How to bend time and space

a dispatch from Bewilderness

For the last century the biggest bar fight in science has been between Albert Einstein and himself.

On one side is the Einstein who in 1915 conceived general relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of space-time by matter and energy. That theory predicted that space-time could bend, expand, rip, quiver like a bowl of Jell-O and disappear into those bottomless pits of nothingness known as black holes

On the other side is the Einstein who, starting in 1905, laid the foundation for quantum mechanics, the nonintuitive rules that inject randomness into the world —

Photo by Edge2Edge Media on Unsplash

rules that Einstein never accepted. According to quantum mechanics, a subatomic particle like an electron can be anywhere and everywhere at once, and a cat can be both alive and dead until it is observed. God doesn’t play dice, Einstein often complained.

Gravity rules outer space, shaping galaxies and indeed the whole universe, whereas Quantum mechanics rules inner space, the arena of atoms and elementary particles. Sixty-five million years ago a ten-trillion-ton asteroid hit what is now the Yucatan Peninsula and obliterated more than seventy percent of Earth’s flora and fauna—including all the dinosaurs. Sixty-five million years is less than two percent of the time since Earth began.

Way after the dinosaurs, Newton arrived with an apple which helped him figure out that the Moon orbits the Earth. The power and beauty of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them.

Black holes are dark monsters with gravity so strong that they can consume stars, wreck galaxies and imprison even light. As Hawking phrased it in 1976: “God not only plays dice, he sometimes throws them where they can’t be seen.”

But I am not a scientist. I’m a former freelance writer and a former freelance ghost. Nothing anchors in the world of media. Mona Lisa turns 519; English bulldog meets his daughter; Tara the cat saves a kid; hot and bothered nuns sue strip club.  Plus a bit odd, a bit old, and a bit brain damaged, too. I keep trying to anchor myself to a floor or a chair or a room or a moment. I can’t.

Something breaks, something opens, something speeds past sell-by date. Einstein said the past and future are merely different places, like left and right. He also said there are two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if all things are a miracle. I believe in miracles. I plunk my contracted, splayed fingers on a keyboard. I will them to build a book.