Meeting That Audience

Just got the question.  (I suppose it was inevitable.)

What do I mean I'm writing a novel about special relativity?!

Okay, let's pause for a second.  All artists - whether we admit it or not - are entertainers.  If we're not entertainers who meet our audience where they are at, we will not be artists for very much longer.

That said, yes, I am most definitely studying relativity theory, both special and general.  After all, it is a lot to visualize.  How much will I use that in my new work?  We'll see.

I promise you this, though:  Only so much that it entertains.  And not one jot more.

Special Relationship

As I keep pondering special relativity to help my second novel (which is coming along well enough that I haven't been posting lately), I can't help but wonder at our seemingly insurmountable differences.

They appear, from a cosmic perspective, so insignificant.

Consider...

I'm standing in my kitchen sipping coffee and watching the neighboring squirrel play tag with a Stellar jay (ie a blue jay with a black head) for five minutes.  I appear not to be moving, right?

However, we all know that I am.  For the planet is rotating, west to east (making the sun appear to "rise" each morning).  That means that even though I haven't moved a step in the kitchen (their game of tag really is kind of fun to watch), I have moved five minutes along the direction of the earth's rotation.  As if someone had grabbed a marker and traced it out on the surface of a beach ball.

Then, too, during those same five minutes, the earth is revolving around the sun, counterclockwise.  So, it has gone its five minutes worth of travel.  That means I've been rotating as well as revolving without even realizing it.

The solar system, itself?  Yes, that, too, is slowly rotating, along with the sun, counter-clockwise.   (Why?  It's an artifact of how the solar system originally formed.  It's still going in the same direction as the earliest gases that spun off.)

And, of course, our solar system is orbiting around the entire Milky Way galaxy.  In fact, the guessing goes that the last time we were where we are now, in the galaxy, dinosaurs were roaming the planet and us, nary a twinkle in their eye.

(Begs the question, doesn't it?  Who will be roaming around the earth the next time we are at this same position in the galaxy?)

Beyond that, the entire Milky Way rotates as well.  Though, being rather flat, which direction - clockwise or counter - depends on which side you're looking at.  And, the galaxy, too, is moving...

All this said, with all this movement occurring in those same five minutes that I am sipping coffee (and most definitely not working on my novel), doesn't it make me feel small?  Sure does.

So small that I can't help but wonder at the differences that supposedly exist between us - those supposedly insurmountable ones between family, neighbors, colleagues, nations, even religions - that all too often separate us irreconcilably for a lifetime or more.

The differences seem so puny compared to all this movement.  Makes you wonder why we put so much effort into them.

But maybe that's just a matter of perspective...

Just A Speck (I)

Here's a background sketch from my new character Zeb... 

Zeb stared up at the dark sky.  And began shrinking.

As far as he could see, the pinpricks of stars radiated across the far-flung heavens.  Heaven.  He smiled at the thought, wondering just where God's Mansion was supposed to be - somewhere in one of the radial arms of the Milky Way?  Or maybe in the Andromeda Galaxy, our near neighbor?  He kept looking up, toying with this idea and that, finding himself growing smaller and smaller as a result.  Well, shoot, he thought.  Aren't there over fifty galaxies in our little backwater block of the universe?  At least from what we can see of the universe, anyway.

Then, a fun thought:  What if Heaven is inside Sagittarius A*, that massive black hole at the center of our galaxy?

On and on he thought, staring at that impossibly huge sky, knowing that the longer he stared, the smaller he would get.  So small, that he began to feel like no more than a jot.  A speck of dust.  Completely crowded out in significance by all the galaxies, super-clusters, planets, comets - and whatever the hell dark matter was - that combine into making up the universe as we know it.  Just a speck.  Nothing more.

And that's when Zeb had his Cosmic Moment.  He realized that he may be just a speck, but that's still something.  Which is better than nothing.  That means that in this universe with its teeming billions of components, he numbered among them.  He belonged.

© Jeff Stilwell 2012