The expanding universe

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Episode transcript

Ah, the ever expanding universe… I still remember when the universe was so small that you could see it all. I was very young back then… in the fact the whole universe was young!

You could pick a direction, any direction, take a couple of steps and you’d be back where you started. You could jump, land on the same spot, while going around the whole thing! I remember that we used to run around and see who would make the most laps in a minute. My friend Q’knu would go so fast that he would almost be all around the universe at the same time.

Our parents didn’t like that one bit: we were already cramped for space, all pressed on top of one another, and having all these youngsters running all around you must have been very annoying. But the fact is: there wasn’t much to do back then… there was no internet… no Solar system… no galaxies… everything was pretty much homogenous.

So we would get into trouble. Q’knu would get into trouble the most, and his parents were very severe. One day he was so angry at them that he tried running away… which was obviously a very silly idea… In fact, nobody really noticed.

It was hot too… In fact, that’s how we started noticing something was happening: every morning was a little bit cooler. And our running records were getting worse. At first we thought we were just getting tired of the game, or that we were getting older, and couldn’t run as fast as we once did… then we realized that it was not us: it was the distance that was getting longer.
With more space, it was easier to do things: we could actually take a shower only a hundred at a time instead of a million at a time. And we developed new habits.

When it started to take more than a day to go around the universe, people realized they couldn’t just leave their things scattered all around, so they started gathering them and settled in different areas. Our one big community divided into multiple communities in different parts of space.

Q’knu and I settled in different regions. At first it took just a couple of hours to go from my place to his place. Then it took days, weeks, months… We got farther and farther apart, we all did, and I haven’t heard from him anymore. There’s so much space now that it’s basically impossible to go around the universe as we used to do.

There is this theory that at some point the universe will start getting smaller, and we’ll all be together again. The older generation tends to like it more: I guess they never really got used to the whole expansion thing. My grandfather sometimes talks about “when we’re back there” and how he’ll finally be able to beat Ut’n’p at chess: he has been practicing for billions and billions of years now…

As for me, I am not too sure whether I’d like that. I got accustomed to all the space, and what I really look back on is my childhood and those simple games. And a smaller universe won’t bring it back.

Acknowledgements

This episode is inpired by "Le cosmicomiche" by Italo Calvino.

Direct download: 01 The expanding universe.mp3