Date: 2015-03-12
To: Invisible Universe
Miles today: 0.0

I had the opportunity to go to Honduras a couple of weeks ago and speak at several different venues. One of them was the National University where I was invited to speak on ¢The Visible and the Invisible Universe.¢ I had fun preparing the talk and had a great time with the students and faculty when I gave the talk. Since I included some discussion on 4D thinking in this particular talk, I decided to journal about it here.My goal for my talk was to inspire us all to look at the universe with an understanding that we understand only a small part of it, and to encourage us to be continuous learners. I divided my talk into three ways to look at the invisibility of our universe.The first part was to look at the history of our knowledge of the three-physical-dimensions-plus-time universe we experience, and where we are today in our knowledge of it. I briefly covered the history of science starting when we first began thinking of all matter being made up of small, unique building blocks which we called atoms, and when we thought the Earth was at the center of our universe. As we developed better telescopes, microscopes and mathematics, we learned that there were many different types of atoms, that they were made up of a few different particles, then many more different particles, and that the Earth was not at the center of the universe after all. I took us through Newton and Einstein, from thinking we¢re in a steady state universe to the big bang theories, and on to today with some discussion on dark matter and dark energy.My emphasis was on the fact that throughout history, when we thought we understood the universe, we later learned that our theories were either totally wrong or that there were finer details that modified our theories. I suggested that the invisible universe is not only things like dark matter and dark energy, it is also those aspects of our universe that we haven¢t learned yet. Some of those things we know we don¢t know, like dark matter, but perhaps most of them we don¢t know that we don¢t know, like¢¦ I don¢t know!Mentioning string theory¢s 10 dimensions at the big bang led me into the second way to look at the invisible part of our universe. Here I discussed the possibility of more than three physical dimensions, including the Flatland story and some of the other thoughts in my previous posts here.For the third part, I mentioned that for thousands of years we have sensed an invisible part of our universe that we¢ve referred to as the spiritual dimension or spiritual world. I didn¢t spend a lot of time discussing it, but did point out that of all the invisible aspects of the universe I mentioned, this is the one many of us throughout history have thought we felt or experienced.I can¢t remember if I mentioned it during my talk or not, but my notes also include briefly asking where do self-awareness, thoughts, spirit, soul, etc. fit into the discussion of the invisible universe? I marvel at the amazing design of things around me, the human hand is a good example, but marvel even more at the idea that I can marvel! What¢s that all about?!As I write this many AT thru hikers in the class of 2015 have already started out from Springer heading north. Many more will be starting soon. I wish you all a wonderful experience!