We're only like, what, 12 days into the new year and I already splurged my money on books, which doesn't sound too terrible when you think about it but when you're into imported non-fiction books, it surely does harm your bank account... and I will only receive my paycheck in February.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I am extremely thankful to find this particular gem among rows of motivational books at Books & Beyond. It's Carlo Rovelli's Reality is Not What It Seems: the Journey to Quantum Gravity.
Me? Astrophysics?
Probably not the best combination but I couldn't find anything more appealing than the thoughts that—correct me if I'm wrong—space is not simply an empty vacuum but a gravitational field in which matters pull and be pulled in the universe, that the stars we see up there are really actually their past, or that special relativity basically shows that perspectives are everything but the speed of light is literally always the one constant in a sea of variables.
I am glad to find another physicist, another storyteller so brilliant he makes physics so enchanting and so simple to even an idiot like me, someone just like Neil Degrasse Tyson, one of my favorite people on the planet.
It's ridiculous how I got this newfound love for astrophhysics at the age of 23, and it completely changed the way I see life and the world I'm living in because the universe is actually a 3-sphere, which completely blew my mind the first time I read it because now it makes sense how spacetime is finite and infinite at the same time. It's like we're living in a giant ball located somewhere in an even more giant ball.
Nowadays, when I see things around me, I couldn't help but try to mentally strip everything down to atoms. If I were to die, will my atoms really vanish or will they dismiss then and rearrange some new form of life on Earth? Does anyone ever really die then? When I see the moon, I couldn't help but think of how matters create curvatures in space, that the moon orbits our planet simply due to the shape of these funnel-like curvatures and the planets orbit the sun in a similar fashion.
Spoiler alert: Einstein published three life-changing scientific journals at a tender age of 25 and perfected the theory of general relativity ten years later. Meanwhile, I will turn 24 this year and I just started a full time job while trying realy hard to keep my anxiety on check. Ah, self-deprecation doesn't feel too bad when you compare yourself with a genius.
Whatever I said in this post may not be the most scientifically accurate thing you'll see on the internet, but I just want to express how grateful I am to even get to see the glimpse of the beauty of physics considering how extremely lacking I am in the field of science. But, you know, even Einstein, Albert freaking Einstein, was struggling with maths. At least, I've taken my giant leap. I actually made an effort to understand a subject I used to despise with all my heart because this time, I actually got a crush on it.
I should go and finish the book before I spit out even more nonsense. Good night.
Oh, and yes, this post is an excuse to put the magnificent picture above from NASA's badass Spitzer Space Telescope of dust covering the center of our galaxy on display.
