Leo62
The intention behind this deck is to explore the exciting, exotic ideas that have emerged in physics in the last 100 years, including Einstein's theories of relativity, Quantum mechanics and more recent mind-boggling concepts such as string theory.
This is thrilling stuff (well to me anyway!
) that can seriously alter your view of reality. Trouble is, these are also very complex ideas and they can be hard to grasp. I wanted to find a way to make them more accessible and, I dunno, I thought it would be a good idea for a tarot deck...
I would never have started this project without the artistry and talent of Chris Butler (the 78th Fool), who is designing the images for the deck. We've begun work on the major arcana, and I can't praise him highly enough. Here's the first couple of cards - any feedback would be gratefully received.
The first card is the Fool, symbolising the creation and the early history of the universe - known as the Big Bang theory. It uses an image from the Hubble telescope showing distant galaxies as they would have appeared early in the history of the universe.
The Big Bang is widely accepted as the dominant theory of the universe’s creation. It posits that the universe was created in a single cataclysmic event, an explosion, almost 14 billion years ago. In the first few seconds after the Big Bang, the four forces (electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force and gravity), atomic nuclei and the basic elements all took shape, but it was another 300 million years before stars and galaxies began to form. Our own sun was born about 8 to 9 billion years after the Big Bang.
Can the Big Bang theory ever be conclusively proved? Perhaps not, but there is an awful lot of circumstantial evidence. For example, it has been demonstrated through the phenomenon of red shift that all the galaxies in the universe are moving away from each other. Red shift occurs when a light source recedes from the observer; the light it emits shifts towards the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum. It also appears that the universe is continuing to expand, billions of years after the initial explosion of Big Bang.
Another piece of evidence, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB), was predicted by the Big Bang theory and has been found and measured. About 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe had cooled down enough for the first hydrogen atoms to form. At this point, the universe changed from an opaque cosmic soup to become transparent, allowing light to travel great distances. CMB is the faint echo of this explosion of light. The subsequent cooling and expansion of the universe has shifted this radiation so far to the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum that it appears as microwaves rather than visible light. This residual glow, at about 3 degrees kelvin (–270 degrees Celsius), is observable at every point in the universe. It was first discovered in the 1960’s using new microwave receiver technology. More recently, NASA’s COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite has measured CMB more accurately.
Also included is the Death card. In this deck, Death symbolises Antimatter. The card shows a traditional Death image, mirrored and superimposed on the image of a dying star.
Every type of matter particle has a matching antimatter particle or antiparticle. The antiparticle has the same mass but an opposite charge to its corresponding particle. For example, the negatively-charged electron has an antiparticle with a positive charge, known as the positron. When a matter particle meets its antimatter partner, they annihilate each other in pure energy, which can go on to form other kinds of particles. Physicists are sure that antimatter exists, but the strange thing is that our universe appears to be made up entirely of matter. What happened to all the antimatter? Antimatter particles can be created, briefly, in particle accelerators, but are soon transformed via annihilations into other kinds of matter particles. It is believed that the very early universe consisted of almost equal parts matter and antimatter. However, there was slightly more matter than antimatter, which meant that all the antimatter was quickly annihilated. From this narrow margin of matter over antimatter, our universe came into being.
This is thrilling stuff (well to me anyway!
) that can seriously alter your view of reality. Trouble is, these are also very complex ideas and they can be hard to grasp. I wanted to find a way to make them more accessible and, I dunno, I thought it would be a good idea for a tarot deck...I would never have started this project without the artistry and talent of Chris Butler (the 78th Fool), who is designing the images for the deck. We've begun work on the major arcana, and I can't praise him highly enough. Here's the first couple of cards - any feedback would be gratefully received.
The first card is the Fool, symbolising the creation and the early history of the universe - known as the Big Bang theory. It uses an image from the Hubble telescope showing distant galaxies as they would have appeared early in the history of the universe.
The Big Bang is widely accepted as the dominant theory of the universe’s creation. It posits that the universe was created in a single cataclysmic event, an explosion, almost 14 billion years ago. In the first few seconds after the Big Bang, the four forces (electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force and gravity), atomic nuclei and the basic elements all took shape, but it was another 300 million years before stars and galaxies began to form. Our own sun was born about 8 to 9 billion years after the Big Bang.
Can the Big Bang theory ever be conclusively proved? Perhaps not, but there is an awful lot of circumstantial evidence. For example, it has been demonstrated through the phenomenon of red shift that all the galaxies in the universe are moving away from each other. Red shift occurs when a light source recedes from the observer; the light it emits shifts towards the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum. It also appears that the universe is continuing to expand, billions of years after the initial explosion of Big Bang.
Another piece of evidence, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB), was predicted by the Big Bang theory and has been found and measured. About 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe had cooled down enough for the first hydrogen atoms to form. At this point, the universe changed from an opaque cosmic soup to become transparent, allowing light to travel great distances. CMB is the faint echo of this explosion of light. The subsequent cooling and expansion of the universe has shifted this radiation so far to the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum that it appears as microwaves rather than visible light. This residual glow, at about 3 degrees kelvin (–270 degrees Celsius), is observable at every point in the universe. It was first discovered in the 1960’s using new microwave receiver technology. More recently, NASA’s COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite has measured CMB more accurately.
Also included is the Death card. In this deck, Death symbolises Antimatter. The card shows a traditional Death image, mirrored and superimposed on the image of a dying star.
Every type of matter particle has a matching antimatter particle or antiparticle. The antiparticle has the same mass but an opposite charge to its corresponding particle. For example, the negatively-charged electron has an antiparticle with a positive charge, known as the positron. When a matter particle meets its antimatter partner, they annihilate each other in pure energy, which can go on to form other kinds of particles. Physicists are sure that antimatter exists, but the strange thing is that our universe appears to be made up entirely of matter. What happened to all the antimatter? Antimatter particles can be created, briefly, in particle accelerators, but are soon transformed via annihilations into other kinds of matter particles. It is believed that the very early universe consisted of almost equal parts matter and antimatter. However, there was slightly more matter than antimatter, which meant that all the antimatter was quickly annihilated. From this narrow margin of matter over antimatter, our universe came into being.
