Showing posts with label Astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Astronomy. Show all posts

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 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!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Well, I Have Some Explaining To Do....

So, the thing with my computer, is that it wasn't a virus, it's that the stupid internet connection wouldn't make up its mind, whether "The Connection was Reset While the Page Was Loading" or it "Couldn't Find the Page"...
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!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Questions on Black Holes and Light...

So, I read a bit more about the alternate dimensions last night, and it's funny, because Stephen Hawking says that it's impossible to visualize the fourth dimension, when Lisa Randall with other theoretical physicists have recently found out how.
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...

So, Hawking came to the conclusion that an infinite universe could not work because we'd have an infinite amount of stars, making the sky blindingly white, all the time, especially at night, because an infinite amount of stars = infinite amount of light. So, this idea was brought down by Einstein and, instead, we now think that the universe has a barrier of some sort, or something to contain it, but that our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate because of dark energy.
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!

Friday, July 16, 2010

Ideas on Dark Energy, and Two Inspiring People...

Well, I have to say, I did have the pleasure of meeting Doctor John Carlson in person, as my dad publishes (AKA The Necronomicon Press, http://www.necropress.com/) and he is one of our most dedicated customers, who has been buying my father's books since soon after my dad first started publishing, approximately thirty-something years now.
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...

Hey there! Thanks for the follow, Jolie :)
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

Today, also known as Bastille Day, I am currently writing this blog (and eating croissantes with nutella) to log my newest journey through the field of astrophysics as a high school student.
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.