Universe

A person who now teaches mathematics at a university was making a simulation program to predict the concentration levels of the air pollution in a city ten years ago in the office where I work. We sometimes went out for drinking after work. Drinking beer at one night, we began talking about science fictions. He was then the president of the Japan Science Fiction Association. He told me he was thinking about inviting Sakyo Komatu, a famous Japanese science fiction writer, as a main guest to their nationwide congress of that year. I suggested him to invite Isaac Asimov instead. He answered me, "Asimofv hates to fly by airplane, so ... ". The mathematician does not write science fictions himself, but writes review articles. An example of his review is something like this; the rainbow must be round shape if it is seen form the spaceship traveling over the speed of light. Our conversation soon went further to the Big Bang and finally he said, "Well, let me calculate the total mass of the universe. Give me a pen and a sheet of paper ... ". He is an extraordinary person.

I also sometimes think of the universe myself when I piss at a deserted campground, looking up the sky with full of stars. Asimov introduces in his book some hypothesises on the birth of the universe - the theories of the big bang, recirculation of the universe, mirror-image structure of the universe and so on. According to the theory of the big bang, which is nowadays widely accepted by the world, the universe came into existence from a grand explosion in a space as small as the tip of a little finger and it is still expanding toward the limitlessly faraway somewhere. It is said that there are some hundred billions of galaxies in the universe and each of the galaxies consists of the same some hundred billions of stars. That is beyond my imagination. Because of this great number of the stars, astronomers generally accept the statistical possibility of extraterrestrial beings. On the contrary, biochemists are often negative about that because they know too many coincidences are required to give birth to life. I do not know which is right. Besides, I have another thing that I cannot understand. Nuclear physicists seemingly divide substance into infinite small parts so that they can find a fundamental solution of the structure of substance. The world of extreme grandness has the same structure as that of extreme smallness. If so, it sounds very interesting to me, however, to imagine this kind of world always causes me a big bang in my brain and disintegrate the brain cells, and in the end pushes me into the tent for a good sleep.

Concerning the universe, everyone remembers the name of Einstein. He is an interesting person. Reportedly, in his old days he listened a young researcher give a lecture on the theory of himself that mass can be converted into energy by multiplying mass and the second power of light speed together, which is well-known by the equation E=mC² , and Einstein said that it is wrong. This theory was then denied by Einstein himself, however, his another famous theory of relativity, in which time changes according to its observer, has, ironically enough, been denied by a minority of other researchers recently.

The bizarre phenomenon of time warp was invented and lots of science fictions were written based on the misunderstanding of this theory. However, if the theory itself is not true, this means that a large number of physicists in the world have been paid for nothing, only introducing a false idea of Einstein to the people during nearly one hundred years. This, however, is a small thing. Till the advent of the Copernican system, the theologians had been fed for nothing during 1800 years. For, reportedly that idea was already known in Greece in the third century before Christ.

Even science, another God of today is also doubtful. Working hard every day, we pass the time in vain and often forget about the meaning of life. But, when we look up the sky jeweled with stars and think of the infinite space of the universe, our mind becomes more peaceful and courageous. We come to think it is really absurd to worry about the trifle things of our everyday life. Life is short and it doesn't make any difference whatever life we chose, anyway. We can have a room in mind to accept the idea to take time and go easy. Espearanto is still only slightly over 100 years old. 100 years is only a moment in space time. Let's go easy.