Honolulu Lite
AS an indigenous earthling, I'm proud of this sovereign planet but it's time for humans to stop being so celestialcentricand start worrying about the entire universe. Expanding universe
needs our helpAn important team of scientists with extremely good eyesight just figured out that the universe is possibly 12 billion years old. More importantly, the universe is expanding at a rate of 70 kilometers per second, faster than Marlon Brando.
How the scientists figured out the universe is expanding is really complicated. Basically, it involved sending up the Hubble space telescope whose sole purpose was to peer deep into universe. Unfortunately, someone screwed up the main lens of the Hubble and so for several years, scientists explored the universe through what essentially was a hellishly expensive Coke bottle. Then NASA sent a team of astro-optometrists or something into space to install a glorified contact lens on the Hubble. That allowed the telescope to really get cracking. What Hubble found was that the universe is big. Really big. Really big and really old. Before Hubble, scientists thought the universe was only about 10 billion years old, which was weird because they knew that certain stars actually were 12 billion years old. When people asked how stars could be older than the universe, the scientists just got sullen and testy. But the Hubble proved that the universe is at least 12 billion years old, so the scientists were lucky there.
NOW, the thing that has always bugged me about outer space, the universe and everything is that, if the universe is 12 billion years old, what was there BEFORE the universe formed. Say you go back 12 billion years to the very day the universe was formed. What was there THE DAY BEFORE? Was it just a big old empty space, like a strip mall department store just waiting for some cosmic tenant to move in?
Not only was the universe formed in some kind of Big Bang deal in which complete emptiness suddenly exploded into chunks of matter, antimatter, watsamatter and other kinds of space stuff, but it has continued to expand ever since. And fast. Like I said, they think it's expanding 70 kilometers per second, which is frightening because most people don't even know how big a kilometer is. But since they measure the expansion in kilometers instead of good old American "feet," you know it's serious.
This finding leads to a couple of important questions, like, if the universe is expanding, what is it expanding INTO? It has to go somewhere, right? The fact that it is expanding indicates there is a SOMEWHERE for it to go. Where is that SOMEWHERE? But more importantly, WHAT is that SOMEWHERE? Where did that SOMEWHERE come from? Can that SOMEWHERE hold an entire expanding universe? How many SOMEWHERES are there out THERE?
I frankly don't know the answer to those questions. And just writing them down caused a furious brain cramp. But I'll tell you this, if the universe is expanding, it's a bad thing and probably our fault.
I suspect that aerosol deodorants, Republicans, rich countries, bovine flatulence and automobile emissions are causing the universe to expand. Where is Al Gore when you need him? While he wastes time with his petty, small-minded, global-warming campaign, stars and planets are moving away from us faster than a presidential grope. It's time to "Save the Expanding Universe!" Or at least put it on a diet.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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