‽istis
reclaims wonder, literally (weekending January 11th 2020)
As the epiphanous stargazers are removed from their nativity
scenes, ‽istis looked out in awe and
wonder at the night sky and considered attempts to make the ineffable accessible,
bring the sublime down to earth and explain the deeply complex with literal,
does-what-it-says-on-the-tin names and initials
‽ perhaps whilst we may
not understand all the content, calling the journal ‘Nature’ may tell us all
that we need to know, versus the unlikely-sounding but presumably not randomly
chosen (all puns intended) ‘Stochastic: An International Journal of Probability
and Stochastical Processes’;
‽ possibly naming the
source of apparent new and nearer FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts) as 180916.J0158+65
in a galaxy only half a billion light-years away (see article in said journal[i])
seems less unnerving than the thought of communicating aliens - of the variety
that Helen Sharman (the Brit who was first to get nearer to them, after all)
vouches for[ii];
‽ maybe the fact that
the lead author of said FRB study in said journal is apparently from the Joint Institute
for VLBI - Very Long Baseline Interferometry (which incidentally sounds as
though it could be an understated ‘safe’ euphemism for measuring allegations of rape
and sexual assault currently under scrutiny in a certain high-profile legal
case in the States) provides a sense of accessibility; if we can understand two
of the words in the institute’s four word title, we might understand half of
what they do).
‽istis blamed
the earliest astronomers who looked out and up and beyond into the void and
called it simply ‘space’…
And perhaps,
possibly, maybe - looking through the ‘Total Perspective Vortex’ (thank you
Trin Tragula and Douglas Adams) – if we remembered more often that: ‘In an
infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense
of perspective’, then how different the world down here might be.
© Pistis
