Background 8

Then Hubble discovered the universe was expanding. Let me take a moment to explain how he did that. When you look at a star you see a bunch of light. If you put that light through a glass prism, you get a rainbow of color. But some lines are missing, like in the 1^st picture. These missing lines come from where the light has passed through the gas around the star and gotten caught up in it. So those lines don’t make it all the way to us. When the star that the light came from is moving away or towards us those lines shift either to more red (if the star is moving away) or more blue (if the star is moving towards us). Hubble found several things when he started looking at the shifts of a whole bunch of stars. First he found that most stars had red shifts, in other words, most stars where moving away from us. This lead Hubble to conclude that the universe was expanding. Second, he looked only at the stars that he knew the distance to. Then he made a chart of how much they shifted. This is what we see in the second picture. Each dot is a star, the speed on the graph corresponds to how much a star shifts and the distance is how far away the star is. Hubble had actually discovered that if we knew how fast a star was going away from us we could figure out how far away from us it was. Suddenly we had a whole new way to find how far away stars were!

Background 7

Now I would like to pause and give you an idea of an amateur astronomer’s view of the universe before Hubble’s discovery in 1923. Pretend for a moment that you are this astronomer. You look up into the night sky and you see a bunch of dots. You can look at them with your telescope and you can measure the distance to some of them by measuring their stellar parallax (basically what you did in your geometry class when you measured the height of a building by the length of its shadow and the time of day) When you see how far away most of the stars are you find that they all fall within a certain range. So you conclude this is how big your neighborhood is. What lies outside this neighborhood? Maybe other, stars maybe not. All you know is that you can’t see them. They named our neighborhood (aka all the stars you can see) the milky way. There are some weird looking things, blobs and oblong shapes, but they are all pretty fuzzy and you don’t know much about them. There was this one guy named Charles Messier composed a list of all the fuzzy blobs so that you didn’t have to worry about them. Life was good.

Background 6

It was not until Edwin Hubble came to the scene that things began to change. He worked at a telescope that looked at the red shift of stars. (let me explain, when light moves away from you the frequency of it shifts so you see it at more red and if it is going towards you then the light will look more blue. Here’s a picture.) anyway, he cataloged the shift of a bunch of stars and found, to make a long story short, that the universe is expanding. Whoa!!!!!!! That means it’s changing. That just sent 400 years of assuming it was static down the drain, and it confirmed one of general relativity’s predictions. It was a phenomenal discovery and set into motion what we know as modern cosmology and astrophysics.

Background 5

Through all this special relativity, the steady state theorem prevailed. Then Einstein went on to create the general theory of relativity. This one is very hard to understand and I don’t fully get it yet. But from what I understand it mainly states that space-time is like a cloth or air and when you put stuff in it, it gets displaced and stretched and stuff. But there were some strange side effects of this theorem. When you worked all the math out it predicted some strange things. It said there were these giant bodies of infinite gravitational pull that ripped holes in the space time fabric (we know them today as black holes). It also said that the universe was expanding. It wasn’t static as everyone had always assumed. But no one believed that that was reality. They just thought they were anomalies of the theory and maybe that they were theoretically possible but there were defiantly no giant holes in space!

Background 4

And that is where Einstein started out, with the assumption the universe was static. Einstein’s special theory of relativity seems to not have a lot to do with the big bang theory or the beginning of the universe at all but it does and it shall be reviled how at a later point in time. For now I shall simply explain it. Einstein was a young man working in a patent office when he came up with the idea. He decided to a thought experiment where he rode along on a beam of light. To be quite frank I’m not sure how he got from riding on a beam of light to relativity but if you are more interested in the topic there is a wonderful movie out there called “E=MC^2” that would explain more about it. But in order to make the post not go on forever I shall sum up his theory in a number of points:

1. 1 1. The speed of light remains the same. Always. End of story.

2. 22. The rate at which time passes changed in order to make 1. possible.

3. 3.3. The lengths and sized of things also change in order to make 1. possible.

So yes, this is special relativity, at least as much of it as I have learned, summed up. Bizarre isn’t it?

Background 3

Decades after Copernicus, the church found a problem with his theory, as I stated in the last entry. Galileo took the brunt of the church's ridicule. He was forced to denounce his belief in a heliocentric universe and was placed under house arrest until his death. But eventually this all disappeared and was replaced with acceptance. Kepler came up with all his equations governing the movements of celestial bodies and Newton discovered, or rather gave a name to gravity. He set it down in Principia Mathematica and from there everything seems set into stone. People thought that 'physics' had been figured out. People thought the world made sense. But you may say, what about the beginning, didn't they question the details of the beginning of the universe. They didn't. That is the rather shocking truth. They didn't question. They assumed that the universe had always been the way it was now. They believed in God and a literal account of what Genesis has to say about the begging. Those that didn't believe that account thought the universe had always been, would always be. This was the steady state theorem. There was little to no change in the heavens. They were stagnate and unmoving. They were not the dynamic shifting body we are familiar with today. And this view stayed for a very, very long time. In fact, Einstein himself took this view and formulated special and general relativity around it. Only in this past century has a stagnate universe not been assumed.

Aside

I am rather busy at the moment so I think I shall take an aside from the main course of this conversation and share an interesting anecdote. I was reading in a physics text, and stumbled upon this very revealing equation. I shall quote.

“Adding PV onto the energy gives a quantity call the enthalpy, denoted H:

H=U+PV

This is the total energy you would have to come up with, to create the system out of nothing and put it into this environment.”

I had never thought about that before. I think it’s the sort of things humans don’t think about. We don’t realize that if you were to create something you would have to create a place to put it. I’ve read somewhere else, that in the Big Bang (the physics version) not only was all the matter and energy in the universe created but also space and time itself. If you make a universe you have to make a place to put it. And now I must go do many thing…things that I don’t really want to do…bother.

Background 2

Then came Copernicus and he changed everything. A resident of 14^th century Poland, Copernicus is one of the most significant and hesitant heroes in our story. In 1514 he published a little pamphlet that outlined his theory. He said that instead of the earth being at the center of it all, the sun occupied that position and that the earth and the planets and things revolved around it. This little pamphlet reached Rome and the church was very receptive to it at first. It wasn’t until near the end of his life that he published a full book on the subject. Many people think he waited so long to publish because he was afraid of the repercussions of his actions, especially from the church. He was right to fear it. 60 years later the church did denounce his theory because it “contradicted holy scripture.” I’ve read most of the holy scriptures of the Christian faith and I haven’t found any piece in it that contradicts Copernicus’ theory. So I pose my first question: why was the church so against it? What did they see wrong with it? It has since been proven accurate in at least the earth revolving round the sun part. What does the church think about it now? Why the change? What happens when something the church says conflicts with observed facts? I guess I don’t keep up with church politics much…but I do wonder these things. Anyway I want to hear your thoughts on the subject. Also, I’ve included a painting of Copernicus by Jan Matejko entitled “Astronomer Copernicus-Conversation with God.” I very much liked this painting.

Background 1

Now the task is to bring up to speed all those who are reading this blog (if anyone is reading it). Anyone with a standard American or British high school education can understand the science behind the view of the universe I found in science when I started way back when. We will start from right before Copernicus. Before then most people of education and the church sided with Ptolemy on this topic. He had proposed that the earth was obviously the center of the universe and the sun and other planets revolved around it. And there was a fixed sphere of stars outside of that. It looks something like the picture I’ve included. People bought into this. It looked like the stars were set in place and just rotated around and around. We couldn't feel ourselves turning and it didn't look like we were going anyplace. So we sort of assumed that we were stationary and everything we saw move was moving around us. But you know what assumptions do...

Introduction 8

That is the purpose of this blog. I will share information and ideal and opinions with you and I’m hoping you will do the same in exchange. The free exchange of information is what I’m after (I’ve always thought copyright laws were a crime against the development of the human race). So here is the invitation. Would you like to join me in furthering the development of physics? Would you like to extract the details of the beginning of the universe? Well then, if you are an intelligent person with reasonable deceit grammar and something useful to say, join me. If you are an idiot with an extensively small vocabulary and nothing intelligent to say, please go back to your youtube channel and argue about Michael Jackson.

Introduction 7

But yet again we have come to an obstacle before we have begun. It appears the physicists don’t really have a good grasp of the details of the beginning of the universe either. So what am I to do? I say why not help them? Yes I shall! I would rather like to be in on the exciting discovery of the details of the creation of the universe. And I have every intention of using all of the resources I’ve been given, including (thanks to the internet) the English speaking population of the Earth.

Introduction 6

So I said to myself, I said, “Self, where should we start.” And I answered myself, I said, “Why, the beginning, of course.” So I took a look at the beginning. And (at the time I started this) I found this. It took a good long time for Copernicus to figure out that we went the center of the universe. Eventually Newton did his thing and modern physics was born.So if I am to peruse this goal of understanding the beginning, if appears the best option would be to fallow the tracks of physics. They seem rather passionate about discovering the truth, and most of them aren’t terrible worried about what’s in it for them, or at least this is my hope. So this will be my path. I shall fallow the physicists to the beginning and go from there.

Introduction 5

We should have searched for knowledge. We did some of this as well, but this was not our focus. I think if we figure out our system, perhaps we could overcome it, or transcend it, or do something significant. Why do we go after this sort of thing anyway? Because we are curious? Because we are board? Because we need more fulfillment in our lives? I haven’t the slightest clue, but the point is that we are looking for something. And it seems a good understanding of our “system” would be helpful in finding that think, or at least for better knowing what we are looking.

Introduction 4

My counterparts in the middle ages sought after the philosopher’s stone. It was said to…wait you people are savvy internet users. I’ll just let you read the Wikipedia article. But they sought after it for their own various selfish reasons. It was this one object that we all agreed was very important. But why did we? Because we wanted things: gold, immortality, youth, prestige, ect. I don’t think we ever contemplated what we would do with it if we got it. We were trying to affect our own lives and win at our system. We didn’t think about what our system meant or what it did to us. That was the philosopher’s job. And I never really liked most of them. The one’s I met were all pricks (the American meaning not the British). Anyway, I don’t think we understood our lives, and if we had we wouldn’t have been searching for the silly philosopher’s stone.

Introduction 3

On to the information I am after. I want to know the details of the very beginning of the universe. I believe the physics of it is what I’m after. I want to know in very great detail what happened that day (or those days). I want to know exactly how God* did it. It has been far too long to remember why or when I started this quest, but I have pondered this question on and off for a good portion of my rather lengthy career. And now I shall pick it back up again.

*Note: I refuse to be politically correct. It is a useless endeavor to avoid hurting people you don’t know and don’t care about. So if you, as a reader, are offended by anything I say, please don’t tell me about it, because as Rhett Butler once said "Quite frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Also, I capitalize God’s name because I respect him. I value his thoughts and prefer to give him the respect I grant everyone else by capitalizing his name when I speak of him.

Introduction 2

As an alchemist I have several goals: 1. To gain knowledge about the physical world and the way it works and 2. To use this knowledge to create things of use (and things that make money). So one may question, of what you use is a blog to an alchemist? The goal for this blog is simply to exchange information. I’m a slow man. I don’t have time to go hunting though the internet, books, journals and what have you for the information I need, and I think it’s important and I’m sure some of you are after the same knowledge and I shall now end this incisive nonsense.

Introduction 1

Hello! Welcome bloggers! (that’s fun to say) van Hohenheim here putting my thoughts into technological form for the first time. It’s exciting, is it not? I should introduce myself. I am Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim (a mouthful). I hail from Maria Einsiedeln, Switzerland. I am a philosopher (the practical kind), physician, botanist, astrologer and all around Renaissance man. But what I am most known for, and in what I take most pride, is my title as an alchemist. It is a title most do not care to take in this day and age, but I stopped caring what people thought about me a long while ago.