Tuesday, September 7, 2010
On Hiatus
I'll be back as soon as possible!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Welcome to a New School Year with Hurrican Earl and Stephen Hawking...
So today, Stephen Hawking finally came out with his new book: The Grand Design, co-authored by Leonard Mlodinow. This will be available on Amazon on Tuesday, September 7th.
I was very surprised to hear that in his new book, instead of speaking about quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity like he usually does, he actually describes the universe from a String Theory point of view instead!
I don't know if you realize how apocalyptic this is: Since when does Hawking involve himself with String Theory????
For the past however-many-years-he's-been-here, he has written books upon books upon papers of quantum mechanics, Einstein's relativity, his formulas, his own work with black holes, and that was about all. Then all of a sudden, he disappears into the dark for a while, and *Poof!* he suddenly transforms into an expert on String Theory as much as he is about Einstein's relativity!
The fact is, I have never in my entire life seen someone as inspiring as Stephen Hawking. A man living with ALS for over forty years longer than doctors said he would. When he was in college and was planning to attend Cambridge University to get his Ph.D. was when he was diagnosed with ALS, with only a few years to live.
And here he is today, still alive, still able to communicate, and still able to write books upon books about his research and knowledge. This man is a genius.
I'd update more, but... I have a surprise for you viewers out there. The next post will be on Saturday, and I'm not, under any circumstance, ruining the surprise! ;)
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Quasars, Pulsars, Novae, and Blinking Molecules…
What I am about to explain to you may be a bit confusing unless we begin with what the heck a ‘quasar’ is.
A quasar is defined as an extragalactic, super massive star-like object in that it is luminescent, but that it is the most luminescent object in the universe.
A pulsar, however (and yes, they have been found which is awesome!) is a quasar that acts sort of like a lighthouse: it blinks in a rotating fashion. However, scientists have not yet figured out exactly how this works.
But what they have found out is that some molecules actually do blink.
According to an article from August 12th, last week Neils Bohr’s prediction of molecules blinking was correct after all.
Neils Bohr had predicted this long ago, as a chemical physicist. Now physicists have found that molecules can blink due to a transition of electrons between discreet levels of energy within individual atoms at a time.
These have been coined ‘Quantum jumps’ by Neils Bohr and they have finally found how exactly this works. There are discreet interruptions when the electrons are being transferred, and so the molecules actually light up with energy when all the electrons are in it, then when the interruption is gone they all then go to the other molecule. The interruptions are caused by the emissions (of carbon and such) from the atom, blocking out the electrons.
What’s cool is that these are molecules that are blinking here. What it means is, different ways of imaging for cancer. Real time images of viruses such as HIV and soforth.
But not only for medical professionals: if blinking molecules could be controlled (which may be coming sooner than we know it), these could be used as an electricity-free way to use house-hold lights, brighter display screens on computers and gaming systems, TVs, and could change the way we see electronics as we know them.
As far as novae go, I wanted to explain why you can’t see quasars, pulsars, or supernovae (or novae) with the naked eye.
The problem is this: the closest stars to us besides the Sun take a loooooooong time to send their light to us.
If we were very close to the supernova or pulsar or quasar or whatever it is, we could see it in real time, or close to it.
But in the same way, you cannot see supernovae or quasars with the naked eye because they are so far away, that by the time the light gets here it would barely be noticeable. Any star that is massive enough to have a supernova (or a nova, which is a supernova that causes a white dwarf not a black hole), or any pulsar or quasar, is not even close to being seen with the naked eye. You even need a telescope to see all of the separate areas and craters on the moon, let alone a supernova that’s happening a thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand million light years away.
Next post: The ending of “The Time Machine” (contains spoilers!) and how probable the ideas really are about what the future will be like…
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
“The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells and What it Implies…
I’m almost finished with “The Time Machine” now and I found a strange similarity with this and “The Lurking Fear” by H. P. Lovecraft. Both of these writers love to do science fiction work, and both include two different species of men: the white, hiding-in-the-darkness gorilla people that inbreed and eat the other species: the people who have not been shunned by society and sent underground (or in Lovecraft’s case, locked in their own home) also known as the civilized, more evolved people.
Another similarity is that the people who are not hiding, do not cannibalize, and live close to normally speak a different language and look a bit strange. In “The Time Machine”, they are 800,000 years into the future, while in “The Lurking Fear”, the people are in the present on their own space of land.
What I found interesting in “The Time Machine” too was that the time traveler insists that going at speeds so high as to go into the future may actually bring yourself into another dimension. If so, he wouldn’t have ended up on Earth, as he remarks near the end of the story. The ‘current’ people in these stories do differentiate greatly between cultures though. In Lovecraft’s story, although they look more monkey-like than humans, in Wells’ story they definitely don’t.
In Wells’ story, what was interesting was he included the fact that their chins were smaller, they were very short and pale, and had big, bright eyes, looking like children, when in fact they were adults. They also all wore the same kind of soft material, and they all ate at the same place. There was no electricity, no currency to speak of, but biotechnology had gone so far as to create new and glorious breeds of flowers, which they all had in their gardens.
On another note, I’ve decided to look at the book “Night Watch” from the year 2000 and see what it was about; I’ve never seen it ever, actually. I was looking at it this morning and it was very useful for seeing the constellations during which seasons, and telling you how to spot certain stars such as Polaris.
Considering it’s from 2000, I don’t know how accurate it would be today. I’m assuming it would be close enough that you would be able to find mostly everything without too much of a hassle.
Next post coming tomorrow, about quasars, pulsars, blinking molecules, and novae (as opposed to supernovae)!
Monday, August 16, 2010
A Blurb From Calculus, the Fire Breathing Dragon of Mathematics…
So, besides listening to audiotapes of science-fiction this summer, I’ve decided to get Dr. Michael Starbird’s audio CD’s of Calculus.
Of course, Calculus can be hard, if the professor is uninteresting, or speaks to quickly, or just doesn’t seem to care if anyone in the room understands… (trust me, I’ve had teachers like that!) But with Dr. Michael Starbird from Texas University, he really shows true teaching of Calculus in a way that most people can understand, not just the quiet, super-intelligent beings in the front of the classroom. With these audio-CD’s, even without a background in Precalculus (I’m taking it this coming year), I can fully understand what the concept is of Calculus and how it works philosophically.
As far as the math goes, it’s harder without a visual, but I can understand the basic concepts of the Derivative and the Integral as two separate ideas that work together mathematically with limits.
If you need any help with Calculus, definitely download his audio-recordings online or buy his books (or borrow them from the library) or just do something to be taught by this guy. He really is very famous, too, for making Calculus an understandable and teachable subject.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
“Deception Point”, “The Time Machine”, and Other Books…
So besides being extremely busy with Summer things, at night I’ve been listening to some audiotapes (much easier to do during the lazy days of Summer) but besides that, I wanted to make a promise:
That I am going to keep with this blog no matter what it takes. Because, first, it’s what I like to do: To write, inform others, teach, etc. But secondly, it’s also my passion. My current dream is this: To be a professor of astrophysics at a great university and to do my own research.
This is what I want, and the blog is what I came up with.
Back to the news, I listened to the entire audiotape of “Deception Point” by Dan Brown (author of “The Da Vinci Code”, etc.) and it was one excellent piece of science fiction. Not too science-ish (in fact, you find out why it’s called “Deception Point” later)but very good nonetheless. Has alot to do with the government which is pretty interesting…
I have begun listening to “The Time Machine” and I’m happy to say it’s very scientific so far. A wonderful piece of science-fiction to read, and there’s even a movie of it.
I loved the beginning, because the ‘time traveler’ (as he’s called) hasn’t yet said he could time travel, but said that he theorized that there were four dimensions: that time is a fourth dimension (which today is still accepted by theoretical physicists)that we cannot perceive like other dimensions because we aren’t surrounded by it, we ride along it, just like space. This is why space and time are considered ‘space-time’. This time traveler didn’t call it ‘space-time’ but he did say that they work hand in hand and that we ride along the fourth dimension involved in our universe, time.
Now, thinking about time as another dimension didn’t quite start until the group of theoretical physicists became a bit more populated, which was around the time this book was written (I can’t quite grasp the exact year) but a number of decades later, here we are reading Lisa Randall’s “Warped Passages: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions” and we see that time being a fourth dimension is still used in common theories.
In “The Time Machine”, when the time traveler is done explaining his theory about us riding along this fourth dimension, he is speaking to a few very educated men in the science field, one being a psychologist. Three of the men were doubtful about his theory, but one man says that he thought it was a very interesting idea.
Then comes when the time traveler deduces that if he were able to change into another dimension by going fast enough, he could travel through time.
Does this sound familiar?
I solemnly swear that I have never, ever heard this story until last night, and I was very surprised by how the time traveler perceives things very similar to how I have been making my theory. Of course, I don’t know how much he knows about the universe and such, so he doesn’t get into great detail about how he came to this conclusion, other than that he believed that time worked hand in hand with space as another dimension with matter, and he couldn’t have been closer to the ideas of most theoretical physicists today.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
"Anyway, I was thinking more of a bio-social exploration with a neuro-chemical overlay"...
Yes, this was another quote from The Big Bang Theory. One of the best.
Although I won't get into just how the heck you get dating out of that remark, because it's more neuro-science related.
Anyways, I thought I'd comment on what I learned while reading "The Day Without a Yesterday" and tell you that I brought "A History of Zero" back to the library today for obvious reasons.
Anyway, in "The Day Without a Yesterday", it talks about how LeMaitre should have gotten more credit for some things that Einstein took most of the credit for. This was because, back when Einstein was around, there began the fight between quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity. Quantum mechanics, at first, could not agree with Einstein's Relativity, until a Russian mathematician (I forget his name) mathematically figured out how they would go together. Then, Einstein found Special Relativity, a term he coined for the Russian mathematician's formula. So pretty much they worked together for a while on it.
Anyways, when they still didn't agree before the Russian mathematician stepped in, there were a number of debates of Einstein's relativity versus the newly-founded Quantum Theory. Einstein was troubled because it turned out his relativity wasn't so great after all. He was bummed, and he was trying to distract himself by being more outgoing with his friends, but the trouble of his relativity (only General at this point) removed all possibilities of truth without expanding it and changing it somehow. The Russian mathematician pointed out that in his General relativity formula, he needed the upside-down triangle-looking symbol (ummm I have no idea what it's called... That's delta, I think?) which made space-time curve matter, and matter curve space-time, but working with quantum theory just a little bit more.
Then came along Einstein's find of special relativity, which clashed once again with quantum theory just a bit longer.
The reason why I like this book is because it not just shows the achievements of Einstein, but it shows who helped him and who should get credit for what things, too. Einstein didn't do all the work, you know.
Also, more about "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, I find it astounding how similar string theory and my theory are. Except for the garbage can theorem (I still can't type that with a straight face), the fact that I'm saying space-time can rip is intriguingly similar to that of string theory.
I'm curious as to how string theorists say that space-time can also repair itself, so hopefully I'll get to that part soon.
As for "A Brief History of Time", I stopped because I wanted a more one-focus book right now, not a general one (which is weird because usually I prefer those)... I guess it's because I know most of the stuff in that book so I need something more focused on stuff I don't know instead.
Ah well, I am definitely keeping up more with this.
P.S. After a long period of time, I'm planning on putting all the posts into a book-form, so stay tuned!
Saturday, August 7, 2010
I Owe You an Apology, String Theory….
This is an official message to String Theory: I am sorry for treating you condescendingly and not believing in you without knowing all the facts first.
From: Madeleine Michaud
What brought this about was the fact that I didn’t really pay attention when I was reading “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene. In fact, I didn’t even read past the first few pages. But what I do know now is that according to string theory, space-time can be torn and it can repair itself, which amazed me! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I didn’t even think of space-time repairing itself after it’s ripped, I figured it would be a black hole. But maybe not. I’ll have to look more into this, but that’s a whole other story.
Did I mention I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. John Carlson? I think I did, but I can’t remember at this point. Anyway, I figured I’d throw a picture up here for fun.
I just thought I’d update saying I’m going to read more soon, because I’ve been behind on my work due to computer issues (of which we thought were resolved, but they’re not!) But now, I have Windows 7, and therefore, I have Windows Live Writer. What this means is, I can publish my blog without having a good internet connection at that time!
I did happen to read more of “A Natural History of Zero”, but it’s becoming redundant very quickly. If I were to give advice to the author, I’d say don’t give away the answer to the mystery only five chapters into the book.
The first five chapters were amazing though, I’d recommend at least reading that much!
Friday, August 6, 2010
The Crazy Dr. Lowell and Some Thoughts on "A Natural History of Zero"...
But the rest of the series has a lot to do with not only space, but biology, which is another interesting science (but we won't get into it much here)... But the reason why I wanted to bring it up was that I thought I was crazy for speaking about the universe as almost an organism as itself, using "natural selection" as to which universe will survive the longest.
It's not always the stronger ones that survive, but it is the norm to think of it that way.
If we think about the universe as an organism itself, then how do we know if its on the latter end of the universal scale?
For all we know, other universes (if they're there)could have survived the past thousand-billion years!
But then again, perhaps we could think about it this way: The universe is expanding. If a universe is contracting, it may be dieing (because everything is going to collapse on each other) but if its expanding, its making more room for more matter to emerge, and stuff won't be crashing into each other.
But the fact that its expanding at an accelerating rate (the speed at which it's expanding is equal to how far it is, so it becomes faster each moment) worries me, because what happens when it reaches that infinite amount of distance? Will everything be sucked into a vortex of terror or something? Haha, probably not. But still, will the universe begin contracting into what is theorized as "The Big Crunch"?
Well, according to "A Brief History of Time", because our universe is expanding so quickly, it is going to keep expanding forever, because there's not enough mass for everything to start moving toward each other again after a certain amount of time.
As far as we know today, we only have about 10% of the mass needed to have The Big Crunch. So what this means is, the universe's expansion will eventually slow down and seemingly stop at some point in time.
In other news, from "A Natural History of Zero", what was interesting was the philosophy behind the idea: Is zero a symbol for nothing, or is it a "nothing" that's there?
The first is what puts it on par with the rest of the numbers, the latter is what would keep it in another category all by itself.
This is an ancient, ANCIENT question, that cannot exactly be answered except by how the mathematician, or the student, or whoever uses it.
If you put zero in a category by itself in your work, then you're saying it's a nothing that's there (which is terribly confusing to those who think about it too long) and if you use it as a number along with all the other numbers in your work, then you're saying it's a symbol for nothing, just like 1 is a symbol for one, and 3 is a symbol for three.
Also, I thought I would bring in some stuff from H. P. Lovecraft's "Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner" First Writings (The Gleaner being the Pawtuxet Valley tabloid/magazine). for the Gleaner, H. P. Lovecraft's first writings ever published, Lovecraft wrote a number of astronomy forecasts and what he knows about stars, magnitude, and the planets.
What's cool is that these were written back in 1906, so it's interesting to see things in there that we know today were wrong, but back then were seen as the truth.
Part of this issues were caused by the fuzziness of the telescopes; you could only see something for about a few seconds before having to readjust and recalibrate the whole thing.
The first thing that started was that there was a professor named Dr. Lowell, who claimed to see perfectly straight crevices dug into Mars, and theorized that they were water canals for an extremely intelligent species.
I had to laugh, because we learned in science this year that it was false.
Plus, they hadn't discovered Pluto yet, so there were only eight planets just like there are today!
Another thing they said was that another professor had spotted dark green spots on the moon that could only be vegetation. Of course, this too was eventually proven false.
The people were beginning to panic because of Dr. Lowell's "discoveries", and many asked questions about extraterrestrial life. What would this look like? It says in the article that no one could be sure because although there's really no air, "there could be a thin, gaseous cloud" that the extraterrestrials could live in. But with the "discovery" of vegetation on the moon, the people would believe anything. Not to mention, that there was a theory of a volcano on the moon, because many people estimated different diameters for the moon's largest crater, and therefore they thought volcanoes must change it.
Back to Mars, Dr. Lowell also thought he saw circles cutting up these long, thin canals, and therefore he told everyone that this intelligent species must use them for when the winter on Mars has passed (which there actually is) and the poles melt (which actually happens) and let the water down the crevices (does not happen).
I wonder if our generations are going to seem this crazy in the future?
Monday, August 2, 2010
Almost the Beginning of the End, But a Fresh Start has Emerged...
So, I haven't updated as much as I would, but it does happen to be a very hard week for me.
Besides all that life stuff, I've been reading a few works of H.P. Lovecraft (A very old, but famous horror/sci fi writer) that included many supernatural dimensions, space, time, and many references to an 'Abyss of time' and such. I wanted to put in a quote that I just had to smile at, because his trademark is putting numerous descriptions all in a line in one large run-on sentence. This is from The Lurking Fear (pub. Necronomicon Press, 1977):
"I felt the stranging tendrils of a cancerous horror whose roots reached into illimitable pasts and fathomless abysms of the night that broods beyond time." - pg. 23
I have to say, in my opinion, this is a much more awesome description, rather than just saying "I was scared, I wanted to run, and scream, but I couldn't."
Although in the second quote, these are commonly used in today's horror books, to suffice the average bowel movement, instead of attempting to stretch our imagination beyond our limits.
I had to write a paper for school in March about my favorite author, or just an author of literary merit. I chose Lovecraft because he fits both of those descriptions. We had to choose an X, Y, and Z about the author (three descriptions of his work, three pieces of literature by him, three themes he commonly uses, etc.) and argue why this author is a great author, or how in the world these three things appropriately describe his work. I chose for my thesis: "H. P. Lovecraft’s use of magic-realism, New England lore, and supernatural dimensions were made more effective in his writings by his obsession with the sciences." which actually turned out to be great, compared to some who used the old X, Y, and Z method, I just chose his three usual literary devices, and made it work with how EVERYONE who has analyzed his works says over and over how he loved the sciences, especially astronomy and physics (which is ironic, clearly).
Anyways, so I've been very distracted from my science reading, until Thursday when at the library, I stumbled upon "The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero" by Robert Kaplan.
I was looking for something fresh, something besides "Blah, blah blah, can't go faster than the speed of light, blah, blah blah" and this was definitely something I was looking for: Something about the sciences that definitely showed genuine interest from the narrator, and didn't start babbling over useless things just to fill the pages.
If I had to suggest it to anyone, seriously, I'd suggest it to anyone who's interested in history, math, science, mysteries, or human nature (behavior, etc.). It talks about numbers from the beginning besides zero, too, and it says how it ties in with the cultures, how the cultures exchanged symbols, and how the symbol for zero wasn't developed until far into the development of civilization. It gives pictures, too, to give the reader a visual of what the old numbers used to look like, and how they weren't exactly numbers, such as Roman Numerals, the Indian 'Kha', and the Greek symbols for different amounts. Many of them weren't exactly numbers because they were only ten-based, not one-based. It's terribly confusing when you tried to make slightly larger numbers such as 72 or 160.
And so, I am taking a break from "A Brief History of Time" for something a bit newer and refreshed, then I'll get back down to the nitty-gritty of spacetime.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Finally, an Answer! Why the 'Not Allowed' Assumption...
After reading it, he emailed me a very good answer about why most or all scientists agree nothing can go faster than the speed of light.
The answer is *drum roll please*
Einstein!
Well, Einstein's equations.
Einstein's equations have indeed been experimentally proven, which means that if you could go faster than the speed of light, your mass would be infinite (a fraction with zero in the denominator = not real or infinite).
This means that if in the case they did find Tachyon particles (or something like them only photons or something) that go faster than the speed of light, Einstein's equations would have to be altered in such a way that they still expressed relativity in the same way it did before, only without this issue of the non-existent fraction.
What I want to ask is, if in the case black holes could be used as a tunnel for Tachyon particles (or photons or something) that go faster than the speed of light, (which I still believe rips space-time creating the black holes, but it has to be small but dense enough to do so), then couldn't these particles or photons or whatever end up even in another dimension?
Couldn't that explain why the mass wouldn't be comprehensible?
It's almost like the issue with perceiving the fourth dimension: Although we can somewhat perceive it and look at it, we cannot figure out what exactly it means because it is not in this dimension. Such as how we perceive four- dimensional objects made up of three dimensional objects put into one, instead of just a four- dimensional object, like other four-dimensional objects do.
Now, an interesting question came up while I was speaking to Sam about the dimensions. He pointed out that according to the pattern, the zero dimension would be able to perceive everything in the negative-one dimension.
Now, what the heck is the negative-one dimension?
Well, since everything is a square of what it was before, let us look at the pattern:
A hypercube is a cube, cubed.
A cube is a square, cubed.
A square is a line, squared.
A line is a point, extended ("lined" if you want to make it follow the pattern)
A point is what?
Maybe the zero dimension is the lowest it can go?
If the negative one dimension does exist, I'm assuming it is inverted from that of the first dimension.
But what is the inversion of a line?
Perhaps this line is the opposite of what it would be in the first dimension? (A line pointing the exact other direction relative to whatever is observing it)
And perhaps if we were to perceive not only the negative one dimension, but all others, instead of the ones we have now, perhaps if we thought we were moving one direction we would be moving in the exact opposite direction, making it difficult to move and do things.
Which maybe is why all of us are in this dimension instead of the negative third dimension (natural selection, I suppose?)
And I'm kind of weirding myself out speaking about natural selection on a universal scale. Has this been mentioned or thought of before?
I have no idea.
I guess that's another thing I'll have to answer!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Actual Text from the Library that I Freaked Out Over...
The is the exact paragraph of the book that made me so excited when I read it at the library!
Because of something else, like another universe was filling up our universe by sending stuff into it through a white hole, the white hole would be like the hole of the balloon, and the person would be the other universe, sending stuff through the black hole... Only it may not be intentional. Maybe this black hole is so supermassive that it just eats everything!
This is what got me so excited: The fact that another universe sending in matter through a black hole into a white hole on our end would make SO much sense when you think about the Garbage Can Theorem.
(By the way, I'm going to have to come up with a more scientific name for that sooner or later...)
Or I could call it the Garbage Can Theorem and have hundreds of scientists laugh at me and say it's the dumbest thing they've ever heard...
In any case, have fun reading that paragraph, that's all I'll put online from the actual text, though I have some more diagrams to upload later once I read through some more of the book.
Thanks for reading!
And thanks for the add, Kyle!
Past and Future Light-Cones, Another Diagram...
This is another diagram I took a picture of for this blog, that's like the last light-cone only it's slightly different, because it represents different times. The cone facing up is the Future Lightcone, and the one facing down is the Past lightcone.
The different between these two, besides the hourglass shape of this one is that any event (a point in the shaded region) in the Future light cone hasn't received the light yet but it will eventually. As time goes by, the event is closer and closer to the center. When it reaches the center is the exact moment when the light affects/reaches it.
After reaching the center, the event moves lower into the Past lightcone, where the light has already reached it.
Computer is Fixed, Light-Cone is Uploaded...
So, sorry for the hiatus, luckily my computer is as good as new (or as new as it gets, it's a 6 year old laptop!)
and hopefully this picture upload will work now because the problem was fixed!
This is a light-cone diagram (or graph, whatever) that has three dimensions. The y-axis is Time, and the x axis is Space (the one pointing right) and the z axis is Speed it takes the light to get there.
You know how when light travels, it physically makes a cone-shape if it's not distorted by hitting an object?
Well, this diagram is kind of cool because it's in the shape of a cone just like how photons are actually sent out.
But what this represents exactly, is each point inside the cone is an event somewhere in space, and the higher it is on the graph, the longer it takes light to reach/effect it. The farther out it is in the cone, the farther it is from the light in light-years.
The reason why it says "Not Allowed" for an event outside the light-cone is that according to scientists (for whatever reason) nothing can go faster than the speed of light. (Which I disagree with...)
So every single point inside the cone is something happening in space, whether it be a supernova, a star being born, or a planet's orbit changing slightly.
Now, I was reading some more Hawking, and I STILL don't understand why scientists assume that everything cannot go faster than the speed of light. Why should the universe have a limit to the speed of matter?
What about antimatter? Would this be able to go faster than the speed of light???
I mean, maybe regular matter goes near the speed of light for an amount of time so that its mass becomes distorted (because the faster you go, the more mass you gain - for whatever reason...)
and the ending result is antimatter!
But have we actually measured this special relativity? Does the mass really grow in size?
Actually, yes, I'm pretty sure Einstein tested this out and it worked on a smaller scale...
Well, probably. I actually don't know much about how he came up with that fact that the mass becomes larger.. I feel like he just randomly made up the formula and said "SEE - YOU CANT GO FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT, ITS MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE!" and then later thought about it over tea and said "SEE - YOU GAIN MASS THE FASTER YOU GO, TOO!"
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the birth of the special relativity formula. Putting random numbers with a radical and the speed of light together and seeing what it comes up with.
Well, on Einstein's behalf, I actually have no idea... He probably figured it out when they were testing why clocks go slower near the speed of light and found out that the clock actually gained mass or something.
In any case, enjoy the light-cone and feel free to ask questions if you're confused!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Well, I Have Some Explaining To Do....
and so, after clicking "retry" numerous times, it finally loaded this page, thank God!
so I was at the library with my friend Sam on Thursday, and I figured I would get some reading done in "A Brief History of Time". One of the most wonderful things was in there...
Hawking was giving the analogy that the universe was like a balloon being blown up, but you couldn't tell where the air was coming from. Then I realized, if my Garbage Can... er, Excess Energy Theorem was correct, this would make absolute sense! Because the white hole dumping stuff into our universe was making ours expand, exactly like a balloon.
Therefore, our universe would not be filled with dark energy, as dark energy is defined: It would be filling up with energy (and possible matter) from another universe altogether.
This would explain why you cannot see dark energy: That it's stretching the universe apart instead of pulling it together (like gravity in certain cases) so it's interesting, because we do know in fact that the universe is expanding like a balloon, because the the colors on the spectrometer is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum, called a "red-shift", which means that all other galaxies are moving away from us, with their speed equal to their distance from us (so its speed would be x^2 as a variable, if x were distance), while none were a blue-shift (moving towards us) except for bodies in our own galaxy.
Which leads Hawking and others to the question: Are we at the center of the universe, assuming that it is finite? (which we technically have to, to say it's expanding)
-and the reason for this question is that all the other galaxies are moving away from us. period.
Does this mean that the universe is expanding but we're at the center? -Would be a more precise question.
Yes, the universe is definitely expanding, and we could be a the center based on this data.
I'll have to look into more recent studies about this to see if we are at the center or not...
As for diagrams, my internet is so bad that it won't even let me post pictures right now :(
But don't worry, I'm updating my operating system soon, and all should be well!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Computer Issues...
Sooooo I will post stuff tomorrow! Stay tuned!!!
Light Cones... Why Make the "Not Allowed" Assumption?
P.S.: THERE WERE THREE IMAGES WITH THIS POST THAT DID NOT SUCCESSFULLY BLOG ON HERE. WILL BE UPLOADING IN THE NEAR FUTURE. ONE IS THE LIGHT-CONE, THEN THE FUTURE AND PAST LIGHT-CONE, THEN ANOTHER DIAGRAM.
So, I was sitting at the library with my friend Sam, and I finally made a prioritized list of what I need to scan (or in this case, take a pic of and upload)... What these light cones represent are points, and each of the points within that shaded region of the Future Light Cone represent an event that light will eventually be reaching or affecting, but hasn't yet. As an event occurs, it moves closer toward the center, until it ends up in the Past Light Cone, where the light has already reached and or affected it. The center represents light affecting it at that exact moment.
I was talking to Sam about the fourth dimension, and I figured I should put in here how the dimensions view each other, including the second, first, and zero.
The zero dimension is a point, and apparently it cannot see, because according to the pattern it should be able to view the 'negative one' dimension, which makes no sense at the moment.
The first dimension, which is a line, views things as points.
The second dimension, as in a flat plane, views things as lines.
The third dimension, which is us, views things as flat planes.
The fourth dimension, as in hypercubes and such, views things as three dimension objects.
It's interesting the talk about the fourth dimension because a hypercube is so strange. The way Lisa Randall described it was a bit strange, because for us to view it it would be one cube at a time, not all at once.
If we were to view a hypercube, it would look like a cube inside a larger cube, with the smaller cube expanding to the size of the large one, and a smaller one reappearing inside the cube and expanding to the large cube's size again.
-----------------
Besides alternate dimensions, I was thinking about that Garbage Can Theorem again... Or Excess Energy Theorem. Whatever you want to call it...
I was reading about how Einstein figured there was an 'anti-gravity force' but didn't know what it was that was expanding the universe, and I realized:
If another universe is what's giving us excess matter to expand, then this means that it's not dark energy as defined... Read this quote from Stephen Hawking before you read any more:
"A Brief History In Time", Page 42:
"In Friedmann's model, all the galaxies are moving directly away from each other. The situation is steadily blown up. As the balloon expands, the distance between any two spots increases, but there is no spot that can be said to be the center of the expansion. Moreover, the farther apart the spots are, the faster they will be moving apart. Similarly, in Friedmann's model the speed at which any two galaxies are moving apart in proportional to the distance between them."
This would actually fit my model PERFECTLY.
Because in reality, when you're blowing up a balloon, you can figure out what is making the balloon expand: There's only one entrance to let air in and out.
And in our universe, it could be a white hole coming into our universe from another (which doesn't have to be physically and literally connected, but it would be by an Einstein Rosen Bridge with a black hole somewhere in another universe) spitting out matter and otherwise that fills up space. It could actually be spitting space-time into our universe, (I mean, black holes can even suck up light, so who knows? You can't see if it's swallowing space-time or not..)
The last thing that occured to me at the library today was that Hawking said when the universe was infinitely dense, it was a singularity. But singularities are in black holes today. So isn't that saying that at any time another universe could form inside our own, on a smaller scale???
And if this is the case, then wouldnt that pretty much prove what nikodem poplawski said, about our universe going into the future through time, coming out of a black hole? That would make it concrete, as long as one assumes our universe is the same as others.
That means that we'd be coming out of a black hole in a larger universe, probably similar to our own.
Wow. I may have caught on to something here...
I'm gonna continue with this tomorrow, and probably upload some more pics or something.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Questions on Black Holes and Light...
Of course, "A Brief History of Time", again, was published in 1989 - 1990.
I am currently getting a TON of books, not only be Hawking, but by Feynmann and some of his lectures, too, to get some variety. Once I'm done with this book, I'm going to read into "The Day Without a Yesterday" (I can't remember the author right now) which was published in 2005. It has to do with Le-something(can't remember his name either)'s work, with all his papers stored in a university in Belgium.
Back to Hawking, what I found was possibly a way to disprove that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. When he was talking about special relativity, Hawking says that this was when Einstein came up with General Relativity, which works with Gravity... The only problem is, no one can really evaluate the formula without having all their own measurements, which is very faulty and not very sufficient.
This leads to a few questions...
Does gravity have a lot to do with what I'm doing?
Yes, it does.
Should I pay more attention to gravity?
Indubitably, yes.
And so, I'm going to study this further, because I feel that there has to be something greater out there than this formula that so many have failed to use, and it seems that there has to be something much more sufficient, accurate, and describes more than just gravity between planetary and solar bodies.
I feel that the formula needs to be tweaked somehow, and can be, but at the moment (for me, at least) there's too many unknowns. I'll have to narrow that down.
Before I can do that, I want to know what each of the symbols mean, because there's one that I'm not really sure what it is. I think it's absolute velocity, but I'm not sure. I'm going to check up on that later.
What I also think is, that there has to be a material out there that can withstand going at speeds faster than light, and that the "light cone" of an event (I just learned about this myself -- you know how everything you can see is because light reflects off of it? a light-cone is a drawing of a three-axis graph that I'll post tomorrow, that's shaped like a cone, and anything outside of the cone cannot exist, apparently.) Isn't a boundary of matter, but everything that we can see. I mean, if you think about it, air that we can't see is being touched by light obviously, but whether it's pitch black or blindingly white, you can't see the air in front of you.
That's why it brings me some questions:
Is everything really affected by light in some way?
I mean, black holes can carry light into their gravitational fields, so that means they must be even more powerful, right?
I am going to continue on this journey through A Brief History in Time, and I'll post some diagrams tomorrow, promise this time.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
In an Infinite Universe, an Infinite Amount of Stars...
This really does make a whole lot of sense considering, even if you said that different stars' lights reached us at different times, the sky would still be bright-white all the time.
Tonight I'm going to read more of it so that I can FINALLY get to the good part about the Special Relativity Formula. I was just getting into it on sunday, when I reached my family reunion, and since then, I haven't had time.
I just got back from a Paw Sox game (unfortunately they lost) :( but it was funny because everyone thought it was a half moon, when it was a Waxing Gibbous tonight. The name origins from "Waxing" meaning "building up" or "growing, and "Gibbous" meaning "almost" as in "almost full" or "almost empty".
Unfortunately, the general population doesn't pay attention to details during seventh grade science class....
But anyways, I've learned a lot about Newton in this book so far (A Brief History of Time).. I've learned that he believed that all the universe and it's matter and materials were just an illusion. When another scientist was told of his opinion, he yelled "It, I refute!" and stubbed his toe on a rock he kicked.
I didn't know Newton's Laws had so many exceptions: This is generally not very well known, and Hawking explains them vividly. This includes his theory of how time worked: That everything was at an absolute rate, relative to absolute time, in an absolute universe. Einstein shot this down when he discovered that when you go near the speed of light, objects contract, and clocks slow down. This explained that time is not absolute: Thus getting rid of the Absolute Universe theory and creating Special Relativity Theory, that the faster matter moves through space, the more mass it gains. Actually, once it goes near the speed of light, the matter can have twice or even 2.5 times the amount of mass it had before. This is quite strange when you think about it.
But when I was thinking about it, wouldn't this explain other dimensions? Going near, at, or even past the speed of light to create a hypercube, then the hypercube comes out of a white hole into the past (which to us is the present, if it was at or past this speed), and the reason we can only view some planes of it is because it is flickering and traveling through our space?
It's an interesting theory... I'll have to give it more thought.
Once again, sleep continues to prevail me, so I will post more tomorrow about alternate dimensions, and possibly even the diagram!
Thanks for the follow, Marshall!
Also, everyone, feel free to 'like' this blog on Facebook!
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Juiciest Part of "A Brief History of Time" So Far...
I'm at the part where Hawking begins to talk about Einstein and the French guy (Can't remember his name) making the Theory of Relativity, and I was just getting into the part that most applies here, about the Theory of Special Relativity, which is the formula I had used originally to show why I thought I could pull through with "This does not mean you can't go faster than the speed of light, this means it is inconceivable to us because we are moving into the future, but when you go faster than the speed of light, time flips over relative to you, and you begin going BACK in time!"
Now, I didn't really get to explain the whole theory, so I'll say some more about the diagrammed aspect of it. Yes, I have a diagram, but unfortunately I couldn't find the energy to draw up a good one for the website...
It consists of an hourglass-shaped drawing with a little square near the top left corner of the page, and an arrow showing the square (representing matter) spiraling into the black hole, going straight through an Einstein-Rosen bridge (wormhole) and spiraling out of a white hole near the bottom. On the side there are two markings, positive infinity (the black hole) and negative infinity (the white hole) representing the direction of time away from zero, where you'd be meeting the speed of light, as if represented by a number-line of some sort.
Now, my next goal is to come up with some sort of equation to represent time according to when it flips over, and such. I was thinking of playing with the d=rt formula, kind of, only mixed with E=MC^2, and possibly even more mixed with the Special Relativity formula (which is a bit confusing when put into typing), and making it something of my own.
The Garbage Can Theorem (haha) keeps coming to my mind, and I'm thinking of what Stephen Hawking said too, about how the Creator of our universe (if there was really one Creator, who knows?) didn't have time: That time is only a dimension of our universe, but that maybe time has always happened with the Creator, too, we just don't know. He said that the common sense-way of thinking about time not being connected to space somehow may have to be altered (I mean, it was in 1990 but still), this may solve some of our problems. For instance, time could be a thing of reality outside our universe, too. Or it could only be for this universe, in this dimension. I mean, time doesn't really exist for the second dimension, so why should it exist for the fourth, the fifth, the sixth?
It's interesting to think about what the fourth dimension looks like: according to Lisa Randall, we already know. You see, to the second dimension, you can see one side of something 3 dimensional at a time. So to us, we can see a three dimensional figure that's one side of a four-dimensional object at a time.
Let's look at the hypercube. It consists of two large cubes connected by six smaller cubes making a ring around the middle of the two. If this were to pass into our plane, we'd see one cube appear, and that one disappear, then another cube, then that one would disappear, and so on...
So you see, it's very hard to visualize (I mean, obviously it'd be pretty weird if some random cubes appeared in the night sky and disappeared one after the other...)
But it makes sense, if you think about how if you're only looking at one side of cone, and you make cuts through it (like the plane barrier does) then you can only see slices of the cone at a time. It's sort of like that. You can only see one part a time, because of the way the planes of the dimensions work, slicing the objects so you can only see one part at a time.
Anyways, for tonight, I'm done.. I was going to talk more but I still feel like crap. It was great posting though!
Also, thanks for the follow, nick!
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The Old Binder... I Need to Change It, For the Second Time
Originally, my project was turning into a binder, consisting of a drawn cover with a rocket and two different titles:
The Modern Time Machine Project by Madeleine Michaud and Kyle Oelofse, and The SIEMEN's Math, Science, and Technology Competition by Madeleine Michaud and Dean Thurston.
Of course, my interests have taken a huge turn from first, writing a book with Kyle, and second, adding on a project to do with all of this information. But that would be terribly difficult for someone going into junior year... I mean, you can't prove my theory, so what good would an experiment do for me if I can't go to the large hadron collider??
This picture was version 2.0 of the project, as it turned into not a book, but just the project and THEN writing a book later..
Of course, my partner for the project was not as interested as I thought he was. And to enter the Siemen's competition before you're going into senior year, you HAVE to have a partner.
So, to my dismay, the project was dismissed, as well as the book.
So for a couple of weeks I had absolutely nothing, except ideas, which is all I had begun with.
As far as my theory went, that stupid stuff with "Brian" (the one from the previous post) had distracted me from everything... Because he wasn't interested in it.
So, I made a big mistake. But I've learned from it, which is the important piece of it.
And so, here I am, writing this post for today...Awesome!
And that wasn't sarcastic. Writing a blog is possibly one of the best ideas ever come up with for blooming writers and people who want to share ideas and information with the world!
It's much less intimidating than writing a book, because all it is, is whatever you want to say for the day, and it doesn't have to be writting in a certain way. You can write it any way you want, and it doesn't have to be over 100 pages to be considered to show to the world (to be printed and sold)....
All it is, is typing stuff in a somewhat-entertaining way and and clicking a button.
How easy...
Anyways, I wanted to tell you all about this dialogue that happens every single time I meet someone new or catch up with a relative:
Person: "Are you thinking about college yet?"
Me: "I want to get my Ph.D in Astrophysics at Cambridge University"
(With a look of surprise)Person: Wow! That's (insert 'wonderful' or 'intense')!
Me: "Yeah, it's in England..."
(Still looking astonished)Person: "Well, that sounds (insert 'wonderful' or 'fascinating')!"
I wonder if a conversation like this happens with anyone else with one of their relatives or when meeting someone new....
As far as science goes, I was thinking about my theory on the way to my family reunion in the car today, and I realized that if the theory is called Modern Theory, and if our universe is actually another universe's waste disposal system, shouldn't that part of it be called the Garbage Can Theorem? I laughed, what a funny name... I suppose it could be called the Excess Energy Theorem or something good-sounding like that?
It's funny because I'm still reading "A Brief History of Time", and I realized that String Theory didn't exist until after this book was released in 1989/1990.
This means that String Theory has only been around for, at the most, 19 years!
Really, I would like to meet the scientist who came up with it, and analyze their brain for a plethora of psychological issues....
Haha, just kidding.
Anyways, next time I'm posting a diagram of the time-travel aspect of my theory, so stay tuned!
Saturday, July 17, 2010
A Brief History of Time. What a Wonderful Book...
To many of you this is probably a surprise that I haven't read it yet, as I am a huge fan of Hawking!
I was thinking about what he says a scientific theory is defined as.
He said it can't be proven, but it can be disproven.
Man, does that feel threatening.
But I also wanted to mention that I've had some second thoughts about this whole theory - thing. I mean, is it truly a theory?
And so, I've come to looking through each and every detail Hawking says defines a theory, and mine covers all of it, to my surprise. I was very happy with this definition!
If only there was someway to prove my theory, but of course, with technology now, and at the rate it is developing, it would probably be around at least 10,000 years before they can begin to prove the smallest of things within my theory.
Am I naming my theory?
Well, I suppose I could name it, but it's not really into the pop-culture yet... Nowadays, everything is about either Quantum Mechanics or String Theory or The Big Bang Theory... Or a Quantum Theory of Gravity, which would be all of them together, as the Ultimate Theory.
I'm naming mine 'MTM Theory', or 'Modern Theory', just for the sake of sticking with names, and the fact that it just sticks with me. 'Modern Time Machine Theory' just sounds way too long and doesn't quite ring when said out loud, too.
So, there's this guy, and for the sake of identity, I'll make up a name for him. I'll call him Brian, just for the heck of it.
So this Brian, he decided to date me for a month and a half, and tell me that I was "the only one for him" and that he "loved me more than any other" and all that BS, but I believed him. But then after we just had a date the night before, he calls me just to dump me, saying something stupid like "we don't have enough time for each other" and that "we have different needs" to which, I was just like "Hello, you don't have time for me, ever. I always have time for you." and to the Needs comment, I just said "Okay... Whatever that means, Brian."
Let's just say, being intelligent has it's advantages. I knew something was up because he had been very spacey and quiet the past few weeks, but he kept saying it was stuff at home: More BS. So, twenty minutes, later, it hits me: Duh, that girl (I'll change her name to Brittany) Brittany that he's been talking to. Wow, how did I miss that????
So, of course, I log into Facebook and get ready for a war to happen. All of a sudden, I get the cleverest few lines in my mind that he probably won't even understand but had just fleeted through my mind as if it was nothing:
That he's "Improbable just like M-Theory", that he's "As destructive as a supernova" and that he's "As intelligent as a corn-husker from Omaha, Nebraska" (reference to the Big Bang Theory show).
As you can imagine, I face-palmed and just began thinking to myself "What is wrong with me?????????????????"
Then of course, I switched those comments around to some much more primitive vocabulary that I'd rather not post in this blog...
Actually, the only reason I just thought of this moment now was that Brian just called and left a message on my answering machine. He's about as over-dramatic as Brian Greene when he wrote "The Elegant Universe". (If you don't get this one, borrow the book from the library or go and buy it, and just try reading past the first few pages without feeling over-emotional about the science involved.
....Well, I think that's all for tonight. I'll update more on the theory tomorrow, when primitive, under-evolved people aren't calling me and leaving dumb messages like those.
I do have a family reunion tomorrow, so I'll let you know if anything science or math-related goes on!
Friday, July 16, 2010
Ideas on Dark Energy, and Two Inspiring People...
And, when I say this was a pleasure, it was the most enthralling honor I've ever come to receive.
This man, Dr. John Carlson, Ph.D, of The University of Maryland, was not only extremely helpful in answering all of my never-ending questions, but he was all-around a genuinely friendly and respectable person.
(For those of you who are not familiar with him, he is one of the most well-known archaeo-astronomers around the globe.)
Now, during this visit, he did inform me on a number of topics, including black holes, time, space-time, and what he was working on at the moment. He did then tell me of one woman, of whom he said I should look up, because she was doing alot of stuff related to what I was interested in.
So, of course, i go to Amazon, find the book he told me of, and I have just begun to read it.
I would like to share with you all a wonderful few lines from this book that really struck me as 'yes, this is the book I need to read. This is something that I can relate to.'
"When I decided to embark on this project, I envisioned a book that shares the excitement I feel about my work without compromising the presentation of the science. I hoped to convey the fascination of theoretical physics without simplifying the subject deceptively or presenting it as a collection of unchanging, finished monuments to be passively admired. Physics is far more creative and fun than people generally recognize. I wanted to share these aspects with people who hadn't necessarily arrived at this realization on their own." - Preface and Acknowledgements, paragraph 3.
This remarkable woman is named Lisa Randall, and she has written a masterpiece of theoretical and particle physics called "Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions".
And of course, I bought if off Amazon, being only slightly intimidated but also fascinated by the title.
I haven't gotten the chance to read much past page 23, but already it is wonderfully written and I would suggest it to anybody who is interested in the subject.
As far as my projects go, I wanted to further explain the diagram of matter moving through the black hole, the wormhole, and out of the white hole.
I was contemplating this diagram (that I've been drawing over and over since the beginning), and just a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting at my dining room table with my friend Dean, who failed to grasp an interest in the subject, but had decided to try his best to help in any way he could. Dean was tired, but I was not ready to give up... We had only been going at it for about an hour, and I still had plenty of thoughts ready to convene.
So once again, I began drawing the diagram, and all of a sudden, I realized: An Einstein-Rosen bridge may have been completely mis-thought to be a tunnel straight through the middle of a black hole to the center of a white hole, as a direct current, when really, it was the singularity that was the rip in space, meaning that the bridge connecting these two continuums could be in, essentially, an infinite amount of places relative to the first singularity.
And if this is true, this means that we have been going about this all wrong:
It doesn't have to be a straight tunnel, it could be a million light-years away and still the matter would get ther, but instead of going back in time and ending up in the same place, it would end up in a completely different area of space, maybe even in a different galaxy. The possibilities would be endless concerning what an Einstein-Rosen bridge is, eliminating the way we think about space-time tunnels and such. On earth, a tunnel is a straight route to the end, where you come out of a cave. If you go back in through that cave, it is still the same tunnel. These tunnels on earth have a physical limit to where you can go within the tunnel. Either you go forward, or you turn around and go the other way.
But with a seemingly infinite amount of space, and an extensive amount of black holes, how are we to know which are white and which are black?
And the answer could very well be:
That the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate because at the center of our universe (assuming that the universe is finite), there is a massive white hole, filling with all sorts of matter from a completely different universe... That our universe is feeding off of a supermassive black hole in another universe that is shrinking at the same rate we are growing. And this brings some alarm, because couldn't that mean that other universes are feeding off of our suppermassive black holes?
But the only way that could be answered is, how fast is the universe we're feeding off of shrinking? And does it have other supermassive black holes that other universes are feeding off of? And is it feeding off of a supermassive black hole from another universe?
If the rate that universe is shrinking is equivalent to the rate at which ours is growing, the answer would be:
That ours and this other universe are not connected to any others.
If that universe is shrinking faster than ours is growing, that means that there is another universe besides ours, and possibly even more than one other feeding off of it.
If that universe is growing too, this means it is feeding off of a universe at least the size of our universe-squared, giving it an amount of matter directly related to how much matter it has.
These explanations could potentially explain the Dark-Energy expansion, of this energy that is stretching the universe, because dark energy could actually just be raw, fresh energy, newly born from the other universe, or it could be over-used, old, and excess waste from the other universe. We could actually be a universally-sized garbage can of this other universe, for excess energies that it can no longer use to it's benefit, almost like it's a natural selection of that universe to excrete waste through a bridge between two singularities so that it will survive longer; maybe the dark energy is what Hawking radiation turns into over billions of years???
Then again, maybe this dark energy is coming from the other universe because that universe is dieing, and this is what happens when the universe ends: as if the universe excretes excess, overused, and old energies (as stated before), but in actuality the whole entire universe is coming into ours, as it fades away, and it has failed to survive on a universal scale. (If so, total epic fail.)
If we are swallowing up a whole entire other universe, this dark energy would be a total explanation of what this other universe was made of. If we go back in time, to when the universe was not expanding as quickly, we could probably analyze just what dark energy looked like (or seemed to compose of) back then. If anything has changed over billions of years, this means this used to be some sort of beneficial energy that has begun decay, and is ultimately stretching out the universe in its decaying form.
Almost as if another life-form, this other universe may have selected us as its garbage can, because we happened to be the ones attached to it since the dang black hole was formed. Or there was a star purposely formed in that spot to connect to ours just so this universe had somewhere to put its garbage.
The dark energy could have been completely harmless before it began decaying, and could have been surprisingly different. Maybe even some other life forms from this other galaxy is sending all of this old garbage to us, intentionally or not, just because, I mean, it's a black hole. It's supposed to be endless, right?
Oh boy, I just thought all this science up as I went along, after I began talking about how the singularity opposite the first one in the black hole could be anywhere.I could not be happier with the results of this post, and I can't wait to think up more next time!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
My Inspirations and Otherwise...
Instead of blabbering on and on about physics and math today, I'd like to say who and what were my inspirations behind this project.
The project's first inspiration was my dearest friend and the world's best teacher, Mr. Levesque, who had first got my mind simmering with ideas by showing us the Special Relativity Formula.
Secondly, it was Nikodem Poplawski, who came up with the time-change effect in black holes and white holes connected by Einstein-Rosen Bridges (worm holes)
Thirdly, it was those cosmology heroes that I grew up watching and obsessing over and giving my heart to, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, who gave me the first idea of learning about astronomy.
Fourth, my friends who have tried to help me with this project, especially Kyle Oelofse, who actually succeeded.
And finally, to my family who has been so supportive of me working on this project. I couldn't have done it if they hadn't given me the encouragement to write down my ideas, and when I'm done, share them with the world.
Now that I'm done thanking everyone in my life, let's get down to some serious business.
Well actually, it's not so serious.
I'm deciding to make this a not-so-filled with babbling sentences about astrophysics and such down, because I figure, it's only the second post. I should save the juicy stuff for later, right?
So I've decided I'm going to make a mini-FAQ about my theory.... Not answering every question, but just a few to get the basic idea.
So, what happens if you reach the speed of light, but you don't go faster or slower than it?
---Well, then time would stop relative to the matter. To the matter, everything would stop moving.
Okay. So what if you slow down after going faster than the speed of light, and begin going slower than it?
---Than whatever time era you've come into through the white hole or worm hole, you're going to become invisible in, and if you're in the middle of outer space, it might be kind of hard to tell which it is...
But when you get closer to the speed of light, you gain more mass, correct?
---Well, I know this is referring to the Special Relativity formula, and no offense to Einstein, but I am beginning to question whether this formula was created to show that you can't go faster than the speed of light, or if you actually, physically can't.
Has anyone ever tried going to the speed of light?
---To be honest, I'm not sure, but what I do know, is that once you get near the speed of light, everything else slows down. You could come back to Earth, and you could have aged 20 years (how ever long you were moving for in real-time), while your spouse or friends have only aged 1.
Unfortunately, that's all for today. I'm lacking a bit in motivation tonight, as I just came back from a date and I'm pretty tired. I'll be more productive with this information tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Modern Time Machine.. What it is, and Why I came up with this Project
Since the summer of 2007, I've been struck by wonder and awe at how much we can learn from physics, and how we can use it to our advantage. The astronomy, well, that's the part that makes it absolutely outstanding and so challenging to grasp in our tiny little brains.
The physics behind how the universe works exactly is always being debated with an extensive amount of theories and evidence surrounding each. The Big Bang Theory may in fact be a wonderfully thought-out and supported theory (and the most amazing and hilarious show I've ever seen!!) , but I do know a few things about physics, and I find that there are much more interesting theories out there than an infinitely dense particle exploding to create everything as we know it.
M-Theory, otherwise known as String Theory, is having an unfortunate lack of evidence, whether it be just because it sounds insane, or the person who thought it up was insane???
Let me quote XKCD, a beloved web-comic:
One scientist is speaking to another, and says, "I just had an awesome idea. Suppose all matter and energy is made of tiny, vibrating strings?" The other responds, "Okay. What would that imply? " The first scientist answers, "I dunno."
Here is the link: http://xkcd.com/171/
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how the String Theory was born.
The sole purpose of this blog, besides making fun of M-Theory and talking about general astrophysics, is that I've decided to make a commitment to trying to find evidence for my hypothesis:
That matter which has the potential energy to move faster than the speed of light can move, or be used as a portal to move (in the case of space-time continnua, a.k.a. black holes) to make time move backwards relative to itself.
This hypothesis is based off of the work of Nikodem Poplawski, who is testing a model of the universe moving forward in time out of a black hole, and an alternate universe like ours moving backwards in time through a white hole (the opposite effect of a black hole).
It is also based on the fact that I have been plugging numbers into Einstein's special relativity formula, and have come to the conclusion that to move faster than the speed of light (330,000kps^2), instead of the mass gained after movement being the square root of a positive number, it is the square root of the opposite of a number, also known as a "Complex" or "Imaginary" number.
Now, when putting in the square root of the opposite of one, stated as (i), the answer comes out to be positive or negative .000000054^2, which may explain that nothing can move slower than the positive of this number, but I'm not entirely sure about the negative of this number.
Before I go on, I will explain more math and science tomorrow. For now, I'd like to state exactly why I named this blog "The Modern Time Machine".
This is a project I've been contemplating for a good three-four months, since I stepped into Mr. Levesque's Algebra II class on a March morning, eager to learn some math, and ended up learning some science, too. I was so excited when we learned this special relativity formula, especially since we don't do astrophysics or astronomy at my school. And suddenly, everything I had learned in the past few years clicked: The bowl of knowledge in my young, developing brain began churning and boiling with everything I had collected about astrophysics: every article, every word, on every page I had printed out from sciencedaily.com (the best science news resource on the net!)
And suddenly, a few days later, I was on a plane to Florida, and I began scribbling away with my calculator in hand, plugging in numbers and making hypotheses in my head, all mixing together to create one thing: the idea that something can go back in time. The idea that something, somewhere probably is. Something that's so hard to perceive, yet, I could find reason to believe it.
And finally, my mind flashes to Star Trek, when they go faster than the speed of light. Black holes, the speed of light, mass, density, gravity... Time. It all mixes together, making every segment of my brain leap with excitement.
And everything works together.
And instead of relaxing while in Florida with my family, I spend much of my time thinking about how I'm going to fit all of this information onto paper or something tangible. So I put all of my math work into a binder, and let things settle. I wrote down my hypotheses about three different times, making sure I have every little detail down the way I want it.
And while we're in Florida, we go to a place I've always dreamed of seeing: The Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. And I took a picture of one of the signs that made me light up inside: The sign that says "Unlocking the Secrets of the Universe" and talks about how the Hubble Space Telescope works at unlocking the mysteries of the universe around us, and I'm just thinking to myself, I might of already have.
But the fact that it's named "The Modern Time Machine" leads to many questions, too. Have I thought of building a time machine? Yes, but that's not the main concept of the project. How is this modern related to other ideas of the universe? Well, it's modern because it's the most recent outlook about time and space that anyone can think of besides quantum mechanics (which could just happen to be completely made up if proven so) and string theory (which has no tangibility) and of course, the famous Big Bang Theory (you should watch the show on CBS, it's wonderful!)
And so, it shows us the journey of moving back through time, using space-time continua, which could very well be our modern time machines, as opposed to the old, man-made time machines of the old science fiction shows such as Star Trek.