Sunday, January 4, 2009

It (2/2)

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Rock World it lived in was very colourful. It eyed with envy lots of other matters around it. Everyone with different capabilities, doing different things, being in different form. How lovely it would be to form alliance with some of them, though that was hardly its own choice. Lots of things have to be right at the same time, plus other matter should also give importance to the proposal. As rock on Earth, it couldn’t have asked for better life. Born around merely 4.5 billion years ago, it found company from loneliness of space it was thrust upon, and found a home on this land.

Earth As it went round the Sun about 4.5 billionth time, it noticed again that Moon was further away from it. Every year, it seemed, that Moon moved about an inch away from it. Have I offended it lately, it wondered. Nothing really came to mind though, because, first, Moon has been drifting away anyway since they were together long time ago, and second, their brotherly-sisterly love is well documented in a country called India. Ah well, it’s only so much you can do when all you can do in life is go round and round around Sun and dance around your own axis. In last century or so, it also noticed some wobbling in her dance. May be I am forgetting it, it rationalized. But how could it, if it’s doing that everyday, literally, since its birth? Has mass at polar regions shifting toward center, making it fatter? Why would anyone not want it to dance, though it could definitely use some rest.

Solar System In southern thinly populated spiral arm of Milky Way galaxy, solar system went on to its routine running at 200km per second. It didn’t have a choice though, cause someone or something has always been pulling and pushing, and that others around it ran too. Perhaps that’s the way it is, it thought. At least that gave it variety of things to see and company of other solar systems. Being average guy in this place wasn’t much fun because everybody and their uncle kept pushing and hitting it, though it smiled knowingly that it got to live longer, five more billion years indeed. It just wished a little more warmth around it. Nearest friend being 4 light years away was not really best deal in galaxy, though it was proud of having possessed only known intelligent life in among its colleagues.

Milky Way Galaxy As it rotated on its center once every quarter billion years, it was very pleased with the work of its billions of stars. Complacency has not been its motto though. It knew what fate lies ahead as a galaxy. Indeed mere few billion years were between it and its impending collision of Andromeda cluster of galaxies. It didn’t want to run away, it just have to be prepared to die or reborn, and do it’s best to save as many of its solar systems as it can. Meanwhile it had to rush away from original point of Big Bang because no one knows why but there seems some mystical thing everyone is trying to outrun others for.

Universe No one knows courage of stepping into unknown better than it. From the very first instant it’s been stepping into unknown, fast and faster as it got confidence. Unknown it really was for there was no space and time where it marched, it carried them there. Vaguely aware that some destiny awaited it there somewhere, it rushed and pulled everything inside it, which was not really much work with mere weight of one hydrogen atom per cubic meter of space.

Book Review - Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy (2003)

I can say, with some modesty, that I am familiar with the subject of mathematics more than an average person is. Despite that I hadn’t ever ...