Greg Egan: Best Sci-Fi Writer of Recent Times?

Greg Egan is the man. So far I've had the pleasure of reading Permutation City, Diaspora, and just recently, Distress. These books are full of so many mind-bending ideas each that it makes most other books you read a bore. Very few authors that I've read have the ability to take advanced (and pretty accurate) math and physics and mold them into genuine stories with deep character development. So many times I'll be reading a book and I'll think, "Come on man just take this idea to the extreme. What do you have to lose?" Greg Egan takes ideas to the extreme and makes them work. If you are interested in math, physics, technology, computing, and the far future, pick up some Greg Egan and thank me later.

Space and Time

You are never in the same place twice, and you never know exactly what time it is. Let me explain:

You are never in the same place twice when you state your position from an absolute fixed point in space. The Earth spins on its axis and revolves around the Sun, the Sun revolves around what is thought to be a super massive black hole, and the Milky Way galaxy itself is moving at around 300 km/sec. While you may be in the same place on Earth, from an imaginary, immovable point in space you are in a new location every second of the day.

You never know exactly what time it is ever. You do however get to know what time we think it was a month ago to a certain resolution. You never know exactly what time it is ever because the atomic clocks we use to keep track of the passage of a single second are not perfectly accurate. Furthermore, the exact time also depends on your altitude (gravity) and speed. With looser margins of error you only know what time it was a month ago. There are many atomic clocks and groups of atomic clocks that keep time very accurately. When all of the data from the world's clocks has been compiled and weighted the BIPM (International Bureau of Weights and Measures) releases the final numbers for the previous month.


Thoughts?

Ruben's Tube

Pretty cool physics experiment made even cooler with some old school Foo Fighters.




Originally found here.