Maybe in time we could see how the world began.

In an attempt to spend less time thinking about more immediate aspects of my life (introspection can mean progress, but sometimes I push it to the point of monotonous self-destruction, a broken record of broken me), I’ve been putting my brain to use on some larger reflections. One of these larger reflections happens to be our universe.  Um, what?

I was listening to this What Made Milwaukee Famous song ‘And The Grief Goes On…” and the first line (which you already should have read above) is ‘Maybe in time we could see how the world began.”  It’s only the first-line in the song, but since I had so many spare brain-cycles lying around I started to harp on it. It’s becoming more and more unlikely with each passing day that we’ll get to see how the world began.  I know you silly holy scripture types think you already know because a group of teenagers got drunk together on a beach a couple thousand years ago and wrote a storybook about giant turtles dragging the planets here on their backs, or a bored bearded man who had all the power beyond imagination that took seven days to make it all (if I had all the power in the universes to make universes it would have only taken me six days), or whatever is popular to believe this millennium in your geographic location.

But back in the real world, we are running out of time to figure it out. I’m no astrophysicist or historian, but I know (or think I know) that the universe is expanding, all the time.  If you don’t understand this (at least the concept of this), it’s because your brain stopped expanding a long time ago, and you were convinced that being narrow-minded would be beneficial in life, and that makes me feel great sorrow for you.  But back on topic,  the technological advancements of the world that enable scientists to look out into the far reaches of our universe are getting better and better all the time, which is exciting because we learn new things all the time.  Sure it means planets become un-planets, and we have to change what we think we know about the universe. (Remember when people thought the Earth was at the center? HAHA.  Remember when people thought there were lots of Gods and Goddesses that spoke Greek hanging out in the clouds watching us all and playing chess with us and making the weather change?  HAHA.  Remember when people thought there was only ONE god? HAHA, what’s that? Oh we aren’t over that yet? Maybe next century. Here’s to hoping.)

So we learn and unlearn and the instruments improve and we can see further back, but all the while the universe is still expanding, and exponentially at that.  So there comes a point, where the rate of expansion will be greater than the rate of growth in the technologies that allow us to peer out into the past. I’m sure there is a fancy name for that point in time, but I’ll just call it ‘a sad day’.  See, I love truths.  I love learning, I love knowledge, and I love knowing/learning truths.  I love mysteries because the process of uncovering truths turns me on.  I love that tomorrow people sprinkled all over this planet will come up with new ideas about how things are and how things came to be, and they will be improvements upon (or departures from) what we thought we knew yesterday about how things are and how things came to be.  I love knowing what I know to be true today will be far from what I know to be true a few years from now and that the growth of my understanding of myself over that time will also be a growth of my understanding of the worlds around me.

It saddens me that one day, the best telescope at the greatest observatory won’t be able to see as far as it used to, because the rate of expansion of the known universe will be ever so slightly faster then the rate of production of that new telescope and observatory.  But maybe we’ll figure it all out before then? (That’s a joke and if you don’t get it, re-read the end of the last paragraph twice and stick some rusty scissors in your eyes please).