Neal is trapped by gravitational forces. He has been for years.
My friend comes to our coffee shop to work through mathematic expressions and theories that describe General Relativity. He’s studying abstractions at a level that requires both confidence and humility.
When he comes to a dead end in one line of reasoning he switches to another, looking for any piece of conjecture he can loop back and add to the puzzle. Neal finds this groping process rewarding for its own sake — there’s no money in astrophysics at the coffee-shop level.
Neal Solomon earned his graduate degree in physics from the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois (UIUC) and spent years developing technologies at a division of Western Electric.
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity deals with the behavior of mass, with gravitational pulls, waves, lensing and time dilation, Neal explains that supermassive black holes, like Sagittarius A in our own Milky Way galaxy, are one example of these phenomena. We know they exist because they emit radio signals and distort the rotation of other objects in binary star systems.
After working through General Relativity, Neal’s event horizon will lead him to black holes. Mastering the Big Bang Theory is the ultimate challenge. If Neal decides to take on the origins of the universe he’ll do it on his own terms, one medium soy vanilla latte at a time.
