The other night Frodo and my Dad and I had a lively debate concerning the end of the Universe.  It was very interesting.  My Dad says that the Universe is finite, and, beyond it there is nothing.  We didn’t quite understand what Nothing was, or wasn’t.  It is all very well to say there is nothing, but it is harder than you think to imagine it.  We wanted to know what it was like.  This is a part of the conversation. 

I said, “Ok.  Let’s pretend that, despite the impossibility, we are standing on the edge of the Universe.  So…what do we see?”

“Nothing. Beyond the Universe there is nothing.”

“And what is Nothing? That doesn’t make sense.  When you look over the ‘edge’ what do you see and what stops you from going on?  Why can’t you take one more step?  What does nothingness look like?  Is it a color?”

“No.  It is simply nothing.  Look. It is like this.  I am making a circle with my hand.  How do you go deeper into the circle?  You can’t.”

“But that is different.  You can’t go deeper but you can keep going and come out the other side. So what stops you from taking one more step?”

“Listen, if it is nothing it can’t be somewhere, and if it is nowhere you can’t go there or it would be somewhere.

“Ok. But what stops you from going on?

Obviously, we didn’t understand each other.  Then I remembered that Albert Einstein said that the Universe is round, like the earth.  There isn’t an edge to come to and look over.  This put a whole new light on the matter.  My Dad agrees with him.  If this is so, then…

I argued - “Imagine that this ball is the Universe.  Inside it is Everything.  What is outside it?  If Everything is inside it then Nothing must be outside it.  But what is Nothing?  Nothing has to be the lack of Something.  If so, then it is empty space.  You have to have one or the other.  You can’t have lack of Something and lack of space.  So, if we have empty space, then what keeps you from going into it?  If somehow gravity stops you from going out of It, It is still there.  And just because it is impossible to go there does NOT mean it does not exist.”

Here we ran into a problem.  What we said seemed to indicate that the Universe is infinite.  We all agreed it is not.  I guess the problem was just that we couldn’t understand what ‘finite’ is.  It seemed to be impossible.  So…

“What do you think about this, Mom?”

So far, she had not really concerned herself in it.  Later she told us something that put her out of all our debates,

“I do not concern myself in things greater than myself.”

I suppose she is right.  Later I wrote a rather comic poem on the ‘End of the Universe.’

I went traipsing through the Universe
Without a single care,
All decked out in silver stars
And poppies in my hair
And wondering when I would ever reach
The other-side of Nowhere

And then I suddenly came to the end
Of the Universe; it’s true
I came to a stop at the end of the world
And found I could not go through
And I stood on the cliff of the Universe
And looked down on the beautiful hue

Of nothingness; it was amazingly grand
Trust me; It was really superb
Standing there on the edge of it All
As the wild winds around me whirred
And I don’t know why I’ve never been told
And I can't imagine why I’ve never heard
Of the glorious end of the Universe.

And then I decided I’d try to go on
And see what happened next
And what lay beyond
And what I would find
When all else was gone

But that was the End; the End of it All
I looked and I looked but there wasn’t any more
Beyond there was Nothing, an invisible wall
An undetectable barrier, an imperceptible door
A door that was shut and would open to none
And I wondered what I had taken all that trouble for

Just to come to the End and find it was locked
And have to turn back just when I didn’t want
To gaze out in the distance, to where I couldn’t walk
It really was such a discouraging thought
To never be able to find what I sought
At the Utmost End of the Universe

- Legolas