Eternally yours

Is time an heaven virtual eternity or is heaven just an eternal dimension, which lives outside time?

The fine line between eternity and time (or time that is so slow that it is virtually infinite), can only be depicted using Calculus, because an infinitely small fringe separates the two. Let me prove that.

Traveling at about 1,700 km/h, you can complete a single orbit of the earth within 24 hours. If you rise from the surface to orbit the earth say 500km above the surface, you can only achieve a 24 hour orbit by traveling about 130 km/h faster, because you would have to travel at least 3,000 kilometers further in the same 24 hour cycle. At 1 million kilometers away, you would need to reach more than 250,000 km/h to keep up. However, going the other way, to the center of the axis you would be traveling infinitely slowly or practically standing still, for you would travel no distance in a 24 hour cycle.

4 billion kilometers away you would need to go at the speed of light to keep up with anyone orbiting near the surface of the earth, who would be happily achieving a 24 hour orbit at about 1,700km/h. But as you can’t go faster than the speed of light, you would start lagging (actually at the speed of light you would be infinitely massive so the slow down would start a bit before that). If a day is the measure of a single orbit, then a day would get longer and longer, the further you go from the center.

Okay, earth is not the center of the universe and certainly one could go around the earth 20 times a day in a space shuttle, without changing the lapse of time i.e. 24 hours later you would still be one day older. However, within the context of the universe, we are the moving parts of the system and not able to just step outside and fly around the thing, so we are inextricably linked to universal time.

As with all massive objects (it is true of all mass), the universe has its own gravity and, by implication, its own gravitational center. Everything in the universe orbits around a common axis, defined by the common center of the universe. Near the center, it is possible to ease through a universal day, but towards the fringe a day would become ever longer until it nears eternity.

Logically, we must eventually reach a point where time is so slow it can be regarded as infinitely slow – scientists use that kind of language to describe a theoretical level that exceeds practical measurement and can only be deduced through Calculus.

Thus, what I can do near the core, at say 1,700 km/h, might age me by one (universal) day, but at the fringe of the universe, one day would equate to billions of years. Theoretically, the breaking effect at greater radii would result in a spiral that would merge yesterday into today, so space-time would effectively stand still. I therefore suppose that the fringe of the universe may be quite static, despite the enormous upheaval below the surface. That is a bit like the calm, static exterior of the human body, which covers all kinds of underlying biological activity.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com