Today I met a space agency employee responsible for experimenting with metals in a micro gravity oven on the International Space Station that orbits high above our heads.
He does this from the safety of his office here on Earth.
I asked him why. I think you have to.
A couple of hours later I met someone else who is tiring of his work measuring infinitesimal differences in gravitational fields and considering switching to studying Interstellar Dust.
Not everyone is faced with career decisions like this.
He explained that Newton’s Law of Gravity might not be as accurate as was originally assumed and he suggested that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity could itself be inaccurate.
I told him I was glad that I could now finally abandon my futile attempts to understand these things, as it would be better to understand the new theory when it arrives.
Ok, he justifiably pointed out that the next one will be even more complicated, but, hey what the hell?
It’s not everyday that you meet someone who might be able to explain the mysteries of the universe so I asked him to help me understand how something (the universe) could be without end when everything else I know (tectonic plates, clouds, my nose) have precise definable limits.
He conceded that the universe MIGHT have a limit, and went on to explain Einstein’s own explanation that if we were two dimensional lying on a flat table we would observe the limits whereas if we were three dimensional on a sphere we wouldn’t.
He almost lost me there, but I gathered my wits and asked if that meant that one day Voyager would come back to where it had started from, from the other direction so to speak.
‘Yes’, was his reply, ‘but when time stops’.
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