Has the universe a top and bottom? If it has, which is the right way up?
"Up" and "down" are terms we use to describe our relationship with objects that are having a significant gravitational effect on us (ie Earth). Therefore, whether the universe is the right way up or not is decided by the laws of physics at any given location, and who are we to argue with that?
yottasecond
Our 4D universe does indeed have a top and bottom. The bottom (T=0) was the Big Bang. Space and time curved in, not to a point but to a parabola. There is nothing before T=0 because when you reach 0, whichever way you go, time will increase.
So that is one pole and it definitely exists/ed. What about another? This is the problem of whether the universe is open or closed. An open universe fits some observations, but a newly-discovered principle of the "conservation of information" creates problems. An open universe that accelerates as it expands can create information, violating the principle. I think the universe will turn out to be closed somehow: this furthest reach in time gives you a second pole.
imipak
Of course it has! The bottom is underneath us and the the top is above. Isn't it?
Simon Hubert, Hove
If the universe goes down the plug-hole clockwise, it's the right way up. If it goes down anti-clockwise, we're all in trouble.
JeMoi
Is The Great Gatsby the great American novel? If not, what is better?
Rather than say greatest, I'll say favourite. My favourite novel is Moby Dick. Great sentences; and throughout the "tangents" that some people complain about, one never loses track of the fact that it is Ishmael (if that's his real name) who is chewing your ear off. He is that wonderful know-it-all with an opinion and a story for all occasions. My favorite form is the short story, but I love this novel. Sometimes I think of it as a set of short stories and re-read some of the chapters in random order.
outofthepast
I don't think there's one Great American novel. But if there is, I'm not sure Gatsby is even the best American novel of the 20s. I always preferred Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos. From the opening, where the processing of immigrants is likened to a mechanical apple press and a newborn infant to a knot of earthworms before the proud father's celebrations see him quietly fleeced in a bar, it's a brilliant, disquieting, beautifully constructed novel.
michaelsylvain
My preference has always been for the outsiders in American literature: Bukowski, Miller, Fante, Roth, Kerouac, Passos, O'Hara, Burroughs etc, because the American counterculture is probably the greatest contribution the country has offered. Henry James and F Scott Fitzgerald give us a glimpse of the opulence of high-society US, but it is the grubby, railroad-hopping bums and vagrants that really represent America to me. The inverse of the American dream always seemed infinitely more appealing.
Cosmodemon
Can you be in the wrong place at the right time?
Joe "King" Oliver had the leading band in Chicago in the 1920s. When the Cotton Club opened in New York they wanted him to run the house band, but he decided to stay in Chicago where he was already successful. The job went to Duke Ellington, and it was the making of him. King Oliver's career declined steadily from then on, and he ended up running a roadside vegetable stall. Right time, wrong place.
Richard Glyn Jones, London N4
It is a misconception to assume that there are right and wrong places and right and wrong times, and that fate might dictate which of these we experience. The reality is that there are places and times in which good, bad or indifferent things might occur and when they do this does not represent being in the right place at the right time but merely something happened in a place (neither right or wrong) and at a time (neither good or bad)
Dean Trotter, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex
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