Things ain't what they used to be in the old cosmic web

The technology of our modern age reveals the magnificence of the universe around us. So why, amidst all of these wonders revealed, are we so mean to each other.

Shine on, shine on, harvest moon, up in the sky…

For most of the time in the century or so since astronomers first surmised the structure of our universe as it’s currently known, we’ve understood the cosmos to consist of dust and gas, star systems, groups of star systems, galaxies, and the universe at large.

To our knowledge, interstellar space (the space between star systems) and especially intergalactic space (the space between galaxies) were, respectively, mostly empty and almost completely empty. All of this changed about ten years ago when astronomers, for the first time, were able to indirectly image the clouds of gas that exist even in intergalactic space against the background glow of distant quasars.

These gas clouds, which provide source material for galaxies throughout the cosmos and bind the universe together as a whole, are referred to as the “cosmic web.” Recently, an instrument known as the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) was able to image various filaments of the cosmic web directly in the remotest areas of intergalactic space.

These images are nothing short of a technological miracle, and one that I am damned happy to have lived long enough to see. If you ever imagined that there was actually something akin to “the force” binding all of the universe together as one, the cosmic web is a good candidate for it.

Who knows what further wonders out there in the cosmos are as of yet undiscovered? It’s a great time for anyone with any curiosity and/or sense of wonder to be alive.

This is exactly the type of thing that attracted me to physics decades ago. I have always been intensely curious about the fundamental questions concerning our place in the cosmos: What is the universe? Why are we here? Is there some grand purpose to existence? Or are we merely adrift on some grand cosmic tide? I don’t know that we’ll ever know the answers to all of these questions, but we know a little more about all of these things every day.

It was my wonderful privilege to teach astronomy and astrophysics for most of my quarter-century academic career. I never tired of conveying my sense of awe and wonder about the universe around us to students in my university classes and challenging them to think about these questions for themselves.

When I go outside each new day and look around, I see wonder everywhere. A cerulean blue sky courtesy of Rayleigh scattering. Geomorphological features of landscapes that evolved over millions of years due to sunlight, radioactive decay and tidal forces. A nearby star overhead that happens to be the right size and at the perfect distance to make this planet habitable for us. And at night, a moon at just the right distance to quell tectonic activity by slowing our rotational rate and limiting our precessional wobble.

All of these things have always given me comfort. They make my problems seem small. We are, after all, literally made of star stuff. The iron in the hemoglobin complex in our blood came from Type II supernovas, which produce nickel-56, which decays into cobalt-56, which decays into the incredibly stable iron-56. This is where iron comes from. Knowing this deep connection with the cosmos has always been my own personal bridge over troubled waters.

I often need that bridge as soon as I head down to my favorite coffee shop each morning and read newspapers. In our own little corner of the cosmic web, avarice appears to trump wonder just about all the way down the line. And despite all of the marvels of the modern world and all they have revealed about our place in a magnificent universe, this trend appears to be worsening. It’s irrational, completely counterintuitive, and disheartening.

Yet, from where I sit, it is all completely true.

Many of my friends are merchants and business owners. All of them tell me the same thing about interacting with people these days: dealing with others ain’t what it used to be. I don’t doubt them for a minute. There is evidence aplenty that they are right on the mark.

All it takes is a trip into town to visit the grocery store to see that the wheels are falling off the civility and decorum bandwagon—vital elements in a polite and stable society. From the poor manners of those with whom we share the roads to the madness that comprises the urban experience and politics, we’ve lost our way when it comes to decency, courtesy, and even the appearance of consideration for others.

It bothers me to no end that, in far too many cases these days, a word is not a person’s bond. Promises often mean little unless lawyers and lots of money are involved. That, as far as I’m concerned, is a strong sign of the beginning of the end. When your word isn’t worth much, you have very little to offer that I have any interest in. The pity is that this sentiment is relatively uncommon.

Combine all of this with the rapid dissolution of families as a basic unit of societal stability, and you have a recipe for a culture under significant duress. This trend has been, in my opinion, in the making for decades but was significantly accelerated during the COVID pandemic. It turns out that the consequences of attempting to largely turn the world off for a significant period of time might have been catastrophic in ways that we are just now beginning to fully comprehend.

The unintended consequences of COVID restrictions are exactly what I and others were attempting to point out while being censored by many legacy media and social media platforms during the pandemic. Even if you bought into the alarmist predictions that dominated the earliest COVID narratives, you had to be willfully ignorant of the possibility that many of the proposed cures could well be worse than the disease.

For these reasons, I’m beginning to think that there may not be a hell hot enough for those who were perhaps responsible for creating COVID and those who were definitely responsible for how we dealt with it.

Did COVID alone cause us to choose avarice over wonder, bad manners over decorum, and irrationality over enlightenment? Did COVID suddenly turn us into a culture of dishonest selfishness and self-interest? I think not. But it sure caused major upheavals in societies that were already under social duress. All of this may have already been in the works, but COVID just might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So tonight, when I walk outside for the last check on the goats and llamas and observe my nightly look at the stars, I’ll locate Betelgeuse and wonder if I’ll get to see it flare into a brilliant supernova while I’m still able to watch the stars in the night. I’ll ponder the cosmic web that I can only imagine without a one-of-a-kind telescope. And I’ll mourn how, in the middle of all of this wonder, we’ve managed to create a world that’s most notable not for these wonders of human achievement but for it’s avarice and dysfunction.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com