Brian Greene: We Are Collections Of Stuff That Communicate With Numbers. Aug 31, 2021
Warning: I have zero education in cosmology, physics, chemistry, etc…
- Heavier particles are made by fusion inside stars.
Yes, to a point.
Gold and uranium, which are the most neutron-rich—require a process called rapid neutron capture. Here, an atomic nucleus is bombarded with neutrons so it swells to an unstable size, but the whole thing happens so fast the element doesn't have time to split apart.
Things like this make my brain go:
Our Sun appears to be a third generation star. Born amongst siblings emerging from the collapsing body of their dead parent. Swifted away, their stellar nursery flows around the galactic tidal swirl only to be separated from each other like scattering pearls driven by gravity’s invisible pervasiveness. They no longer see each other, but they can feel each other’s warmth in the darkness, a small part of each one’s photons shooting out to influence the others. Their multiple embraces causing bubbles of heliopauses.
- Greene considers math to be a language.
I created a quote that I put above my classroom door in 2008: “Math is NOT about numbers, it is about ideas.”
We use mathematics to convey ideas and make models of how our natural world works. I have students that think they “can’t math”, but that’s because the education system doesn’t really teach “math”, they teach “calculating”…what is 2+2, 4*15??? I often use pictures and shapes to teach mathematical concepts, and I create analogies and stories that help kids quickly master ideas, like order of operations, functions, etc.
I had a girl who couldn’t factor out polynomials, like x2 + 5x + 6. I asked her what she loved to do, she replied, “Reading”. Her favorite story? Romeo and Juliett, so I instantly came up with a modified R&J story and framed it with a punnett square that allowed her to instantly be able to factor polynomials. 😊
- Pattern recognition machines is how Greene sees Humans.
We are. That is why Zooniverse recruits people for their citizen science because we can quickly see patterns where a computer cannot, or is extremely slow to recognize.
The flip side is pareidolia, where we see Jesus in a tortilla, or hear words in static white noise that are not there.
- Time – he ponders the idea that there might be particles that come together to make our “normal” time frame of reference and, perhaps, it is different if the ratio of particles are different.
My thoughts: I don’t see time existing, not like an object exists, but as a measurement of how much our underlying space fabric is moving. The more massive something is, the more it distorts space, and time is a measure of that distortion, just like temperature is an average measurement of the amount of energy in a volume. Temperature is just a measurement, to me, but I find pleasure knowing that as rooms, outside, or even a cup of coffee changes temp, I visualize energy flowing into or out of that object.
What actually IS energy??? A fun topic to explore, but I won’t bore you with my thoughts.
- What’s Next – Greene thinks gravity waves will be our focus.
I agree. That night you stayed on after everyone else left and went blah, blah, blah for way too long, I said, “I want to know what is between everything, what is between us and the moon.”
What is the fabric of space made out of, that viscous material that we don’t see but can still pull galaxies along, and vibrates with the ringing of cataclysms?
All we have been able to record and measure or photons. What do you think your night images of the Milky Way would look like if you could image gravitational waves and subtract out the photons?
A snapshot: I picture vibrating densities, like air bubbles trapped in glass thrashing to get free causing ripples to push out in all directions. Yet, none are perfect spheres as each is affected by it’s neighbors and their intensity.
To me, this would be like a room with music loudly playing while you and guests are all talking, a glass mug accidentally hits the floor and…click. A 3D frozen image is taken of the air is taken in the room. The snapshot would not show the sounds, we only hear those, it would show the compression (higher density) and rarefraction (lower density) caused by the energy from the sound waves propagating outwards. And like a light bubble, the amount of energy would diminish and the air molecules would not be as compressed or pulled from each other the further that space is from the sound source.
For a dynamic body, like a galaxy moving through space, take that same party outside where the wind is kicking up eddies and pushing the sound in a certain directions…then we try to map the densities back to their origins.
I’ll shut up now as I am pondering…
Rick