The Last Post: Not!

Hello, all. I am sorry to tell you that there are no more independent reading posts for the year, since the school year is coming to a close. However, I have a proposition. If anyone is interested, I could continue with the blog. It would no longer be an independent reading blog, just a discussion blog. I could try to get as many people involved as possible, and it could actually be serious discussion, but I need to have people interested. Since the blog is not independent reading, we could discuss any topic for as long as we want with no time limits, and I would not necessarily have to pick all of the topics. If you are interested, please say so by commenting with your thoughts. If you are interested and know anybody else who might be interested, please spread the word. If I do not get enough interest, then this will indeed be the last post.

The Universe in a Nutshell 4

The human race has always wanted to predict the future. That's why fortune cookies are so popular. Really, they tell you nothing that you can prove wrong. Messages on them can almost always relate to you in some way, shape, or form. Astrology is another attempt to predict the future. By looking at the stars, astrologers think they can predict the future. They could be right, but not in the way that they would expect. Astrologers could be beat by astrophysicists, such as Dr. Stephen Hawking. Scientists have wondered if there is determinism in our universe, where by knowing the location and speed of every particle in the universe, you could predict the future. Allow me to explain the possibility.

If I kick a soccer ball at a certain angle at a certain speed, it can be predicted how far the ball will go. If we could calculate the strength of every force in the universe, and know the location and velocity of every particle in the universe, could we predict the future? One problem is that we have not been able to predict what decisions a life form will make. The brain of an animal is very complex and hard to understand completely. Each life form was raised to have a different thought process due to its surroundings. How could anybody predict what every life form is going to do?

It is a very difficult idea. I am quite positive that humans will never be able to predict the future of every particle. The question is: could it be possible? Many astrophysicists say no. The biggest point against determinism is the uncertainty principle. According to this principle, the easier it is to locate the position of a particle, the harder it is to find its velocity. This is because particles have wavelengths, which is how speed and position are found. Wavelengths vary, and depending on the wavelength, it may be easier to predict speed or position, but we cannot find both.

If the uncertainty principle holds true, then determinism is impossible. Think about this, though. Say determinism is possible. Would you want to be able to predict everything? I think that a little uncertainty in the world is perfectly OK. I would find it very boring if we could predict everything that would happen. There could be no surprise parties! You would always know where the Easter eggs were hidden, what you are going to get for Christmas, and who is going to win the World Cup. I think that would be very boring.

Overall, I am very glad that we cannot predict everything that is going to happen in the future. I think that life on Earth could be very dull, and would really defeat the purpose of living. You would always know what the right choices to make were, because you could predict what the consequences would be. If we always knew what would happen, why exist at all?

The Universe in a Nutshell 3.14159265358979323846264338327950...

Black holes are very mysterious things that we have pondered for many years. Why do black holes exist? Are there wormholes within black holes? What role do black holes play in the universe? All of these questions may or may not have answers, but nonetheless I will cover these topics with the help of Dr. Hawking and his book, The Universe in a Nutshell.

First of all, how come black holes exist? The most accepted theory is that a black hole occurs when a star of a very large size collapses (we consider some stars small even though most of these stars are much larger than our Earth.). A star constantly bonds atoms together in a process called fusion, which creates heat and light. Eventually, the star will no longer have enough energy to fuse any more atoms, so the star collapses. Because fusion creates heavier elements, the density of the star has increased. The star proceeds to collapse in on itself because of its own gravity. The gravity compacts the star into a very dense and heavy mass. This mass creates a gravity that is so powerful, that not even light can escape it! That is why a black hole is seen as black.

The black hole continues to pull in more and more mass, forever increasing its gravity. As the gravity increases, the black hole compacts more and more, making it denser and smaller. At what point does this process end? If it continues to get smaller, does it eventually disappear? I think that this can't be possible. According to the law of conservation of matter, matter cannot be created or destroyed. So, where does all that mass go?

I think that it only ends when the universe does. In other words, the black hole will get more and more dense forever finally the universe ends. Think for a moment. If the gravity is continually increasing, then eventually won't everything be sucked into the black hole? It is very possible that this is the case, that the gravity will become so great, that black holes will suck the universe back in on itself. If that happens, then all existence would be inside the center of a black hole. This would create such high temperatures that atoms would have all become a soup of quarks and gluons, which is what the beginning of the universe was like!

This leads to many more ideas. Perhaps our universe has had multiple existences. Each time, the universe was sucked back into its previous state until something set it off again. What sets off the universe we do not know, and perhaps we never will. However, this still leads to more questions. Are we the first big bang, the twentieth, the millionth? Why did the first one start? Where did our universe come from? Did it one day just appear? I guess there are still so many questions that we simply can't answer.

How about this one? What was the state of our universe at the beginning. Did it have time? According to the general theory of relativity, gravity slows down time! In my opinion, it makes sense for the beginning of the universe to have a slower time. If the universe was having a very slow time, then millions of years to us would be a few seconds to them. In other words, every few seconds in this miniature universe, large universes are being born and destroyed. This works in that once the universe ends, it will once again begin in a few seconds. That means if there is some sort of reaction that takes a long time to work, it really will not take that long in the universe.

I know that it sounds very confusing, but it means that almost as soon as the universe crunches into the infinitely small particle during an event known as the big crunch, it will expand once again. There is a counterpoint to this theory. If the gravity is so great, how can the universe possibly expand? It would just be crunched into the infinitely small universe forever! I am not sure how to answer that. I have just recently made all of these connections (five minutes ago...).

If this is indeed what black holes will do, then they play a much bigger role in the universe than we have ever thought possible. Dr. Hawking is an optimist, and thinks the universe will expand forever. I can't say that I totally agree with him. These connections I have made are based on facts, but involve a lot of thought as well, and I hope whoever may read this will take a little time to think about if this indeed is how our universe ends: by black hole?

Think about this. There is a good chance that there is a super-massive black hole in the middle of our galaxy, the Milky Way. There may be black holes at the center of every galaxy. Eventually, the black hole may swallow the entire galaxy, picking up mass and gravity! Then, black holes may start to merge to form even larger black holes. Then the universe would enter a phase of only black holes merging until they make the ultimate black hole. This ultimate black hole will suck in the rest of the universe until it compacts into something very much like the beginning of our universe!

Perhaps this is the correct theory. It may also be totally wrong. Either way, it is my current theory of the end of our universe: the ultimate black hole.

The Universe in a Nutshell 2

Stephen Hawking is at it again! Streaming astrophysical nonsense into the minds of everyday human beings! This time, the topic is: are we alone? There are many different reasons why we may not be the only life that exists in the universe. Or is the problem that we believe there is only one universe? Are there other universes out there? Dr. Hawking puts forth many ideas in his book The Universe in a Nutshell.

Are there possibly aliens in our universe? When you think about how vast the universe is, the possibilities are endless! We have not seen the edge of our universe, so we have no idea where the universe ends! Not only that, but the universe is always expanding! Therefore, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. There are billions of stars, and any of them could have planets around them. Even though the universe is so large, there are many details that have to be in effect to support life.

The best way to think about it is by looking at what life on Earth needs to survive. Life requires liquid water to survive, at least on our planet. That in itself is hard to find on any other planet. Earth has liquid water on the surface because it is not too close to sun, and not too far away. It is in a safe zone, so to speak. Another thing that life requires is some sort of atmosphere to protect it. Our Earth has an atmosphere that includes many things that life needs. Oxygen is important to life on Earth. Without our atmosphere, we would have no oxygen, so we would die!

Another thing the atmosphere does is acts as a filter. Most life on Earth requires the Sun's light and heat to survive, but there is a limit. Too much radiation can kill life. That is why the ozone layer is so important. If too much heat reaches the surface of the Earth, the entire Earth would be a vast desert, with no oceans at all. That would not be good for life, now would it? Everything that makes up our Earth came from the supernova of a star. It is not very likely that another planet will be produced with the right combination of elements to make up an atmosphere like ours.

Another factor that we do not often think about is the Earth's magnetic field. The core of our Earth is divided into two parts: a liquid and a solid core. The liquid core flows around the solid core to produce the magnetic field. The significance of the magnetic field is that it protects the earth from all sorts of space junk and debris. The chances that another planet will have such an effective magnetic field is very slim.

When you consider all of the requirements, life somewhere else seems very unlikely. However, there may be ways around many of these requirements. Even on Earth, there are chemo-synthetic life forms that live in the deep ocean. These microorganisms do not need light to live, just certain chemicals from the rock. Perhaps there are chemo-synthetic aliens somewhere in the universe. Or maybe there is life that does not need water somewhere else.

What if we expand the possibilities a little bit. What if there are more "universes" than just ours. What if beyond our universe was a vast sea of universes, all with different laws of physics? Although there is no real way to know for sure, I don't think there are any more universes than our own. If there were other universes, it might have crashed into ours by now. I think that ours is alone, but that's my opinion. Dr. Hawking believes there are others, connected to ours by wormholes.

I do not think there are other universes, but I do think there could be other life. However, because of the probability of having life on a planet is so slim, the life is probably somewhere very far away. Most likely, we will not meet other life forms because of how far away they would probably be. I for many reasons hope we don't meet other life forms.

If we meet aliens, they will probably be more advanced than we are. They would have to come from such a long distance that they would need a great amount of technology to get here. They would likely take over the human race, and that would be no good! Dr. Hawking agrees in that regard. Also, if the aliens are weaker than us, we will probably eliminate them, getting rid of more life forms, rather than trying to be diplomatic with them for our benefit.

All in all, it is very unlikely that we will meet any other life forms. I think that it is quite possible for there to be other life out there, but not in other universes, just in ours. I do not want humans to come in contact with other forms of life because it would probably result in our destruction. That's my view of aliens in a nutshell.

The Universe in a Nutshell 1

Thirteen years had passed since Stephen Hawking first published A Brief History of Time. When you think about it, a great many things happen in thirteen years! In one second, trillions of events are occurring across the globe, and that's just Earth! We humans only consider major events in common everyday life, but if you stop to think, one second means a lot more than you may think! If we erase one second from the history of the universe, so many things would be changed! If one second means that much, thirteen years is huge! The number of events that occur in thirteen years is unimaginable! The point is that a lot of ideas and concepts were discovered in terms of astrophysics, so Stephen Hawking decided to publish a new book called The Universe in a Nutshell that takes many of the concepts from A Brief History of Time and expands on them. However, many new concepts are also introduced. One concept is, what is the limit of human technology, if any limit at all? Consider the following.

Ever since the beginning of the universe, exponential growth has occurred among everything that exists. After the big bang, it would take billions of years for heavy elements such as carbon and oxygen to first form! Then over millions of years the planets, stars, and galaxies would form. Think about the history of Earth. It took three eons for the Earth to be suitable for life. We are currently in the fourth eon, called the Phanerozoic Eon. The Phanerozoic Eon is divided up into three eras. We are in the third era, called the Cenozoic Era. Each of the three eras has been shorter than the previous era. The Paleozoic Era was about 300 million years long. The Mesozoic Era lasted 185 million years. We are now in the Cenozoic Era, which has so far lasted 65 million years, believe it or not! As you should be able to see by now, it takes less and less time for changes to occur. Below is a sample Geologic Time Scale to help you better understand the exponential change of the Earth over time.
Now consider the exponential growth of the human race in this chart below.
The world population has been growing faster and faster! The big question is, does it ever stop? Will the human race ever come to an end? Or will technology continue to advance forever?

It is most likely that humans will eventually die out, but when? There are two definite boundaries to the human race. Boundary number one is the edge of the universe. There has to be a point in which humans can no longer expand. In a four dimensional universe, there must be limits! It is somewhat like a massive box. Eventually, unless the box can be broken, there will be no more room to expand once the box is filled. However, the universe is a little bit larger than the box that your pop tarts come from. In fact, the universe is more like a balloon, because it is expanding. So, one of two scenarios could take place. One, the universe could expand forever, allowing the exponential growth of the human race to be unlimited and continue on, never overtaking the size of the universe. Two, the universe could stop expanding at one point and become static, allowing humans to catch up to its size. Three, the universe could not only stop growing but start contracting, bringing absolute destruction of mankind, for I don't think all of those humans will fit in a microscopic area and survive!

I believe that it really does not matter which of the three possibilities you think will occur. Being the pessimist that I am, I think that humans will bring extermination upon themselves, or they will be destroyed in some other way. Look at the history of the Earth as an example. Over the process of evolution, many species have died out over the course of time! If that did not occur, the dinosaurs would still be around! Notice that species evolve and change over time or in some cases are completely eliminated from existence. There are three possible ways the human race could end up over time. One, humans will be wiped out by natural phenomena. Two, humans will be wiped out by humans. Three, humans will survive and live on until the end of time (if it ends). Also, there are two ways to view humans in their role on Earth. For one, they could be the ultimate living species, and life cannot evolve further past the human stage. The other idea is that humans will evolve into or give way to another greater, stronger, smarter specie that is superior to humanity!

Of all of the given possibilities, I think that humans are the prime race. We will bring about the end to all life on Earth forever, because we have that capability. The only way that life will continue on after us would be through alien life. Here is how I see the future unfold. We will destroy all other forms of life, leaving only humans. Humans will fight and advance in technology until eventually we will have developed such destructive weapons that not even those who have created them are safe in any way. I know that I sound like a pessimist, but I don't think the outlook on the future looks good.

Think about this possibility put forward by Dr. Hawking: genetic engineering of humans. We could someday create a super-human race that would replace ourselves. In that case, humans would somewhat evolve, but at the hands of the human race. Once again, self-extermination. We would make ourselves obsolete by creating smarter, faster, stronger super-humans! Then exponential growth would increase even more!

Another idea of Dr. Hawking's is that computers could be created with intelligence just like humans! Therefore, robots could start to build better robots, who would proceed to build better robots, until electronic intelligence overtakes human intelligence! With all of these possibilities, it is hard to see a limit! I think there is a limit, though. Nothing is truly infinite. There is a finite quantity of everything in some way in my opinion. Therefore, I believe that humans will exterminate themselves, and either super-humans or super computers will take over, but they will eventually destroy themselves too, if they are anything like humans. But who are we to judge that?

A Brief History of Time 3

Well, here it goes. Time travel. Time travel is probably the most disputed and most popular topic about the laws of our universe and the effects of time. People have long wondered if you could go back in time and change things that you did wrong. People have also wanted to go into the future to see what's in store for the rest of their lives. In my opinion, time travel is physically impossible, at least for living creatures! However, many attempts have been made at creating a possibility to travel time.

One of the theories among common people is that traveling faster than the speed of light will allow you to go back in time. I believe that not only is it physically impossible for anything to travel faster than the speed of light, but I argue that even if we could, it would not be going back in time! Take a look again at Dr. Hawking's fabulous light cones diagram.
As we look at the light cone, over time, light travels farther and farther. An object slower than light can only travel inside the boundaries of the light cone. However, something faster than light can go outside the light cone. Here's the problem. Even though you are going outside the light cone, you are still going forward in time. No matter how fast you get, you cannot go so fast that you go back in time. In fact, the only way to move downwards on the time axis is to travel at a negative speed! That means you would have to travel a negative distance over time (which is impossible) or that you would have to travel a distance in negative time (which is the item being disputed). Nothing can go anywhere in a negative amount of time though.

Something that is also missing in this example is that if you were going backwards in time, what makes you think you can go forward again? So now there is this idea that you can switch between negative and positive speeds at any time, traveling negative or positive distances at will! I highly doubt this is possible, and I would like to hear someone tell me how to travel at a negative speed!

I think that theory is pretty much destroyed in my mind. However, there are many more interesting theories out there. One such theory is that of a wormhole, and wormholes are becoming a more popular theory. Wormholes connect two areas in space time in a shorter distance than three dimensions allow. Space time is said to be curved, and wormholes supposedly could connect two portions of spacetime as shown in this diagram.
The wormhole can take you to somewhere before many events have happened there! Here's the problem. A wormhole also moves you somewhere else in space. So, congratulations! You went back in time! But now you are stuck somewhere else in an earlier time period. Since light shows us what happens somewhere else, you may be going back i time, but you cannot change the past. You are actually still affecting the future of your previous location from your current location! Here's an attempt at a better explanation. Say I am on Earth right now on April 22, 2010. I am sucked through a wormhole and end up on the sun on April 14, 2010. If it takes light 8 days to get to the Earth, I am still technically only able to affect the "present" or the "future". I am not greatly familiar with wormholes, but what if this was the case? What if wormholes were still only able to take you back relatively, but not in actuality? This scenario I doubt has ever been examined. If wormholes can take you back in time, is it back far enough? Further research is required to answer that question.

Where are these wormholes? There are supposed to be microscopic wormholes that allow small particles of matter and antimatter to enter and leave our existence. This involves quantum mechanics, which is a very uncertain science. Experiments have shown particles to appear and disappear in a vacuum tube (that means no matter was inside, and no matter could get in or out through physical means!). Where do these particles come from? Scientists believe wormholes may be the answer, allowing particles to jump in and out of space and time. One key question. How come we do not do the same? Why don't wormholes appear in a person's brain and cause his memory cells to be whisked away to some other time period, resulting in the man forgetting where he left his house key? I suppose wormholes can only occur under certain conditions. One condition is thought to be in a black hole.

A black hole is a very complex system. Black holes will be covered more in depth in a later post, but for now, you only need to know the basics of a black hole. Black holes form when a star of a very large mass collapses on itself, creating a ton of gravitational force, forces so great, that even light cannot escape. This massive amount of gravity bends space time so much that it is said to create a singularity, or a point in which the laws of general relativity cannot mathematically explain the result. This is because according to relativity, the space time curvature would be infinite. Scientists believe this radical conclusion can be solved by entering wormholes. The problem with that is that the gravity would crush matter drastically, and you would have to travel faster than the speed of light to get through the wormhole.

Allow me to further explain why you cannot go faster than the speed of light. According to our current laws of physics (which I believe are very much correct) energy and mass are proportional. If you have two masses, one of 10 grams and one of 5 grams, the 10 gram mass will have more energy. Speed and mass are also related. The faster an object is traveling, the greater amount of mass an object has. Finally, speed and energy are related, because to move an object of any mass requires energy. As explained by Dr. Hawking, as an object picks up speed, it acquires more mass. As it picks up mass, the object needs more energy to increase its speed. As you get closer to the speed of light, the object needs more and more energy to speed it up because it is accumulating more and more mass. An object of any mass cannot reach the speed of light because an object would acquire an infinite amount of mass in the process, requiring an infinite amount of energy to make the object go faster. The only thing that can travel as fast as light is something with no mass, such as a particle of light (amazing!).

That, however, does provide evidence as to why wormholes only affect small particles! Because only a small particle of no mass can travel fast enough to go through a wormhole! However, this also shows that humans cannot physically travel time through a wormhole (sad face). Humans have mass, so that ends that! Also, a human would be absolutely destroyed in a black hole! The intense amount of gravity would rip a human being to shreds! Say goodbye to wormhole time travel (for humans, anyway).

A few final thoughts. If we could travel time, then how come we haven't seen any beings appear? Or, even more intriguing, are history professors of the future among us, learning what they can about us to tell their students in the future? Are they the aliens that we supposedly see? Are they what we interpret as ghosts? How come we aren't all destroyed? Most likely if we could travel time, someone would ruin it for everyone and destroy the world with nukes before humans even existed! Dr. Hawking makes a point that there could be multiple histories, and if you go back in time, you are creating another history. However, that would mean you live more than once, or if time travel occurred in the new histories, you would live infinitely many times! I find that ridiculous! Therefore, I believe time travel is impossible for certain for a human being, and even if microscopic particles could travel time, it would have very little effect on humans. That is my current stand. If you have any other time travel theories or protest my reasoning for any of the above mentioned theories, comment and I may or may not respond.

A Brief History of Time 2

Very few people know and understand space time in its entirety, but you could probably ask any common person on the street if they have heard of the equation E=Mc squared and find that they have heard of it. Many people can tell you what the equation stands for, that energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. Some people also know that this equation comes from Einstein's theory of relativity. However, few actually understand what general and special relativity entail. In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking helps us to understand what relativity is all about, and where even this well known theory has its weaknesses.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity is broken up into two parts: Special Relativity, and General Relativity. Special Relativity has to do with the light cones discussed in A Brief History Of Time 1. Those cones in special relativity are always the same anywhere in the universe in this theory. Any event can only effect other events that occur in the future light cone. So if the sun were to burn out, I will still wake up to the sunlight the next morning, and I will still go about my day as normal. That event cannot be effected by the sun, because it is too far away in space to be in the future light cone. However, eight days later, I will not wake up to the sun because that event is in the future light cone of the sun's burning out. Over time, the area in space that the light cone covers increases, and more events can be affected by the event of the sun burning out. However, Einstein did not take into account the force of gravity. When gravity is included, the theory of General Relativity is referred to.

It used to be thought that space time was smooth and continuous (space time being the four dimensional realm in which we live in). However, it has been shown by observing an eclipse that light is bent by gravity. If light is bent by gravity, then the light cones must also be bent, and so the general theory of relativity is created! If the light cones are bent, then space time supposedly must also be curved. It is said that the Earth orbits the sun elliptically because gravity causes the Earth to move along a curved space time track. Earth in space time is actually going straight, but we see it as curved. Because of this curvature, general relativity predicts that time should run slower near larger planets.

The idea that time can be slowed by the curvature of space time is a key point to general relativity, because in this theory, all things are relative to the observer. Distance, size, and even time depend on the observer's view of reality. The most intriguing relativity in my opinion is that of time, that depending on the observing, time may appear to run slower or faster. I think that the key word in this case is appear. A small insect may only live a day, but to that insect, that one day is a lifetime. Many scientists use this a reason to believe that we can go backwards in time, but I find that a relatively poor reason (haha, puns...). In a later chapter, Stephen Hawking puts forth the idea of real and imaginary time. The idea that imaginary time will continue at a steady rate while real time is curved and reversed and other interesting ideas. I think he has it backwards. The fact that all things are relative should imply that we believe in imaginary time! The real time is the one that continues at a steady rate. Let's face it, even though the small insect thinks one day is extremely long, we still see it die at our own rate. Just because the insect thinks it is a lifetime, does not mean it is right. I think that there is one absolute time that is the real time, and the way we experience this time is our imaginary time. Therefore, going back in time is not going to happen! Time marches on, and we can't change that, no matter how long our interpretation of reality thinks time is.

Next week we will discuss time travel in greater detail, and I will do my absolute best to trump any time travel theory that I can find! Send me your theories on time travel and I will do my best to provide evidence as to why they are false, or if they are possibly true, for what reasons it is possible using evidence from either A Brief History of Time or from other sources if necessary (but considering how much information is in this book, I should not need many other sources). Stephen Hawking discusses one time travel theory in great depth: wormholes. So many great time travel theories, so little time!