Found this planet/star video today. Take a look. See how far into it you can maintain your mental model. My first "gasp" came at Earth to Neptune but this is very very small potatoes. Jupiter to the Sun is quite amazing but still apparently tiny, Pollos to Arcturus seems crazy but Beteigeuze (Betelguese to you and me)??? AND THEN MY CEPHEI!!! I was losing any understanding of scale at the Sun...
I remember as a boy I'd imagine flying through infinite space, on and on. The fact that you could never reach the "end" (if you did, you just went a little bit further, right?) filled my head with wonder and awe. You can always add 1 to the biggest number ever...and get a bigger number! Aaaargh, there's no end to it.
Later, much later, I discovered that there are classes of infinity, different types, countable and non-countable for example. Some infinities are "bigger" than others. Eh? Yep!
Then there's the square root of -1. It doesn't exist, does it? Yes it does (but does it?) and it's called i or j (depending on your discipline...). The thing that does my head in is that although it's "imaginary", real world solutions are gained from its employment. It's like the maths skips out to another dimension for a moment or two...
Actually, there are 10 dimensions in reality (or so...).
I can only find 4 in my office, but it is a bit of a mess I'm told...
God is indeed very very big.
And we are indeed very very not.
1 comment:
stop it you're doing my head in. different types of infiniti? some bigger than others? how is that possible? i like the vastness, and hugeness of God. I also like the minute and microscopicness of Him as well. When we discovered atoms we thought we had found the smallest building block, then we found electrons and neutrons and we thought now we have found the smallest, then we found neutrinos and other small things (i'm getting out of my knowledge depth in case you can't tell). anyway, He is awesome!!
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