I spent a lot of time recently reading about some particularly interesting points. First up was space-time synesthesia. I’ve been long term fascinated by bits and bobs in cognitive psychology and more broad aspects of neuroscience. I suspect it had always been a low-burning interest, but one which became quite focused through discussions with my older sister as she undertook her degrees in psychology. I almost became a neuroscientist this last year, but being at the nadir of academic performance, the ‘fall’ after the pride of early ‘08, it all fell through. Sad? Oh yes, but I’ll survive it.

Now, with S-T synesthesia, the most awesome point I felt was how important such things are in savantism. I’m very much a transhumanist in my pigeon philosophy. I like the idea of being able to alter my brain and explore reality. I really enjoyed the short story Exhalation by Ted Chiang which I’d heard recently on the Escape Pod podcast, at one point it deals with an…’alien’, shall we say, who opens up his own head to explore the internal aspects. It’s an absolutely awesome short story and the real beauty of it lies elsewhere, but this very simple act is one which I, as a theoretical physicist, feel intimately attracted to and unspeakably distant from. It’s experiment in such a base, pure and dangerous (idiotic!) form that I can’t help but feel it…tantalising. Enticing. Read the rest of this entry »

“What do deliciously ripened fruits, colorful beach balls, assorted blocks, and adorable kittens have in common? Not much, except that you get to stack them in crazy, towering combinations in the goofily-named physics theory puzzler Cat Cat Watermelon. The recipe for a good time is simple: a spoonful of cuteness, a little gravity, a tiny platform, and loads of challenge. This is one insanely tasty balancing act you won’t want to miss out on.”

Check out the full column here at IGN’s Green Pixels.

Emotions

Or Illusions?

Mere Delusions?

Rationalizing Irrationality of the I’s Mind.

Faults Excused & Faulty Thinking Thoughts Confused.

back at university for 11 days now.

Only 7 of those days have been class days.

Not much has changed. Well, I mean, everything has changed in terms of what I’m learning. Science thus far is engrossing, intellecutally stimualting, it seems to me the higher the learning curve, the more I love it. I know most students here would say the exact opposite.

Short, short post, but I needed to come back here. Its hard because I don’t really like people whom I personally know reading this blog. Well, even if they do, I hope that they have no idea that it is me.

Including, my boyfriend. Since our res rooms are adjacent its difficult to come on and write unnoticed.

Alas, I am already late for my physics theory Lab.

If you read enough Thomas Friedman, you should already be indoctrinated with the mantra that green jobs and renewable energy are the future. And you should already be well aware that America is starting to lag behind other major industrial countries in that front, including Germany and China. Friedman’s latest column focuses on the United States’ shortcomings in implementation of solar power, even while much of the technology and industry is made in America (his columns are always interesting, and only sometimes bombastic and awkwardly written). Friedman’s correct, we should certainly increase funding to solar research, and the government should take a bigger role in encouraging green industry (the stimulus was a nice start). After all, the Sun has been powering this planet for billions of years, and it’s pretty good at what it does.

The sun produces a lot of energy. It’s the biggest nuclear power planet in our solar system, and it sends its power to Earth in the form of light. To be specific, the Sun produces 3.8 * 10 ^ 26 Watts of power that it shoots out into the universe in all directions. That’s a lot of energy released every second. To get some feel for that magnitude, worldwide energy consumption in a year is about 5×10^20 Joules, which amounts to about 1.5 * 10^13 Watts. That’s about one 10^13th of the sun’s power (as in 1/10000000000000). Of course, not all of this reaches the Earth, and most of it is sent out into deep space for people in other solar systems to see as a far away star. Because we are so far from the Sun, we only get about 10^17 Watts of power. But that’s still way more than we need.

So, solar power is incredibly abundant and is a remarkable source of energy. Friedman says that we don’t use enough solar energy, but I have to disagree with him. In fact, the VAST majority of the energy that we consume comes from the sun (though most of it very indirectly). What do I mean? Well, let’s follow the energy cycle backwards a bit.

Imagine I start a fire in the fireplace in my room (okay, the fireplace in my room is fake and is only there for decoration, but ignore that for now). I burn a few logs, sit in front of the mantle, hold out my hands, and feel the heat warming me up. What I’m really feeling is stored solar energy, the direct result of nuclear reactions in the sun. Trees are giant solar batteries. They collect light energy directly from the sun using efficient solar panels called leaves. The leaves absorb the sun’s rays (the only absorb some of the rays, the most abundant ones, and relfect the rest, which is what makes them green) and use that energy to make wood. As everyone knows, plants breathe carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Wood is made mostly of carbon. This is no coincidence. Plants take in CO2 and use the energy of the sun to break that apart into C and O2. The plant doesn’t care about the oxygen and it just gets rid of it (thankfully for us). But it takes all the carbon, sticks it together, and turns it into wood.

It takes energy to break apart the carbon and oxygen. Carbon and oxygen like to be together, so the plant requires the power of the sun to pull them apart. Thus, the carbon in the wood wants to reunite with the oxygen and has a lot of potential energy to do this (meaning, there’s a net release of energy when the carbon breaks apart and gets back together with oxygen). When I burn wood in my fireplace, I’m just allowing carbon and oxygen to once again join hands, and the heat I feel is the energy that the plant put into the CO2 in the first place to turn it into wood and oxygen. So, in a sense, the heat I feel is the sun’s rays that the plant absorbed via it’s leaves, which were stored within the wood, and then released when I burn the wood.

If you didn’t already know, people also like to burn oil for fuel. But that’s really the same thing as the wood. Oil is just very dense plant remains (it’s mostly prehisoric algae. It’s not actually made of dinosaurs as people sometimes joke). It’s basically fermented wood soup. When we burn oil, we’re just burning highly dense, liquid plant batteries (because it’s so dense, it releases a lot of carbon into the atmosphere and also releases a lot of energy in the process). But it still comes from plants, meaning the energy originally came from the sun. The same goes for coal, gas, and pretty much anything that is burned to make power. It’s just indirect solar power.

(Not all of our power is solar. Hydroelectric power is just absorbing gravity indirectly. Nuclear power uses the strong force to turn neutrons into protons. Wind power comes from the spinning of the Earth, meaning that every time we use wind turbines, we slow the rotation of the Earth just a little bit. Geothermal power comes from the hotness at the center of the Earth, which is produced by gravity. Again, every time we use that, we cool down the Earth a little bit).

So where does the Sun get so much energy? Well, solar energy really is just gravity. The sun is a lot of hydrogen that is pulled together by its mutual gravitational force. Eventually, it becomes extremely dense and the hydrogen atoms are pulled close enough together to fuse into helium, and a lot of energy in the form of photons are released. So really, the solar energy of the sun is the result of gravity and nuclear QCD effects.

At some point, gravity will continue to pull the sun together, but the sun will be unable to keep producing enough energy via fusion to keep itself from collapsing. The sun will swell and eventually fizzle out, leaving our solar system dark. Hopefully we will have fixed our energy dependence issues by then.

Well, I can’t resist this one: 10 minutes of tasteful and intelligent wit on things unseen…

What grabbed my ear is his reference to Sir Isaac Newton believing that Jesus came to earth to “operate the levers of gravity”.

Maybe gravity is linked closely with love…or should I say Love….Maybe Love is what holds and draws us to God and one another…maybe Jesus came to increase our capacity to Love, to be attracted, to connect, to be intimate with God and one another…

Unable to view? It can be found at: John Lloyd inventories the invisible

El físico estadounidense George F. Smoot saltó a la fama por su papel en un descubrimiento fundamental: las irregularidades en la infancia del universo que darían lugar después a las galaxias y a las estrellas. En 1992, cuando se hicieron las observaciones con el satélite Cobe, Smoot fue el científico que emergió como figura visible del hallazgo. Recorrió el mundo, incluida España, donde adquirió una popularidad notable, explicando y divulgando aquel logro. Hace tres años, Smoot fue reconocido con el Premio Nobel de Física. Desde entonces, da más conferencias, participa en más comités y tiene más responsabilidades.

Pero Smoot, que ha vuelto a visitar España, sigue siendo el cosmólogo capaz de entusiasmar a quien le escucha, y el científico incansable que mantiene su alto ritmo de investigación. Participa en programas activos (como los satélites Wmap y Planck, herederos del Cobe) o en diseño (una misión espacial para explorar el desafío de la energía oscura) y sigue dando clases en la Universidad de Berkeley. Ahora le invitan a más comités de expertos y le reclaman más como asesor; “tengo más responsabilidades y hago más y más cosas”, dice, soltando una de sus frecuentes carcajadas. La semana pasada, Smoot participó en la XXXII Bienal de la Real Sociedad Española de Física (Ciudad Real) y presentó su charla en la Fundación BBVA, en Madrid.

Pregunta. ¿En qué ha avanzado la cosmología desde 1992, desde el descubrimiento protagonizado por el Cobe?

Respuesta. Los resultados del Cobe fueron muy emocionantes porque vimos que estábamos en el camino correcto para explicar el Big Bang, que es una teoría muy buena, pero con problemas. Con aquel satélite comprobamos que teníamos los instrumentos adecuados para obtener buenos datos y explorar el universo. Pero, además, fue importante porque al público le interesó muchísimo nuestro descubrimiento en todo el mundo -también en España, por supuesto-, y esto supuso un incentivo para saber más acerca del universo. En consecuencia, muchos jóvenes brillantes se sintieron atraídos hacia la cosmología.

P. ¿Cambió mucho el conocimiento del cosmos?

R. Gracias a telescopios en tierra y a satélites hemos hecho grandes progresos en cosmología al medir con enorme precisión cómo era el universo primitivo y averiguar cómo es el cosmos. Más en concreto, hemos podido medir su geometría y ahora sabemos que es prácticamente plano y no curvo; hemos comprobado que el universo no sólo está hecho de materia corriente sino también de materia oscura. Es más, las observaciones nos han permitido calcular que la materia corriente supone sólo el 4% del universo y aproximadamente el 22% es materia oscura; el resto, el 74%, es alguna otra cosa, una nueva forma de energía que se ha llamado energía oscura y que necesitamos averiguar de qué se trata. Así que hemos aprendido cómo es el universo, de qué está hecho y como era al principio. Creo son progresos tremendos.

P. ¿Y los próximos retos?

R. Tenemos que comprobar la teoría de la inflación, tenemos que averiguar qué es la materia oscura, por qué hay un ligero exceso de materia sobre la antimateria y, por supuesto, tenemos el problema de la energía oscura. Lo interesante, además, es que en estas cosas puede estar implicada una nueva física. Por eso estoy muy pendiente de lo que pasa en el Laboratorio Europeo de Física de Partículas (CERN) y en el nuevo acelerador LHC… Es que se trata de algo más que de encontrar la partícula de Higgs, porque con esa gran máquina se puede descubrir algo completamente nuevo, tal vez las extradimensiones…

P. ¿No le parece que descubrir esa nueva partícula, la partícula de la masa, sería importante?

R. ¡Sí, por supuesto! Pero sería como terminar una catedral preciosa, como las que hay aquí en España, pero yo prefiero explorar una nueva frontera, como Colón. Me atraen más los descubrimientos que están por llegar.

P. Si usted empezase ahora su carrera científica, ¿qué campo elegiría? O, dicho de otro modo: ¿Qué aconsejaría a un joven que comenzase su carrera científica?

R. Elegiría trabajar en el CERN o en cosmología… ¡Hay tantos problemas interesantes que investigar! Está, por ejemplo, la cuestión de cómo conjugar la relatividad con la mecánica cuántica, porque tenemos esas dos espléndidas teorías que funcionan muy bien, pero no sabemos como hacerlas trabajar juntas. Pero creo que algún día se logrará la unificación. Por supuesto, también hay otras áreas de la ciencia muy interesantes: en biología, por ejemplo, se están haciendo avances espectaculares. Aun así, yo volvería a elegir la física. A la gente joven le diría que la ciencia es muy interesante y emocionante, que exige trabajo duro, pero que es muy gratificante, y es importante para la sociedad, pero ésta tiene que demostrar que efectivamente la valora.

P. ¿Está usted trabajando en la misteriosa energía oscura?

R. Sí. Hay varios proyectos en el mundo, también en España, y yo estoy trabajando, sobre todo, en la preparación de JDEM (Joint Dark Energy Mission), que es un detector espacial. Se podría lanzar a mediados de la próxima década.

P. Ha dicho que si empezase ahora su carrera tal vez optase por trabajar en el CERN. ¿Sería una ruta alternativa o es que el LHC y las partículas elementales están relacionadas con su trabajo en cosmología?

R. ¡Claro que están íntimamente relacionadas! En el inicio las cosas sucedieron a escala microscópica y luego se desarrollaron hasta la escala del universo macroscópico que vemos, es decir, que los millones y millones de galaxias que hay se deben, en el origen, a las fluctuaciones de energía y partículas elementales. Estoy convencido de que la física fundamental es la misma a ambas escalas. Por eso estoy esperando los resultados del LHC.

I was so weak from helping Lu get her body back from the Trapper that I couldn’t guide myself back to my own body. Instead, I had just enough energy to simply let go and allow the cords connecting me to my body draw me back.

I don’t know to explain it, except to say that it’s not a pleasant feeling. The cords connecting to you to your body, providing you haven’t broken them or disconnected them, drag you back and you literally fall into the physical world.

When I let go, there was a swooping feeling in the pit of my etheric stomach, the kind of feeling you get when a roller coaster begins its descent; then I was free falling. I hate the whole tumbling off of a 10-story building feeling of this type of return, but when there’s no strength left to guide myself in, or when someone is a newbie at being out of body or astral traveling, it’s what happens.

I landed with a thud and an “ow.” Then I slowly reached up to touch the spot on the back of my head where I had smacked the floor. …the floor…When I had planed, I had left my body sitting in the comfy chair in my office. Now I was sprawled on the floor, and I realized that the carpeting in here really needed a good vacuuming.

I sat up slowly, then used the furniture around me to gain my feet. Leaning both hands on the desk, I stood head bowed and eyes closed while I waited for the room to stop spinning. It was almost as bad as when I’d had the inner ear infection during the summer, I thought.

When I was steady enough to move, I pulled myself over to the desk chair and plopped down. Sheeesh. It was going to take more than just a simple half-hour’s worth of meditation to get my energies up to normal again. I hoped no one “called” me into the transitional plane in the meantime.

 * * *

Dave got home soon after I did, but it wasn’t until we were eating dinner that I remembered the email from WKRV (RAVE Radio) telling me that I had been recommended as a possible replacement for their resident psychic, Serena the Seer. RAVE did an hour-long psychic show that consisted of the DJ chatting with the Serena for a few moments, and then they took calls from listeners letting Serena do her thing.

The weekly spot was called Speak with a Psychic, and I’ll admit, I’d listened to the spot once or twice. It was your typical tell the listener what they want to hear type of thing, something I couldn’t bring myself to do. As Katy, my best friend, has told me more than once, I make a rotten psychic because I won’t cater to the customer; I insist on telling people the truth.

(You see, there are psychics and psychics. Psychics are the ones who can read people and know how to pander to their needs and wants; the other type of psychics are those of us who can read people’s energies, and so tell them what we know. As you can no doubt deduce, psychics are usually more popular.)

Anyway, it seemed Serena was going on a book tour and RAVE was looking for several replacements to share the task of filling in for her.

Thinking about the email got me irked all over again, and I started sharing my frustration with Dave.

“I mean, honestly. I can’t imagine why one of my friends would have given them my name. Really, submitting my name…” I lapsed into sullen silence and stared at the uneaten dinner on my plate.

When Dave failed to respond, I looked up and saw him looking guilty and hurt.

“What?” I asked, and I put down the folk I’d been holding.

He swallowed nervously, then said, “Ummm, I’m the one who recommended you…”

“You?! Why would you do a thing like that” I crossed my arms and glared at him. “And why didn’t you tell me? It’s not exactly the type of surprise I care to receive.”

Fired up now, he glared right back at me, “Hey! I gave them your business name, your psychic name, not your real name, and it was months ago, anyway. When they didn’t contact you, I forgot about it, okay?!”

He pushed the plate with his half-eaten dinner toward the center of the table; then scooped a hand through his thinning hair. Then in a calmer voice, he said, “I was doing some designs for their new ad campaign and overheard several of the guys talking about needing someone to fill in for Serena when she went on her book tour. I told them I knew a psychic, had heard she was pretty good. End of story.”

I continued staring at him; and then stood up and took our dinner plates to the sink to scrape them. Neither of us was in the mood to finish dinner, that was obvious.

I heard Dave push away from the table and started to bring the left over food into the kitchen. Standing at my elbow, he said, “I did ask how much the gig paid, and the one guy said it would probably be around $1000 for four hours.”

He went back to the table for the rest of the stuff, and I thought about the money. We could certainly use it, that was for sure. Money always seemed to be tight since I left the corporate 9-5 world.

When Dave came back with the rest of the dinner stuff, I turned to face him. “Sorry. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to see what they have to say.” I slipped my arms around him and gave him a hug.

I knew he was only looking out for us, and sometimes you had to do things you really didn’t want to in this world.

His arms reached around me, and he muttered into my hair, “It’s not like anyone has to know who you really are, not if you use your psychic business name.”

I sighed to myself while thinking, the staff would know. But he was right; none of the listeners had to know. Of course, I might not even get the job, after all, I had no idea if I could even do reading on demand. And no way was I going to make something up—that just wasn’t my style.

 * * *

With the dishes in the dishwasher, we curled up on the couch. Dave flipped channels, and I soon fell into a complacent doze snuggled next to him.

He woke me several hours later to go to bed, and sleep was a sweet oblivion. There were no dreams, no calls for ‘help’, nothing.

The next morning, after getting Dave off to the train, I sent an email to RAVE telling them I’d be glad to meet with them. As Dave had said, no one had to know it was me. I could use the name and P.O. box I had set up when I had first thought about doing the psychic thing for money.

I had taken a few clients on and had really given it a try, but it hadn’t taken long for me to realize that I wasn’t psychic enough to make a business off it.

So, I had dropped the website, thrown away the business cards, and never printed up the brochures or flyers that Dave and I had spent hours designing. I think Dave was a little miffed at first, especially after investing all that work, but he soon came to understand why it wasn’t the right job for me. So now it’s a ‘hobby’, or an indulgence, and I write freelance copy for blogs, newsletters, magazines, research companies, and the like.