Now and Then

In casual conversation we use this reference to mean occasionally. Ask someone how often they trim their toenails and their response will often be; “now and then”. But the “now” and the “then” if given as an explicit answer thinking the question was more than rhetorical, could mean; I am trimming them now and I trimmed them at sometime in the past. We don’t make this mistake because we understand that the question is not expected to illicit an exact answer, (like every 17 days), and we expect the answer to be non specific. But when we get to more serious questions, (asked of nature instead of another human), the answers are specific, not allegorical and the answers we get when we ask nature, through observation or experiment, are often difficult to understand. Being trapped by the limits of our languages and our ability to manipulate combinational patterns we return to an acceptable conceptual allegory. We assume in order to understand. A good example of this is our current cosmological assumptions of the age and size of the Universe. Until we can identify and measure gravitational waves, we have only one energy source available that we can use to interpret the reality beyond our atmosphere, “light”. Fortunately most of the objects in space either radiate or reflect electro magnetic radiation. To further simplify our observations it seems that all types of this radiation travel at the same speed through space and are made up of measurable frequencies and intensities. Using these assumptions we have learned to identify various atomic elements from their emitted wavelengths of light, the approach or departure speeds of light emitting objects and the distance to emitting or reflecting objects. From this one vantage point, using only one complex signal source we have constructed an entire image of the universe around us, its size, its age, and have postulated its beginning and forecast its eventual demise. Using our telescopes, optical, radio infrared, x-ray and microwave, we have looked out as far as we can and back in time as far as we can, or are we? We can’t ask the universe when she trims her toenails because, as far as we know, she doesn’t have any, but we have asked her how old she is and she has answered modestly, “As old as the dimmest light you can find”. Her answer is much like the answer we get from humans when we ask about their toenails, “Now and Then”. The “Now” part of nature’s answer as to her age is the light we can see “Now”, the only light we can see. We can’t see light that has not yet reached us. For us there is only an observational “Now”. Light that, according to our assumptions about its speed through space, may have started thirteen billion years ago. But we aren’t looking back in time, per-see. We are only looking at light that started its journey long ago and has collided with our observational “Now” at the time of our observation. For us inside the universe asking questions, there is no “Now and Then”, There is only “Now” and an assumption. Is it time to trim your toenails?