Standard candles

Table of Contents

• Front cover 1
• Title page 4
• Copyright page 5
• Dedication 6
• Contents 8
• Sonnet for Valentines 12
• The set of all gods 14
• The god of prime numbers 15
• The god of infinities 16
• The god of symmetry 17
• The god of gravity 18
• The god of salt 19
• The god of kites and darts 20
• The god of quantum uncertainty 21
• The god of probabilities 22
• The baker god 23
• The god of automata 24
• The god of teapots 25
• The god of cats 27
• The god of sparrows 29
• The god of hearts 30
• The jeweller god 31
• The god of dark 32
• The god of memory 33
• The muse of universes 34
• Ordinary matter 36
• Ordinary matter 37
• Vacuum fluctuations 39
• The helium thoughts 40
• Advice to the lovelorn 41
• Three-body problem 43
• Love in three dimensions 44
• Heavy elements 45
• Local bubble 46
• Catechism 47
• Standard candles 52
• 1 Address | 1959 53
• 2 Clouds of glory | 1908 55
• 3 Pythagorean theorem | 1965 58
• 4 Triangulation | 1808 59
• 5 The end of greatness | 2000 62
• 6 In the Castle of Stars | 1576 64
• 7 Supernova Type 1A | 1997 67
• 8 Then death returns 70
• 9 In all that void 72
• 10 Looking out to the dark | December 1928 73
• 11 d = (X- x)2 + (Y- y)2 + (Z - z)2 - c (T- t)2 | now 75
• A prayer to bring you home 77
• Muscle of difficulty 80
• Muscle of difficulty 81
• Yet another crack in the foundation 83
• Day’s eye 85
• Expanding space 87
• The movers’ dilemma 89
• Rectangularization of the morbidity curve 91
• Now, that amphibious moment 93
• To the generations that will live a thousand years 94
• Last scattering surface 95
• Let us compare cosmologies 98
• 1 Let us compare cosmologies 99
• 2 The Orphic follower 100
• 3 A pope 101
• 4 The evangelist 102
• 5 The philosophical skeptic 103
• 6 The nihilist 104
• 7 The totalitarian 105
• 8 The survivalist 106
• 9 The optimist 107
• 10 The magician 108
• 11 The baker 109
• 12 The consumer 110
• 13 The funeral director 111
• 14 The Manichean 112
• 15 The artist 113
• Sins and virtues 114
• Avarice 115
• Lust 117
• Gluttony 118
• Envy 120
• Pride 121
• Anger 123
• Sloth 124
• Mercy 126
• Hope 128
• Shifting wavelengths 130
• Tortoise and fern 131
• Fingers of God 133
• The barber’s paradox 134
• Zeno’s paradox 135
• Twin paradox 136
• Sand reckonings: Eubulides’ paradox 137
• Honeycomb conjectures 138
• Bee violet 140
• Optical molasses 141
• Life adapts to inhospitable environments 142
• How to tell a Martian my heart is on the left 143
• Underworlds 144
• Persephone and I are underground 145
• The outer dark 148
• Cocytus 151
• Niflheim 155
• The man with no hands 158
• Each of us the centre of a circle 160
• Postscript 162
• God submits a grant application to the Canada Council 163
• Notes 166
• Acknowledgements 176
• About the Author 178