The Eternity of Time and Space

I asked a question about Eternity: Can man fully comprehend it?  If not, how close can we get?  In general, how good are we really at comprehending really large numbers?  In the following comic strip, a man simulates an entire universe just creating a computer made from rocks.  How long would it take him to do this?  How long would it take him to simulate one second of his universe?  My guess is far more than we as humans can comprehend.  So when we think about the infinite nature of time, it can overwhelm us and give us a sense of awe.  My good friend Sister Holt commented on my Facebook page that these are good questions, but what were the answers?  That's the catch--maybe we'll never know.

We as humans have troubles with really really big numbers.  In the United States government, for example, the politicians keep mixing up the words "millions," "billions," and "trillions."  They all pretty much mean the same thing to them, although one is thousands of times greater.

It's not just time, but space too can be seen as infinite.  Imagine God creating an unlimited amount of worlds.  So far we haven't been able to see life anywhere else in the Universe.  So the previous life God created elsewhere in the cosmos is really far away.  Not only that, but there are thousands upon millions of other worlds out there, greater than the sands of the sea.  So how much space would be needed in space to house all these planets sufficiently far away from one another?  A lot?  Say, infinite?  Just thinking about the vastness of the universe evokes a sense of awe in me.

And it just isn't the eternity of bigness that causes our minds to blow up, there is also the eternity of smallness.  How small is the smallest particle?  An atom?  Nope.  A quark?  Nope, but getting closer.  Is there a real end to how small matter can be taken apart?  Tessellations are a good example of that.  How far into the tessellation can you go?  Into infinity--you can never stop.

It's true with all of eternity and infinity that we as mortal beings won't be able to comprehend them in this life time.  But that's why we'll have an eternity to figure it out. ;)