I love this. I LOVE it. So the James Webb telescope. It's the largest smoothest mirror ever made and it's the furthest away from Earth's gravity ever, and so it acts astonishingly.
And astrophysicists are beginning to notice things in it.
Like, there are way more galaxies, from way longer ago. Longer ago than they should be.
They say this is as weird as looking at a picture of your grandparents, yet you see your grandchildren are also in it. There's grandpa Steve, standing outside the garage where his old Buick is waiting for him to apply the hose. It's a hot Sunday afternoon. And just behind him you glimpse someone. They're familiar. They're Eddie, your little grandson. Eddie is smiling out of the picture as if nothing at all were the matter.
But you're freaking out because Eddie shouldn't have been born yet.
What. Has happened. To time.
All the models. Maybe all of them, literally. Maybe they're all about to give way. Like phlogiston and the ether, dark matter and so on were just brought in to balance some equations. Equations with known fudges. There are two Hubble constants, depending on how far back or not you're looking.
Equations that pertain to a universe where your grandparents are clouds of gas and black holes. But there are galaxies amongst them. Galaxies strewn like necklaces by some carefree drunken partygoer across the divan of the universe, devil may care.
Physical reality currently outstrips the theory, giving humans who can understand what this means a glimpse of profound object withdrawal. A withdrawal that can't be explained (away) by more matter, just invisible matter, that devilish metaphysics of presence rearing its ugly head to spoil the party over and over again, and since scientists don't think philosophy much, they default to it, because it's in the air. It's in the white supremacy.
But reality smiles and scatters far, far away, like those galaxies leaving us with a wink and a smile, way, way WAY further out than they should be. They should still be at the party. But wait...they showed up in a photo of your grandpa on the wall. You're saying bye-bye to the guests, and you look at the photo of your family in the lobby, and there's little Eddie, like I say, smiling away, with his shining milk teeth. Galaxy, milk, galactose. That chocolate you ate in the 1970s. That toothy grin. That necklace Letitia left on the sofa in 1924, only she just left according to your watch. But it's an antique necklace. Hasn't been worn for decades...How could she have...
Isn't that refreshing?
Isn't that lovely?
Refreshing and lovely indeed!!! I came across your blog just now and had to respond to this post. Last night, photons from Stephans quintet (a galaxy group some 280 millions light years away / old) hit my retina with a little help from a piece of glass in my modest backyard telescope. Made me feel just a tiny bit like the mirror in the Webb telescope. Time, whatever it is, is awesome.
ReplyDeleteI am at the moment reading "Dark Ecology". Really inspiring, thank you!!! I also enjoyed "Human kind" and "Hyperobjects" very much. The latter inspired a new project in my work as a composer called "Interobjective soundscapes" in which I try to challenge different spatio-temporal aspects of experiencing sound and music. For instance, I explore performances with graphic scores shown to the audience as simultaneous visual expression of the sound they hear.
I am also working on a new piece to last for more than a year. The time passing between the different movements of the piece is vast, several months. Then, a new movement will be performed. How will the experience of the work as a whole be affected by the passing of time?
I have always been concerned about ecology, and about art as an expression of interconnectedness between humans and non-humans. Reading your books and getting to know OOO has opened up new ways of approaching this aspect of my work, for this I am very grateful (and it also goes well with my interest in physics and astronomy :-))
All the best,
Sigurd Hole