I think it’s almost time for NAP to begin some franchises in other arenas. Food has been mentioned. There have been more than a few works of fiction/creative writing. Some photos and other sundry art. I’d love to see a few collections of the various loosely music related posts, along those sorts of lines.

Maybe I’m just addle-brained at 6 on a Saturday morning, but wouldn’t the expansion of the universe and black holes have exactly the opposite effects on space/time? Think of the expanding universe (in a very rudimentary, planar sense) like a hunk of silly putty on which is imprinted the entirety of human literature. At the moment of the beginning of the universe, all of this writing would be jumbled up together, essentially forming one completely unintelligible jumble of words. From there, as it expanded in all directions, those words would separate and move apart from one-another. At some point, and very briefly, they would be spaced in an “appropriate” manner, such that sense could be made of them, and they would tell their many stories in what we would think of as a linear fashion. After that brief moment of intelligibility, they would continue to stretch, warp, and separate, again losing all sense of meaning, until one would no longer even be able to recognize individual letters, so far stretched would they become.

Exactly the opposite with a black hole: the putty would approach the black hole and, once it began to experience the relatively weak gravitational force of a black hole, start to stretch out slightly until it eventually condensed with all the other matter at the center or event horizon.

OK. I’m done. Liked the piece, Carlos.

I like stories about time travel. Good stuff here. Reminds me of a book I looked into on account that I heard about it cuz the author was dating one of Tricia’s Professors. It actually got some notable reviews. The Time Traveler’s Wife.

This is far from a science fiction exploration of the space-time continuum, but a heartfelt love story of two people who must live with this curse as part of their lives. Ms. Niffenegger has thought through all the ramifications of the time travel, and sewn it seamlessly into the storyline. Once you accept that time traveling is a part of Henry’s life he can’t control, nothing that happens to him seems farfetched or out of character.

And Brian, I’m always game for books that make crazy claims about time. So if you have any titles associated with your comment, please let me know. Or we can just continue with a free form discussion of time. My premise on this story, part of which is above, is as follows. Time is slowly compressing. A modern hour would’ve taken a day, or a month or even a year the farther back you go. This of course is related to the expansion of the universe, or the approximation to a black hole (though i think the black hole experience would be reversed, time would expand instead of compress). Anyways, eventually as we reach the maximum expansion of the universe time will be so compressed that one second would include thousands of years of our time-rate. I’m trying to discern what the human experience would be like under those circumstances if they were happening to one person in our time. I’m sure its an idea that has been tossed around in sci-fi books for years, but i dont like reading most sci-fi, so i’m probably doing a move similar to pierre menard’s.

anyways, I appreciate your reading, and your comments. I have fond memories of having insane conversations with you back in the day.