Infinity

An early browse on FB produces a fascinating video from Maxwell Loughan, theoretical physicist and inventor of a free energy device ... talking about the question of infinity ... a question which perplexed me in my early teens ... the question going round and round in the head, laying awake in the bedroom shared with elder brother, now dead (or operating in a parallel universe) was expressed simply as: Where is the end of the universe? And what is beyond that point?

Of course, this question has tortured many minds for many years, decades, centuries, millenia ... bringing us to the next question: The nature of eternity ...

In the end (and leaving aside the question of where is the end in eternity) such questions may drive us mad, so we leave them parked safely somewhere or other, while we get on with learning things which submit to the capability of current mindsets ... and what schools decide we must learn, itself culturally dependent ... much of it useless ...

Words, as often observed, may serve us and enslave us ... the thing is to always use them with that awareness and not fall into the trap of mistaking the word for the thing it tries to describe ...

So, since we have a word for infinity, let's see what it may mean ... perhaps by examining what it does not mean .... which is very big ... or very small, sometimes defined erroneously by the word "infinitesimal" ... infinity is beyond space, as eternity is beyond time ... and since most humans are caught up in a spatial 3D world and one linear dimension of time, the very structure of language constrains comprehension ... leaving poetry to have a go ... as in William Blake's well known:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.

These things may be comprehended, but not using fragmented thought patterns ... the mystics, like Blake, see them complete and point us towards them as best they can ... such gifts of seeing beyond thought are available once the thinking takes a break .... meditation, dreaming, psychoactive drugs may help .... anyway, 13 year old Maxwell Loughlan is very convincing in his presentations ... quite ego free, implying a mystical aspect and apparently fearless in acknowledging the perils of promoting free energy in this carbon obsessed world .... he also suspects the Large Hadron Collider may have nudged us into a parallel universe, an idea which resonates here, having never trusted such maniacal behaviour as smashing fundamental particles together in the deluded search for the smallest particle ... an impossibility in an infinite universe and indeed mainstream physics has long seen the wave/particle duality in operation at these scales ... the parallel universe ideas are less mainstream, though not unknown ...in 1956 Hugh Everett, for his PhD, proposed the many worlds theory, which offered the mathematical proof of the elusive unified field as long as an infinite number of parallel universes were allowed ... this was too crazy, even for quantum physics, at that time ...

 ...the other mad inventor, credited with splitting the atom and creating the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki ... Robert Oppenheimer, quoted as saying: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" ....  also suggested: " There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago" .... leading us neatly back to Maxwell Loughan ... and the need for schools of unlearning ...

Meanwhile, feeling the need for an outing, a public transport jaunt to Newcastle Airport, firstly on the local bus with all the regulars chatting away, then a brisk walk to the metro and arriving at the arrivals gate with five minutes to spare to surprise a dear friend returning from Spain ...back to Durham by metro, train and bus for a cup of tea, then a walk to town, bus to Bishop Auckland, and just time to buy broad beans, not to be found in frozen form in the otherwise well stocked Stanhope shops, before catching the Weardale bus home, with five minutes to spare .... loving the long journey (and the Bus Pass) for the sake of the look of surprise ... and the broad beans, of course .... simple pleasures ....