You are immersed in an invisible universe. Doubt me? Turn on the radio. Without that device you have no way of knowing that radio waves are engulfing you. You can’t “see” them, but your radio can. It can receive what your eyes and ears cannot, the invisible bands of electromagnetic radiation sent from towers and satellites to bathe Earth in a cacophony of anthropogenic messages and sounds. And, if by chance all human communication fell silent, the radio would still pick up the messages of the universe. Invisible to us but audible over an AM radio is the static that comes from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), also known as the “Echo of the Big Bang” discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. Pay close attention to the static you hear as you dial between AM stations: Some of that is a noise from 13.8 billion years ago.
You are immersed in another kind of invisible universe, also. Doubt me? Look at the face of someone undergoing depression or thoughts of suicide. Without a device to look into the psyche, you have no way of hearing the personal background noise, the “Echo of Mood.” Much of what anyone is lies hidden until you find the device that “receives” information. Building such a device is more difficult than building the first radio. You have to be a new Marconi of the psyche.
If you go to Cape Cod’s eastern shore, you will find a state park devoted to the remnants of the Marconi Station. Before gravity, wind, and waves destroyed the cliff on which the towers of that station stood, the station picked up the distress signal of a ship in trouble in 1912. It was the Titanic, and the signal, sent at a time when radio was new and response times were turtle-slow, fell on ears that could not prevent many from drowning as the ship foundered.
With regard to the human ships in danger of foundering, either those that hit massive objects like icebergs or those that develop slow leaks, you cannot help unless you have a receiver that first recognizes the invisible cry for help. It is time for invention. It is time for a sensitive receiver that enables you to rescue a friend or relative. Listen for the background static. See whether or not you can make sense of it just as Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs made sense of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Yes, they were puzzled at first and even helpless like the people at the Marconi station listening to the SOS from a sinking ship, but through perseverance they uncovered the meaning of the invisible static.
You are immersed in another kind of invisible universe, also. Doubt me? Look at the face of someone undergoing depression or thoughts of suicide. Without a device to look into the psyche, you have no way of hearing the personal background noise, the “Echo of Mood.” Much of what anyone is lies hidden until you find the device that “receives” information. Building such a device is more difficult than building the first radio. You have to be a new Marconi of the psyche.
If you go to Cape Cod’s eastern shore, you will find a state park devoted to the remnants of the Marconi Station. Before gravity, wind, and waves destroyed the cliff on which the towers of that station stood, the station picked up the distress signal of a ship in trouble in 1912. It was the Titanic, and the signal, sent at a time when radio was new and response times were turtle-slow, fell on ears that could not prevent many from drowning as the ship foundered.
With regard to the human ships in danger of foundering, either those that hit massive objects like icebergs or those that develop slow leaks, you cannot help unless you have a receiver that first recognizes the invisible cry for help. It is time for invention. It is time for a sensitive receiver that enables you to rescue a friend or relative. Listen for the background static. See whether or not you can make sense of it just as Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs made sense of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Yes, they were puzzled at first and even helpless like the people at the Marconi station listening to the SOS from a sinking ship, but through perseverance they uncovered the meaning of the invisible static.
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