
Conservation of Mass
Lavoissier pointed out, with the help of his wife Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze,
that if there existed a giant glass dome, big enough to cover all of Paris,
while the French Revolution burned through all of the homes and possessions
of the aristocracy-- and if the debris collected inside that great glass dome
could be converted back to its original sate-- the resulting mass would
exactly equal its pre-Revolution existence.
This is worth our consideration as we see the earth around us today:
wildfires burning through entire towns, villages and states,
animal populations dwindling and expiring completely, and
the quality of the air too thick with ash to even measure. I wonder
whether we could all gather some ash now, from the streets outside.
In 20 years, could our children combine our ash gatherings to create
something new, using their own hopefulness, inspiration and faith
to knit a sparkling world free of the troubles we've cultivated over the
past hundreds of decades?
