So.  I’ve been surfing when I should be sleeping, or filling up applications (deadline: November 30, 2009).  It’s just that I’m from duty, and don’t feel like thinking very hard.  I can’t even put together coherent sentences.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.

Here are a bunch of links that I will peruse tomorrow, when I am more awake and have completed the other apps.  I swear, the internet is bad for my information addiction.

Food links:

• Asian Aisle: yummy candy from my part of the world!

Blog links:

• The Ivory Hut
• Awkward Things I Say To Girls

Metafilter links:

• What is dating and how does it work? by an 18 year old Briton.
• How to make a first date work which I think will be useful tomorrow.
• What is proper dating etiquette? Haven’t read this, but looks interesting.
• Late to the Dating Game. This could be written for me!    My favorite comment:

I’d like my first date to be the result of someone asking me out.

Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait a very, very long time.
- Chinese Proverb

Clothes links:

• TLC Fashion Tips: What Not To Wear
• A Voluptuous Guide to Professional Dressing
• 10 Things about Dressing Professionally if You’re Busty
• How to Dress if You’re Busty and On A Budget

It’s time for the ProfessorTreeFrog First-Ever Holiday Gift Guide!!!

1) This line of plush toys is seriously cute and seriously awesome. They’re called “Evolvems“, and are zip-inside-out plushies demonstrating major evolutionary milestones. They have the Coelacanth-to-Ichthyostega transition, as well as Dimetrodon-Cynognathus, Yinlong-Styracosaurus, and Pakicetus-Squalodon!!!

2) Also a line of plush toys, “Foodchain Friends” is for those with a more ecological than evolutionary bent. Like some sort of cute, twisted take on Matryoska dolls, each plushie fits neatly inside the mouth of the next-largest plushie in its set, forming an adorable semi-creepy food-chain. These are three different sets, set in a prairie, forest, and river on the fictitious planet of Daro:

3) Ever thought of giving your significant other Herpes for Christmas? How about giving your friends the oh-so-timely Swine Flu? Now you can with Petri Dish Plushies! Choose from a wide array of horrific diseases, or maybe invest in a few extra neurons?

4) For those of you not into plushies (you people suck), why not go with the super-preachy Global Warming Mug? Oh, you know you’d love to pour yourself a cup of coffee and annoy the heck out of the climate-change-denier at the next desk…

5) For all your closest teen vampires who have nothing better to do, there’s the Blood Caffeinated Energy Potion! This product is the “same color and consistency of real blood. It has many of the same nutrients of the rubicund liquid we love to consume (iron, protein, electrolytes, and caffeine) and has a delectable fruit punch flavor!!” It even comes in its own transfusion bag! Lame.

6) For those with a more historical bent, how about adopting a scientist from the Unemployed Philosophers’ Guild? They’ve got Darwin, Einstein, Curie, even Schrodinger’s Cat!

7) For your perennially tardy friends, why not get a Relativity Alarm Clock or Watch? The rotating face quickly turns 9:00 into 3:00 in just 30 seconds! Yes, it actually tells time, but in an innovative and quirky way!

[8] For you tech geeks with trust funds, the fabled Optimus Maximus Keyboard has finally come on the market. Every key is a tiny screen. EVERY KEY. That’s 113 screens on your keyboard, each able to dynamically change based on what you’re doing. Amazing. The fact that it costs sixteen hundred dollars? Not so amazing….

Eight seems like a good number, so this officially concludes the ProfessorTreeFrog First-Ever Holiday Gift Guide!!!

I’m currently trying to wrap my mind around Einstein’s Special and General Relativity. Not an easy task …

Here’s an article about a new theory concerning the relation between space and time. It’s from a physicist at Berkeley and has apparently been gaining support. The theory adds energy as a third factor that can essentially remove ties between space and time, depending on the level of energy. At high energies, space and time are considered more as separate dimensions, going back to Newton’s models of how the two interact (at least that they are separate). However at lower energies the dimensions are still intertwined, which stays somewhat consistent with Einstein’s ‘Theory of Relativity’. The article goes into more detail about instances and phenomenon where this model is a better fit than Einstein’s. It’ll be interesting to see what types of implications this new quantum gravity theory may have for things like time travel, dark matter and the origin of the universe.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=splitting-time-from-space

“I only run when I’m being chased…”

-My Wife and many of my non-running friends

Why do I run? For one, I run because I am being chased. By whom? By the same entity that chases all of us. Time. I know that eventually I will lose this race. It is inevitable. But I run knowing that I can put years between me and that ultimate runner.

There are the obvious ways in which running puts off Father Time. As we improve our general health we tend to physically age more slowly.

What follows is one of my favorite quotes from Christopher McDougall’s Born To Run:

“You could literally halt epidemics in their tracks with this one remedy,” he said. He flashed two fingers up in a peace sign, then slowly rotated them downward till they were scissoring through space. The Running Man.

“So simple,” he said. “Just move your legs.”

For me that was an “aha!” moment. All of the common Western diseases can cut our “run” short. The simple act of running can prevent a countless number of these ailments from affecting our society so pervasively the way they do today.

But you know what else running can do? It can literally slow down time.

Yes, I said literally.

Based on Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, the Twin Paradox states that if one twin were to fly off in a rocket at close to light speed, fly around space for a while and then return to Earth, he would return to find his twin brother had aged dramatically more than he.  This is based on the fact that the speed of light is the same for every observer, no matter how fast he or she is going.  It has been proven in experiments.  Years ago, scientists sent several planes with atomic clocks on board to fly around the world.  Before they took off, the clocks on the planes were synchronized with an atomic clock on the ground.  When the aircrafts returned from their jaunts around the world, it was shown that the clocks on the airplanes were slightly behind the clock on the ground.  The faster one goes, the slower time moves for him or her.  At the speed of light, time essentially stops.

The faster and longer you run, the more time slows down for you. You age at a slower rate.  Sadly, you can run your whole life and only slow down time by a imperceptible amount, but I find knowing what we can do as runners poetic…beautiful. As runners we can control Time. We cannot ultimately defeat him, but by the simple act of running, we can tweak him.

I am being chased. That is one reason why I run.

In my youth, I observed that many people believed many things about the world, about other people, and about the reality they lived in. Moreover, they did not agree with each other. No one I encountered seemed to believe exactly the same thing about everything. It seemed very odd to me. Every single person was different, and unless they were all wrong about a wide variety of things upon which they held their opinions, then the only logical conclusion was that they were all correct about what they themselves believed. Ignoring the fact that this was impossible, which is something I frequently do, I had to ask myself what explanation might exist to account for this flexibility in the fabric of realty. At which point I realized that reality was quite relative, and that we all live in our own little bubble of it. Yes, reality is relative, and if you don’t like it, that’s okay, because reality doesn’t care.

Don’t freak out (yet), I’m not talking about space-time. If we all had our own little bubble of that, well, it would be cool, but there would likely be adverse effect. Gravitation distortion, that sort of thing. No, what I’m talking about is a bubble of perception that bends the lens of our observations and conclusions so that they fit within the associative complex forming the shell of our own minds. Without this capability, the universe would seem very confusing on more levels than it already is (particularly for those lacking the ability to cognitively grasp what most of us consider obvious). For example, to a Christian and a biblical literalist, the world of an atheist might seem foolish and ridiculous (and vice-versa). Yet they both exist in the same space-time. They are clearly visible to each other, and can interact, yet one believes the universe was created ten thousand years ago by an all-powerful entity who looks like a human, and the other believes the universe was created fourteen billion years ago by a statistical fluke, and that people are a result of further statistical anomalies and chemical interactions following a set of rules governed by physical laws resulting from the first fluke. In between these two glowing philosophical extremes, there is a whole slew of middle ground that take a bit here and there and everywhere, and mixes things together in a creative stew of conceptual abstractions that explains it all in an understandable way to that particular individual.

What if they are all correct? What if the Christian will go to heaven, and the atheist will simply cease to exist? What if the deist will meet a universal God, and the Hindu will be reincarnated, and the Buddist will wake up to realize they are part of God. (Note, I’m playing fast and lose with religion here, and I’m aware there are lots of different flavors of these religions).

Of course, they can’t all be right. Right? Surely if the Christian is correct, then everyone else will go to Hell. Surely if the Hindu is right, everyone else will be coming back as something quite nasty. Surely if the deist is right, no one will remember any of this. Maybe if someone else is correct, and this is all just part of a dream being dreamt by a God who will someday awaken, we’ll all just remember our part in this drama and smile. Or maybe you are correct, and the rest of us are simply figments of your imagination.

Would it be alright if we were ALL right? Or is that impossible? Because if it’s impossible, then maybe it’s impossible because you simply can’t see how it can be so. And if it’s impossible for you, that’s okay, because it’s not going to be impossible to everyone. Believe what you want to, the rest will take care of itself.

In my youth, I observed that many people believed many things about the world, about other people, and about the reality they lived in. Moreover, they did not agree with each other. No one I encountered seemed to believe exactly the same thing about everything. It seemed very odd to me. Every single person was different, and unless they were all wrong about a wide variety of things upon which they held their opinions, then the only logical conclusion was that they were all correct about what they themselves believed. Ignoring the fact that this was impossible, which is something I frequently do, I had to ask myself what explanation might exist to account for this flexibility in the fabric of realty. At which point I realized that reality was quite relative, and that we all live in our own little bubble of it. Yes, reality is relative, and if you don’t like it, that’s okay, because reality doesn’t care.

Don’t freak out (yet), I’m not talking about space-time. If we all had our own little bubble of that, well, it would be cool, but there would likely be adverse effect. Gravitation distortion, that sort of thing.  No, what I’m talking about is a bubble of perception that bends the lens of our observations and conclusions so that they fit within the associative complex forming the shell of our own minds. Without this capability, the universe would seem very confusing on more levels than it already is (particularly for those lacking the ability to cognitively grasp what most of us consider obvious). For example, to a Christian and a biblical literalist, the world of an atheist might seem foolish and ridiculous (and vice-versa). Yet they both exist in the same space-time. They are clearly visible to each other, and can interact, yet one believes the universe was created ten thousand years ago by an all-powerful entity who looks like a human, and the other believes the universe was created fourteen billion years ago by a statistical fluke, and that people are a result of further statistical anomalies and chemical interactions following a set of rules governed by physical laws resulting from the first fluke. In between these two glowing philosophical extremes, there is a whole slew of middle ground that take a bit here and there and everywhere, and mixes things together in a creative stew of conceptual abstractions that explains it all in an understandable way to that particular individual.

What if they are all correct? What if the Christian will go to heaven, and the atheist will simply cease to exist? What if the deist will meet a universal God, and the Hindu will be reincarnated, and the Buddist will wake up to realize they are part of God. (Note, I’m playing fast and lose with religion here, and I’m aware there are lots of different flavors of these religions).

Of course, they can’t all be right. Right? Surely if the Christian is correct, then everyone else will go to Hell. Surely if the Hindu is right, everyone else will be coming back as something quite nasty. Surely if the deist is right, no one will remember any of this. Maybe if someone else is correct, and this is all just part of a dream being dreamt by a God who will someday awaken, we’ll all just remember our part in this drama and smile. Or maybe you are correct, and the rest of us are simply figments of your imagination.

Would it be alright if we were ALL right? Or is that impossible? Because if it’s impossible, then maybe it’s impossible because you simply can’t see how it can be so. And if it’s impossible for you, that’s okay, because it’s not going to be impossible to everyone. Believe what you want to, the rest will take care of itself.

This was captured during the Leonid meteor shower, it shows the brightness of a meteor streaking across the sky just after midnight in Utah. Fascinating.

• 7.3 Billion Years Later, Einstein’s Theory Prevails…

• Skeptical topic: ‘Experts’ cannot explain paranormal events in Czech house…

• Unsettled Youth, Spitzer Observes a Chaotic Planetary System…

• Teens’ artificial trees will store CO2…

• New Type of Supernova Discovered…

• UMass-led research tracks malaria’s deadly leap from chimps to humans…

• Skeptical topic: 2012 Doomsday Myths Debunked…

• a jaw-dropping mosaic of the heart of the Milky Way galaxy…

• NASA on a crusade to debunk 2012 apocalypse myths…

• U.K. starts study on using human DNA in animals…

• The Vatican joins the search for alien life…

• Skeptical topic: I saw UFO beam up a buffalo (and check out the lame video footage)…

• Large Hadron Collider Less Than Two Weeks Away From First Experiments…

• 40 Years War: Medicines to Deter Some Cancers Not Taken…

• NASA Ames Scientist Develops Cell-Phone Chemical Sensor…

• In SUSY we trust: what the LHC is really looking for…

• Facebook Status Update Clears Teen of Criminal Charges…

• Prized Mushroom Collection Returns to China…

• Bunnies get tailor-made penis transplants…

• Hypnosis has ‘real’ brain effect…

“What is truth?”  In the world today the response to Pontius Pilate’s question is often, “Well, it’s relative”.  What does the Bible say?  What is God’s view on truth?  The second installment of “One Way Jesus: A Call to Confidence in the Exclusivity of Christ” is a great message on truth and its absoluteness.  Check it out in UA Christian Assembly’s audio website entitled Pontius Pilate Revisited.

by Carl Strang

Winter is a time when we slow down and become introspective. Sitting and staring into the fire, we ponder the big questions. If you have been following this blog, you know that the focus here is science, science that can be done simply in outdoor settings. But we are more than scientists, and science has well defined limitations that need to be understood by everyone who does science or studies its findings. This winter I am using one post per week to develop my own viewpoint and biases, in particular sharing my take on the relationship between science and spirituality. In part this defines for me what these two realms of human experience are all about, and also develops the separate methods used for inquiry in each realm. I plan to place this paragraph in front of each entry in this series, so that those who are interested only in natural history or in scientific practice can skip these posts.

Introduction

All musical instruments contain a space, a volume empty except for air (it’s obvious in a guitar, drum or didjeridu, but even a triangle has a gap; sticks hit together have free ends which accomplish the same thing; the human voice results from vibrations in the vocal chords impacting many resonating chambers in the chest, throat and head). This space, set in motion by the appropriate application of energy, creates a sound, and the nature of the sound depends on the nature of both the space and the compelling energy. (The 3 Stooges found many creative ways to make sound with the human head other than with the voice). The space within an instrument permits the formation of a standing wave which emanates as sound.

Possibly the original instrument was a gourd rattle, the gourd containing seeds in its space, and the shaking of it providing the energy (this idea is discussed thoroughly by Dolores LaChapelle in her 1988 book, Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: Rapture of the Deep: Concerning Deep Ecology and Celebrating Life). The gourd and, by extension, every musical instrument is a universal symbol, representative of the Void of creation, the Motionless that sits in eternity awaiting energy so as to take form. Music making (and Stooge head klonking) is a highly meaningful symbolic act.

Physics, in its close examination of matter, has found that our conventional view of “solid” substance is an illusion. When viewed at the subatomic level, matter turns out to be nearly all empty space. (Remember this the next time you sit before a hot fudge sundae). Even the “particles” that dot this space are not solid, but rather seem to be quantities of energy in motion. They are regarded as patterns of standing waves. This makes them, and by extension all “objects,” forms that have much in common with the sound waves emanating from those musical instruments.

This all, of course, applies to us, as well. If we are part of a universe-as-musical-production, then we can imagine the energy of God’s love emanating from the aboriginal Void, with our universe resulting as a precipitated creation. I recognize that this may seem like empty metaphor, but theoretical advances by some of the leading physicists over the past decade or two describe the universe as a complex wave function resulting from a collision of multidimensional “branes” (I’ll return to this later). I can imagine those branes as hyperdimensional cymbals. Various spiritual traditions suggest that we co-create our bodies as outer, small expressions of a larger Spirit beneath the physical surface. Both the mythologies of the world and emerging scientific understanding point to the notion that ultimately the universe and consciousness are bound together into a complex, folded, intercommunicating, interacting whole. They only seem to be composed of separate parts.

Our understanding of reality is based entirely on what we experience, what we perceive. Such experiences include everyday physical sensory impressions, but also what are called mystical experiences. Physical experiences feed science. Mystical experiences feed spirituality. Both kinds of experience, both methodologies, involve inquiry. But both kinds of experience are constructs within our brains; we are a step removed from whatever gives rise to them.

We seem to exist in a time- and space-bound arena, this physical world. But advanced theoretical physics and spiritual traditions agree, though from different viewpoints, that our perception of time and space is illusory. General relativity, and problems with defining what time and space are in the first place, challenge our assumptions from a scientific viewpoint. In the underlying Spirit realm where the bulk of us exists according to some traditions, there is no time or space, only the eternal Dreamtime. Yet within our everyday experience, in every moment we seem to be maintaining and playing with, changing and growing our form (that “growing” part will be especially true if we contemplate too many of those hot fudge sundaes).

My original goal for this study was to explore ways in which science points toward or is congruent with spiritual ideas. For a while that direction seemed promising, but now I feel that ultimately it is a dead end. The discoveries of quantum and relativistic physics, sensory and central nervous system physiology all have dismantled our everyday assumptions about the physical world, showing it to be insubstantial, and that body of fact can open the mind to spiritual possibilities. Some of the notions that have arisen within spiritual traditions find support in these branches of science. But I realize now that spirituality is insubstantial in a different way, a way that remains accessible only through subjective experience. Science has not yet developed methods to touch it. Stephen Hawking’s 2001 book (The Universe in a Nutshell) convinced me that nothing in the “new physics” requires a spiritual interpretation.

Subjective experience remains valid, though Hawking’s language implies that he personally wants to consider only ideas that meet Karl Popper’s (The Logic of Scientific Discovery) criterion of inter-subjective agreement. To do so, I believe, is to commit the error of confusing science with religion. Even Popper was not so extreme. As I read him, his criterion of demarcation was intended to separate science from other ways of understanding, not to argue that it is the only way. Popper pointed out that science is done by human beings, who cannot totally abandon their subjectivity. So science depends upon observations that are the same no matter who makes them. There is no way to prove that any hypothesis is true, because you never can be sure that an exception will not appear. But you can try to falsify a hypothesis, and if a hypothesis stands up to a variety of tests, it can be treated as though it describes a part of the physical universe correctly. Science is our best tool for understanding physical reality.

The picture is made fuzzy, of course, by the statistical nature of many phenomena in the natural world, as well as by chaotic determinism. The humanity of scientists leads them to bend the rules, often without being aware that they are doing so. These are points which have become better known in the years since Popper’s treatise. But in my view they simply add interest and color to the basic structure outlined above.

Of greater concern is the assertion by many scientists and others that science is, or should be, the only way to obtain knowledge. Extreme proponents of this view (I call them science fundamentalists) maintain that phenomena or aspects of reality that are inaccessible to scientific methodology simply do not exist. Popper pointed out that there are clear, logical limits to science and intrinsic uncertainties in its foundation. The whole range of mystical experience is subjective in nature and thus out of bounds to science. We celebrate this, in the arts and in religion. It is irrational to condemn such experiences in the name of science. They are not scientific, but that does not mean they are not real and meaningful.

[Click here for a PDF of this post with nicer formatting]

Motivation

Considering the Euler-Lagrange solutions for the relativistic force free covariant Lagrangian

we get a set of four constant momentum equations

Can we make some sense of this? While this seems natural enough in comparision to Newtonian physics, we “just” add a component when switching to a four vector representation, the factors that one may expect are nowhere obvious to be seen.

Guts

A decomposition into an explicit spacetime split looks like it is the first step along the path to resolves this

Considering first the time component of our equations of motion we have

Or

For the spatial components we have

With a switch to upper indexes, the remaining three equations of motion are then just

Or

The math seems to be saying that relativistically, in the abscence of forces, we have constant velocity in our rest frame. This constant velocity is relative to the initial time component of the four velocity. This is not what I would have expected from the relativisitically corrected Newtons laws in three vector form

In this equation it appears that we should only expect constant velocity in the small speed limit where can be neglected. If we, however, take this equation and run with it, where does it lead? Introducing a vector constant for the spatial momentum we have

We can now square and rearrange, yielding

With the additional assumption that and are colinear we can take roots (the two could differ by an arbitrary spatial rotation), yielding

Just as seen starting from the covariant Lagrangian, we have constant spatial velocity in the abscence of external forces. There was no fundamental inconsistency between the covariant result and the relativistically corrected Newtonian force law. It was just not initially obvious to me that this was the case.

Even truth is relative.

Justin Vassallo 15 Sep 2000

Quiet Sunday evening.  Glad to be home.

Einstein speaks on theoretical sciences; (Nov. 15, 2009)

I intend to write a series on “Einstein speaks” on scientific methods, theoretical physics, relativity, pacifism, national-socialism, and the Jewish problem.

In matter of space two objects may touch or be distinct.  When distinct, we can always introduce a third object in between. Interval thus stays independent of the selected objects; an interval can then be accepted as real as the objects. This is the first step in understanding the concept of space. The Greeks privileged lines and planes in describing geometric forms; an ellipse, for example, was not intelligible except as it could be represented by point, line, and plane. Einstein could never adhere to Kant’s notion of “a priori” simply because we need to search the characters of the sets concerning sensed experiences and then to extricate the corresponding concepts.

The Euclidian mathematics preferred using the concepts of objects and the relation of the position among objects. Relations of position are expressed as relations of contacts (intersections, lines, and planes); thus, space as a continuum was never considered.  The will to comprehend by thinking the reciprocal relations of corporal objects inevitably leads to spatial concepts.

In the Cartesian system of three dimensions all surfaces are given as equivalent, irrespective of arbitrary preferences to linear forms in geometric constructs. Thus, it goes way beyond the advantage of placing analysis at the service of geometry. Descartes introduced the concept of a point in space according to its coordinates and geometric forms became part of a continuum in 3-dimensional space.

The geometry of Euclid is a system of logic where propositions are deduced with such exactitude that no demonstration provoke any doubt. Anyone who could not get excited and interested in such architecture of logic could not be initiated to theoretical research.

There are two ways to apprehend concepts: the first method (analytical logic) resolves the following problem “how concepts and judgments are dependents?” the answer is by mathematics; however, this assurance is gained at a prohibitive price of not having any content with sensed experiences, even indirectly. The other method is to intuitively link sensed experiences with extracted concepts though no logical research can confirm this link.

For example: suppose we ask someone who never studied geometry to reconstruct a geometric manual devoid of any schemas. He may use the abstract notions of point and line and reconstruct the chain of theorems and even invents other theorems with the given rules. This is a pure game of words for the gentleman until he figures out, from his personal experience and by intuition, tangible meanings for point and line and geometry will become a real content.

Consequently, there is this eternal confrontation between the two components of knowledge: empirical methodology and reason. Experimental results can be considered as the deductive propositions and then reason constitutes the structure of the system of thinking. The concepts and principles explode as spontaneous inventions of the human spirit. Scientific theoretician has no knowledge of the images of the world of experience that determined the formation of his concepts and he suffers from this lack of personal experience of reality that corresponds to his abstract constructs.  Generally, abstract constructs are forced upon us to acquire by habit. Language uses words linked to primitive concepts which exacerbate the difficulty with explaining abstract constructs.

The creative character of science theoretician is that the products of his imagination are so indispensably and naturally impressed upon him that they are no longer images of the spirit but evident realities. The set of concepts and logical propositions, where the capacity to deduction is exercised, correspond exactly to our individual experiences.  That is why in theoretical book deduction represents the entire work.  That is what is going on in Euclid geometry: the fundamental principles are called axioms and thus the deduced propositions are not based on commonplace experiences. If we envision this geometry as the theory of possibilities of the reciprocal position of rigid bodies and is thus understood as physical science, without suppressing its empirical origin, then the resemblance between geometry and theoretical physics is striking.

The essential goal of theory is to divulge the fundamental elements that are irreducible, as rare and as evident as possible; an adequate representation of possible experiences has to be taken into account.

Knowledge deducted from pure logic is void; logic cannot offer knowledge extracted from the world of experience if it is not associated with reality in two way interactions. Galileo is recognized as the father of modern physics and of natural sciences simply because he fought his way to impose empirical methods. Galileo has impressed upon the scientists that experience describes and then proposes a synthesis of reality.

Einstein is persuaded that nature represents what we can imagine exclusively in mathematics as the simplest system in concepts and principles to comprehend nature’s phenomena. Mathematical concepts can be suggested by experience, the unique criteria of utilization of a mathematical construct, but never deducted. The fundamental creative principle resides in mathematics. The follow up article “Einstein speaks on theoretical physics” with provide ample details on Einstein’s claim.

Critique

Einstein said “We admire the Greeks of antiquity for giving birth to western science.” Most probably, Einstein was not versed in the history of sciences and was content of modern sciences since Kepler in the 18^th century: maybe be he didn’t need to know the history of sciences and how Europe Renaissance received a strong impulse from Islamic sciences that stretched for 800 years before Europe woke up from the Dark Ages. Thus, my critique is not related to Einstein’s scientific comprehension but on the faulty perception that sciences originated in Greece of the antiquity.

You can be a great scientist (theoretical or experimental) but not be versed in the history of sciences; the drawback is that people respect the saying of great scientists even if they are not immersed in other fields; especially, when he speaks on sciences and you are led to assume that he knows the history of sciences.  That is the worst misleading dissemination venue of faulty notions that stick in people’s mind.

Euclid was born and raised in Sidon (current Lebanon) and continued his education in Alexandria and wrote his manuscript on Geometry in the Greek language.  Greek was one of the languages of the educated and scholars in the Near East from 300 BC to 650 AC when Alexander conquered this land with his Macedonian army.  If the US agrees that whoever writes in English should automatically be conferred the US citizenship then I have no qualm with that concept.  Euclid was not Greek simply because he wrote in Greek. Would the work of Euclid be most underestimated if it were written in the language of the land Aramaic?

Einstein spoke on Kepler at great length as the leading modern scientist who started modern astronomy by formulating mathematical model of planets movements. The Moslem scientist and mathematician Ibn Al Haitham set the foundation for required math learning in the year 850 (over 900 years before Europe Renaissance); he said that arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and math should be used as the foundations for learning natural sciences. Ibn Al Haitham said that it is almost impossible to do science without strong math background.  Ibn Al Haitham wrote mathematical equations to describe the cosmos and the movement of planets. Maybe the great scientist Kepler did all his work alone without the knowledge of Ibn Al Haitham’s analysis but we should refrain of promoting Kepler as the discoverer of modern astronomy science. It also does not stand to reason that the Islamic astronomers formulated their equations without using 3-dimensional space: Descartes is considered the first to describing geometrical forms with coordinates in 3-dimensional space.

The Philosophy of space and time — the notion that it is impossible to say “now” without saying “here” and “how fast.

Keeping it simple for this week.

Theme: Relativity

Words:
vindicate
rapscallion
arrested

As usual, remember comments are semi-moderated, so don’t worry if your comment doesn’t show up right away. Newcomers can learn more about Saturday Scribes here (including how to do a permalink to your post) and read the prompt guidelines here.

Dear J-

What is actually out there?  If you accept that of all the stars in the universe, surely some have planets and of those planets, there must be a few that have Earth-like conditions, then there must be someone else out there wondering aloud what’s out there too.  Distance and relativistic limitations mean that we’re unlikely to ever meet, barring some kind of Star Trek warp drive and the acceptance of unacceptable risks (unless you assume that successful extrasolar exploration is predicated on society being peaceful/united enough to support it).

I used to play a lot of Spaceward Ho! when I was in college; it’s a game with some strategy, but it ends up being closer to Risk in space, with some minor resource management issues.  When you start the game you pick the number of planets (I’m assuming planetary systems), the size of the universe, and the number of players; my winning strategy invariably revolved around creating colony ships with long range, no weapons, and slow speed; fighters swift and well-armed; scouts lightly armed but as swift; and ringing all colonies with layers of satellites with state-of-the-art weaponry in case of accidental discovery.  Scouts were expendable to figure out whether a planet was worth going to (or to feel out the other player), with whole fleets of fighters along the front lines until satellites could be established, and colony ships bringing up the rear, ready to pounce on new discoveries as needed.

I would count the number of players I’d run out of existence, and sometimes it was less than we’d started with, meaning that the computer had exterminated itself in internecine warfare.  For some reason it would make me obscurely sad:  though I realize that the goal of the game was being the sole player standing it felt a little like electronic genocide — rather than seeing them as separate players, they always seemed like separate species, unreasoning and uncommunicative, rapacious and just like the player in front of the screen.  I haven’t played Spaceward Ho! in a long time, now.

Mike

Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American physicist and Nobel laureate, best known as the creator of the special and general theories of relativity and for his bold hypothesis concerning the particle nature of light. He is perhaps the most well-known scientist of the 20th century
Einstein was born in Ulm on March 14, 1879, and spent his youth in Munich, where his family owned a small shop that manufactured electric machinery. He did not talk until the age of three, but even as a youth he showed a brilliant curiosity about nature and an ability to understand difficult mathematical concepts. At the age of 12 he taught himself Euclidean geometry.
Einstein hated the dull regimentation and unimaginative spirit of school in Munich. When repeated business failure led the family to leave Germany for Milan, Italy, Einstein, who was then 15 years old, used the opportunity to withdraw from the school. He spent a year with his parents in Milan, and when it became clear that he would have to make his own way in the world, he finished secondary school in Aarau, Switzerland, and entered the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. Einstein did not enjoy the methods of instruction there. He often cut classes and used the time to study physics on his own or to play his beloved violin. He passed his examinations and graduated in 1900 by studying the notes of a classmate. His professors did not think highly of him and would not recommend him for a university position.
For two years Einstein worked as a tutor and substitute teacher. In 1902 he secured a position as an examiner in the Swiss patent office in Bern. In 1903 he married Mileva Marić, who had been his classmate at the polytechnic. They had one daughter, who was born prior to their marriage and given up for adoption, and two sons. The couple eventually divorced, and Einstein later remarried.

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Einstein’s third major paper in 1905, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” contained what became known as the special theory of relativity. Since the time of the English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, natural philosophers (as physicists and chemists were known) had been trying to understand the nature of matter and radiation, and how they interacted in some unified world picture. The position that mechanical laws are fundamental has become known as the mechanical world view, and the position that electrical laws are fundamental has become known as the electromagnetic world view. Neither approach, however, is capable of providing a consistent explanation for the way radiation (light, for example) and matter interact when viewed from different inertial frames of reference, that is, an interaction viewed simultaneously by an observer at rest and an observer moving at uniform speed.
In the spring of 1905, after considering these problems for ten years, Einstein realized that the crux of the problem lay not in a theory of matter but in a theory of measurement. At the heart of his special theory of relativity was the realization that all measurements of time and space depend on judgments as to whether two distant events occur simultaneously. This led him to develop a theory based on two postulates: the principle of relativity, that physical laws are the same in all inertial reference systems, and the principle of the invariance of the speed of light, that the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant. He was thus able to provide a consistent and correct description of physical events in different inertial frames of reference without making special assumptions about the nature of matter or radiation, or how they interact. Virtually no one understood

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E=mc²: A biography of the world’s most famous equation
QC73.8.C6 B63
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My cousin’s wedding is coming up, and I have yet to find a dress.  The dilemma:

1. We are still in mourning.  That means no bright colors (pink, orange, red, yellow), no white obviously, and no black.  I’m thinking of copper or bronze.  Barring that, thinking of champagne, even though it is an old lady color.
2. Body image issues.  Short, fat, etc.  etc.

Thinking of having a dress made instead.  I hope the R comes through with this one.