The Structure of the Universe
When I was a teenager we used to like to sleep outside. Generally it involved spreading a piece of plastic out in the backyard and rolling our sleeping bags out on it. It was a good way to connect with the outdoors and to get away when you couldn't get away. It was an adventure. An opportunity that sleeping outside provided was time to lay there comfortably and stare at the stars. During one of these adventures my good friend Brian and I wrestled with the question, "What would be here if nothing was here?" In our teenage way we wrestled with the semantic quandary of, "Well if nothing was there then something would be here and that something would be nothing." I don't remember coming up with any conclusions about nothing (though ironically that may be exactly what we did) but we did create this nice model of time. The time when there was nothing we called 'less' and the time when there was something we called 'more'. This, I'm sure...