posted on Jul, 16 2007 @ 06:34 PM
One of the first mind-blowing things that I read by Greene was about how, on a cosmic, universal scale, we are time-traveling forward and backward
constantly everyday.
As an illustration of that point, he asks the reader to imagine that they own a telescope powerful enough to view into the living room of an
extraterrestrial on a far-off extrasolar planet. Then he proposes the telescope owner take ten paces back, sets up their telescope again and look at
the extraterrestrial living room again. What they'd see was that the extraterrestrials they'd just observed were now dead and the house had been
inherited by their grandkids. Go back to the original location, and observe the extraterrestrials before their death. Take ten paces forward, and see
the ancestors of the extraterrestrials.
Before I read that, I had no notion that time was warped over vast distances that greatly. If I remember correctly, his caveat was that your telescope
would have to be extremely powerful, and said living room would really have to be millions of light years away.
Of course this all pales in comparison to all the string-theory, m-theory, spooky action at a distance stuff, but it really stood out at the time.
I'd just like someone to really bump all my favorite theories up together - the singularity, m-theory, peak oil, the "extraterrestrial hypothesis",
global warming, etc., and see how they'd affect one another, how they are affecting one another, what is most likely to happen or be disclosed first,
and what bearing disclosure would have on the outcome of them all. It's rare to hear these subjects get discussed in a single conversation.
If I was already in a masters or doctoral program candidate I'd be doing all I could to see how I could pursue these as a thesis, but right now I
don't have the time, yarbles, or smarts to do it.