Currently, I am reading Stephen Hawking’s latest book “The Grand Design” (I actually had to look up the title on Amazon because I forgot what it was – the book is in the bedroom and out of reach) and finding it quite interesting. In an interview, he said the book basically provided proof that there is no God and also that there are not one, but several, possible thousands or an infinite number of universes.
I was intrigued of course and looked forward to future conversations with religious people (I was going to say “wankers”, but that’s hardly fair, considering the act of wanking is frowned upon by some religions) where I could just blow them away with evidence that we are, in fact, quite meaningless beings (which shouldn’t be depressing, oh no, it should be liberating if anything!).
One thing that also made me frown was his postulation about the number of universes. My first thoughts were: “aren’t you happy with just the one universe? Isn’t that big enough for you, or what?” My laymen’s mind was also struggling with this concept because it did not answer a basic question: if this universe is infinite, where would the other universes be, if they too were infinite? Somewhere along the line, they are bound to “meet” and share recipes or something (I hear universe D makes a chocolate mousse that’s simply divine!). I know this line of thought is simplifying things way too much, which is why I needed Mr. SmartyWheels’ theory about the subject, before I write him a know-it-all e-mail about a teensy-weensy little detail that he overlooked.
The book, being a “popular” publication, includes many illustrations, comparisons with footballers and even some cartoons and jokes (e.g. in a bit about consciousness: “does the Caenorhabditis Elegans with its 959 cells say: ‘that was a damn fine bacteria I had back there?’” – I had to smile doubly, because it was so unexpected to have humour in a book like this, but then I imagine him dictating this sentence in his computery voice to whoever jotted it down, killing all fun the joke could have been), but they help to lighten the sometimes, admittedly, somewhat boring content – e.g. a whole bit about particles and the trajectories they take; all very fascinating to some degree, I’m sure, but I want to get to the no-God and multiverse part!
I am about halfway in the book and I’m sure it’ll end with a…. big Bang (pun definitely intended), maybe Stephen will also tell me where to find those other universes, give me a map to them, or tell me where I can find the portal. Maybe he will end with a romantic thought: “the portal to the other universes is… in your heart, you must learn to love yourself in order to discover them.” Or maybe it will be a hate-filled message: “let us power the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland with all the nuclear energy in the world, and let’s also burn some Chinese children, so that we can create the biggest black hole in the history of our universe, so that we may destroy it faster, FASTER! Mwahahahaha!” (I am remembering the Doomsday announcements about the Large Hadron Collider when they were starting it up – what if those scientists’ REAL research is about wanting to see whether we live or die in a black hole? Then we are royally screwed! WAAAH! ABANDON ship…. err.. PLANET… err… UNIVERSE!)
I really can’t wait to read how it ends…
🙂
Tim van den Oudenhoven 