Ubi cœlum terræ se conjungit.
A host of angels
vent their dirge obscure
as of a vanquished
army of cicadas
to signify alarm or
their displeasure
called to retreat, scorned
unavailing stardust.
 |
‘. . . and now in little space the confines met
of Empyrean Heav’n and of this World . . .’
Paradise Lost Book 10
1667 John Milton |
A Miotic and Dilative Cosmic Eye
In his paper published in April 1930, Zum kosmologischen Problem der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie, Albert Einstein speculates briefly on a universe in a process of Expansion (Dilatationsbewegung) and Collapse in an eternal cycle of extinctions and rebirths. His flirtation with Oscillating Universe theory develops from a presumption of ‘spherical space [spharischen Raum], whose radius is variable over time [and, in consequence, a progressive decrease in expansion follows, which] sets an upper boundary for the radius of the cosmos that cannot be exceeded with the passage of time . . . whereupon the whole process is gone through in the opposite sense (umgekehrtem Sinne) . . .’
