In Space There Is No Up Or Down
I love the night sky, as you might have read from my past writings. I have a perfect place to view the Milky-way Galaxy beside the bay. I’m enthralled with the enormity of all the stars against the black background of space. I can’t get enough of it! It makes me feel so small, and yet so big in that I am a part of it all.
I’ve told my family that if there is an afterlife, then I wish that my ‘Being’ can fly amongst those stars and galaxies, to see them up close and from different perspectives. My favorite constellation, Orion, would look completely different from various different view. From Earth, it may seem that all the stars are laying flat against a black screen, but all of those stars are separated by light years from each other. I find that fascinating! Go on, point at me and call me nerd.
I know that I am a nerd about this. I remember a life changing moment when I was at university in Iowa. The instructor took us out to the football stadium and we gathered around the fifty yard line. There was no light to interfere with our view. We handed around a pair of binoculars to view the night sky. I was guided to look at the Andromeda Galaxy. I was blown away seeing it for the first time. My mind was ablaze with questions about life and the universe. I was overwhelmed and I felt a change in my consciousness. I needed to know more!
I bought Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ soon after and consumed his writings. My appetite for astronomy grew and grew. I needed to know more, so I searched out books about star gazing, our galaxy and the cosmos, and anything else in regards to learning more. At university I went to a few talks by a professor called John Haglan. He was a Theoretical Physicist. I learned about the Quantum Field, which covered all the subatomic particles like Bosons, Quarks, Muons, and their spins. I didn’t understand a thing!! But I liked it!
I felt, for the first time in my life, that I was intelligent, even though as I said, I didn’t understand a lot of it. I wasn’t about to give up. I started to research and dig deeper into this newfound love of mine. That was over thirty years ago and I am still pecking away at whatever knowledge I can grasp. I’ve read all of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s books and went to one of his talks here in Brisbane. I’ve seen Michio Kaku talk here as well. I wish to see Brian Greene but he hasn’t visited Brisbane in a while, so someday I hope he will return. I had a chance to see Lawrence Kruass, but he couldn’t make it down here with Richard Dawkins.
I watch videos of all of these brilliant minds and collect their books to read. Sometimes I feel that I missed my calling and should have become a physicist myself. I love math, but am not that good at it and slow to calculate in my mind. Still, I am a math enthusiast and love to follow great minds of mathematics such as Richard Feynman. I feel that I missed the boat early in my life to pursue these fields.
So I guess you could call me a novice of thirty plus years when it comes to physics and math. Maybe I just like the aesthetic value of it all. I have a BFA in Art and Sculpture, and I admired the works of Henry Moore. I was fortunate to see his semi-abstract sculptures displayed in the Kansas Museum of Art. They were such monolithic structures and changed shape as I walked around them and saw them from different perspectives. I was in awe of his works.
Art is a different way to evoke math and perspective. Sculpture and paintings incorporate a lot of geometry. I like looking for the Golden Ratio within works of Art; The Fibonacci Sequence. It’s so enlightening. I think that Math is the universal language of the cosmos.
It’s all fascinating to me and I yearn for more. If I could do my life over again, I would indulge myself in math and physics. I would die a happy man.
I went out to my ‘go to’ place tonight to look up at the stars and they were shining exquisitely bright. I saw the Crux (the Southern Cross) and the guiding stars. When you know how to align them you can find, or estimate, the direction of the South Pole. Of course Orion was splendid tonight. Here in Australia the view of Orion is upside down, compared to the northern hemisphere. Also, the Moon is viewed upside down here as well in the southern hemisphere. It doesn’t take much to view objects from a different perspective.
In space there is no Up or Down.
My wife bought me a telescope years ago and one night in New Zealand I pointed it toward Orion’s belt and saw the Horse Head Nebula. Again, I was blown away. One night on our back deck in New Zealand I aligned it toward Sirius and it looked so bright through my telescope and sparkled like a diamond, all blues and whites. I consider myself fortunate. What I would like to do is go to a real astronomical sight and view the night sky through one of those huge telescopes, and spend a night looking through it with professional astronomers. That is on my bucket list, as well as seeing the Northern Lights.
One more thing before I end. I visited Hanmer Springs in the southern island of New Zealand one weekend, and we stayed in a cabin located out of town. Nature called and I had to go outside to walk to the toilets. When I stepped outside and saw the night sky I swear I transcended. The sky was filled with stars, and the Milky-Way was the thickest part. I didn’t know that when you see the night sky, unadulterated from the cities light pollution, that the whole sky lit up. I did my business and walked back to the cabin and stayed outside for the longest time in the chilled air taking it all in. I must return there to see it again. I am told that the outback here in Australia is quite beautiful, but you know…, snakes. I also want to hear from the Aborigine elders about their stories regarding the night sky, as well as the New Zealand Maori stories in New Zealand. If I ever return to the states I intend to visit the Hopi and Navajo Nations in northern Arizona and possibly hear their stories as well.
Maybe I should make a wish upon a star…., I hear it will take you very far.
It’s late now and clouds are blocking my view to the stars through my windows. I can usually see Orion setting at this time at night. I’m tired. Goodnight, and as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says, ‘Keep looking up!’
