Beyond our solar system
March 10th, 2008In my lifetime I have seen a lot of glass and acrylic cube tchotchkes. I think I was given one that had several mint-condition pennies from the year I was born suspended inside. I didn’t know what to do with it then, I just called it a paperweight. These days, office windows don’t usually open so paperweights are just clutter. For the most part, these clear cubes of wonder have failed utterly failed to awe, inspire, or even amuse me. Thus, I’m proud to say I don’t own one.
But that all changes when I learn about the existence of this:
Beyond our solar system: The Milky Way galaxy suspended in a glass cube
I would add it to my collection of maps, because that’s essentially what I think of this thing as.
When I was a kid and I would think about infinity, I think about space being something like this cube with us inside and lots of distance to the edge, but the edge being a wall that you can trace until it eventually reveals itself to be a cube. Since I’ve grown up, I prefer to think that around the Earth is a big sphere of black construction paper with little holes poked through for stars. By the time I’m a cranky old man with a cane on a park bench I’ll be insisting that the moon landing was filmed in a Bollywood studio. And when I’m dead the whole of existence will be the inside of my casket (that’s a joke, I have no intention of being buried in a casket. For that matter, I have no intention of dying. Yet.)
Filed under: Musings
