On Wonders of the Solar System

The more splendid and satisfying a brief stint from academia is, the more jarring it is to be return to collegiate reality and all its invigorating tensions. With the crunch of salt under heels, and a mere 19 days past the winter solstice, it’s no surprise that there is hardly a cheer or levity in our gaits as we make the spitefully cold walk to our classroom doors. The novelty of the newly marked year will soon be spent, and what left but this expanse of dry air and the bite of the steely nights? For some like myself, January has become the designated month to celebrate the all too well-known cultural sentiment entitled “postmodern ennui”, fed by what the DSM-IV calls seasonal affective disorder. While some turn to light-therapy, and others to feel-good, witty and inspirational films and others yet to the veritable bacchanal of Friday evenings, I have, of late, found myself craving for BBC documentaries presented by British particle physicist, Brian Cox (of course). As the lengthy adage goes: a dose of physics mends a day in which nothing seems to have come to adequate fruition.

In Professor Cox’s show, The Wonders of the Solar System, the unfamiliarities of the physical world are rendered majestic and absurdly grand in its explicability. In fact, I would argue it is done so well that suddenly the evening air regains some of its color again:

In the gusto after viewing the five available episodes of WotSS, I swiftly made my way to the nearest bookstore and purchased Brian Cox’s book, Why does e=mc2?, and on a spread of summer lawn refreshed and extended what I had known on general relativity. Although six months have passed, the one passage that I can think of, most appropriate in the season at hand, describes the staggering beauty of science. If nothing else, Cox makes the most passionate and most accessible arguments for his field.

The scientist’s job is to strip away the complexity we see around us and to uncover this underlying simplicity. When the process works out, and the simplicity and unity of the world are revealed, we experience the Ionian Enchantment. Imagine for a moment cradling a snowflake in the palm of your hand. It is an elegant and beautiful structure, possessed of a jagged crystalline symmetry. No two snowflakes are alike, and at first sight this chaotic state of affairs seems to defy a simple explanation. Science has taught us that the apparent complexity of snowflakes hides an exquisite underlying simplicity; each is a configuration of billions of molecules of water, H2O. There is nothing more to a snowflake than that, and yet an overwhelming complex structure and form emerges when those H2O molecules get together in the atmosphere of our planet on a cold winter’s night.

And with that, and then so suddenly, some things have been turned aright in the world. Professor Brian Cox, may just be my very own light-therapy lamp.

Sue majors in Neuroscience & English and tends to lurk in bookstores.