i find it interesting that science has concluded that the universe has a beginning; the beginning of time? Is the idea of narrative, of successive time encoded in the very fabric of matter, reality, and that is why our fantasies and our psychological reality must also function this way?
If we have found the beginning of the narrative (the universe) ,what will be the end?
Cristina, to build on you comments on time and the universe, from the perspective of physics:
The 14 billion years refers to the big bang, the creation of this universe. This marks the creation of space and time, which in physics are in some ways the same thing (i.e., space-time). There is, however, one highly theoretical branch of physics based on entropy (Essentially, randomness. In practice, entropy is the reason that you can’t unbreak an egg, and why you can remember the past, but not the future.) that stipulates that one universe is “pinched off” from a previously existing universe. (I won’t go into the specifics because I don’t think I can explain it in a way that would make sense.) Interestingly, this same model proposes a universe that ends “not with a bang, but a whimper,” to quote Eliot. The Universe itself doesn’t end, but becomes so chaotic that nothing, even consciousness, can exist for longer than a fraction of a second. In this model, time both does and doesn’t have a beginning and an end.
The thing I personally find most interesting in this model is that the universe is forever, but eventually won’t support consciousness.
As far as the implications go, I have no idea. Food for thought.
Does anyone frequent the Hubble Telescope website? I came across this picture and I find it fascianting: it is the picture of an “x” of a “cross” at the center of some galaxy/black hole; the picture is currently beingused by christian apologetics and some have even quoted t.s. eliot:
“We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring.
Will be to arrive
where we started.
And know the place for the first time.”
sublime modernity 
Cool!
“…the universe is 14, 000, 000, 000 years old”….
i find it interesting that science has concluded that the universe has a beginning; the beginning of time? Is the idea of narrative, of successive time encoded in the very fabric of matter, reality, and that is why our fantasies and our psychological reality must also function this way?
If we have found the beginning of the narrative (the universe) ,what will be the end?
Cristina, to build on you comments on time and the universe, from the perspective of physics:
The 14 billion years refers to the big bang, the creation of this universe. This marks the creation of space and time, which in physics are in some ways the same thing (i.e., space-time). There is, however, one highly theoretical branch of physics based on entropy (Essentially, randomness. In practice, entropy is the reason that you can’t unbreak an egg, and why you can remember the past, but not the future.) that stipulates that one universe is “pinched off” from a previously existing universe. (I won’t go into the specifics because I don’t think I can explain it in a way that would make sense.) Interestingly, this same model proposes a universe that ends “not with a bang, but a whimper,” to quote Eliot. The Universe itself doesn’t end, but becomes so chaotic that nothing, even consciousness, can exist for longer than a fraction of a second. In this model, time both does and doesn’t have a beginning and an end.
The thing I personally find most interesting in this model is that the universe is forever, but eventually won’t support consciousness.
As far as the implications go, I have no idea. Food for thought.
Does anyone frequent the Hubble Telescope website? I came across this picture and I find it fascianting: it is the picture of an “x” of a “cross” at the center of some galaxy/black hole; the picture is currently beingused by christian apologetics and some have even quoted t.s. eliot:
“We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring.
Will be to arrive
where we started.
And know the place for the first time.”
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/pr1992017a/