The Unseen Here and Now . . .
Stuart
Revercomb
Stuart
Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four
children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be
a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.
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March 08, 2001
Big Bangs and Buckyballs
Damn.
A Comet.
I've just been advised that every 100 million years or so we get slapped by one large enough to produce an "extinction event".
An "extinction event?"
Sounds a little mundane as a description that at the very least would wipe the works of Beethoven from the universe.
Armageddon has a much better, "going to wipe you out and pound you into smithereens" feel to it. But I guess if our modern English dialect has to describe everything as an "event" of some kind, it will have to do.
The same article that enlightened me to this fact came to the astounding realization that each new species that "takes over" after such an "event" has about 100 million years to grow-up and :
A. Realize that there are big dirty snowballs "out there" capable of rendering us past tense on any given day.
B. Come to the conclusion that something needs to be done about it.
C. Devise a means by which to avoid the next impact.
I think we have the "A"part down pretty well. Heck, Copernicus probably had some concerns over some of the stuff he saw whizzing by out there. But I'm not certain we've made it to "B' yet at all. Save some pretty challenging rhetoric by the late Carl Sagan, whose pronunciation of such words as "Nebulae" and "Cosmos" probably didn't help his efforts, we've heard very little regarding our now certain destruction by a wayward ice ball. But its just a matter of time...
How do we know?
"Buckyballs" is how we know.
"Buckyballs??"
Yes. Buckyballs.
Now I know you're thinking that I'm setting you up for some sort of "Snipe hunt" here, but stay with me a moment. Only recently discovered, Buckyballs are infinitesimally small carbon structures that are hard at work way down there at the sub-atomic level. If you're one of those people that has to "visualize" everything, imagine about 17 quatrillion jillion little soccer balls all balancing together on the head of a pin that has been shrunken to about one, one millionth its normal size. Now pick one out and separate it from the group..
There - got it? That's a "Buckyball".
Now here's the good part. If I understand them correctly, and I think I do, these science guys have figured out that Comets pulverize our cute little planet every so often because they've taken some of these ity-bity little soccer balls from certain levels underground and tested the "air" between their "walls" and come to the conclusion that there are traces of stuff that simply can not be made here in our Solar System. Further they have determined, by means as yet revealed, that these substances were produced, "in some distant primordial environment" which is to say that they came from an oozing and dripping sort of place a very, very long way away.
Now thats what I call science.
Not only have they done something that to the average hard working, NASCAR watching, blue jean wearing American must sound like the work of the Gods, they have also been able to infer a conclusion that sounds eternally true no matter how you slice it.
And it probably is. The existence of "Buckyballs" not withstanding.
So the question remains. What the heck are we going to
do about it?
If you saw the movie "Armageddon", which I didn't, let me assure
you that no matter how good the special affects were, we are not going
to be able to send 16 oil drillers into space to detonate a large atomic
bomb on , in or near an asteroid or comet anytime soon.
Its just not going to happen.
This makes the 1970's movie "Asteroid", where the Chinese and Russians join us in launching every last ICBM we own towards an oncoming space rock, a whole lot more believable. And if our best hope has ANYTHING to do with 1970's disaster movies we're in some BIG trouble.
The reality of the situation is that "the end" will come . Just as we ourselves are not immortal, it seems likely that our cozy little planet is no less so.
If your inclined to believe that life on this planet and the "consciousness" it brings is merely the result of a little chance and some good luck resulting in a big bang at both the beginning and end, its not such a petty picture. Nothing much matters in the end because that's just what it is, and death will finally get it's due.
But if you're brave, humble and faithful enough to think otherwise, its when the real party begins - when all the what ifs and should haves and injustices of this fleeting world disappear with the darkness and the great mystery is understood as we now are understood - though we know not how.
It should be quite a celebration - or a "celebration event" as the case may be.
I hope to see you there.