Contributed by
Vijay Fafat
This is another of the hyperspace stories by Miles Breuer. This time, a mathematical physicist discovers that mattter can be tossed around in and out of space(-time) [see his papers, "A Preliminary Report of Experimental Work in the Physical Manipulation of Tensors" and "The Parallel Transformations of Equations for Matter, Energy, and Tensors"]; if done fast enough, this catapulting sets up a see-saw action, causing sections of 3-D space to swing "up and down" in the fourth dimension, in accordance with Einstein's GR equation. As the professor's lovely (obviously) daughter explains:
(quoted from The Einstein See-Saw)
"My father is Professor Bloomsbury at the University of Chicago. He has been experimenting in mathematical physics, and I have been assisting him. He has succeeded in proving experimentally the concept of tensors. A tensor is a mathematical expression for the fact that space is smooth and flat, in three dimensions, only at an infinite distance from matter; in the neighborhood of a particle of matter, there is a pucker or a wrinkle in space. My father has found that by suddenly removing a portion of matter from out of space, the pucker flattens
out. If the matter is heavy enough and its removal sudden enough, there is a violent disturbance of space. By planning all the steps carefully my father has succeeded in swinging a section of space on a pivot through an angle of 180 degrees, and causing two portions of space to change places through hyperspace, or as you might express it popularly, through the fourth dimension."
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By chance, an unscrupulous but brilliant engineer gets hold of the professor's work [the professor's table accidentally swings into his room, carrying with it many of the physicist's papers and books like "'Theory of Parallels,' Lobatchevsky; 'Transformation of Complex Functions,' Riemann; 'Tensors and Geodesics,' Gauss,'Tensors,' by Christoffel; 'Absolute Differential Calculus,' by Ricci and Levi Civita. And Schrödinger and Eddington and D'Abro."]. He builds a suitable catapult and uses his access to hyperspace to steal safe deposits across the city.
A reporter from "The Enquirer" and the daughter bump into the thief by chance, get marooned in hyperspace as a punishment and after a bit of misadventure, are able to return to our space-time, getting rid of the thief by accident as well. A pretty hokum story.
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