In spite of recent conversation about lightsabers and electromagnetic fields and such, i came to the conclusion that i wasn't the only metaltabber here with an interest in science.

Please keep your childish posts out of this thread. If you don't have anything to offer besides your confusion and blabbering nothingness, then don't reply.



Now....who here actually knows what i'm talking about from the title of the thread? For those who do.....do you think it's a probably theory for the GUT? I think it is. I've read a couple books (mostly written by Michio Kaku, probably my favorite author and physicist familiar with teh subject) and it seems like a likely candidate for the GUT.

I mainly started thinking about this again because we discussed the high amounts of energy needed in order to make a lightsaber actually work.....and i was reminded of how high an energy we would need to actually see and prove the superstring theory. I know we could have come close (i think probing 1/10 the energy of a superstring) with the SSC (Superconducting Super Collider)....but the US government cancelled the plans to make it (which pissed me off). I think it cost about 1 billion dollars to make.......which isn't that much considering it costs about the same or more for every space shuttle launch, and how many of those do we have??

Anyways....all those who know what i'm talking about, please voice your opinions....if not i'll just ramble on by myself.

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No. I'm not explaining it......which is why i stated that if anyone doesn't know what this is about, DON'T REPLY!!!!

And no superstrings aren't stretched atoms. That's folly.....gravity doesn't affect things on the subatomic level, you fool.....it's all about the weak nuclear force.

Damnit man, this isn't a physics lesson, it's a fucking discussion for people who know what i'm talking about (i'm guessing far_beyond_sane and slayme might be the only ones).

Now please no more posts about this garbage unless you're actually discussing what i originally wanted. We're currently at 7 replies in here, NONE of which are topical. So please.....if you want to participate, read up on it first.

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fine, i'll apologize in advance for this post, but you wanna suggest some books?

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"Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku.
"Beyond Einstein: The quest for the theory of the universe" by Michio Kaku.

Just type up "Superstrings" at a book store or on a search engine, you'll find lots.

Now please, only topical replies.

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I think its bull shit that the U.S. government canceled funding for the project. They are slowing down scientific progress, and possibly even shooting themselves in the foot in the process. If you notice Memnoch (and I am sure you have) that every major advance in science has greatly increased the quality of life for almost everyone. Classical/Newtonion physics, the periodic table, quantum physics, and currently DNA and computer research. Imagine the kind of energy and technology that could be available if we learned how to harness the most basic and fundamental elements of the universe. And I believe the space shuttle costs about $15 billion U.S. each time it is sent into space, which happens about 5-6 times a year.

Great topic.

You're right about the nature of scientific progress... remember the shit people used to say about the Human Genome project?? Well after they finished it, they developed a cogent theory of genetic polyexpression, and added a huge new layer to all the human sciences and ESPECIALLY psychology... it's brilliant... fucking Luddite U.S. government.... *grumble*

Theoretical physics is so incredibly not my area... music, philosophy, politics, economics, chaos theory, sociology, exercise physiology & kinesology, the history of religious conflict and psychology, yes... at least they're the main ones....

As far as I can ascertain, grand unified theory still remains out of reach... doesn't string theory account for 3 out of the 4?

far_beyond_sane admits ignorance beyond this. I am ashamed. I will go and learn.

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hehe, don't be ashamed, you've already done so much. (but it might be good to learn more too)

From what i've read, Quantum Mechanics (or quantum theory) accounts for 3 of the 4 fundamental forces.....the strong and weak nuclears forces, and electromagnetism. The missing force? Gravity. The reason? The previous 3 work on a small scale......very small, it's all about interactions between atoms and electrons and such.
Weak Nuclear Force: Keep protons/neutrons and electrons all together instead of flying apart at light speed, basically making all matter disappear.
Strong Nuclear Force: An example....what happens when an atomic bomb explodes.
Electromagnetism: Well......electricity and magnetism........they are linked, just like space-time.

But Gravity, it works on a universal size scale......it keeps us stuck to the ground, it keeps the planets of our solar system revolving around our sun......it keeps the galaxies packed tight (in a matter of speaking).....so you can see how different it is from the other 3.

The one theory that explains gravity, is relativity. (you guessed it, by our old friend Einstein) Now, Einstein spent the last decade (i think decade...) of his life trying to incorporate his theory with the other 3 forces.....later on, quantum mechanics were invented which took care of the remaining 3, but didn't include Einstein's theory.

But a new theory evolved (i think some 20-30 years ago)....the Superstring theory. If it is correct, it will bring both relativity and quantum mechanics together into one, simple (lol, right), beautiful theory.

But, it will take centuries before we even have the technological capabilities to probe the superstring and prove it's existence. I think it looks promising, it's just too complicated right now to be solved mathematically (apparently, a computer program designed to figure it out would take decades and decades to test every possible formula for superstrings....there's millions of possible formulas). So the math is too tough for our brains and computers, and we suck too much to actually look at them.....so we're fucked with this possible theory for maybe 500-600 years, maybe even a millenium.

Sane, i really suggest you read "Hyperspace" by Kaku. It's a fucking brilliant book. Even though you aren't a theoretical physics buff, it's VERY interesting.....by far the best non-fiction book i've ever read.

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I forgot to mention that superstrings can only exist in 10 or 24 dimensions.

Kaku does talk a lot about a possible co-existence of another universe at the Plank Length (the size of the superstring). He (like many other scientists) figure our universe had 10 dimensions at the beginning of time, and something happened making it very unstable......hence breaking into 2 co-existing universes. A 4-dimension universe (ours) which blew apart and expanded to the size it is today, and a 6-dimension universe which collapsed on itself and shrunk to the size of the superstring. So superstrings can exist in our world, because we have a counterpart which makes up for our missing 6 dimensions. Pretty cool huh?

Although it sounds complicated, just about every theory (i think....not positive) that has been thought up for the GUT has been simplified in higher dimensions. So it seems logical that the answer must lie in higher dimensions.

Anyways, just wanted to add that in case anyone was confused. This is just some of the stuff Kaku covers in his book. I love the part of the book called "From Ice Cubes to Superstrings"....fucking great man! Or the story by Isaac Asimov near the end....it's about God and shit, really cool....kind of fucks with you a bit. Well...the whole book fucks with you.

Like take for example, a cube. Unfold it, and you get a cross like shape of 6 squares. To a 2-dimensional person (flat like a piece of paper, no width) these 6 squares seem impossible to move. But to use (with the use of the 3rd dimension) we can easily move and manipulate these 6 pieces into a cube. When we put the cube back into the 2-dimensional world....all they can see is one side at a time, so basically, to them is seems 5 squares have just vanished and only one is left.

Now, imagine a hypercube (a type of cube or square made up of 4 spatial dimensions.....don't imagine it, you can't, but just think of the idea). An unfolded hypercube looks like a tesseract (look it up, it's really cool). It's made up of 8 cubes arranged in a cross like manner....looks really fucking cool. These pieces pretty much look fixed to us....how could we "move" these 8 pieces to make just one object?? Well, to a 4-dimensional person, he could easily "move" (like we did to the cross) these pieces into a hypercube....then lay it back down in our dimension. All we would see is one cube....so, it would appear that all 7 others are gone, but they just "moved" in the 4th dimension, so out of our possible view.

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I don't have a god damn clue as to what the hell you're talking about, but I'm just posting this to let you know that I'll get rid of the jackass statements above and keep a close eye on this topic for ya, since it seems to actually matter to you.

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Thanks man.

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Hey memnoch, how much are these books, because tjhis sounds fascinating, but most science books are like £70

I mean this Hyperspace book, i wanna learn!

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Is this it?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=books&n=507846

ITs only $10, thats like £7!

WOOO!

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i want!!

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That's the one.

These aren't university books i'm talking about....it's stuff you could find at a local book store like Chapters or something.

Now, go buy it.....read it twice, and come back with a discussion.

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It is $21.95 cdn. at Chapters (my work). Stephen Hawking also has a new book, although by new I mean a year, called the Universe in a Nutshell. He does not seem to be as enthusiastic as Michio Kaku about super-string theory. Maybe he is becoming more conservative in his older years? Regardless, the idea behind super-string theory is sound, we just have to wait for the mathematics to catch up with it. There is also the possibility that this theory is not the GUT, but merely another step towards it. Or perhaps there might not be a GUT, or at least not one within our primitive understanding. Perhaps asking a human to find the absolute basic law of the Universe is like asking a dog to read a book. You can explain it to the dog thousands of times, and make him stare at a book it 24 hours a day, but it still beyond his comprehension.

I'm sure there is a GUT, but it's like you said....whether or not we have the intelligence to figure it out is the question.

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All done

Science rocks, my mums a biologist/chemist, so i grew up with it, i just enevr took physics, but i'm gonna get this book...

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Memnoch, have you read The Elegent Universe by Brian Greene? It is more focused on super-string theory itself than Michio Kaku's book, although I don't think he is as good of a writer as Michio. But if you enjoyed Michio's book, I think you would like The Elegent Universe as well.

Also, have you read Carl Sagan's Cosmos? It is a little outdated now, but is still an excellent read.

And yes, if you have not figured it out by now, I too am a hopless physic's geek.

This all seems like something that I've been looking for my whole life!
I'm going to buy them books!...........I'll be back.

I've been tempted to buy The Elegant Universe....but, i'm not familiar with Brian Greene, so i'm a little less likely to just buy a book by an author i don't know.....but since you recommend it, i'll rethink it all.

I haven't read Cosmos....kind of wanted to, but it's big and looks kind of old.

And yes, physics geeks rule!!! (pretend it's a nerd)

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../antihydrogen_1

For anyone who's interested in Antimatter and the like, read this.

I found it quite interesting....probably going to buy this month's Nature magazine just to read more about it.


SCIENCE RULES!!!!!!! MAINLY PHYSICS THOUGH!!!!!!!!

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Anti-matter................
If im not mistaken, the reaction between anti-matter and matter releases a huge amount of energy, right? So are these guys just gunna use this shit to make bigger bombs and stuff?

No. Scientists don't make bombs. Governments do.

I'm not exactly sure what it's for, but from the article they say it'll help in proving the Standard Model. I used to know what this was, but i haven't really read anything about theoretical physics in years, so i'm at a loss right now.

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Ah, finally some people that love physics. Another great book is "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene. Its about superstrings, hidden dimensions, and the quest for the ultimate theory. (quatom physics book)

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if you think about it, its even less likier because thats for 1 atom in your hand to go past one atom in the wall, so for the trillions upon trillions of atoms in your hand to go through the trillions and trillions of atoms in the wall, the chances would b smaller


actually, it be like 1/(10 to the billionth)to the trillion trillion trillionth

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Yeah, I don't remeber the real odds and am too lazy to look.

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I also read about a year or two ago in the newspaper that in a university in Boston, scientists were able to slow down light to quite an impressively slow speed (i forget what it was because that was 2 years ago).

Really interesting though.

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I'm not going to apologise for reviving this thread as it is jam-packed with information that people may find a little interesting. Besides, I'm bored and want to write something meaningful. Anyway, back to the thread...

My own view is that A Theory Of Everything (TOE) is not that far away. I certainly believe that within my lifetime, we'll have a more cohesive theory by which we can explain and predict successfully the four fundamental forces:

1. Electro-magnetism
2. The strong nuclear force
3. The weak nuclear force
4. Gravity.

As has already been mentioned, Quantum Mechanics (QM) explains the first three and General Relativity (GR) deals with gravity. I think maybe a bit of background is in order, contrary to Memnoch's previous ideas for this thread. I feel that this is necessary in order to get people to question what exists around them and to develop an inquisitive nature as to what caused us to exist in the first place.

The birth of modern science (QM and GR) is largely owed to a physicist by the name of Max Planck who summized that energy cannot take any value, ie, it is limited to discrete packets of energy known as quanta. Einstein took Planck's ideas one stage further and in 1905 published his paper on the Photoelectric effect, for which he won the Nobel prize in 1922 (astonishingly, GR did not yield a further Nobel prize for Einstein).

Now the photoelectric effect explained the radiation emitted by a black bodied object. Physicists couldn't explain why an object that is entirely black emitted energy - conventional theory at the time insisted that a black body absorbs all energy that is incident to it. However, this was contradicted by experimental data.

It was quite a baffling scenario, but Einstein cracked it. He postulated that light also comes in small packets called photons and wave-particle duality was born. This basically means that light behaves as both a particle and a wave and it was the particle aspect that Einstein used to explian the black body radiation. The photons of light 'interacted' with the atoms of the black body and excited electrons to higher energy levels (this was later expanded upon by Niels Bohr). As the electrons returned to their initial energy level, radiation was emitted away from the black body. The problem was solved!

Einstein didn't know it, but this landmark paper would lead to the inception of the most successful scientific theory that mankind has ever thought up: Quantum Mechanics. Einstein loathed QM, remarking that, "I refuse to accept that God plays dice with the universe" and refused to use any of it's implication in his theories of Relativity.

Relativity wasn't a new concept - it was first proposed by Galileo Galilei in the 17 Century. Galileo introduced the notion of 'frames of reference' when computing velocites and momenta, ie, somebody who is moving at a fixed speed is in a different frame of reference than somebody who is stationary.

Before Einstein, James Maxwell had produced his theory of Electro-Magnetism in some of the most elegant mathematics ever committed to science. His breakthrough was truly breathtaking and revolutionised physics in one fell swoop. However, his equations were based on the premise that light propagated through a substance known as the Ether.

This notion of the Ether didn't sit well with Einstein and in his Special (or Restricted) Relativity he discarded it and postulated that light propagates through space-time at the same speed for all observers. His other postulate of Special Relativity was that the laws of physics are the same for all observers regardless of which frame of reference they are in.

Special Relativity was a huge success and the most famous of equations was derived from it E = mc^2. In deriving this equation, Einstein found that matter and energy are interchangable, ie, matter is energy just in another form and vice versa. However Einstein realised that SR only applied to bodies that were moving with constant velocity and it didn't incorporate gravity. So he set about formulating the second most successful scientific theory in mankind's history: General Relativity.

Einstein published this grand and amazingly complex theory in 1915 to critical acclaim. The theory was radical in so many aspects but the main crux was that gravity is equivalent to the force felt by an acceleration - like when the bus accelerates from a standing start and your back is pressed against the seat. General Relativity also introduced the idea that space-time is warped by mass and it was these warpings that cause gravity. Up until then, it was assumed that gravity acts instantaneously on an object no matter how far away it was - Einstein proved that gravity is also limited by the speed of light.

At the same time as this, the burgeoning Quantum Mechanics community was also gaining momentum. You couldn't ask for two more different branches of physics. QM, as you may have guessed, is based entirely on classifying matter and energy in terms of quanta, ie, there is a limit as to how small you can reduce a particles energy or length (the Planck Length). This is at loggerheads with Einstein's continuous universe, ie, there are no limits and if you wanted you could make a particle infinitessimaly smaller.

Another difference is that QM is essentially based on the statistics of measurement. The statistical nature of QM didn't excite Einstein as it was in bold contrast to his own 'sure' theory. There was no probabilities involved with GR, any answer you got back from the equations was a certainty. Not so with QM and the equations of QM dealt out some quite astounding results.

First of all, particles can penetrate barriers when according to Einstein's physics they cannot. Again this is down to the statistical nature of QM.

Also, because QM is based on exceedingly small scales, the act of measuring has an effect on the energies of the particles we are measuring. To measure something we have to shine light (or a beam of electrons depending on the scale) which in itself is enough to add a significant amount of energy to any system. The equations governing these systems are said to 'collapse' due to the act of measuring having an affect on our results.

Another startling effect was that particles can exist in two states at the same time in a state of Quantum Superposition. Schrodinger's famous cat is an example of this.

Erwin Schrodinger was one of the leading lights of Quantum Mechanics in it's early formation and is responsible for the equation that solves the wave equation of specific particles. He also put forward his famous thought experiment involving a cat, a sealed box and a phial of poison contained inside the box that is released when a radioactive element decays past a certain point.

The cat is placed in the box along with the poison and radioactive trigger and the box is sealed. The radioactive element has a probability that each atom will decay at a given moment and due to the fact that it is statistically equally likely that every atom will decay at the same time we cannot be sure as to whether the cat is alive or not. The cat is in a Quantum state of Superposition as until we open the box and observe the cat, it is neither alive nor dead.

In the 20's another physicist by the name of Heisenberg took these ideas of measurement a stage further and postulated that as we measure one attribute to a degree of accuracy, we decrease the accuracy by which we measure another attribute. For example, in order to measure a particle's momentum (mass x velocity) we need the particle to travel through a certain distance - the more distance that the particle travels through the more accurate our measurement of momentum will be. However, the greater the distance that the particle travels reduces our accuracy of the exact position of the particle.

It also works for Energy and time in precisely the same way - in order to measure a particle's energy we need a certain amount of time to elapse. The more time that elapses the more accurately we can measure the energy. However, with increasing time, we have a decreasing accuracy at which we can say the energy measurement was taken. These situations are covered under Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and this is the most celebrated equation of Quantum Mechanics.

Now ever since the 30's there has been a scramble to combine these two behemoths into one all-encompassing theory, a Theroy Of Everything (or Grand Unified Theory). The strongest possibility at the moment is through String Theory.

String Theory says that all subatomic particles are not represented by one-dimensional points but by two-dimentional 'strings.' Obviously, the mathematics of 2-d objects is a lot more complex than it is for 1-d objects and this complexity is heightened further when you consider that these strings are vibrating all the time.

Any hope of observing these strings directly is, unfortunately, left in the realm of science-fiction as they occupy scales similar to the Planck Length (of the order 10^-35, a decimal point followed by 35 zeros). However, although not entirely satisfactory, the theory works.

This is all very well, but String Theory is based on Quantum Mechanics. "What's wrong with that?" you may say, but QM is not derived classically, that is to say it's basis is not intuitive - unlike General Relativity. These are the problems that are posed to our scientists and I feel that in order to take the next step in our search for a Theory Of Everything, one of those scientists needs to show Einsteinian insight. It's not going to be easy, but it will happen eventually. All that is to be pondered is whether we are actually here to witness it.

I apoligise for the immensity of this post but I hope that a few of you have had an interest in physics (re)kindled or at the very least found it of moderate interest. I'm going to bed...

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I love you.

Ya know, sometimes the answer is directly in front of you. All you need is a powerful microscope....*sigh*

Okay, I'm going to narrow down a few things so tell me if I have it correctly:

String Theory is mainly about finite distance between nonvisable 'strings' combining 2 dimensional atoms. I had originally thought that it was just the fact that atoms are held together by vibrations, but I'm guessing now that's not a very indepth description. The problem is that QM doesn't comprehend the fact that General Relativity is based upon infinate space and gravity. QM, instead is where we got String Theory, which combines the opposing theories of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity...not Special Relativity.

My overall view on Science is that to learn about the Earth and how it works, we must first use space and then find ways to factor in the Earth's shit. And there are also a lot of answers in the Ocean.

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I don't share your optimism about the near-future possibilities of a Unified Field Theory (or Superstrings, for that matter). What interests me is the possibility that macro, meso and micro systems obey different physical principles. Will post more to that end when I have finished this pigfucker of a thesis.

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Yes, I agree. I find it strange how extremely small systems obey discrete Quantum Mechanical rules and extremely large systems obey continuous Genral Relativity rules so perfectly in each individual case, yet upon combining the two we get a comparitively ugly mess. It leads me to wonder that maybe we don't need a Unified Theory besides the search for completeness.

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Ah, I remember this thread! So much have I learned from that last post..espically from John. I should mabye post all your replies in here, yes?

By the way: http://superstringtheory.com/

Great site.

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I found these anwsers very enlightening by John and thought some of you would enjoy them.

What was the most mind-boggling thing you learned in your Relativity/Quantum Physics course?

In the sense of mathematically mind-boggling it has to be Tensor Calculus (Relativity) and Bra-Ket notation (QM). A tensor is an array of numbers (like a matrix) that describes an area of space in terms of it's length, width, area, curvature, etc and they can get very complicated when the number of dimensions increases. Then we applied calculus to them! Bra-Ket notation was devised by Paul Dirac and made calculating energy level changes more elegant - effectively it replaced doing some really nasty, nasty integration - however, it is quite unorthodox so it took a while to get my head round it.

In the sense of being conceptually mind-boggling it has to be the fact that space is curved by mass and, in QM, the fact that taking measurements defines everything. It's hard to explain these! The former is hard to imagine because for years of doing high school maths all you deal with is the x, y and z planes - how do these curve?!?! The measurements thing is very strange - basically, absolutely anything could be happening to particles until you measure or observe them. QM is the strangest thing in the world!!

How do you feel about time travel? Since we know its possible and we "technically" do it every time we move; its possible to see time travel in the future to the future as a possibility, but what about traveling back in time? How do you think it would be done?

Well, time travel is a very contentious issue in the scientific community. Although theoretically Einstein's equations, when solved, yield solutions that imply time travel, it is the general consensus that it will never happen. There has been talk of harnessing wormholes in which relativistic effects would produce time travel. However, wormholes of sufficient magnitude are very rare so that would leave the only option of time travel as being to create our own wormhole. The energy required is truly frightening - even if we could harness the power of dark energy, the numbers are still huge since we have to create negative energy in order to stop the wormhole collapsing. One day these hurdles may be overcome, but certainly not in our lifetime!

What do you think happens when we travel into the future? Do we start a parrellel universe? Fuck up everything in the universe where we came from? I'm sure your familiar with the "Grandfather Paradox", (what would happen if we where to travel back in time and kill our grandfather?) what do you think about that?

Parallel universes are very interesting and the premise behind them is that every time a decision is made in the whole universe, the other possibilities are acted out in another. Now, when you think about how many decisions you yourself make in just a day, that's a hell of a lot of universes when you think about the number of decisions that could be made throughout our universe!

There was a metaphysical theory as to why it would be impossible to kill your grandfather but it escapes me at this moment. I think it was Hawking who proposed it. I think it has something to do with the fact that you would have travelled to another parallel universe in order to kill him. Upon killing him, that universe becomes closed to you and you would be returned to the original universe.

I always wondered when thinking about time travel that if we harness the power of time-travel in the future, then surely we would have seen somebody from the future already - we haven't so as a result I deduced that time travel has not been made possible in the future. Time travel is an age-old concept that has been mused upon for thousands of years and now that it has a mathematical grounding it's getting very hard to understand!

Do you believe that our universe is just a layer in the many? (I think called "branes")

This is quite a popular theory at the moment but it's hard to say whether I believe in it without it being part of a more expansive theory. At the moment it's just a way of describing the multiverse so that you can conceptualise what it would be like if you could imagine it but the maths behind it is far from complete. There is a theory that the big bang was a product of a collision between two massive (empty) branes and thus our universe was created.

They say the universe it "expanding" which means that inorder to expand, you've got to already be in something. What are we in? What contains us? Or what do you think.

Well, I'm not sure that we have to be already in something in order to expand. There have been many different theories as to whether the universe was expanding or not. Einstein himself originally had a term in his Field Equation called the cosmological constant and this required that the universe be static. Upon discovery by Edwin Hubble that the universe was expanding Einstein dropped the term and modified his equations. However, the cosmological constant is thought to still be involved in some way. It has also been observed that the universe's expansion is slowing down. This implies that eventually the expansion will reverse and we will have a "Big Crunch". This in turn implies that the universe will be static at one point in time in the future and so I have a feeling that a modified cosmological constant will still have a part to play.

How do you feel about the M-theory? (theory of every thing - the persuit for Hawkings)

Well, The Theory Of Everything (TOE) has been the holy grail of science for the past 80 years. As you are no doubt aware, Relativity deals with the macro-universe (the very large, ie, galaxies, stars, planets, etc) and QM deals with the micro-universe (the very small, ie, atoms, electrons, waves, etc). Ever since Einstein and Planck planted the foundations for Relativity and QM respectively, people have been trying to combine the two - including Einstein himself (the last 30 years of his life were spent searching for a conclusive TOE). This has proved very difficult since Relativity is based on facts and certainties and QM is based on a statistical approach. M-Theory is just one of the proposed ideas that attempts to combine Relativity and QM. There are others such as String Theory in 11-dimensions. I am not familiar with the subtleties of either theory but we know that both need extensive work in order for them to be considered a true TOE.

Can you clear up exactly what a "brane" is? I know the fundamentals of them but I'm still pretty confused.

Brane is just short for membrane. I'm not really sure about this area, too, but there is a scientific thought that the 3-dimensions around us (the usual x, y, z) consist of these membranes that intertwine to create extra dimensions. That is about as far as my knowledge extends to on this subject!

What fuels the speed of light? To my fallable knowledge; the speed of light can only go 300,000,000 m/s because its mass increases to a point where its speed can no longer be increased, right? Well if this is correct, then is it possible to take a smaller particle and push it farther than 300,000,000?

Yes, you're right to an extent. As you approach the speed of light, your mass increases to the point whereby the amount of energy needed to increase your velocity to equal the speed of light is infinite. This is borne out of Special Relativity. However, a photon has no mass and so it attains the speed of light. Light exists in particle-wave duality, ie, it behaves like a particle and a wave at the same time. Indeed, everything behaves as if it were a particle and a wave - even your very own body! Louis de Broglie (pronounced Broy) derived an equation that converts a particle's mass into a corresponding wavelength. You, Dylan, would have an overall wavelength of something like 10 to the power -35 metres. In comparison the wavelength of light is roughly 10 to the power -12. Mass is a very misleading term, mass describes how a particle interacts with other matter not whether is has a visible form or shape.

There is something like 11 dimensions right? What are the other 8?

It is thought that the other 8 dimensions are embedded into the standard three physical dimensions that we can see. I don't really know how it works but it's akin to watching television. The television screen is 2-dimensional - it has height and breadth. However the image you are watching is clearly 3-dimensional as you can perceive depth as well. It kind of works like this but only on a more unimaginable scale!

Technically there are worm holes but they exsist in a subatomic world. Where do they come and go from? Or what is the leading theory?

I’m not to sure about the reasoning behind this but I think they are caused by fluctuations of energy that is passing in and out of our universe. I’m not sure what the leading theory is for this one.


About the time travel: Would we really have to create a Wormhole? I mean, if
we could get a space craft moving fast enough - we could travel into the
future (but not back!) Also about your thoughts about people from the future
being among us, it could be true. But I imagine it would be some kind of top
secret goverment officials that know the risk of telling people we've done
it...but wait...is it possible that the way we find out about time travel is
by a human from the future tellin us? How is that possible? Phew, my head!

Wormholes offer the most efficient method of timetravel as the effects even when travelling at speeds very close to the speed of light are still quite negligible in the grand scheme of things. For example, the only way we could travel back 50 years would more than likely be through wormholes.

About the people from the future among us: it's a very strange situation. Even if they are among us, as you stated, I'd presume that they would be strictly covert and try not to interact with us. Also, even if they did say that they were from the future, would anybody believe them? Or would we throw them into an asylum somewhere?! It is indeed head-hurting stuff!

Are you gay?
Mildly.

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ha, what the hell was the point of that last one.

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He thought it was very enlightening and that we'd enjoy it.

I skimmed through the questions, and the other one that doesn't seem to fit is the one on Game Theory. But maybe that's just because that's the only one I could have answered, even though I never really wanted to learn about it. Damn intellectual osmosis.

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The last one he mind by the last question. I gunna take out the Game Theory question seeing that it's irrelevant.

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If it wasn't John who revived this, I'd bitch like I normally do. But geek on, John!

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Damn - you said you weren't going to post that one! Good idea to post the other stuff though!

Those exchanges that Dylan and I had should probably be suffice to give anybody a grounding in modern physics and where it's headed. Of course, mathematical specifics will be beyond my capabilities in subjects such as String Theory - it's hard enough solving QM equations in 1, 2 and 3 dimensions never mind 11!

Physics is fascinating and governs everything you do in the physical world - how people cannot be interested in that is beyond me.

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Uh, that's quite a shitload to read......read most of John's massive post. I didn't know you were actually studying this stuff.

There's a few new therios floating about today which are possibilities for a GUT (or TOE). One of which, uh, which i read over the past year in an issue of Scientific American is called "Loop Quantum Gravity". (Scientific American January 2004) I read the article, and tried to understand the best i could, but it's all pretty advanced stuff. Nonetheless, it gives hope to combining gravity with QM. I don't really remember much of the article, except that i was lost through most of it, but anyone who's interested should try to pick it up as a back issue somewhere. I think you might like it quite a bit John.

The basis of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) is that space-time is not a seemless flow that is endless, but rather has individual packets all following each other. (probably not explaining this very well, so read the article, please!) For example, contrary to belief that time is endless and flows without "breaks" like a stream of water would, Time is actually composed of packets of time which have a very finite and very small value. In between these packets, time does not exist. I think the theorised measure of this packet of time has something to do with Plank's constant, maybe called the "Plank Time" or something.

Anyways, i'll be re-reading this article soon and hopefully i'll absorb more info about it. Once that's accomplished, i'll return here to confuse you all even more with my crappy examples.

Another issue of Sci.Am. i bought recently was for September 2004, and the whole issue is about Einstein and how his work has revolutionized the world in the past 100 years. I haven't even read a tenth of it yet, but it's mighty interesting.....if it's still available in stores i'm suggest getting it, it's only about 5$US. (7$ CANADIAN?!?! FUCK!!!!)

And since i last posted in this thread, i've purchased Brian Greene's "Elegant Universe". Haven't read it yet.....i've been too busy reading Stephen King novels and trying to get through Homer's Odyssey, but once i do i'll come back here excited like a little boy on x-mas morning.

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I bought both of the issues you mention, Memnoch - the Einstein one is particularly interesting. I vaguely remember the Loop Quantum Gravity issue but your description sounds about right. This level of physics is astoundingly difficult and there are probably only a select few number of scientists who can fully understand the maths behind it never mind taking it to the next stage in it's development.

I studied some of this stuff in my final year of my maths degree at university (I graduated in the summer of 2003). In the Einstein issue of Scientific American they reproduce Einstein's Field Equation (EFE) to show how his Cosmological Constant has evolved in it's application since he first introduced it. It looks simple, but those Symbols with subscript symbols are Tensors and thus make the equation devilishly difficult to solve. [To visualize a Tensor it may be helpful to know that a standard vector, for example the transpose of [x,y,z], is a very special form of tensor] A guage of the difficulty of solving EFE: at uni, as third year undergraduates, we were shown how to derive the equation but not how to solve it due to the difficulty.

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i realize this doesnt contribute to the topic, but i just wanted to commend you guys on this shit. its all way over my head. feel free to delete this post if you wish, i just figured it was worth saying

You're already far beyond my comprehension John. My education in this stuff ended when i graduated high school, so the mention of tensors and the like brings nothing but question marks and headaches.

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Tensors have something to do with elasticity...hehe I think....[x,y,z] are just the matrices. But yeah I have no idea what the fuck it means.

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Tensors describe exactly what space is like at a certain point in terms of dimensions, curvature, time etc. At my level of comprehension, I came into contact with tensors in the form of 2x2, 3x3 and 4x4 arrays, so basically x, y, z and time dimensions.

Most of the time the tensors in General Relativity are converted out of cartesian coordinated (x, y, z, t) and into polar coordinates (r, theta, phi, t). Theta and phi are measures of angle in radians (one in the vertical plane and the other in the horizontal plane), r is the radius and t is time.

This has the advantage of being non-reference based which means that we don't have to know anything about the surrounding area in order to describe the specific point that we are interested in. Imagine being able to direct somebody to your local grocery store without using points of reference such as street names or phrases like, "Opposite the bakery." This is what makes General Reletivity such a fundamental theory.

However, Quantum Mechanics comes along and introduces statistics to the process of describing a particular point. The tensors in GR do not incorporate this and so this is where the difficulty arises with melding these two monolithic branches of physics together.

Andrew1331: Don't worry about the complexity, hopefully we can explain it so that people who have no knowledge of physics at all can understand at least some of it. Have you found anything of interest as of yet?

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It's quite beautifully written for a physics book. I borrowed it from the library a few times. I'm a very much non-physicist and didn't have any trouble with it, you might find it a bit allegorical.

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I've thought about something recently, maybe John can answer this, although i don't even know if there is an answer to the question. This isn't really about superstrings, but it's about the universe, so whatever.

The universe has 3 spatial dimensions and one of time. Ever since the "Big Bang", they have all been expanding......the universe keeps growing (spatial) and aging (time) all at once, never moving backwards. Some of you might have heard of the "Big Crunch", a theoretical ending to our universe. The theory says that if the universe ever gained enough matter, the gravity caused by this matter would stop the expansion of the universe, and reverse it in turn crushing everything into a point particle. This whole "crushing" of the universe would probably take just as much time as it took to make the universe expand to whatever size it was(is?) when the expansion reversed.

Now my question is, during this crushing phase the 3 spatial dimensions would be getting smaller and smaller, would time also become "smaller"? These dimensions are in a sense being reversed, so would time itself (being a dimension of the universe, it should logically obey all laws like any other dimension) start moving backwards? Would time move backwards up until the very moment the universe was created at the Big Bang, then repeat itself?

If this is so, it creates a universe which repeats itself every X number of years (X/2 being the time it takes from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch).

I've read recently in an article about the beginning of time and all, and some theories predict that time is endless. It never started, nor will it ever end, it just is. If this proves to be true, then i guess my theory of time reversal would be false......but it's still something to ponder.

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Jesus, what will they think of next....

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Well, I suppose it should follow that time would flow backwards during any big crunch. However, I don't think that any causality issues will be encountered during such a contraction. All that will happen is that gravity halts, and then reverses, the expansion of the universe: time is still running 'forward' as the universe is shrinking. You certainly wouldn't be living your life in reverse (if you could ever live long enough to witness universal contraction, of course).

Think of it as if you were to throw a ball straight up into the air. The ball's vertical distance from the ground is expanding at a parabolic rate until gravity becomes strong enough to halt the expansion. At this point it is stationary in the air and will proceed to fall back down to the ground. Time does not run backwards for the ball even though it's 'journey' is effectively reversed.

The universe, I suspect, behaves in a similar manner - only with more cataclysmic consequences!

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I was fidelling through my bookmarks last night before hitting the sack (pillow) and i came accross a site i had once looked at and forgotten, PhysOrg.com.

On the left side of the page was a link to a forum thread titled "God is tachyon particle". I immediately thought this would be science fiction nonsense, but after reading the first post i was extremely intrigued. Here's what CubeStar (a forum member there) had to say:

"I've long held the belief that God is a tachyon particle.

Now the tachyon is a theoretical particle that travels faster than the speed of light. As you may already know, nothing can accelerate and continue to accelerate to light speed or for that matter beyond, the energy required is infinite. But, I believe that faster than light speed IS possible, as long as acceleration is not used, but instead, instantaneous travel is employed i.e. worm holes or some such. A tachyon particle to travel faster than light MUST do so instantaneously. A tachyon particle could theoretically visit every point in the universe at the same time, simply because the time it takes it to reach any point is 0 (instantaneous travel!). So to reach ALL points in space the time would also be 0.

Now let's assume a technology was developed that could in fact detect tachyons. The device would detect countless tachyons in every direction. But those countless tachyons could just as easily be only the 1 (visiting every point in space-apparently at the same time!!). One tachyon particle is all that is required to fill the universe with tachyons. So one tachyon particle could be seen as omnipresent maybe even as God himself touching ALL matter.

cheers"

Quite a mind fuck. I haven't read much about tachyon particles, if anything at all.....i think i might have only heard the word in Star Trek a half million times. I believe tachyons had something to do with their propulsion systems......anyways, this post isn't meant to be taken as fact, it's just someone opinion. I don't believe a particle is God, but just the theory of the tachyon is quite impressive, that one particle can be everywhere in the universe all at once.

Enjoy!

Oh, here's the link to the thread if anyone's interested in reading the rest. Some people go on about religion, while others stick to the Physics aspect of it. One "Guest" says the theory is false do to tachyons moving backwards in time, and that Higgs bosons would better fit his theory of God.


PS. Please don't turn this into some religion discussion, keep it scientific; if you don't have anything to comment on, then don't say anything. This isn't RTT after all.

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Man, I love reading about those fucked space/time theories. Except you forgot the link Memnoch. Please put it up, I want to read more.................

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Get the Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. It's awesome. He's got another new one out, but I haven't gotten around to read it yet. So many books..so little time.

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Thanks

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I've heard of the tachyon particle but never in the context of instantaneous travel. Interesting musings none-the-less, although instantaneous travel would involve huge amounts of energy in order to project the particle to it's destination. However, there are many things we don't fully understand about dark matter and energy so - who knows? - it could be possible.

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Well then, if tachyon particles are proved, then common sense would lead the theory of time travel...? If time travel is discovered though, aren't there theories of different dimensions if I'm not mistaken, so the outcome of time travel might become random....well unless we think that far ahead.....haha, Event Horizon comes to mind

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D'OH! Here's the link.
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=692

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Did any Brits see E=mc^2 the other week on Channel 4? I taped it and have only just watched it. The program porported to give an account of Einstein's influences in his finest achievement, the celebrated E=mc^2. There I was rubbing my hands actually thinking that Lorentz, Maxwell, Mickelson and Morley would get a look in but alas, 1 out of four was a pretty poor showing.

Instead the program makers decided to focus on Faraday (for "E"), Levoisier (for "m") and some bint whom I do not recall (for "^2"). Admittedly the piece on Maxwell (for "c") was reasonably good but the others were not influences in Einstein's special theory of relativity, merely a bit of "background information".

The program gave the impression that Einstein just "threw" all of these components together and et viola, "I'll have a Nobel Prize please", which, incidentally, he did not win for either of his theories of relativity (he won it for his paper on the photoelectric effect).

Anybody who doesn't know a thing about Einstein could well walk away from that program and think that there was nothing to it. Einstein didn't just cobble together the most famous formula in history and say, "Smoke that in ye' pipe for the next 50 years," he derived it whilst proving that Newtonian momentum extends to 4-dimensional momentum in spacetime.

I would have liked the program to delve deeper into Einstein's biggest influence: himself. I would liked to have seen an attempt by the program makers to at least explain that it was derived from reams and reams and reams of theory that had been formulated before. 'Twas not to be, but I have a cheeky little surprise for anybody who is interested. Direct from my university notes is the actual derivation. It's not as long as one might think, but the insights are enormous. Beware however, as there isn't much "standard" algebra going on. Very interesting though, and definitely not just plucked from thin air!

Attached Files

Derivation of E=mc2.doc (26.5 KB, 138 views)

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my bro read that book. im not too intrested in reading, at the moment. cuz i never have time to spare. besides im not that big with space stuff.

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Damn John, hopefully when I finish A Level physics, I might be able to understand what that document is all about.

Aww I wish I brought thsi threa back when I watch a show on Superstring theory on PBS. Sadly I havnt retained much from it since than.

But John its odd you mention this as I just read an anti-Einstein article asicly saying he ripped off a few Physicist's and threw all thier stuff togher.

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I'm about half way through "The Fabric of the Cosmos" which is Brian G.'s second release, and it's quite good. It's got the great writing tyle of "Fabric..", as FBS mentioned, but it's chalk full of the newest theories, etc. While alot of it slightly recapes "The Fabric.." (causing some line skipping to the familiar), I've never had a better understanding of Superstring theory untill reading it.

One of the most interesting things that I've read recently was in the chapter titled "Extended Minds and Morder Physics" in a book called "The Sense of Being Stared At". It's predominantly about psycic phenomina (i.e. the sense of being stared at, telepathy, etc.) but the author wrote about some rather interesting theories that the mind and it's intentions may exist in it's own dimension by pulling in references to string and brane theory.

Slight topic change: What does everyone think about Brane theory?

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The idea of a 5th dimension makes my brain hurt. I havnt read enough on the Brane theory to have an opinion, but it sounds quite interesting.

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That Brian Greene one sounded interesting, but I don't want to waste money on a book in which I don't understand half of the words of the preface. thanks.

[Darko]: Sorry, dude. I ment to quote you but I fucked up your post. Apologies!

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Hey I'm in your exact same position, I've heard good things about Michio Kaku's books. I'll get one soon, probably "Hyperspace". You can check out his webpage, includng previews of his books:

www.mkaku.org

Well unless you have AP physics, you will probably only learn about classical physics and maybe depending on the teacher discuss theoretical and quantum physics briefly. I know my teach sucked and only taught us the math of classical physics, barely any of the theory behind it and refused to discuss quantum.

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yeah im not in AP physics becasue i hated biology and chemsitry and i was never in a high enough math class for them to want me to move up, but it is still something that interests me enought that I would study up on it just for fun. Although we did learn very basic quantum mechanics in chemsitry class. that was some pretty cool stuff.

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Yeah problem with advanced physics is it requires a knowlege of calculus, so if you don't atleast have basic understanding of derivatives and integrals advanced physics will be sort of tough, same with advanced chem.

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oh, that sucks. Math was never my strong suit, and i find to be incredibly boring. Oh well, hopefully someone will reccommend a theoretical physics book that is almost like an introduction to the simpler things forementioned on this thread.

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Think 5 is tough? Superstring incorporates 11.

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pardon my stupidity, but what are all the other dimensions? Last I checked there were only 3

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Only three that we experience regularly, with time being another dimension as well ( as far as I know, I'm very very bad at math ).


Remember the old white avatar I had? That was a four dimensional cube, flattened out.

Yes, like I said, I retained nothing long term fromthe special on PBS.

There are the three we can experience in our normal day-day activities, the 4th dimension is time and according to Brane theory there is a 5th dimension. This 5th diminsion is some sort of membrane like thing looking sort of like a shard of glass which colided into the membrane of something else and caused the big-bang. That is the limitation of my knowlege of Brane theory, and that is why I have no comment on it.

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Dead: Yeah, Einstein took the work of Lorentz (the Lorentz transformation is used when calculating length contraction, time dilation and the increase in mass when a particle approaches the speed of light). However, Lorentz refused to discard the notion of time not being absolute.

DeathCS: the way to think of other dimensions is to look at a TV screen. It looks like the image has three dimensions, doesn't it? But the screen is only a 2-dimensional object. That's sort of how it works, although admittedly it is hard to muster an image of what these extra dimensions could look like.

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http://www.superstringtheory.com

...great site

I'm going to go kill myself because it's 4:35 am and I can't remember the concept behind f=ma. Wow, I'm going to look at my notebook from last year in school.

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Interesting one. As that theory could lead to the so called "theory of everything", at least for physicists. Not only making the strings to float over multidimensional spaces, but making themselves such, would result to a connection between gravitation and electro-magnetism. However, this thinking has lead to five (now six (the Hawking's theory)) different theories of everything. However, a solution has been born, this so called "M-theory" that connects these six theories together by stating that in the end, these theories are just different perspectives from the theory of everything. However, it has now been discerned that M-theory lacks from too less dimensions (11 ), so now they have conducted this thing called "F-theory", which has 12 dimensions but not many know how many problems lie there. It is like a puzzle.

The string theory has also a problem when it comes to the strings, does strings even exist? A guy called Plato proved that you can't find smallest particle from universe (ie. you can never for example tear a paper to end), and the string theory assumes that string really is the smallest particle. This contradiction would automatically collapse the "oh so godly" string theory and then the super string theory and even the brane / M/F theories. The only way to avoid this would be assuming that either the strings "partially" exists, or by easiest way, the strings doesn't exist at all. Wow, now as the string theory states that Everything constructs only from the strings (and dimensions, but they are idealistic), this would mean that nothing exists.

A small puzzle for modern science..

That's the newton equation for finding the force of an object, measured in "Newtons."

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yes I realized taht last night while i was smoking a cigarette before bed. Force equals mass times acceleration. I just was thinking about calculus and since I only had regular Physics, we never used calculus, just algebra. So I was trying to relate f=ma to calculus.

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To achieve a true understanding of string theory...some new idea will be required. Most likely, some break with the concepts on which we've traditionally based physical theory.

If you're interested in physics I recommend you Michio Kaku's books.

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F = m[dv/dt] = m[(d^2)x/dt^2]

F = force (N)
m = mass (kg)
v = velocity (m/s)
t = time 9s)
x = position (m)

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Thats the problem they never related derivatives to physical equations.

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I'm taking AP physics this year and we talked about "strings" and such in a class discussion. My brain cannot yet fathom how to think in these various different dimensions and how to get down to such an infinitesimal scale. But on a somewhat related topic, we started discussing the possible existence of parallel universes and such and how our universe has perhaps gone through countless expansions and collapses and that we may be reliving the same life over and over. Perhaps Mansley or one of you other physics buffs can offer a little more theoretical insight into parallel universes.

The cool thing about that is, the multiverse concept goes hand in hand with superstring theory.
Meaning that superstring theory has millions of solutions....each of which seems to correspond to a self-consistent Universe.

How does that relate to String theory?

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Well, parallel universes are almost a nailed on certainty as many particles are observed to pop in and out of our universe seemingly at will. This is thought to account for some of the dark energy in our universe that has baffled scientists for the best part of a century.

Another way to look at parallel universes is to imagine a "honeycomb" multiverse with each "cell" of the honeycomb being a different universe. Now, it is thought that if you travel far enough, you will exhaust every possible outcome that can occur in one universe (you've got to go a pretty damn long way, if i remember rightly it is somewhere near to 10^(10^22) km) and enter another universe (the next cell of the honeycomb). As a result, anything beyond this limit will just be a repeat of what's gone before - the only difference being the free will of this new universe's inhabitants. For example, you might choose to have coffee this morning while the exact same version of you 10^(10^22) kilometres away might choose a mineral water. A further 10^(10^22) kilometres on, your doppleganger might choose a pina collada with a nice umbrella! And so on ad infinitum. Nobody can really disprove this as a theory since the "multiverse", as one would call it, is infinite and so all possiblities will be played out an infinite amount of times.

As for string theory, the only difference between it and the quantum theories that preceded it is that particles are no longer represented by points with a dimension of zero, but vibrating strings with a dimension of 11. The model seems to be more accurate, but the mathematics, as one would expect, is much more complex since particles are no longer assumed to be moving points, but moving, vibrating, twisting and turning strings. Yikes!

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John, I've read a few things about mysterious particles that appear quickly and then mysteriously disappear (like in an atom smasher). How do they know that they are disappearing and not just "dying"?

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No entirely sure, but I think it's got something to do with conservation of energy: the particles use an amount of energy to leave our universe and when they reappear their energies are condusive to the energy loses incurred by switching between universes.

The local energy of the surrounding space is equal to the energy lost by the particle and so the local energy of a system would be equal to the original energy of the particle less the energy of the particle upon it's return. So I guess when this is taken into account they can tell that a particle has popped out of our universe and then returned.

It's worth remembering that specific particles are known to have specific energies so it's quite easy to spot when a particle has lost energy. The hard part is explaining why.

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Well apparently these could be things like Neutrinos or even perhaps super particles that are only visible via radiation they emmit (ie squarks/quarks, and blackbody radiating particles, or even "exotic matter"). I've just read a few books on such topics. There are millions of particles that may appear to "come and go" but they may not always be visible...such as the particles that cause repulsion in non-charged metals, which could prove to be the building blocks for "exotic matter."

We should revive this thread now that I know a bit more about the topic

Haha. What?

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Would these "invisible" particles be invovled in particle/anti-particles? As in pairs of these particles/anti-particles are forming and disappearing continually, and the only reason they actually "form" or "disappear" is based on if they emmit any radiation?

(Just trying to clear something up from an old physics lesson)

I have eight sugarcubes. I also have eight strands of spaghetti. Surely, those strands of spaghetti must have meaningful correlations to the sugarcubes.

Now, I'm not completely sure that I understood the question, but anyhow:
Speaking in terms of scientific models, pairs of particels/anti-particles continously appear and disappear; a result of Heisenbergs's uncertanity principle (I think it's called in English...)
And yes, Einstein's theory shows that everything can only exist in relation to something else, i.e. if nothing is there to observe it, it does not happen/exist. So in that sense, these particles only exist because they leave a trace of radiation that we can detect.
As for the superstring theory being the GUT, I do not deny the possibility but for now I will not stand behind the claim that it is. In the 80's "everyone" was utterly convinced that the Supergravity theory was GUT and then it all changed to the string theory more or less overnight. But, it offers many interesting possibilities and it does gives some explanations that we were lacking before.
Btw, if you want some more relatively (no pun intended) simple explanations on these matters, try some titles of Stephen Hawking.

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I'm not sure how you're making that correlation with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. HUP merely states that, in the quantum realm, the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known and vice versa.

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Yep. But consider vaccum. It is empty, right? No. According the principle mentioned above, it can not be empty. On quantum level, there are a continous creation and annihalation of "ghost" particles, which never the less exists. This principle does say a lot more about a lot more than basic mechanics, and this is one of its results.
Bloody irritating in some ways, but at least we can partways explain why the universe behaves as it does with this insight.
Damn, I can't stop playing the teacher even here. No offence intended.

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So, your a teacher of - I'm guessing - advanced physics?

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Wasn't that Schrodinger and Thorbin? If I'm not mistaken, Einstein didin't condone this view and said something like "Surely just because a mouse sees the moon doesn't make it exist, you're using too much logic and not enough common sense."

Yeah, you're right. Schrodinger's thought experiment involving his famous cat explains the quantum aspect of viewing/not viewing an event. Einstein spent most of his life post-1915 at loggerheads with quantum scientists ("God does not play dice with the Unverse") despite effectively giving birth to this now most celebrated fields of physics with his paper on the photoelectric effect.

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Einstein didn't condone a whole lot that his theory led to. Big Bang for example...

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Not liscenced, no, but it has been a flaming interest of mine for four or five years. And I've found myself that whenever anyone makes the mistake of asking me something about this field I have a tendency to start asking Socratian questions, develop the subject and start looking for the black board crayon... not saying I know everything though, or that I'm always right!

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