"How is eternity expressed mathematically?"

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
twhitehead, if "God" doesn't exist,
why in the world have you just referenced Him
as if He was looking down upon the two of us from heaven?

“What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell forever? Forever! For all eternity! Not for a year or an age but forever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness, and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of air. And imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all. Yet at the end of that immense stretch time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been carried all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals – at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not even one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time, there mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would have scarcely begun.”

"I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too."

“The soul ... has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.” 

“Time is, time was, but time shall be no more.”

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
twhitehead, if "God" doesn't exist,
why in the world have you just referenced Him
as if He was looking down upon the two of us from heaven?

Originally posted by finnegan
James Joyce had much the same introduction to eternity as I did in my own childhood and with not dissimilar effects.

“What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell forever? Forever! For all eternity! Not for a year or an age but forever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are ...[text shortened]... me was, but time shall be no more.”

― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
finnegan, thank you for a remarkable quotation on "the manifold tortures of hell forever."

Originally posted by finnegan
May I infer that this account of eternity corresponds to your own understanding?

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Question: Is anyone able to fathom the infinite quantitative/qualitative aspect of an eternity with or separated from God?"

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Yes.

the Sun is merely one of countless stars in our Universe. In essence, it is a perfectly normal example of a G-type main-sequence star (G2V, aka. “yellow dwarf” ). And like all stars, it has a lifespan, characterized by a formation, main sequence, and eventual death.

This lifespan began roughly 4.6 billion years ago, and will continue for about another 4.5 – 5.5 billion years, when it will deplete its supply of hydrogen, helium, and collapse into a white dwarf. But this is just the abridged version of the Sun’s lifespan. As always, God (or the Devil, depending on who you ask) is in the details!....

...as the Sun continues to expend hydrogen in its core, the fusion process speeds up and the output of the Sun increases. At present, this is leading to a 1% increase in luminosity every 100 million years, and a 30% increase over the course of the last 4.5 billion years.

In 1.1 billion years from now, the Sun will be 10% brighter than it is today, and this increase in luminosity will also mean an increase in heat energy, which Earth’s atmosphere will absorb. This will trigger a moist greenhouse effect here on Earth that is similar to the runaway warming that turned Venus into the hellish environment we see there today.

In 3.5 billion years from now, the Sun will be 40% brighter than it is right now. This increase will cause the oceans to boil, the ice caps to permanently melt, and all water vapor in the atmosphere to be lost to space. Under these conditions, life as we know it will be unable to survive anywhere on the surface. In short, planet Earth will come to be another hot, dry Venus....

....Once it reaches the Red-Giant-Branch (RGB) phase, the Sun will have approximately 120 million years of active life left. But much will happen in this amount of time. First, the core (full of degenerate helium), will ignite violently in a helium flash – where approximately 6% of the core and 40% of the Sun’s mass will be converted into carbon within a matter of minutes.

The Sun will then shrink to around 10 times its current size and 50 times its luminosity, with a temperature a little lower than today. For the next 100 million years, it will continue to burn helium in its core until it is exhausted. By this point, it will be in its Asymptotic-Giant-Branch (AGB) phase, where it will expand again (much faster this time) and become more luminous.

Over the course of the next 20 million years, the Sun will then become unstable and begin losing mass through a series of thermal pulses. These will occur every 100,000 years or so, becoming larger each time and increasing the Sun’s luminosity to 5,000 times its current brightness and its radius to over 1 AU...

Originally posted by josephw
I didn't say time doesn't exist. I said eternity cannot be measured in terms of a number that represents time because eternity has no beginning and no end.

"No beginning and no end" isn't a measure of time. In fact it's the exact opposite. Eternity isn't about the duration of time, but is instead a place, a location, where time doesn't exist.

I can's say it any simpler than that.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Originally posted by Grampy Bobby (OP)
[b]"How is eternity expressed mathematically?" Thread 158620 (30 Mar '14 23:48)

"Here are the largest numbers I could find as a layman's point of reference:

Googol: A large number. A "1" followed by one hundred zeros.
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,00 ...[text shortened]... uantitative/qualitative aspect of an eternity with or separated from God?"
____________________[/b]

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Is anyone able to fathom the infinite quantitative/qualitative aspect of an eternity with or separated from God?"

Originally posted by divegeester
What he actually said was: "Getting you to discuss anything takes an eternity". Why don't you express that mathematically.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby

[b].

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