Ghosts, Guesses, and Gravity

Ghosts, Guesses, and Gravity

My musings on a snowy Tuesday in January

Today was a gift holiday-day-off day for reflecting on diversity, society, writing poetry, exploring quantum and relativistic physics, and feeling wonder. As I was exploring I uncovered this great video on #QuantumLoopGravity. This image and quote really stood out to me. It led me to think about E=MC2, ghosts, memory, action, society, dignity, love, and poetry, hence the title: Ghosts, Guesses, and Gravity.

I usually discuss culture, farming, or gardens here on this blog. But watching the snow fall, the crystal water from the sky in the cold day as it drifted towards our planet. The quiet Big G Gravity has me dreaming about the relationship between Special Relativity and the power of ghosts and my mind is whirling and as usually, guessing.

Plus, I was watching this amazing BBC video.

Even Newton had doubts. Gravity is a ghost of mass, and a plague to science.

Science and Art

I find the interplay between the sciences and art fascinating. Quantum Effects and Macro-gravitational-relativistic effects are as uniform as a man and his ghost. None makes the other happy or comfortable and neither is fully knowable to the other.

One of the many tunnels that run beneath the building on Fouth. This tunnels was blocked, but it extends beneath the street to who knows where.

I had had the occasion to be at an engagement party the previous evening. Two people I loved have decided that they belong together and I couldn't be happier for them. Love and gravity can bring people together like this. The evening ended at another bar in a historic building in downtown Columbus.

The evening's festivities included a tour of a haunted basement in a building in downtown Columbus. This building was old school and was most probably both a hub for the underground railroad, and a series of prohibition era tunnels for illicitly transporting liquor. You could feel it in the basement with it's tunnels and odd passages and the stories the staff told.

For the record, although I am at heart a scientist who values data over daydreams, I do believe in the idea of ghosts. Regret and poetry are ghosts and both of those (and ghosts) reflect and leverage energy. I am firmly in the school of Hamlet from Shakespeare's play, "Hamlet":

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

HAMLET ACT 1, SCENE 5

Science and Society

This post is a departure because Mezzacello is a city garden and an urban farm, the focus has always been on social events and the science of food. During the winter we spend a good deal of time planning the projects, gardens and events for the coming year. COVID and the entire lost year of 2020 and most of 2021 had a definite negative impact on that.

But bringing the focus back to Gravity, that left one of us with time to spare. I have learned more about Quantum Effects and the community of theoretical physics and mathematics than I ever thought I would. It turns out, there is a HUGE amount of #AppliedSTEM in building a farm. Especially when you consider all the roles I have to fulfill to keep Mezzacello healthy and sustainable.

So the show I saw on Gravity that I mentioned above, it is important here because it underscores one of the most important lessons I have learned here at Mezzacello. That the simplest things are usually just parts of a more complex narrative. Here's to the stories and searches yet to come and lessons learned along the way.

PS: This is the first post I have written that scored 100% on my SEO tracking tool. I guess I should wax on more poetically, more often. Have a great day and don't be a stranger!