Sunday 14th October

After the Big Bang we jump and go ‘Oh!!!!’  But seriously how did all those neutrons, protons, electrons etc: form themselves into different atoms and molecules and then sort themselves out into Galaxies, stars, planets, moons and asteroids?  For something so random as an explosion it looks remarkably well-ordered to me.  The whole idea of the big bang is posited on observations that seem to show the Universe expanding, and maybe it is, but does that mean it was always expanding, or at the same velocity, or even in the same direction.  And if they are right, surely we can pinpoint exactly where the Big Bang occurred, though I have never actually seen or heard of this.

Is it just possible, that despite our computers, our ‘understanding’ of the Laws of Physics, our brilliant radio and visual telescopes that we are actually as misguided as Copernicus and Gallileo were before us.  What if the true result of all human knowledge means a constant revision and re-writing, and re-understanding of what we thought was true only a few years ago.  This is certainly true of such things we can observe in our own lifetime like Medicine; how Doctors now treat Shock, or Heart Attacks or Strokes is quite different from when I was younger.  The corollary of course, is that this very ‘wisdom’ of today will almost certainly be superseded by cleverer clogs than us in the future.  You could say therefore ‘Why Trust anything, as it is almost certainly wrong, or will be in the future.’  But there lies the rub.  We live in the present and so in the present we must make our judgments.

And so back to the Big Bang; we are all living after the Big Bang, so interesting as it is, and unless another Big Bang is imminent, does it really matter exactly how it happened at all.