“Bad news travels at the speed of light; good news travels like molasses.” Tracy Morgan

The number in the title is the speed of light. I am probably the last person in the world who should be writing about incredibly technical issues. I prefer to traffic in ideas over numbers, because digits can be numbing, easily losing us in a maze of mathematics and mechanics.

I am not sure how many of us ever think about the sheer size of the vast universe we are all part of. I thought about this, but it is not something I spend much time with. My stories have always been about myself and this world of ours, with a touch of history for perspective on both subjects. Honestly, I am not sure how this got into my head in the first place. 

In a way, I want to stay with fiction for this story, rather than have it degenerate into some scientific study into the precise nature of all things everywhere. Aside from being boring, it is of no interest to me, because it is beyond my capacity to understand, not to mention my mental acuity. When numbers and time and distance become so large, they rupture the calculator of my comprehension. In other words, don’t bother checking me for accuracy, because that is not the point.

It has always been very important for us to understand this world of ours. We thrive on answers, which is why this thing on my mind is so appealing, primarily because I don’t think there is a way to understand the universe, the entirety of its boundaries impossible to define. I wonder if our religions would be any different adding all this incredible, new found information into the mix. We are part of something so much larger than we ever could have imagined just a few hundred years ago, let alone several thousand.

According to Priyamvada Natarajan, a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale, “A black hole is so concentrated that it causes a little deep puncture in space/time. Nothing we know of exists at that point.”

You see, the above quote is what I’m talking about. I am most comfortable writing in an informal style, having no interest in a footnoted, term paper. I am a big fan of feelings over facts and it certainly applies to this subject, because it is virtually incomprehensible, exploding any effort at precise calculations.

When we see images from extremely powerful telescopes, like the James Webb Space Telescope, we enter the world of millions and billions and trillions as the means of measuring and explaining. It actually sent back images of something called Cosmic Dawn, galaxies formed several hundred millions years after the Big Bang. This limitless universe was formed 13.8 billion years ago. I want to know what existed before all this and nothing is not a very good answer.

Words like infinity and forever and have no beginning or end and I think of them in relation to the universe. If you shot an arrow into the air, how far will it go before reaching the end of the immeasurable cosmos? Let me share a few numbers that will definitely blow your mind. The universe is 93 billion light years in diameter. Now that is the observable Universe and it might very well be 250 times larger than that. A light year is 6 trillion miles. Well, that’s what I mean about numbers being so large, we have no context for them. To make matters even more incomprehensible, apparently the Universe is continually expanding. Where the hell is it going?

I think, in general, our thought processes go from small to large and that applies to our feelings as well. I am guessing when Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree, he was searching for answers for what he had been seeing and thinking since he had begun his road trip. His realizations had to do with understanding what it means to be human, within the context of borders far beyond our ability to comprehend at the time. I wonder if anything would have changed if he was allowed to peer through the Webb telescope. I really don’t think so.

How many poets and painters have looked up at the sky for answers to their own riddles about the meaning of their lives? I am not sure that any understanding about the dimensions of the universe would  have changed any of their thoughts and images. Faith has always been a place holder in the absence of certainty. Frankly, if we had it all figured out, I am not sure religion would have had the monstrous gaps to fill that make it so popular. 

Tragically for our species, we have traipsed all over our world, wearing form-fitting blinders, keeping us more focused on our feet than the forever of our Universe. Our perspective is based on expedience, living moment to moment, without any regard for the billions and billions of light years that measure our true home in the sky.

Honestly, I really can’t say for sure what got me off on this time travel tantrum of mine. I guess if you believe you are part of something far greater than yourself, you almost can’t help looking beyond the stars that cocoon us into feeling we are capable of making sense of it all.

Since the genius invention of the wheel, we have been hard at work, continually re-inventing ourselves with each new discovery. We have always been looking for answers for what we don’t understand. The better we get at it, the closer we get to a place beyond our grasp, no matter how hard we try. 

Thank God.

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