I don’t know if many people in Ireland watched the excellent Horizon programme on BBC2 last Tuesday. Essentially its core mind boggling thesis was all that we have learned about the Universe to date through scientific methods such as the key standard mathematical model of Cosmology may in fact ‘be false’. The programme makers illustrated this contention be repeated showing of various pyrotechnic explosions, a big red pvc bag pillowing outwards to its full size as it filled with air and of course, the use of the ultimate tool for asserting mathematical certainty, a man busily writing numbers, square roots and various incomprehensible squiggles on a blackboard with chalk. This latter reference reminded me of my attempt with some of my fellow students to master ‘higher’ maths while studying architecture in the late 1960’s at UCD in Dublin. We started off with some 25 people attending the class as most of us had achieved ‘high’ maths results in the Leaving Cert and so we felt that the ‘lower’ maths course was a ‘dawdle’ and hence wanted to experience some mental stimulation in attending this class. However, within three weeks the number attending had dwindled to just three as the lecturer simply turned his back on his audience and simply wrote a series of seemingly never-ending equations across the blackboard from side to side while mumbling satisfaction to himself and erasing previous figures as he progressed. After another few weeks the lecture series was suddenly terminated and I think the lecturer in question returned to planet Zorg or whatever other place from which he came.
But for the first time in some 40 years while watching Horizon on Tuesday last, I had a sudden feeling of nostalgia for this class and wondered if I had continued with it would I now have a better understanding of Cosmology in general and indeed the Universe in particular. Unfortunately, my own present knowledge of the universe owes more to Star Wars and Dark Vadar or Star Trek and the Klingons and thus I can only go ‘where no man has gone before’ by means of the Starship Enterprise rather than by any rational scientific model. However, as in my student days I began to take copious notes and soon learned that the Universe has been expanding outwards since the Big Bang (more use of pyrotechnic display on my tv screen) and that Cosmologist have found evidence of a ‘dark’ flow energy phenomenon which is all pervasive and is affecting the working of clusters of galaxies in the entire universe.
To try and get a greater understanding of this extraordinary phenomenon some scientists have built a monitoring station in New Mexico, (where else when it is famously home to such as flying saucers) and have been studying the skies for any sign of the elusive ‘dark’ flow for some 5 years. Recently, they would seem to have achieved a breakthrough as they have deduced that some star galaxies are not behaving as expected. Unkindly perhaps, I did not consider this to be a major ‘earth shattering’ conclusion, as I know of a group of religious worshipers at Knock Shrine in Co. Mayo in Ireland who have achieved a much more intense insight after staring at the sun for a much shorter period of time. However, the latter group were religious activists and as you know our attitudes to religion and science have swapped places in our consciousness in recent times with scientists proclaimed their results with ever increasing intuitive fervour and religious practitioners demanding solid factual ‘proof’ for any religious practice.
Nevertheless I decided to review the core arguments of this programme in its contention that cosmologists have a mathematical equation proving the logical basis for the Universe and its manifestations in space but that unfortunately the Universe will simply not ‘play ball’ as it were and continues to act in an unpredictable and, horror of horrors, an ‘irrational’ manner. Hence, the reason for the introduction of the ‘dark’ energy thesis which if proved could allow the wonderful mathematical equation to ‘stand’ as it were.
I decided to have ago at resolving this dilemma in my own modest way and set out for the ‘Rock Road’ between Moycullen and Tullykyne, so called because it has an extensive land area of rugged limestone outcrops similar to those found in the Burren and the Aran Islands. There I spent some 5 hours in deep contemplation and reflection on my immediate amazing landscape. Just as I was about to leave I definitely became aware of a strange all pervasive energy which I could distinguish in the rock formations around me. I knew that it might prove difficult to establish the veracity of this sensation to the Cosmologists of New Mexico, who need ‘absolute’ proof before conceding the existence of anyextra terrestrial event. I therefore took a photograph and it is reproduced with this blog. I know that it alone may not be deemed conclusive proof that ‘dark’ energy flows exist but it has had such a far reaching impression on my own life to date that I can truly be said to be a ‘shadow of my former self’.
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