S4F: Fiction by the Numbers
by David Siegel Bernstein, PhD
This post offers up a few numbers you can drop into your fiction—particularly science fiction. They are, at best, estimates and therefore subject to re-estimation as scientists learn more. Nevertheless, including them in your work will add verisimilitude. Remember in SF it’s important to minimize the number of lies you are telling the reader about science (exaggeration is another matter).
Okay, buckle up, here we go.
- 13.75 billion years ago an event occurred that we commonly call the Big Bang—which for the record was neither big nor made a bang. It was an amazing event where all the matter that ever was and will be came into existence from a very (very) small point.
- 380,000 years later the first atoms formed. Hydrogen.
- 200 million years after the Big Bang: there was light (the first stars ignited)
- The universe is 90 billion light-years wide. Tomorrow it will be bigger.
- 70.8 kilometers per second per mega-parsec is how fast it’s growing. This is known as Hubble’s Constant. A parsec (parallax of one arcsecond) is 3.26 light-years. A mega-parsec is a million of these (3,262,000 light years). Wow. Take a moment to appreciate how big/fast the expansion is.
- 5% of the universe is composed of stuff made of atoms. What we call “normal” matter.
- 25% of the universe is composed of dark matter. This is matter composed of some type of particle that moves around, but we can’t see it directly. Thankfully it clumps together because if it didn’t–none of us would exist.
- 70% of the universe is dark energy. This is something that is evenly distributed across the entire universe (no clumping), and possibly the cause of the expansion.
See you in time and space… and S4F
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Authors: David Siegel Bernstein. Form: Column. Length: 500 words. Editor who accepted this story: Previous Editors.
Author Bio
Abandoned Towers Content: S4F: Black Holes (Don’t Really) Suck S4F: Black Holes Suck S4F: Can Anyone Intelligent Communicate with Me? Other Than My Earthling Friends. Part II S4F: Can Anyone Intelligent Communicate with Me? Other Than My Earthling Friends. S4F: Do You Know the Time? S4F: Do You Know the Time? Part II S4F: Do You Know the Time? Part III S4F: Fiction by the Numbers S4F: I Have Virtually Nothing to Say About Zero-Point Energy S4F: If You are Uncertain—Call a Quantum Mechanic for a Fix S4F: Infinity for Fun S4F: Infinity of Fun, Part II S4F: Meet David Siegel Bernstein – Forensic Statistician S4F: More or Less Human S4F: Much Ado About Nothing This Month S4F: Now Playing at the Opera—The Faster than Light Particle Experiment S4F: Paradox Found S4F: Paradox Lost S4F: Parallel Worlds S4F: Splicing Science from Fiction S4F: The End of Infinity (Infinity of Fun Part III) S4F: We Hold Universal Truths to Be Not Self-Evident S4F: What’s the Matter with Antimatter?
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