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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Out on a limb: Two minute warning

First, let me introduce a new topic header, “Out on a limb.” Again and anon I will utilize this header to indicate I am going to go way beyond my depth (think Marianas Trench) by proposing theoretical vectors which are, at least to my knowledge, new or different. Since I already have ventured thusly in one prior post, on 2011-02-02, I have altered that header in keeping with this new approach.

Now, to once again go where angels fear to tread.

Seems to me that time, per se, gets short shrift in the whole “spacetime” business with which astrophysics busies itself. And in quantum physics, at least the more popular sources that I skim, time seems hardly an issue at all.

In astrophysics, the main concerns of time study appear to be centered on three areas: searching, astronomically, back in time toward the big bang; how time “slows down” at high velocities; and in the question of time travel, though the latter seems more of a populist sideline. In quantum mechanics, time…well, truth be told, I don’t remember seeing it mentioned as a significant factor; however, I fault my literature review more than anything else.

Still, I went so far as to read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. In my estimation, it dealt much more with space and matter than with time. In all, physicists seem scads more preoccupied with issues like dark matter, the cause of gravity or superstring theory. Time may be a factor, but it seems almost incidental.

Here’s what I think: time doesn’t exist.

(To be continued.)

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No show

This one just tickles me pink: the electron has mass but has no dimensions.

A model of an atom, showing an electron.

However, this is not what an atom really

looks like, nor is it what an electron looks

like. But it is colorful.

Simply put, electrons do exist. You could, in theory, weigh one, but you couldn’t measure it’s width—or it’s height or depth, for that matter. No skin, no bones, no structure. It’s what’s referred to as a point particle, meaning that it does not have spatial extension, it does not take up (occupy) any space.

See, it's believed that electrons, one of the essential parts of an atom, are an elementary particle. That is, they are as small as the components of matter get. Since they have no component parts that are smaller than themselves—they have no components at all!

As far as I’m concerned, that there is just plenty enough to boggle the mind for one day.

But there’s more.

If you're among my two avid readers, you might recall that electrons, which operate within the realm of quantum mechanics, spin, some one way, some another, but two can never occupy the same quantum spinning state. But think about this: they spin, despite the fact that they have no surface or structure that can actually move one way or another. You’ll remember, from our glance at quantum entanglement and the Pauli Exclusion Principle, that if one of the electrons spins one way the other has to spin opposite. Just think about it: the little devils spin—even though they've got nothin’ to spin with!

How can you not love particle physics?

This is starting to remind me of that ride at Disney, you know, the Haunted Mansion? Spectral dancers spinning but nobody there. Ghostly heads riding along with you.

I’m thinking that maybe quantum physics depends a lot more on a vivid imagination than it does on math skills.

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PI versus TAU

In 1854 Henry David Thoreau published his best known work, Walden. It’s an account of two years of his life spent in a hut near Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts. Thoreau, a proficient amateur naturalist, spent much of his time observing, and writing about, the daily minutia of the rural woodland and lakeshore where he was living.

Among his writings is the description of a titanic battle in microcosm, an account of a mortal conflict between two species of ants that he watched close up, on his very doorstep. He reports on the fighting much like a war correspondent, describing the fury and devastation with which the tiny combatants attacked one another and the death and destruction that ensued. And all of it hidden among the weedy stems and leafy grasses around his hut.

One notion that he imparts from that experience was that such hidden conflicts are always around us, but only the careful observer will discover them.

I have discovered such a conflict.

Camouflaged by symbols and formulae, obscured by operands and integers, disguised in chalk dust and flat-screen graphics, a gruesome battle is being engaged in the arcane world of mathematics.

On one side are the Pi (π) loyalists, a group dedicated to the preservation of 3.14159… as the primary definition of the linear and spatial relationships in circles. In opposition are the Tau (τ) revolutionaries, equally motivated number fanatics who insist that 6.28318… is the complex integer that would better serve geometricians, trigonometricians and all-round mathematicians throughout the known universe.

I was raised in the Pi camp. The abridged version of Pi, 3.1416, was a mantra taught early and repeated often in the pre-PC primary, secondary and advanced educational forums through which I progressed. There were no circles without Pi. With due reverence I learned that Pi times the diameter (π x d = c) equals the circumference. I was drilled in reciting that Pi times the radius squared (π x r² = A) equals a circle’s near-mystical Area. Even now, “Pi-r-squared” floats unbidden into my mind whenever I encounter circles or circular objects. It resonates in my near-sub-conscious along with other embedded phrases, like “please-and-thank-you” and “green-eggs-and-ham.”

But in the late 19^th century, some French (wouldn’t you know) mathematician suggested that Tau, which is twice Pi (as the brighter among you may have noticed) is actually the more utilitarian number. As if any numbers that have been calculated out more than a hundred million decimal places—and still counting—could be considered utilitarian. That’s why we round off these numbers: because they appear to be infinitely complex and are, technically, irrational numbers. Really, how handy is that?

Still, it is much more common, among the professional mathematicians, even the mercenaries, to use twice the radius rather than the diameter in doing calculations. Diameter is out, radius is in.

Okay, I admit the distinction escapes me, but for some reason it’s significantly more convenient for advanced mathematics, perhaps comparable to flush toilets versus outhouses. Or maybe not. Chopsticks versus forks? Cans versus long necks? Whatever.

The Tauists (pronounced TOW-ists, and not to be confused with philosophical Tauists, pronounced DOW-ists) insist that Pi is imprecise, since it is used to describe other math properties besides circular ones. Piists (pronounced…oh, never mind) rightly point out that Tau is used in physics to describe certain elementary sub-atomic particles of the lepton family, having a mass about 3,490 times that of the electron, and a mean lifetime of 3×10-13 seconds. (A word to the wise: this may be on Friday's quiz.)

Adding to the fog of war is the trend in current mathematics to parse circles not in portions of their circumference, but in portions based on angular sections of the entire circle, called radial arcs, which apparently confuses some students. I call it collateral damage.

It may not seem important, but consider what is at stake: wedding rings and golf cart tires, trash can lids and shirt neck sizing, clothes dryers and piston rings, geo-stationary TV satellites and icing-filled chocolate cookies, shower drain strainers and wristwatch gears, particle accelerating supercolliders and toddlers teething rings, inner tubes and sliced baloney. Circles reach into every part of our lives—and a battle of covert forces will determine who controls them all.

Eh.

It’s still just arithmetic to me. But, as Thoreau said, “…he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds.” No problemo—my computer came with a great calculator.

Nevertheless, I hope you celebrated, as I did, this past Monday, March 14^th, marking the 22^nd annual Pi Day (3/14, get it?). Here at the RV park the festivities were somewhat subdued. This was just as well. Because, for me, the whole idea of Pi is a personal experience. I opted to observe the Pi holiday in my usual quiet fashion—with a generous radial arc of a bakery-fresh deep-dish pecan beauty that I nuked to medium hot perfection and then topped with a big scoop of some French (wouldn’t you know) vanilla ice cream.

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Grandson's birthday!

Gravity. No, seriously.

Ask yourself this important question:

Where would we be without gravity?

Think about it. Do you realize how difficult it is to clean up spilled beer uh, milk if there is no gravity? Or to sit in a recliner? Or make a left-hand turn at a busy intersection? Or flush a toilet? Or eat pistachios? Or just hang out?

See what I mean? There is—literally—no telling where we’d be without gravity. Because gravity is what keeps us and everything else pinned to the earth, and that everything else includes items like the water we drink and the air we breathe and the burger on the grill.

Gravity is the earth-bound name for a basic natural force called gravitation, the attraction between bodies of mass. The more mass, the more gravitation. Planets, stars, moons, all exert gravitation. So does a baseball, though not enough to have an effect. So do you and me, but again, not so’s you’d notice.

The gravitational force of the moon, and the sun, are what cause the tides in our seas and oceans. Their gravity tugs at our whole planet, but it is the liquid sea that responds in the most obvious fashion.

Gravity is one of the four natural forces that control our physical universe. Besides gravitation, the others are the electromagnetic force, the strong force and the weak force.

Still, despite the best minds being applied to it—and I mean folks like Aristotle, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein—we’re still not sure exactly what causes gravitation. Einstein’s theory of general relativity suggests that gravitation is a warping of spacetime, an actual inward flux of the fabric of the universe caused by the mass of objects. The moon, therefore, orbits the earth because it is caught in this four-dimensional gravitational dimple, like a marble spiraling around the inside of a serving bowl with the earth at the center.

A simplified diagram of the spacetime warp caused by gravitation.

In real terms, spacetime is drawn in from all directions. In the case

of our moon, its velocity prevents it from falling to earth; actually,

the moon is very gradually moving away from earth.
CLICK THE IMAGE FOR ANIMATION (Image NASA)

Oh-oh. This reminds me of a joke. Hey, it’s a gravity joke, okay?

A tourist, wandering around the charter boat docks in Key West, sees the captain of a dive boat cleaning scuba gear and he shouts out, “Hey, Captain, why is it that divers always fall backward off a boat?”

At which the captain snarls, “’Cause if they fell forward, they’d still be in the blasted boat!”

There’s a ton of minutiae about gravity, lots of esoterica and other tidbits, but I think there is one significant concept that is, perhaps, most important to keep in mind. It seems that gravitation is the main problem between classical physics and quantum physics. Gravitation doesn’t have much of an effect on the sub-atomic particles that are the basic bits and pieces of all matter. That is why the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force were proposed, as a way of explaining the structure and behavior of atomic particles.

I still think they could have come up with better names for them.

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Answer to last week's quiz, what is the sun's stellar name? Sol

Through a hole darkly

Ready for this? Black holes. I’ve got some nifty Gif images. And this stuff is easier to understand than the last couple topics (at least for me).

Fig. 1 A simulated black hole over a starry
background. Background stars behind and
near the line-of-sight become a blended
ring caused by gravitational lensing.
(Courtesy NASA)

Believe it or don’t, the first recorded mention of even the possibility of a black hole-like body dates all the way back to 1783. English geologist John Michell described the light-absorbing properties such a body might possess. Keep in mind that this was only 50-some years after Isaac Newton died, and he was the one who first described gravity. Surprised the heck out of me. Here I’d been thinking it dated back only to the 1979 Walt Disney movie.

French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace suggested similar star-body properties in 1796, but the notion was then shelved through much of the 1800s.

It wasn’t until shortly after Albert Einstein proposed his theory of general relativity in 1915, suggesting the physics for such an occurrence, that the concept was revived. German physicist Karl Schwarzschild and Dutch physicist Johannes Droste, working independently, developed specific formulas that would begin to define the nature of the body which could overcome the speed of light by an extraordinarily intense gravity field.

Fig. 2  Simplified model of a black hole,
cut away to show the event horizon (A)
and the singularity (B). Outside of the
event horizon light (red arrows) can
move in any direction, but within the
event horizon, the singularity's gravity
pulls light, and everything else, inward.

Because such a body, conceptualized as a single point, has the unusual effect of altering normal light and gravitational rules, it is called a singularity, in other words, a single point unlike anything else. In fact, things become so singular that time actually may stop in a black hole. The term singularity also is used because, with neither light nor anything else able to escape, nothing can be known about these bodies through direct observation.

Another significant term defining the anatomy of a black hole is event horizon. This describes the edge or surface of the spherical area surrounding the singularity at which limit gravity overcomes the speed of light; the singularity itself is the "core" of a black hole while the event horizon is its outermost "skin." Think of it like the outer edge of the atmosphere around the earth. For a black hole singularity, this surface is described as an event horizon because, once you pass it, everything changes (not necessarily in a fun way).

Fig. 3  Plasma jets erupt from the super-

energized accretion disk as it meets the

event horizon. (Courtesy NASA)

As all this implies, the singularity is called a black hole because it sucks in all light that comes within its event horizon, leaving no way to directly observe it. Technically, it’s invisible, though there are a few ways to “see” one. We’ll get to that later.

What causes a black hole?

In a nutshell, a whole lot of particulate matter squeezed down into a very, very, very small space. The most common are probably collapsed stars, though theoretical physicists suggest several sources. Again, more on that after a bit.

If you took our sun (Hey, who can tell me our sun’s stellar name? Answer next week.), if you take our sun (about 1.4 million miles across) and crush it down until it could fit into the Grand Canyon (which is 1 mile deep), the sun would become a black hole (the Grand Black Hole?). All of the matter in the sun would be packed together so densely that it would have a gravitational field that even light couldn’t escape. And since nothing can travel faster than light, I’d stay away from the Grand Black Hole, if I were you.

In reality, though, our sun does not contain enough mass to develop the force of the collapse necessary to become a black hole. It may take a star with up to 20 times the mass of the sun to collapse into a singularity.

Fig. 4  A small star (L) has its stellar matter
drawn into the accretion disk of a nearby
black hole (R)  (Courtesy **)

Where do black holes come from?

The more popular theories suggest four types of singularities.

1. Super-massive black holes (SMBH), which occupy the center—and likely help form—most spiral galaxies like our own. An SMBH continuously draws stellar material into itself, always enlarging from the mass of the material it accumulates. The source of SMBHs is uncertain. One theory suggests they are the result of colliding masses of stars, such as head-on galaxy smash-ups (they happen). An SMBH can have as much mass as several million to several billion stars the size of our sun (our sun = 1 “solar mass”).
2. Stellar black holes are formed after an aging star uses up all of its expansive energy-producing matter—sometimes exploding in a supernova in its death throes—while all of its remaining matter collapses in on itself. Stellar black holes may contain five to twenty times the mass of our sun (5 to 20 solar masses, opinions vary) compressed into a single point (don’t try this at home).
3. A highly theoretical type (though evidence of their existence is mounting) is the intermediate mass black hole (IMBH), perhaps containing 100 to 1000 solar masses. Their existence is the hardest to explain; the jury is still out.
4. Micro or miniature black holes, possibly formed from colliding material right after the Big Bang, may be smaller than an atom but contain the same amount of mass as Mount Everest; also highly theoretical.

Fig. 5  Simulation of "Einstein Ring" gravitational lensing as a black hole

passes in front of a distant galaxy. (Courtesy **)

Here are some methods by which we can detect black holes.

Stellar black holes, SMBHs and IMBHs are surrounded by flattened accretion disks (picture track and field’s throwing discus) made up of the accumulated stars, stellar gas and dust, or other cosmic material being drawn toward the singularity at its center. This material becomes more and more compressed, and thus hotter and hotter, as it approaches the event horizon. Accretion disks are easily observable and are a primary indicator of a singularity. (Examples, Figs. 4 & 6)

As the accreted material, now energized in the extreme, approaches the event horizon, it can throw off visible plasma jets perpendicular to itself and along the line of the polar axis of the spinning singularity, another way black holes can makes themselves known. (Examples, Figs. 3 & 6)

Black holes cause gravitational lensing, a topic mentioned, in passing, in an earlier essay. This distortion of light passing near the event horizon is caused by the singularity's intense gravity. It can help in the detection of a black hole that is viewed against other cosmic background objects. (Examples, Figs. 1 & 5)

Stellar black holes may give themselves away when their gravitational allure causes a nearby star to enter an off-center orbital dance that betrays the singularity’s presence. The singularity may also be seen to draw stellar gas away from the partner star toward itself. (Example, Fig. 4)

Fig. 6  Approaching an SMBH (super-
massive black hole) of the type thought
to be at the center of  many galaxies
like our own. Note the doughnut-shaped
"torus", a bulging accumulation of
material near the center of the accretion
disk, and the plasma jets. (Courtesy NASA)

What would a visit to a black hole be like?

On the bright side, death would be instantaneous. The event horizon is not a friendly place for carbon-based life forms—or much else. Things would happen so fast that there wouldn’t be time to notice; actually, there may not be time in any form. It’s been suggested that, as your body crossed the event horizon, it would be sucked immediately toward the singularity in a long string of individual atoms, though some particles might first be thrown off at the event horizon into the hot plasma jets—to be shot a hundred light years into intergalactic space. The rest of you would be smashed into unrecognizable sub-atomic smithereens, melding none-too-gently into the ultra-solid mass of the singularity. So you probably won’t need a sweater.

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Twist tie theory

The other day I was complaining about twist ties in an e-mail to my friend, the Otter:

You know what gets my guts in an uproar? That American industry can't set a standard for which way twist ties are applied. Is that so freakin' complicated? I mean, how many years . . . ? But every darn time you get a twist-tied package, you have to figure out which way you have to twist it. We're not talkin' rocket surgery here. I know which way to twist open my prescription meds, a bottle of bleach, a jar of jelly, a radiator cap, the clean-out access on a sewer line, a darned five-gallon container of dishwasher sanitizer, but a loaf of bread—no-o-o-o-o-o! First one way, then the other. Have I cross-threaded it? Or is it twisting open? Nope, getting tighter. Okay, guess it's the other way.

Twist ties (Courtesy **)

The Otter, in his offhand way (he much prefers to discuss economic theory), responded with a series of optional solutions, none of which actually plumb the depths of this problem. Well, he hasn’t heard the last of it.

However, the issue of twist ties brought to mind a remarkable mystery (at least to me) of particle physics: string theory.

Here’s the notion of string theory as I likely misunderstand it:

Back in the day, we learned that atoms were made up of electrons, protons and neutrons and that these were the smallest particles of matter. Well—surprise, surprise—they aren’t the smallest particles. Nor are they these tiny balls of energy that were always depicted in representations of the atom.

Current theory has it that they are actually one-dimensional oscillating lines, “strings,” that are made up of a variety of even smaller particles, like bosons, fermions, gluons and other theoretical bits.

“One dimensional,” did you catch that part? I’m not quite sure how one wraps his or her mind around a concept like one dimensional; it's almost not quite there to be wrapped.

A graphic projection of String Theory?
(Courtesy **)

It gets worse. String theory doesn’t work unless there are at least seven more unobservable dimensions in addition to the four dimensions of spacetime that we’ve already discussed. That’s right, now we have a minimum of 11 dimensions (which, I…uh…I’ll explain, yeah, on the back side of this page).

Seriously, though, something tells me that there’s a bunch of really tricky mathematics behind all this.

And there’s more.

Turns out that the whole negative-positive electromagnetic charge system that was supposed to hold atoms together, as I learned in high school science, actually would cause them to fly apart. So particle physicists had to come up with something else besides electromagnetism and gravity to explain what held atoms together. To deal with the conundrum, they proposed the existence of two more forces, the strong force and the weak force. (Really? Must have been a Friday afternoon when they came up with those names.)

Have you noticed that I am totally incapable of explaining any of this stuff, but that by telling you about it, it makes me seem smart?

Just two or three more concepts, then.

Strings are generally thought to loop in on themselves, which I think is what that pinkish graphic, above, is supposed to represent. But sometimes strings may be attached to “branes,” the particle edges (membranes) of these other seven dimensions, and then they do not loop, just oscillate, like a worm on a fishhook.

Much as it might seem unlikely, due to the apparent opposite ends of the cosmic scale that they occupy, string theory is important to understanding the activity of black holes, too (oh yeah, black holes are not science fiction, fellow voyagers).

Named for 19th century German mathemati-

cian August Mobius, one of its discoverers,

the Mobius strip has only one side. You can

construct one with a long strip of paper. Put

a half twist in the strip and fasten the ends

together in a loop; paper glue or cement

works best for purposes. Now you can mark

a line along the entire surface length of the

strip, meeting your starting point, without

lifting your pencil from the paper. This has
nothing at all to do with particle physics; it's
just for fun! (Image courtesy **)

String theory has given rise to superstring theory, which is not, as I first thought, about very long strings. Rather, it is a theoretical model attempting to generate a formula that can tie together general relativity and quantum mechanics into a unified theory, also known as the theory of everything (I kid you not!).

Enough! I’m still stuck on the one-dimensional object. I mean, even a Mobius strip has edges.

Anyway, do you see why I was reminded by twist ties?

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Physics and Magic 001: A Quantum Primer

Today, I’m going to tell you everything I know about quantum mechanics. It won’t take long.

For the lay person, like myself, quantum mechanics is best explained by using analogies, metaphors and similes, because the science part of it is really, really complicated; even the simple explanations come nowhere near being simple. So this approach to quantum mechanics will be a little like knowing that snow is white because it is cold.

Much of the foundation of quantum theory was laid down by a number of really smart theorists in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Among them was Max Planck, a German physicist who was studying thermal radiation.

There was an unexplained variable in such radiation for which Dr. Planck proposed a mathematical solution. His formula depended on a certain assumption of fixed energy productions that he said were “quantized.” He was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work. So were several other physicists who developed the field in the early years of the last century.

Where it gets tricky is that all of these scientists were working on notions about things they couldn’t even see yet: the atom and its parts. Look at it this way:

Imagine you’ve never seen nor heard of the famous coiled-wire toy, the Slinky™. (Can you hear the ad jingle, still resonating in you memory? “It’s Slinky™, it’s Slinky™, oh what a wonderful toy….”) Anyway, imagine you’ve never seen or heard of it. Now imagine you are sitting in a chair, blindfolded, in the middle of a room with a stairway nearby. Someone starts a Slinky™ into its only entertaining trick, coil-hopping down the stairs (in contrast to its single un-entertaining trick, getting tangled into a ball of useless bailing wire).

Okay. You can hear a staccato ringing whine, a regular series of thumps, and you can tell the sound is coming from the direction of the stairs, but you are blindfolded, so you can’t see anything or know exactly where the sound is coming from.

Now, imagine having to describe what is causing the noise, what is happening to cause it, and what you might do to keep the whole thing from entering an “un-entertaining” state. Please show the calculations you use to reach your answer. (Use the back of the page as necessary.)

That’s sort of what the early years of quantum theory development were like. At least in my understanding.

So why do we need quantum theory? Is it just to supply plot devices for Star Trek?

Not exactly. Here’s the central difficulty:

Classical physics, that is, the physics we are all unconsciously familiar with, that explains everything from JELL-O™ to the phases of the moon, has significant shortcomings when it comes to explaining some things on the sub-atomic level. So, when we get right down to electrons and neutrons and protons—and all their more recently discovered siblings and cousins—classical physics falls flat on its face.

For instance, classical physics assumes that you can precisely measure both the momentum and the position of the Slinky™ as it clang-clumps down the stairs. Quantum physics knows that you can’t. (Though, for purposes, this doesn’t really become significant until you’re dealing with individual atoms.) This very, very loosely describes what is known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, first proposed by Werner Heisenberg, another German theoretical physicist, from his work in the mid- to late 1920s; Heisenberg also received a Nobel Prize. His uncertainty principle states that, by measuring one factor, let’s say momentum, you can only estimate the other factor, position.

Another remarkable discovery of quantum physics is that all matter, including you, me and the sun, exhibit the qualities of both particles (Duh!) and waves (Huh?).

One of the fun controversies (well, I think it’s fun) of quantum theory is called entanglement. It is derived from the work of Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli (yup, Nobel Prize) which he described in 1925 and it soon became known as the Pauli Exclusion Principle. It says that two electrons in one system cannot be in the same quantum state; if one electron assumes one state, the other electron automatically assumes the other.

As a consequence, further development of the Pauli Exclusion Principle posited the notion of quantum entanglement. Where the fun comes in is that entanglement suggests that this automatic change will take place no matter how far apart the two electrons are. I mean, they could be really, really far apart.

Here’s an example:

You and your twin both need new shoes. However, the shoes you want are only available in Australia and the shoes your twin wants are only sold in Iceland. Before you leave, though, your father gives you each a smallish gift-wrapped box, a present to entertain you while you’re in your respective hotel rooms in Sidney and Reykjavik.

Father tells you that the gift is a Slinky™, one of your favorite toys. (This will replace your last one, which ended up as a hopeless snarl of colorful wire.) He says that the store only had two left, a red one and a blue one, but he’s not sure which is which, since the gift-wrapping was done by the clerk in the store’s back room. Because of TSA regulations, the gifts will have to be packed in your checked luggage so you won’t be able to open them until you reach your hotels.

What neither you, your twin nor your father knows is that the Slinky™ in each box has no color, but it can only become either red or blue, and one must assume each color because that’s what the store’s inventory stated.

Your flight to Australia is direct, but your twin must make connections in Atlanta. Consequently, you reach your hotel room in Sidney while your twin is still riding in a cab from the Reykjavik airport.

As you begin to tear the decorated paper from the box, you cry excitedly, “I hope it’s the blue one.” At which point yours becomes blue and your twin’s Slinky™, on the opposite side of the earth, instantly becomes red. (Hmm? Entanglement. Maybe Slinky™ wasn’t the best example.)

However, Albert Einstein (Nobel Prize) who had made his own contributions to the need for quantum mechanics, had trouble swallowing this idea whole; he referred to it as “spooky action at a distance.” But, remember, he’s been wrong before.

There might be one or two other things we could cover, but I think this is more than enough for now. Certainly it goes way beyond my area of competence. Maybe you should just read the Wikipedia entry on quantum mechanics—like I did. Then maybe you could explain it to me.

—  -  —  -  —  -  —  From the news  —  -  —  -  —  -  — 

Ultrafast Quantum Computer Closer: Ten Billion Bits of Entanglement Achieved in Silicon

ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2011) — Scientists from Oxford University have made a significant step towards an ultrafast quantum computer by successfully generating 10 billion bits of quantum entanglement in silicon for the first time -- entanglement is the key ingredient that promises to make quantum computers far more powerful than conventional computing devices. (Link to article)

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