{"id":16046,"date":"2016-02-13T10:57:28","date_gmt":"2016-02-13T15:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=16046"},"modified":"2016-02-13T11:19:34","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T16:19:34","slug":"ripples-in-the-space-time-continuum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2016\/02\/13\/ripples-in-the-space-time-continuum\/","title":{"rendered":"Ripples in the space-time continuum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Ripples in space-time. Image: Penn State<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

The news in physics is he-EW<\/em>-jah! this week. Einstein was right! Gravitational waves detected! Science journalists are foaming at the mouth. And how do we know? Because a billion years ago two super-massive black holes sucked each other in and the aftermath of that collision is reaching Earth just in time for its hairless ape inhabitants to have learned how to build something fancy enough to notice.<\/p>\n

I’m a hopeless science weenie, so I love this stuff. But it’s all pretty deep juju for an\u00a0English major. Everything I really understand about gravity I learned from falling off the roof. The very theory of black holes is as opaque to me as the theology of transubstantiation. And don’t get me started on string theory.<\/p>\n

I do make an effort to understand. There were times when I was reading Stephen Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time” when it all seemed to come together. Just for a moment it all made sense. And the next moment it all collapsed back into itself; not even intelligence could escape from the black hole of my brain.<\/p>\n

Hawking famously said, “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe.” Some of us, maybe.<\/p>\n

Ripples in the space-time continuum will remain among the many things I have to take on faith, like electricity, the functions of my iPhone, chaos theory, and the redeeming power of love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news in physics is he-EW-jah! this week. Einstein was right! Gravitational waves detected! Science […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16046"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16051,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16046\/revisions\/16051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}