”
Pop quiz time,
”
I announced to 9-year-old Calvin Nuttall as we lounged at our
Fremont Peak State Park campsite and gazed at the twilight sky.
”
Ready for a question about infinity?
”
“Pop quiz time,” I announced to 9-year-old Calvin Nuttall as we lounged at our Fremont Peak State Park campsite and gazed at the twilight sky. “Ready for a question about infinity?”
Calvin, his sister Lauren, their father Stu and I had come to the high mountain point along the Gabilan Range to watch the Perseid meteor shower peaking on Aug. 17. For much of the late afternoon, I popped astronomy questions at the two Morgan Hill kids.
“Once upon a time, there was a British astronomer who speculated the universe might hold an infinite number of stars,” I told Calvin. “What would the sky look like if there really was an endless number of stars?”
Without hesitation, Calvin shot back: “One big star.”
“That’s absolutely right!” I shouted like a TV game-show host. “The whole sky would just be completely filled with light all the time.”
It was only about 70 or so years ago that the astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered there were galaxies far beyond our own Milky Way. And looking at the immensity of space, it’s an easy temptation to believe the universe might indeed be infinite in its treasure trove of stars.
But could the universe be infinitely large and without end?
With an infinity of stars, it would be very difficult – maybe impossible – to detect any stars at all because their combined light would overwhelm an astronomer’s telescope. Not that there would be any astronomer to observe a universe of infinite stars. An infinite amount of heat and radiation from that endless stellar source would probably cook any carbon-based life form before it could evolve into a star-gazer.
Daily life on our tiny world can’t possibly prepare us to begin to imagine the concept of infinity. Grasping the concept of some sort of definitive edge to the cosmos is also brain-boggling. It makes you wonder, if the universe indeed has an edge, what might be beyond that border?
Astronomers can see to the “edge” of what’s currently the observable universe where the most distant galaxies are about 10 to 12 billion light-years away. The universe is estimated to be about 14 billion years old, so if astronomical technology might one day allow us to see to the outer reaches of the universe – and therefore the oldest parts of the universe – we might behold the Big Bang – the very moment of the creation. It would be an awe-inspiring sight.
But that horizon might very well merely portray just the visible universe, a region that stretches billions of light-years in either direction and is constantly expanding powered by the explosive energy of the Big Bang. There are scientific observations suggesting our visible patch of 100 billion or so galaxies could very well be an infinitely small portion of an even vaster universe.
What wonders – if anything – lie beyond our light horizon if there is indeed a greater expanse of universal real estate? If we ever found out, the answer might make us realize how infinitely minuscule our small planet truly is in the vastness of the cosmos. Any speculation on infinity doesn’t just relate to the very big. It also deals with the very small.
There was once a time not all that long ago when scientists held that atoms were the tiniest stuff possible. But then scientists discovered even atoms were made of stuff like neutrons and protons and electrons whizzing around in their orbits. And of course, as bigger and more powerful super-colliders were built, tinier and tinier stuff was found as scientists ventured down the scale of atomic structure. The menagerie of known particles numbers more than 300 now.
But it leads to the question: Are these tiny particles made up of even smaller stuff?
An intriguing and still unproven idea known as “string theory” proposes there might be tiny strands of energy that serve as the building blocks for everything. Your mind might right now be wildly imagining a notion that maybe there’s a never-ending series of increasingly tinier and tinier particles descending into its own infinity. It might be sort of like those Russian “nesting” dolls where you find a progressively smaller doll each time you open one up. Is the universe both infinitely large and infinitely small? Or are there clearly defined boundaries to size?
The idea of something without an end is one of those concepts that’s a fun puzzle to play with – for a while. But it can grow maddening if you dwell on it too long. By definition, you’ll never find any real conclusion to the puzzle.
The American Heritage dictionary defines infinity as “unbounded space, time or quantity.” For me, that bland description doesn’t do the overwhelming concept true justice. I much prefer the definition of infinity given in Douglas Adam’s science-fiction classic “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:”
“Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some, much bigger than that, in fact really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real ‘Wow, that’s big!’ time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we are trying to get across here.”
On that camping trip to Fremont Peak for a night of meteor and star-gazing, I realized that pondering questions on the infinite can have no end.
Sources for this column include PBS’s NOVA shows “Elegant Universe” and “The Runaway Universe.”
Martin Cheek is the author of ‘The Silicon Valley Handbook.’ He can be reached at ma****@**********rs.com.
