Big Brain Theory

My official response to this week's NYT article is: Huh?

I gotta say, I'm usually enraptured by the pinings of astronomers and cosmologists. Cosmos was one of my favorite books of all time, and was an impetus toward my studying the history of science in grad school. I love Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, anyone who ponders the vastness of the universe and our little place in it.

And yet I get the unmistakable feeling that cosmologists are just making shit up at this point.

Back in the day, I was blown away by the notion of 100 billion galaxies of 100 billion stars each, not least because it made for a great conversation starter at frat parties with the shy chick who had wandered outside to get some air. ("Hi, I'm Todd. Wow, check out that sky tonight. Did you know there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy?")

But when the cosmological conversation shifted to the part about most of the universe being made up of dark matter--which, well, nobody knows what the hell that is, basically--and then the concept of how many dimensions there are, and whether some are folded back onto each other...it just started to kind of get like an insider-y Mensa meeting, and, frankly, I was married by that point anyway.

So my reaction to this latest weird article is essentially a yawn and a shrug, with a sidebar comment that the human brain, which is the size of a Big Mac, has some inherent limitations in its ability to comprehend the nature of the universe. I've given up on trying to be smarter than everyone else and am now just as happy to discuss Britney and Jamie Lynn.