 Fantasy: March 14, 2018 Issue [#8800] |
  Fantasy
This week: Einstein Was Wrong! Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
-Albert Einstein
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
-Carl Sagan
We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
-Benjamin Franklin |
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Every once in a while, you'll see some clickbait headline like, "Einstein was wrong!" Yes, I'm admitting that this newsletter is titled with clickbait. You're here reading it, aren't you?
This is clickbait because it appeals to human nature. Albert Einstein is widely regarded as the smartest person of the 20th century, if not all of history. Whether he actually was or not is debatable, but no one uses Newton, Tesla or Feynman as a synonym for 'genius.' And it appeals to us ordinary mortals to think that even the most towering intellect can be wrong.
What is certain is that Einstein's discoveries forever changed the way physicists, as well as many ordinary people, see the universe.
But it is the nature of science that it is always being refined. Einstein built on the discoveries of those who came before him. Today's scientists continue to build and refine the edifice of physics.
And, being human, certainly he was often wrong, just like the rest of us. It doesn't matter how smart you are if you have bad or incomplete data.
But - and here's the important part for writers - we can't just dismiss the entire structure of science if a corner of it has been revised or refined. Newton's discoveries about gravity and planetary motion work just fine at the speeds we're used to - but not at higher velocities, where relativity has to be taken into account.
Here's an analogy. Everyone knows that the earth is round. (Okay... if you are convinced otherwise, then there is no hope for you; go away.) But let's say you want to buy a piece of land that's, for example, maybe one acre in size and flat. You get a surveyor to mark the boundary corners. The surveyor does so, and for a parcel this size, the curvature of the earth makes no difference - the calculations are the same as if Earth were flat, because any corrections for curvature would be less than the inherent uncertainty of the survey.
But now let's say you're working with an area the size of a US state (though probably bigger than Rhode Island). Well, then you start to have to take the Earth's curvature into account. Maybe you're not sure if the radius of the earth is 3000, 4000, or 5000 miles - but it turns out that, again, the exact number doesn't matter so much; all that matters is that there's some relatively large radius involved.
For more detailed calculations, yes, the precise radius does matter. And for even more accuracy, you'd have to take into account that the polar radius is less than the equatorial radius. (Also, you have the difference between the deepest part of the Marianas Trench and the top of Mount Everest, but that turns out to be a bit less than the difference between the equatorial and polar radii.)
Point is, refining science doesn't mean that what came before was necessarily wrong. Science, like writing, is a process. Just because some science has been disproven in the past doesn't mean that writers can get away with just throwing out things like general relativity or quantum mechanics because it's inconvenient to one's narrative. Nothing pulls me out of a book or a movie faster than the thought, "okay, that doesn't work because physics."
This is not to say that you can't play around with concepts like wormholes, teleportation, magic spells, warp drive, whatever. Just know when you're violating the laws of physics, and why, and have some explanation for it. |
Some fantasy for your perusal:
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Last time, in "Romantic Subplots" , I talked about romance in fantasy and science fiction.
brom21  : Personally, I do not like romance novels. But I have learned to be well rounded for whatever genre. I am now editing a story a started about two years ago. There is no romance in it but given your words, I may have to change that. Thanks for the NL.
It's good to branch out sometimes.
gingerlyme: Wow, I love your take on Star Wars being about the droids. I've never thought of it that way, but it makes perfect sense now that you've pointed it out!
It was one of my greatest epiphanies. Which probably says more about the general lack of quality of my epiphanies than anything else.
That's it for me for March! See you next month. Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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