Universe

Saturday

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

A tower of nonsense

Western civilization believes in increasingly few Big Things, as the Greek poet Archilochus and the 20th-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin called them. This includes the One Big Thing, God, the numerous philosophical proofs of whose existence many claim to find insufficient and unbelievable. Among those things the West does believe in are the numerous discoveries that scientists have claimed for themselves, such as the recent discovery that the universe is expanding at its edges – that is to say, it is receding from us – faster than the speed of light, owing to the cumulative stretching of space: a thing that seems to me to be far more unimaginable and unbelievable than the existence of a single triune God who created that universe and everything in it.

Tuesday

David Whitehouse

A new map of the universe may turn gravity on its head

From our US edition

Scientists have released the largest map of the universe ever compiled. Millions of galaxies have been surveyed, stretching back 11 billion years, most of the age of the cosmos. According to many scientists, this data, combined with other observations, presages a major reassessment of what we know about the universe: possibly, for the first time, revealing a crack in Einstein’s theory of gravity. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is attached to a large telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Each night it measures the positions of and distances to thousands of galaxies. Galaxies exist in groups and their motions are influenced by other, nearby galaxies.

universe 3I

Thursday

David Whitehouse

Farewell, Voyager 1

Some time soon we will have to say farewell to our most distant emissary – the Voyager 1 spacecraft. After almost 50 years in space, it’s 15 billion miles away and showing signs of wear and could soon stop transmitting. Late last year, Voyager 1 began to decline, sending back spools of gibberish to its handlers on this planet. A few days ago, Nasa engineers finally traced the problem back to a single chip but it’s clear that Voyager 1 will shortly have to cut contact and make its way out across the universe on its own. It’s strange to think that it will be exploring on out into deep space long after its makers – humans – have become extinct.