The universe is not just infinitely big it is also infinitely small.

Our current technology allows us to perceive objects that are just over 13 billion light years away, using the Hubble Telescope Ultra Deep Field (UDF) image which captures from ultra-violet to near infrared light. A composite image of objects at nearly incomprehensible distances (123,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 km). A small region of space within the constellation Fornax, containing over 10,000 objects most of which are galaxies.

Soon to be surpassed by the new James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched this year, which will provide wider access to bands of the electromagnetic spectrum reaching farther into space than we ever have before.

The perception of space becoming infinitesimally small was theorized by Zeno’s Paradox. Zeno of Elea, a contemporary of Socrates, who theorized that an object could be divided by half an infinite number of times, and thus movement was only an illusion. If a distance covered by movement was always divided by half, then the destination would never be reached. Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider have measured what are currently the smallest known objects, quarks, by colliding protons and electrons thereby breaking them apart to see what they are made of. At one time it was the atom measured at various sizes, .1 to .5 nanometers (.00000005cm). Then the discovery that atoms have fundamental components and a nucleus of protons and neutrons, which are in turn made of quarks. Size at this point is considered beyond measurement. They are too small to smash into an electron, and they are not found in nature outside the destructed remnants of protons and neutrons, so we are currently unable to learn much more about them. Of course, none of these objects are seen as we consider sight in typical environments. Much like the images captured by our space telescopes. There is much more to perception than our natural senses are currently capable of.

There are forces that bind things together. Electromagnetism, and gravity.

I used to think that gravity was a force of attraction that was somehow generated by the mass of objects. That an object by just having more mass than another had some power to exert a force on it.

But gravity is not a force.

Gravity is the curvature of spacetime.

Therefore, time is relative to one’s position is space.

So, time is not a universal constant.

If time is a unit of measurement, then the measurement of an object in one location may not be equal to the measurement of the same object in another location. This is called time dilation.

Time dilation causes gravity. Or gravity is another name for time dilation.

General Relativity - thank you Einstein.

As the space between matter increases the speed of time increases. As space decreases, mass increases and the speed of time decreases.

Mass causes a curvature of spacetime. A gravitational field is another term for the curvature of spacetime around an object. The mass does not create gravity, the mass of an object slows the speed of spacetime relative to an object. Slower spacetime causes a higher curvature of spacetime between two objects.

The earth’s mass causes time to flow faster at my feet than at my head if I am standing. Perhaps an immeasurable difference but a difference enough to make pull ups hard. The difference is insignificantly small, but not inconsequentially small. Thousandths of a microsecond small. The time dilation of the orbiting International Space Station at 408km (254mi) above earth is .01 seconds for every year on earth. A person on ISS for 3 years would return home about .03 seconds younger than everyone else on earth. But then as celestial bodies go, the earth is not that massive. The most massive objects observed in our universe, black holes, may dilate time to near infinity from our perspective. If it were possible for us to observe an object crossing the event horizon it would move at an unobservable velocity toward the center of the gravity well. But from the perspective of the falling object, it would move at higher speeds as its altitude decreases, approaching the speed of light.

Time can be compared to a river flowing over rocks and rills with rapids and eddies. Or rather think of time as still water with the rocks flowing through it causing waves and rapids and eddies. Objects can create waves in spacetime, gravitational waves that can be measured. Scientists at the LIGO Observatories use laser interferometry to measure fluctuations in gravitational waves down to “less than one ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton”. On September 14, 2015 the first gravitational waves were measured, ripples in spacetime, triggered by the colliding of two black holes about 1.3 billion light years from Earth.

Time is standing still; it is us that are moving through it.

Everything is mostly nothing. Even when the smallest objects are measured, they are found to contain more space than matter.

Infinity means there is not an end to space and time. If there is not an end then there was no beginning. Our three dimensional perspective is unable to comprehend this.

One of my favorite movies, Interstellar, introduces us to some of these concepts combined with the guise of a compelling story and stunning cinematography. Perhaps this is why I was so attracted to it. And partial inspiration for learning this nonsense, if I have learned any of it.

But the movie also describes a force that transcends the laws of thermodynamics, physics, and gravity. There must be a contradiction, otherwise the laws of thermodynamics are self-defeating, being that no organized system is capable of sustaining such organization under its own energy. Entropy ever increases. Disorganization and chaos ever increases until the system has reach maximum entropy.

But even as we see this reflected in society,

the binding of matter continues.

Love is transcendent.

Time continues.

Space continues.

Until it doesn’t.