Acorn

 

As you have, no doubt, already observed I have many theories. One of the least obvious ones goes rather as follows:

Imagine that this planet, Earth, is a particle. Which, in essence, it is certainly no more than that. But think of it more as a ‘sub-atomic’ particle.

The Earth orbits around the Sun in much the same way as sub-atomic particles orbit whatever it is that they go around. Then the Sun orbits the centre of the Galaxy—the ‘Milky Way’ Galaxy.

For the Sun to go around the centre of the Galaxy once takes millions of years. We are out there along the Orion Arm or, at least, a part of the Orion Arm a long, long way out from the galactic centre.

That one orbit is known as a ‘Galactic Year’. It has been 61 Galactic Years since the ‘Big Bang’ so this is a clue as to how long one Galactic Year takes—about 230 million years. The estimates are between 225 million years to about 250 million years and this orbit is happening as the Solar System is travelling at an average speed of 828,000 km/h (230 km/s) or 514,000 mph (143 mi/s) relative to the galactic centre, which is about one 1300th of the speed of light. If you could travel at that speed in a jet aircraft along the equator, you would go all the way around the world in approximately 2 minutes and 54 seconds.

We are definitely going around the Galactic Centre.

But, then, the Galaxy is going around as well. It is going around something. We are told that there is an expansion in progress. Because of the ‘Big Bang’ the galaxies are all heading outwards into even deeper space. Yet some of them are getting closer to us. Our ‘neighbour’, ‘Andromeda’, is getting closer and closer so that, one day, it will collide with the ‘Milky Way’. Fear not. That day is a long, long way away yet.

The stars in the galaxies are so far apart, particularly at the periphery, that it is entirely possible that the collision will have little effect upon us unless we hit the centre of ‘Andromeda’ in which case it will be necessary to draw the curtains.

I believe that the galaxies are all orbiting something. Somewhere in that deep, deep blackness there is a centre point where the ‘Big Bang’ is said to have occurred. It may be the biggest Black Hole ever or it may just be a mass of dark matter about which we know nothing.

Whatever it is, we are going around it.

All those little sub-atomic particles whirling around in a huge sphere at vast speeds and yet taking billions and billions of years to go anywhere.

Now step back.

Step back far enough to see that whole spinning sphere.

Now step back far enough to see other spinning spheres. They would be other universes. Some are older and, maybe, some are newer than us. They are there.

Keep stepping back until the gap between those universes becomes smaller and smaller.

Eventually you are far enough back to see the universes coagulate into a definable shape. Those universes are atoms. The galaxies are the sub-atomic particles. Their star systems are the quarks and electrons that spin interminable around inside those atoms.

A few more steps back, the shape gains colour and substance. If you step away far enough you will see that the universes all combine into a shape.

It is an acorn.

A small girl is peering at it. She is wondering if there is life inside that acorn that is so small she cannot see it.

We are here, but she will never know and we shall never know of her.

There is so much that science does not know that we should always question it.

This is just a surreal theory borne of a bored mind when I was a child.

Or is it?