{"id":11826,"date":"2012-09-28T11:26:46","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T15:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=11826"},"modified":"2012-09-30T13:28:47","modified_gmt":"2012-09-30T17:28:47","slug":"the-universes-through-the-keyhole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/the-universes-through-the-keyhole\/","title":{"rendered":"The Universes through the Keyhole"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Not just any old astronomical photograph. (Click to enlarge.) See
\nthe note at the foot of this post<\/a> for more info.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (italicized portion):<\/p>\n

Fall<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
\nChanges its tense in the long-haired maples
\nThat dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
\nRedden on their branches (in a fiery competition
\nWith the final remaining cardinals) and then
\nBegin to sidle and float through the air, at last
\nSettling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
\nAt twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
\nIn a season of odd, dusky congruences\u2014a scarlet tanager
\nAnd the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
\nLoping down the center of a wide street and the sun
\nSetting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
\nA gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
\nBlamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
\nChanges and moves in the split second between summer’s
\nSprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
\nPulling out of the station according to schedule,
\nAnother moment arriving on the next platform. It
\nHappens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
\nFrom their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
\nSliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
\nAround us even as its colorful weather moves us,
\nEven as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
\nAnd every year there is a brief, startling moment
\nWhen we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
\nSuddenly feel something invisible and weightless
\nTouching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
\nIt is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
\nIt is the changing light of fall falling on us.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Edward Hirsch [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The truth is you already know what it’s like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.<\/p>\n

But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think… The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(David Foster Wallace [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Palindrome<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is less difficulty—indeed, no logical difficulty at all—in
\nimagining two portions of the universe, say two galaxies, in which
\ntime goes one way in one galaxy and the opposite way in the
\nother…. Intelligent beings in each galaxy would regard their own
\ntime as “forward” and time in the other galaxy as “backward.”
\n\u2014Martin Gardner, in Scientific American<\/em><\/p>\n

Somewhere now she takes off the dress I am
\nputting on. It is evening in the antiworld
\nwhere she lives. She is forty-five years away
\nfrom her death, the hole which spit her out
\ninto pain, impossible at first, later easing,
\ngoing, gone. She has unlearned much by now.
\nHer skin is firming, her memory sharpens,
\nher hair has grown glossy. She sees without glasses,
\nshe falls in love easily. Her husband has lost his
\nshuffle, they laugh together. Their money shrinks,
\nbut their ardor increases. Soon her second child
\nwill be young enough to fight its way into her
\nbody and change its life to monkey to frog to
\ntadpole to cluster of cells to tiny island to
\nnothing. She is making a list:
\nThings I will need in the past<\/span><\/em>
\nlipstick<\/span>
\nshampoo<\/span>
\ntransistor radio<\/span>
\nSergeant Pepper<\/span>
\nacne cream<\/span>
\nfive-year diary with a lock<\/span>
\nShe is eager, having heard about adolescent love
\nand the freedom of children. She wants to read
\nCrime and Punishment<\/em> and ride on a roller coaster
\nwithout getting sick. I think of her as she will
\nbe at fifteen, awkward, too serious. In the
\nmirror I see she uses her left hand to write,
\nher other to open a jar. By now our lives should
\nhave crossed. Somewhere sometime we must have
\npassed one another like going and coming trains,
\nwith both of us looking the other way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Lisel Mueller [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/a>About the photograph:<\/strong> This is actually a composite photograph —\u00a0two thousand<\/em> separate images of the same area of sky — taken by the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>. (If you add up the total exposure time of all those images, this is approximately a two-million-second<\/em> exposure: twenty-three days.) The image is called the Extreme Deep Field, or XDF.<\/p>\n

So what’s so remarkable about it? Two things struck me right away:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>First, this is a really, really small area of the sky. How small? The photo at the right should give you an idea. (The Moon has been added to that image to provide a sense of scale.) See that very faint little rectangle standing on one corner about in the center? Yeah.\u00a0That<\/em>. Like the post title says:\u00a0through the keyhole<\/em>. The tiny, tiny keyhole.<\/p>\n

(If you can’t see it, by the way, that’s because of this reduced-size version of the real photo. If you click to enlarge it, you should be able to see the rectangle more clearly.)<\/p>\n

The other remarkable thing about it: all those dots aren’t stars. They’re\u00a0galaxies<\/em>. Each galaxy contains (cue Carl Sagan impressionists) millions and billions of stars. In the original image — again, in that tiny little area of the sky — over five thousand galaxies<\/em> are visible. (Sorry, italics should almost be the default font posture for this note, hmm?)<\/p>\n

So, already my mind was sort of stretched out of whack. But then I started to learn and think about the distances and time scales involved…<\/p>\n

The universe, they estimate, is around 13.5 to 14 billion years old. The most distant galaxy visible in the XDF is about 13 billion light-years away, that is, it’s taken that mote of light that many years to reach our eyes. I looked back at the photo immediately above, of the scale of the XDF, and noticed that it’s actually in a fairly dark patch of sky. These galaxies are not only far, far, far away from us. They’re gigantic<\/em> distances from one another. And again,\u00a0those are “just” galaxies<\/em>. The closest star to us in the Milky Way is about four light years away, and heck, it took the most recent Mars rover around eight or nine months just to get to that planet, at a tiny fraction of the speed of light… and the earliest dinosaurs (the usual Earthly point of reference for “deep past”) appeared less than a quarter of a billion years ago…<\/p>\n

(I’m sorry, but wow. Just one big inarticulate\u00a0wow<\/strong><\/em><\/span>. Yes, an italicized, small-caps wow<\/strong><\/em><\/span>.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, all of a sudden this got me thinking… You know the song “I’ve Told Every Little Star<\/a>,” right? Written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, published in 1932? Biggest hit version recorded by Linda Scott, in 1961? What? NO?!? Okay, here:<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>I’ve Told Every Little Star. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:18 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:ivetoldeverylittlestar_lindascott.mp3|titles=’I’ve Told Every Little Star’|artists=ArtistName]<\/div>\n

[Lyrics<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

So let’s suppose that Linda Scott really had told every little star — just in the area covered by the XDF photo. Let’s suppose, conservatively, that each of those 5,500 galaxies contained a million stars. Let’s suppose, further, that in reporting her love to every little star, she used the words I think he is so sweet<\/em>. This takes about 2-3 seconds to say, call it 3 seconds to give her time to catch her breath as she moves from star to star. Let’s see… 2.5 seconds times 5,500 galaxies @ 1,000,000 stars… umm…\u00a05,500,000,000 stars total, times 3, carry the 1…<\/p>\n

Jeezus holy cats:\u00a016,500,000,000 seconds.<\/p>\n

Got that, Linda?\u00a0It took you 522+ freaking years to tell every little star<\/em>. Sez Wikipedia<\/a>, you must’ve started professing your love around the same time Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type. And never, ever took a bathroom break<\/em>.<\/p>\n

No wonder she hasn’t yet\u00a0bothered to tell the insensitive clod she’s singing to. Where the hell was he<\/em> for the past five centuries?!?<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Update, Sunday 2012-09-30:<\/strong> I neglected to tip my hat (once I caught up to it) to the\u00a0Bad Astronomy<\/em> blog<\/a> for alerting me to the XDF photo. Thanks, BA (and Dr. Phil Plait)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Not just any old astronomical photograph. (Click to enlarge.) See the note at the foot of this post for more info.] From whiskey river (italicized portion): Fall Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season Changes its tense in the long-haired maples That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves Redden on their branches (in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,247,1393,94,95,593,74,250,36,251,324,713],"tags":[1081,1972,1987,2314,3203,3204,3205,3206],"class_list":{"0":"post-11826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-backwards","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-02_in-the-news","10":"category-science-medicine","11":"category-history-in-the-news","12":"category-music","13":"category-art","14":"category-reading","15":"category-poetry-writing_cat","16":"category-researchresources","17":"category-humor-writing_cat","18":"tag-david-foster-wallace","19":"tag-mathematics","20":"tag-edward-hirsch","21":"tag-lisel-mueller","22":"tag-hubble-space-telescope","23":"tag-extreme-deep-field","24":"tag-linda-scott","25":"tag-endless-love","26":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-34K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11826"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11857,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11826\/revisions\/11857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}