Convergence and Divergence of Space-Time

About this poem

The Elusive Ephemeral Nature of Time: On a Utube channel website post American astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, in an impish manner, playfully poses this question in the form of a Rumpelstiltskin riddle, and without offering the answer: “Not that anybody asked, but lines of longitude (meridians) on Earth demark time, but lines of latitude (parallels) diverge, with every fifteen degrees approximately representing one time zone. Yet all lines of longitude meet at the poles. So what time is it at the poles?” I am a retired educator and professor of psycholinguistics. The use and understanding of languages is a fascination for me, always the teacher that is ever a student. DeGrasse Tyson’s intriguing question belongs to the field of Existential Physics that examines the puzzling enigmatic phenomena of the hypothetical past, present, and future, with the observation of what is depicted in the field of theoretical physics as “The Block Universe Theory” (the coexistence of past, present and future), with the associated phenomenon of the “Now” that is observer-dependent; and where it is proposed that all time exists in the now, neither past nor future, but in the “now” existential state. Thus, the answer that DeGrasse Tyson anticipates as being “correct,” must be that of an observer-dependent “now,” where each of us in an Observer-Dependent Block Universe, and within a coordinated system of a global universe, independently construct time collectively within an observer-dependent framework. This eight-stanza extended Japanese-style poem is composed particularly with children in mind to whet their appetite and their native curiosity to pose interesting questions and to solve perplexing problems. more »