Thursday, February 2, 2012

Something about understanding the universe

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner

Here are two very interesting quotations taken from an interview of the mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme:
The more I learn about light the more I realize, man, we don't know anything about light... It's just bizarre... a particle has it's own proper time which slows down as you speed up. But at the speed of light... there's no time. That's bizarre ... that we can, right now, as you know, see — interact with the light that has come from the birth of the universe. So ... from our point of view, that light traveled for 14 billion years but from the point of view of the light it's the moment of creation.
...
So I do think I do think absolutely that ... there will be a flourishing of religions, not a withering away. And they will flourish to the degree that they will move into the context of planet and universe. I even think that as a matter of fact that ... some of the central insights of the religions are more powerfully presented by what we know about the universe now then when they were first formulated.
~~~

4 comments:

  1. At least the prologue to the Gospel of John was onto something it appears, "in him was life, and the life was the light of all people." In the 'light' of modern physics and astronomy it seems that even the weird tense change works - at least in translation to English - "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

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  2. What a beautiful image!
    annie c

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  3. Joseph Mallord William Turner was definitely the master when it came to painting light. That was what he emphasized over and over in his work.

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