It was at this moment that I realized I had crossed some sort of threshold within my consciousness that had allowed me to normalize the grand scale of Manhattan’s buildings. When I first moved here, the city’s concrete canyons seemed interminable and out of context with the human experience. I could not completely fathom the sheer size of the buildings that dwarfed me; the very idea seemed akin to comprehending the entirety of the world’s vast oceans in a glance. That feeling, coupled with the explosion of human activity on the streets, had initially left me feeling out of sorts. But that day in Battery Park, the absence of the city’s grand edifices registered as an alien experience with which I was not completely comfortable.
I have read two schools of thought concerning the cosmological future of the universe. The competing theories draw on two phenomena, both of which are versions of the Doppler effect, the same scientific principle that explains the reason that the pitch of an approaching siren drops as it passes a stationary observer. Both posit the idea that the universe was created in a Big Bang, an explosion of matter and energy that scattered the dust that would form into galaxies and the stars, planets, comets, asteroids and other bodies that composed them. However, the first theory purports that the Big Bang sent all of this matter and energy on an interminable journey of expansion that would eventually rend all matter from itself, scattering it like ashes in the cosmic winds. In this theory a stationary observer at the center of the universe would see background electromagnetic radiation on the red side of the electromagnetic spectrum, granting the phenomenon the name “red shift.” Here we are all adrift in the cold vacuum of space.
The second theory argues that the expansion of matter that exploded during the Big Bang will eventually lose its momentum, slow to a stop, and then reverse itself. It’s as if the universe’s matter is a cosmological rubber band that, once stretched taut, begins the process of returning to its native form. This Big Collapse would result in a “blue shift,” as electromagnetic radiation viewed from the center of the universe would fall on the indigo side of the electromagnetic spectrum. Once collapsed in on itself, the universe’s matter-energy would then explode again, starting the Big Bang/Big Collapse cycle anew once more. Some cosmologists theorize that this endless loop has gone on for countless billions of trillions of millennia. In this theory we are headed once again toward our genesis.
Though recent scientific evidence suggests that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating, owing to unknown forces called dark matter, I hope that the latter theory of blue shift will eventually come to fruition, though I would be long dead should it ever be borne out. For some illogical reason, I draw comfort from the idea that things are getting closer to one another. Assimilating the context of our existence expands the human consciousness, regardless of how abstract that process may be. I’d like to think that when the record stops God—or whoever—will flip it, then put the needle back on the groove.
