Archives for the 'Physics' Category
Raw Thoughts on Mass (updated)
Published on 21 Dec 2007 at 2:18 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under Philosophy, Physics, Probability, Research.
What good is a cortex if it doesn’t dream a little?
I have been thinking about Ariel Caticha and Carlo Cafaro’s derivation of Newton’s Second Law from probability theory (http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.1071). In this derivation, they assume three things:
There exist basic entities called particles
There is an intrinsic uncertainty about a particle’s position
There is change… not time necessarily, but change.
The first thing I […]
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An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
Published on 1 Dec 2007 at 4:15 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under Physics, Research.
Garrett Lisi recently posted a paper to the arxiv (arXiv:0711.0770v1 [hep-th]) titled “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything”. In it he proposes that the group E8 unifies all of the fields of the Standard Model with Gravity and predicts new particles.
In addition to the paper, here is an excellent blog that discusses the theory, its […]
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Nature Abhors a Gradient
Published on 27 Nov 2007 at 3:54 am.
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Filed under Biology, Climate, Energy, Evolution, Philosophy, Physics, Social Justice.
I recall back to my first days in physics class where I read the quotation “Nature abhors a vacuum”. The phrase was accompanied by an image of two teams of horses trying to pull two hollow hemispheres apart after the air was pumped out from inside.
These were called Magdeburg hemispheres and the experiment was performed by […]
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Information Physics
Published on 11 Oct 2007 at 12:01 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under Information, Physics, Probability, Research.
Three of us here at the University at Albany are becoming collectively known as the Albany Group: Ariel Caticha, Carlos Rodriguez and myself. We three are exploring some relatively radical ideas about information, probability, geometry and physics, and often we find our ideas converging in unexpected ways.
One convergence that I am particularly interested in is […]
Water Balloons!
Published on 16 Sep 2007 at 8:52 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under Fun, Photography, Physics, Space.
A few days ago, my brother sent me an email with a slow-motion movie of a water balloon being popped in zero gravity. This led me to searching for all sorts of slow-motion water balloon movies, which I have now collected here.
I hope you enjoy them…
0. Entire Sets of Movies can be found at http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/balloon/blob.htm
1. […]
