Welcome to the cosmiCave: On Shadows, Relativity, and the Search for Reality

Maybe that’s Cosmic Cave—or Cosmic Avenue. Maybe just cosmiCave will do—one word, a few different meanings.

To start, I see this site as a journey—both for me and, hopefully, for you. It’s a space where I’ll be sharing thoughts on cosmology, space-time, epistemology, ontology—in short, on the universe and how we go about understanding it. How we observe, interpret, explain, and sometimes mislead ourselves in the process.

Over time, I plan to branch into a wide range of topics I’ve worked on over the past decade: from course materials I’ve developed for teaching the foundations of astronomy, to tools and techniques I’ve created for student observations using robotic telescopes. But at first, the blog will focus on the project that has consumed most of my energy for the past eight months while I’ve been on leave from teaching: a return to the foundational physics questions I first explored during my PhD.

I recently completed a book—currently under consideration with academic publishers—called Beyond Space-Time: Reclaiming Reality from the Illusions of Relativity. In it, I argue that the “block universe” interpretation of relativity is not just counterintuitive but structurally inert. I then turn to the purely operationalist interpretation, often treated by relativists as a safe ontological fallback. But as I show, this view is neither adhered to in practice nor consistent with large swaths of contemporary physics. Ultimately, I propose a new theoretical framework—Cosmological Relativity—which offers what I believe to be the cleanest and most coherent interpretation of relativistic phenomena.

That said, Cosmological Relativity comes with implications that many physicists and philosophers might find uncomfortable. It implies, for example, that much of what we think we know about black holes is mistaken. It rules out time travel—not just practically, but conceptually. And it challenges widely accepted philosophical views that are often mistaken for objectivity, even when they clash with empirical evidence. In short, it’s a theory that invites us to take a hard look at what we think is real.

The book lays out the argument in full, but this blog will let me explore its details more freely—unpacking the tangents, backstories, cultural links, and philosophical oddities that didn’t fit between its covers.

For example: although I managed to include a short reference to H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, there’s far more to say. It’s fascinating to see how, even in its opening chapter, Wells introduces a category error through a rhetorical sleight of hand—one that philosophers of time still echo today. In the 1931 prologue to the novel, Wells himself describes how the idea had been “in the air” during his university years, a reflection of the broader conceptual shifts already unfolding in the late 19th century.

My aim here, then, is to bring the book—and the ideas behind it—to life in a broader, more dynamic conversation. The topics will evolve. I’ll revisit old essays I never published, explore newer ideas I’m still testing out, and eventually share course materials that I hope will be useful to anyone fascinated by astronomy and our place in the cosmos.

At its heart, this site is structured around the allegory of Plato’s Cave. It’s a metaphor that has guided science since the beginning: the idea that we see only shadows, and that the real work of science is to trace those shadows back to the structures that cast them. In today’s physics discourse, we often stop at describing the shadows themselves, mistaking successful prediction for understanding. We’ve grown wary of ontology—suspicious of claims about what really exists. I think this is a mistake.

In everything I post here, I’ll be trying to demonstrate how science works at its best: not as a catalogue of predictions, but as a disciplined effort to disentangle projection from reality. To move beyond appearances and toward explanation. To exit the cave, even if just a few steps at a time.

So welcome to the cosmiCave. Whether you’re here for the physics, the philosophy, the pedagogy, or the poetry of it all—I hope you’ll find something that sparks curiosity and encourages reflection.

Thanks for being here. Feel free to share your thoughts below.

—Daryl