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Vacuum Diagrams I'm writing this today after thinking much about the book 'Vacuum Diagrams' by Stephen Baxter and the frighteningly elegant yet simple concept I was introduced to therein. So what exactly IS a vacuum diagram? The answer to that is very simple. A vacuum diagram is basically an event that appears from nothing, and upon it's destruction, moves backwards through time to cause itself to happen. Or more simply, it's a closed loop of actions in time and space. . . . Clearly, this is not getting through to you so let's try an example: Say, one day, while walking to school, you find an unconscious man somewhere along the way lying on the grass by the side of the road. Now, when the man wakes up, he has no memory of who he is or how he got there. You help him to a police station and all is well. You keep in touch with him over the course of weeks and months and continue your life. Now, say about a year later, that same man comes up to you all excited, and tells you that he's invented a machine that can go backwards through time. Still with me? Good. Now, here's the tricky part. Say, he tells you, he's going to go back in time to just before the moment you found him, so that he can figure out what the machine was and what broke it okay? Still with me? okay, now here's the tricky bit. Say, just as he starts up his machine, you accidently trip or hit a switch that for some reason, causes this man's machine to explode, the shock of which causes him to lose his memory...but NOT before it's already started him off onto his journey back in time. So what are we left with? The man appears, unconscious, and without any memory moments before you stumble onto him on your way to school. After which you become friends all over again, and a year later, he discovers how to move through time and bang, yet again, the cycle continues. That, in essence is a vacuum diagram. An event that causes it's birth as it dies. It's a closed loop that won't get you anywhere...that CAN'T get you anywhere. Now, thinking about this deep enough, what if life itself is also nothing but a giant vacuum diagram? According to popular theory today, our universe and existence started with the Big Bang, a cataclysmic explosion of ridiculous proportions that eventually created all life as we know it. What if...at the end of the line, trillions upon trillions of years down the line, for any reason, the universe ends in a way to trigger such an explosion yet again, creating everything yet again, and going on until it's end where it begins once more... I find myself strangely enamored of this concept...it seems so interesting to me...I don't know why... |