238 ANN"UAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION", 193 3 



tion certainly contains, particles moving with all speeds up to that of 

 light, and, moreover, an infinite number with speeds lying within 

 any arbitrarily small fraction of the velocity of light. Such particles, 

 in the worldwide instant of an observer near ourselves, estimate the 

 world far younger than we do. For them the world has scarcely 

 begun to run down. Particles, nebulae, or observers can be specified 

 arbitrarily near to the event of creation, in their own reckoning, at 

 the worldwide instant corresponding to any specified event in the 

 history of any other observer. The world is thus running down, 

 ageing, and decaying for each separate observer, but contains an 

 infinite sequence of observers for whom it is arbitrarily young. The 

 world is thus a continuing system; each particle or nebula has an 

 evolutionary experience behind it and in front of it, with ultimate 

 decay as its goal, yet the world as a whole cannot be said to decay. 

 It is not the same in an observer's today as in the observer's yesterday, 

 but it is the same forever. Creation never recedes into the past; it 

 is only just beyond the limit of observability in our own present. 

 Time advances for each separate observer, but the universe as a whole 

 knows no definite age at an assigned event; the worldwide instant 

 of the observer to whom this event occurs contains experiences which 

 assess the age of the world at all values from that assigned by the 

 given observer down to zero. Each observer may legitimately coimt 

 himself, and will in fact reckon himself, as the world's oldest 

 inhabitant. 



I believe that these various considerations go far toward removing 

 the apparent contradictions between thermodynamics and relativity 

 to which we earlier drew attention. Though I have been led to these 

 conclusions by studying one particular possible model for the uni- 

 verse, the same conclusions, or substantially similar ones, probably 

 follow on any model, in particular on those which make use of a 

 conceptual curved, expanding map — so-called expanding space — to 

 represent the world. The main points are the existence of nebulae 

 moving with all speeds up to that of light, so that all possible smaller 

 time reckonings are existent in the world-instant of a given observer 

 at a given time reckoning; the inevitable running-down of the uni- 

 verse for each separate observer, with the existence of all lesser 

 degrees of run-downness in the same world-wide instant; and the 

 existence of a singular condition for nebulae at the maximum dis- 

 tance, such that the singularity in our past experience which we 

 call creation reproduces itself at, and is all but observable near, the 

 apparent boundary of the system. I commend to philosophers the 

 idea that creation is ever present in the universe; not a new idea, 

 but one to which, in my opinion, we are led by the strictest inter- 

 pretation of modern physics and astronomy in the light of their 

 philosophies. 



