Black holes keep sucking me in

  

There are many things I cannot and never will understand about physics. Yet I continue to try. I’ve read so much about black holes, it hurts. 

There’s a mystery about them that illustrates the ridiculous nature of reality. In a black hole, our current laws of physics may cease to exist. 

An acquaintance of mine once gave a sermon about how ridiculous the claim was that two plus two may not equal four in a black hole. He was suggesting this was a denial of objective reality. The congregation laughed at the thought. 

To be fair, it depends what you mean by “objective.” The theory of relativity would suggest that some things are relative, dependent on the observer. Those at the top of a mountain experience time at a slower pace than those at sea level. Gravity speeds up time. 

Once you near a black hole, the gravitational pull is so strong that time goes into overdrive. A mere second on the event horizon, the point before you get ripped to shreds, is equivalent to a thousand years on earth. Once actually in the black hole, time might wrap back onto itself allowing you to go back to an earlier time. As some speculate, you might actually enter a “white hole” within the black hole, where time reverses and you de-age yourself out of existence. If only we could put some of that in a bottle. 

But no one has ever or ever will be in a black hole, as the closest one is 1,500 light years away. Besides, you would never survive entry after being pulled to shreds in a rather technical term called spaghettification. 

Infinity is another perplexing concept. Do some things go on forever? Does, for example, the universe simply continue, as it cannot be demonstrated there is in fact an outer edge? If it stretches for infinity, one can assume (as some have) that there is a limitless number of galaxies and therefore a limitless number of possibilities for life. 

Theorists take this to the next level, suggesting there could be multiverses, where there are endless possibilities for life. Just think – if the universe is actually endless, then there are endless possibilities of earths and outcomes that could very much resemble ours but be slightly different. That tuna sandwich you ate today could be a chicken sandwich in another universe. 

 That’s a hard one to wrap one's mind around, so let’s bring it down to a more practical level. Imagine cutting a carrot in half over and over again. If one could slice each new half with an increasingly microscopic knife, would the halving ever stop? Theoretically, you should be able to continue to do this infinitely. At such a small scale, however, there is a limit. There’s a point, according to scientific theory, where you can no longer cut the distance in half – because at this point, distance no longer can be measured. In fact, time can no longer be measured because it no longer exists at the quantum level. This is called a Plank – a unit that’s a quadrillion times smaller than one quadrillionth of a meter. It’s small. 

How do physicists know this? Sometimes I doubt they really do. But more often than not, their theories are eventually proven. It took over 80 years to demonstrate that gravitational waves are produced when black holes collide. In 2016, two large observatories in the United States showed that a very small gravitational wave passed through the earth as a result of two black holes colliding a billion light years away. Space-time was disrupted for a brief millisecond. 

We observed the ripple effect of something that happened one billion years ago. 

Wrap your head around that. 

Canada's divisions not as deep as they appear

  

It was in my fourth year of university when I realized I was majoring in the wrong subject. As dry as it sounds, Political Science 100 was enlightening. 

The class’s fundamentals guide me to this day... Okay, maybe not every day, but it has helped me understand why Alberta hates Ottawa (usually) and why Quebec wants to be left alone. It helped me realize that our Constitution is not so clear cut. Provincial and federal responsibilities overlap in strange and confusing ways. 

Hence, the Supreme Court’s ruling on the federal government’s new environmental impact legislation remains a mystery to most of us. What we do know is that environmental protection is under the jurisdiction of both Canada and the provinces, leaving grey areas subject to interpretation. 

Another grey area is healthcare. Even though this significant government expense falls under provincial jurisdiction, the federal government holds influence. With cold, hard cash, the federal government tries to maintain a consistently funded healthcare system across the country. 

Ottawa often uses money to influence provincial policy. One area where it is interestingly absent is education. Despite this, public K-12 education runs nearly as seamlessly as healthcare, with similar curricular requirements across the provinces. 

Advanced education is another provincial domain where universities have tended to operate at similar levels across the country – even maintaining similar tuition rates. Until last week, that is, when Quebec announced tuition rates for Canadians outside of Quebec would nearly double. In an effort to save its French universities, Quebec may cannibalize its most successful schools like McGill. 

Then there’s equalization.... Most people don’t know much about it. The old joke is that only three people understand the formula and two of them have since passed. Equalization is a means to redistribute the country’s wealth, where provinces like Quebec receive up to $14 billion a year for essentially having a weaker economy, and Manitoba gets over $3 billion because hydropower is not included in the formula (again, few know why). Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia get nothing, and resent the rest of Canada because of it. 

As always, there are cracks in the federal experiment that both narrow and widen over time. Some provinces think they should run things on their own. Quebec has been afforded the most autonomy with fewest strings attached to federal funding. Together with hefty equalization payments, some would suggest this is the price we pay to keep Quebec in Canada. 

Recently, Alberta has followed Quebec’s lead with plans to run their own pension plan. The Alberta government claims they’re putting more into the Canada Pension Plan than they are taking out. With a younger, wealthier population than the rest of Canada, that could very well be. I would argue it’s all part of the give and take of being in Canada, and until Alberta has a PST of its own, it has more to give!

Our nation's governing is full of give and take. Some provinces like Alberta grow resentful over time from continuous “giving.” Quebec and the Maritimes, on the other hand, don’t want to be made to feel like they’re receiving handouts. 

As worrisome as these issues are, they are relatively small cracks in our federation. Compared to the very real threat of Quebec separating from Canada in the 1990s, this is peanuts. 

Western alienation has also diminished in the last couple decades (and will further diminish should Trudeau lose the next election). Despite central Canada’s historic control over the country’s politics, Western provinces have begun to show greater political and economic influence. 

Remember, as my university professor taught, the provinces still hold the cards when it comes to government’s two biggest sectors, healthcare and education.  

How and when they play their cards is all part of Canada’s complicated constitution game. 

 

The terrorist trap

 

About a year after the 9/11 attacks, I went to hear a renowned liberal author talk about her new book. Much to my dismay, she ditched her planned speech on globalization to talk about George W. Bush’s plan to invade Iraq. 

Unlike her writing, her talking points were bland and not well thought out, but it didn’t matter. She was preaching to the choir. Everyone in this Canadian audience knew the plan to invade a second Middle Eastern country in two years was crazy. 

Now we know for sure. The resources spent, the lives lost, the occupation that’s lasted for over two decades was a mistake. It was clearly an overreach, using an act of terrorism to justify control of an oil-rich country. 

The invasion of Afghanistan, on the other hand, was not questioned. As a country that harboured terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, most nations could support military action. And yet this occupation turned out to be just as futile, with the Taliban returning to power as soon as American soldiers retreated in 2021. 

On a side note, a friend of mine from Pakistan suggested the Taliban is not nearly as bad as what the West has made them out to be. They are representative, generally, of the people they rule. They don’t adhere to the West's progressive values, but that’s typical of the region. He agrees they are not “good,” but neither are the rulers of most Middle Eastern countries presently. 

Like most governments, good or bad, they bring stability to the region and don’t want to attract much international attention. Terrorists and terrorist states, by contrast, thrive on it. 

Hamas clearly wanted a fight. They committed atrocities to demand retribution. And perhaps unwittingly, they have drawn the world’s attention to the plight of the Gaza Strip, an area of the world I knew very little about until a few days ago. 

Over two million people, almost half of them children, live in this incredibly condensed area, barricaded by Israel on one side and the Mediterranean Sea on the other. Their living standards are some of the lowest in the world. With little political autonomy, they are almost entirely dependent on Israel for the essentials of life – food, water, and most electrical power. 

It's easy to understand how this could become a breeding ground for terrorism. Not that it’s justified in the least, but the conditions exist, like in Afghanistan, to feed resentment and hostility. 

Hamas was ruthless in its attack on Israel. Unfortunately, their acts of terror will be quickly forgotten by the Arab world if Israel reduces the Gaza Strip to rubble. The humanitarian crisis that’s unfolding is a gift to extremists worldwide. For those who invaded Israel, who killed without thought, there was no goal to conquer. There was simply one goal: Gain the attention of the world as Israel destroys our people. 

Now the world watches as hundreds of Palestinians perish, most of them unaware of what their dictatorial government was even planning.  

It’s a sad state of affairs that feels inevitable. When countries are attacked, like after 9/11, they fight back. To not act would convey a toleration of barbarism. The public would not stand for it. 

But the quashing of a weaker enemy, without consideration of the innocent, may soon be viewed by the world just as cruel.