I've started reading The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, by leading superstring physicist Brian Greene (who also wrote the best-selling The Elegant Universe). Fascinating stuff about how physicists have viewed space (and time) throughout history. We've been spending quite awhile talking about Isaac Newton and his bucket, no ordinary bucket, but a bucket that has confounded physicists for centuries.
And finally, here's a little goldfish I'd like you to meet named Sparky.
While Sparky's blog is already quite addicting, I have it on good authority that Sparky's life will get much more interesting on March 1st.
21 comments:
LOL - I found Sparky's blog to be so insightful that I had to Blogroll it.
Is that when Sparky meets the family cat?
Man, I have wanted a castle since I was 5 - damn that fish is lucky.
Looks like he has 3!
Poor Sparky! (Must remind Sparky never to watch A Fish Called Wanda.)
That's awesome.. I'm posting a link to it too...
Hello! I am a friend of "SunGrooveTheory," she told me about you - that you are interested in moving your site over to PHP/mySQL .... I'll be more than happy to give you pointers, help, or tips if you need them! PHP/mySQL is lots of fun :-)
Hey Dan :) I left a comment on your site earlier. I really appreciate your offer to help, and I just may bug you with a question every now and then ;)
wow I feel like I missed a train.
Dan, wow, nice to see lol =)
I just wanted to chime in,
::also a fan of Sparky:::
(and superstring theory... What do you think of it? It can't be proved or disproved... Doesn't that make it a psuedo-science? But maybe this is too much discussion for the comments section... hehheh.. ) Yeah, Sparky's great =)
Superstring theory is the leading contender for a GUT -- grand unified theory -- (unifying general relativity and quantum theory), but it's all based on rigorous mathematics, and they've figured out some ingenious ways to test predictions made by the theory. So I wouldn't call it pseudo-science. For example, when Einstein came up with general relativity, it was just a theory and nobody had proved anything. But since then we've performed experiments that prove the theory (such as measuring the unusual orbit of Mercury).
Yes, I agree with that (leading contender for GUT)
And the mathematics are rigorous. It bridges the gap between Q.M. and Einstein's theory of Relativity. (Relativity does not hold on very small scale, Q.M. does not hold on very large scale.)
Of course, it would be wonderful to have a GUT, but I can't help but wonder if Superstring theory is it. It is my understanding(am I mistaken here?) that the "strings" are too small to ever be able to detect. Well, it will be interesting to see how it develops. And you are certainly one smart cookie. You just may be involved in the process =)
I have also heard postulated that perhaps the reason Relativity seems to fail where Q.M. comes in is that we have still not yet achieved a full understanding of both special and general relativity.
lol - I'm just an "armchair physicist" ;) And you sound pretty smart yourself! Yes, they don't know either if superstring theory is "it". I think you're right about never being able to detect the "strings", since they are at the Planck length scale. But the theory makes certain predictions that can be experimentally verified (such as the existence of new particles). We can also never detect the "extra" spatial dimensions the theory predicts (and requires to work), but we might be able to detect their influence on ours.
I've read that when you mix relativity and QM the math breaks down, producing nonsensical results (all these extra infinities). I haven't heard that postulation about us not fully understand relativity. I know there are multiple solutions to Einstein's equations, but isn't the math already set (and the math fails to mix with QM?). (I don't know the math of advanced physics.) We need to unify relativity and QM if we are to understand what happened during the Big Bang and what's going on with black holes, since in both cases you have the very small with very large gravitational/relativistic effects. With physicists it all comes down to the math, and apparently superstring math really turns them on ;)
We can also never detect the "extra" spatial dimensions the theory predicts (and requires to work), Right,
I've read that when you mix relativity and QM the math breaks down, producing nonsensical results (all these extra infinities).
Right, and that's beyond my knowledge area right now, because I am still trying to grasp degrees of infinity. It boggles my mind. But Einstein was far more advanced when it came to understanding concepts as such. Yes, there are certain aspects of Einstein's theories that are still in research.
Discussing with you here is a breath of fresh air!! Why aren't the people in my physics classes more like you?? Instead, I got to take Q.M. with a bunch of frat-boys, and try to discuss Newtonian phys with them, much less anything even slightly more advanced.
Pwaahaha!! Kitty, you have to read this joke I just found!!
An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician (it is said) were holidaying in Scotland. Glancing from a train window, they observed a black sheep in the middle of a field.
"How interesting," observed the astronomer, "all scottish sheep are black!"
To which the physicist responded, "No, no! Some Scottish sheep are black!"
The mathematician gazed heavenward in supplication, and then intoned, "In Scotland there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black."
That bastard is up to 6 castles now... and all I ever wanted was 1! How unfair is that - and he is onyl a fish!.
SunGrooveTheory,
haha -- I'm not sure astronomers will like that ;)
Here's an example of different orders of infinity my hubby just came up with: Consider the number of points on a line (infinite), and the number of points on a plane (an infinite number of lines, each of which contains an infinite number of points). Mathematically you have to treat these two infinities differently for everything to work out.
Wow, that's a really good analogy. I'm still not sure that I grasp the depth of "degrees of infinity" completely, but that is very helpful.
I know what you mean. Infinity is infinity, right? How can you have more than infinity? :)
No kiddin, huh? lol.
but what about the fabled and often mentioned "infinity +1"
lol
Exactly! I've won many a verbal contest with infinity + 1 in elementary school.
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