Last week I attended a BrisScience lecture. Here's their website where you can read more about BrisScience. The lecture 'The Origin and The End Of The Universe' was given by well kown theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, author and broadcaster Prof Paul Davies. It was an incredibly interesting evening. The hour flashed by as Prof Davies took us on a journey across the billions of years since the Big Bang, and the billions of years till the Big Rip or whatever BIG thing it will be that will see the demise of this Universe, and possibly the birth of a new one. Who knows! But, it was great fun to think and imagine as he talked, postulated, imagined, and presented current research.
The Long Room at Brisbane's Customs House was packed with standing room only. Such is the drawing power of Prof Davies.
Regular readers will know excactly why I attended the lecture. Yes, a fascination with the amazing perspectives cosmolgy provides. It can be daunting though. These both vast and intimate perspectives certainly place humanity and Earth, way out of and beyond, the centre of the Universe! Indeed where is the centre? Is there one? These perspectives tell us that we are relatively new to life in expanding space, and that our home, planet Earth, is destined for destruction in the prolonged death throes of our dying sun. Yet, the universe seems destined to death as well, but in death it may bring forth another universe...and life, of some kind, goes on?
I am working on a new oil painting based on the small work on paper I wrote about in my last post All Of Us [above] This small gouache painting 'talks' about history; past, present and future. Yet, as I have written before, if we are part of the 'cosmic dust' that somehow coalesced into the human form, a relatively short time ago in cosmic terms, then this 'dust' perhaps holds a kind of memory of the non human pre-existence. Do we somehow carry remnants of the nano-seconds after the Big Bang...like presumably everything else in the universe? Will this 'dust' survive the universe's entropic death to be released in the birth of a new one, ultimately creating another humankind...or not? In the state of foreverness, which I suspect is not about time or place, are we just a blip? These questions are humbling, but also exciting.
I will upload the new painting when it is finished, which should be fairly soon.
Cosmic Dust Oil on linen 120 x 160 cm
INTERESTING
My Dad sent me this TED link. A colour blind young man who, with the assistance of technology, can hear colour. http://on.ted.com/Harbisson
I have nearly finished reading Dr. George Blair-West's fascinating book 'The Way Of The Quest'. I so look forward to reading a few chapters before going to sleep. Each chapter has gems of thought provoking elements.
And this is such a refreshing story: Remembering Herbert Vogel, The Postman Who Amassed One of America's Greatest Art Collections
Cheers,
Kathryn
www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/kabrimblecombe/videos
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