I suppose that my biggest single peeve with people is that they are a very narrow-minded species. They think small, they act small, they use a very well evolved selective processing circuit in their brains to block out what they don't want to hear. I can't do that.
I have to question everything. Just because some mysterious "they" tells me something is so, I don't believe it. I want to see for myself, compare evidence, touch, feel it, know that what "they" say is truly the way it is. Let's face it, our entire history is filled with people refusing to believe this certain fact or that irrefutable truth, and turning out to be completely correct in doing so. Our very foundations of knowledge were formed by just such thinking. But I want to talk about the universe.
A hundred years ago, the universe and the galaxy were synonymous. Our most powerful telescopes could not determine where any matter existed outside of our galaxy. The universe, which means something to the effect of "the one container," was simply another way to describe the imaginary bubble that our one galaxy was contained within.
Today, we know that that there a literally billions of galaxies, each one composed of literally trillions of stars. The universe, in order to keep its name, has expanded to include all of known space, and mankind has set out to find the single point from which it all began. The Big Bang, is the most elusive known event in the history of the universe, and it is the subject of hot debate among - what was that I phrase I began with? - a very narrow-minded species.
We won't find The Big Bang Event. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Big Bang happened so far outside of our realm of perception that we aren't even capable of understanding it. What we are looking for is an echo of the Big Bang Event, a tiny bit of a chain reaction that spans many universes, creating them in all in a single explosion that brought everything imaginable into existence. But our Big Bang is not The Big Bang Event. It is but a grain of sand on beach a thousand miles long, a minute speck against which it is hard to tell the difference from one speck to another.
And beyond that other Big Bang Event, there lies still another, and one to follow that. The more we know and the farther we are able to look into time and space, the farther the repercussions and systems will be repeated on ever larger and grander scales. Echoes of echoes, for as far as our feeble minds can comprehend in either direction. Each pattern will have some slight difference, or a major change of shape and texture, because the intricate combinations required for exact duplicity are beyond the power of the most brilliant minds and computers we can bring to bear.
I've said it before, and I will quite likely do so again: everything is a circle within a circle. Wheels of quarks forms wheels of atoms which form wheel of molecules. From those form cycles that are subjective for us, and beyond comprehension, and from those form wheels of worlds, then suns, and galaxies. Universes are made of galaxies, and then engulfed in the multiverses that spawned them.
Each one is a necessary step to arrive at where we are, and a logical conclusion to follow the path to where we are going. But even our most brilliant minds are like tiny bacteria crawling around in a Petrie dish, with no concept of what lies beyond the barrier of the dish itself, and only a rudimentary understanding that the dish is even there.
Big Bang? Sure. It's the only logical conclusion, but the event we think of as defining time and space is only an echo, and both time and space are redefined a billion billion times over, encompassing minds far superior to our own, and yet just as incapable of seeing beyond what their minds are able to comprehend. It's a big place, and creatures the size of people can't even imagine what it all means.
I have to question everything. Just because some mysterious "they" tells me something is so, I don't believe it. I want to see for myself, compare evidence, touch, feel it, know that what "they" say is truly the way it is. Let's face it, our entire history is filled with people refusing to believe this certain fact or that irrefutable truth, and turning out to be completely correct in doing so. Our very foundations of knowledge were formed by just such thinking. But I want to talk about the universe.
A hundred years ago, the universe and the galaxy were synonymous. Our most powerful telescopes could not determine where any matter existed outside of our galaxy. The universe, which means something to the effect of "the one container," was simply another way to describe the imaginary bubble that our one galaxy was contained within.
Today, we know that that there a literally billions of galaxies, each one composed of literally trillions of stars. The universe, in order to keep its name, has expanded to include all of known space, and mankind has set out to find the single point from which it all began. The Big Bang, is the most elusive known event in the history of the universe, and it is the subject of hot debate among - what was that I phrase I began with? - a very narrow-minded species.
We won't find The Big Bang Event. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Big Bang happened so far outside of our realm of perception that we aren't even capable of understanding it. What we are looking for is an echo of the Big Bang Event, a tiny bit of a chain reaction that spans many universes, creating them in all in a single explosion that brought everything imaginable into existence. But our Big Bang is not The Big Bang Event. It is but a grain of sand on beach a thousand miles long, a minute speck against which it is hard to tell the difference from one speck to another.
And beyond that other Big Bang Event, there lies still another, and one to follow that. The more we know and the farther we are able to look into time and space, the farther the repercussions and systems will be repeated on ever larger and grander scales. Echoes of echoes, for as far as our feeble minds can comprehend in either direction. Each pattern will have some slight difference, or a major change of shape and texture, because the intricate combinations required for exact duplicity are beyond the power of the most brilliant minds and computers we can bring to bear.
I've said it before, and I will quite likely do so again: everything is a circle within a circle. Wheels of quarks forms wheels of atoms which form wheel of molecules. From those form cycles that are subjective for us, and beyond comprehension, and from those form wheels of worlds, then suns, and galaxies. Universes are made of galaxies, and then engulfed in the multiverses that spawned them.
Each one is a necessary step to arrive at where we are, and a logical conclusion to follow the path to where we are going. But even our most brilliant minds are like tiny bacteria crawling around in a Petrie dish, with no concept of what lies beyond the barrier of the dish itself, and only a rudimentary understanding that the dish is even there.
Big Bang? Sure. It's the only logical conclusion, but the event we think of as defining time and space is only an echo, and both time and space are redefined a billion billion times over, encompassing minds far superior to our own, and yet just as incapable of seeing beyond what their minds are able to comprehend. It's a big place, and creatures the size of people can't even imagine what it all means.
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