In the large, sweeping view of our universe, the Earth and the Human story are invisible.  Whereas the ebb and flow of Human civilization now nears an apex, beware the crescendo, for our species is due to come crashing into oblivion - like all species do.  A glorious chapter of sentient existence will have come and gone; as Life remains upon this bountiful Earth.

We must excuse ourselves for being most interested in Human affairs, just as a person must be excused for being most interested in himself.  Insight, Truth, Beauty - our most cherished appreciations are created, and have life for a brief few millennia!  During a "tick of time" these noble thoughts have minds to think them.  Yet, in some sense, all things we value are eternal, for in distant futures, newly-evolved sentient beings may embrace similar ideals.  And there are other planets in this universe, billions of them; and the same appearing and disappearing of sentience and their ideals must also be occuring upon some of them.

However, when our universe collapses upon itself, assuming ours is "closed," everything will melt, evaporate and disappear.  Begone, the arduous journeys of individuals, the ebb and flow of civilizations, and the coming and goings of sentient species, as atoms evaporate to energy, and another cosmic rebirth commences, cleansed of any trace of the previous universe.

But this next universe will give rise to the same stellar evolutions, the same planetary systems, and there will be the same twinkling into existence of sentient beings, facing for their first time new cosmic conundrums and formulations of their versions of beauty, truth and ultimate insights.  Every place where life reforms, and the spark of sentience gives birth anew to noble thoughts, there will recur the entire panoply of Odyssean journeys, of devotions to noble aspirations, of monumental achievements of understanding, of the creation of civilizations - all these things will appear, and ultimatley disappear, in approximately the same form!  This "eternal recurrence" will be impervious to remembrance.

Within each universe these minuscule dramas unfold in farflung places and times, and each is felt freshly anew.  Yet each extinguishes, and is erased by the inexorable aging and collapse of the universe, devouring their meaning as it devours their existence.

Everything, ultimately, is nothing!

This site opened:  December 11, 1998.   Last Update: December 11, 1998