Sunday - Surfing the gravity waves

I dreamt I was surfing a gravity wave. It's an odd thing to dream. How close to the source of the wave would I have to be so that gravity's "surf" produced a wave tall enough to surf? The gravity waves measured by LIGO/VIRGO have a very very low amplitude. To surf one of these I'd need to be a subatomic surfer indeed.

If this is the sort of thing I'm dreaming, I must be watching too many physics lectures. I am trying to wrap my head around some of these concepts and I think I'm making great progress. I am not a quantum mechanic but the ideas are making sense. Empty space isn't empty, the standard model makes amazingly accurate predictions of the behavior of matter and energy, Einstein's theory of gravity has so far stood up, every wild and weird thing it's equations predict have been found once a way to test them was devised - such as the gravity waves I dreamed I was surfing.

I heard Kip Thorne make a comment about gravity and time that made me laugh. “Everything likes to live where it will age the most slowly, and gravity pulls it there,”he said, and them promptly noted that the difference between a high point on earth and a lower point is pretty darn small, though just a tad bigger than the gravity wave amplitude. I think about why gravity slows time and I have my own view. Since the speed of light (c) is constant, and mass warps space time - a larger mass creates a deeper well in space time, then the distance light travels out of the well is longer, and ergo, takes more time. And since a black hole creates a possibly infinitely steep and deep well, it takes that long to get out.
 
Now I have to think about Hawking radiation.

These photos were taken on my through Grand Central Terminal a couple of weeks ago. I think the reduced pedestrian traffic through the terminal makes it an ideal time to do repair, restoration and renovation inside the terminal. 

There is a dreamy quality about the place that is so not 2019 and, I hope, only temporary.

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