Katie Mack’s wonderful book on how the Universe might end is quite appropriately titled The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking). It starts with a poem by Robert Frost called Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Katie immediately clarifies that we know how the world will end. It will end in fire. In a few billion years’ time, the Sun would have become a red giant and the Earth most certainly won’t survive the fiery hell that will follow. But, the question of how the universe will perish is far from settled. The fate of the universe is intimately tied to something called “dark energy.” This rather unimaginatively named entity will decide if the universe ends in fire or ice, in a Big Rip or Big Crunch (Yes, those are actual names for the end of the universe scenarios and not candy bars). I wrote about this in a piece for the Wire,
One way or another, the universe is bound for horrific tragedy – or at least it would be if we had any way of knowing we’re right about these things. Physicists created each of these scenarios based on cosmological data that’s hardly incontestable…It’s hard to say if any humans will be able to witness any of these events. But that doesn’t mean we can’t ever know: we can by unravelling the mysteries of dark energy. To do this, we need to collect light from very distant galaxies, pointing our telescopes billions of years back in time.
For me, reading about the universe’s demise is not only intriguing but oddly comforting too, probably because it bolsters a belief that everything good and bad will eventually come to an end. Hell, even the entire universe will one day. At least that’s what most scientific wisdom suggests. However, Roger Penrose has a fairly radical idea about the life-cycle of the universe. I wrote about Penrose’s proposition for The Wire
Penrose has long championed a particular flavour of cosmological models to describe the universe’s evolution, called cyclic conformal cosmology (CCC). This model slaves the universe to a continuous cycle of birth and death: an event like the Big Bang creates it, followed by the formation of galactic structures, then – after a really long time – death becomes inevitable and structures cease to exist. The universe in this smooth state ‘somehow’ matches with the uniform and compact conditions required for the birth of a new universe. This is then jumpstarted by another big bang. Penrose envisions our current universe as simply occupying one aeon in many, that it was preceded by a previous universe and that it will eventually give way to another just like the one we currently inhabit.
Penrose’s theory is audacious and while it is steeped in rigorous physics, most experts believe that it’s probably wrong. However, this theory does indeed mirror the eschatology of at least two traditions - both the Mayan and Hindu traditions don’t envision an ‘end’ and subscribe to a cyclic notion of life. If we recount the history of life on Earth, we’ll be reminded that in the ~ 3 billion years since life of some sorts evolved here, the Earth has been punctuated by events of mass death and rebirth. Peter Brannen details each of these events in his excellent book, The Ends of the World. Mass extinctions aren’t a typically cheerful subject, but Brannen writes about these with surprising levity and a well-rounded insight. This nice review of his book distills its essence,
Brannen and his authorities believe that our predations have not yet brought us to the brink of a sixth mass extinction. But by connecting deep time with human time, the picturesque with the disastrous, the micro with the macro, The Ends of the World shows that there may yet be inescapble consequences for our history and habit of improvident behaviour.
Elizabeth Kolbert attests to this in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book - The Sixth Extinction where she says - ‘‘Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.’’ Kolbert's book systematically dissects the role of humans in reshaping the Earth and triggering a sixth mass extinction event. In prose that is at times poetic, Kolbert expertly guides us through her bleak thesis on the state of the Earth’s biodiversity and reminds us that the end of wildlife, will in all likelihood be the end of us too. That we are in the midst of the sixth extinction event is now a widely accepted consensus, but have we bypassed a tipping point and reached a point of no return? We don’t know for sure. In my explainer on ‘tipping points’, I had written,
What we do know is that humans have radically changed the stability landscape of Earth’s climate, making it more cryptic and potentially even causing a runoff calamity. In this time, history won’t guide us because there have been no precedents for such change. That said, prevailing wisdom suggests that we should be able to guide Earth away from this dangerous path by building an alternate one. In other words, we need to resculpt the stability landscape. It would no doubt require a global collaboration of the kind we haven’t had before, but today is all about doing things for the first time.
Kolbert’s take is,
To argue that the current extinction event could be averted if people just cared more and were willing to make more sacrifices is not wrong, exactly; still, it misses the point. It doesn’t much matter whether people care or don’t care. What matters is that people change the world. This capacity predates modernity.
The end of the universe is not nigh, the end of the Earth is a few billion years away, but our world can well and truly be sliding down a slippery slope. A marker of this current extinction event we are living through is the wiping out of individual animal species. I very often go back to a certain piece written by science writer extraordinaire Ed Yong called - The Last of Its Kind. His lede lays the groundwork for this masterclass in science writing and storytelling - ‘‘The biologist David Sischo has a tragic assignment: keeping vigil over a species’ sole survivor, then marking its extinction in real-time.’’ Ed writes,
When the last of a species disappears, it usually does so unnoticed, somewhere in the wild. Only later, when repeated searches come up empty, will researchers reluctantly acknowledge that the species must be extinct. But in rare cases like George’s, when people are caring for an animal’s last known representative, extinction—an often abstract concept—becomes painfully concrete.
One of my all-time favorite books is Douglas Adams’ Last Chance To See, in which Adams goes on a journey to see the last individuals of the most endangered species on Earth. His adventures are littered with funny encounters. His dry humor and witticisms shine through, and yet, the soul of the book is profoundly sad. It’s a testament to his genius that he is able to pull strings and make you chuckle and then within a few pages, douse you with the cold truth.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying.
Both, the death of species and the ultimate death of the universe have lessons to teach us. In her book, Katie Mack wonders if being aware of our cosmic destiny makes us more wholly aware of our own existence, the point or pointlessness of it. Do we have a role, any role to play in these giant machinations of the universe? Do we matter at all? Benjamin Franklin had mused - ‘‘There are an infinite Number of Worlds under the divine Government, and if this was annihilated it would scarce be miss'd in the Universe.’’ Franklin tells us to ‘not presume too much on our own Importance.’ But, as long as we can influence life around us, we shouldn’t presume too little either. The clock of the cosmos runs in eons. Our lifetimes resolve only a few tens of years. But, in that time, we can cause very tangible change. We matter.
I’ll leave you with something sweet, after writing about something fairly morbid. I found it quite wonderful that in a book about the end of the universe and effectively the end of time, Katie dedicated her book to her mother. She writes - ‘For my mother, who has been there from the beginning.’
Here are some recommendations -
I recently watched Nomadland which features an incredible performance by Frances McDormand. Her Oscar-winning turn in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri is well worth your time too. I also re-watched The Big Sick starring Kumail Nanjiani playing a version of his real-life self. I didn’t love it the first time I watched it but absolutely loved it the second time over. If you are looking for a warm, funny, and breezy film to watch, make it this one.
Longreads - The rich vs the very, very rich: the Wentworth golf club rebellion: Even if you (like me) don’t care much about golf, this excellent piece by Samanth Subramanian still has enough to keep you hooked. It’s dripping with sarcasm and offers insight into a slice of an unfamiliar world (at least for me). Vijay Varma and the perks and perils of the Bombay hustle: Few people do profiles like Ankur Pathak and this one on the breakout actor from Gully Boy is beautifully written. Good profiles make for great reads. Taffy Brodesser Ackner often gets it right, like in this Tom Hanks profile. Pathak rarely gets it wrong.
I’ll take a shortcut and recommend all the books I listed in this piece. They are all amazing reads. Here they are in order of appearance - The End of Everything by Katie Mack, The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen, The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, and Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams.
Ishant Sharma completed 300 wickets and 100 test matches recently - quite a feat for a fast bowler from India. Jarrod Kimber has an excellent analysis of his career here - Ishant Sharma, The Comeback GOAT. Oscar season is here and Hollywood Reporter hosts roundtable discussions. Most of them are really good and here is an Actors Roundtable from last year that I really enjoyed watching.
You’ve probably heard of WandaVision, but I am here to tell you that WandaVision is one of the most unique things Marvel has ever put out. It’s worth watching for that reason alone. TV series allow Marvel projects the room to breathe (more or less) without being bogged down by strict adherence to the MCU.
This poem by Neil Gaiman took my breath away.
Dark Sonnet
By Neil Gaiman
I don’t think that I’ve been in love as such
although I liked a few folk pretty well
Love must be vaster than my smiles or touch
for brave men died and empires rose and fell
for love, girls follow boys to foreign lands
and men have followed women into hell
In plays and poems someone understands
there’s something makes us more than blood and bone
And more than biological demands for me
love’s like the wind unseen, unknown
I see the trees are bending where it’s been
I know that it leaves wreckage where it’s blown
I really don’t know what I love you means
I think it means don’t leave me here alone
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