Pointing Your Cursor to the Universe

Mercury, September/October 2006 Table of Contents

by Paul Higgins

Everyone looks up at the stars in awe, but only a few wonder how they got there. Fewer still actually apply themselves to study of the stars and heavens. And while numerous books for enthusiastic non-scientists are written each year about cosmology, this grand branch of astronomy remains one of mystery and a source of almost passive intimidation for non-scientists.

Cosmology, the study of the structure, dynamics, and evolution of the Universe, is a field of intellectual endeavor supported by concepts that are very abstract. Indeed, much of what we know about the Universe is due primarily to observation and then a back-application or even development of theory to explain or understand those observations. The observations inform the theory, for the most part—observation generates questions, which lead to scientists' formulated hypotheses in response to those questions, which, when tested, eventually lead to theory. And a theory, then, can inform subsequent observations. Sort of a cosmological Ouroboros.

In essence, cosmologists are describing structures that often we cannot even see, and comparing the indirect experimental data to theoretical calculations. Studying cosmology is akin to rattling a sealed box and describing what is inside based on the sounds. For example, understanding concepts such as curved, four-dimensional space is for most people a huge mental leap into the seeming nothingness of spacetime fabric—considering we cannot draw a true picture or graph of it (see for example, "Using a Brane to Probe the Bulk," March/April, p. 18)—yet cosmologists routinely gird themselves in such ethereal cloth.

This inevitably leads to the question of why society should fund cosmology programs, especially when so few people apparently "get it." This is a hard question to answer because physicists are competing against requests for funding for humanitarian programs, such as universal health care and building homes for the poor. A common answer to the question of the value of cosmology research is, "Well, we don’t know why it’s important now, but give us a few years and maybe we’ll be able to say."

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