A perfect game and space-time waves

Something extraordinary happened this past week. Domingo German of the New York Yankees pitched a perfect game.

There have been only 24 in major league history, which reaches back to the 19th century. That’s 154 years and more than 235,000 games, which means there has been one perfect game for every 10,000 games played, give or take. That’s pretty close to a dictionary definition of extraordinary.

In this case, extraordinary also was layered with curious.

German was the fourth Yankees pitcher to throw a perfect game. And each of their given names starts with D.

Don Larsen. David Wells. David Cone. Domingo German.

It doesn’t mean anything, right? Or does it?

Humans love to find patterns in seeming randomness. It’s a way of providing color, or context. Much of it is meaningless trivia, like the Yankees D-list, but some can be substantial. Which to take seriously?

She was the fourth person in the last 27 years to . . .

It’s the 11th time this decade, after only two such occasions the decade before . . .

The previous six times this happened, indexes moved . . .

The last time the region experienced a similar once-in-a-thousand-years event was . . .

Many analysts earn a living making such observations about the economy. Climate scientists couch current-day findings in such context. Political pundits obsessively seek present understanding in past events. Sports fans can’t finish a conversation without seeking such insight. The added observations are sometimes illuminating, sometimes confusing, sometimes banal, sometimes terrifying.

They’re also inevitable and sometimes essential for the understanding they can bring to large sets of data or the long arc of history. They can impose order on what seems like the chaos of our world. Because nothing brings comfort like knowing that what’s happening now has happened before and things turned out OK. And nothing brings fear like knowing that the something that happened before was followed by something bad. And nothing brings angst like realizing there is no precedent for what’s happening now, no pattern to reference to soothe or rankle us.

German’s gem came on a day when physicists revealed a discovery that was both explanation and invitation for more explanation — about the longest possible arc of our history.

Five teams of scientists announced, independently of one another, that they had discovered evidence for the existence of long-theorized space-time, or gravitational, waves — which they say could help us understand how our universe came to its current structure nearly 14 billion years after the Big Bang.

I’m no astrophysicist. I’m not even a dime-store physicist. But this sounds big. Literally. The physicists said these gravitational waves have a low-pitch hum that reverberates across the universe. And this hum, which comes from the interactions of massive black holes — and by massive we mean as large as a billion suns — ripples the fabric of space and time.

Physicists, some blessed with the tongues of poets, describe the universe as a roiling sea in which Earth bobs every which way. They liken the hum from these buffeting waves to a choir, or orchestra, with each black-hole pair playing a different note scientists now can hear.

The discovery was the latest affirmation of the general theory of relativity put forward by Albert Einstein — who has the best post-death batting average of anyone who posits theories and awaits corroboration or rejection by future peers.

One Yale physicist told The New York Times that gravitational waves can be created by any spinning object, like two people “doing a do-si-do.”

Or, presumably, a pitcher pirouetting off the mound after defying more mortal aspects of space and time.

The extraordinary demands explanation, on the D-list or in outer space.

 Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.

By Michael Dobie

michael.dobie@newsday.commwdobie

Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.