By Rex Alphin

Why do people grow older and not younger?

Does the universe have an edge? If so, what is past the edge? If not, how can something extend out forever?

From what did all that is visible to the human eye derive? If we go back a thousand billion years before the Big Bang and all known matter were compressed beyond comprehension into a small dot of unfathomable mass, where did that dot come from?

If the Earth revolves around the sun and the sun revolves inside the Milky Way and the Milky Way revolves around other galaxies, is anything in the universe absolutely still? If so, relative to what?

If time slows down as one approaches the speed of light, does time stop at the speed of light? Does this mean that, theoretically, at such speed a clock will cease to tick? Would there be no concept of miles per hour or feet per second? Not even a perception of tomorrow?

Would you then cease to grow old, fixated at that age at which you attained that speed? What would that feel like? Furthermore, if it were possible to exceed the speed of light, would time actually reverse such that we would grow younger? What would that feel like?

Would our memory also reverse? Would our intellect reverse along with our hands, arms and legs? Would we imperceptibly lose our ability to discern, to understand concepts, to speak language, growing into infancy? And would such passage feel perfectly normal, much the way aging feels normal today?

In that sense, could we actually return to the womb of our mother to the extent we no longer existed? And could our mother return to the womb of her mother and in fact the human race return to its origins? If so, would we be cognizant of such a journey and thereby remember the future?

If we did go backward in such a state, could we not eventually return to the original conception of the universe such that we repeat the process again, thus experiencing a perpetual state of expanding and contracting, aging and un-aging, whereby we are simply now in the aging status?

If so, would it repeat itself in exactly the same process, such that the thoughts, actions and perceptions experienced today are but the millionth time such thoughts, actions and perceptions have been repeated in exactly the same way?

Just wondering.

Rex Alphin of Walters is a farmer, businessman, author, county supervisor and contributing columnist for the Suffolk News-Herald. His email address is rexalphin@aol.com.