Wednesday, August 11, 2010

"Anyway, I was thinking more of a bio-social exploration with a neuro-chemical overlay"...

"Wait, are you asking me out?"

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!

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