There were these ideas of using pneumatic tubes or, you know, all kinds of ways people were inventing to start clocks.
So this was the problem of simultaneity and exactly what Einstein was working on in the patent office where he started - famously started out. And the problem was there was no way for all the clocks to be started at the same time so that everyone could agree on an exact time. There was no central clock, central time that everything was set to. So a clock in Switzerland might be 15 minutes ahead of a clock in France. And in order for schedules to work, you need to agree on a clock. And in order for trains to work, you need schedules. Well, for starters, time - especially around the turn of the century. So I really want to be able to talk about it from the idea side, you know, not dig into the equation side. And I always wonder, well, why not, right? Some of these basic ideas - relativity is more philosophy, Einstein was more of a philosopher before he dug into the math, the proof of what he did. I hear a lot of people saying, oh, I don't do numbers. I think maybe this is why - one of the reasons why I dug into it so deep and so hard - was because I think people shy away from relativity, from science. And I just thought before I even put the magazine down that that was a brilliant story idea. He could have shown that gravity bends light. "I was reading this blurb in Scientific American in 2014, and it said a hundred years ago this month, Einstein was on the verge of proving relativity, and if he had only gotten to Russia or his team had gotten to Russia to photograph the total solar eclipse, he would have had his final piece of proof. But Barenbaum says what first attracted her was the science. The story centers on Vanya and Miri, Jewish siblings who might be able to avoid Vanya's certain death on the front lines - if he can prove that gravity bends light.Ī Bend in the Stars is Rachel Barenbaum's first novel, and it's somehow a history of science, a story of injustice, a romance novel, and an adventure tale all at once. These two threads intertwine in a new novel called A Bend in the Stars. In 1914, Russia was on the brink of war, and Albert Einstein was on the brink of proving his theory of relativity.
0 kommentar(er)
