20080412

Bon mots: space, time, and spacetime

"Space by itself and time by itself must sink into the shadows, while only a union of the two preserves independence."
--Hermann Minkowski

"There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities--potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry--that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics."
--Gregory Benford, Timescape (1992)

"Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of Time..."
--Edgar Allen Poe, "Dreamland"

"I heard that in relativity theory space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings."
--Steven Wright

"You can measure distance by time. 'How far away is it?' 'Oh about 20 minutes."'But it doesn't work the other way. 'When do you get off work?' 'Around 3 miles.'"
--Jerry Seinfeld

"My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is."
--Ellen DeGeneris

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