God's Aside 4

I think I’ll just keep going on this train of thought. If he designed math and the universe for us to figure out than that implies he wants us to (goodness, I sound so much like a philosopher). And why wouldn’t he? If he is anything like us (the whole created in his image thing) I should think he would like to show off. One of my dearest and oldest friends is a terrific artist and he is always ready to show his latest work and explain the how the why the details to any ear that would listen. Why wouldn’t God be any different? His masterpiece, the creation, is so much more complex and intricate, and daresay beautiful, and why wouldn’t he want to show it off. In all honesty he does seem a big showy. I mean even for those who aren’t (to further the analogy) art students, he’s created features that absolutely cannot be ignored, like the sunset and the ocean and the stars. Now, for those who do study his work, he is…well, a downright showoff. Quantum mechanics is the most ridiculously dumfounding thing I’ve ever found. For the bio people out there the transition from larger scale chemical combinations to a living thing has always seemed rather incredible to me. The scales on which the structure of the universe lies, in and of itself is enough to blow the mind of any rational human. He is a showoff on the grandest scale. And if you have no one to show it off to, well that’s just no fun. But it seems he does. (no, I’m not suggesting humans were created just to study science) But he does have use, and we do seemed to be programmed with this innate curiosity. And well, somehow I don’t think he minds at all. But if all this is true why do we have to search so hard? Perhaps it’s simply more fun that way. I mean after all I do like a challenge. If I didn’t I would have done something else.

God's Aside 3

Today I must share an experience with you. I had this cake…it was be best thing I’ve ever eaten. It was divinely blessed cake and it make me so so so so happy. It make me believe that if there are things that are that good and make people that happy there must be a God…there must. Someone had to create that kind of feeling. And with that lead it here is the next part on my God series.

Perhaps there is a God, such as the Jews claim, who has spoken with humans and cares about them. I’ve read quite a few of their texts and in one, I do believe the Christian’s share this part, it is said the God made man in his image. I’m not quite sure what this means to them, but I am rather certain that there is defiantly something special about man (and woman of course, there is no doubt in my mind there is something special about woman!). We are the only species on earth to have the kind of advanced cognitive thinking that we do. Well, let’s just put it this way, I’ve never met any other animals that wondered about God. We believe we are special. This kicks back to an earth centered model of the universe. We have always thought we had a special place in the universe. As far as the actual location of earth, we really aren’t that special. We are just in a small branch of an average galaxy in a rather uninteresting part of a (supposedly) uniform distribution of matter. But how come we know that (or at least we think we do). We’ve never found any other beings as intelligent as us (at least not yet), but I will be very honest, the fact that all our math and physics works seems a little more than coincidental. That’s why all of the physicists and chemists and mathematicians put their trust in it. It works. It’s works in so many situations and under so many circumstances. We can predict things with it, and we are right. We measure, calculate, modify, conceptualize, invent math, and in the end we get it right, at least so far we have. I can firmly say I don’t believe science is going about understanding the universe in the wrong way. And if this is so well, then there is a set mathematical structure to the universe. Yes, take a moment to try to comprehend this. There is a set mathematical structure to the universe. Math sort of governs the universe. Math. I often hear stories from math teachers of student’s asking how math applies to real life. Operations and relations of constants and parameters govern the universe! Talk about structure. Think with me for a moment about some of the highest forms of structure that humans have created, languages, the stock market, the internet, the space shuttle, etc., they don’t even compare to the higher structure of the universe.

Backtracking 2

Forgive the lack of post yesterday as well, more IRS stuff to be dealt with…I don’t understand all of the paper work I have to fill out…way back when you would just explain your situation to a judge and he would make a decision and that would be that…there was no box checking (there are no boxes for someone over 100 years old). Anyway back to our discussion. Interesting things that happened in the recent past include earth's origins 4.5 billion years ago and the sun forming around 5 billion years ago, but what I really want to focus on is the formation of stars and galaxies about 300 million years after the big bang. You know that whole ‘human are made out of stardust’ thing from the 70’s? Well, let me take a moment to explain that. Stars work by fusion, that is, they take small atoms like hydrogen and cram them together to form larger atoms like helium, and so on and so forth until they make things like carbon and iron and other elements. Then the stars blow up…well not all of them….but a substantial amount do. And when they blow up these elements get spread around the universe…get trapped in big rocks, sucked into other stars, expelled again, etc. then at some point they got trapped in a big rock that started rotating about a normal old star and there ya go: Earth! So yeah…the carbon we’re made out of and all the iron in the building you’re standing in was once created in a star! That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?

Backtracking 1

If you couldn’t tell, yesterday I went and talked to my cosmologist friend. It was rather ‘interesting.’ I learned quite a bit, and hopefully I shall continue to learn more. But to continue…we shall start with our timeline of the universe. But I think we shall go backwards…start with the present. So we have this universe. We can only see a small part of it (because of our horizon), and I’ve included a picture of what it looks like (it’s on a logarithmic scale). And if you download Google earth, it has a sky function and you can zoom in and see all the stars, it’s very fun. But anyway, when we take a catalog of the red shifts and the things we see it appears the things are moving away from us. But we already knew this from Hubble. But what we’ve found recently is that those things are moving away from us at faster and faster speeds. This is a bit strange cause you would think that after the big bang and inflation stuff would start slowing down. But what we are seeing now, with our infinitely advanced technology, is that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. And they are going really really fast. They are actually leaving our horizon. And you know what this means, this means they are going faster than the speed of light! Yep space, as we speak may be expanding faster than the speed of light and leaving our horizon and thus, our field of vision. This is the universe we have right now.

Inflation 8 / WHAAAAAAA?!

STOP THE PRESSES! Hold the phone! Take a step back! Ya know that whole thing about nothing going faster than the speed of light, yeah, well that’s not quite true! I know, crazy! Psycho! I’m in shock. But it turns out that space can exceed the speed of light. (For those of you who have no idea what is going on, general relativity states that nothing goes faster than the speed of light, and this is a very widely known and accepted principle, so that’s why I’m freaking out). General relativity dictates what goes on within space-time but it turns out it doesn’t dictate the expansion of space itself. So ya know how I was asking about why the horizon problem is solved by inflation well this is exactly why! Its cause space expanded outside our horizon (which is caused by light) and then it is slowly been coming back into our view (if we neglect the expansion of the universe, we’ll get to this later). Was this common knowledge? Did other people know this! Was I left alone in the dark on this (yes that was a stupid pun). I’m still in shock over this.

Why the IRS doesn't like me

You will have to forgive my sudden absence. It would appear that the IRS dislikes my birth date and I was summoned to ‘correct’ the ‘mistake.’ Even with my unyielding insistence on the truth of the date, they said I needed to change it or I would be sent to court. So I changed it. According to the government I was born in 1944 and am 65. It was quite an unpleasant weekend, but I made it through. And I have decided on something. I’m going to get help from an actual cosmologist on this inflation issue I am actually going to ask someone who knows what they are talking about it. Hopefully this will lend me a bit more information as to how and why inflation actually happened. And when I figure out the answer to those questions I will be sure to let you know. Until then I think it would be fruitful to move on to something else. I was thinking that we could explore the timeline of things a little better. We brushed over it to get a context for inflation but I think it merits a better exploration so this is what I shall be proceeding with. And for your viewing pleasure I have included a lol cat. Have a pleasant Sunday.

Inflation 7

Ok today we tackle the flatness problem, which is also solved by inflation (supposedly). It’s actually really, really simple when you take all the math out of it. Ed’s text has a considerable amount of math in it but I don’t know where it was derived from so I’m not gonna go there. But there is a simple explanation, and here it is. Inflation just stretches out the universe to its current flat state. It’s like if you have a balloon that got stuck behind the TV after the birthday party a month ago; ya know how it’s all wrinkly and bunchy. Well, if you take that balloon and somehow manage to untie it and blow it up some all the wrinkles will come out of it. This is what happened with the early universe. It may have been all wrinkly at the begging but then it got stretched in inflation and became flat again. That’s all there is to it (ok not really, there’s a lot of math but…we can worry about that later…maybe).