Filippo Bonaventura
- Medium Type
- Digital Storytelling
- Year
- 2020
Paradoxically, it is the most remote things that seem to us most readable.
The most distant physical entity that we can observe is the cosmic background radiation, an electromagnetic bath that permeates the entire universe and was formed just 380,000 years after the Big Bang. It’s so simple it’s almost perfect. Almost.
It is precisely by studying the tiny imperfections of this radiation that we were able to demonstrate that the universe was born and to understand how it has evolved over time. If the cosmic radiation had been absolutely perfect, it would have left us with far more questions than answers.
Because in the cosmos, as in life, it is imperfection that is revealing.
The stars appear so small that electric night lighting is enough to keep many of them out of sight, yet we know them better than you might think. They are so simple that they are almost perfect. Almost.
Even the stars have a small degree of imperfection, given by the heavy elements that “dirt” the primordial chemical composition of the cosmos. In cosmic terms it is only a couple of percentage points: a small minority of atoms of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, iron and so on. But for us it means the possibility of having a planet and a body. Without this small stellar imperfection there would be no life, there would be no us.
Because in the cosmos, as in life, it is imperfection that is revealing.
For a theoretical astrophysicist a star is basically a segment of a certain length on which five equations are integrated, the entire fate of which depends almost solely on its initial mass. Instead, ask a psychologist what a human being is. While our future remains shrouded in total mystery, we know for sure that a star of 20 solar masses will shine for 5 and a half million years before exploding as a supernova and leaving a black hole as a remnant. A star can be defined within five equations, a human being simply cannot. The fate of a star is written, ours is not: a small change today is enough to make a huge difference tomorrow. We are strongly nonlinear.
We human beings are made of those atoms that make stars imperfect. We are made of cosmic imperfection. We are small nonlinear, complex, imperfect, chaotic entities. If we were not, we would not have called what is up there “cosmos”, which literally means “order”. Maybe that’s why we like it so much up there: it gives us a sense of order, simplicity and perfection that we feel we have lost by coming into the world. It gives us a sense of home that we left and would like to return to.
The good news is that up there is truly where we come from, and it is truly where we will return. It is not a rhetorical statement. The atoms we are made of were forged billions of years ago in the heart of distant stars, and in billions of years they will return to the stars when the sun dies. We are made of atoms but we are not just atoms: we are atoms organized in an autopoietic information metabolism. Yes, we look imperfect. Looking at ourselves we hardly keep the memory of that comforting primordial order. Almost.
But it is precisely that complexity that generates the emergent properties that we call “life” and “self-awareness”. Of course we are imperfect, but the awareness that we descend directly from that order, that we will return to that order, and that it is our temporary, complex imperfection that makes us unique, as far as we know, in the entire cosmic landscape can console us.
Because in the cosmos, as in life, imperfection is revelatory.
Biography
Astrophysics degreed at University of Trieste, Filippo Bonaventura is holding a SISSA Master in Science Communication. With Lorenzo Colombo and Matteo Miluzio he manages the scientific dissemination project “Chi ha paura del buio?” and he is co-author of “Se tutte le stelle venissero giù” (Rizzoli). With Laura Paganini he is co-author of “Il Cosmo. Vita, morte e miracoli dell’universo” (Hoepli). He loves music and plays the piano, living and working in Milan.