tags: physics
2006
March
- 2006 Mar 12
- stopping time
The vagaries of consciousness? Or quantum mechanical effects?
· Read more… - 2006 Mar 26
- the sin of pride
I was walking through the Science Fiction and Fantasy section of the Borders in Glendale when a totally random thought occurred to me. I think what brought it to my mind is the question: what is the cause of evil? I was flipping through random fantasy novels where characters are neatly pigeon-holed into Good or Evil, and clearly in the real world nothing is that obvious.
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April
- 2006 Apr 1
- over and over
Days like this I feel like I am trapped in some kind of existential loop, a la “Groundhog Day,” forced to live and relive excruciatingly painful parts of my life. I suppose it is simply the fact that I really haven’t learned any of the lessons I was supposed to have learned, so I haven’t really learned to avoid these situations that make me want to weep, and maybe even sometimes writhe in agony.
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October
- 2006 Oct 27
- physics vis-a-vis racism and misogyny
Man, Lee Smolin, theoretical physicist to the nth degree, is my hero. The first I had heard of him was his book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, a discussion of the possible unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity, which covers string theory and loop quantum gravity. I also noted his name in João Magueijo’s book Faster than the Speed of Light.
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December
- 2006 Dec 1
- the first of the last (to sleep, perchance to dream)
(The track that is currently playing is "The Perfect Kiss" by New Order)
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2007
May
- 2007 May 6
- mika “any other world”
In any other world
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you could tell the difference
and let it all unfurl
into broken remnants.
Smile like you mean it
and let yourself let go.
June
- 2007 Jun 30
- better lucky than good
The Fool is an auspicious card, depicting potential.
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July
- 2007 Jul 13
- nerd dreams
I swear. Who dreams of particle accelerators?
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2008
March
- 2008 Mar 3
- profession: astrophysicist/neurosurgeon
I'm sure you've heard the phrase "it's not rocket science" to describe something that should be easy. So Raymond Chen asks what actual rocket scientists say when they want to describe something easy. The common answer seems to be "it's not brain surgery."
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June
August
- 2008 Aug 9
- what is "real"?
One of the books I'm currently reading is A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein by Palle Yourgrau. Essentially, it concerns Gödel's conclusion that the Theory of Relativity naturally leads to a universe where time isn't real. I also started The End of Time by Julian Barbour, who comes up with a similar conclusion, though his formulation is much more recent, and in the few pages that I have read, he necessarily bases his ideas partly on the way that the brain processes information (without actually going into the messy neuroanatomically and neuromolecular details.)
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2012
March
- 2012 Mar 3
- there are no happy endings, because nothing ever ends
There was a time after Edwin Hubble discovered the universe was expanding that I think a lot of people thought the universe was doomed to end. Gone was the idea that the universe was static and eternal. So it was either the Big Freeze, or the Big Crunch. Either the great heat death of the universe, or gravity would eventually halt the expansion and everything would come crashing back down into a singularity again.
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