BEYOND THE INFINITE

How high is the highest?

A shop going out of business in our town has an ‘infinity box’ for sale. The box is glass fronted and electrically illuminated, you can peer in and without seeing yourself at all you see multiples of whatever you’ve put in there fading off into the far, far distance.

As a child, on my back on hilltops far from light pollution on frosty moonless nights (I used to sneak out when all the house was mute) I would contemplate the shivering stars and ponder infinity. I still do. Contemplate, that is, I no longer sneak out—but I’m no closer now to any answers than all those years ago. Okay then, Einstein, if you’re so clever—

A traveller, footsore and weary happens fortuitously upon an inn just as night is falling and a terrible storm about to break. But (there’s always a ‘but’ in these things, ever notice?) the receptionist smiles sweetly says without regret, “Sorry! We’re all full up! Hard luck!”

And after going through (and being repulsed on) all the usual suggestions like double up? laundry? shed? kitchen? share with the dog? doss down in the lounge/cellar/attic? it finally occurs to our clever traveller to ask “How many rooms do you have in this truly magnificent hostelry?”

To which the smirking reply is “Infinite, Sir! This is an ‘infinity Inn’ — we have an infinite number of rooms and all of them are occupied. Full. Taken. So very sorry.”

To cut to the chase our weary traveller makes a suggestion, which after ghasting the young lady’s flabbers scores him a room for the night without having to bunk in with anyone else. How so?

BELOW THE INFINITE

We think of infinite as being towards the larger end of the sizing scale: big, bigger, bigger still, even more bigger, even more bigger yet etc etc on to infinity. But does the converse hold true? Can we have infinitely small? (WARNING: Don’t go there. Like the Ancient nautical charts that territory is marked with a red line and ‘Beyond here be monsters‘.)

Now here’s a thought——taken from my library book (“Wonders of the Universe” Prof Brian Cox) which is a summation of four recent documentary shows by the BBC on the universe. I think the quote purports to be the current word of science and who would we mere mortals be to argue? I tend to … plough on:

BIG BANG in the Great Scheme

That ‘far smaller than an atom’ thing has been given names ranging from Primordial Atom (PA) to Singularity.

The scientists are clever: having created an infinitely dense infinitely small PA floating all by itself in the middle of a non-existent nothing, they then blow it up and so create the universe. According to the good book (BBC) the Bang happened almost 14 billion years ago, creating a universe which is now about 45 billion light years across. Oops … something not quite right there …

Anyway, if it were me had to explain it all I’d have taken the Occam’s razor approach and gone for simplicity. Somehow God is tidier, and infinitely neater, than their blasted Primordial Atom. Either way it’s a giant leap of faith but the evidence is on a par.

The same old questions questions linger—

• Out of what exactly, in a vast empty nothingness, did God create Himself before there was a beginning? Then having created Himself, out of what did He create Creation? Or did a bigger better previous Goddier God create Him?
• Or—how long did the timeless Primordial Atom seethe and fester before deciding to go POP and liberate those “thousands of trillions of suns” to go forth and multiply in the heavens?
•  And—what could possibly have changed inside that timeless Primordial Atom/Singularity/cosmic Egg/Thing … given that any form of change is a function of time?
•  And—if it did change enough to make it Big Bang the universe into existence—what the hell took it so long?

MY POINT IS THAT both science and superstition (into which I also classify ‘religions’) require the same amount of faith, based effectively on similar ‘evidences’ (which too often are statements by the initiated). I suggest that for ‘evidence’ we should insert Supposition, as in Flavour Of The Day—seeing that yesterday’s science is always today’s Barrel Of Laughs (as will be today’s science tomorrow, but none of them can see that).

My case here is the Big Bang. The terms ‘Big Bang’ and ‘God, the Creator’ are identical and interchangeable—it takes the same kind of religious faith to believe in either, and once believing, so dismiss the other out of hand. Some lucky souls can believe in both at the same time—I salute them.

In the meantime that damned Infinity Box is still priced waaaaay too high, I don’t have the infinite wealth to match my infinite curiosity and desires; perhaps I can create one, but my skill with electricity would guarantee a Big Bang of my own.

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KISMET