Does the ocean end at the horizon? The horizon is just the edge of our sight. Let’s apply this same principle to the sky.
We are used to thinking of what we perceive as physical objects. I am interested in the idea that our brains are expressing perceptual limits.
Imagine time as a cone. There is the point at the bottom and the open mouth at the top. In these models, the point is matter and the mouth is energy. But we want to be neither. We want to be the disc that sits between the two. We don’t want to be the moon. Nor the sun. We want to be the earth.
But this cone just describes a relationship. More than a thing to see, it is a way of seeing.
In the same way that we can call the moon the point, the sun the open mouth, and the earth the disc that sits between the two (the 37th parallel?), we could call the earth the point, the sun the disc, and the black hole as the wider sun. The earth, in a sense, is just the “point” (moon) to a wider sun.
In other words, what if the object we’re seeing is not so much a thing as a limit? A horizon.
By what limits is our horizon—our sight—bounded? We see the present. But we see neither past nor future. Our sight ends at the edge of each.
My work is trying to find new ways to define these edges.
At one end of time, we see light that is as dense as it can be, before becoming something else. At the other end of time, we see light that is as fast as it can be, before becoming something else.
Light, in these models, is bounded by two black holes. It is too dense to cross the Alpha boundary. And too fast to cross the Omega boundary.
I was talking with my friend Martha Carlin, whose husband, John, has Parkinson’s, about my suspicion that his brain is misgauging the Planck length. I believe he is using the moon value in place of the earth value.
If earth is a width of light, “moon” is too dense. It needs to expand, but it can’t; the sun is holding it in place. “Sun” and “moon,” here, are twin poles of the same light. If we squeeze light to the density of the moon (“the point”), on the other side of time, it will expand to the width of sun (“the mouth”). The sun, in these models, is akin to the moon’s halo.
It is as if we are seeing the fourth state of matter experiment writ large.
With Parkinson’s, my understanding of light is Alpha-shifted. I am not viewing light as itself; I am viewing light as its passenger (moon). Because time is too slow (magnetic), I have to be too fast. To hyper-methylate.
If time is too magnetic, I have to be too electric. I need additional magnetism (iron), but I’m trapped. There is too much magnetism outside the cell, and not enough inside (PD?).
With ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), my understanding of light is Omega-shifted. I am not viewing light as itself; I am viewing light as its track (sun). Because time is too fast (electric), I have to be too slow.
If time is too electric, I have to be too magnetic. I need to decrease my magnetism (iron), but I’m trapped. There is too much iron inside the cell, and not enough outside (ALS?).
Gravity. Magnetism. Iron. The more I look at human health, the more essential iron—especially natural, heme iron—seems. I suspect it will be crucial to our practice of medicine, in the future. Are we—our future selves—harvesting it along the 37th parallel?