Gravity is for losers

As I understand it, there are fundamental discrepancies between general relativity and quantum mechanics. Both theories come close to explaining how everything works, but some parts are totally incompatible. A major stumbling block seems to be gravity. Gravity, the force which keeps us comfortably in our recliners and not bouncing our noses against the ceiling, appears not to have any effect on the smallest sub-atomic particles proposed by quantum mechanics. So far, that conundrum has prevented the final iteration of a Theory of Everything.

The effects of gravity are an essential component of both General and Special Relativity, besides keeping our feet firmly planted on the ground. It can't just be tossed aside simply to finalize a universal theory, even though we appear to have proof it does not always apply. That gap between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics has, so far, remained unbridgeable.

But I think I can help out with that.

Consider the water glider, also known as water striders, water skeeters, water scooters, water bugs, pond skaters, water skippers, water skimmers or puddle flies. They walk on water. Literally, in its literal sense. These insects, of some 170 species of the Gerridae family, are light enough that they can distribute their weight to actually walk on the surface of water, taking advantage of its surface tension.

I suspect any competent physicist can see where I'm going with this.

Subatomic particles are known to have even less mass than a water strider, ergo, they have the potential of riding on the gravity wave rather than being drawn into it. I call the theory Quantum Gravity Wave Skating. Thus the paradox between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics can be resolved.

Done and dusted.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to travel to Stockholm.

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What's the matter?

Seriously, Dark Matter? A mysterious substance that fills much of the universe but no one can find? C.mon, who are you tryin' to kid?

Allow me to establish my credentials in astrophysics: I have undergraduate and graduate degrees, neither of them in mathematics or a physical science. So I'm just spitballin' here.

As I understand it, "Dark Matter" was originally proposed over a century ago as a hypothetical explanation for certain cosmological phenomena that appeared to lack other known causes. And we've been looking for Dark Matter ever since.

But I think the search for Dark Matter may simply represent a failure of imagination. Dark Matter may not exist at all. We need to be looking for something else entirely. It's just that so many scientists are hung up on the laws of physics, as if laws aren't meant to be broken.

Consider seaweed on a beach. An obvious hypothesis for the accumulation of marine plants on sandy stretches of shoreline is that the plants are attracted to the sand, itself. They may be drawn to its comforting warmth, its reassuring stillness, or even its cozy dryness. But how to prove which? One means of encouraging research might be through a cash prize offered by some beach resort's Chamber of Commerce to the first scientist who can provide evidence. And so the stampede begins. However, in reality, we all know that seaweed is actually dragged ashore by crabs for their nests. But see how things can become confused by predetermined parameters?

Dark Matter may simply be a distraction, a metaphor that has taken on a life of its own. There is, in its very name, an allure for the human psyche, which is likely how the term was first established. To my thinking, there is the same element of unscientific science that has made string theory so attractive. In that vein, recent research out of Hawaii suggests that the very inability to discover Dark Matter is further evidence of its existence.

Now consider these possibilities as a first step outside the Dark Matter box:  Perhaps the phenomena under question have multiple causes. Perhaps our Dark Matter exists in a parallel universe. Perhaps we should actually be searching for Dark Antimatter. Or not.

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A man way after midnight

 A dozen or so years ago I discovered the music of ABBA and, wanting to know more about the group whose music I was enjoying, I looked them up on Wikipedia. There I discovered two facts which particularly surprised me.

First, that they were Swedish, yet the songs I enjoyed were in unaccented English. Second, that they had broken up thirty years before I'd even heard of them, nearly twenty years before Wikipedia was even a thing. It wasn't as if their music hadn't been popular everywhere on the planet, including the US. Yet, somehow, I had managed to be conscious for the better part of several decades and not have glommed onto their music. It was a real stranger-in-a-strange-land sensation.

Yet here I am again. Thanks to theoretical physicist and science philosopher,  Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder, I find out that string theory, of which I've barely become aware in recent years, has been losing credibility since the mid twenty-teens.

I feel like I've hurried to catch a train only to find the station torn down and the tracks pulled up for scrap.

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A Many-Worlds Paradox?

Similar to several earlier posts involving quantum physics, this post will be presented in a manner that implies that I am, in some fashion, conversant with the concepts of quantum theory. However, in recognition of the notion of non-competence attributed to Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, I make no pretense to any manner of understanding quantum mechanics. Thus, corollarily to that postulated quantum axiom, one must eschew the understanding of quantum mechanics to have any hope of understanding it. I draw that mantle of inverse legitimacy close around me. Moreover, any issue regarding my competence has little, if any, bearing on the functions and principles of quantum physics, itself.

With any questions of my competence thus being suitably disclaimed, I would point out a
conundrum of the Many-Worlds answer to the question of quantum wave function collapse. If, as postulated by the many-worlds, or infinite universes theory, any and all universes are possible as a consequence of universal wavelength, then it must also be possible that a universe exists in which the many-worlds theory is not possible. What if we are living in that universe?

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Just think about it

 

Most of those dots are galaxies and this is an area of the sky that could be viewed through the hole in a CheerioTM held at arm's length.

Go figure.

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Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

What happens to a white rock when you throw it into the Red Sea?

It gets wet.

Classical Physics

Well, it was funny when I was eleven years old. But it got me to thinking about rocks (actually, it was the other way around, but this makes a better intro) ...

You see, most of my career, I worked in the mental health field. Much of it was in direct service to folks dealing with debilitating illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, problems specific to their brains. At different times, I worked in a state hospital and in a community mental health center where I witnessed all manner of effects of these conditions.

Quantum Mechanics

After some years, I became intrigued by so-called normal thought processes, as opposed to the troubled thought processes of those with whom I worked in Mental Health. Finally, I came to realize that there really was no such thing as pure rational thought, in that all thinking was heavily influenced by emotions.

Relativity

Truth be told, I pretty much suspect that thinking and feeling are companion functions of the same brain-based mental systems; one doesn't really occur without the other. But I've ranted about that elsewhere in my blogs, so I won't get into it again here.

Let's just say that these photos represent my approach to thinking about physics without actually ... uh, how to say this? ... without actually thinking about physics, I guess. Maybe I'll call it quantum thinking because ... well, just because. If you have to ask, then maybe you shouldn't.

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Photo credits, from top: Ajith on flickr; publicdomainpictures.net; ibid.

String theory in a nutshell

In acknowledging my Second Grade-level comprehension of particle physics, I was awestruck with the string theory explanation provided in a Kurzgesagt video on YouTube.

Kurzgesagt combines the German terms kurz (koorts) and gesagt (gay-SAHGT), literally, "briefly said," into a compound word which translates handily into the English idiom, "in a nutshell."

As a YouTube channel, Kurzgesagt examines a very wide range 

of science-related topics in a generally elemental, simplified, and brief format, often with tongue-in-cheek humor. That jocularity includes their penchant to "try to destroy the universe at least once every few months," as stated (at 05:50) in their video, The Most Efficient Way to Destroy the Universe – False Vacuum, one of several blackly gleeful videos in their series on universal annihilation.

More on topic, in their video, String Theory Explained – What is The True Nature of Reality?, Kurzgesagt laid out what was, for me, at least, the clearest explanation of the literal minutiae of particle physics. It was probably beneficial that I had also viewed their video on the makeup of elementary particles, What is Something?, the day before.

I might just be ready for Third Grade.

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Outing myself: I am a time traveler.

I am from the past.

DeLorean Time Machine

But then, so is everyone else. We are all from the past. Yesterday. Last Thursday. A year ago. Or maybe 1949, my personal time travel limit. Possibly 1948, depending on your views of fetal development. Or perhaps much, much earlier, depending on the likelihood of reincarnation.

H. G. Wellsian Time Machine

In any event, we are all literally (and I mean literally in the literal sense) traveling through time. Even more, we're doing it the hard way: we're traveling through space-time. So, not only are we having to move along a linear time line at a sixty seconds to the minute clip 24/7, but we're also covering vast distances on a spinning globe while orbiting on a ninety-three million mile radius, and at the same time whirling around the outer reaches of a stellar spiral arm of a galaxy which, itself, is traveling at an ever-accelerating cosmic velocity! Just accounting for the earth's rotation and our orbit around the sun, you're moving at over 67,000 miles per hour and at 3,600 seconds per hour, even if you're sitting in your recliner at home.

My Time Machine

We're not only time travelers, we're space travelers, to boot.

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I get it!

Again! It's happened again! I just figured out something that's had me stumped for years: the difference between wattage and amperes and voltage. (Hey, I didn't say it was a difficult concept, just that I'd always had trouble with it.)

Volts are like, uh ... you know, like how much. And amps are like, well, sort'a like how much, too. And if you, um ... take pi times the square root of the hypotenuse ... or something ... you get watts, I think. (I didn't say I could explain it, just that I figured it out. For myself. It's personal. Very private. I'm sure you understand)

OK, let's look at it like this; it's more familiar territory - -

Take two bottles of the same kind of booze. Just to avoid confusion, we'll say it's rye whiskey. One bottle is 80 proof (meaning 40% alcohol), the other is 100 proof (50% alcohol).

- Volts -

The proof amount is the voltage.

- Amps - 

How hard you're slugging
it down is the amperage.

- Watts -

And the effect it has

on you is the wattage.

Works for me.

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Breakthrough

Were I in the midst of a religious meditation, I might have referred to it as a revelation or an epiphany. But I wasn't.

I was watching a PBS Digital Studios video on YouTube entitled, The Speed of Light is NOT About Light. And, at about 03:37 in that vid, triggered by the comment, "We don't measure magnetic field, we measure its effect," some very elementary physics concepts clicked into place for me; I actually felt a wave of relief wash over me. It was eerily similar to an experience I once had in a graduate statistics class when the prof, during his lecture, reformulated a hypothesis which instantly resolved what had been, for me, a week of confusion and growing desperation.

Look at it this way ....

But, as usual, I'm not really writing about physics. Rather I'm writing about how I experience its esoterica. In fact, I'm not sure I could even define what concepts I found to be suddenly more clear. All I know is that, over the course of a few seconds, what the presenter was talking about began to make more sense and some terminology took on new meaning—at least for me. And all because of a unicorn pony on rollerblades.

In any event, I highly recommend the PBS Digital Studios channels for your consideration.

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Being there

I don't get quantum mechanics—haven't got a clue. Wouldn't know a quark if one popped up in front of me coated in a buttery Béchamel.

Of course, my main problem is that I'm not a physicist. Nor, strictly speaking, any sort of scientist at all, if one discounts a rank amateur's interest in a wide range of natural phenomena.

photo credit NOAA &
Wikimedia commons

But then, one doesn't have to be a geologist to appreciate the grandeur of the mountains or a meteorologist to be awed by a towering anvil thunderhead.

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Alternating currents

For that matter, how would you know if you’d moved into a parallel universe?

I mean, think about it. If—and I’m a little hazy on the physics here, but then, who isn’t—if every decision point creates the opportunity for an alternate reality, who’s to say I’m in the reality I’m supposed to be in? Maybe I tripped or sneezed or got a raspberry seed caught under my dental plate, something to distract me just enough that I made a decision I wouldn’t have otherwise and here I am—divorced from someone I shouldn’t be, driving the wrong car or even standing in the wrong checkout line at WalMart.

What’s more, if my decision created this universe by mistake, and if all of you people are in this universe too, then all of you are also in the wrong place, just because I belched up a bad taste from my chili last night and was distracted as I was playing solitaire on my computer.

Even worse, I’m in my sixties now. That means I’ve had a lifetime of opportunities to stumble around from one bad decision to the next (and I can recall quite a few without even trying) creating and then abandoning one wrong universe after another. I could’ve left hundreds of thousands of billions of people in utter confusion and despair as I slipped seamlessly from one sinking ship to the next.

Oh, you think entering a parallel universe wouldn’t be that easy, huh? Well, I said seamlessly and I’ll stick to it. There is nothing I have found in the literature that guarantees it takes some sort of catastrophically explosive tear in the so-called fabric of spacetime to connect alternate realities. As a matter of fact, any reputable physicist will admit that the “rules” governing such occurrences may be entirely outside our known laws of physics.

In light of that, I feel quite confident in asserting that the nature of such rules, I’ll call it exophysics, pretty much does guarantee that the inter-universe connections occur in ways we have not even imagined.

You want proof? Okay, here’s an experiment. First, pick out a technical field of which you have absolutely no knowledge, like brain surgery, rocket science or guaranteeing your privacy on the internet. Now, assuming you’re not a brain surgeon, rocket scientist or the operator of some on-line social network, tell me how to go about removing a brain tumor, landing on Mars or keeping your email address from some erstwhile Nigerian “prince.” Go ahead, take your time. Use the back of the page if necessary.

You haven’t got a clue, have you? So what makes you think you know the first thing about exophysics?

And even if you could guess the exophysics outside of this universe, that would be absolutely no help in guessing about the exophysics outside another universe, especially if I’ve plunked you into one of my wrong universes to begin with.

All I can say is, I’m really, really sorry. Sorry for creating another wrong universe in which you’re now trapped and sorry for ending the last paragraph with a preposition. I can only have hope. Perhaps, in the next universe, it will be acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition.

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Voodoo Physics

Recently, I came across two books that cast significant aspersions on the entire notion of string theory: Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit and The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin.

First of all, have you ever noticed how scientific works have such long titles? It’s like they’re trying to summarize the book in the title. What’s wrong with a tight, pithy title like Absurdities of String Theory or Cutting the Strings? Why these obsessive run-on sentences trying to squeeze onto book covers? Have you ever seen a really obese individual dressed in spandex or some other stretchy material? Scientific titles must be a real headache for cover artists.

Now, I may have left you with the impression that I have actually read the two books I mentioned. In fact, I wouldn't mind if you had that impression. It might cause you to think I was very intelligent and widely read on matters of physics. If you’ll notice, however, I wrote that I “came across” these books. More specifically, I read about them on Amazon.com. So, while the following might give you the notion I understand it, I’m simply parroting comments from reviewers.

In his book, Woit makes the case that superstring theory is not just far-fetched, it doesn’t even really have the substance to be described as a theory. Since it makes no testable predictions, it cannot be proven, or, more importantly, proven wrong. Essentially, this makes superstring theory unchallengeable, so it survives and flourishes without being subject to the scientific method.

Smolin, for his part, posits that much research in physics—the search for the laws of nature—has entered the realm of the imaginary with its dimensionless sub-atomic particles and multiple parallel universes. A lapsed string theorist himself, Smolin laments that many of the best and brightest new talent among physicists today are being drawn toward this mystical realm.

A RELEVANT ALLEGORICAL VIDEO

And, just when I’m beginning to think it may be safe to go back into the waters of general and special relativity, I see this teaser on my home page from the BBC news service: “Test ‘breaks light speed again.’” The article describes experiments conducted at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland and an associated Italian lab, INFN, at Gran Sasso in the mountains of central Italy, some 450 miles away.  The Geneva lab shot bunches of neutrinos through the earth’s crust at a giant super-sensitive detector at Gran Sasso. The results confirmed an earlier experiment in which the neutrinos arrived some billionths of a second faster than light would have traveled the same distance. This seems to turn on its ear the insistence, in relativity theory, that the speed of light, 186,282 miles per hour, is an absolute limit and that nothing can move faster. (NOTE: These results were later retracted due to experiment errors attributed to faults in equipment handling.)

What's more, I was reading a brief history of the neutrino on a website by the University of California, Irvine, and the synopsis reflects a very similar inception to that of string theory. It gave me pause.

I was starting to like that the idea of string theory, and possibly other conjectures of quantum mechanics, were just so much magical thinking. My mind began to erase branes, multiple universes and extra dimensions from its working chalkboard. The world began to make sense again.

Then those dang Europeans challenge one of the basic tenets of relativity theory.

I’ll bet it was the French. They’re always trying to upset the apple cart.

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Me and my shadow

"You're holding me back"

Okay, here's something to think about:

While you, at your world class best, can propel yourself at about one mile in four minutes, your shadow can move at the speed of light.

Go figure.

"I just can't keep up
with myself."

And if that's true, if you could cast a shadow 186000 miles long, it would take a full second for a change in your position to ripple all the way from your shadow's feet to it's head. (Or should that be "his" head? Does your shadow have a gender? I think that may be more a matter of metaphysics.)

Then it would take another second for the light from that change to travel back to you. In effect, as the "ripple" moved away, it would appear to slow down, because the light source would be further and further away.

"I'm out'a here!"

And then, with just a short burst of speed on your part . . .






I'm just sayin'.

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Incomplete

As I've mentioned, I've been working my way through George Musser’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory. Unfortunately, I haven't been having all that much success.

First off, let me say that I do not believe any fault lies with Mr. Musser or his book. He seems competent and his writing style is pleasant. It's just that I have the same trouble with his book as I've had with every other book on these topics: I've got no freakin' idea what he's talking about!

All I know is that, I start out okay with this stuff, but then it's like watching the author row a boat into the fog. He becomes less and less distinct, and then I can't see him at all anymore. I look hard, but I only can hear the squeak of the oars in the oarlocks, just the vaguest hint at what it's all about. It's so frustrating that I'd like to bang my head against something, but the only thing available is the fog.

I'm sure the fault must be mine. Well, I'm not even sure about that, either. I mean, I'm not exactly stupid. And maybe that's the problem.

The book is for the complete idiot. Maybe I'm not a complete idiot. Maybe I'm an incomplete idiot. Maybe there's some studying I must do or courses I have to take in order to reach complete idiot status.

What I am fully certain of is that drifting about in the fog is getting a mite irksome.

So I'm going to look into this business of becoming a complete idiot. I feel motivated.

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Teensy-weensy, itsy-bitsy

I want to put a few things in perspective. Strings, for instance.

As I mentioned last time, I’m working my way through George Musser’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory. I want to get a handle on what subatomic level we are dealing with when we talk about strings.

Deconstruction of matter:

1. Macroscopic, e.g., diamonds

2. Molecular, diamond allotrope

3. Atomic, carbon

4. Subatomic - Electron

5. Subatomic - Quarks

6. Strings (Image**)

First, let’s take another look at the diagram I used in my last entry, showing the progressively smaller and more basic parts of matter.

Now, try to wrap your mind around this concept: the most common estimate of the size of strings is that a string compares to an atom in roughly the same proportion that a human being compares to the entire observable universe. And we know that atoms are so small that it is only in recent years that we’ve been able to scan to the level of individual atoms with advanced electron microscopes. So I find it hard to imagine how infinitely smaller strings must be.

Beyond that basic fact lies the practical problem of ever even being able to observe a string—assuming they do exist. It would be tantamount to looking from earth to some very, very distant planet in a galaxy far, far away with the intention of being able to read the scoreboard at a Buckyball stadium there (Buckyball being the sporting pastime of the residents of that very, very distant planet). It’s likely to be a long time, if ever, that we have instruments able to directly observe either strings or Buckyball scoreboards on distant planets.

Of course, even when I was in school, no one had ever seen an atom. Technically, just a few short decades ago, atoms were just a theory, sort of like strings are now—or global warming or evolution, for that matter. But, even then, there was evidence that atoms existed. Their effects could be predicted and tested so that, even if we couldn’t see them, we knew the little devils were there.

We’re not quite at that point with string theory, though. There are competing theories which still have legitimate physicist adherents. Among the major contenders is loop quantum gravity theory. Among other things, the loop gravity theory proposes that space itself is actually composed of something, “space atoms” if you will, that act as the means for the transference of gravity—gravity being the main problem between defining the macro-universe (planets, stars, galaxies) and the micro-universe (atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons quarks and strings).

While the effects of gravity were well established by folks like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, their theories don’t hold up on that micro-universe, subatomic level. Hence, as I’ve mentioned, quantum theory was developed.

As Musser notes, for most practical purposes, those discrepancies don’t matter. Both astronomers and particle physicists can each explore their respective fields without regard to the theoretical offsets regarding gravity. But, eventually, when the ultimate questions of black holes or the Big Bang must be answered, then it will matter a great deal.

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What would you do if I sang of a string?

Would you stand up and walk out on me?

At Amazon.com

For the next week or few, I suspect we’ll be talking about string theory. I’ve just started a new book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory by George Musser (2008, the Penguin Group, New York, NY).

This week, I just want to go over the basics, some of which I’ve discussed before.

Back in the day, when I studied science in school, the theory was that the basic building blocks of matter were atoms, and atoms were composed of protons, electrons and neutrons, held together by various electro-magnetic, inertial and gravitational forces. This is, more or less, the classical theory of physics, fully supported by the general theory of relativity.

But there was a, shall we say, “companion” theory of physics called quantum mechanics; however, when I was in school, it was not popular enough to make it into the general science textbooks. Even so, quantum mechanics was a serious field of study limited only by the problem that many of its theories could not be tested given the technology of the day.

Over time, though, technology began to catch up and quantum theories became more and more accepted.

Deconstruction of matter:
1. Macroscopic, e.g., diamonds
2. Molecular, diamond allotrope
3. Atomic, carbon
4. Subatomic - Electron
5. Subatomic - Quarks
6. Strings       (Image**)

The problem remains, however, that some of the basic tenets of quantum theory and classical theory, while provable, are not, apparently, compatible. This led to a quest for a “unified theory” that would explain those incongruent notions. String theory is the most popular hypothesis to date, though it is neither complete nor unanimously acclaimed. String theory is based on the work of Italian theoretical physicist Gabriele Veneziano and was first described in 1969.

Very, very simply, string theory proposes that the atomic particles we called protons, electrons and neutrons are made up of even smaller stuff and that this stuff is in the form of both looped and open-ended one-dimensional strings. It is the nature and behavior of these strings which, so to speak, ties together quantum theory and classical (general relativity) theory.

Then it gets interesting.

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Round 'em up, head 'em out

Time for snowbirds to gather and get the flock out'a here. Adios, Arizona; howdy, Colorado. So, for the next few weeks or more, we'll be giving this a rest.

Superconductors

A superconductor.

Actually, I’ll be writing about superconductivity today, but superconductors made a better title, and also allowed me to use a clever graphic—lest we forget that these blogs are mostly about keeping me amused.

First, let’s have a couple demonstrations showing what superconductivity is all about.

Demonstration 1. Wave your hand about in the air as rapidly as you can. Now, move your hand just as rapidly, but keeping your palm in firm contact with the surface of a carpet. (Hey, I said firm contact.)

Okay, don’t be bleeding all over the carpet. So, do you feel the heat on your palm? That heat is caused by friction with the surface of the carpet as it resists the movement of your hand, what one might call (and I am calling) resistance.

Demonstration 2. For this demonstration you will need your mother’s permission: pop a slice of bread in your toaster (an English muffin would be better). Now crank that handle down. (It’s plugged in, right?) Hold your horses, give it a few seconds.

Image**

Now very carefully—don’t get too close—look down into the toaster slot. (If your eyebrows are smoldering, you’re too close.) See those glowing wires aligned on either side of the muffin? Those wires are made of a metal alloy designed to resist the flow of electricity. That resistance to the electricity causes them to heat up, glow red and yellow, and hence the delicious carmelization of the surface of the English muffin.

Now pop out that muffin, slather on a generous portion of margarine or butter (see how it puddles deliciously in all the nooks and crannies?), add a healthy dollop of jam, jelly or honey, and enjoy. In quantum mechanics, this is referred to as a snack.

The wires in the toaster conduct electricity. (Starting to see where we’re headed, eh?) They’re just designed to conduct it poorly, so there is resistance, which causes heat, with some light as a byproduct. The same method is used to create light in an incandescent light bulb—which is also why they’re inefficient, because so much of the electricity ends up creating heat rather than light.

On the other hand, most electric lines or wires are designed to conduct electricity with as little resistance as possible, from the cord connecting your computer to your house current to the high voltage transmission lines that carry electricity from generating facilities to distribution and transformer stations throughout the country.

There are two problems, however. First, all metal wires—and there really aren’t any other kind in general use at present—have some resistance to electric flow. Secondly, the lower the voltage of that flow, the more susceptible it is to resistance.

So, to carry electricity over distances, power companies raise the voltage to very high—and more dangerous—levels. Even so, it’s estimated that upward of 5% of the power generated in this country is lost to resistance before it even makes it to a consumer’s electric meter. To transmit power at preferred lower voltages would result in exponentially higher losses.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the flow of electricity in the ever-smaller circuits of computers causes problems of speed, proximity and heat that have our current technologies reaching their theoretical limits.

What physicists have sought, ever since electricity became more than just a conjurer’s trick, was a means to conduct electricity at low voltages without loss to resistance.

Image: American Superconductor

In 1911, Dutch physicist (and Noble laureate) Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who studied how materials behaved at very low temperatures, discovered that, when super-cooled—and by super-cooled I mean temperatures very close to absolute zero, -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit—some materials lost all resistance to electrical conductivity. Hence the term, superconductors.

In theory, if one put an electrical current into a closed loop of superconductive material, the electrical current would move unimpeded, without any loss, through that loop indefinitely.

Image: ItsSaulConnected.com

The problem remains, even 100 years later, that materials still must be super-cooled to become superconductors, an expensive and impractical consideration for general use. But research has been developing materials that can superconduct at slightly warmer temperatures and the holy grail is that material that can superconduct within ambient temperatures.

And I wouldn’t mind finding some way to toast my English muffins faster.

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Out on a limb: Time out

(Continued from last week.)

Consider how casually we treat time. For instance, in this country, most of us, twice a year (daylight savings time, eh?), up and change it just to suit our convenience. This has the effect of a makeover—one 23-hour day and one 25-hour day every year. And we think little of it.

Then there’s the matter of time zones. We divide the earth into 24 zones, to account for the 24 hours of its rotation (but how do we speed it up or slow it down to accommodate the 23- and 25-hour days?). Being round, the earth accounts for the 360 degrees of a circle. Dividing those 360 degrees by 24 hours gives us 15 degrees of longitude for each time zone.

Time warp? Time wrap?

Except, of course, where it’s not convenient for us. As an example, consider the gerryman- dering of the time line (see the inset map) along the borders of Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Montana.

Or we can time travel simply by moving about on the earth’s surface. On the continental USA we can change our time by as much as three hours. I’ve often wondered what might happen if one were crossing a time zone boundary precisely at the stroke of midnight. Do you travel through time by an entire day? Or might you slip into a rift in the fabric of time itself, reappearing in another dimension exactly like our own so that you would be unaware of the dimensional shift—but would you then be destined for an entirely different future? Maybe it’s already happened.

To cease belaboring the point: we really don’t take time all that seriously.

Stomping our collective foot, we whine, “But we do take time seriously! What about the saying, ‘Time is money’?"

Seriously? Is time money? Or is effort money? Or one’s determination and response? If time were money, might not we all be rich?

Taking this back to the realm of physics…well, let’s save that for next time.

To be continued. Sometime.

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