Symbols have always been, the length and breadth of the history of mankind, a sort of gateways to knowledge, as hinges between density and subtlety.
Although it could seem too far for many eyes, the concept of symbol can be linked to that of "wormhole", the latter being developed by the British physicist Stephen Hawking (born in Oxford 73 years ago).
Hawking's concept derives from the black holes theory developed by the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, based on Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity (1915) and enriched by the contribution of the physicist Nathan Rosen, finally perfected by their colleague John Wheeler in 1967, true father of the term "wormhole".
A black hole, according to the development of Schwarzschild, is an inhabitant of the infinite space with a gravitational field so strong that nothing can escape from it, not even light. According to general relativity, gravitation modifies space and time as approaching a black hole, to the point that an observer entering in contact with a black hole border zone (called Horizon) would experience a complete stop of time.
It can be helpful to become aware that inside those black holes -whose existence was conclusively confirmed in 1994 by Hubble Space Telescope images and reconfirmed in January 1997 by a research team of Americans astrophysicists- there is a part of the universe to which we do not have access, since we cannot sensorially perceive or measure it with any tool available nowadays. We could say then that if we consider the universe as a whole, there is a significant part of reality which remains sensorially unreachable. It is a kind of "it is there..., but we actually ignore it".
Stephen Hawking's studies stimulate our intellect when he suggests that black holes do not collapse like many other celestial objects but may form a kind of tunnel between them: the "wormholes" ("worm", due to the spiral bonding configuration of stellar gas and dust around black holes, constituting the so-calledaccretion disks). Simplifying, a wormhole is much like a tunnel with two ends each in separate points in spacetime.
These wormholes have the great advantage of being able to connect different parts of our own universe, but not only: they probably also communicate with universes other than our own, making a sort of tunnel between the black hole and them, as theorized by Hugh Everett -a disciple of John Wheeler- in hismultiverse scenario. Whatever they are, those whormholes would connect us to a part of the Whole to which we do not access with our material sensory capacities. In that zone, according to the Einsteinian general relativity theory, time totally stops. That is the way that the astronomer Carl Sagan shows in his book "Contact" -and with the help of physicist Kip Thorne- as a path to solve the spacetime issue, pointing to an ajar door of hope for humans, through which they might be able to visit other far corners of the cosmos.
As through the wormholes, symbols would give access to that kind of "it is there..." too.
The tunnel formed between the two ends of a wormhole is stable, thus we could move from one galaxy to another, or from one universe to another. But that tunnel can close prematurely if the explorer is not properly prepared, if time has not been exactly synchronized to pass across it. Similarly, the symbol remainsclosed to those who are unable to interpret them.
Hence, the wormholes would represent a gateway to what still remains -even for the most advanced physicists- an unknown realm of the universe that can be thought but not seen. Exactly as symbols, which allow us to slip into the meaning of veiled issues.
Wormholes probably shelter a direct analogy to symbols. A sort of passageway to certain fields of a more integrated and comprehensive reality.
Copyright © 2015 by Ricardo Vanella. All rights reserved.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario