I use to write science fiction stories long ago, until I had to spend more and more time to write science nonfiction. I didn't notice the change so quickly, really. Just one day I thought the whole exercise of making stuff up was vastly less important than making sure things were accurate. It is like the difference between painting watercolors and manufacturing automobiles -- very completely different.
I must do science still, but I have to admit that has become very tiresome. I long for the freedom to just make stuff up -- to let my mind wander. I don't want to make sure atoms are aligned and the sequences assembled with correctness. I just want to paint colors that don't necessarily exist. I want to pretend that traveling through time is possible for everyone.
I only get paid to solve problems, not to dream anymore. Dreaming, however, is still a part of science, such as to dream up an idea to solve the unsolved. But there are limits to dreams, and almost no limit to the paperwork. No limit to the meetings and lines of computer programs to test the ideas, and then to write more paper work.
Science fiction is possibly a mixture of art and science. Like a watercolor artist, the science fiction writer can broadly splash a background of pastels and and infinity of sky and sea. Within those limitless landscapes the writer can stud the place with aliens and magical machines or beautiful girls with aquamarine eyes and ultra-mental control of their lovers. Science is like a Microsoft OS, mostly inhumane, coldly calculated, and fraught with inherent, ugly complexity. Art can be smooth and incalculable, only the result of a mind and its biochemical neurotransmitters.
But science also has a beautiful side, if only that mathematics might be carried out in a certain elegance . I think it sometimes limits those who can view such "artwork" to those who labor with all that math, perhaps completely lost on many whose lives never required those skills.
When I see the sky I see infinity -- no matter if there really is an edge or not. If I was to walk at a snails pace until the end of my days I would never get any less further toward the edge than if I were to fly through space at the speed of the fastest rockets, or traveled to other stars with ion drives. It is infinite for all practical purposes because I will surely die before getting any significant distance toward even the observable end.
Yet in mathematics one must deal with multiple infinities, as if one weren't enough, and never mind if there can be no true single infinity or not. In mathematics merely the potential for something to be real makes it become real, for instance counting from 1 to infinity and, between each counted number, stepping an infinite number of steps. No one can actually do such a thing, but just because it is thinkable, it is therefore a non-zero probability and must have some formal treatment.
Similarly, just the possibility of something existing out there beyond the edge of reality makes it necessary to think about. Mostly, the only good will be to dispel some incorrect notion about physics, or to tidy up the details of a formal theory. I can't pretend for a moment that more than 1 infinity is even remotely actual, yet if I were to divide 4 infinities by 1 infinity I should expect the result to be 4, not "an incalculable quantity". This is merely because of the rules of division, and canceling out the sides of equations however, and the variable X is allowed to contain infinity just as much as X might contain 23. How silly is it to even have to deal with such folly?
I have just as much problem with other logic problems, or even rules involving time. Time is difficult to define without using a term which is somehow interchangeable with the word time itself. The same is true of space. For in either case, at zero time, or zero space, existence itself seems in peril. How can time NOT exist, or for space to NOT exist, even for the merest instant, somehow seems absurd. Yet, by the accounting of some unknown substance S, space might be zero because of the relationship of S to time, or some substance T might interact with space in zero time. Gravity is kind of like that, where it is really a kind of Inertial Ratio that is affected by mass and effects mass itself, yet has no mass.
Quantum physics gets so convoluted with paradoxical logic that some scientists just throw up their hands in surrender. The theoreticians might always find them a source of alchemical mystery, that perhaps they might "solve the great mystery" if they keep at it. But to a rocket scientist only results count, and rocket full of fuel is not a bucket full of symbols. For them, a machine must actually function accurately in order to land on the Moon or Mars. Theorists might cry foul, though, for someone to demand utilitarian materialism. Surely the "magic" is still in scientific theory, even if it is gone from the clockworks of planetary systems. The edge of the Universe is much closer, for in theory at least, a black hole is the end of time and space for anything the enters its gravity well. Since no one knows the what-happens-next of that problem it is very fun to theorize about.
Yet black holes are not truly theories, they are real physical things, and somehow the do emit teeny amounts of "radiation" which means that the can evaporate. I wonder if we might sometimes see the results of such events, or if it such a very long time, near eternity for a mere human, not a single black hole would ever truly evaporate. And if it did, I wonder if there would be a sudden explosion of light that was no longer bound by the massive gravitation, and it would appear almost like the supernova which might have given birth to the black hole originally. Time itself, as well, like pent up light and heat, may spring forth again from a black hole in that far, far distant time, and liven up a long black eternity once again.
Black holes may well then be the storage batteries of reality. Do not open until quadrillions of years after Christmas.
I must do science still, but I have to admit that has become very tiresome. I long for the freedom to just make stuff up -- to let my mind wander. I don't want to make sure atoms are aligned and the sequences assembled with correctness. I just want to paint colors that don't necessarily exist. I want to pretend that traveling through time is possible for everyone.
I only get paid to solve problems, not to dream anymore. Dreaming, however, is still a part of science, such as to dream up an idea to solve the unsolved. But there are limits to dreams, and almost no limit to the paperwork. No limit to the meetings and lines of computer programs to test the ideas, and then to write more paper work.
Science fiction is possibly a mixture of art and science. Like a watercolor artist, the science fiction writer can broadly splash a background of pastels and and infinity of sky and sea. Within those limitless landscapes the writer can stud the place with aliens and magical machines or beautiful girls with aquamarine eyes and ultra-mental control of their lovers. Science is like a Microsoft OS, mostly inhumane, coldly calculated, and fraught with inherent, ugly complexity. Art can be smooth and incalculable, only the result of a mind and its biochemical neurotransmitters.
But science also has a beautiful side, if only that mathematics might be carried out in a certain elegance . I think it sometimes limits those who can view such "artwork" to those who labor with all that math, perhaps completely lost on many whose lives never required those skills.
When I see the sky I see infinity -- no matter if there really is an edge or not. If I was to walk at a snails pace until the end of my days I would never get any less further toward the edge than if I were to fly through space at the speed of the fastest rockets, or traveled to other stars with ion drives. It is infinite for all practical purposes because I will surely die before getting any significant distance toward even the observable end.
Yet in mathematics one must deal with multiple infinities, as if one weren't enough, and never mind if there can be no true single infinity or not. In mathematics merely the potential for something to be real makes it become real, for instance counting from 1 to infinity and, between each counted number, stepping an infinite number of steps. No one can actually do such a thing, but just because it is thinkable, it is therefore a non-zero probability and must have some formal treatment.
Similarly, just the possibility of something existing out there beyond the edge of reality makes it necessary to think about. Mostly, the only good will be to dispel some incorrect notion about physics, or to tidy up the details of a formal theory. I can't pretend for a moment that more than 1 infinity is even remotely actual, yet if I were to divide 4 infinities by 1 infinity I should expect the result to be 4, not "an incalculable quantity". This is merely because of the rules of division, and canceling out the sides of equations however, and the variable X is allowed to contain infinity just as much as X might contain 23. How silly is it to even have to deal with such folly?
I have just as much problem with other logic problems, or even rules involving time. Time is difficult to define without using a term which is somehow interchangeable with the word time itself. The same is true of space. For in either case, at zero time, or zero space, existence itself seems in peril. How can time NOT exist, or for space to NOT exist, even for the merest instant, somehow seems absurd. Yet, by the accounting of some unknown substance S, space might be zero because of the relationship of S to time, or some substance T might interact with space in zero time. Gravity is kind of like that, where it is really a kind of Inertial Ratio that is affected by mass and effects mass itself, yet has no mass.
Quantum physics gets so convoluted with paradoxical logic that some scientists just throw up their hands in surrender. The theoreticians might always find them a source of alchemical mystery, that perhaps they might "solve the great mystery" if they keep at it. But to a rocket scientist only results count, and rocket full of fuel is not a bucket full of symbols. For them, a machine must actually function accurately in order to land on the Moon or Mars. Theorists might cry foul, though, for someone to demand utilitarian materialism. Surely the "magic" is still in scientific theory, even if it is gone from the clockworks of planetary systems. The edge of the Universe is much closer, for in theory at least, a black hole is the end of time and space for anything the enters its gravity well. Since no one knows the what-happens-next of that problem it is very fun to theorize about.
Yet black holes are not truly theories, they are real physical things, and somehow the do emit teeny amounts of "radiation" which means that the can evaporate. I wonder if we might sometimes see the results of such events, or if it such a very long time, near eternity for a mere human, not a single black hole would ever truly evaporate. And if it did, I wonder if there would be a sudden explosion of light that was no longer bound by the massive gravitation, and it would appear almost like the supernova which might have given birth to the black hole originally. Time itself, as well, like pent up light and heat, may spring forth again from a black hole in that far, far distant time, and liven up a long black eternity once again.
Black holes may well then be the storage batteries of reality. Do not open until quadrillions of years after Christmas.
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