Musée Marmottan MonetAnd now some pseudo-scientific nonsense:Space-time: an intricate relationship between physical distance and the amount of time it takes to get there.
The Universe's outer limits are defined by how far away light could travel from us in any direction. In this sense, it appears boundless--what could possibly happen to light along the way to make it stop? As far as we know, only a powerful enough gravitational force could ever stop a photon traveling through space(Excepting impact with a solid mass). So in a relativistic sense, the 'knowable' universe is strictly limited in a physical sense by the speed of light, and thereby the speed of the fastest possible information that could reach us.
Just a thought.
And now some pseudo-religious nonsense:I. In the beginning, there was not much at all.
II. As time progressed, it became quite apparent that 'not much at all' is a little boring.
III. There was light. It emanated from every direction at once, in every direction at once. Everywhere it went it encountered space--it was as if an enormous gravitational pull that had constrained it--not for ages, not for aeons, but for a true, endless infinity, for there was no time before the light--was sudenly released. Immense energy flowed everywhere--to wheres that hadn't even existed a moment before.
IV. As light encountered light it became matter. Purest energy condensed, at first boiling hot into plasma, and slowly, slowly, into swirling masses that begot their own gravitational pull. All of the energy that existed before the Event became, in this way, reconcentrated throughout a newly constituted space-time continuum, and achieved its own light--the bright light of fusion, which, even still, was far paler than the light of the Event itself.
V. With time these stars became out of balance. The resources within them withered--Hydrogen turned to Helium, and Helium into Carbon, and so on, until finally, the very souls of the stars became so corrupt with heavy, immalleable iron, that they consumed themselves, and expired in enormous blasts. The cataclysms resulted in the complete destruction of the being of the stars, but each produced a light far greater than at any other moment in the stars' history, yet a light still far inferior to the first Event.
VI. And these heavier elements eventually recoalesced, forming their own bodies--bodies which could not live without the light of nearby stars. There was one of these bodies in particular, a swirling globe of iron, its core a fiery forge, yet one still far less intense as the cores of the forbearer stars, and is immeasurably less intense than the Event. It's outer crust cooled by the vacuum of space nearby--hydrogen and oxygen formed together to create water.
VII. The perfect mix of chemicals existed, inspiration hit, and life began. And life contained within it a fire, but a fire that burned far dimmer than the core of its planet progenitor. Immeasurably paler than the star that gave it energy on which to exist. And infinitely paler than the Event itself, the precondition for all of space-time.
VIII. This life began to effect the planet around it. It consumed some chemicals. It excreted others. And slowly, slowly, the thinnest, topmost layer changed--it became more and more habitable, and more and more lifeforms emerged--adapting from prior organisms into more and more complex ones. Self-replicating protein strands. Mitochondrian. Prokaryotes. Eukaryotes. Protozoans. Plankton. Multicellular organisms. Algae. Metazoans. Trilobites. Fish. Insects. Amphibians. Ferns. Insects. Reptiles. Dinosaurs. Birds. Viruses. Mammals. Primates. And humans.
IX. And within every human burns a fire. A fire, like all animals', far paler than the Earth's own, even more so compared to the stars, and infinitesimal compared to that which created it. Yet within every human is a fire that apprehends, and that reaches out to understand the universe around it. An intelligence which in its own way, though physically dim, specklike, shines far brighter than anything before it, save only the Event itself.
Alternate ending:
IX. And humans are a vaguely interesting species that really haven't done anything that cosmically significant at all, but have managed to cause some pretty ridiculous problems for themselves in their own little neighborhood.
In other news, Paris is still fun, and I've started a
Flickr Account where I'll be uploading some pics.
And now, a roflcopter:
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/O/ ___ 0\_ _o \
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(-:_________________lol__/
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It's actually way faster than it looks.
