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Jainism : The Eternal and Universal path for Enlightenment
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climatic cycle, however, does not match with the period of 4th r1, which has a large period, again raising doubt about the jain units of time! None the less this can be a subject of further investigation.
An important geological cycle (probably related to volcanic periodicity) is 33 million years. The sun moves in the galaxy like a carousel. Astronomical cycles include motion of sun in and out of the galactic plane which is about 60 million years and rotation of sun around the galaxy which is about 250 million years. The sun itself has an expected life of about 10 billion years before all the nuclear fuel will burn out, and presently we are about half way through its life cycle. The Universe was formed about 14 billion years ago and we know reasonably well how it evolved since then. However not much is known about what happened before the Big Bang and what will happen in the future. The future of the universe however depends on the model used.
We may summarise the discussion in this chapter by stating that modern cosmology is firmly based on observations and theories and Jain cosmology has many appealing concepts. There is scope of reconciling some aspects of Jain cosmology with modern theories. No doubt there are many points of debate, disagreements and disputebut this itself is a reason enough for further investigations.
