Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Gravity waves...

sweep through universe, shock. Buggering around with time, shock. Been watching a BBC Horizon programme on gravity, in shock, shock. Seems gravity isn't a bit like glue and has nothing to do with rendered horse gizzard, a material from which glue was once manufactured. Modern physics insists that gravity does not arise when horses are boiled but is instead the result of heavy objects moving through spacetime. Such objects curve spacetime and gravity is curvature but spookily time slows when closer to heavy objects. The heavier the object moving through spacetime the more curve/gravity the slower the time. It follows that the further one is away from a heavy object, say a horse, the faster time moves. The principle point here is that both spacetime and gravity are not absolutes but variables, that they are relative. Now, gravity waves are produced when really heavy objects, say two neutron stars spin round each other. Neutron stars are unbelievable heavy, heavier even than horses and their masses swirl and twist spacetime throwing out gravitational waves as if from a universal spin cycle set for brushed cotton, which is of course a heavy cloth.

Gravity waves ripple through the universal spacetime causing it to stretch and contract and correspondingly causing time to speed up and slow down. The cosmos is in constant flux and with our fellow tenants we too are subject to these fundamental changes. We too are subject to stretching and contracting and even different time zones. Call me old fashioned but I prefer all my bits to be running in the same race. Imagine the horror of becoming stuck in a getting up for work ripple? Or a Monday morning ripple! It would be possible in this scenario to spend eight hours just getting out of bed for work, out of bed for work, out of bed for work, out of bed for work... and this is before having to go to sodding work!

Ah, but who would complain about being stuck in the astonishing sex with partner ripple, astonishing sex with partner ripple, astonishing sex, blah de blah de blah... Things balance out, the universe gives and the spacetime taketh away. Ying and Yang. Personally could do with life being a little more heavy on the Yang, but hey, that's just me.

4 comments:

Annie said...

Did you see the programme on BBC4 Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives?
http://www.2-4-7-music.com/newsitems/sept-oct-07/eels-parallel-worlds-parallel-lives.asp

Most intriguing it was, about the Eels musician Mark Everett and his dad, a Quantum Mechanic who came up with the theory of parallel universes. If the same atom can be in two places simultaneously, he said, and people are made up of atoms, then there can be different versions of ourselves existing in parallel universes... At first the scientific world ignored this theory, but recently they're beginning to come around to it. I recommend it if you get a chance to see it...

Hayden said...

why yes, of course! And I wasn't really late for work at all, it's just that my bits weren't in sequence with other peoples' bits, and if you knew them you'd understand that it's just as well.

K. Restoule said...

I thought the BBC only aired Documentaries about Cheese?

I guess I was wrong.

Dan Flynn said...

Annie,

I like the idea of being able to be in two places at the same time especially if the other me could do my work and I could have all his fun. Hmmm, would he object? Probably but I'd take no notice because I know I'm not the fighting kind. Ha ha.

Hayden,

You know of course that we won't be paid if some of our bits work longer hours. Even in spacetime there aint no justice in the workplace.

K,

The BBC does make documentaries about cheese, it's true. But they also make documentaries about other interesting subjects. Why I was only this very week watching an absorbing documentary about thread.