Making the Invisible Visible

Abstract

Michael Frayn, novelist, playwright and columnist, perhaps most famous for his plays, Copenhagen and Noises Off, articulated a canny insight about our perception of the universe. In his book, The Human Touch, he notes that when we look up at the night sky, beyond our luminous moon and deep into the Milky Way, we only see “that calm seems certainly safe tonight.”¹ In other words, we perceive our galaxy as an ocean of stillness, a place where nothing much seems to happen because it is invisible to our naïve eye. Frayn makes the point that, in reality, we are barreling around the Sun, and the Sun around the galaxy at incredible speeds; and that aside from our speedy galactic travels, the universe is a maelstrom of unseen explosions and collisions. It is only thanks to the science and technology of astronomy that we can make the invisible hustle and bustle of space visible, so that we can wonder at the universe and ponder our place within it.