Timely Feat of Science
An amazing NASA satellite probe, a million miles from Earth, has somehow figured out how to look back a long time ago in a galaxy not far away. It’s a remote feat baffling to anyone choreographing those wires for a new DVD. In fact, only three people understand how the satellite works. By measuring slight light and temperature variants emitted at the beginning of time and earning travel miles ever since, scientists can confirm theories about the Big Bang and how the universe was formed. They now know, for instance, the precise time of Creation -- exactly 13.7 billion years ago. On a Tuesday. Right after breakfast. Eastern time.
Time travel intrigues humans and also writers. But it’s so complicated, and the new luggage restrictions would be onerous. Time-peeking is much more comfortable. And possibly lucrative. Besides studying anti-gravity, dark energy and whether galaxies fly apart or compress at the end of time, NASA could design pop-up Web ads like the ones offering to find your old high school classmates. Give NASA $29.95 and an approximate date and its satellite might measure light variations from, say, your high school era and detect whether Nikki really told Donna that she liked you or if Donna just made that up to stop you from dating Nancy.
Of course, as long as the $145-million satellite is out there peeking backward, we could also seek answers to some important -- well, intriguing -- questions in history.
When Earth was formed, was the West Coast really created three hours behind the East? Did the Red Sea part or was it a biblical special effect? What was the inventor of fire doing when he ignited the first flames, and did he immediately suck the burned finger? Why did Henry Hudson choose to explore so many cold places when he had the unknown Caribbean? Did George Washington’s wooden false teeth make everything taste like oak? And how was Abraham Lincoln’s fadeaway jumper? Did everyone really walk that fast in the 1920s? When KTLA’s Hal Fishman anchored his first newscast that day at the Battle of Manassas, how did they power the TelePrompTer?
What kind of accident made the first beer happen and who agreed to be the initial taster? What was the first airborne expletive uttered the moment Orville Wright lifted off? Why doesn’t carbon-dating work on Dick Clark? Do you suppose show dogs think they’re showing off their handlers during those presentation parades? So very many questions and only one time-peeking satellite. And, by the way, how do you think they measured years before there was an Earth with an annual orbit of 365 days?
