“It is possible to relegate the epoch of the starting of the expansion to minus infinity, e. g. by using instead of the ordinary time the logarithm of the time elapsed since the beginning. But this is only a mathematical trick. We call zero minus infinity, but that only means that we allow the universe an infinite time to get well started on its course of expansion, but it does not make the time during which anything really happens any longer.”
Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->
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Willem de Sitter 44
Dutch cosmologist 1872–1934Related quotes

“Minus times minus equals plus,
The reason for this we need not discuss.”
As stated in "The Poet Himself" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E6D81539F937A35753C1A967948260 by Paul Fussell, in The New York Times (4 October 1981), these lines were a "math mnemonic" which Auden "had to memorize as a child."
Misattributed

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Lecture 1: Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse? Part I.
The Early Universe (2012)

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Section 4 (pp. 173-174)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)