Anasi the Spider: Story Keeper
Anansi the Spider had one burning desire. He yearned to own for himself all the mythological stories spoken in song and performed around night fires: All the sagas of the ages one could hear from the distant mountains to the savannah edge. Anansi thought of this wish all the time, hoping to one day see it fulfilled. Yet, he did not know how to accomplish this goal until an elder spider came upon him by a stream. After Anansi spoke of his bold ambition, the venerable spider instructed him to request these stories from Nyane, keeper of all tales.To visit Nyame, Ananzs had to wait until he saw a rainbow arc forming across the a nearby cliff's falling waters. Such arcs often appeared during either the early morning or late afternoon. These were the iridescent pathways fashioned from the breath of the rainbow serpent whose coiled body
held up the world. Anansi had only to climb the rainbow arc for Nyane to grant him an audience. He ascended the arc that very afternoon.
Nyame was a kind god, who was abundant in both sorrow and happiness. He shed tears upon the rainforest almost everyday, to nourish its life with a constant flow of water. The murmurs of drops falling from the palm canopies were Nyame's sobs. His sobs always turned to laughter upon the sight of the returning sun shimmering upon the rich, verdant land below. The responding calls of animals nestled within its thickets were the laughter's resonant echoes. As rainbow arcs always form on the Sun's return, Nyane was joyous at the spider's arrival. "Welcome, my friend," he said gladly. "How may I serve you?" After Anasi greeted him in return and spoke of his wish, Nyame replied, "I shall give you what you desire, but you must first bring me three things: a swarm of hornets, the Great Python, and a leopard. When I have these in my realm, I shall bestow upon you all the myths of the world."
Anansi returned to the land upon the same rainbow that had conveyed him to the sky. The spider was absorbed in thought as to how he would capture the hornets, python and leopard. Like all spiders, Anansi
was clever. He had to think of a way to trap these animals. It is true that each of the creatures he had to capture had great powers, but they also had great weaknesses. The hornets could soar to great heights and could inflict horrid pains on even the largest animals. Yet, the hornets were as frightened as they were furious, for they often fled and stung without thought of consequence. The Great Python was more powerful than the hornets, and he had the gift of silent motion. Yet, as he was a cousin to the world-balancing Serpent, the Great Python was vain and
overly proud of his length. The leopard was even more powerful than the Serpent. It was as swift as the mighty desert's winds and as strong as thunder. Yet, the Leopard was always searching for prey at his eye level and never bothered to look up or down.
Soon, Anansi devised a trap for the hornets. He carved a hole in a gourd and placed it next to a stream. When he saw the hornet swarm approach, he jumped in the stream long enough to make his entire body wet. He ran from the water to the hornets and told them of a great flood that was washing out all the land. "Quick," he advised them. "Hide in this gourd, for it will float upon the flood waters." The hornets all flew into the gourd. Anansi then stuffed grass in the hole, trapping them all inside. He threw the hornet gourd to the sky as an offering to Nyame.
Next, he concocted a plan to capture the Great Python. He found a long bamboo pole and some jungle vines, the latter of which he hid under this belly. He searched the jungle depths until he spotted the Python resting in the shade next to a deep turquoise-tinctured pool. The python's body
wove around the rocks and his head rested upon a mossy patch. Anansi went up to him with the pole, making sure that he made enough noise to arouse the Python from his slumber.
Wordlessly, the Python lifted his head toward the spider after being jarred from his nap. The Python did indeed look beautiful, as though all the hues and colours of the jungle flora had been impressed upon his shimmering scales. He also looked quite long and imposing.
"You are the great Python?" Anansi asked him, a deep sense of awe in his voice. The Python nodded, gratified that he was known to even to the spiders. Anansi played to this advantage. "You are the Python bred from the same fires that cast forth the Earth balancing serpent? The one that the dancing men sing about around their fire circles?"
"The same," the Python answered simply, although Anansi could tell he was pleased.
"It is my honour," Anansi told him. "Your greatness is known to all the talking creatures. They all speak of your beauty, power and length. I can see you are abundant in the first two. But, well..."
"Yes?" the Python asked him, his tone now curious.
Anansi looked ill at ease. "Some of my elders claim that you are not as long as the legends tell us you are."
The Python slithered forward. He looked hard at the spider and was no longer pleased. "Is that what they say?"
"Yes, it is," Anansi replied, but quickly added "But, I don't know. I told them that you were as long as this bamboo pole I am holding. Now, however..."
"Now what?"
"Now, Great Python, I believe I was mistaken. I beseech your pardon and pay homage to your beauty, but of your length, the legends did speak too generously."
At this, the Python was angry and demanded that Anansi lay the pole next to him to measure. Anansi did this at once. The Python was, indeed, just as long as the pole. The crafty spider tied the Python to the pole with his jungle vines. Though the enraged Python struggled, it could not slither away. Anansi hoisted the Python toward the sky as an offering to Nyame.
Finally, he had to capture the Leopard. This task was actually quite easy, once Anansi put his mind to it. He dug a ditch over which he laid a floor of leaves. This ditch he dug in the middle of the night outside the Leopard's home. When the Leopard emerged that morning for the day's hunt, it quickly walked across the leaf floor and fell into the pit. Though the Leopard roared and tried to escape, it could not. Anansi waited for it to fall asleep. After it finally exhausted itself, the leopard lay down and napped. Anansi lifted him out the ditch and toward the sky as the final offering to Nyame.
Anansi was then drawn up to the sky to join Nyame in a great feast. That night, Nyame spoke all the myths to Anansi, who then became the keeper of the myths and stories. Anansi soon gifted his children with these stories. Eventually, all spiders became the storytellers: weaving the threads of ancient tales the same way they weave their webs.
Nyame cast the hornets into the sky, where they became the stars. The Leopard and Python formed into two of the grandest constellations which shone their lights upon the darkened rainforest.
THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
70 Falmouth Street Portland, Maine 04103
43.6667° N 70.2667° W
Altitude: 10 feet below sea level
Founded January 1970
Julian Date: 2459221.18
2020-2021: LXVII
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Thursday, January 7, 2021
The Exploratorium II: Multiverse
Greetings!
Yes, we are speaking to you, as opposed to the "you" that now occupies an alternate Universe that might have separated from our own a minute ago. Well, now, of course, we're speaking to you, but not to the "you" that now inhabits the Universe that materialized a second ago, and certainly not to the "you" that now resides in the Universe that split away from the first alternate Universe that we mentioned earlier. The "you" that now reads this article is remaining in the same Universe where this article was written, so you cannot read the article that is being written in the alternate Universe that just formed in a blink a moment ago, which is probably a shame because there is a fair chance that article will be more concisely written by a more disciplined writer. If you have been following along with this entire paragraph, then we must certainly be occupying the same Universe, at least for now.
Do parallel Universes exist?
Is it possible that out there in the unfathomably complex hyper-spatial-temporal mega complex many copies of you and everything else are ceaselessly replicated relentlessly, unstoppably ad infinitum?
OR
Do parallel Universes exist?
Is it possible that there is only one you and us and everything around us, but, perhaps myriad other Universes exist in which the governing physical laws are different and in which reality would not only be perplexing to our mortal minds, but utterly and irrevocably incomprehensible?
These two notions, once considered the sole reserve of crafty science fiction authors and brainy metaphysical philosophers, are now seriously under consideration in the scientific community. That the multiverse concept has developed a scientific vogue is a remarkable paradigm shift. Albert Einstein, himself - certainly no slouch in cerebral matters- found the idea of parallel Universes "repugnant," or, more precisely, a cop-out. To him and his contemporaries, introducing parallel Universes into any problem solving procedure was akin to someone inserting "Then the Flimmong people of Volupinnax 8 performed a valence electron dance" within a chemical equation.
Today, however, our perceptions have broadened enough to accept the possibility that our Universe is not alone.
While it will surprise nobody to learn that the Exploratorium cannot settle the issue once and for all, we will discuss the two main parallel Universe theories. The examples cited at the article's beginning refer to these two theories. The first example, in which the Universe is replicated innumerable times, pertains to the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Physics. At this juncture, it would be helpful to introduce the world's most famous cat:
Yes, Schrodinger's Cat. Quantum Physicist Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961) developed a well-known thought experiment which he hoped would illustrate the absurdity inherent in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Physics. With profuse apologies for the simplicity, in this interpretation two possible quantum states are juxtaposed an observation is made. At that time, one state collapses while the other takes form. In this cat example, imagine a closed box containing a cat (of course), a glass phial of poison, a hammer attached to a Geiger counter and a lump of radioactive material. The cat is alive when the box closes. However, if the radioactive material emits an alpha particle, the Geiger Counter will register the emission and trigger the hammer mechanism that will shatter the glass phial and release the poison, killing the cat. The cat will persist provided no emission occurs. In this scenario, we cannot know if the radioactive substance released a particle. Only when we open the box will we be certain as to the cat's fate. However, according to the Copenhagen Interpretation, the cat exists in both a dead and alive state until an observer opens the box and one of the waveforms collapses. Yet, according to the Many Worlds Interpretation, a Universe is created to accommodate both possibilities. If an observer opens the box and finds the cat alive, then in an alternate Universe created just for that event, the cat dies. If you are the observer, let's say, then if you open the box to see a fully alive and rather perturbed cat, then another copy of you looking into the box to see a dead cat forms.
The ramifications of this theory are astounding when one takes into account the size of the Universe. Let's say that right now on a planet around a star in a galaxy tucked away within the Horologium Supercluster a Smurklegrid is stuffed in a box with a phial of poison attached to a hammer activated by a Geiger Counter. The same experiment is conducted and at once another Universe is created to accommodate a live Smurklegrid and a dead one. That means that everything within that Universe, including you -and not the you that formed while you were reading the previous paragraph- is copied as well. If a Universe is created to accommodate all possibilities, then Universes to the nth degree are formed constantly, by the millions, billions or, by this time, the Quattuorvigintillions, which, as we all know, is equal to a thousand duodecillion. One could be well forgiven for thinking this notion to be perfectly preposterous. However, the quantum realm is well known for its counterintuitive precepts.
The other example, which isn't quite as staggering, asserts that many Universes exist but are not formed by any event within another Universe. Instead, they arise out of a "space-time foam" within a hyperdimensional reality of which our own three-dimensional Universe is but a minuscule part.
Universes arise like bubbles, each one distinct from the other. Each Universe is governed by its own physical principles. This theory attempts to explain why our Universe developed to be anthropogenic ("human or life producing") without introducing an intelligent designer, a notion at which many scientists balk until, of course, they find themselves in fox holes. Understand that the parameters of our Universe are set in such a way as to make life possible. If gravity, the weakest of the fundamental forces, were weaker, material might never have coalesced to form stars and planets. Conversely, if gravity were much stronger, the Universe might have imploded in on itself within a microsecond. Moreover, if electromagnetism or the nuclear forces exhibited different strengths, stellar nucleosynthesis -the process inside stellar cores that generate heavier elements- or chemical reactions might not be possible. The delicate balance among the fundamental forces makes the cosmos conducive to life's development. If our Universe is alone, the probability of having such favorable parameters is so vanishingly small as to necessitate the intervention of an outside intelligence, at least according to some. On the other hand, if our Universe is merely one of many Universes emerging from the "foam," then only in a select few Universes do conditions arise that allow for life's development. We just happen to inhabit a life-bearing cosmos, hence our existence. The next Universe "over" might just consist of a quark fog, while the Universe just beyond only lasted for a nanosecond before implosion: a bubble that popped before its time.
Does the phrase "next Universe over" even make any sense? Not really. "Over" being a spatially relative term, cannot apply to Universes which are separate and distinct space-time systems. As a rough analogy, think of a chess set next to a Monopoly board. Though the boards are physically adjacent, the rules of one are wholly unrelated to those of the other. The tophat can't checkmate the king and the bishop can't go directly to jail.
The question about detecting parallel Universes remains very much an open one. There is some thought about dark matter actually being caused by the gravitational influence exerted by another Universe juxtaposed with our own. Perhaps investigations into dark matter will yield information about such Universes. Yet, we don't know yet.
Though we may revisit the Multiverse again in our travels, we can admit that our Universe offers us sufficient opportunities for exploration, thank you very much.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the Daily Astronomer:
