Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Random thoughts as I run, part 3

By this time, dusk was creeping into twilight. The downtown lights shone against a deep blue sky, as approaching figures slowly morphed from faces into silhouettes. It crossed my mind that my run, though rather linear in nature, existed in not two, but four diminsions. This was space-time. The change in the lighting of the horizon was just as intrinisic to my run as the scenery I passed. A graph of my run through space-time could be charted. My stopwatch and the milemarkers told me the same thing: where am I on this run?


I'm reminded of Stephen Hawking's book I read not too long ago. In this case, I would be a beam of light. (A fitting comparison, given that nothing travels faster than light.) The diagram above represents time verses space. The diagram below shows what a person on the very cusp of the event horizon would see. My ovoid head results from the curved lines in space-time when one travels at approximately light speeds.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've seen your head, Jonathan. It is ovoid at baseline...ha, ha...just kidding.

Again, you have way, way too much time on your hands.

Jonathan said...

What can I say? I guess I do have some free time on my hands...better blogging than sitting in front of the TV, I say!

Did you like the distorted New Balance's?

Phil said...

dude! I think I found the illustrious Jonathan's first typo. it's versus, not verses. :)