Posted 05/01/2013:
"We are stardust ... We are golden ..."
The words of Woodstock, the sixties song by Joni Mitchell, have imbued within them a certain romanticism. Whether or not the words are romantic, or invoke a higher order spiritual ambiance, they are literally true. The theme of the day – stardust – was approached this day in same way as other themes on other days – via the segue. Let me explain.
This writer has always been one to favor the inane, irrelevant, and obscure. I suppose it’s a genetic defect, but I have found that I can spend an enormous amount of time thinking about cosmology and other things unlikely to mean the difference between a day that is good and one that is less good. As “practical people” have no use for cosmology, it could be that persons who are extremely pragmatic cannot be successful basic scientists. Maybe it takes the dreamer to imagine the unimaginable.
Primordial Elements
The subject came up during the morning coffee hour. I sometimes have a long, one way conversation with the other half before she leaves for work, and after I’ve consumed enough coffee to think. There is at that time a critical window of lucidity that I try to seize upon – when I can. The subject of this morning’s hour?
Primordial Elements.
Primordial? Is that sensible breakfast table talk? In my defense, I must say that my morning babble is usually prefaced by a precursor that makes sense to an un-pragmatic dreamer, if not to his other half. To be concise, the conversation started days earlier, as a segued topic deriving from an advertisement for a Tesla motor car. The advertisement mentioned the Lithium batteries that powered it, and that naturally led, some days later, to the Big Bang, and a conversation laced with various facts about stardust and primordial elements. I’m sure that’s clear.
If the mud’s not as clear as I have asserted, so early in the morning, then maybe a missing piece of information, when supplied, will suffice to clarify the turgid waters …
The missing piece? Heinz R. Pagels, physicist.
I happened to be in the middle of a book written by one Heinz R. Pagels, when the Tesla motorcar conversation took place. The connections were immediately made.
Go to page two of article: https://ronaldscheckelhoff.wordpress.com/quarkety-quark-2/
Musings 