What can be found at the beginning of eternity the end of time and space

Harem Hotel Kate Last Riddle

Harem Hotel Kate’s Riddle & Answer List

Quick list of Riddles & Answers

1 Level Riddle: A Black Hole
2 Level Riddle: A Coin
3 Level Riddle: An Echo
4 Level Riddle: A Mushroom

5 Level Riddle: A Bridge
6 Level Riddle: A Mirror
7 Level Riddle: Memories
8 Level Riddle: e
9 Level Riddle: Lead

10 Level Riddle: A candle
11 Level Riddle: A map
12 Level Riddle: Everyone is Married
13 Level Riddle: A shirt
14 Level Riddle: A bell
15 Level Riddle: r

16 Level Riddle: My clock
17 Level Riddle: A Stapler
18 Level Riddle: Smoke
19 Level Riddle: Gold
20 Level Riddle: o
21 Level Riddle: An egg

23 Level Riddle: Nothing
24 Level Riddle: Family Name
25 Level Riddle: The sun
26 Level Riddle: v
27 Level Riddle: vore
28 Level Riddle: An egg

Harem Hotel Kate’s Riddle & Answer – Answers
Riddle or Question — I am the beginning of the end, the end of every place. I am the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space.
Answer — The answer is : E

Riddle or Question — What is seen directly before the end of January and February that can’t be seen at the beginning of either month?
Answer — The answer is : R

Riddle or Question — On Earth I am dead, though I live on the moon. I am in no crater, but I’m in every bloom. I cannot move on my own, but I’m in each room.
Answer — The answer is : O

The beginning of eternity, The end of time and space,

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Presentation on theme: «The beginning of eternity, The end of time and space,»— Presentation transcript:

1 The beginning of eternity, The end of time and space,
Riddle Poems The beginning of eternity, The end of time and space, The beginning of every end, And the end of every place. – The Guess Book (c. 1820) The answer is…. The letter e!

2 Often talked of, never seen Ever coming, never been.
What am I? Often talked of, never seen Ever coming, never been. Daily looked for, never here, Still approaching, coming near. Though they expect me to appear, They will never find me here. The answer is…. Tomorrow (the future)

3 What am I? Until I am measured I am not known. Yet how you miss me
When I have flown. The answer is…. Time

4 I may fall, but I never break. Children I may cause to quake.
What am I? I may fall, but I never break. Children I may cause to quake. You lose energy as I come your way. I’m part of your week, But not your day. The answer is…. Night

5 oo What am I? At the back of every Igloo, And the middle of the Moon,
Always running around in Loops you’ll find me, If you look inside the Room. The answer is…. oo

6 Vowels! – Jonathan Swift We are little airy Creatures,
All of diff’rent Voice and Features, One of us in Glass is set, One of us you’ll find in Jet, T’other you may see in Tin, And the fourth a Box within, If the fifth you should pursue It can never fly from you. – Jonathan Swift The answer is…. Vowels!

7 What am I? Though some might say I blossom, I am not a flower. I am an impromptu roof, Your friend in weather foul and fair. I sometimes stand my ground, But when people give me a hand, I can go anywhere. The answer is…. An umbrella!

8 REMIT (A Teacher’s Aide) by Mr. Kilby
I deal in numbers But I’m not a calculator, The business I’m involved in Most people savor. This precious commodity I won’t let you squander, If it’s efficiency you’re after I won’t let you wander. Some find me annoying Others necessary, Toward the end of a test I can make things scary. I always run out Yet I stand very still, If you haven’t guessed me yet You probably will, In… 3 2 1

9 Riddle Poems What are the characteristics of strong riddle poems?
Closure: Write your own riddle poem! Try to use poetic devices we have studied—simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, rhyme, imagery, etc.

In The Wake of Gods

What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in an hour.
Odpowiedј (Answer): M

It goes up and down the stairs without moving.
Odpowiedј (Answer): carpet

Give it food and it will live; give it water and it will die.
Odpowiedј (Answer): fire

Thirty white horses,
On a red hill,
First we champ,
then we stamp,
then we stand still.
What are we?
Odpowiedј (Answer): teeth

What five letter English word does not change its pronunciation when four letters are taken away?
Odpowiedј (Answer): queue

What can you catch but not throw?
Odpowiedј (Answer): cold

I run, yet I have no legs. What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): nose

Take one out and scratch my head
I am now black but once was red
Odpowiedј (Answer): match

What does everyone have that he or she can always count on?
Odpowiedј (Answer): fingers

He has a look of awful scorn,
And wears his clothes a funny way,
Waving his hands over fields of corn,
He keeps the birds away!
Odpowiedј (Answer): scarecrow

Remove the outside, cook the inside,
eat the outside, throw away the inside.
Odpowiedј (Answer): corn

I have a 100 legs but cannot stand.
A long neck but no head.
And I eat the maids life.
Odpowiedј (Answer): broom

What is that of which the common sort is best?
Odpowiedј (Answer): sense

What gets wetter the more it dries?
Odpowiedј (Answer): towel

The man who invented it, doesn’t want it.
The man who bought it, doesn’t need it.
The man who needs it, doesn’t know it.
Odpowiedј (Answer): coffin

What’s the beginning of eternity,
the end of time and space,
the beginning of the end,
and the end of every place?
Odpowiedј (Answer): e

The more there is the less you see.
Odpowiedј (Answer): darkness

They come at night without being called
and are lost in the day without being stolen.
Odpowiedј (Answer): stars

Forward I am heavy, backward I am not. What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): ton

What is it that one needs most in the long run?
Odpowiedј (Answer): breath

What lives on its own substance and dies when it devours itself?
Odpowiedј (Answer): candle

I move quickly but have no legs
I like warm flesh and blood
Some of my bones can unhinge
I travel through lots of mud
If you see me you may scream
I really don’t know why
If you can guess what I am called
Then you are smart, oh my!
Odpowiedј (Answer): snake

You find us in darkness but never light.
We are present in daytime but absent in night.
In the deepest of shadows, we hide in plain sight.
Odpowiedј (Answer): d

There was a green round house.
Inside the green round house was a smaller white house.
In the white house was a red house.
And living in the red house were lots of little black babies.
Odpowiedј (Answer): watermelon

What kind of room has no windows or doors?
Odpowiedј (Answer): mushroom

They are Dark,
and always on the run.
Without the sun,
would be none.
Odpowiedј (Answer): shadows

What has hands, but is not flesh, blood or bone?
Odpowiedј (Answer): clock

Two people walk to the top of the hill,
a little person and a big person.
The little person is the big person’s son
but the big person is not the little persons father.
Who is the big person?
Odpowiedј (Answer): mother

I have holes on the top and bottom.
I have holes on my left and on my right.
And I have holes in the middle, yet I still hold water.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): sponge

I look at you, you look at me
I raise my left, you raise your right
What is this object?
Odpowiedј (Answer): mirror

A word I know,
Six letters it contains,
Subtract just one,
And twelve is what remains.
Odpowiedј (Answer): dozens

It has no top or bottom but it can hold flesh,
bones and blood all at the same time.
What is this object?
Odpowiedј (Answer): ring

The more you take the more you leave behind.
Odpowiedј (Answer): footsteps

Light as a feather, there is nothing in it;
the strongest man can’t hold it for much more than a minute.
Odpowiedј (Answer): breath

As I walked along the path,
I saw something with four fingers and one thumb,
but it was not flesh, fish, bone or fowl.
Odpowiedј (Answer): glove

What can run but never walks,
has a mouth but never talks,
has a head but never weeps,
has a bed but never sleeps?
Odpowiedј (Answer): river

What eats rocks, levels mountains, rusts metal,
pushes the clouds across the sky, and can make a young man old?
Odpowiedј (Answer): time

Use me well and I am everybody, scratch my back and I am nobody.
Odpowiedј (Answer): mirror

What we caught we threw away, what we didn’t catch we kept.
Odpowiedј (Answer): lice

What grows in winter and dies in summer. And has roots that grow up?
Odpowiedј (Answer): icicle

What one word has the most letters in it?
Odpowiedј (Answer): alphabet

Yellow and white
Hard outside
Stolen from life
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): egg

You use a knife to slice my head,
and weep beside me when I am dead.
Odpowiedј (Answer): onion

I went into the woods and got it
I sat down to seek it
I brought it home with me because I couldn’t find it.
Odpowiedј (Answer): splinter

What can fill a room but takes up no space?
Odpowiedј (Answer): light

It is weightless but you can see it
and if you put it in a barrel of water
it will make the barrel lighter.
Odpowiedј (Answer): hole

No sooner spoken than broken.
What is it?
Odpowiedј (Answer): silence

I have two heads but only one body,
the more still I stand the faster I run.
Odpowiedј (Answer): hourglass

The part of the bird that’s not in the sky,
Who can swim in the ocean
And yet remain dry.
Odpowiedј (Answer): shadow

The rich men want it, the wise men know it,
the poor all need it, and the kind men show it.
Odpowiedј (Answer): love

Squeeze it and it cries tears as red as its flesh,
but its heart is made of stone.
Odpowiedј (Answer): cherry

I am the black child of a white father,
a wingless bird, flying even to the clouds of heaven.
I give birth to tears of mourning in pupils that meet me,
even though there is no cause for grief,
and at once on my birth I am dissolved into air.
Odpowiedј (Answer): smoke

I am both Mother and Father.
I am seldom still yet I never wander.
I never birth nor nurse.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): tree

Born Motherless and Fatherless,
Into this world without a sin
Made a loud roar as I entered
And never spoke again.
Odpowiedј (Answer): thunder

There is a thing that nothing is,
and yet it has a name.
It’s sometimes tall and sometimes short,
joins our talks and joins our sports,
and plays at every game.
Odpowiedј (Answer): shadow

Through wind and rain I always play,
I roam the earth, yet here I stay;
I crumble stones, and fire cannot burn me;
Yet I am soft—you can gauge me with your hand.
Odpowiedј (Answer): ocean

A little pool with two layers of wall around it.
One white and soft and the other dark and hard,
amidst a light brown grassy lawn.
Odpowiedј (Answer): coconut

Pronounced as one letter,
And written with three,
Two letters there are,
And two only in me.
I’m double, I’m single,
I’m black blue and grey,
I’m read from both ends,
And the same either way.
Odpowiedј (Answer): eye

I do not breathe, but I run and jump.
I do not eat, but I swim and stretch.
I do not drink, but I sleep and stand.
I do not think, but I grow and play.
I do not see, but you see me every day.
Odpowiedј (Answer): leg

Always wax, yet always wane:
I melt myself with my own flame.
Lighting darkness, with fate unblessed,
I soon devolve to shapeless mess.
Odpowiedј (Answer): candle

With potent, flowery words speak I,
Of something common, vulgar, dry;
I weave webs of pedantic prose,
In effort to befuddle those,
Who think I wile time away,
In lofty things, above all day
The common kind that linger where
Monadic beings live and fare;
Practical I may not be,
But life, it seems, is full of me!
Odpowiedј (Answer): riddle

To you, rude would I never be,
Though I flag my tongue for all to see.
Odpowiedј (Answer): dog

I welcome the day with a show of light,
I stealthily came here in the night.
I bathe the earthy stuff at dawn,
But by the noon, alas! I’m gone.
Odpowiedј (Answer): dew

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives.
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?
Odpowiedј (Answer): one

I never was, am always to be.
No one ever saw me, nor ever will.
And yet I am the confidence of all,
To live and breathe on this terrestrial ball.
Odpowiedј (Answer): tomorrow

What is it that everyone requires, everyone gives,
everyone asks for and that very few take?
Odpowiedј (Answer): advice

What always happens at the end of a dry spell?
Odpowiedј (Answer): rain

What is all over the house?
Odpowiedј (Answer): roof

What starts with T, ends with T,
and is full of T?
Odpowiedј (Answer): teapot

Spell mousetrap in 3 letters.
Odpowiedј (Answer): cat

What is always before you,
yet you can never see it?
Odpowiedј (Answer): future

What increases the more you share it with others?
Odpowiedј (Answer): joy

What is too much for one, enough for two,
but nothing at all for three?
Odpowiedј (Answer): secret

I was born at the same time as the earth.
I am destined to live as long as the earth.
Yet I shall never be five weeks old.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): moon

What does a hero need most in the long run?
Odpowiedј (Answer): breath

What is it that you should always keep
because no one else wants it?
Odpowiedј (Answer): temper

It wasn’t my sister nor my brother,
but still was the child of my father and mother.
Who was it?
Odpowiedј (Answer): me

What is it that everyone in the world is doing
at the same time and at the same speed,
yet some started sooner and some will finish later?
Odpowiedј (Answer): aging

What flies when attached and floats
when it’s not?
Odpowiedј (Answer): feather

What can be broken by speaking just one word?
Odpowiedј (Answer): silence

What has a big mouth yet never speaks?
Odpowiedј (Answer): jar

What can’t you see that is always before you?
Odpowiedј (Answer): future

What can you hold without ever touching
or using your hands?
Odpowiedј (Answer): breath

What is neither inside the house,
nor outside the house,
but lets you see both?
Odpowiedј (Answer): window

What has four legs but only one foot?
Odpowiedј (Answer): bed

When things go wrong,
what can you always count on?
Odpowiedј (Answer): fingers

If yesterday had been Wednesday’s tomorrow
and tomorrow is Sunday’s yesterday,
what day would today be?
Odpowiedј (Answer): friday

What do you get between sunrise and sunset?
Odpowiedј (Answer): sunburned

How can you say rabbit without the letter R?
Odpowiedј (Answer): bunny

What kind of clock is crazy?
Odpowiedј (Answer): cuckoo

What has a neck but no head?
Odpowiedј (Answer): bottle

What has 10 legs and drools?
Odpowiedј (Answer): quintuplets

What never gets any wetter
no matter how hard it rains?
Odpowiedј (Answer): ocean

What creature always goes to bed
with its shoes on?
Odpowiedј (Answer): horse

What is the first thing you do every morning?
Odpowiedј (Answer): wake

What do people make that nobody can ever see or feel
but it annoys them just the same?
Odpowiedј (Answer): noise

I am, in truth, a yellow fork
From tables in the sky
By inadvertent fingers dropped
The awful cutlery.
Of mansions never quite disclosed
And never quite concealed
The apparatus of the dark
To ignorance revealed.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): lightning

When young, I am sweet in the sun.
When middle-aged, I make you happy.
When old, I am valued more than ever.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): wine

I am always hungry,
I must always be fed,
The finger I lick
Will soon turn red.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): fire

All about, but cannot be seen,
Can be captured, cannot be held,
No throat, but can be heard.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): wind

If you break me
I do not stop working,
If you touch me
I may be snared,
If you lose me
Nothing will matter.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): heart

If a man carried my burden
He would break his back.
I am not rich,
But leave silver in my track.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): snail

Until I am measured
I am not known,
Yet how you miss me
When I have flown.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): time

I drive men mad
For love of me,
Easily beaten,
Never free.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): gold

I go around in circles
But always straight ahead,
Never complain
No matter where I am led.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): wheel

Each morning I appear
To lie at your feet,
All day I will follow
No matter how fast you run,
Yet I nearly perish
In the midday sun.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): shadow

Weight in my belly,
Trees on my back,
Nails in my ribs,
Feet I do lack.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): ship

Bright as diamonds,
Loud as thunder,
Never still,
A thing of wonder.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): waterfall

My life can be measured in hours,
I serve by being devoured.
Thin, I am quick
Fat, I am slow
Wind is my foe.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): candle

A glittering point
That downward thrusts,
A sparkling spear
That never rusts.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): icicle

You heard me before,
Yet you hear me again,
Then I die,
‘Till you call me again.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): echo

Three lives have I.
Gentle enough to soothe the skin,
Light enough to caress the sky,
Hard enough to crack rocks.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): water

Lovely and round,
I shine with pale light,
grown in the darkness,
A lady’s delight.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): pearl

At the sound of me, men may dream
Or stamp their feet
At the sound of me, women may laugh
Or sometimes weep
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): music

When I am filled
I can point the way,
When I am empty
Nothing moves me,
I have two skins
One without and one within.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): glove

As a whole, I am both safe and secure.
Behead me, and I become a place of meeting.
Behead me again, and I am the partner of ready.
Restore me, and I become the domain of beasts.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): stable

What does man love more than life
Fear more than death or mortal strife
What the poor have, the rich require,
and what contented men desire,
What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves
And all men carry to their graves?
Odpowiedј (Answer): nothing

What is round as a dishpan,
deep as a tub,
and still the oceans couldn’t fill it up?
Odpowiedј (Answer): sieve

I bind it and it walks.
I loose it and it stops.
What is it?
Odpowiedј (Answer): sandal

A cloud was my mother,
the wind is my father,
my son is the cool stream,
and my daughter is the fruit of the land.
A rainbow is my bed,
the earth my final resting place,
and I’m the torment of man.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): rain

I stand on one leg with my heart in my head.
What am I?
Odpowiedј (Answer): cabbage

What belongs to you but other
use it more than you do even
though you’ve had it since you were born?
Odpowiedј (Answer): name

What fastens two people yet touches only one?
Odpowiedј (Answer): ring

What is put on a table, cut, but never eaten?
Odpowiedј (Answer): cards

What goes into the water red and comes out black?
Odpowiedј (Answer): ember

When one does not know what it is,
then it is something;
but when one knows what it is,
then it is nothing.
What is it?
Odpowiedј (Answer): riddle

What is the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space, the beginning of every end and the end of every race

It’s really quite simple: The letter \»e\». You will notice that at the beginning of the word \»eternity\» there is an \»e\». The same goes for the end of \»time\», the start of \»every end\» (although this one would get double points in categories), and the last letter of \»place\».

What is an example of eternity?

Eternity is defined as or seems like, an endless amount of time. An example of eternity is the amount of time that takes place in heaven.

What is space and why is it there?

Outer space is the region beyond a planet’s atmosphere. For Earth, it begins about 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level. The line separating the atmosphere and outer space is called the K\u00e1rm\u00e1n line.

Learn more about riddle questions here:https:\/\/brainly.com\/question\/20140875

The letter «E» Beginning of (E)ternity, end of tim(E) and spac(E) etc.

It’s really quite simple: The letter «e». You will notice that at the beginning of the word «eternity» there is an «e». The same goes for the end of «time», the start of «every end» (although this one would get double points in categories), and the last letter of «place».

What is an example of eternity?

Eternity is defined as or seems like, an endless amount of time. An example of eternity is the amount of time that takes place in heaven.

What is space and why is it there?

Outer space is the region beyond a planet’s atmosphere. For Earth, it begins about 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level. The line separating the atmosphere and outer space is called the Kármán line.

What can be found at the beginning of eternity the end of time and space

ALSO BY BRIAN GREENE

The Hidden Reality

The Fabric of the Cosmos

The Elegant Universe

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2020 by Brian Greene

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Greene, B. (Brian), [date] author.

Title: Until the end of time : mind, matter, and our search for meaning in an evolving universe / Brian Greene.

Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf Books, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019022442 (print) | LCCN 2019022443 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524731670 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781524731687 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Cosmology. | Physics—Philosophy.

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019022442

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019022443

Ebook ISBN 9781524731687

Cover photograph by shaunl/E+/Getty Images

Cover design by Chip Kidd

Also by Brian Greene

1. The Lure of Eternity: Beginnings, Endings, and Beyond

2. The Language of Time: Past, Future, and Change

3. Origins and Entropy: From Creation to Structure

4. Information and Vitality: From Structure to Life

5. Particles and Consciousness: From Life to Mind

6. Language and Story: From Mind to Imagination

7. Brains and Belief: From Imagination to the Sacred

8. Instinct and Creativity: From the Sacred to the Sublime

9. Duration and Impermanence: From the Sublime to the Final Thought

10. The Twilight of Time: Quanta, Probability, and Eternity

11. The Nobility of Being: Mind, Matter, and Meaning

A Note About the Author

“I do mathematics because once you prove a theorem, it stands. Forever.”1 The statement, simple and direct, was startling. I was a sophomore in college and had mentioned to an older friend, who for years had taught me vast areas of mathematics, that I was writing a paper on human motivation for a psychology course I was taking. His response was transformative. Until then, I hadn’t thought about mathematics in terms even remotely similar. To me, math was a wondrous game of abstract precision played by a peculiar community who would delight at punch lines turning on square roots or dividing by zero. But with his remark, the cogs suddenly clicked. Yes, I thought. That is the romance of mathematics. Creativity constrained by logic and a set of axioms dictates how ideas can be manipulated and combined to reveal unshakable truths. Every right-angled triangle drawn from before Pythagoras and on to eternity satisfies the famous theorem that bears his name. There are no exceptions. Sure, you can change the assumptions and find yourself exploring new realms, such as triangles drawn on a curved surface like the skin of a basketball, which can upend Pythagoras’s conclusion. But fix your assumptions, double-check your work, and your result is ready to be chiseled in stone. No climbing to the mountaintop, no wandering the desert, no triumphing over the underworld. You can sit comfortably at a desk and use paper, pencil, and a penetrating mind to create something timeless.

The perspective opened my world. I had never really asked myself why I was so deeply attracted to mathematics and physics. Solving problems, learning how the universe is put together—that’s what had always captivated me. I now became convinced that I was drawn to these disciplines because they hovered above the impermanent nature of the everyday. However overblown my youthful sensibilities rendered my commitment, I was suddenly sure I wanted to be part of a journey toward insights so fundamental that they would never change. Let governments rise and fall, let World Series be won and lost, let legends of film, television, and stage come and go. I wanted to spend my life catching a glimpse of something transcendent.

In the meantime, I still had that psychology paper to write. The assignment was to develop a theory of why we humans do what we do, but each time I started writing, the project seemed decidedly nebulous. If you clothed reasonable-sounding ideas in the right language it seemed that you could pretty much make it up as you went along. I mentioned this over dinner at my dorm and one of the resident advisors suggested I take a look at Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. A German historian and philosopher, Spengler had an abiding interest in both mathematics and science, no doubt the very reason his book had been recommended.

The aspects responsible for the book’s fame and scorn—predictions of political implosion, a veiled espousal of fascism—are deeply troubling and have since been used to support insidious ideologies, but I was too narrowly focused for any of this to register. Instead, I was intrigued by Spengler’s vision of an all-encompassing set of principles that would reveal hidden patterns playing out across disparate cultures, on par with the patterns articulated by calculus and Euclidean geometry that had transformed understanding in physics and mathematics.2 Spengler was talking my language. It was inspiring for a text on history to revere math and physics as a template for progress. But then came an observation that caught me thoroughly by surprise: “Man is the only being that knows death; all others become old, but with a consciousness wholly limited to the moment which must seem to them eternal,” knowledge that instills the “essentially human fear in the presence of death.” Spengler concluded that “every religion, every scientific investigation, every philosophy proceeds from it.”3

I remember dwelling on the last line. Here was a perspective on human motivation that made sense to me. The enchantment of a mathematical proof might be that it stands forever. The appeal of a law of nature might be its timeless quality. But what drives us to seek the timeless, to search for qualities that may last forever? Perhaps it all comes from our singular awareness that we are anything but timeless, that our lives are anything but forever. Resonating with my newfound thinking on math, physics, and the allure of eternity, this felt on target. It was an approach to human motivation grounded in a plausible reaction to a pervasive recognition. It was an approach that didn’t make it up on the fly.

As I continued to think about this conclusion, it seemed to promise something grander still. Science, as Spengler noted, is one response to the knowledge of our inescapable end. And so is religion. And so is philosophy. But, really, why stop there? According to Otto Rank, an early disciple of Freud who was fascinated by the human creative process, we surely shouldn’t. The artist, in Rank’s assessment, is someone whose “creative impulse…attempts to turn ephemeral life into personal immortality.”4 Jean-Paul Sartre went farther, noting that life itself is drained of meaning “when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.”5 The suggestion, then, threading its way through these and other thinkers who followed, is that much of human cultur
e—from artistic exploration to scientific discovery—is driven by life reflecting on the finite nature of life.

Deep waters. Who knew that a preoccupation with all things mathematics and physics would tap into visions of a unified theory of human civilization driven by the rich duality of life and death?

Well, OK. I’ll take a breath as I remind my long-ago sophomore self not to get too carried away. Nonetheless, the excitement I felt proved more than a passing wide-eyed intellectual wonderment. In the nearly four decades since, these themes, often simmering on a mental back burner, have stayed with me. While my day-to-day work has pursued unified theories and cosmic origins, in ruminating on the larger significance of scientific advances I have found myself returning repeatedly to questions of time and the limited allotment we are each given. Now, by training and temperament, I’m skeptical of one-size-fits-all explanations—physics is littered with unsuccessful unified theories of nature’s forces—only more so if we venture into the complex realm of human behavior. Indeed, I have come to see my awareness of my own inevitable end as having considerable influence but not providing a blanket explanation for everything I do. It’s an assessment, I imagine, that to varying degrees is common. Still, there is one domain in which mortality’s tentacles are particularly evident.

Across cultures and through the ages, we have placed significant value on permanence. The ways we have done so are abundant: some seek absolute truth, others strive for enduring legacies, some build formidable monuments, others pursue immutable laws, and others still turn with fervor toward one or another version of the everlasting. Eternity, as these preoccupations demonstrate, has a powerful pull on the mind aware that its material duration is limited.

In our era, scientists equipped with the tools of experiment, observation, and mathematical analysis have blazed a new trail toward the future, one that for the first time has revealed prominent features of the eventual if still far-off landscape-to-be. Although obscured by mist here and fog there, the panorama is becoming sufficiently clear that we cogitating creatures can glean more fully than ever before how we fit into the grand expanse of time.

It is in this spirit, in the pages that follow, that we will walk the timeline of the universe, exploring the physical principles that yield orderly structures from stars and galaxies to life and consciousness, within a universe destined for decay. We will consider arguments establishing that much as human beings have limited life spans, so too do the very phenomena of life and mind in the universe. Indeed, at some point it is likely that organized matter of any kind will not be possible. We will examine how self-reflective beings contend with the tension entailed in these realizations. We emerge from laws that, as far as we can tell, are timeless, and yet we exist for the briefest moment of time. We are guided by laws that operate without concern for destination, and yet we constantly ask ourselves where we are headed. We are shaped by laws that seem not to require an underlying rationale, and yet we persistently seek meaning and purpose.

In short, we will survey the universe from the beginning of time to something akin to the end, and through the journey explore the breathtaking ways in which restless and inventive minds have illuminated and responded to the fundamental transience of everything.

We will be guided in the exploration by insights from a variety of scientific disciplines. Through analogies and metaphors, I explain all necessary ideas in nontechnical terms, presuming only the most modest background. For particularly challenging concepts, I provide brief summaries that allow you to move on without losing the trail. In the endnotes I explain finer points, spell out particular mathematical details, and provide references and suggestions for further reading.

Because the subject is vast and our pages limited, I have chosen to walk a tight path, pausing at various junctures I consider essential for recognizing our place within the larger cosmological story. It is a journey powered by science, given significance by humanity, and the source of a vigorous and enriching adventure.

THE LURE OF ETERNITY

Beginnings, Endings, and Beyond

In the fullness of time all that lives will die. For more than three billion years, as species simple and complex found their place in earth’s hierarchy, the scythe of death has cast a persistent shadow over the flowering of life. Diversity spread as life crawled from the oceans, strode on land, and took flight in the skies. But wait long enough and the ledger of birth and death, with entries more numerous than stars in the galaxy, will balance with dispassionate precision. The unfolding of any given life is beyond prediction. The final fate of any given life is a foregone conclusion.

And yet this looming end, as inevitable as the setting sun, is something only we humans seem to notice. Long before our arrival, the thunderous clap of storm clouds, the raging might of volcanoes, the tremulous shudders of a quaking earth surely sent scurrying everything with the power to scurry. But such flights are an instinctual reaction to a present danger. Most life lives in the moment, with fear born of immediate perception. It is only you and I and the rest of our lot that can reflect on the distant past, imagine the future, and grasp the darkness that awaits.

It’s terrifying. Not the kind of terror that makes us flinch or run for cover. Rather, it’s a foreboding that quietly lives within us, one we learn to tamp down, to accept, to make light of. But underneath the obscuring layers is the ever-present, unsettling fact of what lies in store, knowledge that William James described as the “worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight.”1 To work and play, to yearn and strive, to long and love, all of it stitching us ever more tightly into the tapestry of the lives we share, and for it all then to be gone—well, to paraphrase Steven Wright, it’s enough to scare you half to death. Twice.

Of course, most of us, in the service of sanity, don’t fixate on the end. We go about the world focused on worldly concerns. We accept the inevitable and direct our energies to other things. Yet the recognition that our time is finite is always with us, helping to shape the choices we make, the challenges we accept, the paths we follow. As cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker maintained, we are under a constant existential tension, pulled toward the sky by a consciousness that can soar to the heights of Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Einstein but tethered to earth by a physical form that will decay to dust. “Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.”2 According to Becker, we are impelled by such awareness to deny death the capacity to erase us. Some soothe the existential yearning through commitment to family, a team, a movement, a religion, a nation—constructs that will outlast the individual’s allotted time on earth. Others leave behind creative expressions, artifacts that extend the duration of their presence symbolically. “We fly to Beauty,” said Emerson, “as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.”3 Others still seek to vanquish death by winning or conquering, as if stature, power, and wealth command an immunity unavailable to the common mortal.

Across the millennia, one consequence has been a widespread fascination with all things, real or imagined, that touch on the timeless. From prophesies of an afterlife, to teachings of reincarnation, to entreaties of the windswept mandala, we have developed strategies to contend with knowledge of our impermanence and, often with hope, sometimes with resignation, to gesture toward eternity. What’s new in our age is the remarkable power of science to tell a lucid story not only of the past, back to the big bang, but also of the future. Eternity itself may forever lie beyond the reach of our equations, but our analyses have already revealed that the universe we have come to know is transitory. From planets to stars, solar systems to galaxies, black holes to swirling nebulae, nothing is everlasting. Indeed, as far as we can tell, not only is each individual life finite, but so too is life itself. Planet earth, which C
arl Sagan described as a “mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam,” is an evanescent bloom in an exquisite cosmos that will ultimately be barren. Motes of dust, nearby or distant, dance on sunbeams for merely a moment.

Still, here on earth we have punctuated our moment with astonishing feats of insight, creativity, and ingenuity as each generation has built on the achievements of those who have gone before, seeking clarity on how it all came to be, pursuing coherence in where it is all going, and longing for an answer to why it all matters.

Such is the story of this book.

Stories of Nearly Everything

We are a species that delights in story. We look out on reality, we grasp patterns, and we join them into narratives that can captivate, inform, startle, amuse, and thrill. The plural—narratives—is utterly essential. In the library of human reflection, there is no single, unified volume that conveys ultimate understanding. Instead, we have written many nested stories that probe different domains of human inquiry and experience: stories, that is, that parse the patterns of reality using different grammars and vocabularies. Protons, neutrons, electrons, and nature’s other particles are essential for telling the reductionist story, analyzing the stuff of reality, from planets to Picasso, in terms of their microphysical constituents. Metabolism, replication, mutation, and adaptation are essential for telling the story of life’s emergence and development, analyzing the biochemical workings of remarkable molecules and the cells they govern. Neurons, information, thought, and awareness are essential for the story of mind—and with that the narratives proliferate: myth to religion, literature to philosophy, art to music, telling of humankind’s struggle for survival, will to understand, urge for expression, and search for meaning.