Flowermountains

Update / Summer

Hurray, finally a new post! People have been complaining that this blog is a bit too abstract and philosophical. They say I should tell more about what I’m actually doing. So here we go.

Mostly I have been working on my thesis…or better said, I have been trying to. I had some start-up problems initially, but now I’m slowly getting somewhere. It will still take up most of the summer, I guess… Fortunately, I can write virtually anywhere, so I make sure to get sunburned occasionally. I also had a week of holiday in between in Cologne (girlfriends need to be kissed now and then…and you won’t hear me complain about that!). That’s also when the summer really got started. Nice weather and all, everything turning green, it was great! Back to Oslo, and also there nature transformed within just one week making Oslo one of the greenest cities I have ever seen. It’s amazing, when you look at the city from slightly above you see lots of trees, more trees, and now and then a rooftop penetrating even more trees. (Ok, I’m slightly exaggerating here, but it is really green!) I’ve uploaded some pictures showing some of the greenness.

Anyhoo, with summer approaching the days also get longer. Quite a bit longer actually, with the sun coming up at around 4:30, not to leave again before 10. And this is still the south of Norway! Even in the middle of the night there’s still some light in the sky, as you can see on the following (kind of blurry) picture:

The picture was taken at 0:52, to give you an impression…luckily I had time enough to get used to sleeping in a somewhat lighter room…

Ok, that’s about enough for now. I’ll add some more of the usual stuff shortly.

Everything is Relative

This is part two in my quest for the holy grail: the meaning of life. For part 1, see here. Now I will shed some light on the issue of light itself, going back a rough century to the time of Einstein’s great theories. Why light? Since it is this particular phenomenon that triggered Einstein into completely changing the way people (read: scientists) see space, time, and the universe as a whole.¹

What happened? Well, some years earlier, other people had shown that the speed of light is a constant, no matter how you look at it, it’s always the same. So, what would happen if you’d run after a departing beam of light, fast enough to catch up? What would you see? Would light “stand still”? Apparently things are not that easy, and Einstein concluded that, no matter how fast you would run, you wouldn’t gain an inch! The speed of light is still constant, no matter how you look at it, no matter how fast you go. This and some other stuff led to Einstein’s theory of relativity. In short, the idea is that when you travel with constant speed in a closed chamber, there is no way for you to determine at what speed you are moving. Any experiment you run will result in the same findings, whether you are at rest, or moving at any constant speed. Motion is relative, and only defined in comparison with something else. Still following? Now the interesting part starts.

This theory has some interesting implications. Most importantly, the notions of “space” and “time” as being universal, like we’re used to, are not exactly true. Let’s start with time. Suppose you take two exactly identical, very precise clocks, and you send one of them on a tour around the earth in a very fast airplane while leaving the other one behind. Upon the return of the airplane, you compare the two clocks. You would then, to your surprise probably, find that according to the clock in the airplane a little less time has passed since departure. You can imagine this as follows. Remember high school geometry? When an object moves in three dimensions, it’s speed is divided between the three axes. When it moves at constant speed, any change in direction will cause the portion of speed along each axis to change, but the total speed (the sum of the partial speeds) remains the same. Now, change the object’s three dimensional space into a four dimensional version, with the fourth dimension being time. According to Einstein, every object always moves at constant speed through the four dimensional spacetime, and this constant speed is equal to the speed of light! When an object is at rest, all of it’s movement in concentrated along the time-axis. However, when moving, some of the time-motion is diverted to movement through space! Thus, also the notion of time is relative. Reasoning one step further, this also means that, when travelling through space at light-speed, there is no movement through time anymore. Light is timeless.²

Some similar reasoning leads to the conclusion that also space is relative: objects that move very fast seem to be slightly shorter than when they would be at rest. However, I don’t think this is very important to the rest of the story so I won’t delve into this.

Maybe it’s wise to take a break here. This stuff requires some time to settle in. In fact, I’m getting slightly confused again myself. Next time we’ll see how all this influences the idea of “force” and why we have still some problems with that. By the way, as a small reference, most of what I explain here is based on a book by Brian Greene, called “The Elegant Universe”. If this stuff interests you, I can really recommend this book. It almost reads like a novel.

¹Being a social scientist who is studying science, I could easily go into a discussion about the relation between scientific ‘truth’ and ‘what is really out there’. You know, everything is socially constructed in some way. There is no neutral, objective science. Oh well. I’ll save this for later.
²I think this also explains why light always seems to move at the same speed, no matter how fast you go. Speed, after all, is depending on our notion of time.

Olympics

The Ultimate Question

If you have read Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” you will know what the Ultimate Question is. If not, I strongly advise you to go to the nearest library or book store now and start reading, because you’re really missing out on something here! However, it’s quite a read, so I’ll enlighten you in advance. I’m talking about The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Not a particular shallow and unimportant question. Some things I read lately made me thinking about this question.

In a number of the next posts I hope to discuss some parts of the puzzle, among which Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity (yeah, Einstein! I promised I would write about him, right?), String Theory, and some more philosophical aspects of these theories. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, don’t worry, I guess that’s normal. If you’re interested, I hope I’ll be able to explain some of it (also to myself). If you’re not interested, just skip these posts. I won’t be angry.

To get started already, as a small introduction, consider this. Everything in the Universe is built up out of small bits and pieces, generally known as atoms. These atoms again consist mainly of three different particles, being quarks (two types: up and down) and electrons. So, everything we know, consists of only three different building blocks! That makes us actually quite similar to trees, rocks, air…anything! So what makes the difference? Is it really just the various ways these particles are arranged that make us ‘alive’ and rocks ‘stone dead’, so to speak? I think these are quite intriguing questions…

Spring is coming!

Finally, also in Oslo nature got aware of the fact that it’s actually Spring now. After lots of snow during Easter, combined with nightly temperatures of over -10ºC, this is a welcome change. Not that I don’t like snow – oh no, I love snow! – but it should sort of stick to the Winter. After all, that’s what that time of the year is for. Anyhoo, here’s a short movie I shot at Sognsvann (a small lake quite close to where I live). It’s a sort of panoramic view, quite boring actually, no action or drama involved. I hope you like it anyway.

By the way, there are some new pictures in my gallery, in case you hadn’t noticed yet.