Friday, November 04, 2005
Bad parrot
I think the parrot has pulled one of the keys off my new one-handed keyboard and broke it, I'm really annoyed. I was getting used to it as well, I will try to get it repaired.
I have always thought the biggest mystery in life is time. Not that events do not act sequentially such as night following day, but the infinitely long taproot. Back in the thirties Edwin Hubble trained a new design of telescope on the night sky, it was a telescope that had a mechanism that kept it trained on the same spot of the sky. As the earth rotates the stars move and Hubble's telescope could track that movement. Astronomers for many years had noticed that some of the stars in the sky were not a sharp point of light but were a fuzzy blob. It was one of these blobs that Hubble focused on, and photographed it with a very long exposure so as to be able to collect as much light as possible. When he developed the photograph he noted to his astonishment, that what had been previously thought of as one thing , was in fact billions of stars, thus humanity learned of galaxies.
The next thing astronomers did, was start to map the galaxies, they noticed a very odd thing, the galaxies appeared to be getting further away from each other. We tend to see the universe as a static thing, it is no such thing the universe is dynamic. The mean distance between the earth and moon increases by just over an inch every year. As the sun burns up its mass its gravitation pull decreases, so the orbits of all the planets in our solar system gradually increase.
The observation that galactic distances are increasing, means if we reverse time far enough everything was one lump, hence the theory of the big bang. Some theorists have it that, the universe just popped into existence, I find this idea very unsatisfying. I like the idea of the big bang being caused by a big crunch. I like the idea of an eternally expanding and contracting universe. I believe as the Mayan people did, that the future is caused by the past. If the eternity of big crunches were made with every atom in the same juxtaposition, then the eternity of big bangs will be the same, the eternal oscillation. This would mean time itself, is an illusion because the *now* we are in re-occurs, farewell death - begone grim reaper.
I learned this idea from Nietzsche from his book 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'
You can read the whole book here
I have always thought the biggest mystery in life is time. Not that events do not act sequentially such as night following day, but the infinitely long taproot. Back in the thirties Edwin Hubble trained a new design of telescope on the night sky, it was a telescope that had a mechanism that kept it trained on the same spot of the sky. As the earth rotates the stars move and Hubble's telescope could track that movement. Astronomers for many years had noticed that some of the stars in the sky were not a sharp point of light but were a fuzzy blob. It was one of these blobs that Hubble focused on, and photographed it with a very long exposure so as to be able to collect as much light as possible. When he developed the photograph he noted to his astonishment, that what had been previously thought of as one thing , was in fact billions of stars, thus humanity learned of galaxies.
The next thing astronomers did, was start to map the galaxies, they noticed a very odd thing, the galaxies appeared to be getting further away from each other. We tend to see the universe as a static thing, it is no such thing the universe is dynamic. The mean distance between the earth and moon increases by just over an inch every year. As the sun burns up its mass its gravitation pull decreases, so the orbits of all the planets in our solar system gradually increase.
The observation that galactic distances are increasing, means if we reverse time far enough everything was one lump, hence the theory of the big bang. Some theorists have it that, the universe just popped into existence, I find this idea very unsatisfying. I like the idea of the big bang being caused by a big crunch. I like the idea of an eternally expanding and contracting universe. I believe as the Mayan people did, that the future is caused by the past. If the eternity of big crunches were made with every atom in the same juxtaposition, then the eternity of big bangs will be the same, the eternal oscillation. This would mean time itself, is an illusion because the *now* we are in re-occurs, farewell death - begone grim reaper.
I learned this idea from Nietzsche from his book 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'
The greatest stress. How, if some day or night a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you — all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a dust grain of dust.' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?
You can read the whole book here
