Author: photog

Stop the Presses.  Gravity is a Force and Space is not Curved.

photog Current Events, Science, Science Fiction / Fantasy , , ,

So I get most of my physics from YouTube and the latest news flash is that Einstein’s belief that mass warps space-time may be put aside for a theory where gravity is a force again and space-time isn’t curved.  In fact, maybe it’s not space-time anymore just space and time.

Uh, okay.  Personally, I never understood why (or how) space could be curved.  I didn’t see why light couldn’t just be affected by gravity the same as everything else.  I mean what does it mean to say space is curved?  Space, per se, is nothing.  It is the lack of something and all it has is location so how can a bit of nothing be curved?  Now the fact that matter and even light can be deflected in their motion through space makes sense.  We can see it all the time with magnets and projectiles in a gravity field.  It’s Newton’s law extended by all the other theories that identify the other forces; electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces.  So why say space is curved?  According to the report (and I’m not saying I can fathom this) this new way of looking at gravity also eliminates the current paradox between quantum theory and Einstein’s conception of gravity.  In your face Albert!

Now to be fair to Professor Einstein later on he had been thinking about a similar system he called Teleparallel Gravity.  So maybe all of this is just more reviewing old ideas because nothing new has been discovered.  But I think it makes sense to bring the best minds to bear on these fundamental questions.  Of course, if there’s no space-time then all of the science fiction that used the term becomes dated and passe.  Such is life.

Now, if there is no warping of space does that mean Black Holes can’t tear a hole in it?  Is there no such thing as a singularity?  Are there no worm holes and no way to go from one universe to another?  Next thing you know they’ll be telling me that the speed of light isn’t the fastest speed possible and faster-than-light travel is perfectly achievable if only I can buy enough dynamite from the ACME company and strap it to the back of my rocket sled.

Okay, now the inertialess drives of Doc Smith’s Skylark and Lensman series are science again and jungle worlds with naked red-haired amazon warrior women who can become part of the federation are totally realistic again.  I just hope that the ultra-intelligent but hopelessly-evil amoeboid Eddorians don’t find out about this quantum gravity thing before the Arisians do, so we will still have a chance to perfect a way to destroy Ploor with an inertialess planet that we’ve somehow translated from another dimension and then restored its inertia in time to use it as an irresistible planet wrecker.  Oh wait, I just said there are no alternate dimensions.

Okay, forget that last bit.  But otherwise, I’m completely on board with this new quantum gravity/non-curved space rigamarole.  Let’s just try and give it a cooler name.

It’s All Gotten Very Sad

photog Current Events, Fake Science , ,

Three weeks ago, at the beginning of May I turned off the heating system in the house.  And that was an historically reasonable action.  At that point the days were averaging in the high sixties and sometimes breaking into the low eighties.  So, hurrah for the end of winter and come on summer!

Well, today after the fourth really cold day in a row I looked at the thermostat and noticed the temperature in the late afternoon was sixty-three degrees.  I saw that Camera Girl was wearing an arctic survival suit and the dogs were burrowing into the permafrost layer that had infiltrated the living room.

Being the benign dictator that I am I overrode Camera Girl’s frugal instinct to “just add more layers of clothing until you’re warm” and turned on the heating system and set the thermostat to seventy-two.  Global warming; don’t make me laugh.

Now, of course, I’m well aware that in the southwest it’s already in triple digits here and there.  But up here where the geniuses of Harvard and Yale hold sway we’re freezing to death but we spend all our time worrying about ice caps melting.  But finally, finally, finally all of the nuttiness they enacted to make fossil fuels too expensive to use has come back to bite them on the butt.  The governor of Massachusetts has discovered that natural gas prices have skyrocketed!  She can’t account for it!  And she is demanding that the agencies responsible for regulation of energy companies and those companies themselves immediately lower the consumer cost for natural gas!

Of course, what it means is she will have to reverse the executive orders she put in place to make the prices higher a few years ago.  Essentially, she is “shocked, shocked to find out gambling is going on at Rick’s Café Américain.  Oh, by the way here are your winnings Madame Governor.”

But I think the biggest shocker will be to those who own and invest in the green new energy companies that Biden rewarded with billions in subsidies and grants.  With all that payola shut down there is going to be a lot of unemployed “consultants and lobbyists who will have to figure out a new racket.  The real question I have is what happens to all those rooftop solar panels when they stop working in a few years.  Do the homeowners have to replace them out of their own pockets?  And if they won’t, what exactly happens to them?  Will they eventually be covered over with tar paper and shingles?  They don’t look like they’ll keep the snow and ice out indefinitely.  Will people have to yank them off their roofs and have their roofs patched?  And how much will it cost to “recycle” the panels?  Who’s going to pay for that, the homeowner?

These are troubling times for the followers of Gaia.  The Earth goddess’s disciples are out of power in Washington and even in her most loyal bastions in Germany and Belgium things are not going well.  Greta Thunberg has been reduced to chasing after and hectoring her neighbors in Stockholm if they drive automobiles instead of ride bicycles.  But the new African immigrants don’t know who she is and they’ve roughing her up a bit.  It’s all gotten very sad.

Meanwhile Fifty Year Later

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

Six down, one to go.  A fourteen-hour day just ended.  It went better than I expected.  It did end in failure and will have to be repeated in June but that’s a story for another day.  The main thing is I didn’t crash and burn in the middle and if I get through tomorrow, which will be easier than today, I can relax through my root canal or tooth extraction or whatever other dental horror story occurs on Thursday.

And I was completely isolated from the outside world today.  I don’t know whether aliens landed from the Andromeda galaxy and cured Joe Biden’s cancer and started flights of humans to their world based on a book whose title will eventually be translated to mean “To Serve Biden” (it’s a cookbook!).  I looked at the headlines tonight briefly and I couldn’t find anything of note but maybe I’m just tired.

While I was gone, I put Camera Girl in charge.  But the dogs know she is a pushover and they ran amok terrorizing her and just trampling her attempts to maintain order at the Compound.  It’s an old story.  She is acknowledged to be the world’s least effective dog owner.  She spoiled these dogs and now they neither fear no respect her.  I could restore order but what’s the use.  She refuses to discipline them in any meaningful way.  She just screams at them without any result.  But all of this is irrelevant.  Tomorrow is a day fraught with great significance.  Exactly fifty years ago tomorrow I first laid eyes on Camera Girl when she was just a seventeen-year-old babe at the beach in Brooklyn.

That day was an example of fate.  Neither of us was supposed to be at the beach that day.  And neither of us had ever met.  And just by the sheerest accident we each had a friend that knew each other and who had planned to meet at the beach.  So, by third hand luck we met and hit it off.  And now fifty years later we’re still keeping company and trying to figure out what the heck we’re going to do to keep this crazy merry-go-round twirling for a little while longer.

Fifty years is a considerable amount of time.  It’s basically my entire adult life.  The friend who knew her friend is long dead but still comes to mind from time to time because he may have been the funniest human being I’ve ever met.  I guess humor isn’t a good predictor of human success or even survival.  It is a very strange world we live in.  The unlikeliest chance can have a profound impact and steer the course of our whole life.

But all kinds of chance exist.  I had assumed we would celebrate our big day with some enjoyable event at our favorite restaurant.  But instead, I’ve got two chores to take care of and then I’m waiting on a root canal the next day that won’t let me enjoy food for a while.

What’s the expression?  You’ve got to take the good with the bad.  Well, that’s a crummy expression!  But also, very true.  Oh well.  It was a great day at the beach fifty years ago.  And there will be more great days to come.  So, on with the show.