An afterthought...

If we could compress space by stopping local time so that crossing the space was easier, in fact by eliminating the distance, we humans would probably start pooting across great distances until we completely destroyed space.

Imagine if you could travel in an instant from New York to Tokyo simply by compressing all the land mass in between. I bet there are lots of people who wouldn't mind deleting North America and the Pacific Ocean for their own convenience.

We gotta long way to go...

compressing time

Let me use the last entry to suppose a new form of space travel. If time did freeze, according to Kovachi, all space would instantly compress because the cohesion of energy would disappear. Why? Because time is the moment of energy transfer, the reason for matter, the spark of density and gravity. Imagine, then, being able to localize a time 'freeze' that compresses a portion of space from point A to B. If your ship was positioned on the cusp of the time quanta that is frozen, then perhaps you could ride a gravity wave to the other side in an instant.

Just make sure you don't enter that segment of space or you'll get compressed smaller than a Kenmore trash compactor could dream.

The Cosmic Reset Button

Physicists for the most part buy the Big Bang as the original cosmic burst. The question of a cyclical or linear universe, that is, are we a pulsating and contracting expanse or just swelling to the point of endless entropic dissipation, is key to understanding the Bang.

Instead of matter or energy being the primary measure of the universe's trip to nowhere, Kovachi's TGIF theory quantizes time into particles that mingle with gravity/energy to create matter. This creates the following supposition: the universe only exists because there is velocity. Time doesn't pre-exist the universe, it is the primal reaction, the first transfer of gravity to energy giving birth to matter. Without that transfer, there is no matter. So, the only way to 'reset' the universe is to stop time.

Imagine what that would look like. Stopping time wouldn't freeze us all in Matrix style bullet time, nor would it be like pulling on an H.G. Wells gearbox to shoot us past the moment into an alternate human history. Time is more like zeros and ones in a computer. Individually they don't seem like much but you add them up infinitely and they look like something they really aren't. So to 'stop' time would be to eliminate the agitation of gravity that creates energy. The universe would collapse in on itself in the last micro-nano-planck-moment of time leaving only dead matter, the byproduct of a once living universe.

Talk about the ultimate reset button. But would it start the whole thing over again? Only time will tell.

My daughter, the constellation.

My daughter Elise was married last Saturday. I searched for days, wondering what I could say about her to the gathering as father of the bride but when I saw her standing in that dress it took me by surprise and all my words failed me.

Going to so many weddings over the years, you get used to seeing a gorgeous young woman in a white gown that it becomes part of the uniformity of the occasion. Tuxedos, flowers, round tables, ritual, etc. often give the guests too much deja vu.

But the girl in the gown that day shone out at me like a beacon of light, like all the trappings, including the tux I was strapped into, were all part of the invisible dark matter (well, this is an SF blog!) and she was the only particle of light in the whole universe. My! It took my breath away. It wasn't that she was the most beautiful girl in the world (that's a given), it was more: she turned the mundaneries of weddings into an event that I was privileged to witness.

To bring this special relationship that I'm sure many parents feel at their children's weddings, into a perspective that somewhat befits this blog, and follows what I've been saying the past few entries. The universe we see is only visible with the eyes that were evolved to survive in it. Maybe the truly beautiful, rare, and unusual can only be seen when our relationship with it is special.