I need to clarify, if only for myself, why I am writing this. Obviously an interested but lightly-informed amateur is not going to find the secret of life, the universe and everything by thinking or blogging about it. Even if physics appears to be mired in fog and complexity, thousand of physicists and billions of dollars says to me 'why bother?'.
Blogging may be the key, not to finding direct answers, but to increasing awareness, first that awareness itself is something special, secondly that impossible questions like the infinite universe or the nature of gravity can be answered and understood by many in terms of familiar models. Thirdly our use of the world's resources is at an unsustainable level, our progress is unstable, and there has to be a mass realisation of our privileged position as intelligent life, and our greater responsibility. As civilisation has developed our wars have moved from nearby tribes, to city states and fiefdoms, to countries and continents, to our present clash between cultures. I think it's a common belief that if we encountered an external threat like an alien invader, the world would unite against it. Well, we may not meet the Clingons or Zargons around here, but we are facing a threat as great as any science fiction writer imagined from LGM, and equally need to unite.
Prof Brian Cox's programme recently showed that an equitable energy target of 5kW per person is impractical by known fossil and renewable sources, it requires viable fusion power. But more was spent on cellphone ring tones last year than on fusion power research, we have some priorities to sort out.
It is impossible for most people to reach professional standard in disciplines they are not apt in and trained for and experienced in, yet we enjoy directly the results of their teaching, writing, acting, cooking, art and music, engineering, doctoring and building. Of course big science also benefits us in pharmaceticals and technology, but physics research and physical fundamentals remain largely inaccessible. String theory, huge accelerators, big telescopes etc appear to us on Horizon TV programmes, yet I think most people would know Hubble for its beautiful images rather than its contribution to our physics knowledge.
I think there is a need for the Big Questions to be simplified, and made accessible and natural by techniques such as familiar models.
Saturday 21 February 2009
Thursday 19 February 2009
Two things - no, three things
There are two kinds of people - those who divide people into two kinds, and those who don't. Trivialities aside, there are several fundamentals that look quite different from opposite approaches. Our perception of reality depends on how it is perceived.
Sub-atomic particles can be observed and counted individually, most have an exact mass, and yet if you send them through two adjacent slits they behave as only waves can. Particle or wave - let's have a fight! The development of our species on earth is known to scientists to have evolved over billions of years, but to followers of certain faiths over a period of 5 days at some point over just 5,000 years ago. In the first case scientists observe and measure the phenomena and reconcile different behaviour in a complex set of equations, so that a particle and a packet of energy are expressions of the same thing. In the second, a scientist believes the geological fossil evidence and reconciles the scriptures by using a loose interpretation, and their purpose of teaching an early awareness of creation. I have heard it expressed as "the science says what, and the scriptures say why. Why is not just a matter of cause and effect, but a search for a reason that we are here and asking questions.
Well, two is a special number (it is the only even non-zero prime) but three is quite special as well. I am actually looking to connect three things - the facts of the physical universe, the spiritual world which includes God and his reason for our existence; and our perception and awareness of them. Why should our speck of flawed humanity figure alongside the magnificence of the first two? Certainly the physical universe was here long before us (in our linear view), and I am not suggesting God only exists because we invented him. It is because we (intelligent life) are the instruments of awareness and knowledge of both, and in this way we connect these warm star-baked molecules with the God who made them. And we connect them in such a way that the people who care cannot agree whether the universe came about by some freak accident and has no purpose, or it was designed by a God with a master plan in which we are an early prototype life form. Both answers are fairly improbable if you try to think about it. Yet here we are. Why? Don't ask! But the glib answer is hinted above.
Sub-atomic particles can be observed and counted individually, most have an exact mass, and yet if you send them through two adjacent slits they behave as only waves can. Particle or wave - let's have a fight! The development of our species on earth is known to scientists to have evolved over billions of years, but to followers of certain faiths over a period of 5 days at some point over just 5,000 years ago. In the first case scientists observe and measure the phenomena and reconcile different behaviour in a complex set of equations, so that a particle and a packet of energy are expressions of the same thing. In the second, a scientist believes the geological fossil evidence and reconciles the scriptures by using a loose interpretation, and their purpose of teaching an early awareness of creation. I have heard it expressed as "the science says what, and the scriptures say why. Why is not just a matter of cause and effect, but a search for a reason that we are here and asking questions.
Well, two is a special number (it is the only even non-zero prime) but three is quite special as well. I am actually looking to connect three things - the facts of the physical universe, the spiritual world which includes God and his reason for our existence; and our perception and awareness of them. Why should our speck of flawed humanity figure alongside the magnificence of the first two? Certainly the physical universe was here long before us (in our linear view), and I am not suggesting God only exists because we invented him. It is because we (intelligent life) are the instruments of awareness and knowledge of both, and in this way we connect these warm star-baked molecules with the God who made them. And we connect them in such a way that the people who care cannot agree whether the universe came about by some freak accident and has no purpose, or it was designed by a God with a master plan in which we are an early prototype life form. Both answers are fairly improbable if you try to think about it. Yet here we are. Why? Don't ask! But the glib answer is hinted above.
Saturday 14 February 2009
Qualifications, and method
What I have put up so far is the result of some decades kicking around ideas and firming them up, and there are some more of those to come, but from now on I'll mainly be dotting around new territory.
What am I doing writing about this (arguably) biggest subject of all? Apart from a long-term and prevailing interest, I did a short Philosophy of Science course in my engineering degree in the 70s, I attended church regularly as a youth and for some brief periods since, I have read much science fiction (again mainly in the late 70s) of the practical kind of Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Azimov. In a 1st year University science course I did modules on relativity, and thermodynamics. I have to admit that both were beyond me academically, but some principles stuck, in particular the stunning simplicity of the energy-mass relationship e=m c^2, and the fact that the entropy (degree of chaos) of the universe is increasing. The existence of the Internet, for example, appears to belie that, but who can argue against the principles of thermodynamics? (I abbreviated it to TDS (=T(temperature)deltaS(entropy)) = tedious or TDM = tedium = Te Deum. Obscure coincidental connections, or what?) But I'd be the first to admit that I am not academically qualified to find answers in Cosmology. I just got tired of waiting for the professionals to get results from their very large particle accelerators. Hubble mus be the best telescope we have, there will be huge amounts of scientific data obtained, but the best value I have seen is in images showing the beauty of the distant universe.
Regarding method, I am using this blog to attract interest and discussion from people who are prepared to keep content at a level that ordinary but informed people can follow. The Internet gives this capability of the first time, to reach a very large number of people (and hence a fair number of active contributors) with a reasonable quality of discussion. We may not be well-informed about the scientific evidence, but have a deep pool of intuition and imagination.
For clues about where I'm going with this, I'll close now with the observations (a) that human perception is key to this part of the universe's understanding of itself - it is not the facts that matter, but what they mean to us. And (b) that religion plays a major part of our understanding. People can reconcile Science and Religion, but only by agreeing to disagree, I would suggest.
What am I doing writing about this (arguably) biggest subject of all? Apart from a long-term and prevailing interest, I did a short Philosophy of Science course in my engineering degree in the 70s, I attended church regularly as a youth and for some brief periods since, I have read much science fiction (again mainly in the late 70s) of the practical kind of Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Azimov. In a 1st year University science course I did modules on relativity, and thermodynamics. I have to admit that both were beyond me academically, but some principles stuck, in particular the stunning simplicity of the energy-mass relationship e=m c^2, and the fact that the entropy (degree of chaos) of the universe is increasing. The existence of the Internet, for example, appears to belie that, but who can argue against the principles of thermodynamics? (I abbreviated it to TDS (=T(temperature)deltaS(entropy)) = tedious or TDM = tedium = Te Deum. Obscure coincidental connections, or what?) But I'd be the first to admit that I am not academically qualified to find answers in Cosmology. I just got tired of waiting for the professionals to get results from their very large particle accelerators. Hubble mus be the best telescope we have, there will be huge amounts of scientific data obtained, but the best value I have seen is in images showing the beauty of the distant universe.
Regarding method, I am using this blog to attract interest and discussion from people who are prepared to keep content at a level that ordinary but informed people can follow. The Internet gives this capability of the first time, to reach a very large number of people (and hence a fair number of active contributors) with a reasonable quality of discussion. We may not be well-informed about the scientific evidence, but have a deep pool of intuition and imagination.
For clues about where I'm going with this, I'll close now with the observations (a) that human perception is key to this part of the universe's understanding of itself - it is not the facts that matter, but what they mean to us. And (b) that religion plays a major part of our understanding. People can reconcile Science and Religion, but only by agreeing to disagree, I would suggest.
Wednesday 11 February 2009
Why blog?
In case anyone is wondering why I am writing this, let me try and explain, it might help me too . . I find myself wondering about what came before the Big Bang, and the whole impossibility (from our 3-dimensional viewpoint) of everything appearing from nothing. Especially when you think about what nothing really is. Because empty space is not nothing.
Early man lived outdoors, many early cultures tracked the movements of the stars and planets, the evidence of the correct shape of the solar system (and the correct shape of the earth) was there to see. Yet they did not become common knowledge till just a few hundred years ago. Understanding the basics should not need fine scientific measurements; the main tools are an open interpretation of the evidence, an agile imagination, and some simple models.
One of Arthur C Clarke's stories is of the world's telephone network being developed to the point where is has a comparable number of links and nodes as a brain, and gains intelligence which it then engages to control all the telecommunications and power infrastructure. Even with the internet and the computers it interconnects this hasn't happened yet, but maybe the people connected to those computers on that network will put their heads together and distil out a simple route to solving an impossible conundrum. It's about time this new supertool, the internet, was exploited for something grand, other than SETI.
Well, we need an objective, and the first one is to think of a simple model for the shape of the universe, which has to include its fourth dimension, time. Does it matter? Not really, it's just an interesting challenge.
Early man lived outdoors, many early cultures tracked the movements of the stars and planets, the evidence of the correct shape of the solar system (and the correct shape of the earth) was there to see. Yet they did not become common knowledge till just a few hundred years ago. Understanding the basics should not need fine scientific measurements; the main tools are an open interpretation of the evidence, an agile imagination, and some simple models.
One of Arthur C Clarke's stories is of the world's telephone network being developed to the point where is has a comparable number of links and nodes as a brain, and gains intelligence which it then engages to control all the telecommunications and power infrastructure. Even with the internet and the computers it interconnects this hasn't happened yet, but maybe the people connected to those computers on that network will put their heads together and distil out a simple route to solving an impossible conundrum. It's about time this new supertool, the internet, was exploited for something grand, other than SETI.
Well, we need an objective, and the first one is to think of a simple model for the shape of the universe, which has to include its fourth dimension, time. Does it matter? Not really, it's just an interesting challenge.
Tuesday 10 February 2009
Some big ideas
We are talking about the shape of the universe, so let's waste no time in bringing God into the discussion. I hesitate however, because God is a matter of faith and nothing I say should deepen or lessen anyone's faith. For those for whom God is fact, and not just a belief, let me say that he gave us free will, and this includes the ability of each of us to believe, or not to believe. If knowing him was somehow compulsory, then we would not be human. So one person may know God, and another may not, and neither can say the other is wrong.
The method I use to show the shape of the earth to a flat-earther, or the shape of the universe to an "infinite universer", can also be used to illustrate how God is there for those who want to find him. But I don't want to trivialise something so meaningful to many people, and will leave this for the moment as an exercise for the student . . . Meanwhile God may or may not guide me as I exercise my free will to write these random jottings.
Going back again to my teens, a very good friend told me something very profound. I don't know if it was original or whether he got it from Mr Tomkins in Wonderland (ISBN 0-521-44771-2) but it goes as follows "Through us, humankind, the universe is aware of itself". It is our awareness, as compared to being alive or being conscious, that sets us apart from all other life on earth, and is the foundation of our curiosity, the development of our skills and talents, and our independent thought.
Another "so what" moment. Well, I've sidestepped religion, I've avoided emotions, I am a layman and am not going to get into complex dimensions or string theory etc. However complex the laws of physics, I think the basics have to be quite simple, and I reckon that awareness is a good starting point to move off from, as it is the connection or interface between the universe and our (and therefore its) understanding of it.
The method I use to show the shape of the earth to a flat-earther, or the shape of the universe to an "infinite universer", can also be used to illustrate how God is there for those who want to find him. But I don't want to trivialise something so meaningful to many people, and will leave this for the moment as an exercise for the student . . . Meanwhile God may or may not guide me as I exercise my free will to write these random jottings.
Going back again to my teens, a very good friend told me something very profound. I don't know if it was original or whether he got it from Mr Tomkins in Wonderland (ISBN 0-521-44771-2) but it goes as follows "Through us, humankind, the universe is aware of itself". It is our awareness, as compared to being alive or being conscious, that sets us apart from all other life on earth, and is the foundation of our curiosity, the development of our skills and talents, and our independent thought.
Another "so what" moment. Well, I've sidestepped religion, I've avoided emotions, I am a layman and am not going to get into complex dimensions or string theory etc. However complex the laws of physics, I think the basics have to be quite simple, and I reckon that awareness is a good starting point to move off from, as it is the connection or interface between the universe and our (and therefore its) understanding of it.
Monday 9 February 2009
Too soon to state objectives, lets just set down a few relevant discussions/arguments. Always start with the obvious (though it was not always so . . )
Why did it take us until the middle ages to begin to realise that the earth was spherical? Everyone believed the earth to be flat, and then wrestled with the problems that creates, of what happens at the edges - won't the sea run off? And what is beneath this plate-shaped earth. And why is the horizon apparently a fixed distance, dependent on only the height ASL of the observer? Just looking at a peeled orange has all the clues of a sphere with poles, and lines of longitude. Was the moon also a flat disc, which just happened to present its surface normal to the earth?
People were trapped in their local view of the world, and so oranges could be spherical but planets must be flat. And then the great navigators proved the earth's true shape by sailing around it in one direction and ending up where they started. The earth's surface has finite area, and it has no boundaries. Like an orange, you (or an ant) can travel around it without ever stopping, but its area is only 4PiR^2/3. For someone with a two-dimensional view, where there is only forward/reverse and left/right, the gentle downwards curvature of the globe does not exist and to return to where you started without falling off the edge is a total mystery. Slot in the third dimension, the same one that up and down exist in, and all fits into place.
How many people think the universe is infinite? In any case it is unimaginably large, so why not? Cosmologists (using the term broadly) know it is not, in fact its total mass has been estimated, I have seen a figure of 10^40kg give or take some orders of magnitude. They see evidence of the Big Bang and can measure the age and the speed of expansion.
I worked out as a teenager that the universe must be finite. The method was simply that if it were infinite, there must be another earth exactly like ours, but for that to happen there must be a near-infinite number just like it except for one molecule etc etc, even thinking about an infinte universe is scary. Fortunately we have a model from our two-dimensional world - as the surface of a sphere is finite but unbounded, so the volume and mass of the universe is finite but unbounded. In this case whichever direction you set off in (forward/back, left/right or up/down), and think you are travelling in a straight line, you will end up where you started.
So where is the hidden dimension, the forgotten up/down of the flat earther? Let's say that is time (I haven't a better idea), something we are familiar with in our local view, but find it hard to imagine on a cosmic scale. And something which links cosmic distances and the speed of light.
I once failed an interviewing course, and one reason was a dumb question I gave a bright test interviewee - what would you reply to a precocious nephew who asked you why we are attracted to the ground. (I did not ask him to explain gravity, just how he would reply to a cute question.) I think his answer was to ask his dad - or someone who understood big things. But he copped out. What do you say - shut up and eat your porridge? But if we can't be expected to understand the size of the universe, why should we question why gravity exists. There are far more pressing mysteries, like whether UFOs are real.
But there is a model for gravity that lay people should be able to understand, that involves slipping off the tricky dimension and going back to just three. Take a rubber toy balloon, stick some pieces of lead shot around its surface, what happens? (Don't forget, gravity doesn't exist yet, we can do without the sticky stuff). Nothing happens. But start to blow up the balloon, and the pieces of lead shot will resist the movement, and make indents in the surface of the balloon. And if two of the pieces of lead shot are close together, their indentations will tend to be lower in the region between them, and they will roll (or gravitate?) towards one another. We have a model of masses being attracted to each other when being accelerated in an elastic medium.
Put back the magic dimension, the one that takes us from a 2-D surface to a 3-D volume, and we have the elastic medium of space with masses in it. If the space is static the masses don't bend it and there is no gravity. But if the elastic space is expanding, the masses resist by making indents in the space. Two masses nearby each other 'share' an indent, and roll down its 'sides' towards each other - hence gravity. Astronomers make measurements of stars by observing how light from distant stars is bent around planets as they 'line up' to our view. Space is elastic, and it bends as it pushes masses along in its expansion.
So what? If you didn't know before, then you've learned something fundamental. And if you did, well let's move to the next step. Yes, all of us.
Why did it take us until the middle ages to begin to realise that the earth was spherical? Everyone believed the earth to be flat, and then wrestled with the problems that creates, of what happens at the edges - won't the sea run off? And what is beneath this plate-shaped earth. And why is the horizon apparently a fixed distance, dependent on only the height ASL of the observer? Just looking at a peeled orange has all the clues of a sphere with poles, and lines of longitude. Was the moon also a flat disc, which just happened to present its surface normal to the earth?
People were trapped in their local view of the world, and so oranges could be spherical but planets must be flat. And then the great navigators proved the earth's true shape by sailing around it in one direction and ending up where they started. The earth's surface has finite area, and it has no boundaries. Like an orange, you (or an ant) can travel around it without ever stopping, but its area is only 4PiR^2/3. For someone with a two-dimensional view, where there is only forward/reverse and left/right, the gentle downwards curvature of the globe does not exist and to return to where you started without falling off the edge is a total mystery. Slot in the third dimension, the same one that up and down exist in, and all fits into place.
How many people think the universe is infinite? In any case it is unimaginably large, so why not? Cosmologists (using the term broadly) know it is not, in fact its total mass has been estimated, I have seen a figure of 10^40kg give or take some orders of magnitude. They see evidence of the Big Bang and can measure the age and the speed of expansion.
I worked out as a teenager that the universe must be finite. The method was simply that if it were infinite, there must be another earth exactly like ours, but for that to happen there must be a near-infinite number just like it except for one molecule etc etc, even thinking about an infinte universe is scary. Fortunately we have a model from our two-dimensional world - as the surface of a sphere is finite but unbounded, so the volume and mass of the universe is finite but unbounded. In this case whichever direction you set off in (forward/back, left/right or up/down), and think you are travelling in a straight line, you will end up where you started.
So where is the hidden dimension, the forgotten up/down of the flat earther? Let's say that is time (I haven't a better idea), something we are familiar with in our local view, but find it hard to imagine on a cosmic scale. And something which links cosmic distances and the speed of light.
I once failed an interviewing course, and one reason was a dumb question I gave a bright test interviewee - what would you reply to a precocious nephew who asked you why we are attracted to the ground. (I did not ask him to explain gravity, just how he would reply to a cute question.) I think his answer was to ask his dad - or someone who understood big things. But he copped out. What do you say - shut up and eat your porridge? But if we can't be expected to understand the size of the universe, why should we question why gravity exists. There are far more pressing mysteries, like whether UFOs are real.
But there is a model for gravity that lay people should be able to understand, that involves slipping off the tricky dimension and going back to just three. Take a rubber toy balloon, stick some pieces of lead shot around its surface, what happens? (Don't forget, gravity doesn't exist yet, we can do without the sticky stuff). Nothing happens. But start to blow up the balloon, and the pieces of lead shot will resist the movement, and make indents in the surface of the balloon. And if two of the pieces of lead shot are close together, their indentations will tend to be lower in the region between them, and they will roll (or gravitate?) towards one another. We have a model of masses being attracted to each other when being accelerated in an elastic medium.
Put back the magic dimension, the one that takes us from a 2-D surface to a 3-D volume, and we have the elastic medium of space with masses in it. If the space is static the masses don't bend it and there is no gravity. But if the elastic space is expanding, the masses resist by making indents in the space. Two masses nearby each other 'share' an indent, and roll down its 'sides' towards each other - hence gravity. Astronomers make measurements of stars by observing how light from distant stars is bent around planets as they 'line up' to our view. Space is elastic, and it bends as it pushes masses along in its expansion.
So what? If you didn't know before, then you've learned something fundamental. And if you did, well let's move to the next step. Yes, all of us.
Sunday 8 February 2009
I've seen a few good blogs, generally about the individual. That's fine if you think you are interesting (whether you are or not), and the best blog I have seen is of an individual now deceased, whose issue is his experience in the war to end all wars.
I am more interested to blog an issue, rather than myself. What I have in mind is nothing trivial, in fact it is far too complex for the layman, but something that needs understanding at a popular level to be useful to us.
A subject full of paradox and mystery, contradiction, and controversy no doubt. A subject which is impossibly complex, yet common sense says has to be fundamentally simple. Can you see what it is yet?
I am more interested to blog an issue, rather than myself. What I have in mind is nothing trivial, in fact it is far too complex for the layman, but something that needs understanding at a popular level to be useful to us.
A subject full of paradox and mystery, contradiction, and controversy no doubt. A subject which is impossibly complex, yet common sense says has to be fundamentally simple. Can you see what it is yet?
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