According to certain scientists who attended private universities and then married one of their graduate students, the universe — as we know it — went through a big change 13.7 billion years ago.
Or perhaps the big change was 13.8 billion years ago. Scientists haven’t been able to agree on the exact moment, nor have their wives.
The event has been labeled “The Big Bang”… although no one was around to hear it, so we are stuck once again with that ancient philosophical controversy, “If a universe is created and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Really, it ought to be referred to as “The Big Soundless Explosion”. In my humble opinion.
Which brings to mind what has happened in Pagosa Springs lately. But we’ll get around to that scientific concept in a moment.
As I understand the situation, prior to the Big Bang (or alternately, the Big Soundless Explosion), the entire universe was squeezed in a single packet of energy and matter called a ‘singularity’, which didn’t obey the rules of physics that science has so carefully constructed over the past 200 years.
Apparently, when you are a ‘singularity’ you get to make up your own rules.
For some reason that no one can fully explain, the ‘singularity’ suddenly decided to expand into the shape of a universe. Most of the expansion took place during the first second of the universe’s creation, during which protons and neutrons and electrons came into being. Also something called ‘dark energy’ filled the void of space, except that no one knows exactly what ‘dark energy’ is. But it has to exist, because the universe is supposedly expanding at an ever-increasing rate, which it cannot do unless we have a universe full of ‘dark energy’. Whatever it is.
This image, above, might illustrate the first moments of the Big Bang, when the ‘singularity’ woke up and decided to blossom into a full-blown universe.
Or it might be just a purple dot. I’m not sure.
But one thing about which we are sure: after about 13.7 billion years (give or take), Pagosa Springs was incorporated along the banks of the San Juan River.
Some people have suggested that the whole reason for the Big Bang was to bring Pagosa Springs into existence. Other people will argue that Pagosa Springs was simply one of a gazillion accidents — happy accidents, or unhappy accidents — that resulted from the Big Bang.
The unhappy accidents are many, of course… and include hurricanes, taxes, and Facebook.
The happy accidents include dogs, romance novels, and soft-serve ice cream.
Not all scientists buy into the idea that our universe happened purely by accident. Many of them subscribe to the belief that ‘intelligent design’ has been guiding the cosmic process. This ‘intelligent design’ theory does not, however, explain Facebook.
But the opposite belief — that everything is a random happening, with no thought behind it — does not explain soft-serve ice cream.
So we are stuck in the middle, so to speak, between an accidental universe and intelligent design… clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, as they say.
Then we have the conundrum of Pagosa Springs, which has experienced its own Big Bang over the past couple of years. Many of us remember Pagosa Springs when it had only a single stoplight, at the corner of Hot Springs Boulevard and Highway 160. In those days, Pagosa Springs was like a ‘singularity’ that could make up its own rules.
Then it decided to wake up. Whether this decision had anything to do with ‘intelligent design’ is highly questionable.
One similarity between the universe’s ‘Big Bang’ and Pagosa’s ‘Big Bang’ that the increasing speed of the expansion. For a long time, Pagosa didn’t have any stoplights. Then one appeared, and for a long time, we just had just that one stoplight. Then suddenly there were, like, six stoplights. And even that didn’t fix the traffic problems.
I blame it on ‘dark energy.’
I can do that, because I’m not a scientist.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.