What if the universe is neither finite nor infinite?

I don’t pretend to know very much about science and how stuff works. But I was watching a documentary about infinity and the question was raised about the nature of our universe: is it finite or infinite? The two proposed solutions to this problem are both equally incomprehensible. Let’s assume that the correct answer is that it is infinite. That means we have no chance of ever reaching the boundaries of the universe, because they simply do not exist. And that is a difficult concept to grasp. The balloon analogy is often used as a visual representation of the infinitely expanding universe: imagine that the balloon itself is the entire universe, and as you blow it up it becomes larger in all directions. Some say that that is what the universe is doing too. But even that analogy does not adequately represent the theory that the universe is infinitely expanding since, eventually, a balloon can no longer become bigger and it will burst.

The second theory is that the universe is in fact finite, and its diameter is a measurable constant, theoretically. But that is equally difficult to comprehend: if the universe has boundaries, what is beyond them? We assume that we cannot escape the confines of the universe, and that is true of both theories. But if we could, what would be there waiting for us? Rational cognition does not allow us to be able to imagine an environment where literally nothing exists.

This got me thinking, maybe there is another possibility. What if the universe is expanding, but is not increasing in size? By that I mean, what if the density is changing? Imagine a black hole for example: they constantly increase in mass, but the size of them appears not to grow at the same rate as the size of the matter that constitutes their make-up. Hypothetically, if the Sun was to become a black hole (which is impossible due to its relatively small mass) it would only have a diameter of 3km, but its mass would still be the exact same as it is now. That means that all the material that forms the Sun’s 1.4 million km diameter, would be compressed to a 400,000^th of its current size, roughly.

So, if we know for an absolute certainty that matter can remain the exact same size in terms of mass, but occupy a much smaller portion of the universe, could that be what is happening to the universe as an entire entity? Let’s hypothesise that we are becoming denser: although you would assume perhaps that we would notice as that would imply that we are becoming smaller, and that we can measure size as it is quantitative, maybe that isn’t quite so true. What if our rulers are also getting littler? We are only able to measure distances relative to their surroundings. So if EVERYTHING is condensing, it follows that the proportion of everything in relation to everything else observable is still constant.

What I’m trying to say, perhaps without much coherence, is that the universe could be expanding, whilst also staying the same size. If everything condenses to make room for new things, then the balloon can be indefinitely blown up. The problem I have in coming to terms with this theory, or indeed the two preeminent theories, is thus: from my understanding of the laws of physics, you cannot create energy/matter/etc, everything is recycled, so if new celestial objects are being created, from whence did the matter and energy required come? Dark matter? Dark energy? We know very little about these two phenomena, so what if I hypothesise that they can disappear entirely. Not be recycled, and not transfer their energy elsewhere, just vamoose. We assume that dark matter constitutes roughly 80% of the mass of the universe, even though we cannot see it. Well what if it can completely vanish from the universe altogether? Then the universe could remain the same shape and size, but decrease in density. In other words, the stuff in the blackness we call space could expand outwards, without the universe becoming larger. Isn’t that like a black hole? What if all the black holes in the universe suck in matter and then they evaporate, which we know to be true? Then would there not be space for other stuff to occupy?

I have just confused myself. Over and out.

‘I Have Eaten the Plums…’ (poetic quotes top 5:4)

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams, ‘This is Just to Say’.

For the penultimate installment in my poetry top 5, I have opted to include, rather than a quote, the entire body of the poem. This is because the poem itself is so short that quoting any part of it would pull said part so far away from the realms of context and coherency that it would be rendered inconsequential in forming any kind of analysis; b) even as a complete unit, the poem is still so vague in terms of its intended meaning that it demands the critic to consider it in its entirety.

This is perhaps one of the most, if not the most, analysed modern poems in existence, and its meaning is still debated to this day, exactly eighty years since it was written. The obvious message, construed from the final stanza, is of forgiveness. This could be as blatant as it seems; that the author is asking forgiveness for having eaten some plums belonging to the person we suppose to be his wife. It has even been conjectured that Williams wrote this poem as a note to his wife on a napkin, or pinned to the fridge. Taking the idea of forgiveness a step further, the plums could be a metaphor for something worse: perhaps he slept with another woman, and the plum analogy is actually symbolic of ‘eating of the forbidden fruit’, proverbially speaking. Others have argued that the poem represents the idea of sexual frustration, though personally I don’t really follow that reading. Whatever the interpretation you favour most, the sheer fact that this is a poem means that, so long as your idea is evidentially substantiated, your assertion exists within the realms of validity.

That being said, is this a poem? Certainly it looks like a poem; it is presented in three stanzas, of roughly equal shape and size. But that’s where the argument ends. There is no formal metre: none of the lines exhibit the same syllable count or stress count as any other, or at least not uniformly. There is no rhyme (that’s not to say that all poems must rhyme, I’m just highlighting the lack of any poetic techniques), no punctuation, no assonance, etcetera. The only instances of anything resembling awareness of poetic stylisation is the capital ‘F’ at the start of stanza three, and the repetition of ‘so sweet and so cold’ in the last two lines. Aside from these anomalies, the text reads as a sentence, albeit a sentence devoid of punctuation.

This creates an interesting conundrum: where do we draw the line between one style of writing and another? Previous posts have already dealt with apparent contradictions regarding the legitimacy of a proffered style (my last post about Pale Fire touches on the fact that the text is claimed by the author to be a novel, despite the fact that the majority of it is presented in the style of a poem, and my own poem, My Silent Wife, I claim to be a sonnet despite the fact that it doesn’t really incorporate any regulatory requirements of a true sonnet). In my humble opinion, the writing is exactly as the author intended it, thus a claim by the author that it is a poem, a novel, or otherwise, should not be a point of contention. Having said that, I do appreciate that it could be difficult to accept something as one thing, when it takes the shape of another. I still maintain, however, that to assign a different set of rules to a piece of writing changes the poem’s ‘DNA’. The poem has the sole purpose of capturing the mind, thought processes, emotional circumstance, and other personal attributes of the poet, at the exact time as he wrote it. In other words, the poem is a response to a precise moment in time.

In my opinion, a response to a precise moment in time is exactly what this poem is. I like the idea that Williams did not intend this poem to hold any real, discernible meaning, other than to serve as an apology for eating the plums. This creates a synergy between the act of eating the plums and the act of writing the poem; the speaker ate the plums as an honest response to a moment in time, just as he wrote the poem as an honest response to the moment in time that came directly after he ate the plums. The poem, if that meaning is assumed, serves then as an example of the way we live our lives; we act spontaneously. If there are some delicious looking plums there, of course we’re going to eat them (though I’d probably just eat one; eating the rest is somewhat gluttonous). And once we have eaten them, we will naturally have a response to that action. And Williams’ response was this example of tongue-in-cheek remorse. I say tongue-in-cheek because, let’s face it, he wrote this poem with a smile on his face and a sense of self-satisfaction, no matter how guilty he pretends to feel. Perhaps, however, that sense of self-satisfaction goes further: perhaps this poem was written to be deliberately vague and ambiguous so that Williams could revel in the fact that scholars would argue about the poet’s intended message? Perhaps there is no meaning, and that, in itself, is the point of the poem?

‘Outstare the Stars’ (poetic quotes top 5:3)

‘A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.’

Vladimir Nabokov, ‘Pale Fire’; Canto One, lines 120-125

Nabokov’s Pale Fire is a tour-de-force in postmodernism. It is, in fact a novel, but the main body of the text is written as a nine hundred and ninety-nine line poem, split into four cantos. Canto one deals with death and the supernatural, canto two is about family and suicide, canto three focuses on the afterlife, and canto four deals with daily life, creative processes leading to poetry, and a general desire to understand the universe. The poem is written by the fictional John Shade, and is accompanied by a short foreword and lengthy commentary, written by a similarly fictional character named Charles Kinbote.

There are a variety of interpretations and readings of this book, some of which still remain undiscovered, according to Nabokov. Many readers choose to explore the relationship between the two main characters, Shade and Kinbote, which they argue are allured to by constant cross-references throughout the text. Some claim to believe that Kinbote and Shade exist within one another’s writing, influencing the creativity of each other. Indeed, the title, Pale Fire, has been cited as being pilfered from Shakespeare’s Hamlet when, in Act I, Scene 5, the glow worm remarks how the ‘’gins to pale his uneffectual fire’. This quote is often interpreted as a reference to creativity and imagination, so perhaps supports the hypothesis that Kinbote and Shade are an influence upon each other. However, it is more likely that the title was in-fact taken from a lesser known Shakespeare play, Timon of Athens; ‘The moon’s an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun’ (Act IV, Scene 3). Whatever the true meaning, suffice it to say that this book is so complex, and so bewildering, that it is deemed impossible to be adapted for screen.

That brings me to the end of my history lesson, and to the focus of my own reading, which I am basing on the above quote, taken from canto one. I am, as this is a poetic reading, considering the text as solely a poem and not drawing any conclusions from the foreword or the commentary, as they are not academic; they are merely fictional fabrications, which don’t tend to aid a reading of the poem.

As I pointed out, canto one is all about death, specifically Shade’s early encounters with it. The quote I have selected appears to be a comment on the transience of human life, and its insignificance when compared to the natural world. The first two lines allude to ancient hourglasses, in which ‘fine sand’ would count down a specified time. The shape of an hourglass resembles the symbol for infinity (a number 8 laying on its side), and this, I feel, is no coincidence, since the next lines directly reference the concept of infinity . In fact, if you combine the two uses of the word ‘infinite’, along with the hourglass allegory, you’ll notice the famous ‘power of three’ being utilised. Go back to the hourglass again, and consider the idea that an hourglass measures time infinitely. It will measure out its five minutes worth of sand, and then can be turned to measure it out again. This creates a contrast to human life, which is transient and lacks the ‘second chance’ nature of the hourglass.

The succeeding lines reinforce this idea of infinite nature juxtaposed with finite human life. Nabokov states that stars are ‘Infinite foretime and infinite aftertime’, in other words saying that stars were there before Man, and will still be there after. These images of Man’s insignificance, in relation to the natural world in which we live, certainly unite to create a sense of inferiority; a sense of abandonment inside a rather large abyss. This image is cemented by the final line of the quote, ‘They close like giant wings, and you are dead.’ This line conjures the idea of staring up out of a dark hole towards the stars, and falling away from them until they fade from sight and we cease to matter.

The symbolism of infinity recurs throughout the body of the poem, but another specifically poignant moment occurs in canto three. Nabokov writes ‘And I’ll turn down eternity unless /The melanchololy and the tenderness /Of mortal life; the passion and the pain…(list of every day observations)…this slender rubber band /Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand /Are found in Heaven by the newlydead /Stored in its strongholds through the years’. (lines 524-536) This quote is interesting because it notes, after careful examination, the existence of eternity both on Earth and in the afterlife. The general gist is that the narrator will opt out of eternal peace in Heaven unless all the everyday familiarities he knows and loves are also to be found in Heaven. As such, he is questioning the benefit of living forever in the afterlife when we don’t actually know what the afterlife holds. Now consider the line about the elastic band which ‘always forms…an ampersand.’ An ampersand is the proper name for the symbol used to represent the word ‘and’; it looks like this ‘&’. Notice the similarity between that shape and the shape of the hourglass and, thus, the symbol of infinity. I think that what Nabokov is trying to convey here is the idea that we do not need to be so preoccupied with the afterlife, as it is a concept that we are nowhere near understanding, nor even proving. I believe he is trying to say that all the foretold glory of eternity also exists on Earth, and we should be more concerned with living our tiny, transient existences as best we can, and if the afterlife happens to be even better, then that’s a bonus.

As an extra treat in this instalment, I am now going to compare this quote to another of my favourites

‘Tall nettles cover up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.’

Edward Thomas, ‘Tall Nettles’; lines 1-4

This poem has always been particularly enchanting to me, and this first stanza deals with the same ideas that I have interpreted in Pale Fire. The tall nettles, taken as a symbol of nature, have overgrown and, thus, hidden the farmyard implements placed at the end of the garden. If we consider the tools as a metaphor for Man, then this stanza serves to, once again, demonstrate the insignificance of humans compared to the natural world. It also seems to give a certain degree of power to nature, as if it is something that we will never subdue. Plants have the ability to regrow if they are trimmed; this is a phenomenon that we, as humans, are only just managing to realise for ourselves, and only with the help of science labs. This idea serves to enforce the idea of human mortality compared to nature.

To conclude, from my own readings of these quotations, I am able to discern, fundamentally, the notion that Man is not as powerful and infallible as we would like to believe. Let me, for a second, point out to you that the oldest tree on this planet is reckoned to be in excess of five thousand years old. Consider the fact that if you were lucky and made it to your hundredth birthday, you still would only have lived on this planet for two percent of the lifetime of that tree. Imagine the environmental, evolutionary and geological changes that that tree has a) witnessed and b) survived through. That fact alone serves to really hammer home the notion of the two poems that human life is incredibly transient, and that we should be far more concerned with experiencing Heaven on Earth than we should with notions of the afterlife. I feel that it is important that people try to experience as many different things as they possibly can, and really seek a sense of enlightenment instead of believing that they will still have an eternity in paradise after they die. As Nabokov questioned, in the quote from canto three, how certain can we really be that all the blessings we know to exist on Earth, also exist beyond the realms of our finite lifespan?

Forgetting the World

Disclaimer: The assertions made in this post are strictly personal. No scientific research was undertaken for the production of this article, nor do I claim to be an expert on mental health. A friend has pointed out to me that different strands of dementia result in different behavioural qualities exhibited by the patients – my subject just happens to be largely peaceful and content. No offence is intended to anyone who’s experiences dealing with degenerative mental health disease differ from my own.

My friend deserves a thank you for bringing this potentially harmful oversight to my attention, so check out her own blog. Her name is Hannah. Tell her I said ‘Hi!’ 

• http://www.awhoretoculture.wordpress.com

As an afterthought to my last post, about Eloisa to Abelard, and its fundamental message that being able to forget our pain and suffering would result in us being able to live a wholly happy existence, I came to a sudden personal realisation; what if we are, in fact, sometimes capable of this high degree of forgetfulness? What if it is actually possible for a human being to completely forget about the trials and tribulations of their existence on Earth, whilst still remaining on the Earth?

Not so many years ago, my Nan was diagnosed with dementia. As a degenerative mental health issue, dementia causes its ‘sufferers’ to live, so to speak, in the present moment, for the most part. My Nan appears to exist in a permanent state of contentment for the majority of time. In my understanding of life, human beings feel the necessity to strive to obtain love, wealth and happiness. And as I discussed in my last post, it is nigh on impossible to obtain the latter whilst the former two are present. In the case of my Nan, however, she has completely erased the need for wealth and love. Money isn’t an issue to her, and likewise she doesn’t seem to worry if her one true love is absent (as was the case recently). Personally I think it’s incredible that this is even a tangible phenomenon.

In the first line of the last paragraph, I wrote the word ‘sufferers’ in inverted commas because I’m not convinced that people do ‘suffer’ with dementia. If anything, it could be construed as a blessing for the patient, insomuch as they are now free to live ’til the end of their days in an almost unbroken state of contentment. All the pain, suffering, heartache and stress attributed to their preceding days on this planet have faded into nonentity. Dementia allows people to achieve what Eloisa thought she saw in the life of a nun; the ability to forget the world. However, Eloisa came to the conclusion that in forgetting the world, one must also be forgotten by the world, and in the case of dementia patients, that is not the case. Though they may be exempt from the roller-coaster of emotions that is love, their own families still exhibit this love for them. So in fact, it is humanly possible to eradicate the hardships associated with love in oneself, but in doing so the ones who love us experience deeper, longer lasting levels of anguish.

I didn’t speak much about the film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in my last post, but it has become more relevant now, since it basically backs up my own reasoning. In the film, Joel and Clementine, a modern day Abelard and Eloisa, experience a whirlwind romance to begin with, before things go wrong, and Clementine takes steps to remove Joel from her memory at a special clinic. Joel finds out about this by accident, and it causes him so much unhappiness that he also takes steps to have Clementine removed from his memory. The emotional response experienced by Joel on learning that Clementine has removed him totally, eternally from her life, causes a similar set of circumstances to those caused in real life by dementia. The person with dementia, let’s call her Clementine, has the utter privilege of being  unaware of the pain she has experienced, meanwhile her family, lets call them Joel, has their suffering amplified because they are no longer able to feel the warmth of love that they desire.

I think that Eloisa perhaps got her interpretation of the circumstances of the nun slightly wrong: I do not feel that the nun was happy, as such; I feel that the nun was merely content. On a scientific level, during high periods of stimulation, such as while experiencing love, or while engaging in sexual activity, endorphins are released into the body. These act as a natural opiate and result in an extreme feeling of exhilaration and an overall feeling of well-being. Let’s just suppose that a person, a nun is a good example, manages to live their life entirely painlessly, but in doing so ostracises themselves from feelings associated with love and sex. The endorphin rush associated with these activities allow us to experience an even higher degree of happiness than is usually attainable; we’ll call this true happiness. Excluding oneself from the pleasures and vices of life outside the convent removes the opportunity to experience these higher levels of happiness, thus I conclude that Eloisa was wrong to surmise that a nun is truly happy. I propose that a nun is merely content, in the same way that a dementia patient is also content. All that’s left to fathom is whether or not one would prefer to be eternally content, or to embrace suffering in order to experience the highest realms of happiness.

‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ (poetic quotes top 5:2)

Here is the second installment of my poetic quotes top 5. Enjoy!

‘How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d’

Alexander Pope, ‘Eloisa to Abelard’; lines 207-210

Familiar to many from the film which takes its name from the third line, this quote is fundamentally a nod to the blessings of innocence and ignorance. Recall, for a second, the old adage that ‘ignorance is bliss’; that is the essence of this quote.

The poem, written in 1717, is a romantic (note the difference between the de-capitalised verb here, and the capitalised noun in my last post) tale about the unrequited love between Eloisa, and her tutor, Abelard, who is 20 years her senior. It is based on the true story of Heloise and Abelard Pierre, which dates back to the 12th century. Abelard is a supreme philosopher and he is nominated as the Canon of Notre Dame. Eloisa’s uncle, Fulbert, discovers the details of the affair between the two lovers and tries to put an end to it. Eloisa and Abelard continue their liaisons discreetly, and eventually she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son. In order to avoid displeasing Fulbert, Abelard concocts a plan to get married in secret, but Fulbert announces the engagement publicly so Eloisa denies it, in order to avoid tarnishing Abelard’s reputation, and harming his career, and Abelard convinces her to go to a convent for protection. Fulbert thinks that Abelard has sent her away to get rid of her, so he has Abelard castrated. Eventually Abelard’s career is ruined by his relationship with Eloisa and he goes into hiding, living a solitary life as a hermit. He and Eloisa exchange love letters for the next twenty years, and spend only the briefest amount of time in each other’s company before they die. 600 years later, Josephine Bonaparte (wife of Napoleon I) learns of their story and has them exhumed so they can be buried with each other.

The tragic tale is similar to the more well-known story of Romeo and Juliet, and indeed is often categorised alongside Shakespeare’s masterpiece as one of the greatest love stories ever penned. The quote I have selected from the poem is poignant as it is antonymous with the rest of the narrative. In this section, Eloisa is speaking of a nun. The first line directly identifies the subject; a ‘vestal’ is a chaste woman – a nun in this case. With that in mind, the first line can be interpreted to mean that innocence and morality lead to happiness and good fortune. In other words, if you know not of love, or of sexual interaction, then you are sure to be in a much more agreeable situation, because you are devoid of the anguish that accompanies love. To refer once again to Shakespeare, ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’ (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Juxtaposing the opening line of the poem with Shakespeare’s assertion, it becomes apparent where the derivation of the meaning of ‘how happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!’ lies.

The next line has many people confused when trying to deduce an interpretation of their own, due to its awkward syntax. However, if I rewrite it thus; ‘forgetting the world, by the world forgotten’, its meaning is slightly more evident. Put simply, it implies that the innocence and purity construed from the first line allows the nun to disappear from all concerns, and to be without concerns herself. In other words, she has forgotten the world around her, and in turn has been forgotten by the world. This is the scenario which Eloisa most desires; she wants to be totally unaware of the troubles that currently afflict her, and for the world around her to be totally unaware of her as well. She believes that only by being virtuous and at the same time ignorant of true happiness, can one really be solely happy, because true happiness carries with it the reciprocal – torment and suffering.

The third (and most famous) line serves to reinforce the imagery I have already conjectured. Sunshine is used here as a symbol of light and happiness, and ‘the spotless mind’ is a metaphor for ignorance, or a lack of memories: in other words, a mind that has forgotten the pains of an Earthly existence. So, the line fundamentally pertains to the preordained notion that happiness can only last so long as innocence remains. In fact, this line takes it one step further, by asserting that happiness can be infinite, so long as knowledge of pain is absent.

The final line serves to ratify the overall notion that happiness can be achieved by remaining distant from the world as a whole. Basically it states that your prayers for happiness will be granted, but you will forego any further wishes, because happiness is all you will ever have. Only by never knowing heartbreak can you ever know happiness as a lone emotion.

If we now step out of the 18th century, and cast our minds forwards 300 years to the present day, we can see why this poem has stood the test of time, and why it still resonates with readers to this day. For a start, everybody can surely sympathise with Eloisa, for nobody in this world can claim to be indifferent to, or unaware of pain and suffering, thus nobody can claim happiness to be the only emotional response they have ever experienced. Furthermore, everybody probably wishes they were able to forget certain aspects of their past in exchange for sunshine. I think, in a modern interpretation, it’s probably acceptable to project this quote over a larger surface, symbolically speaking, because the search for happiness in the present day is not solely attributed to the quest for true love. We have become less chivalrous as time has passed, and now we associate happiness with wealth and materialism, as well as finding our one true love. In the technological age, we are more likely to strive to be famous on the internet, and that fame, we suppose, would bring happiness with it. We yearn to be adored by society, admired by our peers, and accepted wherever we go. The simple message of those four lines of poetry are now such an alien concept to us that, rather than serving as an example of our highest ambitions, it has the opposite effect; perhaps it’s time we realised that true happiness is not found by creating the most popular internet video, or by being the centre of attention at the local bar, but by being separate from all the vices offered to us on a daily basis, and living our own lives as virtuously and as full as we possibly can. Of course, we are, like Eloisa, doomed never to experience happiness eternally, because love will not allow us never to experience heartache.

‘Philosophy Will Clip an Angel’s Wings’ (poetic quotes top 5:1)

I have decided to do a top 5 of my poetic quotes, along with a brief analysis of each, and I shall try to relate each quote to the present day. In no particular order, here is the first installment…

‘There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture — she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine,
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-personed Lamia melt into a shade.’

Keats, ‘Lamia’; part II, lines 231-238

This quote epitomises the debate between Romantic writers (not authors of amorous literature; authors writing between c1800 – 1850) that science and rational cognition was more important than the power of the imagination (including ideas pertaining to magic and spiritualism) , or vice-versa. The narrative of this poem follows the story of Lamia, a serpentine immortal being, who masquerades as a beautiful woman in order to seduce Lycius, a gullible adolescent. Lamia does not come across as evil; it seems that she only wishes to be able to live happily ever after with Lycius, as the fairytale version would surely go. But Lycius’ mentor, Apollonius, sees Lamia for a fraud, and causes her to disappear simply by staring through her. Lycius then collapses and dies too. Although Lamia’s intentions are fundamentally good, it has to be noted that she has achieved her goal through means of deceit. This raises the question of whether or not it is better to find true love, even if that love owes its existence to a deceitful conception, or whether it is better to live a wholly truthful life, even though that truth may cause all happiness to fall to redundancy.

The above passage serves to expand on the narrative theme. Beginning with the first line, the image conjured is of a reverent (the word ‘awful’ is used here in its archaic form; to mean awe inspiring or admirable) rainbow, perhaps created by some sort of higher being or something magical. However, the next line implies that, with the advent of scientific understand, the rainbow is reduced to be included in ‘the dull catalogue of common things’, citing the fact that we know ‘her woof’ and ‘her texture’, meaning that we are aware of exactly what a rainbow is, and how it is caused. This serves to make the rainbow appear banal.

The next line implies the same message, but more directly. Fundamentally, it states that science will render the power of imagination futile. This idea is fortified by the succeeding lines; the idea that science will, eventually, solve all the unanswered questions and erase the possibility of anything magical or fantastical being given as an explanation for something tangible.

The final two lines of the extract force home the overall message of the poem; science will ‘unweave a rainbow’, in other words, cognitive rationale will reveal the true nature of any phenomena, just as the power of understanding resulted in the demise of Lamia.

As stated earlier, Lamia owed her happiness to a lie, thus it is logical to conclude that the general message of this poem is that anything considered magical, spiritual or imaginary is merely a lie and, if we go back to the notion that Lamia is really a serpent, then it is fair to assert that the belief that lies are poisonous is the overall conjecture.

I feel that the message in this poem is still relevant today; with science progressed far beyond what was even imaginable in the 1800s, every day we are disproving more and more ideas that were founded in the realms of the imagination. As a result, we have far less to be in awe of than our ancestors would have done. Imagine, for example, that rainbow once again. Imagine seeing it in the 1800s, before you knew how a rainbow was formed. It’s fairly logical to assume that, since nobody knows how it got there, it must have been but there by divine intervention, or some other spiritual force. But if you place that rainbow into the present day, though we still look upon a rainbow and regard it as naturally beautiful, we still place it in ‘the dull catalogue of common things’. With the progression of science, we are severing our imaginative capability, and it has surely got to be of some degree of concern that a diminishing capacity to imagine and to think spiritually may have a serious impact, one day, on our creative ability. What happens if we were to reach a point of total understanding of the universe? If we were, hypothetically, able to prove that no life existed anywhere in the universe, except on Earth, then that knowledge would have a massively detrimental impact on science-fiction, for example. I think somewhere along the lines, there might come a time when scientific progress might become so advanced that everything currently unexplainable will simply become another item on a list of ‘dull, commonplace’ things. When that happens, the world will be a very boring place.

The Rosetta Spacecraft – The Real Discovery: How Arthur C. Clarke was 13 Years too Early

Provided you haven’t been living in a hole for the past few weeks, you may be familiar with the current European Space Agency mission to track down the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, flying out beyond the orbit of Jupiter. It’s taken 31 months for the Rosetta spacecraft to reach its current position, 800 million kilometres from Earth and, until now, it has been in a ‘deep-sleep’ as it has completed its voyage. The spacecraft runs almost entirely on solar power, and as it has travelled so far from the Sun, those clever folk at ESA decided to put Rosetta into ‘hibernation’ whilst it completed the majority of its journey, so as to conserve power. On its way, it orbited the Earth twice and then completed a slingshot around Mars in order to harness the planet’s gravity and propel the craft into the far reaches of the solar system. Once it reaches its destination, the spacecraft will hurtle alongside the comet before performing the risky task of firing a probe, called Philae, onto the surface of the comet. It will then continue blasting though space following the course of the comet.

                Arthur C. Clarke’s preeminent text, 2001: A Space Odyssey, bears the marks of more than just coincidental similarities to the Rosetta mission. In fact, there is almost a direct correlation between the fictional voyage of the spaceship Discovery, and its real life counterpart. The assignment dedicated to the team aboard Discovery included such duties as journeying beyond the orbit of Jupiter and launching a probe into its atmosphere, before continuing to Saturn. In order to reach Saturn, Discovery had to make a slingshot around Jupiter in an effort to thrust itself further into space.

                Already the parallels between Clarke’s novel and the Rosetta mission are beginning to become apparent. But further depth of analysis is required to really weave fiction and reality into one intangible web of coexistence. As already mentioned, in order to conserve energy, Rosetta was set to a state of deep-space hibernation. This bears an eerie resemblance to Clarke’s description of the condition of Discovery’s crew, ‘the three members of the survey team, who would not be needed until the ship had entered her final orbit around Saturn, would sleep through the entire outward flight. Tons of food and other expendables would thus be saved.’ Although Rosetta is, unlike Discovery, unmanned, the rationale is verging on identical: utilisation of a state of slumber in order to minimise consumption of valuable supplies.

                The eventual awakening of the crew of Discovery relied on a computer, which was named HAL. Clarke describes HAL as the brains of the ship, stating that, when the crew was in hibernation, ‘only the essential systems would continue to operate.’ This draws another analogy between Discovery and Rosetta; ESA project scientist, Dr. Matt Taylor, explained that Rosetta has ‘an internal alarm clock. The clock will say “it’s time to wake up.”’ Barring this alarm clock, the rest of the spaceship will be turned off. Although Clarke perhaps was unable to imagine the possibility of unmanned space travel, the premise of his hypothetical text almost identically mirrors the techniques employed for modern day deep-space exploration.

                In the novel, once Discovery reached Jupiter, it was required to fire two probes into the atmosphere of the planet for research purposes, which is somewhat similar to the task beseeched to Rosetta. Clarke also, like the ESA scientists, recognised the danger of such a task, writing that after the probes were launched ‘there were anxious minutes of waiting, then, for the two watchers on the Control Deck. They could not be certain that the probe would survive…’ For Discovery, the issue faced by the probes was the potential for burning up as they penetrated the Jovian atmosphere, whereas the Philae probe runs the risk of bouncing back off the surface of the comet, due to the low gravity of its target. Though these issues are not identical, the simplified premise remains the same: firing a probe into unknown territory, at some degree of calculable risk.

                Another factor that Clarke identified and utilised in his text was the circumstance that, at that distance from communication centres based on Earth, it would take some time for messages to be relayed between the spaceship and the scientists back home. During a crescendo in the narrative of the plot, a communications antenna on Discovery is reported to be faulty, and one of the crew members decides to relay this information back to Earth and suggest a solution. After his message has been sent, Clarke writes ‘now there was nothing to do but wait for the confirmation, which would take at least two hours as the signals made the round trips past the orbits of Jupiter and Mars.’ BBC News science correspondent, Jonathan Amos, in an article about Rosetta, asserts that ‘the huge distance between the probe and Earth mean telecommands have a one-way travel time of 45 minutes.’ He goes on to quote mission manager Gerhard Schwehm as saying “After 31 months in hibernation, what is 45 minutes to wait?” The accuracy with which Clarke was able to predict the time taken for the transit of communications between Earth and a spaceship near Jupiter is astounding. His prediction that a response would take two hours is in direct agreement with scientific predictions from the ESA, who gave Rosetta an ‘hour-long window of opportunity’ to communicate with them, the exact same length of time given by Clarke for one-way communication from Jupiter to Earth.

                Collating all the evidence, it is impossible not to conclude that Clarke effectively prophesised the mission currently being undertaken by the ESA, and he did so with almost complete, unprecedented accuracy: he described, in vivid detail, the method of deep-space hibernation which, though varied from its application to organic matter in the novel, to its application to computer technology and machinery in reality, was utilised to the same effect: preservation of valuable resources; he explained the necessity to slingshot other planets in order to gain the required momentum to venture into the far reaches of the solar system; he explained the time frame for communications from Jupiter to Earth with exact accuracy; he described the risky process of firing explorative probes into unknown territory. Though there are discrepancies between the fictional adventure of Discovery, and the real life odyssey of Rosetta, bearing in mind that Clarke penned 2001: A Space Odyssey half a century ago, those inaccuracies pale into insignificance when considering the technological and scientific advances we have made in that time (we hadn’t even planted a human foot on the surface of the moon when the manuscript for the book was sent to the publishing house), and it could certainly be hypothesised that Clarke almost predicted the future of space exploration; perhaps he even inspired it. Let’s hope that the Rosetta mission ends more successfully than Discovery’s did!