The article can be found at http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/09/19/the_me_sized_universe/?page=2
I like this article, but I’m still trying to figure out why it exists in the science news section of the Globe. It doesn’t actually present any new information – it doesn’t even refer to a recent event in the world of science that may have inspired the author to write the piece. I feel like it belongs in a magazine or a collection of essays or an introduction to a book, not a newspaper.
Nonetheless, it’s in there. So what is it? Samuel Arbesman, an affiliate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University (as well as a postdoctoral fellow at HMS), basically throws a bunch of numbers and comparisons at us in order for us to get a feel for some of the more intangible, “astronomical” quantities of the universe. And for the most part, they work: a supernova occurs every 50 years in the Milky Way, the diameter of a neutron star is about the distance between MIT and Wellesley, 10 billion hydrogen atoms lined up in a row are about the length of the average adult arm span.
These work for me. What doesn’t work is the purpose behind the damn article. Where was the inspiration? He hints at some recent discovery that may have happened when he says, “The universe is actually becoming less impersonal. Through science and technology, we are getting better at bringing cosmic quantities to the human scale.” But I would appreciate it if he gave an example of these make-it-all-easy-to-imagine technologies. Maybe I’m picky. But then he ends it with a poor, sorry, mushy conclusion as an attempt to wrap the whole thing up into a cute little gift: “Yes, the universe is big and we are small. But we must treasure the exceptions, and see a little bit of the human in the cosmic, even if only for a moment.”
Come on.
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