*Gazing up at distant star
Remember what the tenured teach
They’ve told me it exists afar
At distance we can never reach

This based on much simpler math
Where shortest distance two points meet
Is always by the straight lines path
Geometry that’s incomplete

When both points are one and the same
Dimension where they now exist
Straight line no longer holds it’s claim
And simpler math now does subsist

So distant star may be right here
Distance now no longer straight
Geometry becomes austere
When we do find this new stargate*

This painting was inspired by the concept of subspace portals, or stargates, a common premise in science fiction. It has been portrayed in movies such as Dune, Contact, and the Stargate series. The painting portrays a ‘natural stargate’ provided by nature rather than by technology. These natural ‘stargates’ are theorized to exist.

I once had a physics teacher that showed us how this was possible, as well as showing how our mathematics still had a long way to go. He asked the class what was the shortest distance between two points, to which the class answered with the standard geometry answer of ‘a straight line’.

He then told us that this was not true, that the shortest distance between two points is when both points existed in the same space together. He then demonstrated this by drawing two points on a piece of paper and then drawing a straight line between them to demonstrate the standard geometric answer.

Next, to illustrate how this was not true, he poked a hole into each point on the paper, and folded the paper so both holes aligned, and passed the paper clip through these two holes to show there was virtually no distance between the two points in another dimension. A simple demonstration that showed how stargates are theoretically not only possible, but very probable.