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"Marvelous!" Wise David exclaimed.  "I always wondered about what it meant when Chinese said a day in the heaven is the same as a year on earth.  Now I see the physical meaning of it . . . it just means that we who live on earth is having the shortest life span among all E.T.s in this universe.  What a hellish fate we are having here?" 
  
Wise Guy still speaking slowly and puzzled at another thing: "But wait, do you remember the experiment of 'red shift'?"  
  
"Yes, that's what I was going to mention too". David said: "The 'red shift' experiment means we are not the only ones living in hell.  Everybody is." 
  
"Red shift, or the Doppler effect, could be understood this way.  If a ambulance or a police cruiser is rushing towards you, you will feel the siren having higher and higher pitch.  When the vehicle is rushing away from you, you will feel the siren become lower and lower pitched.  Imagine stars in the universe are like cops holding flash lights running around you, when they rush towards you, you will feel the lights become more and more purple.  When they all rush away from you, then you will see those lights in their hands become redder and redder.   When astronomers used their instruments to measure the spectrum of all the lights emitted from stars around the solar system in the universe, all the spectrums were shifting towards the directions of becoming redder and redder.  Putting that together with the fact that the background radiation temperature of the universe is fairly constant no matter how far it is. And since Theory of Relativity was based on the idea that no points in the universe is special relative to another, the only plausible explanation to the observation of red shift was that every object in the universe was really in a big massive "explosion" as described by "big bang" theory.  Everything is moving apart from everything else in the expansion phase of this big explosion.  Further away things are apart, faster they are moving away from one another.  People in the heaven looking at us thinking we are living with a shorter life, because our time appear to be shorter.  We see them as being short lived also, since relative to them, we are in the heaven and traveling faster." 
  
Wise Guy sighed and smiled and said:  "Wonderful theories of the 20th century!  If we see a very small sphere right in front our eyes, is it because it has a very small diameter, is it because we are moving really fast from it, or is it because we are actually really far away from it, or is it because the point was formed long, long time ago?  If we see a dot far, far away from us, is it because it is truly very small or is it actually very big, but happened long, long time ago, or close to us but just too small?" 
  
David said: "I guess the biggest shock to people from these 20th century scientific theory is the disappearance of 'time'.  Remember ancient people in the West couldn't believe that if you keep traveling west, you will eventually reach the East, and I don't think ancient Easterners were any different, but now that curvature of the surface of the Earth is widely accepted.  Comparing to the curve of the Earth surface, it is much harder for people to envision the universe is warped, and loss of 'time' as we understood it is much more shocking than loss of a straight line or a plain surface of the earth.  Yet the journey of seeking knowledge by the entire mankind has led to such weird scenes much bizarre than that of the knowledge seeking voyage took by Odysseus or Ulysses.  The bizarre timeless imagine that painted by modern science is that: 'past', 'present' and 'future' are happening together, right now, everywhere, in multiple 'universes', depending on where you are from when looking at them.  Creatures in one universe looking at other creatures in other universes and thinking those creatures were nuts and without having immortal and decent lives.  On the contrary, other beings in this other universes looking at these poor folks living in another universe and couldn't help but pity them for not having decent quality of life due to short life span.  Remember Chinese on two sides of the Taiwan Strait used to say the other side was living in deep water and hellish fire (水深火热之中) through propaganda?  Remember people in the camps of communism and capitalism used to point at the other saying the other camp was living under tyranny (残酷压迫之下)?  Depending on the context, the same group of folks in the universe can change their mind and view and felt like they are the one living in hell, while others are in the heaven, and vice versa.  There is nothing new under the sun, or there is nothing creative under the light.  Occasionally or every so often, we thought that we were witnessing the phenomenon of "déjà vu all over again".  Modern scientific advancements with giant leaps forward often bring about 'small step for a man, but a giant leap for the man kind', yet they are all illusions that are not really new under the sun. 
  
So as through the glass and darkly, General Patton saw himself appearing in multiple lives and fought numerous battles in different guises under different names.  Same experience or even could be the same 'me' could have written the following words as 此去泉台招旧部，旌旗十万斩阎罗 under the name of Marshall Chen, Yi.  A few Romans or Greeks believed they were incarnations of Hercules, then there were such widely believed events as incarnation of Dalai or other lamas in the area we are familiar with as Tibet.  We see history replays over and over again in front of our eyes with wars, famines and exodus --- out of Egypt or Louisiana.  We saw anti-Semitism, Witch Craft, holocausts not only once and not only in one area either.  We see history playing the same or similar events in multiple places at the same time, such as: Cultural Revolution in China; anti-war (Vietnam) movements in US; Cold war, Revolt in Hungary.  As a person traveling from country to country, you would see what happened in one place just about have happened in any other place before in different scales.  For instance, the experiences that I have had in studying, working, unemployment, employment again, most likely have had happened to somebody else after their graduation.  I still remember your description about going overseas is like experiencing your little adventure to the neighboring village at the age of 4 when you accidentally followed older kids walked a little longer than parents allowed.  I can still remember how Hurricane Rita reminded me of all the war refugee evacuation scenes that my father used to tell me about when Chinese were moving around during the years of anti-Japanese war.  When I stop by Chicago O'Hare airport these days, I listen to the airport announcer and he often reminded me the famous NBA team Chicago Bulls of the 1990, but the content of his speech reminds me of Culture Revolution.  He would talk with great excitement: "Department of Homeland Security has RAISED the national security advisory level to ORANGE" with the same excitement of introducing Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, but the way he use the word 'raise' instead of the word 'remain' by other airport announcers, often remind me of the Culture Revolution times that we experienced in China.  Then all the talks about 'please do not joke in the airport regarding security matters', simply remind me of the time when adults taught us children not to play with the portraits of Chairman Mao.  How do you explain the similar things happen to you over and over again no matter where you are?  But if you think of time and space are all out of imagination, then it is easy to make sense of them all.  There is nothing new under the sun.   
  
Even something appear to be quite new could be predicted as nothing new under the light according to theory of relativity.  Such things include: two twin brothers one living at the foot of the hill and one living on the top of the hill would age at different speed because their traveling speed along with the rotation of the earth will be different.  Two clocks one traveling along an astronaut and one stay in a local Wal-Mart will display different time.  Go figure. 


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