(no subject)
Jack hadn't been aware just how much time the ITF took up until he left it and now he found himself with a truckload of free time and not a lot of stuff to fill it in. He'd tried fiddling with his telescope and after a couple nights, had a decent approximation of a star chart going. All the constellations on the island were different from back home, and not just a hemisphere shift either; it was like the stars had been shaken up in a blender and thrown back in the sky in a completely different arrangement. And that was frustrating, on more levels than one.
Today, Jack had hauled his partially done charts up to the Compound and camped out next to the bookshelf, trying to get a book on astronomy that didn't need Carter and Eli to translate it. He wasn't having a lot of luck so far, considering his pile had two books by Stephen Hawking and no fancy little chart thingies that he could use to help draw out his own maps.
Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories - the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics... The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe, that is, the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as a million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles, the size of the observable universe. Quantum mechanics, on the other hands, deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch. Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other - they cannot both be correct.
Uh. Right. Probably not gonna be the answer. Jack picked up the book and turned it a little, squinting at it as if an axis tilt would somehow make him understand the science talk. Physics? So not his game.
"Why is this so much hotter when Carter starts spouting it off? This is...dry."
[Feel free to save Jack from the physics book or try to help explain it. Excerpt from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.]
Today, Jack had hauled his partially done charts up to the Compound and camped out next to the bookshelf, trying to get a book on astronomy that didn't need Carter and Eli to translate it. He wasn't having a lot of luck so far, considering his pile had two books by Stephen Hawking and no fancy little chart thingies that he could use to help draw out his own maps.
Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories - the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics... The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe, that is, the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as a million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles, the size of the observable universe. Quantum mechanics, on the other hands, deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch. Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other - they cannot both be correct.
Uh. Right. Probably not gonna be the answer. Jack picked up the book and turned it a little, squinting at it as if an axis tilt would somehow make him understand the science talk. Physics? So not his game.
"Why is this so much hotter when Carter starts spouting it off? This is...dry."
[Feel free to save Jack from the physics book or try to help explain it. Excerpt from Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.]