If you don’t take my words too seriously, I would say this: If we assume that all matter would disappear from the world, then, before relativity, one believed that space and time would continue existing in an empty world. But, according to the theory of relativity, if matter and its motion disappeared there would no longer be any space or time.
Albert Einstein (1921) as quoted by Philipp Frank, Einstein, His Life and Times (1947) 1st edition, Ch. VIII, Sect. 5, p. 178. In response to the question by an American journalist: How could one explain the content of the relativity theory in a few sentences?
I wondered about “my” little 25 acres, what was here before me. I knew the local lore, I met the previous owner of almost 80 years and heard the stories of his family. I decided to look back in time as far as I could to imagine what it was like to stand on the same spot for 100, 1000, 10,000 … a billion years in the past.
This is what I found.
Back to Words
Go to The farm in time a Billion years ago
God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.
Avicenna, as quoted in 366 Readings From Islam (2000), ed., Robert Van der Weyer.
The line it is drawn
Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964)
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.