OK science fans, this is way weird.

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14707-brightest-gammaray-burst-was-aimed-at-earth.html

It seems that on March 19, 2008 a huge gamma ray burst from 7.5 billion light years away was aimed almost directly at Earth. It would have been visible with the naked eye if one were on Earth in a dark space facing the source of the burst. New Scientist says it was “a particularly focused jet”.

The article ends with a statement about the dilation of time due to the expansion of the Universe and leads to the following earlier article:

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13792-cosmic-time-warp-revealed-in-slowmotion-supernovae.html

This brings up some metaphysical thoughts for me. The first of which relates to the time space continuum. It seems that the idea that time cannot exist without space and space cannot exist without time has been fairly well demonstrated by cosmology. I accept this intellectually. I work at owning this as a concept in my daily life and try to integrate it into my construct of the nature of existence. Totally integrating this idea into one’s being would, I think, radically change one’s sense of self in the world, especially when added to other physics concepts such as the idea that matter is not at all solid, but mostly empty space. In fact I once (in 2000) had a very transcendent experience regarding the nature of time in relation to the time space continuum.

The second thought that comes up may be thought by many to be rather fanciful. That is: was the gamma ray burst aimed almost directly at Earth totally by accident? I don’t claim to know the answer to that, but it is food for thought.

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