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Writer's pictureEian Tsou

Rant #2: Life (I think?)

Updated: Feb 2

I did a little rant before on black holes because I didn't understand them, and I'm back again questioning existence in itself. Side note: I feel like the majority of this won't make sense because I haven't made sense of what I'm even wondering about yet, but whatever...

 

When driving along the George Washington Bridge and looking out the window, I often ponder about how everything is the way it is, y'know?


Like (and this might sound really stupid), I look at my hands and stuff, and I get surprised about how I can move them, how I can touch them, how I can grab things. I start looking at the sky, the clouds, the ground, just wondering how this is all real. Just... wondering.


This curiosity expands to more things, like electronics. I find it crazy that we were able to create all this technology, all these computers. When the universe was created, electrons were as well, and it's amazing that we were able to use those tiny-ass particles (or waves as I learned from my chem teacher) to our own benefit.


Electron
Definitely a Real Photo of an Electron (iStock)

I've also taken the time to realize that we're such small beings living on a floating rock among trillions of other floating rocks in the universe. I realize how we're so tiny –– how we're so insignificant.


And then, I wonder why we're here, how we got here. And I guess that's the main question, isn't it? Was our creation an accident? Probably. Surely it all comes back to the Big Bang.


Like, wasn't there "nothing" before the Big Bang? So how do you create this huge freaking universe out of literally nothing? How do you create life? Is there this recipe for life? Can I craft a human being in my kitchen? Perhaps bake one up? It's just so mind-boggling to think about the mysteries behind how life formed (from the very beginning). It really keeps me awake during French class...

 

Y'know, I just read something. Apparently, some cosmologists believe a previous, cold dark empty universe could have been the source of our very own Big Bang. Well then, obviously that begs the question "What the hell happened before that?" And also, the keyword in that sentence was "empty". An "empty" universe was the source of the Big Bang? So doesn't that technically mean there was nothing before the Big Bang because the supposed "universe" that created it was "empty"? So does that mean that there was an empty universe #1 that created empty universe #2 that created the Big Bang? But then, isn't this just an infinite loop of saying empty things created other empty things and so on until we finally got the universe as we know it? WTF?!


Big Bang
Definitely a Real Photo of The Big Bang (Getty Images)

I also can't imagine "nothingness". It's impossible to picture because, as humans, everywhere we look there's something. We've never seen "nothing".


I originally thought "nothingness" meant pitch black, but then again, that's something isn't it? That's the absence of light. However, you can't have an absence of a thing if that thing wasn't a "something".......... right? I honestly have no clue what I just wrote but I'm leaving it as is.


There was this scene from the sitcom Young Sheldon where Sheldon was trying to convince Dr. Sturgis that "zero" wasn't real. Dr. Sturgis, being the experienced mathematician that he is, scoffed at Sheldon's ridiculous claim, using this analogy:


"Picture an empty box. What's in the box? Nothing".

"It's not nothing", says Sheldon. "Air... atoms... molecules... that empty box is as full as full can be".


Even a genius like Dr. Sturgis can't come up with a good analogy to describe nothingness because you can't. I guess, to describe "something" would be to describe something that exists, which nothingness doesn't...... does that make sense? I dunno.


Young Sheldon
Young Sheldon and Dr. Sturgis

Something else that seriously astonishes me is just truly how old the universe is. 13.7 billion years. 13.7 BILLION years.


I think, a lot of the time, people will overlook that number, and it's probably because it's common knowledge that the universe is billions of years old.


But think about it, as a number. There have been 13,700,000,000 years since the universe was created. Imagine saying you were 13,700,000,000 years old. Pretty overwhelming, and that's how I feel about it. It's like how I said earlier that no one can picture nothingness. No one can picture a billion "things" either (well I guess you can now with this video).

 

The Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. A lot of the rock that we see around is probably millions or billions of years old. THAT'S CRAZY TO ME!


I feel like wondering about these things has made me appreciate the little things that we as humans have in this world, from our hands to technology to skyscrapers.


There was this big rock at my old elementary school that was basically part of our school's identity so much so that it's mentioned in our school spirit song. I wonder how old that guy is...


"...And our friends we’ll see by the rock at three

Pals forever we will be..."


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