People shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks… Isaiah 2:3-4
I think by now the media’s unending
focus on everything related to the upcoming activities transpiring on Nov. 5,
2024 would be satiated, at least outside the DC beltway. It’s apparently not. The media is only shifting out of first gear now that Iowans
have finished their caucuses’ dances.
A meager 15% of Iowa’s Repubs
managed to brave sub-zero temperatures and celebrate being caucus-goers last week.
With no surprise whatsoever, Donald Trump was the caucuses’ winner. Naturally,
The Donald is now beating his Iowa plowshares into political swords.
This time around the Dems wisely abandoned caucusing for their presidential candidate after being gravely wounded by their grand mal caucus fiasco in 2020. It took 3 days for them to figure out that Pete Buttigieg barely beat Bernie Sanders. Congrats Pete that victory got you the Transportation Secretary’s job. In 2024, Iowa Dems instead are casting regular mail-in ballots from Jan. 12 through Mar. 5 (aka, Super Tuesday) to vote for their presidential candidate. Ho hum.
But let’s not get too grounded in
the Hawkeye state’s momentary quadrennial political glow. Instead, look above and
beyond. There’s fascinating news about the heavens that has a connective thread
to the presidential election. Dennis Overbye wrote an intriguing story
about how our universe may have begun, way, way beyond Des Moines, Concord and
even Washington, DC. Dennis is the New York Times’ “cosmic affairs
correspondent.” I wonder what Dennis’ cosmic affairs beat does not
include because ultimately there’s very little outside the realm of cosmic
affairs, not even Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Richard and Liz or Taylor and
Travis.
Dennis’ story, “The Early
Universe Was Bananas,” discusses results from a new astrophysical assessment
about the birth of our universe. This investigation focuses on the astronomically
short interlude of just half a billion years after the Big Bang, when time itself
began. Mercifully, this birth was free from any medical interventions.
The study focuses on examining “newborn”
galaxies in the firmament. Until now, standard cosmological theory has assumed
that the newest galaxies would appear very similar to the prevailing inventory
of about 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. Unexpectedly, after scrutinizing thousands
of baby galaxies they appeared not at all like orbs or discs associated with older
galaxies like our Milky Way. The newborn galaxies instead look more like bananas,
pickles or surfboards shown in the image below. If confirmed, this surprising
result may expand our sense of how dark energy-matter influences the universe.
After learning about this shadowy
astrophysical realm, I connected these universal dark forces with our current political
expanse. It’s quite clear to me that The Donald embodies fuzzy dark energy
through and through. Unfortunately, the untruthful Trumpian fuzzy dark energy is
having quite visible consequences. His political and campaign forces are
certainly dark, too often very fuzzy and have very little to do with
gravity. That hasn’t bothered his followers at all.
Baby banana galaxies portray
challengers like Nicki Haley and up until Sunday, Ron DeSantis (who’s retreated
to the Everglades), whose hoped-for goal is somehow to be the Republican candidate
for president. Baby pickle galaxies depict Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson,
the virtually invisible Democratic presidential challengers. Galactically-speaking,
President Joe Biden is represented by Mayall’s Object, an adult galaxy
discovered 82 years ago at the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton, east of San Jose,
CA. It’s my local space observatory. Joe will be 82 years old 15 days after he wins
the election, having conquered fuzzy dark energy spewed by the Repubs. Here’s
hoping.
