A Fool’s Ambition
“We are delighted to report to you that we have seen what was thought to be unseeable.”
Back in 2015, almost exactly 100 years after Einstein predicted gravitational waves, scientists heard gravity. Saying that—or, in this case, typing it—is still one of my favorite phrases to utter. Like nature has a case of synesthesia.
This month, scientists saw a black hole.
Next, perhaps, we will taste dark matter.
At the end of Black Hole Blues, Janna Levin calls her book—about the race to record gravity's sonic ping—a "tribute to a fool's ambition." And, god, isn't a fool's ambition the most important thing we can cultivate today? Isn't radical imagination the most sacred calling of our time? Is it not a fool's ambition to dream of alternative futures without police or prisons while we experience the slow ache of climate catastrophe, while Flint is still without clean water, and while people rush to care for only one kind of burning church? Dating, too. Dating in your late-30s, in the age of Tinder, hoping that you will actually, miraculously, make meaningful connections seems like a fool's ambition.
Still, we keep trying. We keep experimenting. We keep creating, despite a total lack of evidence that there is life on the other side of the widening event horizon.
So, in this time when options for the personal and political can feel equally bleak, I hope you are grateful to nature (and Beyoncé) for reminding us that we can, indeed, see "what was thought to be unseeable."
