The discovery of those extra galaxies shouldn't surprise anyone. By now we've come to expect such shattering announcements buried in the more obscure areas of the New York Times, right next to the article about a hot new trend in women's handbags. Every few months it seems scientists peer into a telescope and find a part of the universe that had previously gone unnoticed somehow, sending cosmologists scurrying back to wherever they hole up to work the new data into their theories, theories which are completely abstruse and incomprehensible and could be safely ignored except for the fact that they promise to tell us such unimportant stories as what the universe is and how it came to be. You know, the universe? Like, the totality of all time, space, and existence?

I for one welcome scientific news that reaffirms my belief in a universe of unbelievable immensity and harrowing emptiness, the dissipating reverberations of an ancient act of pointless violence. The humming void. The cold, lonely blackness of space, which burst into existence from a singularity and might very well collapse into another one, taking time and space with it. These ideas appeal to my general affinity for melodrama and overly large gestures, and also feed my natural inclination toward giddy despair and gallows humor. To know the universe is basically a camp gesture is reassuring to me. I see it as confirmation that my instincts about what life is are in line with the most sophisticated scientific thinking. How brilliant I am.