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Once you understand the traveling clocks, you can dope out who won the race of the Robert E. Lee.

Right With You, Prof. Einstein!By ROBERT M YODER

The old master who taught us time has dents and that the universe looks like a tin can has pitchedanother cosmic bean ball. An Einstein fan, still baffled from last time, plans to reserve a padded cell.

Aone of the thousands who tried to foUow Pro-fessor Albert Emat^in through curved spacewith ruts in it, and got slightly fuddled

attempting to think of the present as a string ofbeads on a wire, I welcome the news that the greatthinker has done it again, if anybody knew what.The timing is nice. It's been about twenty yearssince aU right-thinking citizens were struggling tounderstand Einstein's relativity, so that we shouldbe rested and ready for another romp, and I, for o"®-am tired of being confused by trivialities; it will bea pleasure to be confused about somethmg reaUycosmic. Word that the professor has now carriedrelativity further, aroused in this Einatein fan verymuch the feeling a dog must have when a shinytruck comes down the street. He knows he can tstop it, he can't conquer those twinkling wheels, butas a dog of spirit he certainly is going to run along-side and bark. , , ^

For when the professor drives past, it s a tinetruck for chasing. The last time o u t - i t was in the'2O's-the attempt to understand in general how

he had reconstructed the universe led you into awonderland of big, exotic ideas, some of whichwould curl your necktie and cross your eyes. Bentlight was one of the simpler of the new conceptions;there were shrinking yardsticks which were differentlengths in London, New York and just outaide ofBetelgeuse; there was a new picture of space, if youcould picture space at all, as an immensity of noth-ing with low places in it, like a lawn that needs roll-ing. In those depressions the mighty planets rolled,not in obedience to old-fashioned gravitation, butbecause that was the path of least resistance.

That was a policy I could endorse with some en-thusiasm, though I never was able to master muchof an idea of space. As Professor Einstein conceivedit, space was finite, but unbounded—limited, but bynothing in particular. It was easy enough to under-stand what things were like in the downtown dis-trict, but I never got much of a picture of thosesuburbs. Thinking in terms like that is a little"

DRAWINGS BY LEO HERSHFIELD

Which do you prefer—Einstein'B cylindrical universe, or the old-foshioued spherical model?

It may not be easy to ride an imaginary biejclewith no hands, but it^e considered stitnulatlng.

difficult for persons who have trouble, as I do, evenimagining sheep to count at night, though the pro-cedure is clear enough: it's like riding an imaginarybicycle without using the handle bars. Not easy, butstimulating, and I have no doubt that ProfessorEinstein'B new theory will produce a second round ofthe same fine exotic ideas.

When we left the professor and his explainers,back there in the '2O's, there was a nice choice oftwo entire universes; it will be interesting to seewhich of two ideas, pretty closely matched, wonout. Einstein's universe, you may remember, wascylindrical, shaped, as I got it, like a can of beans,though of course you'd have to conceive of a can ofbeans without the usual side or ends, and withoutmany beans. But a rival named de Sitter sneered ata cylindrical universe; his equations led him to be-lieve the universe was spherical. De Sitter's, I be-lieve, was "open in the time dimension," a questionon which I never entirely made up my mind. Kthat's the way the taxpayers want it, it's all right, Iguess; and de Sitter offered another distinctivefeature—flexible time. The time between two eventswas not a rigid period—a minute, say, or an hour.Time got longer the farther events were away fromyou.

If I understood this correctly, the Civil Warwas over in a matter of minutes if viewed, say, fromSaturn, where, unfortunately, it couldn't have madeany practical difference.

Einstein's universe, as a rival attraction, offeredghost stars. A ghost star was one which had expiredsome millions of years before, but was still Bbiiiing,the light rays having (Continued on Page 148)

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RIGHT WITH YOU,PROF. EINSTEIN!

(Com inutnl front Page 25)

chased around the entire universe andcome back to the old stand. I had trou-ble understanding why this wouldn'tresult in a neat stripe, a nice addition tothe conventional starlight, but ap-parently it didn't. Once you got intothe swing of this thing, as we'll have todo again, now, a striped sky soundedperfectly plausible. It was clear thatEinstein had upset things badly—"ourwhole conception of time and space,"the experts said, and I thanked themfor that "our," although the damagein my own neighborhood was not ex-tensive.

It was thought at first, you mayremember, that Einstein had some-how uncoupled the whole relationshipof past and present and cause andeflect —if you can uncouple a relation-ship—but cooler heads prevailed. Itwas agreed, after a small furor amongthe philosophers, that effect stilltrailed cause, that temptation stillcomes before downfall, and youth be-fore age. The hang-over might still besaid to come after the drink, it was de-cided, and the slip was still doing busi-ness in the Bame old stand, betwixt thecup and the lip.

Einstein's tremendous feats of im-agination—roughly that of a termiteimprisoned in a cellar beam and yetable with tools of the mind to describethe entire bouse—are more easily un-derstood than the thorny details,which, unfortunately, involve math-ematics a little higher than most of uslike to go. He is laying down nothingless than a test for the laws of nature;and the work of a man who applieswhole systems of geometry to mightyabstractions as easily, apparently, asyou and I try an unidentified cap on atube of toothpaste, is not easily reducedto terms of an automobile engine or agame of pool. Even so, some of the ex-planations we struggled through inthose early days of relativity must have

been twice as complex as Einstein'soriginal equations.

I remember one fearsome hassle—you may have encountered it too—inwhich, by way of illustrating one ofEinstein's ideas, you were invited toimagine two moving rods, hung frombeginning to end with clocks. One ofthe rods passed the other, all clocksticking triumphantly, and if you hadthis firmly in mind, it was a simplifica-tion of something, probably the factthat time and space are kinfolks. Inever could understand the illustrationlet alone the point, except that, withsmoke pouring from her stacks and thecrew cheering lustily, the Rohert E.Lee won.

What with the new dress styles,a woman ia assured of catchingeither a man . . . or a cold!

— K\Y

I hope, too, that for Einstein's newtheory, which is said to extend histhinking to include electromagnetism,we don't have to brush up on thoseshrinking yardsticks. I had an excellentbook on relativity, won in a crap gamefrom a bookish newspaperman. Itsauthor substituted a one-foot ruler forthe yardsticks, a kindly idea, but notmuch real help. The yardsticks enteredalmost all discussions, and if you un-derstood the new ideas of space-time,you knew why they could be said toachieve different lengths in differentplaces, in spite of the fact that theydon't.

As a man who has trouble compre-hending the time zones, let alone timezones in an eternity where time andspace are the same, I never got thisthoroughly in hand. It wasn't thefault of the expert who wrote the book.He did his best to make a layman feelat home in this wonderland, and wouldremark, for example, that "the geom-etry of the four-dimensional contin-

Foliniarj 23,193"

uum" W£is a mere convenience, a littleshortcut the mathematicians founduseful, no doubt because there's solittle traffic. It was pretty clear that ifthis was the corkscrew I would act b^doing much damage to the contents ofthe bottle, but it was flattering to be »suspect.

Still, there were principles here andthere that I did master very briskly. Ihope they are involved in the profes-sor's new, improved theory. One wasthe fact that a man at rest can't pos-sibly tell for sure whether he's at rest ormoving uniformly in a straight line.That has been a great consolation tome at times when it seemed certain Iwas on dead center. Another idea Iunderstood, though without knowingwhere it figured, precisely, in the gen-eral plot, was that a body in motionwill contract. This means clearly thatthe Superchief setting out from Chi-cago should arrive in Los Angeles as 8four-car local, and I can't help it if i*doesn't. Professor Einstein and I do^not guarantee every little detail of thisthing. If you don't like our universe,why don't you go back where you camefrom?

I, for one, had a good time the lasttime Professor Einstein took us for oneof his little bird walks through eternity,and I'm glad to hear he's gone further-There will now be four or five years ofinterpretation and explanation, andunless the professor is badly ofT hisgame, it will produce a lot of ideas thatare really worth a man's time. The pro-fessor deals in ideas with scope. I'mwarming up by considering how theEmpire State Building would look witha belt in the back, by recalling that ifthe world rotated faster the applewould have missed Newton entirely,and by pondering what, in consideringthe present as a string of beads, to u a ^as a string. I'll be badly disappointedif the professor hasn't produced some-thing pretty striking. Warped time,operating in corrugated space, withMars in the side pocket, is the least Iexpect from him. If you'll wait 'til Iget my hat, professor, I'll be right withyou.

THEY TOOK THE BACKDOOR TO THE BIG TIME

{Continued from Page 30)

rounds with one of the fastestbreaks ever seen in Madison Square

arden, and the folks at home bieganto simmer like water over a slow fire.

One hundred students at the uni-versity's high school spent their noonhour in the chapel, praying for victory.The excitement spread. Members ofhe Missouri Legislature at the state

capitol in Jefferson City discovered, toheir horror, that no nearby station

was going to broadcast the final gamewith New York University. The Houseof Representatives passed a resolutionhat neatly combined the state's linger-ing suspicion of .things in New Yorkwith its confidence in a native product.It read:

Whereas New Yorkers Bttll mistake Mis-souri for a land of Indians and backwoodsmen,he pleasure and entertainment of M iasourians

will be increased a hundredfold by listening tot. Louis U. defeat New York U.A Jefferson City radio station hastily

rranged to handle the game. WhenSt. Louis beat New York, 65 to 52,ivic pride ran wild. University stu-

dents danced in the streets. The Mis-souri House resoluted again, this time

to congratulate the Billikens for bring-ing "national fame and honor to Mis-souri." Not to be outdone, the St.Louis Board of Aldermen formally de-clared St. Louis "the center of thebasketball world." Fifteen thousandadmirers waited at the Union Stationfor the Billikens to come in. OnlyPresident Truman has received ashearty a welcome in recent years, andhe's a Missourian, too, even if he isn'tfrom St. Louis. On hand were themayor, the police chief, the fire chief—who had made the players honoraryfiremen at another station reception —postmaster and other civic dignitaries.

There was a brief trainside speech bythe Rev. Niel P. McMekius, S. J., chair-man of the university's athletic coun-cil. " I t ' s back to the books," he an-nounced. St. Louisans were alreadylooking ahead to greener pastures. Therewere anguished shouts of "No! No!Let's go to the Olympics!"

While his players caught up withtheir classwork. Coach Hickey raced allover St. Louis and the small townsaround it as guest of honor at a stupefy-ing number of church, school and clubbanquets. He showed movies of Billi-ken games until the films were ragged.In six weeks Hickey was home for din-ner only twice, but he didn't mind. Heis always eager to t^tablish the Billi-kens in the hearts of their countrymen.

A citizens' committee collected a"Coach Eddie Hickey TestimonialFund." The money bought him a neWcar. The university later tore up his oldcontract and gave him a new one and araise in pay. Hickey has been in St.Louis less than three years, but he iseasily the most popular coach the uni-versity ever had. "No coach in Amer-ica is on funner ground," says AthleticDirector Bill Dumey.

The first faint sign that basketball atSt. Louis U. was on the way up came inthe fall of 1945, although nobody recog-nized it then. That was when Macauleyenrolled his six feet and eight inches,after making the all-state basketballteam while at St. Louis University HighSchool.

In those days, few of the good high-school players bothered with either St.Louis U. or Washington, the other localuniversity. They migrated instead toschools with successful teams and fancyschedules. Another crack center. BobKurland, went through high school in aSt. Iiouis suburb three years ahead ofMacauley. He followed the beaten pathout of town, enrolled at OklahomaA. and M., and became a three-timeAll-American. But Macauley's familywanted him to live at home while he'was in college.

What has happened since has beenthe work of three Irishmen — Flanigan,