Every so often, a new topic attracts my interest and for a few days I just watch dodgy documentaries about it on YouTube, and bore other people by talking about it. Past topics that I have obsessed over include: Jainism, the Branch Davidians, synesthesia, Japanese subcultures, Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities), Fred and Rosemary West, prosopagnosia (face blindness), Mormons, and Aztecs.
This week I am reading Cosmology: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Coles, and reawakening my childhood love of outer space. I read lots of Russell Stannard's books when I was little, and even then I loved all the stuff about how space is curved, and dark matter, and Olber's paradox (although I didn't know it was called that when I was 8).
Anyway, some cosmology related things:
- The films "Another Earth" and "Melancholia":
This trailer features the song "That Home" by Cinematic Orchestra - an amazing choice because it is a beautiful song but also it is itself (like the alternative earth) a mirror of another song of theirs called "To Build A Home".
Also, both films are really just human stories about loss and depression... with a sciencey twist... I can't wait to see them.
- 'Sun Ruins' is a series of old prints of the universe with all the stars punched out - by Aspen Mays.
- I think that's all I wanted to write.
One more thing: My favourite part so far in Peter Cole's book is where he writes about Stephen Hawking and the Big Bang...
".. expanding-universe models predict the existence of a singularity at the very beginning, where the temperature and density become infinite. No matter whether the universe is open, closed, or flat, there is a fundamental barrier to our understanding. In the beginning, there was infinity."
In the beginning, there was infinity.
That line gives me the shivers. (in a good way)
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