PART ONE
In this conference there has been some recent discussion of what is.
What is the universe?  How big is it?  It is expanding rapidly.  Was
there a Big Bang?  Et cetera.  I think, from what I would judge of the
scientific consensus, that there was a Big Bang - that, we are actually
just now a bit past the initial blast.  Only about 50 billion years or
so.
We are still up in the air, so to speak.  We haven't found out yet - how
to land safely.  
Or if we will ever land anywhere.  Will we keep on going forever, out and
out, further and further, colder and colder?  Until away from this 
inferno for eternity.
The universe is much larger than the one we can see.  We can see only 
about 50 billion galaxies, spanning a time frame of a bit under 20
billion light-years.  In all that time and space, we can't see any further
for two reasons: and only one of them makes sense.  One is that the
beginning hadn't happened yet - that everything we see at that distance
is so young - that there isn't anything to see.  The other, is that
light hasn't had enough time to reach us yet, or so little of it is
reaching us - that it will take too long to see, like a million years
or so... a scant moment in the scheme of things.  Scientists have now
used the Hubble to take samples of the Deep Field: a small portion of
the sky where there isn't very much visible to the most powerful ground
based telescopes, much much less than the naked eye.  Over ten days,
and fifty-a-day samples taken of protons striking the telescope's lens
from that area - we have seen further away - and further backwards in
time - than ever before.   15+/-2 billion years.  And after taking
out the noise, these pictures are great - showing infant galaxies -
and what's going on out there - then, but not now.  
Beyond that, everything is too young - or too cold - to see.  What
is happening there now, one wonders, not 15 billion years ago - but
now?  Maybe about the same thing that is happening right here.  Or maybe
not.  There is no answer yet to this question.  We get to see further
away by taking longer and longer looks.  10 days is mouse feed.  But
we can't see "Now" happening anywhere but right here, "now".  We are
very dense.  
We may very well be unusual.  But I doubt it.  I doubt we are even in the
10% of the most self-conscious beings in the universe.  We are most likely
_not_ the most intelligent species possible.  I hope.  
I doubt we are very unusual - there are other species out there - many of
them even more successful than we are/were at getting out there and seeing 
the universe.  They might be a bit further along - and we can't even see 
their existence yet because they haven't yet had time to be seen evolving
by us.  Their light hasn't even gotten here yet.  But they are there - and 
quite possibly completely invisible to us, because we are seeing their 
infancy.  They are still blowing up.  Some galaxies still run into each
other.  I've seen the baby galaxies bred by the two parents as they 
careen into and through, one another.   It takes up to 5 billion years 
for them to even begin to touch each other.  And babies already!  We've 
been here a lot longer than 15 billion years.
Wait a second.  Maybe I should have defined what we are before giving you
the impression I meant humans.
We are not only human.  We are consciousness.  Consciousness is who has
been here a lot longer than 15 billion years.  We are in a dangerous
universe.  One that has just exploded, and we have to figure out how
to land safely so we can survive.   And we will land.  Either we will
land to explode again, or we will freeze to death and enter an eternity
of darkness.  Uh oh.  Did I say eternity of darkness?  
When we run out of fuel, oh say, about 100 dillion or so years from now,
we will freeze to death.  The universe will simply peter out and die, if
it keeps on expanding into its larger and larger scale forms.
All the hydrogen, the atom whose nucleus is circled by a single proton, 
is gone.  Matter begins to re-emerge in its larger and larger scale forms 
- becoming more dense - even as we expand.  WE, matter, everything, gets 
further apart - EXCEPT on the small scale.  Everything in the small scale
gets denser and denser.  Then, is that enough to get us to finally 
contract?  I think it is the strong atomic nuclear force that finally wins 
the day, and we blow up again.  But I have no proof.
The so-called weak-force in nuclear mechanics, is gravity.  It slows down
our expansion.  Think of a grenade.  It blows up in your front yard.  What
happens?  Dust and debris fly haplessly to and fro, breaking out windows,
ruining your azaelias.  Everything the blast ejected falls back to planet
earth, correct?  In the grand scheme of things, do we have enough gravity
going in the universe to bring everything back to... what?  Probably.  
And it is there - some huge "Planet Rilirilivearibig", so big that each
galaxy - all 50 billion we can see plus 100^10 billion more we can't see, 
will come landing down smack in the middle of a living room, through the 
plate glass window of some poor hapless old lady in the middle of a 
dispute with her next door neighbor, a really nasty fellow too he is.
Or, we will get sucked into a different dimension though a black hole.
It's a different world in there.  The weak force brings on the
most violent reaction in the strong force, and the strong force says
"Whoa!  Just a minute." and then takes forever to do anything about it.
I can't guarantee what happens in there - but use common sense a little
and it will take you places no self-respecting scientist would ever
entertain:  We get to go to The Great Start-Over, and sleep on the way.
Continued...
--- GEcho 1.11++TAG 2.7c
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