Thursday, April 9, 2009

the "How?" (to travel around the Universe and some other things)

Last Monday I met Mr. Mobius again. He looked quite like his old self. His mole had shifted back to the left side of his face. And his squint was back in his left eye instead of his right – which is where it had been the whole of last year.

He shook hands with me, a little disorientedly. “I’ve been using the other one for a whole year,” he said, after mistaking my left for my right.

“That’s not the only thing you’ve been doing that’s strange – ”

Mr. Mobius looked around quickly and then smiled innocently at me.

“Sharp, aren’t you? Was it the mole you noticed? Or the sudden bouts of ambidexterity?”

“Both. Well, specially the mole. You’ve – you’ve changed. Twice in the last year.”

“Not changed, child. Just laterally inverted. Like what happens to you in a mirror.”

All sorts of strange ideas floated around my head.

“You’ve been through a mirror?”

“No,” he said. “Through is difficult. Around – that’s an easier trick. I’ve been around.”

“Around a mirror?”

“Just around the Universe.”

I stared.

“How?”

“In my Expansion Capsule. It uses a plane of relativity where there’s no such thing as the distance around the Universe.”

“So this spaceship – your Expansion Capsule thingy that bends space to nullify distances – ”

“It doesn’t bend space, child. Gravity does that. It just spaces out your molecules so you can become comparable to the size of the Universe – which has a pretty spaced out molecular structure – and you can slide across the gravity curves.”

“…bends space to nullify distances, it – it inverts you?”

“No. It’s just space that does that. The Universe twists before it loops back in on itself. So every time you travel around it – you come back laterally inverted. (And upside down too – but that’s easily corrected in an upside down world.) Your mirror image comes back instead of you. It’s like traveling around a Mobius Strip.”

“Seems to me that you’re the one who twists everytime you travel out there. Not the Universe.”

“That’s it. I’m the man who likes to twist around the farthest reaches of the last collapsible dimension and come back to tell the tale.”

“Also twisting himself a little bit in the process.”

Mr. Mobius smiled his strange lopsided smile and said:

“You look older today, child. You’ve had a long year, too, haven’t you?”

3 comments:

Rajasee Ray said...

explanations:

1. a mobius strip is a long strip of paper(or any other sheet material) twisted once and joined at the ends.

2. if a 2D object were to travel along this strip - on one circumnavigation it would end up in its original position but on the other side of the sheet and laterally inverted(which has very much to do with its being on the other side). on a second circumnavigation it would return to its original position(including side of the sheet) as a lateral inversion of the lateral inversion of itself - hence, back to 'normal'.

3. imaging a 2D mobius strip in a 3D world is easy - but if the we were to see it as and from the 2D world itself many things would be different. for one, there'd be no 'this side' and 'that side' of the sheet.

4. a 3rd (uncollapsed) dimension is needed to twist a strip of paper and create a Mobius strip and a 2D mobius world.
conversely, you might believe that some things weren't created - they've always existed...otherwise where would a beginning come from?
to come t the point of it, i'm not really saying anything much in this 4th explanation of mine. blah.

disclaimers:

1. the universe may not be a giant 3D mobius strip. even though space does bend a lot...in more ways than one.

2. a 2D mobius strip does laterally invert unfortunate 2D residents (and rotate them upside down but they can always turn themselves upright again provided they know which way is up if there is an up) but i don't know if a 3D mobius strip will have the same effect.
lateral inversion in a 2D world might not have as easy an equivalent in the 3D world - i wouldn't know. i'm not that good at maths.

Rajasee Ray said...

oh, and another thing. if you did manage to get an Expansion Capsule to 'expand' you - aside from whatever the effect of the warped intermolecular forses would be on your life and etc.- i don't know what would happen to the whole speed of light thingy.
it's all rot - uninformed misguided rot. maybe if i'm allowed to write another comment i shall claim i never wrote any of this - but what the hell.

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