Bad Poetry

First came counting, then came arithmetic,
Then came geometry in the baby carriage.

and

I think that I shall never see,
A thing as lovely as Geometry.
Whether tis nobler in the mind's eye
To play with shapes and other pictures
Or reduce them to funny scribblings called
Equations, beginning with Logic which spawned
Science on the one hand
And Mathematics on the other hand
And never the twain shall meet until Newton,
THAT is the question.
Hail Euclid!

S.Colyer

P.S. Happy Mother's Day !

Mathematics and Art: Salvador Dali

Warning: the first picture of me on this blog will be forthcoming. Hide the children!

Hypercubes and multi-dimensional mathematics have always fascinated me, always will. I think it was in the 8th grade when at the local library I ran into "networks", which begins with The Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem, the solution of which after much sweating: build two more bridges. That then led me into topology, and the unification of doughnuts and coffee cups (which I'd thought trivial). Topology provides us a way to deal with multdimensionality, and from there the world is your oyster. Ted Kaluza, Oskar Klein, Superstrings Theory, AdS/CFT correspondence, and beyond.

Yes, I've read a lot of Rudy Rucker, C.F. Hinton, and Abbott's "Flatland." Those are nice places to start.

In any event, I had to run my daughter into NYC last Tuesday for an art project at "The Met", that is to say "The Metropolitan Museum of Art."

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I ran into the actual painting of Salvador Dali, whose work I've always enjoyed, notably his hyper-cubic "Crucifixion", with his wife Gala in the foreground:

Here's a fun version of the same painting:

And finally, the actual painting, with what appears to to be a friend of "The Men in Black" standing aside it:

Much Ado About Hawking

When the world's most famous Scientist speaks, people listen. Now that the furor over his remarks, that we should be quiet lest the aliens invade us has died down, I'll add my two cents.

Well first, he may be right, and if so then there's nothing we can do about it. He may be wrong too. Since we can't know one way or the other, don't worry about it. Que sera, sera.

Second, it's a bit anthropocentric. What the Spanish, Portuguese, German, and English colonists did in the Americas is a done deal. The old high-tech-rapes-low-tech stuff. Hopefully the aliens will be more like the French in the Americas, and have sex with us. ;-) Unless they're some form of land squid. Ew.

But more importantly, that was Human on Human stuff. Who are we to say that if they just plain exterminate our greedy, lying, selfish species, it won't be for the good of The Galaxy? We're not all winners, let's be honest. And good people can go bad. I'll bet they figure that one out pretty quick after a decade of observation.

In any event, I'd be more worried if aliens on say Europa, Titan, Tau Ceti II, Epsilon Eridani  IV, Procyon XII or wherever aliens dwell, were visited by the Humans of Earth. OK, at first we'd be nice because the first visitors would be Scientists who of course are wonderful people, but our businessfolk and their lawyers won't be far behind. THEN we can talk resource-stealing, as in the movie, Avatar. Except with a realistic ending.

Third, I pay little creed to Drake's equation. It goes so non-linear so fast any result is pretty moot, IMO. What we need is more data to firm up some of those variables, and given Astronomy, we're getting there.

Fourth, we're going pretty quiet as it is, as we switch from radio to cable and low-earth orbit communication. Looking for us in the radio spectrum, they'll see us "go quiet." They may know why. Or they may not and figured we just exterminated ourselves. Which we still might.

Have a nice day. :-)

Actually, I'm glad Hawking brought attention to himself again. His personal story of courage is quite inspirational, and hopefully people will remember his previous and more important remark regarding getting the heck off this planet while the getting is good. Having all our eggs in the one basket that is our 8000-mile ball of rock is not good, aliens or no aliens.

The Third Law of Thermodynamics and The Speed of Light Analogy

There has been a trend in 2010 thanks to Erik Verlinde toward Thermodynamics, the Engineering/Physics undergraduate and 19th Century specialty, in Physics. In order to get up to speed I am boning up on what I learned as an undergraduate Engineer on the topic.

One grand introduction, short, sweet, and concise, can be found in the Micropedia section of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, a reference source I still prefer to Wikipedia in many ways. It also has a long Macropedia section devoted to Thermo. For the greatest detail on things Physics and especially Mathematics, I do find Wikipedia to be outstanding however.

The Third Law of Thermodynamics

In any event, I like the way the 3rd law is defined in E.B., thus:

"The concept of temperature enters into thermodynamics as a precise mathematical quantity that relates heat and work to entropy. The interplay of these three quantities is further constrained by the third law of thermodynamics, which deals with the absolute zero of temperature and its theoretical unattainability. Absolute zero (approximately -273 degrees Centigrade) would correspond to a condition in which a system had achieved its lowest energy state. The third law states that, as this minimum temperature is approached, the further extraction of energy becomes more and more difficult."

Interesting. I knew that, but not in that well-put way. I thought of Ab Zero's attainment as simply being impossible.

So that made me think of something else:

The Speed of Light

The speed of light is described as being our Universe's upper speed limit, in a vacuum. True vacuum doesn't really exist, but in any event, trying to move a mass closer and closer to the speed of light requires an ever-increasing amount of energy, according to the special theory of relativity.

Is it just me, or could there be a connection?

Limits. The Universe has limits. Just like lives.

Carina Nebula! Hubble Hits a Home Run - Happy 20th Hubble !

This is simply the best image Hubble has ever taken IMO, which is impressive given the competition. My favorite before this was one of the first, a close-up of The Eagle Nebula, a one light year tall region of star-forming, seen face on. That was amazing because for the first time we saw the three-dimensionality of these clouds. Very Inspiring.

The Carina Nebula, below, seems similar, but in this case it's from the perspective of being near the bottom of the cloud, looking up. Even more dimensionality! The Carina Nebula is 7500 light years away, and that cloud is 3 light years tall.

Well done, Hubble Scientists! Happy 20th.