knees

And beg god to forgive me

Or at least take this agony

Of being seen but never seen

having nightmares in my sleep

Of you without me

In wakefulness i know what’s true

That nothing can be real

Except that which you speak and then in time you feel

But I’m not awake and don’t know how to heal

12/27/20

Warped worm of words weeping willows while whales wail and woe.

Bring me the nebula of cosmic alchemy, boil the spirit of everlasting creation,

And taste the fruit of the womb of the galactic void.

10/21/20

I am the Worm

How to compare to the deep green hue of earth? How to compare to the feeling of digging deep into dark brown dirt with black fingernails, pushing your hand through the elements that both create and destroy you? Mother Earth buries me in her soil, begging me to take root on my own. Will I be able to surface? I’m caught below the brush. Worms begin to crawl onto my skin, taking me with them back to the ground. I’m not ready to leave the warm womb of Mother. My flesh decomposes, slowly becoming one with the cycle of nature, turning to the beginning of time, before “I” existed, before Mother Earth herself took form, before the universe came to know itself.

Will I be born again? What becomes of my body after I am done using it? What does it mean to die without knowing the answer? What does it mean to live your whole life grasping for meaning and truth just to find out there’s nothing more to life than dirt and worms all the way down over and over again.

Stepping into the honey-colored sunlight of early fall, she walks along a path, blanketed in multi-colored leaves.

4/5/20

The snail slugged along,

Up, down, East, south indistinguishable behind the fog,

Drunk from fatigue, the snail clumsily carried the weight of the past, present, and future atop his fragile shell,

To break would be to put to rest the toil of poor Sisyphus,

But yet some internal furnace of will fuels the impetus to carry along,

To what end- the snail doesn’t know.

To the peak of Everest.

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carlsaganlunatic · 5 years ago

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A poem from the depths of mania

Cold turkey sucks at thanksgiving dinner. Is the microwave up?

I heard on the grapevine Mother Hen lays her eggs in the afternoon.

Oh I do hope your ringer is off-

I don’t want to be the pea under your stack of mattresses, m’adame.

Alas, My mind runs marathons through the pink Himalayas during soirées. I hold fast my laurel branch as my solar plexus marches to the 1-800 record speed. Bronze again?

I’ll fetch a tissue for the trouble my love, déjà vue could reach to Mars if he tried but the cacao is warm in Julia’s cup.

The little people told me secrets but my axis precedes and the constellations scramble. At the peak, Queen Midas sits translucent, a forgotten rendez-vous with Mister Clean, mais je devine.... Okay?

« Presque mi amore »

#poetry

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carlsaganlunatic · 6 years ago

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La Déesse Dedans/The Goddess Within: Anime and Ego

In the biblical story of the “Tower of Babel”, humanity attempts to build their way to heaven. God, in order to inhibit the prideful undertaking of the humans, casts a magic spell to diversify the spoken languages of those audacious people, effectively enabling them from being able to converse and communicate (The Bible). The attempt to become gods is a foolish one. In theology and philosophy, sentience is a necessary hierarchy that separates gods from men. Through self-contemplation and existential crises, the vast majority of humans are guilty of muling over their purpose in life. Reminiscent of the “Tower of Babel”, this search for truth in the uniquely “human” paradigm is a fruitless endeavor grounded in egotism.

We like to believe we’re special. Ptolemy and Aristotle believe that Earth was the center of the universe in which bodies in the solar system revolve. Furthermore, the absence of evidence for alien intelligent life helps drive the fantasy of humans being the sole observers of the Universe. An innate bias programmed into our worldview filters down into our actions, inflating our egos to unreachable heights. Conflict plays a major role in the cyberpunk anime Ergo Proxy as the characters struggle to find meaning in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. In this dismal world of demons and gods, humans create robots resembling humans called Autorievs programmed to perform tasks in society with precision and automation (Ergo Proxy, 1). Chaos breaks loose as the Autorievs begin to fall victim to the Cogito Virus, a programming malfunction that forces the robots to become self-aware. Humans fear the evolution of their sentient creations as it challenges their own superiority complex of intelligence and awareness, clearly reflecting the god complex of many humans that challenges the ultimate divinity of n’importe religion. Pattern denounces breaking the natural hierarchy of the world through any attempt to evolve a being’s set level of sentience.

Suffering is an inevitable condition of the human experience. Suffering ensues from our inherent curiosity about the ways of the world and the ultimate reality of existence. Ultimate truth implies the possession of omnipotence- a capability beyond the likes of mortals. Certitude renders the search for meaning a futile effort. Nihilism argues that, because there is no essence or implied meaning to reality, life is meaningless and reality is not even real. The plot of Ergo Proxy creatively depicts this meaningless search for meaning as its main characters struggle to reconcile their existential anguish. For example, Re-I, grand-daughter of an elite government official in their dystopian society Romdeau, sets off on her own journey for truth after coming face-to-face with a Proxy (Ergo Proxy, 1). Proxies, like Autorievs, are a creation of the technologically-advanced humans, previously intended to act as rulers of the domes or societies of the Earth-based humans in hopes of reinstating order to the ruin that Earth fell into. Proxies, though, possess powers that threaten the authority of human-beings as they are more advanced in their consciousness. After coming into contact with one of these evolved beings, Re-I becomes impassioned to seek for an explanation to the awe inspired by this glimpse of divinity. Her curiosity quickly becomes the bain of her existence as she suffers endlessly to piece together the meaning of her place in this world of gods and women. Re-I’s egotism is a commonality shared by all human beings. Anthropomorphic views blind our rationality, leading us to reach beyond the limits of our knowledge and almost always ending in tragedy.

Hubris or excessive pride misleads humans to their tragic downfall as they overestimate their mortal capabilities and emulate the qualities of gods and goddesses. In the myth of Icarus, our tragic hero flying too close to the sun, reached too far beyond his limits and was incinerated in the process. Ergo Proxy explores this concept seen in the Greek mythological story of Icarus referred to as hubris. Vincent Law, the male protagonist of Ergo Proxy, suffers similarly to Re-I in his journey to self-realization. Being both human and Proxy, Vincent cannot understand his place in the world and tortures himself by trying to reconcile the meaning of his existence. From a nihilistic point of view, Vincent’s efforts are meaningless as he cannot possibly know what significance he has in the Universe as no essence is prescribed to his existence. Interconnecting nihilist philosophy with the idea of anthropomorphism as a bias in perspective of reality necessitates a new term. I would like to introduce the term “tumidism” as the belief that humans’ egocentric search for a truth beyond their own level of sentience is the effect of a meaningless existence. Our selfishness leads us to assume some meaning beyond the evidence seen before us. We invent gods and demons to fill the gaps of our understanding of the Universe as, we as mere mortals, cannot possibly comprehend the vast nature of the Universe. In Ergo Proxy, Autorievs infected with the Cogito virus drop to their knees and pray as they develop an overwhelming sense of awareness that materialized from a void. Following a sequence of references to the mythology of Icarus, the final episode of Ergo Proxy famously shows one of the Proxies retreating to the heavens in an array of light rays, reminiscent of Icarus’ flight towards the sun (Ergo Proxy, 23). The Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud claims that humans have a tendency to explain away phenomena unknown to them through religion. Coined the “God of the Gaps” theory by Friedrich Nietzshe, famous German nihilist philosopher, this pattern emerges from religious beings assigning gaps in their understanding of the Universe to be direct evidence of God's existence. Nietzshe recognized the egocentric nature of humans in believing themselves capable of making sense of the mysteries of the world. Ergo Proxy’s Autorievs reaching towards human sentience, humans reaching towards god-like omniscience, and Icarus reaching towards the sun, we all form a rung on the ladder of hubris, destined to fall.

Without evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence, humans remain in possession of the highest level of sentience among beings. This supposed uniqueness of humanity inevitably leads to a sense of pride in our intelligence. A pattern repeated throughout history, the hubris of Icarus from ancient Greek mythology heeds warning to reaching beyond one's limits. This quality, derived from human’s anthropocentric and ecocentric worldview, defies the natural order of intelligence as it is a forced evolution by humans to become gods. The post-apocalyptic anime series Ergo Proxy shows the progression of suffering that results from searching for an ultimate truth beyond one’s capabilities of comprehension. Art mirrors life as the characters of Ergo Proxy realize the inferiority of humanity on the Universal time scale.

Nietzsche’s nihilistic philosophy combined with the anthropomorphic tendencies of humanity brings to light the catch-all term- “tumidism”- describing the downfall of humanity as placing their own selfish meaning to a reality otherwise meaningless as far as human-sentience is concerned. With latin root “tumid” meaning goddess, god, or divinity, tumidism effectively unifies egotism and heroic tragedy. Vying for equality as no single person is above or beyond another, tumidism thereby grants universal equality to all breathing beings. Whether the respiration source is oxygen or methane is of unimportance. In a world accelerating towards climate catastrophe, it is clear that the selfishness of humanity does indeed yield a price to pay. All that exists was birthed from the same cosmic origin. Whether or not some divine being set off this creation is not the most essential question. The significance is within the fact that all beings, humans included, are kin in the cosmos.

Assigning unique importance to any one species of being is plain ignorance. I, for one, am awaiting the day where humanity realizes the cosmic commonality shared between all creatures and can set aside our egos to simply admire the beauty of the world. “Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” (Adams). Messiahs aside, we are all one in the spirit.

Works Cited

Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Pan Books. 1979.

Ergo Proxy. Shuko Murase. 2006.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 1891.

The English Standard Version Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments with Apocrypha, Oxford UP, 2009.

#ajin: demi-human #ergo proxy #hitchiker's guide to the galaxy #tower of babel #god #goddess #frederick nietzsche #icarus

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carlsaganlunatic · 6 years ago

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L’appel du vide

Fifty-five million years ago, waves of photons began their journey deep into the Universe, traversing through space-time to finally complete their journey to Earth. Peeking through the Virgo constellation, we can admire the waterfall of mass cascading down the event horizon of M87, a cyclopean black hole almost three million times wider than our own planet. This present era is experiencing the first ever glimpse at the most ominous and perhaps terrifying celestial object that Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking could merely dream of. So what now and why do we care? Gazing into the deep velvet of space can provide sage wisdom for us earthlings and give priceless perspective unto the human experience. This photo of M87 (*not to scale*) shows a literal rip in space time.

In our four-dimensional reality, space warps around bodies of mass, comparable to a bowling ball on a trampoline. If the density of any point in space exceeds a critical value, space splits and the mass funnels down infinitely to a point of nothingness and everything simultaneously, also known as a singularity. Blackholes are thought by scientists to be at the center of every galaxy. The conductor in the symphony of galactic orchestras. The largest known blackhole reaches a mass 6.6x10^10 times that of the sun. You would have to stand more than 2 billion kilometers away from M87 to avoid falling into the point of no return of its inescapable event horizon. I cannot even imagine the dwarfing size of Earth as viewed aboard the ISS, much less Jupiter whose size is 1,400 times that, much less a fucking black hole. The ego seems to annihilate when pondering numbers of this magnitude. No human can stand beside the volume of the Universe and feel important. We are not the center of the solar system (sorry, Ptolemy), much less the Universe, and our world is one of billions. Then again, we were born of the cosmos; the same atoms that forged the fires of the Big Bang run through our veins. Falling down the depths of M87, we can sense this sisterhood of the universal consciousness. Suddenly the beauty of life echos across humanity; we are lucky enough to experience this world with the gifts of curiosity, intelligent thought, awe, and love. Staring down the void offers a clarity so blinding it’s as if Yahweh is revealing herself in the burning bush. And the prophecy? You are no better than the ants below your feet and no less than the stars in the night sky. However you have an integral role in the history of physical reality that is entirely your own. There is no concept of bigotry that exists next to a singularity. The Event Horizon Telescope team’s ground-breaking accomplishment is an existential call for humanity to open their paradigms and unite in the name of empyreal mind-fucking.

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