A COSMOLOGIST SAYS THAT ASTRONOMY IS “FAR SIMPLER” THAN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. For me, the discovery of the gravitational wave is an almost unbelievable achievement. In this essay on the Aeon site, Martin Rees looks at the discovery of a gravitational wave from a different perspective. He says that: “Today, we can convincingly interpret measurements that reveal two black holes crashing together more than a billion light years from Earth.” However, Rees says, the common cold is a more complex problem.
Why? Because: “Astronomy is far simpler than the biological and human sciences. Black holes, although they seem exotic to us, are among the uncomplicated entities in nature. They can be described exactly by simple equations….Despite its vastness, a star is fairly simple – its core is so hot that complex molecules get torn apart and no chemicals can exist, so what’s left is basically an amorphous gas of atomic nuclei and electrons.”
Maybe I am too easily impressed by the fact that this perhaps simple process took place over a billion light years from earth.