By JP Malig

MY old wristwatch, given as a gift a couple of years ago, is somewhere in the clutter within my

backpack. I no longer wear it nowadays, as I have gotten used to a life that is not bordered or limited by time.

From this, we reflect on time and the human journey.

What we call an hour is actually a measurement of space – an arc of 15 degrees in the daily rotation of the earth. But the earth not only rotates daily about by its axis at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour. It also revolves annually around the sun at the rate of 20 miles per second.

The Solar System, which the Earth is a part of, moves within a star system. The star system within the Milky Way; and the Milky Way with respect to the other galaxies within the universe.

Our position in time and our position in space are thus relative. Eastern Standard Time if you’re in the United States; Planet Earth Time, Solar System Time or Milky Way Time. The universe itself is a four-dimensional space-time continuum with three dimensions of space and a dimension of time.

Digression. A continuum is something that is continuous, like space or time or the spamm being sent to your e-mail account.

According to time-space measurement, a light-year is the distance spanned by light traveling for one year at 186,000 miles per second, or roughly 6 trillion miles. By this measurement, the universe is some 35 billion light years in radius. Quite large.

And quite old too. Geophysicists measure its present age by which uranium expends its nuclear energy. Astrophysicists, by estimating the temperatures at which the thermonuclear processes in the stars transmute their matter into radiation. And cosmogenicists, by calculating the velocity at which the remote outer galaxies

are receding from our solar system.

All agree that the universe began with a Big Bang several billion years ago, with conservative estimates of the universe’s genesis at about two billion years ago. As it had a beginning, it must have an end. The earth is gradually

cooling; the stars are slowly transmuting their energy into radiation; the sun itself, consisting only of free neutrons, is burning out.

Eventually, everything will come to an end – from kerplooie to kaput. Though we may still have another two billion years left for us, there will eventually be no light, no heat, no life, no time.

The universe and all life will come to an end.

Yet, these spatial and time concepts must be modified. Quantum physics proves that there is a corresponding distortion of the space-time continuum for every concentration of matter in the universe. The combined distortions produced by all the incomputable matter in the universe cause the continuum to bend back on itself in a great cosmic curve.

Thus, a ray of light energy traveling from the sun at 186,000 miles per second will describe a great cosmic circle and return to its source after two billion Earth years.

How ironic it is that modern science now defines the universe by the same symbol used by mathematician philosophers of ancient Greece, by the religious systems of Buddhism and Taoism and native American Indian belief. As far as we know, the circle is also the symbol of the human psyche and of life.

So wherever and however we travel, by foot, horseback, car, train, ship, airplane, rocket or space shuttle, we are bound within this circle. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. Every step you take is on an arc of a great curvature.

Likewise, our journey through time is not a straight line from the past, through our present, to the future. Time too bends back on itself in a closed circle.

Aqua can now "Turn Back Time" faster than Madonna can sing "Ray of Light".

We complete our circuit by returning to its source. The end of everything is the beginning. Like the movement of the hands of an old wristwatch ticking somewhere in my backpack.

JPM/30 July 2000