October 2007 | From the Editor
A Bubble Bath of Universe
By Ritzy Ryciak
The pages of my book, The Fabric of the Cosmos, are mottled with yellow highlighter, dark and deliberate underlines, inserted questions and awed comments like, “Wow!” Written by renowned physicist and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Dr. Brian Greene, this book propelled me into new ways of considering the floating orb we all live on.
The first (and only) time I met Dr. Greene, who, I would like to note is easy on the eyes, was years ago when he came to Seattle’s Town Hall and spoke about space and time, string theory’s extra spatial dimensions, and his most recent book, Fabric of the Cosmos. I remember being entranced by the questions he posed. What is reality? Does time have a beginning? Are there more dimensions surrounding us than just the three we can perceive? Could a breakthrough in physics — one more puzzle piece to the mystery we live everyday — actually change the way that we experience the world?
The exciting thing about science is that one question always leads to more questions. It reproduces that sense of awe I remember feeling when I was little. Dr. Greene’s books and insights always bring me back to a place of complete wonderment and openness to the possibilities around me.
This month, our writer Jamie Friddle had the privilege to chat with Greene (see pg. 24) about the Big and little questions on his mind. My highlighter was at the ready.
“Some of the striking ideas that people are floating these days is that we’re but one universe of many. That the more common idea that what we call the universe — earth, the other planets, the galaxy, the hundred billion stars in the galaxy, the hundred billion other galaxies — that this collection is all there is, the entirety of creation,” offers Greene. “…Now, we’re recognizing that we may have a bubble bath of universes and we’re just one bubble.”
Life feels different when you try and imagine what that really means — just one bubble in a bubble bath of universes. I have never been able to fully grasp the vastness of galaxies around us, but I think that simply trying can be beneficial. It expands the lens through which we perceive the world.
Greene is not the only one out there expanding his perspective. “Most of us have been trained in viewing the world in a Cartesian fence [that is] the world is a substance and we [humans] are different from the earth,” says Farmer Erick Haakenson, referring to the tenets of Biodynamic Farming (pg. 14), a farming philosophy that aims to bring down that “fence” and emphasizes the importance of being in rhythm with the sun, moon, planets and stars while planting and tending your land. Biodynamic farming has become increasingly popular, and opened up a dialogue about treating farms as unified and individual pulsing organisms. Haakenson describes it as “homeopathy for the farm.”
I see it as a welcome and timely shift in perspective on food and our planet — a dipped toe into our bubble bath of universes.
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