Monday, July 18, 2011

Infinitely big and small

I've been thinking, again, about big and little things.  A TV commercial triggered it by asking me what wondrous thing I saw today, and was it big or little?

Concepts relating to large and small infinity have fascinated me for decades.  I can almost grab on to big infinity.  Like, for instance, even if our universe is finite, there has to be an infinite amount of nothingness for it to exist in.  I can sort of dig that huge, never-ending macro-ness.  It's small infinity that gets me boggled.

For example, when you pluck a violin string, you can actually see it moving if you pluck real hard and look real close.  The amplitude of the vibration (the maximum displacement from equilibrium or, basically, how far the string moves back and forth) will diminish over time, but theoretically, it never really does (discounting the effects of friction and if you don't stop it yourself).  It's just that the movement gets smaller and smaller and smaller until we can't perceive it any more, but it will continue to move forever in smaller and tinier and microscopic-er increments.  That's what I can't wrap by brain around.

I can about get into the notion that our entire universe is a speck to some thing that exists on the other side of it or in a different dimension inside of it.  That's not what bothers me.  I am bothered by the notion that there could be a world so minuscule that, although it seems as big to its inhabitants as our universe does to us, it is living in my scalp.

That's freaky.

And no, I have not been drinking, smoking, shooting, or snorting anything.  But I am hungry.

No comments:

Post a Comment