Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Cup of Tea

An old friend and his family once told me they had a family tradition of believing (somewhat tongue in cheek) that the whole universe was contained inside a tea pot, a tea pot similar to the one they used to boil tea. Each tea pot contained a universe that contained a family like theirs with a tea pot that contained a universe and so on. They took guilty pleasure in boiling a cup of tea in the knowledge they had destroyed another universe. They looked forward to the eventual end of our universe when the beings who owned the tea pot with our universe felt they needed a nice camomile or perhaps an Earl Grey.

Of course, most of us have a version of the infinite universes in every atom theory. But, now that scientists have shown that there is sugar in the middle of the Milky Way, I think my old friend and his family may have been spot on.

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