BY ALL THE SAINTS! GET SOME PERSPECTIVE!
so i was sitting at work yesterday, working on my Dr. Who scarf, and i was watching a documentary about Paralell Universes.
the documentary was interviewing different physicists who were talking about how they had struggled and argued and fought over the theory that could reconcile the differences between Newtonian Quantum physics and Einstein's General Relativity (because Quantum works really well on the atomic level and on things that are small but breaks down when you get larger than, say, a truck, whereas General Relativity works amazingly well with planets and comets and black holes but doesn't work for shit when you get close enough to the objects to start asking what they're made of) so they come up with String theory, which says that matter is not made up of particles, but that it is made up of strings of energy that vibrate and through their vibration they create matter and give it form.
string theory works really well on the atomic and the macro level but it still has some holes because everyone was trying to work out the theory and make it work and it turned out that there were, in fact, FIVE different string theories, all of which worked out really really well... unless you compared them to one another. it all came down to how many dimensions you think there are.
Newtonian physicists say that there are 3 (length, width, depth). Einstein said that there were four (length, width, depth, and time, since he theorized that space and time were one large "fabric" which could be altered at once, hence the relative nature of time, light, gravity and so on when you get near large objects like planets). String theorists were arguing over how many dimensions and finally settled on 10. then a new theory came along (Super Gravity) who said no, there are actually 11. this sounds stupid, but when you plug 11 dimensions into string theory it works. all five theories are unified and it flows harmoniously and they found that the strings that give string theory its name are actually woven together. a membrane. a refinement, on a sub atomic level, of Einstein's space/time theory. and there are lots of these membranes all vibrating and waving and interacting with one another. and the energy produced by these waves could start acting with or against one another (like waves in a bathtub) and could, conceivably, cause enough of a buildup of energy that they could have caused the big bang!
the resulting energy displacement from that would cause the membranes to ripple and flow, causing heavier objects to coalesce in the troughs and flow together forming planets, while the lighter elements would ride the waves further out and could, conceivably, keep going. with one theory they solved the differences between two warring theories, found the singularity for the big bang, discovered why some planets are made of one thing and others not, found an explanation for the expansion of the universe, found the theory behind the large atom smasher in Switzerland, and learned something about the nature of matter itself in a way that explains small things (you, me, whales, snails) and also governs the movement of planets and galaxies.
and all of this is amazing, but what really blew my mind is that none of this actually works on paper unless you accept the idea that parallel universes exist! that's what's causing the waves to start moving! there's SOMETHING on the other side of the eleventh dimension that is causing the ripples to begin in the membranes and its gravity is amazingly strong. we're only feeling a slight pull over here, a residual backwash from whatever's on the other side.
fascinating.
so i'm watching this and then my boss told me to come and look at something amazing. it was a video clip from a baseball game that had been played the night before. i told him to get some fucking perspective! he said i was being weird.
the documentary was interviewing different physicists who were talking about how they had struggled and argued and fought over the theory that could reconcile the differences between Newtonian Quantum physics and Einstein's General Relativity (because Quantum works really well on the atomic level and on things that are small but breaks down when you get larger than, say, a truck, whereas General Relativity works amazingly well with planets and comets and black holes but doesn't work for shit when you get close enough to the objects to start asking what they're made of) so they come up with String theory, which says that matter is not made up of particles, but that it is made up of strings of energy that vibrate and through their vibration they create matter and give it form.
string theory works really well on the atomic and the macro level but it still has some holes because everyone was trying to work out the theory and make it work and it turned out that there were, in fact, FIVE different string theories, all of which worked out really really well... unless you compared them to one another. it all came down to how many dimensions you think there are.
Newtonian physicists say that there are 3 (length, width, depth). Einstein said that there were four (length, width, depth, and time, since he theorized that space and time were one large "fabric" which could be altered at once, hence the relative nature of time, light, gravity and so on when you get near large objects like planets). String theorists were arguing over how many dimensions and finally settled on 10. then a new theory came along (Super Gravity) who said no, there are actually 11. this sounds stupid, but when you plug 11 dimensions into string theory it works. all five theories are unified and it flows harmoniously and they found that the strings that give string theory its name are actually woven together. a membrane. a refinement, on a sub atomic level, of Einstein's space/time theory. and there are lots of these membranes all vibrating and waving and interacting with one another. and the energy produced by these waves could start acting with or against one another (like waves in a bathtub) and could, conceivably, cause enough of a buildup of energy that they could have caused the big bang!
the resulting energy displacement from that would cause the membranes to ripple and flow, causing heavier objects to coalesce in the troughs and flow together forming planets, while the lighter elements would ride the waves further out and could, conceivably, keep going. with one theory they solved the differences between two warring theories, found the singularity for the big bang, discovered why some planets are made of one thing and others not, found an explanation for the expansion of the universe, found the theory behind the large atom smasher in Switzerland, and learned something about the nature of matter itself in a way that explains small things (you, me, whales, snails) and also governs the movement of planets and galaxies.
and all of this is amazing, but what really blew my mind is that none of this actually works on paper unless you accept the idea that parallel universes exist! that's what's causing the waves to start moving! there's SOMETHING on the other side of the eleventh dimension that is causing the ripples to begin in the membranes and its gravity is amazingly strong. we're only feeling a slight pull over here, a residual backwash from whatever's on the other side.
fascinating.
so i'm watching this and then my boss told me to come and look at something amazing. it was a video clip from a baseball game that had been played the night before. i told him to get some fucking perspective! he said i was being weird.