The latest word from astronomers suggests that our universe resembles a TV sequel-of-the-week more than it does a good whodunit.
The upshot is, the whole shebang appears to be eternally expanding outward, a universe with ”a brilliant beginning but no end,” according to Jeffery Linsky and his team at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colo.
This theory, developed with the aid of something called a cornerstone measurement, and using heavy hydrogen and the hobbled Hubble telescope, apparently makes for a good second act in the drama of the Big Bang, the universe`s alleged ”brilliant beginning.”
Perhaps. While Dr. Linsky`s scientific prowess is a quantum leap ahead of ours, we may just decide to keep the prerogative of the amateur stargazer, and keep wondering about it all.
Plus, maybe we`re all a little burned by these meaty scientific bulletins that later turn out to be so much flat-Earth ash. Recently scientists Andrew Lyne and Jodrell Bank retracted their earlier announcement that they had identified a new planet. It turns out they were eyeing a perfectly ordinary Earth-sun squiggle.
Being in a fact-and-error business ourselves, we know how they feel. We all need the cautionary humility of a Maurice Wilkins, the 1962 Nobel Prize-winning scientist who observed ”the scientist does not go after truth; it goes after him.”
In that spirit, let us suggest some idle questions. Such as: If the universe is infinite, how do we know when we`ve measured its cornerstone? And how can we be certain that hydrogen is ”the most abundant element in the cosmos” if we have an infinite field from which to draw samples?
That`s not to say the theory of a universe without end isn`t right; just that for now, we`ll consider the safer ground to be the unstable ground of curiosity, not certainty. As another Nobel winner, Francis Crick pointed out, ”just as important as having ideas is getting rid of them . . . without becoming too enamored of them.”
