{"id":545,"date":"2004-02-18T09:59:49","date_gmt":"2004-02-18T17:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2004\/02\/bad_taste_as_a_doomsday_theory\/"},"modified":"2004-02-18T09:59:49","modified_gmt":"2004-02-18T17:59:49","slug":"bad_taste_as_a_doomsday_theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2004\/02\/bad_taste_as_a_doomsday_theory.html","title":{"rendered":"BAD TASTE AS A DOOMSDAY THEORY"},"content":{"rendered":"

It looks like bad taste may bring the world to an end in what’s being called the Big Rip. Not
\ncontent with being the b\u00eate noire<\/I> merely of aesthetes and high-minded critics, bad taste
\nhas become a new obsession for cosmologists trying to understand “a mysterious force called dark
\nenergy [that] seems to be wrenching the universe apart.”<\/P>
\n

This dark energy — also termed phantom energy — “crosses a boundary of good taste,” says
\nDarmouth physicist Robert Caldwell, co-author of a paper exploring “the possibility that a
\nmysterious force permeating space-time will be strong enough to blow everything apart, shred
\nrocks, animals, molecules and finally even atoms in a last seemingly mad instant of cosmic
\nself-abnegation.”<\/P>
\n

Bad taste is the stuff of “bad news,” Caldwell says, because, as Dennis Overbye writes<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> in The New York Times,
\n“Phantom energy violates physicists’ intuitions about how the universe should behave.” Good
\ntaste would mean less weirdness. Imagine what could happen, short of a galactic apocalypse. A
\nchunk of phantom energy “could be used to prop open wormholes in space and time — and thus
\ncreate time machines, for example,” Overbye writes.<\/P>
\n

Other scientists are equally dismayed. One says it’s “unphysical, but we’re not ruling it out.”
\nRobert Kirshner, of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tells Overbye that the idea
\nof a mysterious force wrenching the universe apart had been dismissed as “too strange.” Kirshner
\nsays, “It sounds wacky, but I think we’re in a situation where we’re going to need a really new
\nidea. We’re in trouble. … It might be our ideas are not wild enough, they don’t question
\nfundamentals enough.”<\/P>
\n

Is it possible that 21st-century scientists need to take a cue from the bad taste of “Lord of the
\nRings” director Peter Jackson? His first full feature film, made in 1983, put him way ahead of the
\ngame. Titled, yes, “Bad Taste,”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> it’s been called “a testament to what can
\nbe done with a small budget and a lot of dedication.” That’s something cosmologists ought to
\nkeep in mind with the expected loss of the Hubble Space Telescope, which could help measure
\nthe parameters of phantom energy. <\/P>
\n

Perhaps scientists should borrow one of the posters for that movie — <\nB>Good  <\/FONT>Taste Made<\/FONT> Bad <\/FONT><\/FONT>Taste<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> — as sandwich boards to lobby for continuation
\nof the Hubble program. Or if it’s not too disgusting, they might consider screening “the
\nparticularly gruesome effects” in Jackson’s low-budget “Braindead”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> for NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe
\nas part of a “save the
\nHubble”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> campaign.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like bad taste may bring the world to an end in what’s being called the Big Rip. Not content with being the b\u00eate noire merely of aesthetes and high-minded critics, bad taste has become a new obsession for cosmologists trying to understand “a mysterious force called dark energy [that] seems to be wrenching […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-8N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}