Project Hail Mary
"After an eternity, the panic begins to ebb away. Human brains are amazing things. We can get used to just about anything."- Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary
"“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment"
Light is a funny thing. Its wavelength defines what it can and can’t interact with. Anything smaller than the wavelength is functionally nonexistent to that photon. That’s why there’s a mesh over the window of a microwave. The holes in the mesh are too small for microwaves to pass through. But visible light, with a much shorter wavelength, can go through freely. So you get to watch your food cook without melting your face off.
“You want me to look at the dots?” I said.
“Yes.”
“The whole world put you in charge of solving this problem, and
you came directly to a junior high school science teacher?”
“Yes.”
I run the numbers and come up with an answer I don’t like. The
gravity in this room is too high. It’s 15 meters per second per second
when it should be 9.8. That’s why things falling “feel” wrong to me.
They’re falling too fast. And that’s why I’m so weak despite these
muscles. Everything weighs one and a half times as much as it
should.
Thing is, nothing affects gravity. You can’t increase or decrease it.
Earth’s gravity is 9.8 meters per second per second. Period. And I’m
experiencing more than that. There’s only one possible explanation.
I’m not on Earth.