Awemongering

An email received 13/12/04 from JH:

Is anyone else seeing these astonishing programmes called, rather surprisingly and arrogantly, “What we still don’t know” (as if the whole universe wasn’t still as intrinsically mysterious as its always been) by the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees. They are brilliant but somehow very peculiar.

There is Martin Rees, with his ascetic medieval face, dressed entirely in black so that his body often fades away altogether, like a wizard in a strange otherworldly landscape. It has deep sculptured elliptical lakes, checkerboard lawns which remind me of a cross between The Glass Bead Game and Alice in Wonderland, and little pointy hills. But he hands out these amazing (to me) “facts” which are our present western scientific story achieved through the power of modern technology. And wonderful pictures of the universe which make you want to sing hymns.

“Fact”: that the universe began with 2 chemical components, hydrogen and helium. Through a process I didn’t really follow, they expanded into 92 components, and everything in the universe is made out of these 92. The human being is supposed to be the most complex (but how do we know as we can only see bits of our corner, and the past, miraculous as this is).

But I woke up in the night, just thinking about this 92. It seems a bit like The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy where the answer was 42 - or was it 47? Who was counting this 92? Why did they stop? Isn’t it odd that we’re counting the whole universe with human numbers - but what else can we do?

“Fact”; that the gathering-in force we call Gravity seems to be balanced with a surging, expanding invisible force that is presently called ‘dark matter’. I hadn’t realised before how they were related but they seem to be a classic pair of opposites (yin/yang). This dark matter is concentrated but also ‘loose’ so one of the speakers described ‘it’ passing through us though we know nothing about it. This Dark Matter (related to Black Holes) covers 85% of the universe, so all we can see is only 15%.

Is this Spirit?

Is it God?

Is it the Dust that Phillip Pullman describes so dramatically in his trilogy His Dark Materials?

Presumably we’ll never know much of this dark matter through technology? do we through feeling?

I’m left wondering whether size isn’t a red herring?

Would any scientists care to tell us more? I can’t help thinking this material must be having a big impact somewhere, but it just makes me feel astounded, even jokey. It all seems so unlikely.

There’s the final programme next week. We’re so immensely lucky to have access to all of this, but what do we make of it?

yours in puzzlement and awe.

JH

Having instead watched a programme about how tigers are being hunted to extinction in the Taiga (the population halved since the fall of ‘communism’) by people driven to desperate measures by poverty, I was less than enthusiastic. My reply 14/12/04:

Hi J,

I’ve happened in on a bit of this series and was distinctly underwhelmed – all production values, little substance, very tired old science. BTW nothing mysterious about the 92 naturally occurring elements: more can be made in the lab, just that the atomic nucleus gets too big to hold together and is unstable like uranium. And ‘dark matter’ only resonates with you thro’ Pullman, it’s dark cos it doesn’t shine cos not big enough to reflect light or have nuclear fusion going on - unusually sensible term for science which sometimes dreams up inappropriate terms like charm and strangeness. The programme makers would be pleased though that it ‘worked’ for you. I’d advise caution about writing a ‘piece’ in these terms for Green Spirit...

love, Chris

To which she said:

Thanks Chris

But my contribution to greenspiritdisc which is what I sent you has caused the most enormous response, very good stuff, from scientists, poets, witches, most of the Greenspirit Council – which is great....loads of replies in 24 hours.....

But ten days later, JH said:

dear Chris

You were right with your caution about the Universe programmes and herewith is a copy of my repentance. However, a lot of us had some very good conversations about it all, and about ways of knowing.

Subject: The 3rd programme of What we don’t know

dear All

I feel personally guilty about this programme, having been so fascinated by the first one, reasonably well satisfied by the second, and bored stiff and repulsed by the 3rd. I absolutely agree with Don’s reaction. It was horrible. The trickster at work again.

What it was clear we were getting, as Don said, was the reductionist mindset of the scientists, who were determined to prove the human race is the point of everything, even to the extent of envisaging all these other universes so that at least we can be unique in this one. They were just like the Wizard of Oz being unmasked…

I felt particularly upset because I’d persuaded my hosts to watch (I was in London), and then it was such a bore.

Also what was remarkable was that not only the artificial landscape which I described before was looking somewhat tatty by this stage, but we kept on being presented with the same urban pictures over and over again. It gave you the distinct feeling that all participants, especially the Astronomer Royal, were living in a computer game themselves.

Oh well.....

JH

[BTW, there was a webchat (copy) on this Channel 4 programme with some of the same stuff about the awesomeness of science.]