Thinking About the Universe

Sometimes I think about the Universe. It’s hard for me to conceive of the Universe having a beginning, but it did. There was a time when our Universe and its billions of galaxies did not exist. Then suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, it sprang into existence. That happened 13.82 billion years ago. We call that event the Big Bang. The Big Bang is the best theory we have come up with to explain what we see when we peer into space.

We think of space as “empty space”. Of course, space contains galaxies and dust and radiation, but if you take all of that away, what’s left? Empty space. Except, space is something. Meaning, space is not nothing. It is definitely something.

When we point our telescopes at other galaxies, we can see they are moving away from us. The farther a galaxy is from us, the faster it is traveling away from us. This doesn’t mean there is something special about our place in the Universe. The fact is, this truth holds for every galaxy. If you could travel to any place in the Universe, you would see all the other parts of the Universe moving away from you.

You might think all these galaxies have some outward velocity, that they’re traveling though space like pieces of shrapnel traveling outward from a bomb. But you would be wrong.

What is happening is this: the space between galaxies is expanding. Space itself is expanding. Galaxies are embedded in space, and as space expands it carries the galaxies away from each other. It’s like a loaf of raisin bread in the oven. As the loaf rises and expands, the raisins move away from each other. They’re not traveling through the loaf of bread. They’re staying put; it’s the loaf that is expanding and carrying the raisins farther apart.

If space were literally and truly nothing, how could it expand?

Our Universe, apart from the matter and energy (and dark matter and dark energy) it contains, is made of something we call spacetime. Space and time are the components of spacetime. That is why an object’s velocity through space affects the passage of time for that object. Space and time are woven together. If you tug on one you affect both.

The Big Bang created the Universe. But the Big Bang wasn’t something that happened somewhere in space. Before the Big Bang happened, space didn’t exist. The Big Bang created space. And it created Time. It created spacetime.

Suppose you had the power to remove everything from the Universe. You remove the stars, you remove the dust and gas, you remove light and x-rays and gamma-rays. You remove the dark matter and energy. You remove everything, until finally there is nothing left but empty space. And finally, you remove the empty space. Now, what do you have?

You have the situation that existed before the Big Bang. I call it the Void. The Void can’t be pure nothingness, because if nothing at all existed – not matter, not energy, not potential energy, not even some kind of mathematical framework to hang the laws of physics on – if nothing at all existed, then there would be nothing to cause the Big Bang.

If we had a time machine, we could travel back 13.82 billion years to a time when there was no Universe. We’d have to be in a very special time machine that could exist without occupying any space at all, because there was no space to occupy then. There would be no up or down or this way or that way, because those terms describe 3-dimensional space, of which there wasn’t any. Yet. But something happened. We don’t know how it happened, but we see the flotsam and jetsam it left behind. We see stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, black holes, neutron stars, magnetars, blazars, quasars, and other wonders. We see billions of galaxies. We see a Universe that might be infinite. In fact, there may very well be an infinite number of Universes, each sealed off from all the others, each a part of a vaster Multiverse.

Physicists have theories about how the Universe began and how it may end. In fact, with last year’s discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN, physicists tell us the Universe may well be unstable and that it could collapse into an alternate reality at any time – a reality in which we won’t exist. It may do this, they say, because the vacuum energy is too high. We’re back to thinking about empty space. Empty space is not nothing, it is something, and it is filled with energy. Like water running downhill, the Universe wants to be at a lower vacuum energy than it is now, but it finds itself “blocked” like a river that is dammed in a valley. The Universe is in an “energy valley” and one day it might find a way out. If it does, it will blink out of existence and create a new Universe – a new Big Bang – with a lower vacuum energy.

It’s a lot to think about. Physicists are pretty smart, and they’ve got some really nice tools these days, so maybe they’re right about this. Still, I think they have as much of a shot at understanding the Universe as the ants in my yard have of understanding the plumbing in my house. The more answers we find, the more questions we have. If a Creator exists, it’s a cinch that He’s a lot more clever than us. For sure, the ultimate answers to “Life, the Universe, and Everything” won’t be found in a book.

Gabo

I heard the TV news report: Gabriel Garcia Márquez died today. If you’re a writer you know his name. I’m not a writer (blogs don’t count) but I am a reader, so I turned immediately to watch the story.

Gabriel García Márquez, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America, wrote many novels and short stories, among them One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. He made popular a literary style labeled magic realism, in which elements of magic are part of an otherwise mundane, realistic existence. But it’s the story of how he came to write One Hundred Years of Solitude that I want to recount now, because I think it’s a great example of how to know that someone is absolutely, unequivocally, a writer. This anecdote comes from Wikipedia:

“Since García Márquez was eighteen, he had wanted to write a novel based on his grandparents' house where he grew up. However, he struggled with finding an appropriate tone and put off the idea until one day the answer hit him while driving his family to Acapulco. He turned the car around and the family returned home so he could begin writing. He sold his car so his family would have money to live on while he wrote, but writing the novel took far longer than he expected, and he wrote every day for eighteen months. His wife had to ask for food on credit from their butcher and their baker as well as nine months of rent on credit from their landlord. Fortunately, when the book was finally published in 1967 it became his most commercially successful novel ...”

I’m glad for him, glad his book was successful. But I don’t think García Márquez was thinking of fame and success as he wrote his book. He would have written that book regardless of the outcome. He wrote because a writer has a story in him that he must get out and onto paper, just as a poet has emotions that must find expression, as a painter has a vision he must capture on canvas. I say this as someone who has been, at different times in life, a story-teller, a poet, and even a painter. My efforts were a pale shadow of real talent like García Márquez possessed. But there were rare occasions when I felt for a moment that I had expressed something in words almost eloquent: that I had succeeded in saying something the way I felt it.  That is a good feeling.

Stranger With A Camera

It all started because I wanted to take a photo … this photo of an old bell:

Blogging is one of my hobbies, and photography is another. I enjoy taking photos, and I’ve recently started posting some of them online. I like a photo to be art-worthy if I can make it so; not just an ordinary snapshot but a photo that is pretty, or one that might have meaning to someone who sees it. That’s the goal, at least. I thought the old bell mounted on a post in front of a tree would make a good picture. So I took the shot. As luck would have it, the time of day was late and there wasn’t enough light to bring out the colors, so a couple days later, after a busy morning going here and there, I decided to walk across the park and take another photo in better light. And I did. I walked across the park and up to the sidewalk across the street from the bell, and I shot another photo. There were several kids playing on the sidewalk nearby. I didn’t pay much attention to them; after all, it’s a public park with a playground, so kids are there all the time.

As I turned to leave, I saw a young woman approaching from down the block, walking very fast. She was carrying something, which turned out to be a Chihauhua. The trees in the park were in bloom, so I thought I would try my luck at getting some good photos of the blossoms. As I was walking away, the woman got close enough that I could hear her talking. She was saying something to the children about the dangers of letting strangers talk to them, or take pictures of them … I was catching every fourth word so it wasn’t clear exactly what she was saying, but it was clear that she was talking about me and it was clear that it wasn’t nice. So I thought, maybe I can show her and the kids that because someone is a stranger, that doesn’t automatically mean they are dangerous.

So I went back and in my friendliest voice I said, “Hi. What’s your dog’s name?” The woman said, “Peanut.”

She wanted to know why I was taking pictures of the kids. I said, “I didn’t take pictures of the kids, I took a picture of that old bell.” And I pointed across the street.

She wanted to know why I was taking pictures, and I told her that I like to take pictures, and I asked her if she had heard of Flickr. She said she had. I told her that I like to take pictures and put them online for people to enjoy.

I asked, “Can I take a picture of Peanut?”

The woman seemed to think about it and then said, “Okay.”

I sat down on a little brick wall and the woman put her dog beside me on the wall so I could take a picture. But every time she let go of the dog, it tried to scramble away and she had to grab it again. After several attempts, it was obvious the dog was too excited to sit still, and I said, “This isn’t going to work. Maybe you could hold the dog and I’ll take a picture that way.”

The woman said “No. First you take pictures of children, now you want to take pictures of women.” She went on, more to herself than me, I think.

My own opinion is that it would have made a good photo, but I could see she was in no mood to be friendly or listen to my explanations, so I got up to leave. She had some parting words for me, in which she expressed that she was uncomfortable with me having a camera and demanded that I put the camera away when I was in her presence. She said she was going to get her husband. My parting words were, “You’re paranoid.”

Neither of us came away looking our best. I’m sure she was worried about her kids (I’m assuming they were her kids) and didn’t understand what I was doing there, and she probably was assuming the worst, whatever that might have been.

Now, the fact of the matter is, it’s as legal to carry a camera as a bottle of soda or a backpack or a Chihuahua. And if you and I are both in a public park or  street, I can legally take your picture and you can legally take my picture. That’s the law. 

What I do with your picture is a different matter. If I sell your picture or otherwise make money off it, without your permission, you may be entitled to compensation. In America, people are still allowed to take pictures in the park.

I walked around the park and took more photos of buds blossoming on trees. The entire time I was taking photos in the park, I could hear her ranting about me taking pictures. Finally I left the park and walked across the street to another house with flowers in hanging baskets in the yard. I started to take pictures of those, but realized they were silk flowers.

I walked on up the street. I passed the house where she stood in the backyard with several other adults, and I could still hear her ranting about me taking pictures. The very next day, I was notified that a neighborhood watch meeting was being called. Coincidence?

It’s too bad her world is one where a man with a camera represents a greater threat than a man carrying a gun on his hip. But that’s her world. It’s not my world, not yet, so when her world met my world, there was a collision. To her, I was a threat. To me, I’m a citizen in the park taking pictures of an old bell and pretty blossoms and minding my own business.

If you’d like to see some of my pictures, you can find them here. (Click on the first photo, top left, to see it full size. Then click the arrow to go to the next picture.) If you think a photo is inappropriate, be sure to leave a comment.

Modern Times

I have two microwave ovens which, what with me being a single guy, I find quite useful for cooking tasks such as making popcorn and heating leftovers. (Also useful for heating water for tea, if that counts as cooking.) Sometimes, I'll heat one of those frozen entrees – formerly called TV dinners – that are sold at the Frozen Dead Food Store. With two ovens, I can heat leftovers and boil water at the same time.

It goes without saying that my smart phone is smarter than me. It can do thousands more things than I need. But even my old "dumb" phone, which the industry euphemistically calls a "feature" phone, was smarter than me. It could do hundreds of things I would never need nor even understand why anyone would want to do them.

The old cell phones were phones with a little computer inside. The new phones are computers with a little phone inside. If I had to call 911 on my old phone, I would take it out of my pocket, flip it open, and press 9-1-1-Talk. To end the call, I would press "End." If I have to call 911 on my smart phone, I would take it out of my pocket, push the power button to bring it out of standby, swipe the unlock zone on the screen, touch the phone icon which brings up the Call Log, touch the phone icon on that screen to get the dial pad screen, touch 9-1-1 and then touch the phone icon on the dial-pad screen. Then, I would try to remember why I’m calling 911. Don't ask me how to end the call. I think the correct procedure is to remove the back cover of the phone and take out the battery. I'm pretty sure that will make the phone “hang up” (to use an obsolete term from antique phone technology) but I wouldn't bet money on it.

I'm not a texter. I don't understand the attraction of texting. The pretend-buttons on the pretend-keyboard are half the size of my fingertip. I can't type an entire word without making at least one typo. People like to complain about autocorrect, but autocorrect has never corrected a single typo I ever made, and though autocorrect is probably hiding on my phone and it's only turned off somewhere in the settings menu, I have no idea where that setting is located. Settings for various functions are always hidden in the last place I would look, assuming I even knew the hiding place exists.

The reason people have such a big problem with autocorrect is not the fault of autocorrect. It’s because no one can correctly type two consecutive words without introducing enough typos that the phone's computer, if it could, would say, "Huh?", but since it can't it just rolls the metaphorical dice and picks a word that starts with the same letter and has about the same number of letters (give or take three letters) as the combination of letters just entered.

People: quit blaming autocorrect when the real problem is your inability to accurately touch type on a pretend keyboard that is two inches wide. The solution is to turn off autocorrect and enter your message the way God intended: by retyping every word six times before moving on to the next word. The first time you spend twenty minutes typing a two sentence message, you’ll either find a way to communicate that doesn’t involve texting, or you’ll learn to love autocorrect, warts and all.

Saturday Beer Fail

It’s a sunny day and 73°. It doesn’t get much better than this as far as weather goes. I look out the front window and see 3 police cars lined up in front of my house. They have stopped a car and have a man, presumably the driver, sitting on the curb in handcuffs, and are talking to a second man. On the car’s roof is a fixed-blade knife and sheath. Also on the car’s roof: an aluminum can containing a liquid which an officer pours out onto the ground. I’m guessing it isn’t ginger ale. Intrigued, I watch the little group for a couple of minutes. I must have caught the end of the event because it is over quickly. The man in ‘cuffs is placed into a police car and off he goes to jail. The other man gets into the car and drives away. Welcome to my little city, and have a nice day.

A Visit to the E.R.

On Monday evening I had to go to the emergency room. I’ve done this enough times to know the drill. Take the perishables out of the fridge and put them into the freezer. Turn off all the lights. Close the window blinds and set the lamp timer. Get in my car and drive to the Interstate. (On the way, stop at the gas station because my discount coupon expires at midnight.) Get on the Interstate and head south to the hospital.

There were a lot of people in the ER waiting room, but the medics saw me right away. They do that when you tell them the reason you’re there is your heart. Usually they take you right away, I should add, but not always. A couple of times I’ve waited for hours to see a doctor – yes, for a heart issue.

They took me to a small room and hooked up an EKG machine. The machine was smart. It printed its diagnosis at the top of the paper strip that showed my cardiac activity: Atrial fibrillation with Rapid Ventricular Response. While the machine was doing its thing, a woman at a computer terminal asked questions.

Then they put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me to a trauma room. “Why am I in a trauma room"? I asked. “Because all the emergency rooms are full.”

After they have you lying on a cot in the ER or trauma room, they hook up another EKG machine. Then they put an intravenous line into your arm, just in case they need it. The young man who sited the line hit my vein on the first try. The IV needle is large – it makes the way for a plastic tube that goes inside the vein. The plastic tube, not the steel needle, is what stays in the vein. I was glad he hit my vein on the first jab.

A woman I had not seen before came into the room with a computer terminal. She asked questions, most of which I had answered, but I answered them again. The ER people – the nurses and the people from Registration – were nice and friendly. Doctors are another matter; they’re more “all business.”

I received only one med while I was in the ER – a low dose of a med I was already taking every day. I was doubtful another small dose would help me, and I was right.

The room had a small TV mounted on the wall. A nurse gave me a remote control – a white, oblong gadget with a heavy cord attaching it to the wall. It had a nurse call button and buttons to operate the TV. But the buttons didn’t work for the TV. The young man who sited the IV came into the room, and I told him the remote didn’t work. He reached behind the TV and jiggled cables on the back of the set, but to no avail. The TV worked, just not the remote. I had no idea what channels were available, so I asked him to switch the TV on and tune it to a news channel. I would spend the next six hours lying on the cot in the trauma room.

Time passed and another woman came in with a computer terminal and asked me questions. I told her she could get the answers to her questions from the previous woman, but she said she had to ask them, so I answered them again.

Eventually they told me they were going to “keep me for the night.” Meaning: admit me to the hospital. In lieu of treating me, they were going to wait until my cardiologist came in the next morning. So they wheeled me to an elevator and took me up to the fourth floor, and wheeled me down the corridor and into room 464. It was a semi-private room and it had an occupant. After a while a nurse with a computer terminal came into the room and asked more questions. Many of the questions had already been asked and answered. I pointed that out, and she said that the hospital’s computer and the ER’s computer weren’t connected, so she had to ask them again.

It was now 1:30 AM. The nurse said they were going to hook up an IV drip to keep me hydrated. I asked her, “Why don’t you bring me water and let me drink it?” The nurse said she could do that. (Of course, the hospital had a vested interest here: dripping a bag of water into my vein would go on the bill as a large number, whereas a glass of water was free.)

I couldn’t sleep. The nurses kept the door wide open and light flooded into the room. (They kept the door open so they could make frequent checks on the other occupant without the extra trouble of opening and closing the door.) The nurses’ station was just outside my door, and they talked in a normal conversational volume as if it were the middle of the day, and that made sleep more difficult. On top of that, the other occupant of the room insisted on keeping his television going all night long with the sound up. I complained to a nurse about not being able to sleep, and after an hour or so she returned with a low dose of Ativan. It helped a little. I slept for two hours.

The next morning my primary care doctor and my cardiologist met at my bedside. They had decided not to do anything about the a-fib. Instead, they wanted me to take a blood thinner. A blood thinner makes it possible to live with a-fib. I hesitated but they insisted. They suggested Coumadin, a blood thinner with known interactions with other drugs as well as foods. It’s so deadly that you have to get your blood tested every two weeks, at least in the beginning. If you get too much in your blood, your blood will get so thin it will leak out of your veins. You’ll bleed to death internally. I gave a firm “No” to the Coumadin.

They suggested a different blood thinner, and I reluctantly said “okay.” Finally, around 11 AM they let me leave the hospital, but not before giving me a dose of the new blood thinner and a prescription for more. I left, dropped the new prescription off at the pharmacy, and went home. I got on the Internet and looked up the blood thinner they wanted me to take. The Box Warnings were scary. The word “fatal” was used a number of times. Plus, it warned that once I was on it I was never supposed to stop it or there might be a “thrombotic event.” That didn’t sound good.

At some point during the day I realized my heart was back in its normal, familiar rhythm. A doctor would say, “Not so fast, it has to be confirmed with an EKG.” But I didn’t need an EKG. I’ve had this body a long time and I know what it feels like when it’s working well.

I went to the pharmacy to pick up two prescriptions: one was simply a new dosage of a med I was already taking, and the other was the blood thinner. The middle-aged woman behind the pharmacy counter looked at me and said, “We have two medicines ready, but I have to tell you something about one of them. It’s three hundred and fifty five dollars. You might not want it.”

“You got that right,” I said. “Put it back on the shelf.” The pharmacist didn’t blink. Considering the price of drugs these days, I’m sure she’s heard the phrase, “I don’t want it,” many times.

I’m pretty sure I hear someone out there saying, “Why don’t you get prescription drug insurance?” My answer: “I have prescription drug insurance. Next question?”

Anyway, that’s my experience at the ER. If you should go, your mileage may vary.