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Distorting the Time-Space Continuum Write a comment.
blog by SHUTTA CRUM listed in categories: Book Planet, Writer's Life

Recently an interesting question popped up on the “Ask A Scientist Physics Archive.” (I know. I must have been sleep-surfing!) Anyway, the question was “Is it possible to artificially distort the space-time continuum?”

One answer given indicated that everything distorts it a bit. I saw a great example of just how the Earth does this on a NOVA program about Einstein and his Theory of Relativity. A blanket stretched out and held aloft represented the space-time continuum. The Earth dropped onto the space-time blanket distorted the surface as it sagged deep into the cloth. This distortion helps to create gravity and other goodies that are nice to have, like penny wishing-wells where the penny circles in closer and faster to an opening at the bottom until the penny disappears. (This also happens to demonstrate parting a fool from his money using a nifty vortex.)

It seems the amount of distortion one can induce artificially depends on the amount of mass concentrated in a small area. Which gets directly to what has been nagging me lately—how much distortion have I personally created in the universe due to the mass of the books amassed atop my nightstand in various stages of being read? And just what might disappear down any vortex created from my artificially induced distortion?

For our purposes, let me state that the small area that supports this weight is 48.3 centimeters by 48.3 centimeters. (Isn’t it nifty how things sound so scientific when using the metric system?) Also, let me say that I am not counting the space in front of the nightstand where more books are piled. These are not constrained within a prescribed area but slide under the bed and around the potted plants stretching out their mass. I am pretty sure they are not disturbing the space-time continuum to any discernable degree.

Using the bathroom scale, I’ve weighed the 19 books and one magazine. (See individual titles below.) They weigh in at 9.53 kilograms. (That’s 21 pounds for those more imperially inclined. Hmm . . . I like that. Maybe I should get my bathroom scale permanently converted to kilograms?)

Anyway, squeezed around the books is at least another 30 lbs of stuff; reading glasses, pens, pencils, weather alert radio, old 10 lb. princess telephone, writing journals, flashlight and a huge box of Kleenex. All of this teeters to a towering 44.5 centimeters.

These numbers are significant, because I think my nightstand has enough concentrated mass to make a documentable difference in the space-time continuum. And when you consider all of the nightstands of all of the readers in the world . . . the question becomes, what is the impact of all this disruption on the space-time continuum? Also, what if every reader in the world added just one more book to his or her pile at precisely the same instant? It fairly boggles the mind doesn’t it? But wait a minute—what if we each subtracted one book and gave it to a brand new reader to begin a new pile?

You can see where I’m headed, can’t you? Acting together, we readers have enough gravitas to change the world—heck, the universe—one book at a time. (Forget that we’re constantly searching for eyeglasses that lose themselves down those vortexes we’ve created!)

I’m for it! Find someone who’s just learning to stretch reading muscles and offer a book. Perhaps he or she will keep it on a nightstand as it is read, and will add other books as well. We can change the world.

My current nightstand pile: (In no particular order.) Make of it what you will . . .

Whistlin’ and Crowin’: Women of Appalachia by Sohn
Each Little Bird That Sings by Wiles
Aw, Shucks! The Dictionary of Country Jawing by Bertram
Eyewitness Travel Guide to Ireland
The Comedy Thesaurus compiled by Brown
Five Victorian Ghost Novels (in one vol.) compiled by Bleiler
Domesday: a Search for the Roots of England by Wood
The Sacred World of the Celts by Pennick
The May/June Hornbook
Ellie McDoodle: Have Pen will Travel by Barshaw
Mythology by Edith Hamilton
The Origin of Language by Ruhlen
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Centenary Ed., revised by Evans
The Other Bible: Ancient Alternative Scriptures compiled by Barnstone
Sold by McCormick
The Mouth of the Night: Gaelic Stories retold by McFarlane
The Flip Dictionary
Jazz by Myers
2 Saduko puzzle books by Will Shortz.

Cheers!

Shutta

Posted in November, 2007