An Unwarranted Trust

What do we do when something we trust transforms into something beyond our experience – a raging river runs dry, a baby never cries, or a constant in physics becomes inconsistent…

I say, why not embrace it! And in the hokiest way possible!  In fact, it sounds like a  trip to the Golden State is in order!

There are places on this planet where gravity  fiddles with its vector – adjusting both its magnitude and direction.  And in doing so, it kicks our complacency right out the window. One such location – The Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, California – is a very hokey place indeed.  Be prepared, if you decide to visit, because gravity is about to have a good giggle at your expense.

As you approach The Mystery Spot, you feel heavy. On arrival, you feel disorientated. And throughout the visit, your brain is muddled by inconsistent sensory inputs.  In short, you are a little bit tipsy – and gravity is the intoxicant.

At The Mystery Spot, mischievous gravity varies up to 17 degrees  from the perpendicular.  In its naughtiness, gravity allows water to flow uphill.  Downward rolling balls reverse spontaneously to travel higher. Your eyes, your muscles, and your inner ears tell you different stories.  And to encourage this confusion, the proprietors have constructed walls and floors at irregular angles to further confound the hapless visitor.

There are theories, but no explanations, for these gravitational phenomena. How could there be an explanation  when we have no basic understanding of the nature of gravity? Oh, what a terrible niggling nervousness this causes – perhaps our faith in gravity’s constancy is false, and we are fools to construct our life around it!

Then there are the peculiar distortions in the behavior of light at The Mystery Spot to confuse us. Observe the Numerate Ninny at one end of the bench looking rather short (I mean petite) and the statuesque new-bride-in-blue at the other end of the bench (enjoying her superiority in height). 

They switch positions. The bride-in-blue is not so tall as she used to be – and she looks a little perturbed by it.  How  can it be? 

What a funny business it is!  

I can speculate, in an enthusiastically tiresome manner, as to why gravity is misbehaving, but this visual conundrum is beyond my ability for conjecture.  Surely, any gravitational phenomenon that causes light to bend would be strong enough to be felt in our muscles, but there was no such sensation. And if light bends, presumably it would do so in a way that distorted an image. Yet the objective observer – our camera- recorded no such distortion.

I’m stumped – but what a fabulous thing that is.  This is how Aristotle, Galileo, and Newton felt about the world they observed.  The normal functioning of the world was as inexplicable to them as The Mystery Spot is to us.

In being perplexed by this localized quirk of gravity, we have the privilege of experiencing something of the wonder that challenged the great minds of physics.  Befuddlement was mother to their insights. Befuddlement made them the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

(Gosh, I hope we’re not too heavy for them; maybe a gravitational anomaly would help lighten their load.)

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There are other locations with gravitational anomalies around the world.  I am told that Belgium, China, Northern Ireland and other locations have such quirky attractions.  If you know of their exact locations, why not share them in comments below…