What is Spacetime? Exploring Cosmology, Einstein's Field & Restructured Gravity

[pelastration]

What is Spacetime? I think this is an essential question in Cosmology. Some will accept, others don't.
Has spacetime a hidden property, is it a sub-material elastic object/background or ...? Is there one spacetime or are there spacetimes? Is spacetime the "Field" (das Feld) Einstein referred to?

The Stanford link http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/ [/URL] shows some approaches.

Marcus pointed out in post [PLAIN] https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=588977&postcount=7 [/URL] - referring to an article with Renate Loll - that: "According to Einstein, spacetime is flexible (malleable, ductile), but also at the same time continuous and smooth-----for example it does not have breaks (fractures, gaps, rips...)".

So:
1. Flexible (thus elastic),
2. Continuous and smooth,
3. No breaks (non-breakable).

In my speculative opinion spacetime is indeed a hidden object and it is non-breakable.
But how can we come from these properties to local, discrete packages (which seems independent)?
Well, by bending and penetrating parts of spacetime with each other you can create locally discrete zones (holons) where two or more parts of that object interact - and influence - each other. That creates locally friction (and kinetics effects) between the spacetime layers. Interaction in such system is a feedback approach: The local parts influence the larger hidden system and the hidden system influences the local packages.
The consequence of this approach is that we can not make a distinction between matter (fields) and energy (fields) because they all come from the same properties. Interconnectedness in incorporated in everything, and that's called "gravity". Our Universe is thus "restructured gravity'.

Attached image shows you the basic concept of the multi-layers spacetime. If the image is not loaded you can find that on this link [PLAIN] http://mu6.com/holons_2/genderless_to_duality.jpg [/URL].

But ... what is spacetime in your opinion?

 

[pelastration]

Since nobody reacts, here is a link to a previous (2003) PF thread titled: What IS the spacetime fabric?
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5732&page=1&pp=15

 

[Daminc]

I've theorized a bit on the nature of space/time but no one can actually say what spacetime fabric is as of yet because there is no way of actually proving anything conclusively.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Since nobody reacts, here is a link to a previous (2003) PF thread titled: What IS the spacetime fabric?
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5732&page=1&pp=15

I think that thread about covers the cases, so why do we need this new one?

 

[pelastration]

I think that thread about covers the cases, so why do we need this new one?

first I found the old one afterwards (via Google!), secondly since 2003 there are lot new members, thirdly I was touched by the way Renate Loll expressed her points in the article (in Dutch).
BTW she stays on the level of spacetime "ripples" ('plooien' in Dutch). If something in non-breakable then there can be also other geometric concepts like topogical caps like I explained. I wonder why she stays in the one dimensional thinking of ripples. Why not multi-layers created by only one layer?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Maybe because she doesn't find any need for multiple layers!

 

[pelastration]

Maybe because she doesn't find any need for multiple layers!

Touché.
yes probably. Or she didn't imagined the concept. I e-mailed her last weekend and asked. No reply yet. But maybe she doesn't find any need to answer.

 

[marcus]

first I found the old one afterwards (via Google!), secondly since 2003 there are lot new members, thirdly I was touched by the way Renate Loll expressed her points in the article (in Dutch).
BTW she stays on the level of spacetime "ripples" ('plooien' in Dutch). If something in non-breakable then there can be also other geometric concepts like topogical caps like I explained. I wonder why she stays in the one dimensional thinking of ripples. Why not multi-layers created by only one layer?

I was hoping someone who can read Dutch would read the original. I was guessing about some of the words and sometimes only made a very rough approximation in English. Even the title I did not translate exactly, I think! Any help you can give would be appreciated Pela.

I wonder if the dutch word 'plooien' is related to the english word DEPLOY (unfold) and EMPLOY (fold in) and maybe also the PLEATS in the fabric of a curtain or dress. haven't checked, just guess.

Here is the Dutch text
www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/press/knutselen.pdf

here is a thread with partial rough English translation
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=588977&postcount=6

 

[marcus]

Since nobody reacts, here is a link to a previous (2003) PF thread titled: What IS the spacetime fabric?
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5732&page=1&pp=15

thanks for linking us back to that Good Old Thread of 2003! I had forgotten that thread. Somebody says that scientists have discovered that the color of spacetime is beige and that he thinks it is made of caramel pudding----one may refer to it not as the spacetime continuum but as "the spacetime FLAN'


In this thread a poster named Eh gave a germane quote from Einstein
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=69491&postcount=4


"Space-time does not claim existence in its own right, but only as a structural quality of the [gravitational] field"."

At one time I found a link to a source for that quote which gives context, but I posted the link and forgot where. Does anyone have a source?

 

[pelastration]

I was hoping someone who can read Dutch would read the original. I was guessing about some of the words and sometimes only made a very rough approximation in English. Even the title I did not translate exactly, I think! Any help you can give would be appreciated Pela.

I wonder if the dutch word 'plooien' is related to the english word DEPLOY (unfold) and EMPLOY (fold in) and maybe also the PLEATS in the fabric of a curtain or dress. haven't checked, just guess.

Here is the Dutch text
www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/press/knutselen.pdf

here is a thread with partial rough English translation
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=588977&postcount=6

OK Marcus I will translate this night some parts and later the others.
Indeed I believe "plooien' is related. We also use 'plooien' in the curtain or dress. Very similar toe 'plooien' is 'vouwen' (like folding something as an action, but also the ripples in the elbow or skin.)

 

[marcus]

OK Marcus I will translate this night some parts and later the others.
Indeed I believe "plooien' is related. We also use 'plooien' in the curtain or dress. Very similar toe 'plooien' is 'vouwen' (like folding something as an action, but also the ripples in the elbow or skin.)

thanks, any amount of improvement, substantial, or even just a small correction, would help. but please do not work too hard, unless you enjoy translating! (it is not to lose sleep over )

the photograph of Loll that they put in that Handelsblad article looks very serious to me. I like this one better
http://perimeterinstitute.ca/images/marseille/marseille103.JPG
where she is out for a walk with friends. Lee Smolin took it.

 

[marcus]

"Space-time does not claim existence in its own right, but only as a structural quality of the [gravitational] field"."

At one time I found a link to a source for that quote which gives context, but I posted the link and forgot where. Does anyone have a source?

I found the old post with google,
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5768
it has a link to a longer quote:

Something Einstein wrote in 1952 contains this quote

"Space-time does not claim existence on its own, but only as a structural quality of the field."

It is not especially easy to grasp the meaning, I suspect, but it might be worth thinking about. Eh quoted this in another PF thread and I was able to find an online reference in this Usenet post, which gives more context:

> However, I consider the ultimate words of Einstein on this matter
> to be the fifth appendix, added in 1952 (three years before his
> death), to the fifteenth edition of his book "Relativity: The
> Special and the General Theory." In that appendix, titled
> "Relativity and the Problem of Space," Einstein explicitly
> addresses the issue in question here. (Note that in the following
> "type (1)" space is Minkowski space.)>
> "If we imagine the gravitational field, i.e., the
> functions g_ik, to be removed, there does not remain a
> space of the type (I), but absolutely _nothing_, and
> also no 'topological space'. For the functions g_ik
> describe not only the field, but at the same time also
> the topological and and metrical structural properties
> of the manifold. A space of type (I), judged from the
> standpoint of the general theory of relativity, is not
> a space without field, but a special case of the g_ik
> field, for which -- for the coordinate system used,
> which in itself has no objective significance -- the
> functions g_ik have values that do not depend on the
> co-ordinates. There is no such thing as an empty space,
> i.e., a space without field. Space-time does not claim
> existence on its own, but only as a structural quality of the field"

The Usenet post by Paul Stewart is archived at
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-07/msg0052723.html

 

[Hans de Vries]

I was hoping someone who can read Dutch would read the original. I was guessing about some of the words and sometimes only made a very rough approximation in English. Even the title I did not translate exactly, I think! Any help you can give would be appreciated Pela.

Marcus, The German version you have is an exact translation of the original
Dutch version. There's not that much physics in it since it's for a daily journal.

dutch: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/press/knutselen.pdf
german: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/press/NRCdeutsch.htm

The essential points (for english readers) can be found here:

http://focus.aps.org/story/v14/st13

Regards, Hans

 

[marcus]

Marcus, The German version you have is an exact translation of the original
Dutch version. There's not that much physics in it since it's for a daily journal.

dutch: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/press/knutselen.pdf
german: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/press/NRCdeutsch.htm

The essential points (for english readers) can be found here:

http://focus.aps.org/story/v14/st13

Regards, Hans

Hans, thanks for your interest! I've looked at the three sources you give here and must say the Focus article by Adrian Cho is good science journalism. Worth recommending as a quick introduction.

I'm interested in the popular press coverage too, for various reasons. I'd like to understand those articles better although there is not much science content. [for example: What is the feeling attached to the dutch word "knutselen" and the german translation of it "basteln"? My dictionary does not do such a good job with colloquialisms and nuances. It just says that "basteln" means to devote hard work to something.]

 

[Hans de Vries]

[for example: What is the feeling attached to the dutch word "knutselen" and the german translation of it "basteln"? My dictionary does not do such a good job with colloquialisms and nuances. It just says that "basteln" means to devote hard work to something.]

"knutselen" and "basteln" is a very good 1:1 translation. To English the title
would translate best I think to "Playing with quantum foam". However, the
word "playing" misses the aspect that you're actually trying to make/create
something while playing, like in "basteln" and "knutselen"

Regards, Hans

 

[selfAdjoint]

"knutselen" and "basteln" is a very good 1:1 translation. To English the title
would translate best I think to "Playing with quantum foam". However, the
word "playing" misses the aspect that you're actually trying to make/create
something while playing, like in "basteln" and "knutselen"

Regards, Hans

Mmm, just to get the sense rather than anything literal, how about "tossing"? You can toss a ball, or a salad, or a bowl on a potter's wheel.

 

[marcus]

"knutselen" and "basteln" is a very good 1:1 translation. To English the title
would translate best I think to "Playing with quantum foam". However, the
word "playing" misses the aspect that you're actually trying to make/create
something while playing, like in "basteln" and "knutselen"

Regards, Hans

Another possible English title or headline for the story could be

"Building with quantum foam"

I gather that basteln and knutselen have the sense of

"to do handcrafts, to make stuff or tinker with stuff for fun"

Arts-and-crafts handwork is certainly popular in the United States, there is currently a craze for knitting. Retired people take classes in ceramics and woodworking and weaving and there's all those Martha Stewart glue-gun decoration projects.

but I don't know any general verb for "to do recreational handcrafts".

So maybe the best is just "building with quantum foam"

BTW in the interview Loll says SOME PEOPLE talk about quantum foam, but that is not her choice of words. The journalist put the foam image in the title for his own journalistic reasons, not because that is a central analogy in Loll's work. Yes the title of the popular article is misleading, so what's new.

[MUCH LATER EDIT: this is an afterthought, how about

"Crafting the Quantum Foam"]

 

[marcus]

thanks for linking us back to that Good Old Thread of 2003! I had forgotten that thread. Somebody says that scientists have discovered that the color of spacetime is beige and that he thinks it is made of caramel pudding----one may refer to it not as the spacetime continuum but as "the spacetime FLAN'


In this thread a poster named Eh gave a germane quote from Einstein
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=69491&postcount=4


"Space-time does not claim existence in its own right, but only as a structural quality of the [gravitational] field".

to take another look at the thread topic: what is spacetime?

if we go by the accepted wisdom (Einstein) spacetime does not exist, what exists is the GEOMETRY of it (the "field" is just a name for the geometry of spacetime)

so we have come again to the essential question: how can something have a shape if it doesn't exist.

or, as AE put it, if it cannot claim separate existence IN ITS OWN RIGHT. I am not sure what that means but anyway, if something does not exist in its own right as a real something, then how can it have a shape.

how can disembodied geometry exist of its own accord?


so then people go and put the responsibility for existing on MATTER and they say that spacetime geometry (the "field") is just the geometric relationships between bits of matter or between events involving bits of matter, like the collision between my foot and the floor when I take a step.

maybe it is too frustrating to think along these lines.

anyway this thread is supposed to be about what is spacetime, and I think
the people making the most progress now are the Triangulations (CDT) people and they say, if I understand right, that

Spacetime is NOT made of triangles. It just helps to use triangles when you quantize its geometry. And afterwards shrink the triangles down in size, if you can get some more computer time and it is practical to shrink them some more. But spacetime is not made of them, one just uses them because they work.

And they do not say it is "foam" or "fabric" or "fluid" or any kind of substance AFAIK. I didnt hear them use a material analogy. They just want to do the best they can to making a quantum dynamics of the GEOMETRY and not ask, for the time being AFAICS, what IT it is the geometry of.

Please let me know if you got a different impression about the CDT approach.

 

[hellfire]

> If we imagine the gravitational field, i.e., the
> functions g_ik, to be removed, there does not remain a
> space of the type (I), but absolutely _nothing_,

I guess this depends on what one defines with “remove the gravitational field”. It seams that Einstein assumed that the removal of the gravitational field is equivalent to the removal of guv. Based on this assumption, the identification between gravitational field and spacetime seams to be a meaningful step, as guv = 0 has no physical meaning. I have no knowledge to question Einstein’s claims, but it seams not very obvious to me that the removal of the gravitational field is equivalent to the removal of the guv. As a first guess I would take “removal of gravitational field” equal to taking no matter sources Tuv = 0, or as a second guess taking zero Christoffel symbols, or may be a zero Riemann curvature tensor. None of them lead to guv = 0. I have to admit that it is unclear to me what “gravitational field” actually means in general relativity, which seams to be the key issue to arrive to such a conclusion:

> There is no such thing as an empty space,
> i.e., a space without field. Space-time does not claim
> existence on its own, but only as a structural quality of the field"

 

[nightcleaner]

Hi Marcus

We have an intuitive idea of space and time from experiments we performed in the cradle with fingers and toes. You remember. There is no such intuitive understanding of gravitational field. I wonder why we should now accept the idea, put forward by Einstein in his years as a self-professed curiosity of socklessness, that the concept of gravitational field should be more fundamental than the intuitive concepts of space and time?

I can and do accept gratefully the notion, due to Einstein and Minkowski, that space and time are equivalent. This is not intuitively obveous. However I have found that space-time equivalence yields fairly easily to the following analysis: an increment of time is required to measure an increment of space. Hence there is no space without time. It remains to wonder if there is any time without space.

Curiously, this seems to reduce in mathematical terms to the meaninglessness of zero in the denominator of rational expressions for motion. I suggest that nothing exists which does not move (this from the idea due to Einstein that there is no preferred reference frame). So, any object has to possesses a velocity, expressed as change in spatial position divided by change in temporal position. From this I deduce that taking the increment of time to zero results in the disappearance of the notion of "object." Or, equivalently, that zero time results in the notion of object being generalized to the notion of the universal set. If time is zero, nothing is everything. Everything is nothing.

Since we must posit that we exist, there is something. Hence time cannot go to zero. The notion of instantaneous velocity is a convenient and useful fiction. We do of course take change in distance to zero, meaning only that the measured object is moving in the same frame as the observer. Does this allow us to say that space-time equivalence means only that space and time are proportional, and not that they are identical?

I think not. (Please do not let that be my epitaph!) The notion of point-like particles is, I do think, like the notion of zero time, a useful fiction. I imagine that it was thoughts like these that led Planck to declare the action potential, and Heisenburg to declare the uncertainty principle.

That's my coffee.

On a personal note, if anyone wonders where I have been lately, the garden is planted and the cottage now has windows and a door to go with the floor, walls and roof. None of this is my doing, but it has been interesting to watch. Heat, telephone, and electricity may arrive eventually. Plumbing is that bucket in the corner.

Be well,

Richard

 

[Daminc]

I suggest that nothing exists which does not move (this from the idea due to Einstein that there is no preferred reference frame).

What about at the center of the Universe? (The point where everything is moving away from).

 

[marcus]

... the idea, put forward by Einstein in his years as a self-professed curiosity of socklessness,...

That's my coffee.

On a personal note, if anyone wonders where I have been lately, the garden is planted and the cottage now has windows and a door to go with the floor, walls and roof. None of this is my doing, but it has been interesting to watch. Heat, telephone, and electricity may arrive eventually. Plumbing is that bucket in the corner.

...

this is an interesting point. can one trust the judgement (about space, time, and other serious questions) of someone who wears no socks?

Hi Richard, congratulations on getting the garden in. sounds like the cottage is quite habitable now, apart from utilities.

Unless I'm confusing places, the cottage is out in the woods, by a slough, and (I thought) inaccessible in the winter. I think I remember that you left your espresso maker there last fall and had to go the whole winter without espresso---something that added savor to returning this spring.

Now it is sounding more year-round accessible and habitable. Am I confusing cabins and cottages? Will this cottage be made comfortable in all seasons? I must have missed part of the story.

 

[Curious6]

People are often surprised to hear that space and time had a beginning. This is due to their everyday notions of these familiar concepts. They say, 'The Universe must be expanding into something'. However, physicists suggest that prior to the inception of our 4D spacetime, there was a spaceless, timeless state. This could perhaps be thought of as a completely blank state, but still something in a sense, where our spacetime could then expand into. The attributes attached to spacetime could not be applied to such a state, but it would nonetheless be something.

Anyways, the nature of space and time will surely be elucidated when a complete quantum gravity theory is formulated.

 

[nightcleaner]

Hi Marcus, and all...

My cabin is built of natural aspen logs in a hundred year deep woods at the end of half a mile of twin ruts through swamps and drumlin fields. It is seven miles from pavement and another eight miles on secondary roads to town. It is accessible in winter by snowshoe but I don't do that much anymore since I broke my leg three years ago. It has been standing there for twenty-six years.

The cottage, on the other hand, was built this year from squared aspen timbers by my friend Mark, who twitched the logs out of the woods with his team of horses, milled them into timbers, planks, and boards on his property north of Grand Marais last summer, and brought them down the Northshore road on his two ton truck in the fall. Mark is a very resourceful fellow who loves to talk about theoretical physics. He homeschools his two daughters and is a master horseman. I will see them again at solstice in a couple weeks.

The cottage is twelve by sixteen with a sleeping loft and stands on concrete posts sunk four feet into gravel. It has a porch and a sheet steel roof with wide eaves. Makes me wish I played the banjo, or at least a harmonica. It is tucked under maple and birch trees and has a fine view of a cedar swamp. Fifty feet back from The Hill Road, a designated natural and scenic byway, only twelve miles to town in beautiful Clover Valley, a region of abandoned dairy farms now being resettled by a new wave of urban refugees.

The cottage belongs to my friend Peg, who built it so I would have a place to stay while careing for her gardens and animals. She loves her lifestyle, which she thinks of as "technicolor Amish," but wants the freedom to travel. I will maintain a work/rent relationship, a kind of tennant-farmer, no, sharecropper, no, indentured servant, no, serf, no, Kulak. I don't want to go any lower than that. Back to my peasent roots. My friend Micheal, who incidently also recently started in a position as caretaker (to a landholder in Chico, California), thinks of himself as Nomadic Eclectic Bohemian, which is perhaps descriptive of my own position, altho I would think Semi-nomadic in my case.

So the cabin belongs to me, is primitive and remote, and has the advantage of being totally isolated, nearest neighbor half a mile by trail, two miles by road. The cottage by contrast belongs to my friend Peg, is on a maintained road, and is a few hundred yards (over the ridge) from Peg's house. The two places are nine miles apart as the crow flys, but nearly twenty miles apart by road. In one, I am a freeholder, in the other I am a serf. That's life for you.

Marcus, I am a poor man, but free as long as I don't care for comfort, safety, or human relationship. For these things I must depend on the generosity of my betters. Thank you for being here, and for sharing the wealth of your library. Reminds me of a poem by Gary Snyder...something about "sorry I broke into your house last night, but I had to use the dictionary..."

Be well,

Richard

 

[nightcleaner]

People are often surprised to hear that space and time had a beginning. This is due to their everyday notions of these familiar concepts. They say, 'The Universe must be expanding into something'. However, physicists suggest that prior to the inception of our 4D spacetime, there was a spaceless, timeless state. This could perhaps be thought of as a completely blank state, but still something in a sense, where our spacetime could then expand into. The attributes attached to spacetime could not be applied to such a state, but it would nonetheless be something.

Anyways, the nature of space and time will surely be elucidated when a complete quantum gravity theory is formulated.

Hi Curious6;

I too hope for an elucidation of space and time, but I am not patient enough to wait for someone else to report on it. I want to go there myself, put my stake in the ground, even if it happens that the survey lines shift and change, leaving me owner of a piece of swamp instead of the hilltop I thought I had. Oh well.

I would like to engage you in a conversation about the meaning of "beginning" in 4D spacetime. However I do not know where to start. But consider the big bang singularity, surely a unique spacetime event if there ever was one. Where did it happen? How is it that we must look to the ends of the universe in every direction to see it, by virtue of the cosmic microwave background energy, when surely all the Hubble shifts must point to a single place and time? Does the universe have definable edges and a determinable center? Can we go and sit there and look out equally in all directions to eternity? If you stand at the North Pole and proceed in a northerly direction, where will you go?

I am not trying to be a wise guy. If there is no answer, we must find better questions.

Be well,

Richard

 

[marcus]

Hi Marcus, and all...

My cabin is built of natural aspen logs in a hundred year deep woods at the end of half a mile of twin ruts through swamps and drumlin fields. It is seven miles from pavement and another eight miles on secondary roads to town. It is accessible in winter by snowshoe but I don't do that much anymore since I broke my leg three years ago. It has been standing there for twenty-six years.

The cottage, on the other hand, was built this year from squared aspen timbers by my friend Mark, who twitched the logs out of the woods with his team of horses, milled them into timbers, planks, and boards on his property north of Grand Marais last summer, and brought them down the Northshore road on his two ton truck in the fall. Mark is a very resourceful fellow who loves to talk about theoretical physics. He homeschools his two daughters and is a master horseman. I will see them again at solstice in a couple weeks.

The cottage is twelve by sixteen with a sleeping loft and stands on concrete posts sunk four feet into gravel. It has a porch and a sheet steel roof with wide eaves. Makes me wish I played the banjo, or at least a harmonica. It is tucked under maple and birch trees and has a fine view of a cedar swamp. Fifty feet back from The Hill Road, a designated natural and scenic byway, only twelve miles to town in beautiful Clover Valley, a region of abandoned dairy farms now being resettled by a new wave of urban refugees.
...

some notes for others who may be enjoying the echos of Great Lakes geology and poetry: Lake Superior looks like a long-snout coyote-type animal and Duluth is right at the tip of the nose.

Grand Marais means BIG SWAMP (correct me French scholars if this is a blooper) and it is right up near the Canadian border not quite as far as where the ears would be, more like at the level of the eyes. So the NORTH SHORE road is this long almost straight approx 150 mile stretch along the ridge of the nose down to the tip, where Duluth is.

The logs have to be twitched with a cable. Some people drag them with a crank winch device called a "come-along" but Mark has horses. then he has to mill them and then he trucks the lumber approx 150 miles down the n. shore of L. Superior to a place near Clover Valley near Duluth (a place which the dairy cows have all left) and builds a COTTAGE for Peg's poet-caretaker-landsitter. You know how people get a house-sitter when they go away on trips. If you have some land, with animals and vegetables, then you get a land-sitter. Or maybe his job is to inhabit the land which otherwise would not be thoroughly inhabited. What ever it is, we see that it involves a lot of active attention (unlike a house, where you mostly just sit)

the whole thing is pretty interesting. Drumlin refers to the big oval mounds of debris left by a glacier that was there a long time ago.

I could be quite wrong about the geography, but thought some guesses would be helpful to people like myself who know Minnesota only by hearsay (again, I could even have the State wrong----it could be Wisconsin). the vagueness actually helps create a sense of wilderness (and at the same time a sense of a generic woodsy off the beaten), so we do not ask the writer for more than hints of location.

 

[nightcleaner]

quite right, Marcus. Only the north shore trail is not as straight as it looks on the map. The north shore of Lake Superior is bounded by a very ancient mountain range called the Sawtooth mountains, and the road curves up and down bedrock ridges, crosses many deep cut wild water trout streams, and even goes through two tunnels bored through cliffs whose faces drop practically straight into the water. The only place in the world I know more scenic than this is Big Sur. Of course, I have never been to New Zealand. The world I know is almost entirely on the back of this continent we call Turtle Island. Most people today know it as North America, but the only thing I know about Amerigo Vespucci is that he was an early Italian mapmaker, and I know a lot more about turtles.

I chose to live near wilderness and I put up with many inconveniences to do so. We have singing hourdes of mosquitoes, stinging clouds of blackflies, and paralysing blizzards to encounter. Bears and wolves and cougars are polite and respectful neighbors, nothing to be afraid of there, as long as you respect them in return.

Gardeners here are worried about their seeds rotting in the cold wet mud this spring, but the forest just soaks it up and glows like the inside of a jewel. I munch on blue-bead lily leaves, which taste like cucumber, and unfurling woodland aster leaves, which are mild and nutricious. The pale green buds of spruce trees are sour as grapefruit and more packed with vitamin C. Cattail shoots are absolutely delicious, and fiddlehead ferns are as succulent as asparagus, which also grows here, mostly on old farmsteads. The rhubarb is prolific and maple seeds have a sweet, nutty flavor.

I must be getting hungry.

Be well,

Richard

 

[marcus]

...

Gardeners here are worried about their seeds rotting in the cold wet mud this spring, but the forest just soaks it up and glows like the inside of a jewel. ...

do some people set up makeshift plastic greenhouses to sprout their veggies, for transplant outdoors later? I fear the cold mud that rots the seeds and i would be tempted to rig something like that on the south side of a house or barn

a vigorous sentence that combines worry, rot, mud, and then tosses off the glow inside a jewel---the urgency of true description leaves no room for sentiment or self-consciousness. it is refreshing to hear about this stuff

but doesn't Peg know local people who have tried greenhouse-type temporary lean-to shelters

 

[nightcleaner]

Yes, Marcus, greenhouses and raised beds and covered beds are all useful. Most gardeners start their seeds indoors in trays in April and hope for good weather. Another friend a few miles down the road grows blueberries and raspberries for cash crop and vegetables for the table. She started with sheet plastic greenhouses but a few years ago she built a real greenhouse on concrete foundations. She is the only gardener I know who reliably has homegrown tomatoes every year.

Actually, I would have thought placing a greenhouse on the south side of a building would be a good idea, as you describe, but there is a peculiar habit of the sun in these northern climes. (We are at about 45 degrees North lattitude, as you know.) In the early summer, the sun rises in the North! Well, a good ways North of East anyhow. So a greenhouse next to a building loses some hours of light. The same thing happens in the afternoon. Most greenhouses are built in the open for that reason.

Thank you for the editorial comment. BTW, I bought some peaches in the grocery yesterday. I thought of you with your feather. Peaches here are a sad reminder of those that grow in California and Georgia. Small and hard, not juicy, they spoil before they really ripen. Some grocers carry better produce, but I am not in the one percent column. I will wait for the apple crop to gloat over abundant riches.

Be well,

Richard

 

[selfAdjoint]

In the early summer, the sun rises in the North! Well, a good ways North of East anyhow.

Yup, and it sets north of west too. As you move in spacetime further north and later in the summer, these rising and setting points approach each other to your north and give the midnight sun.

 

[Kea]

The only place in the world I know more scenic than this is Big Sur. Of course, I have never been to New Zealand.

Hi nightcleaner

It sounds like you live well. I would like to visit sometime. Of course it is also very beautiful here - and when the oil runs out I know where I'd rather be!

Cheers
Kea

 

[nightcleaner]

What about at the center of the Universe? (The point where everything is moving away from).

Hi Daminc

Sorry I missed you earlier. I marked your question mentally but then got off into all kinds of distractions.

Well, it would be nice if there were such a point, at least a unique one. But as it happens it appears that everything is moving away from everywhere. I imagine Hubble must have been surprised, at least for a little while, when his research showed that everything in the universe is moving away from Earth. Isn't that special? Maybe Earth was created for God's amusement and for our enjoyment after all.

But it turns out that Earth is still a tiny point in a vast space full of other interesting objects, and is not specially at the center of the universe at all. Another unfortunate turn for the creationists. You could go anywhere in the visible universe, look around you, and things would still look pretty much the same. There is no evidence of an edge of the universe anywhere, nor of an end, nor of a center, nor, we may have to conclude, of a beginning. Every single point in space and every single event in time may have to be center, edge, beginning and end all in one.

This has inspired interest in all sorts of strange geometries. We have to try to think in more than three dimensions, more than four. Spirol twisty things that are shaped like rotini noodles rise up from the complex plane (part of it is imaginary!) and are shown to be mathematical spheres! I read about this in chapter eight of Penrose, The Road To Reality. I only vaguely understand it, but that is what, it seems to me, he says.

Be well,

Richard

 

[nightcleaner]

Yup, and it sets north of west too. As you move in spacetime further north and later in the summer, these rising and setting points approach each other to your north and give the midnight sun.

Hi selfAdjoint

I got to go to Alaska a couple times last decade, and was in Fairbanks in June so I saw the sun set and rise again in the space of a few hours. In the North. And I was also above the Arctic circle for two weeks in January, I forget what year, maybe it was 1988. So I saw days with no sun at all. It was a very interesting experience.

But if you truly want to experience a sun that rises in the Due North, it can be done. Just get in an airplane at night in July and fly toward the arctic circle. As you fly North, the sun can be seen to rise directly in front of you. I saw that once. It was incredibly beautiful, and if you add Denali peak above the clouds, there can hardly be a more ethereal sight on Earth.

Be well,

Richard

 

[nightcleaner]

Hi nightcleaner

It sounds like you live well. I would like to visit sometime. Of course it is also very beautiful here - and when the oil runs out I know where I'd rather be!

Cheers
Kea

Hi Kea

I think we all want to be at home when the final bell tolls. I know New Yorkers and Los Angelenos who would not abandon their hives for fire, earthquake, flood, storm or WMD. Something about the last stand as a human pre-occupation is admirable. But we have come to expect that: the whimper, not the bang, will be the last human sound.

I don't know and hope not to be there. But, there is good cheer in the thought that humans lived on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years without needing to burn a single drop of oil. I think it is likely that humans will remain when the oil runs out. Automobiles, airplanes, spaceships, well, that is a different question.

What is the common goal anyway? Or if we stick our heads above the common, what more can we see? Shall Humanity establish new empires in the cosmos? Or breed a new gray slime of nanobots that may evolve into intelligent planets some day? Or vaporize in the instant when branes collide? We do not know. Each of us has only the tiniest part.

For me, it is enough to do what is in front of me. Feed the mosquitoes. Push seeds into cold mud. Gaze on a star rising in the North. Wonder what a visitor from the other side of the world might look like. Smile for the center of the universe.

It would be a great honor for me to meet you. I would even fly to New Zealand to do so, if it were in my power. But the truth is I don't travel much even on this continent any more. I am so glad we have this internet connection! We can talk, exchange ideas, as if lying side by side, kept apart by the merest gossamer curtain. Here, perhaps, we may even be closer than we could ever be, with physical bodies to get in the way.

Be well,

Richard

 

[Kea]

I think we all want to be at home when the final bell tolls...I think it is likely that humans will remain when the oil runs out...

nightcleaner

I agree that humans will remain (briefly, until we evolve ourselves) ... just not 6 billion of them. I was thinking of the problem of food distribution. Supply and demand. Fighting. The NZ West Coast would be relatively underpopulated and defensible; a few critical passes to guard.

Sigh. But perhaps I shouldn't spend too much time thinking about this; not because I don't think it's going to happen, but because if I focused more on the Category Theory revolution then I would be playing my little part in improving technology that would enable us to be more energy efficient and clean.

Then again; maybe I should have stuck with the mountaineering. I've laid in the tussock by crystal tarns, a braided river in the deep valley below, surrounded by waterfalls and weeping glaciers, happy in the knowledge that there was no other human within some days walk; the keas for company. How many people really know that they have never seen a clean environment?

Kea