This post is about a topic I find myself coming back to in my mind from time to time. It’s currently nothing more than a rambling stream, but that’s ok.
Today, I saw that my former Coach’s dog had passed away via a social media post. I could feel the grief in his words. It’s a feeling that I am familiar with, and one that I suspect so many others are, too.
In it, he says, “I hope to pet you and play ball with you again someday.” Someday. Some day after forever. This notion, which begs the question of whether or not there is a real “after forever”, is what I am writing about tonight.
Here’s how I think about time. We come to exist. In our scientific and anthropomorphic endeavors, we’ve come to realize that we can conceptualize this idea of time. This weird concept that there are infinitesimally small frames, one after the other, that we are constantly moving through. There goes one. Then another. You could imagine getting to the bottom of this sea of turtles. At some point, you reach the ability to freeze everything to the smallest slice. This is an instant. This point, frozen and unchanging, is an instance of time. When you get here, you realize that there was one right before it, and one right after it. Ad infinitum in both directions.
Of course, there are problems with this. What happens if you go far enough in one direction on this axis? Let’s first tackle the “easy” case: going backwards. Fortunately for us, we have at least some kind of agreed upon answer. Thanks, again to science, we know there is some kind of origin (or at least we think we know…). If we go far enough back, we know that space and time were condensed to a single point. The origin. The moment and position (which, if I am thinking about it right, are one in the same) of the “Big Bang”. Theoretically, prior to this there was simply nothing. Stack Exchange posts would posit that it is meaningless to speak of what existed in space and time before the big bang. That, by definition, there simply was nothing.
Ok, so that’s our boundary if we allow our thought experiment to pan left, rapidly sliding past all that came before us. What of the other direction? What is the outcome of going far enough “to the right”? To me, this is where science is less certain. It’s my understanding there are two prevailing theories: the heat death and the cold death of the universe. Neither of which I’m remotely educated on enough to even discuss, let alone speculate about. So, instead, I want to just speak freely about my own intuitions.
Here is how I see it. First, the case in which there is a definite finitude. There is a moment that our universe is destined for where all ends. After which, there simply are no more infinitely small frames of time which a godlike observer could gaze upon. Nothing. We are doomed to cease, and with this cessation, all records of our past, present, or future. Reason would suggest this outcome ought not be any more or less favored than any others.
Second, the case in which there is not a curtain call to our moments. There is some kind of moment after all the moments. The nature of what this moment might be, in this scenario, is not one that I think any man or woman could fully theorize. Certainly not without considerable progress on a “Theory of Everything”. Despite this, I can guess. Who’s going to stop me? You sure aren’t.
In this moment after all the moments, I would speculate at perhaps two possibilities. Perhaps time effectively changes direction. Not necessarily in the sense that you might imagine playing a tape in reverse, but the manner in which time is meaningful or defined. A great reset might occur. Perhaps there is a contaction of time in which some unique event creates the seeds of a “new” universe, born out of the sleepy ashes of this. I have read/watched videos about questions regarding the cosmological constant, which has come under fresh curiosities with recent observations, that have discussed how it seems like there is a necessary imbalance that led to the formation of our universe. Some kind of slightly positive pressure that is nearly immeasurable. If this is so, I would wager that the end of our time would leave an equal pressure lingering in the void of space. Perhaps it is this imbalance that would ignite yet another billions of billions of years of opportunity for matter to exist again. Whether this scenario is any different than the one in which time appears to reorient itself in the reverse direction is beyond me.
If, however, it is the case that there is some kind of manner in which our universe can be born, die, and be born again, begs a further question, one that is suspiciously like a question I’ve already posed: is there an end? If our universe itself is cyclical, does this cycle end?
I suspect that it does. I suspect that, because the universe we exist in is finite in energy, there is a finitude in which it could continue to cycle. Perhaps it is not a small number of cycles. Perhaps it is far greater than there are possible combinations of energetic states in our finite cosmos. If so, if it is the case that the universe is cyclical to a point which exceeds the number of possible combinations of quantum superpositions, is this scenario any different than a multiverse theory? To me, it is not. To me, this would imply that our universe is the scenario in which we occur(red). All possible versions of us, all moments that have shaped us – past, present, and future – either have occurred or will occur in this rubber-banding chain reaction.
What of my dear old football coach? Does this mean that there is a moment in our universe’s past or future in which he meets his dog again after it has died? Probably not. Our universe does not seem to subscribe to notions of magic. We, organic machines that have developed capabilities far beyond imagination, are subject to the same laws that created our possibility. We don’t appear to be capable of reanimation, or of molecular recombination. In all the other instances of this universe, my coach probably experienced one final moment with his dear friend, in which there were no more moments to follow.
Is this sad? Indeed. The pain of true loss like this is perhaps one of the most cruel burdens existence has thrust upon us. However, I always find myself returning to a reassuring thought when I am saddled with such despair: without this loss, there can be no real significance. If we didn’t have to lose our friends, our family, our pets, or even ourselves, there would be no meaning to find. There would be no joy in existence, as existence would be eternal! It would always just be. If there is a god who experiences this, I pity her. For she knows not what it means to weep at such loss.