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I Finally Get Relativity – Part the Last!

I Finally Get Relativity – Part the Last!

Alright! Welcome back to my short series on finally getting Relativity! In the first installment, I addressed the background to Einstein’s revolutionary breakthrough, which covered Galileo, Newton, and the birth of Classic Physics (aka. Newtonian Physics). In the second installment, I addressed how the problems of reconciling electromagnetism with established theories of motion led Einstein to propose his groundbreaking Special Theory of Relativity.

Hopefully, I did them justice while also presenting them in a way that met Einstein’s challenge (“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old…”). This brings us to the last lap, wherein I attempt to explain how Einstein generalized his theory to account for gravity and thereby made sense of the Universe (well, not quite, but he definitely pushed that ball farther downfield!)

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I Finally Get Relativity – Part II

I Finally Get Relativity – Part II

Welcome back! If you made it through Part I, I will assume that I still got the ball and everything there made sense to you – or you’re just a glutton for punishment! Either way, things are about to get real weird, real fast! Here goes…

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Personal Milestone: I Finally Get Relativity!

Personal Milestone: I Finally Get Relativity!

In life, it is good to set personal goals. Not just the big and life-changing kind, mind you, I’m talking about the little things that help you to measure your growth as an individual. A few years ago, I set one of these little goals for myself: I wanted to be able to explain Relativity. As Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

The other day, while practicing explaining Relativity, I finally felt the dots connecting. E=mc2, mass-energy equivalence, inertial reference frames, gravitation, spacetime, etc. Basically, I was finally able to explain to myself in a way where what and why came together. While I’m positive my grasp lives up to Einstein’s metric just yet, I’m not sure anyone could explain Relativity to a six-year-old.

Maybe he could, and maybe he did. I really don’t know! In any case, reaching this milestone actually raised a lot of the challenges I face as a science communicator.

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The First Ones!

The First Ones!

Consider the following. The Universe as we know it is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old. The first stars emerged roughly 100 million years later, which were short-lived by our standards. These stars were almost entirely made up of hydrogen and helium, and the fusing of these elements in their cores gave rise to heavier elements. These include lithium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, and iron, key elements that would become the building blocks of planets and life!

A consequence of this was that second-generation stars (aka. Population II) and third-generation (Population III) stars would contain traces of metal. Another consequence was the formation of planets in new star systems. At this point, roughly 4 billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was seeded with the elements for life and places for it to emerge. That was just shy of 10 billion years ago, about 5.5 billion years before our Solar System formed.

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(Updated) Advice for Aspiring Writers!

(Updated) Advice for Aspiring Writers!

Good morning! There’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now but never got around to it. And that is, share some tidbits of wisdom that I have learned over the years about writing. Most of these tidbits are things I learned from people who really knew what they were talking about, so I was sure to listen! Some others are just things I concluded along the way.

And wouldn’t you know it, the list has grown to include another important item since I originally scrawled them down. In any case, almost twenty years after I began writing, I’ve managed to condense the most important lessons I’ve learned down to six main tips. Here they are…

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Introducing The Martian Dispatches!

Introducing The Martian Dispatches!

At long last, this special project (which I’ve been busy with for many months) has been released. Which means I can finally talk about it! But first, a little preamble…

About a year ago, I joined Mars City Design®, a non-profit innovation and design platform dedicated to merging architecture, design, and the creative industry with the commercial space sector (aka. NewSpace). Since their inception in 2016, they’ve hosted an annual design competition where architects and designers from around the world submit ideas for how humans could live sustainably on Mars someday.

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Science Fiction, Babylon Style!

Science Fiction, Babylon Style!

There are times when ideas come along that just feel inspired. Then there are times when you think, “this is something I really should do because it sounds awesome in concept.” Those are the kind of ideas that you know readers will appreciate, provided you can do them justice! Otherwise, they’ll just sit on the shelf (or your Documents folder) and gather dust. The following list of ideas sort of straddle these two categories.

They came to me while researching ancient Mesopotamian myths that remain a part of our culture today. In fact, many of the myths that are considered to be foundational to western culture trace their roots to the “land between two rivers” (between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers). Here are the ideas I was mulling over after reading up on some ancient myths.

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Blog Tour: The Cronian Incident by Matthew S. Williams @storybywill @RRBookTours1 #RRBookTours #Scifi

Blog Tour: The Cronian Incident by Matthew S. Williams @storybywill @RRBookTours1 #RRBookTours #Scifi

The Formist Series is getting a BLOG TOUR! Check out the dates and fire some “questions for the author” to the participating blogs (if you feel like it)

R&R Book Tours's avatarR&R Book Tours

To celebrate the upcoming release of the final installment of The Formist series, we’re going back to where it all started in The Cronian Incident! 

Read on for details, excerpt, and a chance to win a signed copy of the book!

The Cronian Incident FINAL 150dpiThe Cronian Incident ( The Formist #1)

Publication Date: September 2017

Genre: Science Fiction

Jeremiah Ward was just another convict, a disgraced investigator who once worked the Martian beat, now serving his sentence in a mining colony on Mercury. When a member of a powerful faction goes missing on Titan, Ward is given an opportunity he cannot pass up. In exchange for investigating the disappearance of this figure, he gets a clean slate and a second chance.

But, the deeper Ward digs the more secrets he finds. Instead of investigating a missing person’s case he becomes embroiled in a centuries-old conspiracy and Ward comes to realize his one…

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Casting for the Formist Mini-Series!

Okay, there’s no mini-series in the works (yet!) But I’ve been thinking, if my first three books (the Formist Series) are ever adapted into a mini-series, there are some people I had in mind for the main roles. And it’s fun to imagine real-life actors bringing life to the characters you created. At a certain point, you want to see if there are any actors/actresses who look as you imagine them and can capture their personality and spirit.

First up, here’s who I see filling all the lead roles:

Jeremiah Ward

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