When Scientists Goof Up

By Jim Hagarty
1994

I think the strangest news to hit the papers for a long time is this week’s announcement that the universe may be only half as old as it was always thought to be – eight billion years as opposed to 16 or more. The implications of the discovery by scientists are yet to be fully thought out but some things are already clear.

First of all, perhaps we can all breathe a little easier, knowing this space we occupy isn’t as long in the tooth as we had believed. Ever since I read the news about how young the universe really is, I’ve felt a spring return to my step that has been missing for a while. Just think. This place won’t be as old as we thought it was for another eight billion years. Suddenly, the panic to get everything done just doesn’t seem as urgent. Apparently, there’s lots of time left. Maybe all those leaves don’t need to be raked right away.

The second thing I think we’ve learned is how colossal some people’s mistakes are and how they don’t feel the least embarrassed to admit it. If I was a scientist, and I missed determining the age of something by eight billion years, I’d be sending back my PhD and searching through the help-wanted ads. But these people feel nothing. No responsibility whatsoever. Has it ever occurred to them that a lot of us might have made our plans based on the assumption that this thing was 16 billion years old? Have they never heard of calendars? Or appointment books? Do they think they can drop a billion years here and there and no one will have to reschedule?

What I would like to know is, how you get employment as a scientist in charge of the universe and what the job description must read like. Does your new boss say, on your first day of work, that you are allowed to make mistakes in your estimates up to 10 billion years but bigger ones than that and you’re gone?

Another consideration the newly confirmed age of the universe presses upon us is one that has me quite worried. What does this do to the people who make it their mission to warn us all that the end is near? That the world will cease to exist next Friday at 3 p.m.? Surely they were basing their predictions on the scientific “fact” that the universe was 16 billion years old. Adding it all up, they concluded there are only seven days left. Do they now have to redraw their signs to read, The World Will End (Eight Billion Years and) Seven Days From Now? Somehow, the extra eight billion years thrown in diminishes the urgency of the situation the doomsday warners are trying to impress on us.

And the other thing that has me shaking a bit is this idea that, at the flip of a coin, scientists can cut the age of the universe in half. What I wonder is, if they can slice it in two one day, can they suddenly double it the next? If next week, they announce that this joint is not eight billion years old but has actually been around for 32 billion years – twice the original estimate – will we all be ready? Will that affect our life insurance? Our pensions? The retirement age? Library book due dates?

Pardon me for all this angst, but I like certainty. In fact, I thrive on it. No surprises for this guy. I can handle my car bill exceeding the estimate by a few dozen dollars. I can absorb an unexpected tax hike of 50 bucks.

But you start cranking up those errors to the levels these scientists apparently feel comfortable with and I’m getting just a bit edgy.

I could handle, say, 500 million years. But eight billion?

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.