Hello all,
I began most February mornings with an intense, brief exploration of the cosmos. But first, I went on a nice walk with my friend Pip — during which we stumbled upon one of those take-a-book/leave-a-book libraries by the side of the road. I nabbed Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I placed it in the family bathroom, and strung together a few pages during the daily milk pump.
Like others, I had passively celebrated Hawking for his wit and resilience. But the book that made him famous really is masterful. Perhaps because of the laborious process required for Hawking to express himself, the writing is simple and accessible — breezy, even — given the hefty subject matter. (Here he is introducing quantum mechanics: “There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don't shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.”)
The crudest plot summary I can offer (don’t @ me): We convincingly understand how gravity works at the scale of the universe, and we convincingly understand how other forces work at the level of tiny atoms — but the answers we have found aren't compatible. Reconciling the micro and macroscopic is the main riddle of physics now.
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My husband sometimes makes a clever distinction, between mysteries and secrets. My investor friend Kanyi paraphrased this pretty well: Secrets are “I don’t know yet” problems, the kind journalists hunt. Mysteries, however, are “nobody knows yet” problems.
The answers may not be known by anybody. Perhaps because the question hasn’t been asked yet — or hasn’t been asked in the right way. Perhaps because the answer requires some deep insight that nobody has dug far enough down to hit yet.
For example, an exhaustive theory of the physical universe. I wondered if we will ever solve this mystery of time and motion, and what it means that we cannot. Then my philosopher friend Amia told me that physicists mostly ignore philosophers. Science worships what it all is, rather than “what it all means.”
It’s easy to abstract the hard sciences, as you scroll a touchscreen atop baroque wiring solutions, or hurtle through the air in a metal tube. Better to be inspired by them, and the mundane, painstaking process of confirming something as “true.” My parents are both academic scientists (and here is some excellent news on that front), so I know vaguely how those sausages are made. Given the recent, catastrophic cheapening of hard facts, I am pleased about the revenge of truth in the form of vaccines that work against COVID-19, and the global scientific collaboration to make them.
I’m still moved to witness the world’s luckiest receive jabs (yes, we are calling them jabs, isn’t it fun, welcome to British). The distributional problems — from bad scheduling UX to planning for poor countries — dim in significance when I think about how absolutely amazing it is to have millions of inoculations before this first anniversary of global lockdowns.
Science is often bottled up in academic journals, to be translated into “new study says” pieces in popular news, or a lengthy feature if you’re lucky. And I haven't been a fan of science fiction the way I haven't been a fan of video games — they just fell off my radar and I never bothered to question that. But COVID and motherhood have vaulted me further than ever into the world of “person who reads primary research in The Lancet.” And I’ve been recently drawn to stories that take on futurism, new technologies, space aliens, and what have you. (What’s the difference between magical realism and science fiction? Perhaps your major in college.)
Top of my recommendation list* would be the excellent Three Body Problem series. These books, by Chinese author Liu Cixin, document the world’s response to the knowledge that a much more sophisticated alien civilization is coming for Earth — in 450 years. It is hardcore in its deployment of actual physics and math, but also nails the delicate sociology of our planet and the factions in “foreign policy” that would erupt in this scenario.
Book club this month is also reading Everything you Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma (don’t quite recommend), about an anxious 20 something who decides to GO TO A NEW PLANET to escape her boring job. The scheme echoes the glorified and problematic space habitation plans of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and probably other rich dudes I haven’t tracked. But like these projects, the book is unsatisfying.
Actively trying to flee Earth has always felt neglectful to me. Humanity needs a higher floor more than we need a higher ceiling. Indeed, one of the major plot themes in Three Body Problem is the disastrous toll that industrial space exploration takes on Earth’s environment, and human well being. How shrewd, for a Chinese author to infuse their interplanetary thriller with messaging that would not be out of place at an Extinction Rebellion meetup.
One last comment in this general direction: I spent five days cemented to my couch for “virtual Sundance.” I tend to load up on documentaries because they’re harder to access in wide release. Many were great, and Lucy Walker’s Bring Your Own Brigade, embedded with firefighters in California, is relevant here. The documentary covers the policy and lifestyle causes of intense fires, with frustration at our failure to prevent them. She focuses on the town of Paradise — hit with 85 fire deaths and massive home loss in 2018. Her footage is straight from the volcano, with blood red visuals that take you to Mars.
I left the film believing the culprit isn’t just climate change, but individualism. To wit: In their frenzy to escape Paradise, dozens of residents abandoned their cars on a tiny road, bottling up the exit for those behind them. And when it came time to rebuild, the town voted to reject new building codes because they were aesthetically inconvenient. I’m not sure what I would have done in either case, but it’s hard to think of a collective response as representative of our climate risk problems. Motivating people to act together remains a mystery.
But spring is coming, this month. Get excited.
Dayo
*The list if you like:
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
Binti, Nnedi Okarafor
The Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin
Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
The Power, Naomi Alderman
I’ve resolved to share more of my #twonouns finds, to honor this newsletter’s origins. Here’s one in Kentish Town.