How Einstein Imagined Spacetime

Something happened in Europe at the start of the 20th century. What happened was, human beings began to sense the reality of hyperspace. The thing called hyperspace, in movies like Star Wars, the thing that you reach by traveling faster than light—it started to shimmer into existence in the early 1900s. 

Like a gorgeous mirage, hyperspace wavered into being, in philosophy, science, literature and art. The science is Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. There are two kinds of art I want to share. First, the water lily paintings of Claude Monet. Secondly, there’s that amazing innovation in narrative prose—the stream of consciousness. Let’s start with the paintings. They make it so obvious.

The Orangerie is quite an experience. “Orangerie” means a place where they grow oranges. But this is a place where they grow experiences of gorgeous paintings.

The Orangerie is a pair of oval-shaped rooms in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. In these rooms, you can visit Claude Monet’s astounding water lilies paintings. It’s more than visiting. It’s being inside them. It’s not an experience you can forget. 

Immersive, strangely anticipatory of VR, you find yourself surrounded by gigantic ovals of color. An oval is a circle that’s been squeezed, just like spacetime isn’t totally regular but is squeezed and stretched by gravity. An oval is also an egg, an obvious container that isn’t just a container, but a living habitat for an embryo. The visitors are the embryos. And Monet’s paintings are the yolk, a gorgeous, mauve-blue-green yolk.

Floating in the yolk are little blobs, the water lilies. The water lilies appear not as objects in empty space. They melt into the water. It’s as if they are manifestations of the warp and flow of Monet’s beloved pond at Giverny. It’s as if the water lilies are an intrinsic part of their habitat: go figure. 

Ecological thought holds this to be true, a truism, even. But imagine what it was like to see that, first. You’re Claude Monet, and you’re seeing the slowly rippling, smooth, transparent liquid of your pond at Giverny. The pond contains so much else—water weeds, shadows, the sky… and water lilies.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...