The Edge of Forever ➶

Carl Sagan in the Cosmos episode The Edge of Forever:

If the cosmos is closed, there’s a strange, haunting, evocative possibility. One of the most exquisite conjectures in science or religion. It’s entirely undemonstrated, it may never be proved, but it’s stirring. Our entire universe, to the farthest galaxy, we are told, is no more than a closed electron, in a far grander universe we can never see. And that universe is only an elementary particle in another still greater universe, and so on, forever. Also, every electron in our universe, it is claimed, is an entire miniature cosmos containing galaxies and stars and life, and electrons. Everyone of those electrons contains a still smaller universe, an infinite regression up and down.

Every human generation has asked about the origin and fate of the cosmos. Ours is the first generation with a real chance of finding some of the answers. One way or another, we are poised at the edge of forever.

✶ Tuesday, 14 October 2014

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