This is kind of inspired by Roger Penrose’s thoughts on the Universe.

Time goes like:

1. Eternity of nothingness – like really eternity. Time has no meaning, goes on forever. You weren’t in existence so it all went by pretty quickly
2. Big bang
3. 14,000,000,000 years – you’re still not existing, dinosaurs come and go, sharks and trees come and stay, birds and mice take over
4. 80 years – You, me, Donald, Boris, Vladimir, Britney, Maggie, Justin and all the rest
5. 100,000,000,000 years – til the death of the universe
6. Time loses all meaning
7. Eternity of nothingness – like really eternity. Time has no meaning, goes on forever

And you’re sat there thinking about whether to have a Big Mac or a Filet O Fish. How can you grasp the length of time that has passed until you came on the scene? How can you grasp the length of time that will pass after you die?

Protons don’t give a flying fuck about time. They don’t even know it exists. It happens that a few of these protons are flying around in you. They’ll be flying around until the end of the universe. These protons have been around since time came about.

How can we care about things that are so trivial, when we have 80 years out of eternity to do something. We can feel, and unlike the animals we can reason. We have the capacity to love which connects us to the animals. However above all we can think about our actions. What are you going to eat tonight? Fries? Something healthier? Pasta. Has your daughter been naughty? Did you sleep well?

The protons sit there waiting. When can they move on. When will the blood stop flowing around you so that they can go sit in a tree. The protons have got 100 billion years to float around until the end of the universe. Maybe they’ve been through a few universes. Anyway a couple of them are floating around your brain. You agitate a few million of them whilst you decide between watching the news or staring at the coffee stain on the table that you should clear up. There’s the washing up to do again. But it’s ok you’re gonna change the world. You’re gonna change the pale blue dot.

As far as we can tell we’re all that exists in the universe. So there’s an eternity of time of nothingness that came before us and after us, then there is an eternity of space of nothingness (at least no life, no reasoning).

You’re one of 8 billion reasoning beings. 8 billion doesn’t seem that much in an infinite expanse of nothingness of space and time. Might as well just call it 8 people. Knock the billions off, the protons don’t care. So the earth has been around for 14 years, there’s 8 people (4 1/2 Asians, 1 1/2 Africans, 3/4 European, 1 American) living here and the dinosaurs were around a month ago. There’s 100 years to go until this universe dies.

Once the universe dies, time and space loses all meaning until the next big bang (according to Penrose). So for the universe it might be fair to say that there is reincarnation. As in Isaac Asimov’s Multivac from The Last Question that finally answers ‘let there be light’ at the end of the universe, just before the lights go out.