I believe that wonder is an accompaniment of discovery. I have discovered things -- even in the theoretical realm when one is not totally convinced of the theory, one can discover and be amazed at the beauty of a congruence one had not anticipated. My life has been peppered with such discoveries of such magnitude that I could hardly contain my joy. Yet for the most part, these discoveries are private, for rarely is there an opportunity to take another through that journey.
And so I wrote a book -- the product of 25 years (more, really) of concerted probing of ... of... of mindspace -- not just any mindspace, but a particular mindspace. In my case, it is or was, cosmology. It all started with a question. I guess it was a good question, at least for me it was. It took me out of the mundanity of my job as an offset printer into the graduate school of astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley. There I was able to acquire ultraviolet spectra from the Hubble Space Telescope of nearby quasars. Encoded in the spectra were absorption lines of primeval clouds of hydrogen. That alone told me little. Next I obtained a galaxy redshift catalog. This enabled me to calculate the tidal fields produced by galaxies within 7.5 megaparsecs (a long way), which I used as a measure of the isolation of clouds. What I was looking for was clouds in cosmic voids. This was a test of my cosmology, which told me that there would be more clouds in these cosmic voids than adherents of the Big Bang theory supposed, and that furthermore, their concentration would increase as one probed deeper in voids. I recall the evening, driving home on my bike -- the awesome glee at having confirmed for myself that those clouds were there!
Would I have I have been that happy had I known that none of my colleagues would be interested -- even repelled by the thought that I could be right? It was the tale of Sisyphus told again in my life. And today, with the theory fully fledged, I push that boulder upward to the pinnacle of acceptance, reaching out, like a blind man, for acknowledgment, even while I begin to approach Death's door. The theory? Yes, it's the theory of the continuing creation of the universe -- quite literally -- by little creation events that bring with them both positive and negative energy species -- matter and photons as positive energy, and space as negative energy. Yes, space as literally a negative energy; joules per cubic meter. By gentle prodding of the mind-space, the theory unfolds with such beauty that I am sometimes left in awe and wonder, for there is always more. For it is the universe! Deep, but not unfathomable. Yet there is always more as deeper questions are asked.
And so, I would say to those who crave that feling, good questions are the key to the door of wonder!
I believe that wonder is an accompaniment of discovery. I have discovered things -- even in the theoretical realm when one is not totally convinced of the theory, one can discover and be amazed at the beauty of a congruence one had not anticipated. My life has been peppered with such discoveries of such magnitude that I could hardly contain my joy. Yet for the most part, these discoveries are private, for rarely is there an opportunity to take another through that journey.
And so I wrote a book -- the product of 25 years (more, really) of concerted probing of ... of... of mindspace -- not just any mindspace, but a particular mindspace. In my case, it is or was, cosmology. It all started with a question. I guess it was a good question, at least for me it was. It took me out of the mundanity of my job as an offset printer into the graduate school of astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley. There I was able to acquire ultraviolet spectra from the Hubble Space Telescope of nearby quasars. Encoded in the spectra were absorption lines of primeval clouds of hydrogen. That alone told me little. Next I obtained a galaxy redshift catalog. This enabled me to calculate the tidal fields produced by galaxies within 7.5 megaparsecs (a long way), which I used as a measure of the isolation of clouds. What I was looking for was clouds in cosmic voids. This was a test of my cosmology, which told me that there would be more clouds in these cosmic voids than adherents of the Big Bang theory supposed, and that furthermore, their concentration would increase as one probed deeper in voids. I recall the evening, driving home on my bike -- the awesome glee at having confirmed for myself that those clouds were there!
Would I have I have been that happy had I known that none of my colleagues would be interested -- even repelled by the thought that I could be right? It was the tale of Sisyphus told again in my life. And today, with the theory fully fledged, I push that boulder upward to the pinnacle of acceptance, reaching out, like a blind man, for acknowledgment, even while I begin to approach Death's door. The theory? Yes, it's the theory of the continuing creation of the universe -- quite literally -- by little creation events that bring with them both positive and negative energy species -- matter and photons as positive energy, and space as negative energy. Yes, space as literally a negative energy; joules per cubic meter. By gentle prodding of the mind-space, the theory unfolds with such beauty that I am sometimes left in awe and wonder, for there is always more. For it is the universe! Deep, but not unfathomable. Yet there is always more as deeper questions are asked.
And so, I would say to those who crave that feling, good questions are the key to the door of wonder!