Monday 4 December 2023

Filaments And Voids

Despite having read the cosmological sf of Poul Anderson's Tau Zero and Starfarers, I learn by googling that recent discoveries in cosmology make the universe seem to be a completely different kind of place composed of dark matter, dark energy, walls, sheets, filaments and voids. These last items, voids, sound familiar but they are something other than mere empty space. The Milky Way galaxy might be part of a void. (I read this somewhere but other information says that it is part of a filament.) If space is finite but unbounded, like the surface of a multi-dimensional sphere, then what look like galaxies further away might be nearer galaxies seen a second time because their light has gone all the way around the universe. They do not look identical because they are viewed at different stages of their history. My understanding of physics breaks down very quickly. Blog readers with a better grasp of science will be able to learn more from the above link and its links. (Voids turn out to be volumes of space with few or no galaxies between filaments which consist of walls of superclusters of galaxies.)

Can anyone write sf against such a background? Can intelligent beings possibly play any role in the universe on such vast scales? Can plausible narratives be created about intelligences operating on such a metagalactic level? Are we approaching a conceptual limit? 

All previous sf has been left behind.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It does make me wonder what Anderson might have written if he had lived another ten years. He might have tried writing another cosmological novel incorporating what was not known by him while he was writing GENESIS or FOR LOVE AND GLORY.

Ad astra! Sean