Days 116-121 - Experimenting with Minkowski spacetime

Funny that almost immediately after destroying all my electronic equipment I had to go Isla Margarita (located Middle Of Nowhere, Delta de San Fernando, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina).

Being here for almost a week put me in an interesting spacetime, fitting in all special relativity of the world, into my world...

The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality. – Hermann Minkowski, 1908

Space

A tiny island 2 hours away from Buenos Aires. You get there by taxi / boat combination. The only things found on the island are:

• One guest house with 3 rooms.
• One main house, where guests are fed 3 times a day and offered to select entertainment of their choice among board games, a tiny TV, cookbooks, and gardening books. Side Note: a bottle of wine a day per person is included into the full-board price. If you don't want to drink alcohol, a bottle of wine is substituted by a same-size bottle of water / coke / lemonade. Fascinating. \
• Four dogs of various kinds.
• Four cats of various colors.
• Ten geese.
• One nutria.
• One hammock.
• Garden.
• Forest.
• River around.
• ONE female owner who has been taking care of everything for the past 12 years.

Time:

Sometime before the 1990s: no internet, no computer, no eBook (no books either), no iPod (I lost it in one of the bags, found afterwards).

Special Relativity Applied:

1. All uniform motion is relative, and there is no absolute or well-defined state of rest.
   Q: What can one do in the absence of familiar 21st century electronic-based motions?
   A: Apparently, a lot. Clearly, there is no well-defined state of rest, however options include but are not limited to:
   - going for a walk on the same forest path several times a day, rain or shine
   - talk to the lady owner about how she could possibly live like this and find out that it had been her life-long dream that finally came to fruition when she was in her 50s
   - lie in the hammock for hours, fully clothed in winter-wear, yet enjoying the sun or absence of thereof
   - talk to the dogs
   - talk to the cats
   - compulsively watch TV for one full rainy day, because you have not done it at all for the past 4 months, but draw a line at Die Hard 2 dubbed in Spanish
   - take 338 pictures of the same scenery: trees, river, animals in the sun... trees, river, animals in the rain... rinse, repeat... luckily, though not completely intact, the camera still works:)
   - notice fewer and fewer leaves on your favorite tree every day as the autumn progresses
   - take a beautiful boat ride for a couple of hours
   - notice that although the river water is not a beautiful blue of the Caribbean, but rather a disgusting brown of Rio Plata, it is actually not that bad, because if you look at the river long enough in the wind, it starts to look like dunes in the desert
   - make funny faces
   - do yoga on the pier
   - notice weirdly twisted tree trunks
   - have thoughts
   - stop having thoughts
   



2. The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all inertial observers regardless of their relative motion or of the motion of the source of the light.
   
   Q: Will one get bored in a week (a day, an hour, a minute) without reading, chatting, listening to music?
   A: Apparently, not at all. After all, in the vacuum fullness of life, the speed of light is the speed of light, and this week passed as quickly for me in my electronic-free motion as it would otherwise.

Amen, Hermann Minkowski! I could not have done that in just the XX century, or just on a little island. Only the union of the two could create that independent reality of mine from May 26th till May 31st, 2010...