“Turtles All the Way Down!”

Everybody knows the story of the south sea islander who was asked what his island was resting on. He said it was on the back of a giant turtle. But what was that turtle on? —it was on an even bigger turtle—in fact it was “turtles all the way down!”

We laugh, and think, “How simple. How primitive.” There obviously couldn’t be an infinite progression of bigger and bigger turtles.

Wait a minute! Let’s re-think that in more modern, possibly more scientific terms. Where is his island? It’s the peak of a sea-mount, surrounded by water, on a globe just floating in space. It’s 8 light minutes from the sun, and 4.2 light years from the next sun (the star, Proxima Centauri). Astronomers tell us that the universe has been expanding for 14.8 billion years. But into what? What is beyond that? More stars? More turtles?! Nothing?

Maybe that islander wasn’t so far wrong. We really can’t come up with anything much better! Farther and farther stars (or three-dimensional space stretching to infinity) or more and more turtles, may not be so far-fetched.

And while we’re thinking along these lines, maybe we’re at the beginning of another infinity too. It could be that the ‘Big Bang’ started a fourth dimension as well—time! But that’s a whole other story.