relatively speaking

 I am not disputing anything Einstein said.  Like you, I don't understand all the details.  What I can't figure out is your concept of time.  If you click on your flashlight two observers at different distances, and all traveling at about the same speed relative to each other, will see the light at different times.  The closer guy will see it before the more distant guy, because the speed of light will be constant for both guys.

The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second.  If one of the guys is 186,282 miles further away from the flashlight than the other guy he will see the flash one second later than the other guy.  Mercury receives the light of the sun about five minutes before we Earthlings see it.

As I said I don't fully understand the theory, and as you have admitted neither do you, so we are both arguing our respective interpretations of it, and so it's kind of pointless.  On the other hand it stretches the mind does it not?

I didn't say that the same people would recur in each cycle of the big bang.  I said:  Actually the big crunch does not think that the universe will come back the same way every time, but we have eternity here so we can rest assured that it will come to those identical times where I am typing the post an infinite number of times, so, you know, same difference. 

But melting down that scrap metal, let's make it a brand new Mercedes, is an interesting case. The way modern day physicists understand the universe is that matter can never be created or destroyed.  It can be converted to energy, but then that energy can be converted right back to the same amount of matter at any time.

They also believe that information can never be lost.  Having perfect knowledge of every atom, including its speed, it is possible to recreate a brand new Mercedes from that pile of metal.  One of the odd things about time is that mathematically it works just as well going backwards as it does going forwards, and working things out backwards, having perfect knowledge, you can work out how it became that lump of metal, and you can work out what that lump was before it got melted down.  

That was the problem with black holes.  It was previously thought that when matter fell into a black hole all information about what it was before that event was lost.  But now I believe it has turned out that black holes will eventually dissipate and when they do that the information will be retrieved.

I am on pretty shaky ground on that last paragraph, but I think I am correct, but I won't do the research at the current time.

I am glad to hear that the Old Dog is still kicking, and that at some future time he will achieve internet and will be conversing with us.  He sort of breaks up these little spats between the two of us.  Sometimes it is nice to think of something cooling like an ice cream machine.