In Response to: The cosmic apocalypse

Three cheers for Princeton statistically discerning our universe’s ultimate fate (“The Cosmic Apocalypse” by Mark Alpert ’82, cover story, Feb. 11)!  But while Schrodinger’s cat is still mysteriously boxed, indeed rendering us only 90 percent half-there, why not invoke what Princeton's also known for – i.e., visionary architecture – so that a workable model isn’t limited by evidence still pending?

Ever since PAW’s A moment with ... David Spergel ’82 (April 19, 2006), I’ve been inspired to clarify any uncertainties otherwise too dependent on already latent inflationary or cyclical indications to spatially jumpstart Spergel’s astute observation of “actually looking back 13.7 billion years ... whenever we look out in space.” That grand unification is still indecipherable after 13.7 billion years, in turn, asserts by necessity, additional space indecipherably separate from spacetime as we know it. Indeed, timelessly sandwiching what’s accessibly ours between gravity-induced branes of dark matter “pushing down” to what we already know as “pulling in.” And hence our universe’s most diametrically opposed exponentially flattening-and-expanding at once, oozing dark energy like mayo from a flatbread snack.

Diagrammatically, if our “hole[d]” universe, fluxed in time were but a spherical inner-lining/plenum-wrap to a super spherically “whole” universe predominantly timeless, one can start to imagine all light and energy escaping timelessly from liner via incontrovertible leaks or “black holes” to the more all-encompassing inner-core-sphere of anti-space/timelessness from whose center the source of gravity is radiantly strung to the now-exponentially-expanding wrapper (indeed quantumly penetrating its plenum of spacetime) until, ultimately, the vacuumed-but/expanding-flatness literally big bangs a complete flip-flop of wrapper-and-core mutual exclusivity which, in turn, reverses time – indeed mirroring everything.

Further cosmological evidence notwithstanding, this way, and in lieu of anything Robert Frost and/or T.S.Eliot, if we’re still “lost,” we can at least say: “We’re making good time.” And more easily confide, once our 13.7-billion-year glance in space comes to a “fork,” that we'll no doubt “take it.” Basically, we kicked ourselves out of Eden.

Chris Morris *78