Welcome to a New School Year with Hurrican Earl and Stephen Hawking...

Up in New England, luckily, Earl may be hitting up in Mass., but as far as here in RI is concerned, it's only about tropical storm level (significantly less damaging than a hurricane) and therefore won't last very long, and won't be as strong as it was down south.

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! ;)

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…

"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!

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.

Light Cones... Why Make the "Not Allowed" Assumption?

NOTE: THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE POSTED FOR THURSDAY, JULY 22ND BUT COULD NOT BE PUBLISHED BECAUSE MY COMPUTER WAS BEING OBNOXIOUS. BEAR WITH ME AS I REPHRASE A FEW THINGS THAT IVE SAID ALREADY. THANKS! - Tuesday, July 27th

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.