Article Title: The cosmic now

Article Summary

The article at issue ruminates on the nature of alternate reality, and of what part of the ‘here and now’ is a reality, and not a dream. The author tries to provide various reasons behind why the laws of the universe support our existence, and these reasons run from us getting very lucky cosmically to life not needing the conduciveness of physics and its laws at all. To explore in more detail the connection between human life and the nature of the universe, the author recounts varied incidents across several parts of the globe, which most definitely may be happening at the current moment but may also be – not happening. This paradox means several things. While it does mean that the universe must be truly gigantic to hold the number of possibilities it does, it also means the ‘now’, or current, chronologically static and confined moment of time in the present, is actually fluid. We might see clearly in the present moment things that happened billions of years ago, like twinkling stars which have already burnt out emitting flashes of light. These glimpses into the past may be provided even by objects painfully quotidian, like an old analog TV projecting static. Isaac Newton said that time is unidirectional and very static – so how does his logic hold up now? The answer is that the experimental figures verifying his hypothesis are slowly, but surely coming up in the future. In the meantime, to preserve our sanity about the nature of time, we must simply make do with things that are happening in front of us, happening completely, observably in the here and now. However, we must also keep in mind we are fooling ourselves regarding the nature of time.

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Words to learn from this article:

Colossally: extremely, something of great magnitude.

Contemplating: reflecting on, thinking over.

Infinitesimal: very, very small.

Baffling: something that puzzles or bewilders you.

Titanic: of gigantic size or influence.

Cosmic: relating to the universe.

Embryonic: related to the embryo stage of the development of organisms, in which a baby animal or mammal takes rudimentary shape of an adult of its species, and is carried in a sac in the mother’s womb.