But as I got ready for bed last Sunday, I had the feeling everything had changed, shifted in a way that will never shift back.
The reason was something I’d just learned — make that heard — on the PBS program “Nova.”
And although it can be expressed in one sentence — and will be in a moment — its implications made me feel like a pelican that had managed to snag a whale in its pouch, tipped its head back and was trying to fit a writhing leviathan down its gullet.
The thought: There are more galaxies in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches and all the deserts on earth.
The reason I used the word “heard” rather than “learned” to describe my contact with this information: Heard involves merely taking in the data. Learned indicates a level of comprehension I haven’t reached.
After bringing up something worth ruminating on, folks of a certain age use to tell me: Chew on that for a while. Well, if I chewed on this little ditty for eternity, I’m not sure I’d learn more than how to give myself a good case of TMJ.
In a profession in which we’re taken to task for taking things out of context, I can find no context in which I can connect the little bit of the personal universe that surrounds me with a universe whose dimensions seem simply incomprehensible.
And I’ve tried, with the following: Let’s say, I were to conceptualize our universe, the Milky Way, to be be the size of an average candy bar. I still can’t imagine a space large enough to hold as many candy bars as there are grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts on earth. And I fear the effort might reduce my brain to a gooey nougat.
I’ve been thinking lately our creaturely aspects as human beings. A simple one is our ability to see only a sliver of the full light spectrum. To realize the greater swath that exists — infrared, microwave, etc. — we turn to tools.
As I stood before the vanity in my bathroom last Sunday night, I began wonder whether we have similar limitations in perceiving even the visible portions of the universe.
Although our imaginations and skills may allow us to measure the dimensions of the universe, the product of those calculations and measurements may be something we cannot truly comprehend.
That’s how it seemed Sunday night as I stood in front of my vanity.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.
About the Author