a rant

Please forgive me in this post for it is a rant and nothing but a rant. I hate Ockham’s razor with a hatred that cannot be described in English. Perhaps in Russian Mat but not in English. It’s like the catholic school teacher’s ruler against the dreamer’s knuckles. I suppose this is a strange thing for me to say considering that most physicists swear by it. But just think about it for a moment. Going with the simplest, least contrived answer kills one’s imagination and deadens the soul. Very much akin to Ockham’s razor is the set of philosophical ‘rules’ that debaters and intellects have used for centuries. We treat philosophical arguments like mathematical proofs. I like mathematical proofs; they are challenging and intriguing puzzles that one can solve in an afternoon’s time. But I hardly think the deepest mysteries of the universe should be treated so flippantly. We view the wonders of the universe and the questions which our mind raises in response to those, why, we treat the very existence of God as things to be tackles. We have no reverence or respect. We are out to conquer. And this disgusts me to no end. This is why I dislike philosophers so much! I cannot stand their arrogance and their brutal treatment of things like truth and self awareness. It’s as if they have been handed a new born child and after pondering it and examining it for a bit, declare that they have understood the miracle of life and promptly disregard the babe. And these people are regarded as intellectual giants. On the other hand those that do not hold to Ockham’s razor, those that do not abide by the rules of the philosophical world, those that would have the universe and the human mind be infinitely more complicated and beautiful than we could begin to grasp, those that ponder possibilities far outside of the ‘normal’ realm of possibility, those either keep their speculations to themselves or are labeled new age spiritualist or crackpots. How this makes my soul cringe. Why does everything have to be intellectually conquered? Why does everything have to straight forward? We assume we have the universe under out thumbs but in my opinion we understand a mere speck of the actual knowledge there is to behold and, also in my opinion, if this history has shown how the human race treats knowledge, we don’t deserve to get any more.

Why I haven't been on.

Hey bloggers. You may have noticed that I have not been on since Tuesday. Well at the university I'm currently 'attending' we were informed that Westboro Baptist Church was going to come an protest our homosexual community. Don't go to their website, go to the Wikipedia article here. So we have been very busy organizing and planning in order to counter their efforts. My biggest part in all of this has been pointing out that Christians don't acctually believe this. Christians believe that God loves everyone and sent Jesus to die for everyone. Emphasis on the word 'everyone.' But anyway that's why I have written. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up on the blog again tonight.

Cosmo 101

Hey! Sorry I didn’t post yesterday. I said to myself, I said, “Self you gotta remember to post on the blog!” But then I started watching the finals for Olympics ice dancing. And they just got so exciting and I got so wrapped up in them that before I knew it, it was midnight and I hadn’t done any work! But I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to write about. In my class right now we are mainly doing a lot of calculations concerning the alterations one needs to make in order to compensate for the presence of a massive body such as a black hole. But I doubt these calculations are very interesting and in my opinion say very little about the concepts behind general relativity. So instead I think I’ll talk about the philosophical implications (and the implications to physics as a whole) of general relativity for a couple of entries. So let’s see, now we’ve done away with gravity and replaced it with a structural change in spacetime. What we’ve essential done is replaced gravity as one of the four fundamental forces. Now all we have left is magnetism /electricity, the weak force and the strong force. We have done away with gravity as a force and we have messed with time and space. They have become distorted. If we were to take a look out from out distorted place in the universe what do we see. We see things through a circus mirror. To me it feel like we have to question the way we see everything! It changes the whole playing field.

Cosmo 101

We interrupt the regularly scheduled programming to bring you the bigger picture. So we’ve been talking all about gravity, and we’ve been talking about it from the perspective of general relativity. In other words we’ve been looking at gravity as simply a bending in spacetime. It’s not a real force or anything it’s just a warping to the playing field. But there is a very different view on gravity that we haven’t talked about yet. It’s the particle view and it says that gravity is a force that is carried by a massless partial called the graviton. Yes I am aware that these two views are totally and completely in contradiction to one another. And everybody else knows it too. This is one of the great challenges facing physicists today. We have tried and tried again to fit two together. But we don’t have a straightforward answer yet. In fact string theory is one of the leading theories that people are trying to use to solve this conundrum. But if any of you young people out there (or old people for that matter) would like to give physics a go this could be an area you might check you.

GOD! ?

Hello there readers! I wanted to do a GOD!? entry today but I didn't want to just do pictures today. So to start things of here is the first paragraph of Wikipeida's entry on God:

God is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity inpolytheism.[1] God is most often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence (perfectgoodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. God has also been conceived as being incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent".[1] These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish,Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers, including Maimonides,[2] Augustine of Hippo,[2] and Al-Ghazali,[3] respectively. Many notablemedieval philosophers and modern philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God.[3] Many notable philosophers and intellectuals have, by contrast, developed arguments against the existence of God.

I have also been looking out for pop cultural views and references to God and have discovered that while American society isn't always interested in God there is a large interest in the supernatureal. So I googled that and the picture up top is the gist of the first 20 pages or so.

The last thing I've included for today is a picture of one of the most beautiful and moving buildings I have ever been in, the Hagia Sophia. It was originally a church (this is when I visited it), then it became a masque and now it is a museum but it is very closely associated with God (and it's just gosh darn pretty) so I thought I'd include a picture of it.

Cosmo 101 The Schwarzschild metric

Ok so here are two more strange effects of the Schwarzschild metric. One is the time. Let’s say we are attending the interstellar Olympics being held on our black hole alien friends home ‘planet.’ But a dispute arises with the speed skating. The fans in the stands measure the winning speed skater to have competed the required number of laps in 34 seconds. But the fans orbiting the planet from further out measure on 1.5 seconds. But there is no discrepancy. The time is warped by the curvature of spacetime alone. I think I’m going to leave the next item for tomorrow and got get some sleep. I’ve had a lot going on and I wouldn’t mind a bit of a break.

Cosmo 101 The Schwarzschild metric

Ok so equation 4 from yesterday is the Schwarzschild metric but we won’t use all of it. That last term, the one with r^2 and phi, has to do with angles so we don’t use it much. We mostly use the first two terms. The first term describes how time changes and the second term describes how space changes. You remember that alien race that thrives around black holes. Well they are used to this and know how to measure things around a black hole. And because this is so strange to us they give us an example. Let’s say we are very close to a 5,000 meter (that’s the mass) black hole. Let’s say we start out right above the horizon (which is at 2M or 10,000 meters) and want to measure 1 meter. Now we need more information than this. There are two viewpoints we could take with this measurement. We could take the viewpoint of someone outside the influence of the black hole or we look at this from the perspective of someone right here next to the horizon. Let’s say we want to measure one meter from the viewpoint of someone outside the influence of the black hole. Now what would that one meter look like from the perspective of someone right here next to the horizon? Well if you use just the second term of the metric you calculate a distance of about 83 meters! Quite strange. Ok this is all I have time to do tonight but I’ll see if I can’t explain this more tomorrow.

Cosmo 101 The Schwarzschild metric (math included)

Now I would like to take a moment to talk about the actual Schwarzschild metric. Now there will be a bit of math involved in this but hopefully it will be well worth it. First let’s talk about units again. In general relativity we like for things to be as simple as possible, so we make time and length have the same units. In my book we use meters. Well how do you make time go from seconds to meter? Well you multiply by the speed of light, c. So, now that we have everything in meters things will be pretty easy. We’ve seen the first equation up top (1). It’s the equation for the distance one travels. We’ve also seen the equation right below it (2). It tells us the distance one has traveled in spacetime. But the thing about equation 2 is that it only works for flat spacetime. But now we are dealing with a curved spacetime and we will have to change equation 2. What Schwarzschild discovered is that you can alter this equation to get a distance that works for curved space. But first we have to do some more unit changing. Now we are dealing with gravity and that means we have to deal with masses. Masses normally come in units of kg’s but now we want them in meters as well. So we multiply any mass we get by Newton’s gravitational constant, G, and then dividing it by the speed of light squared. This is in equation 3. Now our new equation for distance will look nice and neat. And there it is, equation 4. There is a lot more to talk about but I think I’ve given you enough already. We’ll talk about all that tomorrow.

Cosmo 101

I may not have a really sound answer to the question of why all this stuff is so strange but I do have a bit of an illustration that might help us think about it. Have you ever heard of the book flatland? Well it’s about this group of shapes that live in a 2D plane. Our protagonist is a fellow by the name of square. These shapes live in a 2D plane and have never experienced 3D. Now if our square were to travel into a vicinity of very high mass, as in the picture, he would dip down in be warped under the strange warped space. Strange things would happen. He would get distorted. Lengths and time would be distorted. And it would freak him out! Just like we do when we encounter strange things like this. He can’t imagine or see his space being twisted, just as we can’t see 4D spacetime being bent and twisted. But it is and that’s why all those strange things happen. It’s very hard to picture but I hope my illustration has given you a little bit of a better understanding of what is going on.

Cosmo 101 The Schwarzschild metric

We had some homework to do on the Schwarzschild metric. Now as we were staying yesterday, when one calculates a radius near a heavy object you have to be careful how you calculate it. There is the normal radius which is measured directly from the center of the object out, and there is what we call the reduced circumference (which is actually a radius and not a circumference) and it is what we calculate from knowing the circumference. But these, as we said yesterday, are different. It turns out that when you get very close to the black hole these things get very different. In fact as you approach the black hole the difference between these two gets larger and larger till it goes to infinity. Until of course you get sucked into that black hole. Quite a strange concept. But why does this happen. Well I asked the professor and he said just because the spacetime ‘fabric’ around that object is so distorted. I know it is very hard to comprehend something like that but that’s the answer he gave us. Now I’m not saying that’s a bad answer but it’s not the most satisfying of answers. It’s like being hungry and someone giving you a wafer. I don’t really like wafers but I do like big Macs! I would like a big Mac answer to the question but I’m afraid that is not something that will come easily. But if any of you have some clues or thoughts please comment!

Cosmo 101 The Schwarzschild metric

Ok so here is where things start to get weird. Last night I introduced the Schwarzschild metric, but now allow me to explain why it’s necessary. We are use to a world that is basically flat. If you have a circle and you measure the circumference then divide by 2 time pi you get the radius. If you measure from the center of the circle to the edge of it you get the same number for the radius. Duh! But now I shall show you an example in which this is not true. Ok so now take a look at the picture that I’ve included. The black thing in the center is a really heavy black hole. Now let’s say there is an alien race that flourishes around black holes. So what they do is big these big platforms all around the black hole. The purple and red dashed lines are 2 different platforms that our alien race has built. Not what the scientists of our alien race (they need a name) want to measure the distance from their platforms to the center of the black hole. So what would we suggest they do? We would suggest they measure the circumference of the platform and divide by 2 times pi (in light blue), and then do the same with the other platform (in dark blue). Our alien friends are a bit skeptical so we suggest that as a check they subtract these 2 radii and that should be the distance between the platforms (in orange). They do as we suggest and find something amazingly peculiar. Their outer radius subtracted from their inner radius does not equal the distance between the platforms! The human scientists are astonished, embarrassed and confused, but the alien scientists are quick to explain. Because of the heavy influence of gravity near the black hole our normal geometry (which we call Euclidian geometry) simply doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work. In this instance, our alien friends explain, we have to use the Schwarzschild metric.

Cosmo 101 The Schwarzschild metric

So we’ve recently been looking at one metric in particular, the Schwarzschild metric. There is an interesting history to this one. So Einstein published some of his finding concerning general relativity in 1915. This same year a man by the name of Karl Schwarzschild was serving in the German army and thinking about these same sorts of things. He came up with some equations that are now the Schwarzschild metric. And then he died only a couple of month later. Einstein didn’t think it was even possible to come up with these sorts of equations. It makes you wonder what he would have come up if his life hadn’t been cut short. Anyway, these equations, like any metric, describe a world and the way physics works around this world. Formally we say these equations describe the spacetime geometry for a certain situation. Well the Schwarzschild metric describes the world around a spherical non-rotating mass. The most famous examples are black holes! Yes, that’s right, we get to talk about black holes! Perhaps I should do a bit of an introduction. Most black holes arise from a star finally giving in to gravity and collapsing in on its self. At this point all of that matter is compresses so much that it sort of tears spacetime and creates the mysterious black hole. But anyway if you were to stand right outside a black hole your spacetime and hence the laws of physics will be governed by the Schwarzschild metric. It’s a very twisted spacetime that I don’t really understand completely but I think I shall have more information for you tomorrow.

GOD! ?

Oh my! I had forgotten how hard homework was and how long it took! All we did today was math. So today I think I’m going to put a God post up.

Cosmo 101

Forgive the lack of a post last night I was at a wedding and it took much longer than initially anticipated. But I have come to a decision. With this class and all of the other things I am doing. I think I’m going to only write a post once during the weekend (Friday- Sunday). Ok if figured out how we do velocity. If we are just trying to find the velocity of a thing we us normal (or coordinate) time. So now I think it’s time to discuss some interesting properties of gravity. Ok so let’s say we are characters in a sci-fi movie and we are going to visit a black hole. To our horror one of our androids slip over the edge of the observation deck of our spaceship and falls towards the black hole. As much as that android was useful, helpful and part of the team, this mishap provides us with a scientific opportunity. We watch the poor little android as he is sucked further towards the back hole and see a confirmation of general relativity. You remember the experiment with the gobstoppers when we feel towards the earth. The same thing happens to the android. As he falls gravity pulls on his feet more than on his head and he gets stretched. Also gravity pushes him inward and his arms get compressed. This goes on until he gets stretched into a thin string and finally sucked beyond the event horizon. This event has one of the coolest names in science; we say the android underwent spaghettification. Also, and I won’t provide an example for this just take my word for it, the curvature of spacetime messes with the lengths of things and the wavelengths of light. These effects are not due to special relativity, they are not associated with time dilation or length dilation, they are solely due to the curvature of spacetime. But I don’t know why. Perhaps I will have more information on Monday.

Cosmo 101 (a bit of math included)

Well…I was gonna talk about tidal effects and the Schwarzschild metric but I think I would like to talk about our homework more. I know that sounds weird but…it is, my homework, I mean. We are currently working with special relativity and it is just really weird. I’ve always known, well since 1687 (Newton’s year), which feels like forever, I’ve always known that gravity is a force and that v=d/t and that t is the same for everybody that hasn’t even been a concern, but now it is and I don’t really know how to handle it. Now all of the equations that I’ve always fallen back on are not valid anymore and I don’t know which ones are and aren’t. For example there are two (or possible more) types of time in relativity. There is measured time which we represent with a normal t and there is wristwatch (or proper) time, which is designated with the greek letter tau. Now which of those do you use if you want to find the velocity? And for example if you have people traveling at different speeds they will see different times for different events. In other words not everyone agrees on the time separation, delta t, between two events. And not everyone agrees on the spacing either. But there is hope (haha I sound like a public service announcement) there are some values that are the same for everybody, tau is the same no matter who you are or how fast you are going. The equation to calculate tau is tao^2=t^2-s^2. Here s is the displacement in space. It’s the same as the r we used a couple weeks ago.

Cosmo 101

Ok so hop back into your glass elevator we’re gonna need it again. So let’s get some more goobstopers and do a little experiment. The experiment is to toss one lightly up into the air and see what happens. First let’s start out on earth. You’re just sitting there in the chocolate factory and you throw the goobstoper up into the air. What does it do? It goes up and slows down, then comes to a stop and falls back down. Ok after you record the results you take off into space and find a nice little spot away from any gravitational fields. You cut the power and drift along at a nice constant velocity. Now you try the experiment again. You throw the goobstoper up but this time it just keeps going until it hits the ceiling. Hmm…interesting. Now you turn your power back on and set the controls to accelerate you at 9.8 meters per second per second (the ‘acceleration of gravity’ felt on earth) and you do the experiment again. This time the goobstoper goes up and comes back now just the way it would on earth. Very peculiar. Well now you go back towards earth and let yourself free fall down towards the earth. Now we repeat the experiment one more time. This time when you throw the goobstoper up it keeps going just as it did when you at constant velocity in deep space. This set of thought experiments is called the Equivalence Principle and, more succinctly, look like this:

A lab on earth = an accelerating lab in deep space

And a non-accelerating lab in deep space = a feel-fall lab on/near earth

Now there is one distinction that must be made. When I say earth what I really mean is a uniform gravitational field (remember the experiment from last night), but on earth’s surface it’s very close to uniform. You know what, I think I’ve been spelling goobstoper wrong…by George I have! It’s spelled gobstopper. Oh well, you knew what I meant.

Cosmo 101

Ok time for some more really cool introductory concepts. Proper time. I and the author of the book we will be reading like to call it wristwatch time and it has to do with moving clocks…or watches as the case may be. So let’s go back to wolverine and deadpool in their epic battle. Let’s say that in the computer chips inside deadpool’s head he has a clock. Now this clock measures the time when the battle starts, the first event and let’s say that deadpool himself is present when the call to the army is made, event two. If that were the case then the clock inside deadpool’s head would measure wristwatch time, or proper time. Right now it’s just a vocab term but latter it will mean something more. I also wanted to tell you about the reading we did for tomorrow. It was all about gravity. So you know in high school physics how they say that gravity exerts a force on you when you fall…well all the time…but it hurts you when you fall. Well turns out that there is really no force at all…we are accelerating towards the earth due to the fact that the space around the earth is curved by it’s gravity. Here’s an experiment to illustrate. Let’s say you have working replica of Willy Wonka’s glass elevator. Now first you take it way into deep space where there are no planets or anything with a very strong gravitational pull. Now you have 4 everlasting goobstopers and you set one near the ceiling, 2 in the center one on the left and one on the right, and one near the bottom of the elevator. As you sit there in space your goobstoper don’t move, not one iota. Now let’s say you come back to earth and let yourself free fall through the atmosphere and plummet towards the earth. Now you are experiencing the same sort of weightless feeling you did in deep space so you decide to try the goobstoper experiment again. You put the goobstopers in the exact same places and watch them. The funny thing is that they do move but only very slightly. The top one inches toward the ceiling the center ones move more towards the center and the bottom one goes towards the floor. Again this effect is very small but if you were to fall for quite a long time (and not die in a giant fireball upon impact with the earth’s surface) you would see the goobstopers move! And they are moving because of gravity. Cool experiment right? Now all I need is a glass elevator and some goobstopers…

Cosmo 101

So I went to my first cosmology class today and it was amazing. I am very much looking forward to walking through all of this with you. And guess what! All of the things we’ve been talking about up to now have been almost a perfect introduction to where we started off in class today. But there are some things I didn’t mention, so I would like to take today and explain what an inertial reference frame is. Ok so whenever I think of this topic I always picture people in bubbles floating around in spacetime and it always makes me think of this commercial. But anyway inertial means that the bubbles aren’t accelerating, they’re just floating along at a constant velocity looking at events that take place. The other thing I wanted to cover today way the units that I couldn’t remember from before. So when dealing with spacetime in any sort of relativistic way you have to make a choice. Both time and distance either have to be in meters or in seconds. The book we are using picks meters. So whenever you have a time 12 seconds for example you multiply by the speed of light, 3x10^8 m/s and you get an answer in meters. The units of everything else change too, for example velocity is unitless, it’s just a number.