Equals

The Elemental Letter E

The Letter

The letter E’s origin story makes me chuckle. Early inscriptions display E as a stick figure with its arms waving in the air like it’s yelling, “HEY! Hey you!” Well, in fact – he is! The Phoenician word for this early letter is hē (pronounced “hey”). The symbol originated from an Egyptian hieroglyph, meaning joy or elation.

If you’ve followed my posts, you know the next step to creating the Western letter E runs through Greece. Because the Greeks did not use hē’s sound – basically a throaty H, it was repurposed as a vowel pronounced “ay” (as in “hay”), which is still the pronunciation of E in most European languages. English is the outlier with the pronunciation “ee.” But hē, we should expect the exception – after all, this is English.

1) Egyptian hieroglyph Gardiner Class A28. 2) Letter hē tracing from Wadi el-Hol 1800 BCE. 3) Letter hē 1000 BCE - right-to-left writing style. 4) Modern letter E - Arial font.

E has been listed as the most commonly used letter in English for several hundred years. The modern use of E denoting all things electronic or digital has only bolstered that statistic.

The Painting

My primary inspiration for this painting was to capture the energy and form of gravitational fields. Isaac Newton famously worked out the mathematics of gravity in the 1600s but believed that objects were attracted to each other by an unseen force similar to magnetism but operating on a cosmic scale. In the early 1900s, another scientist, whose name escapes me, famously performed a series of thought experiments leading to one of the most important discoveries of all time. The theory of general relativity describes a mind-bending realization that space and time are intricately linked into a four-dimensional reality called spacetime. Our modern satellite infrastructure and GPS technology rely on this fundamental law of the universe.

It may seem odd that space has four dimensions…

… Uh, I’m going to stop here for a second before I lose folks from the “I don’t like science” crowd. Just so you know, I’m going to use an analogy about finding some yummy food to help describe spacetime.

… I also promise that there will be No Math anywhere in the post…

… And we will eventually get to the section that explains how all this relates to the painting.

You still with me? – Ok, here we go.

It may seem odd that space has four dimensions – but if two people want to have a delicious lunch of soup dumplings, they need to agree on where and when to meet. The address 600 Pine St. - Suite 408 describes the restaurant’s location in three-dimensional space. The street address gives us two dimensions: 1) how far west it is on Pine Street and 2) the even building number 600 tells us it’s on the north side of the street. The third dimension (up/down) is described by the suite number telling us the restaurant is on the fourth floor. But – you can’t eat together unless you agree on the fourth dimension - a date and time to meet. BTW, you WILL need a reservation.

Now, to understand how gravity is related to spacetime, you need to picture three things - a bowling ball, a trampoline, and some kind of round food – let’s say an orange.

Gravity is caused by massive objects like stars (the bowling ball) warping the fabric of spacetime (the trampoline). Now imagine a smaller something like a planet (the orange) trying to roll past the newly created crater in our spacetime fabric. Although it starts its journey in a straight line, the smaller object’s path will bend when it encounters the warped fabric. On Earth, the orange will spiral into the bowling ball because its forward motion is overwhelmed by our planet’s gravity. But in space, planets maintain their orbits around stars because an equal amount of forward inertia counterbalances the planet’s “fall” into the spacetime crater. All satellites – moons, asteroids, comets, and even spacecraft stay in orbit the same way.

San Francisco Bay Area high school teacher Dan Burns created this excellent video demonstrating how massive objects warp the fabric of spacetime. You’ll get the gist in the first couple of minutes.

Even light from a distant star heading toward Earth is subject to gravity. Shortly after the theory of general relativity was published, scientists observed one of its key predictions. During a total solar eclipse, a star located behind the sun could still be seen in the eerie darkness. The star remained visible – appearing as though it was next to the sun because its light was bent by the sun’s gravity in a process called gravitational lensing.

© Michael Salemi 2025 - Based on a concept from the European Space Agency

Some of you probably noticed that I drifted back to science stuff and even brought up high school. Ok, sorry about that; here’s another gravity analogy using food.

We experience gravity as Newton’s apple falling in a straight line from its branch to the ground because the Earth is so much heavier than an apple. But in reality, the apple is still warping its own little corner of spacetime, “tugging” at the Earth on an infinitesimal scale. In fact, it has been proven (in my opinion) that Honeycrisp apples not only taste better than other apples but also (theoretically) warp spacetime more than other varieties because their higher water content gives them more mass!

The Painting

For real, this time

Now that you understand a little about how gravity behaves, you can better appreciate the painting’s composition. The canvas represents the fabric of spacetime, and our famous scientist’s portrait represents a massive body warping it. Hundreds of lines stream in from all directions and encounter the gravitational field. Some of their paths are distorted but move past the scientist. Others are lensed or captured in orbit.

The outer edge of the canvas is dominated by chaotic lines representing the bubbling soup of gases, elementary particles, and random objects that characterize deep space. The composition becomes crisper and more symmetrical toward the center of the painting, reflecting the order created by gravity as it streamlines the movement of these elements into orbits around a massive object.

The Phoenician letter hē makes an appearance as the block figures tumbling through space. They introduce an element of randomness and uncertainty reflecting two key aspects of relativity’s evil twin - the theory of quantum mechanics, which describes the laws of physics at a subatomic scale. The random aspects of quantum mechanics, like subatomic particles popping into and out of existence (not to mention theories on how cats can simultaneously be both dead and alive*), never sat well with the father of spacetime. He famously mocked quantum uncertainties by commenting, “God does not play dice with the universe,” and spent the second half of his life unsuccessfully pursuing a theory of everything to unite quantum mechanics and general relativity. A search that continues to this day.

My journey through the alphabet continues to lead in unexpected directions. Little did I know that a slightly comical rock carving of a stick figure yelling “hey” would lead to an exploration of the mystery and beauty of spacetime. I genuinely appreciate you depleting some of your limited fourth-dimension reserves to come along on this journey. As always, I invite you to share your thoughts on the post by clicking the Comments Button below. Feel free to offer your opinions on the formula linking energy and mass, the merits of Red Delicious apples (even though the answer is none), or whatever else might be on your mind.

* This refers to the famous Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment illustrating the difficulty of applying the rules of quantum mechanics to everyday experiences. If you want to learn more, this link is one of the better explanations of the concept.