The last time I wrote about outer space, back in May, I called it "the final frontier nobody really cares about," and even hinted that there might be a smidgen of hooey in cosmological study (not to be confused with cosmetological study, the science of applying makeup). That was grossly irresponsible and unfair — just crankiness on my part because I was having trouble "getting my head around" a few astronomical statistics on the distance and size of a newly discovered black hole.
I’m a big enough man now to admit that space science is way above me. Who am I to question an institution steeped in high-minded empiricism (second definition)? From here on out you can consider me on board with space science!
Not that a few small concerns haven’t surfaced since my attitudinal epiphany took place. For instance, while I now completely subscribe to the often-used scientific proclamation that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world, I must confess to feeling a little wary about the tabulation methodology — specifically, how many scientists were involved in the stars-versus-grains counting and how did they coordinate?
Just kidding! An anonymous answer guy on the website everything2.com (most likely a cosmologist not wishing to toot his horn) wrote that the average grain of sand is about .25 millimeters square and that there are approximately 1.5 million kilometers of shoreline on Earth, with an average beach width of 50 meters. Because no beach-goer has been known to dig down any farther than a meter or so, simple math puts the number of grains at 4.8 times 10 to the 21st power. Star estimating is even easier, he says: Multiply the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy (100 billion) times the number of galaxies in the universe (50 billion), which comes to 5 times 10 to the 21st power. There you go — more stars than grains.
If there is a quibble with that scientific finding, it is only from those who think the number of stars in the Milky Way is 200 billion, as well as those who think it’s 500 million. Either way, that’s more stars than sand grains, so what’s the problem? Before the Hubble Space Telescope was sent up in 1990, space scientists were using figures like 250,000 stars in the Milky Way and 10 million galaxies in the universe, so the grains won out then, but hey — let’s not talk about the past when the present is so . . . relevant.
An example: We now know that a person is capable of forming a universe by him or herself, as long as he or she can figure out a way to form a black hole. I heard that from a space scientist on Ira Flatow’s Science Friday while driving home from work. You know, this scientist said, it may not be feasible for a single person to form a black hole, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility of doing it. Exciting stuff.
All right, here’s the creme de la creme of cosmological proclamations, credited to Stanford University "String Theory" expounder Leonard Susskind: There are more universes out there than there are atoms in our universe. Whoa — that’s a lot of universes! But before you start with a "not possible" knee-jerk reaction, you have to understand something first: Only 4 percent of the universe is made up of atoms, so that cuts the number of universes way down right there. (The remaining 96 percent, cosmologists say, is composed of atomless dark matter and "mysterious dark energy.") Still, I wouldn’t want to be the guy stuck with the math work on that baby. Just counting the atoms in a dinner fork would vapor-lock my brain.
But that’s why we have space scientists, isn’t it — diligent observers in a sometimes thankless profession, with their computers tuned in to Hubble, ready to make the call that there are no longer a few but a jillion universes out there, and if you want to form another, by all means take a stab at it.
More power to ya.
