Things Can Only Get Not Better

I’ve spent the last four Sundays having my weekends lulled into the great infinity of the past to the carefully modulated tones of Professor Brian Cox as he explains to me the Wonders Of The Universe.

There’s not a lot not to like about Professor Brian Cox even though one blogger has described him as having the “nasty wet lips of a rapist”. He’s kind of a human version of Bungle from Rainbow – only with the intellectual capacity of a young Einstein and the enthusiasm for the cosmos of a much thinner, more youth marketable Sir Patrick Moore.

My wife claims he has the perfect voice to fall asleep too (which may explain a lot of the late night phone calls she’s been making) though she’s at pains to point out that it’s not at all because he’s boring. On the contrary, what he says is incredibly fascinating and intellectually dynamic. It’s just that his soft, Rupert The Bear tones are endlessly comforting and after a busy weekend they can tend to have a pleasurably soporific effect.

Personally I stay wide awake to watch the computer generated representations of supernovas and black holes as Professor Brian talks about the end of the universe. That’s the kind of universal Armageddon renaissance man I am.

‘Cos the end of the universe is coming, folks. Professor Brian said so. All this starry shit we’ve got going on at the moment with galaxies and constellations... well, it’s just a passing fad. One day all those little lights are going to go out. All matter will dissipate. And the universe will become one unending stretch of darkness. Time itself will stop because there will be no more change.

Apparently it’s all down to entropy. Entropy is the natural order of things. Everything, given time will break down, collapse, fall apart and dissolve into a uniform state of formlessness.

This may explain my modus operandi at work but the less said about that the better.

I’m not sure how I feel about it really; the end of the Universe. I mean, one could take the bleak approach and think, “Well, what’s the point of it all, then? What’s the point of morality? Of caring? Of procreation? Of Katie Price?”

But the best thing about Professor Brian is his unfailing ability to see the wonder and the wonderfulness in all things. (With possibly the exception of Katie Price.)

Because as Professor Brian explained it, without entropy, without the end of all things being on the cards, we wouldn’t have a beginning of things. We wouldn’t have this miracle of life; this relatively tiny span of time in eternity where life in the universe is possible.

Of course, we wouldn’t have Katie Price, David Cameron and Eamonn Holmes either but I guess for the purposes of infinite possibility we have to accept the shit with the gold.

And so suddenly, it all makes sense. More than that, the preciousness, the sheer miraculous nature of life becomes clear. We’re lucky to be here. It’s amazing we’re all here, right now, together at this point in time. Although technically speaking, cosmologically speaking, this is the only time we could be here.

I think what I like the most about Professor Brian is the way he manages to imbibe hardcore physics with a truly non-denominational sense of spirituality. A sense of meaning, of higher order, of purpose. Without getting all God-bothery about it.

It’s a heady brew to partake of on a Sunday night and I shall miss it now that the series has come to an end.

But those lips... they are nasty and wet, I have to admit.