Adrift In The Cosmic Microwave Background

Going Through Old Notebooks Part 34: In this universe allegedly produced by the Big Bang, even the darkness is made of light.

Lagoon and Trifid Nebulae (Messier 8 and Messier 20), in the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy. Telescope image via Javier Zayas Photography.

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Apparently the universe—our universe—is shaped like a potato. Stars, not-stars, dark matter, normal matter, all that you and I can see, and quite a lot we can’t, everything supposedly produced by the Big Bang? Yeah. It looks like a potato.

That’s what they say, anyway. Maybe I read it somewhere. All that dark stuff, all that blackness between the bright points, between the things we call things; if you look at it through a radio telescope sensitive enough, you can see that even the blackest parts of empty space still emit a glow.

This glow is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other heavenly body. It emanates from within the blackness itself.

Go ahead. Try to find a corner of the night not secretly glowing like a blanket made of fireflies. As long as your instruments are tuned to the right frequency, you can’t. It’s all one big, glowing potato. In this universe allegedly produced by the Big Bang, even the darkness is made of light.

I once had a nightmare that I was stuck to a spinning rock by centrifugal force that itself was hurtling—falling, really—at unimaginable speeds through a lawless field of endless, empty black. I awoke with a start, absolutely terrified, because of course—the dream was true! We are stuck to a spinning rock by centrifugal force that is hurtling through a lawless field of endless, empty black!

I wish I’d remembered to think then about the inescapable glow of the cosmic microwave background radiation. That is, to remember the potato.

Outside the farthest reaches of the Big Bang, this cloud of light and dust that we find ourselves suspended in, this 14-billion-year-old firework display, are there other Big Bangs? Other universes? Other potatoes?

I get up. I drink tea. I make pancakes with fresh red currents stirred into the batter.

I am stuck to the people I love through a kind of centrifugal force, my tides controlled by the celestial bodies I am closest to. I orbit and am orbited, even during radio silence. I send signals out into the dark not-dark, like a satellite, my antennae flashing.

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This post has been adapted from a notebook entry originally written in 2022.

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