BUBBLE UNIVERSE
Below is the latest plausible bubble theory from the astronomers.
It "confines" or "defines" our part of the universe as being a sort of
bubble only 250 million light years in diameter. That's 250 million
times the distance light travels in a year (which is 186,000
miles times the number of seconds in a year.)
That's a lot better than the diameter of the entire universe
which is estimated to be 93 billion light years!
[Expanding universe: We may be in a vast bubble
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200320192753.htm
The few thousand galaxies closest to us move in a vast 'bubble' that is
250 million light years in diameter, where the average density of matter
is half as large as for the rest of the universe. This is the hypothesis put
forward by a theoretical physicist to solve a conundrum that has been
splitting the scientific community for a decade: at what speed is the universe expanding?]
Nevertheless, despite the apparent attractiveness of thinking in terms of light years,
I still prefer to ground my thinking within the bubble consisting of the Earth, the Sun
and the Moon or, better still, within the bubble of thought that floats above my head.
And that may be why I like things that fit comfortably into my thought bubble such as
haiku, aphorisms, pithy anecdotes and witty jokes. There is a dangerous confusion
of bigness and prolixity with importance and profundity.
As Luc De Clapiers, the Marquis De Vauvenargues (1715-1747) said, "Lorsqu'une
pensee est trop faible pour porter une expression simple, c'est la marque pour la rejeter."
[When an idea is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be dropped.] In the same vein,
Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662) apologizing for a long letter, wrote, "Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus
longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." [ I have made this
longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.]
So this period of viral confinement and isolation may be a good time to think about the
simple and short fundamentals of life. Perhaps it is a time to pull back from exploration
of what's going on at the largest distances of the universe and explore more deeply
the bubbles closest to us.
ADDENDUM
This brought to mind a design project typical of the work of Daniel Young - a label for
a bottle of blowing bubbles intended to stimulate thoughts about the apparently genuine
physical possibility that the emergence of a new form of sub-atomic particle could
cause the collapse of our entire universe in an instant. Now, there's a comforting thought.
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