Understanding the Infinite and the Eternal - Lent 2022: Day 28

Forty-six days without alcohol or meat may seem like an eternity when you start out, but the days pass quickly. Four weeks gone today, two and half to go.

Eternity and infinity tend to go hand in hand. One connected with our perception of time, the other, with our perception of space. Looking at our Universe, which we currently know to be 13.8 billion years old (assuming the Big Bang was its beginning). We currently (written before the James Webb Space Telescope starts to bring us images of the farthest reaches of the Cosmos) think the observable Universe is 93 billion light-years in diameter, which immediately raises the question of how it got that big within that time if nothing can travel faster than light.

My own grasp of what infinity means as a mathematical concept was little more than a billion billion zillions until the early 1980s, when I was watching the comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News. There was a sketch which mentioned a parallel universe identical to this one, but in which the gear-stick of the Mini Metro was a millimetre shorter. Now extend this comic conceit to include a multiplicity of parallel universes differing only to this one in that the Mini Metro's gear-stick was longer or shorter by one Planck length (1.616×10⁻³⁵ m, or about 10⁻²⁰ times the diameter of a proton). This is the shortest discrete unit of distance possible (there can't be half a Planck length). But even so. Once you start contemplating universal possibilities at the sub-atomic scale, infinity becomes mind-boggling.

It becomes something that we can't get our heads around. It literally does not compute. But how about eternity? A mere 13.8 billion years is something we can grasp. But can we grasp the time-scale of the heat-death of the universe, when the final proton decays, estimated to be some 10^3,200 years from now?

“Eternity is awful long time, especially towards the end,” said Woody Allen. 

I beg to differ - it will speed up, with our eternal souls perceiving it to rush as it moves towards a finite end.

As we age, our perception of time changes too. To ten-year olds, one year represents one tenth of the total time they will have experienced, a week being around 0.05% of the sum of their life's span so far. But as a 50-year old, a year is but one fiftieth of the time you've experienced, a week flashes by you with the same relative speed as a day would to a seven-year old. And as such, our perception is that time accelerates as we grow older. As we approach 80 years of age, we feel time passing at twice the speed we did when we were 40.

I would posit that the journey of our consciousness, growing in understanding through a series of lifetimes - who knows, maybe in one epoch beyond biological life? accelerates as we near God - God the purpose - All in God, God in All. 

This time last year:
The Holiest of Holies

This time two years ago:
"On my planet, there is no disease"

This time four years ago:
A Brief History of Time review (Part II)

This time seven years ago:
"We don't need no [tertiary] education"

This time eight years ago:
Arthur's Seat - Edinburgh's urban mountain

This time nine years ago:
Heaven

This time ten years ago:
A wee taste of Edinburgh

This time 13 years ago:
Forward go the clocks

This time 14 years ago:
Early spring, dusk