Build Your Own Universe

Coming to Christmas 2012, it's the "Build Your Own Universe " Kit from Namco!

Well ok...maybe not until 2112, but thanks to the anti-aging pill sure to be out in the next 20 years, we'll all still be around for Christmas in 2112 anyway. Right?

Seriously now. I was on my way home this afternoon and Robert Krulwich comes on the radio having an interview with Bryan Greene . For the next 15 minutes Bryan explains how scientist are already working out the details of creating universe seeds from mini-black holes, which can then be expanded (think Big Bang) via runaway repulsive force (gravity's evil twin).

I'm all for the pursuit of knowledge. I'm all about science for the sake of science. But it seems to me, we learned how to mimic the process that fuels a star and we've spent the last 60 years on the brink of destroying the planet. For decades, we watched the skies daily thinking that every high flying bird was an enemy bomber bringing fiery death from above. That was just mimicking the fueling process of a star...not actually creating a star. Yet even today, we are petrified of every dark skinned foreigner carrying a backpack or briefcase for the fear they would vaporize a city with the previous discovery.

Do we REALLY want to open THE box holding the knowledge to harnessing the power of actually create a universe!!??? I mean let's think about that for a moment. If you create a universe...with a big bang as the catalyst...well I mean maybe it's just me, but it seems like an explosion powerful enough to bring an entire universe into being is going to pack a little more punch than your everyday dirty bomb. Considering the thing that creates this, the universe seed, is only a cubic millimeter in size...I mean...do we REALLY want that hanging over our head? Even if the explosion didn't get you, the fact that a new universe just got created in your backyard seems like it might put a pinch on your property values.

Now they will say that it would only be created under strict laboratory controls and would be directed to come into being outside of our own universe's time-space. That's great, but who is to stop the crazy zealot from blinking our universe out of existence because the Sunday paper prints Beetle Bailey playing poker with Jesus, Buddha and Mohammad?