¶ Geodesic
Index Entry
Geodesic:
“A geodesic line means the most economical relationship between events, but the events are not necessarily simultaneous. So there is a relationship between a rocket that just went off and another rocket that goes off a little later. When for instance, if you are so peculiar in the head that you like to shoot at a duck, if you want to hit the duck the way to shoot is not at the duck. You shoot where you hope the duck is going to be, but you don’t shoot at the duck or you won’t hit it. This is typical of the geodesic relationship between yourself and a nonsimultaneous event. The point of the head would not be simultaneous to any shoot. We have pictures taken during this last world war of night battles between two planes using tracer bullets and the pictures are sometimes taken from the firing plane and sometimes from another plane in company with it. In these pictures of the tracer bullets you will sometimes see a plane fire and hit another plane, but the lines are completely skew lines. These are geodesic lines. They are the most economical relationship between those two events. In a nonsimultaneous Universe all the relationships are geodesic. There are no straight lines.”
¶ Citations
- Oregon Lecture #3, p. 112, 5 Jul’62
