See the Light

A lesson for hopeful thinkers

If we have the timeline right, the Big Bang boomed and then 13.8 billion years later came us and a bunch of scientists. What if we are the very first creatures in the entire Universe to have evolved into conscious and clever beings? I mean, it would explain why we don’t see any time travelers coming back from the future. Although, odds are way in favor of life having evolved somewhere on one of those trillions of planets already discovered.

The location of everything that has ever existed can be pinpointed by giving the X, Y, Z coordinates for the position. Time is the 4^th dimension necessary to complete its unique description, but can time be a dimension if it is not a physical axis in space? In math, time defines all forms of energy in the E=MC squared equation with C representing distance travelled in one second. The energy-time relationship goes to next level when the speed of light gets multiplied times itself to describe every type of energy, which contradicts that nothing can travel faster than C. Only thought experiments can help make sense of the most famous equation in history along with other ones that need C to 3^rd and even C to the 4^th power to predict chemical reactions.

Alright, let’s do a thought experiment with how fast the speed of light is. It takes about 8 minutes for sunlight to reach earth. Square C and light can make the trip 175 times in one second. Cube it, and well, let’s just say you could follow the path of a comet around our solar system in a blink. Will we ever use this in a practical way? I say yes, and when we do, we will be one step closer to finding the meaning of life. The next level of understanding will go beyond deciding if Dark Energy makes the universe expand or if it is Dark Matter that holds it all together, or if gravity bends space-time without electro-magnetism, or if the aging process halts at the speed of light, or what really happens to something or someone travelling at C to a higher power. We call this being in a quantum state and it’s where every electron and photon lives. If we ever find a way to enter that dimension, or level of consciousness, we will find answers to the final mysteries evading our physicists today. Until then, keep looking.

JS Nardello