The Stars and The Earth or Thoughts upon Time, Space, and Eternity

By Felix Eberty

Translator: Josephine Caruana

Published by Comino-Verlag

Copyright: © 2018

A short read reflecting on the information carried by a photon as it reaches your eye from the far reaches of space.

Originally the book was published in two volumes, both together totaling less than 80 pages, in 1846 and 1847. The book sought the union of physics and religion, metaphysics; for God sees the past and the present as a single point in the space time continuum, time stopping when moving with the light, observing all in three dimensions rather than four. Eberty continues his thesis from an all-seeing God to a time when man’s technological progress allows him to see as God sees or the child of God becomes a god.

Eberty knowing that the speed of light was finite, about 300,000 km/s, contemplated that all visuals captured by any type of eye, human or otherwise, happened in the past. The past including an inconceivably, insignificantly small amount of time in the past, such as a plate of mac and cheese in front of you, is still in the past, what you see has already occurred. Jurgen Neffe, author of a biography of Albert Einstein, stated it succinctly “time travels with light”. Observing light traveling from a billion light years away exhibits events as they happened a billion years ago but if you traveled with those photons for those billion years the past occurs at the same time as your present.

Eberty’s thoughts on the meaning of time and space were recognized at the time not only as novel but metaphysical in nature, maybe not so much today.