Posts Tagged ‘Cosmology’

Quantum Mechanics: Did Newton Have it All Wrong?

Friday, January 15th, 2010

Guest author, Thomas Kennedy, features a twice-monthly series, Quantum Leap, wherein he guides readers through the fascinating world of quantum mechanics. This is issue 006.

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You know, I am probably wrong in blaming Sir Isaac Newton for ideas like black holes, dark matter, and dark energy, but there is no doubt that the bulk of the scientific community have continued to attempt to use his approach based on Force, Mass, and Acceleration to model cosmology.  At least, at some point, after The Big Bang.

The $9 billion dollar science project, aka the Large Hadron Collider and the search for the elusive (and most likely) nonexistent Higgs Boson particle, represents the end point in this attempt.  Black holes and dark matter, the assumed core and make up of galaxies in an attempt to balance angular momentum, is akin to attempting, like the Little Dutch Boy, to plug as many holes as possible where observed reality fails to line up with the various hypotheses that exist in cosmology.  Dark energy is also a balancing variable in the equation because, if both black holes and dark matter have such a hold on the universe, why does it appear that all visible matter in space at the super scalar level appear to be growing more distant from one another?

The one thing that I have learned over the years building statistical models is that adding more variables in an attempt to improve ones forecasting accuracy isn’t necessarily the way to go, but this is the approach taken right now within the scientific community and their reliance on Sir Isaac.

Now this leads to the question of “If not Newtonian physics, what else is there?”  My and other minority scientists’ reply is Quantum Mechanics.  So what does that mean?

More to come…

<em>Watch for Issue #7 of Thomas’ “Quantum Leap”, here on A Sky Full of Stars, on February 05, 2010.</em>

You can access all previous issues of “Quantum Leap”, here.

Quantum Leap: The Connection between Quantum Mechanics and the Universe

Friday, November 20th, 2009

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Guest author, Thomas Kennedy, features a twice-monthly series, Quantum Leap, wherein he guides readers through the fascinating world of quantum mechanics. This is Issue 002.

To have an intimate knowledge of the Cosmos, why is the study of the smallest of all things, the physics of Quantum Mechanics, so important?

The following video, How the Universe was Formed, illustrates the connections far better, visually and narratively, than I can using words alone:

Click here to view the video.

Watch for Issue #3, here, on December 4.

Quantum Leap: What the ?

Friday, November 6th, 2009

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Guest author, Thomas Kennedy, will feature a twice-monthly series, Quantum Leap, wherein he guides readers through the fascinating world of quantum mechanics.

What is the opposite of being a Theoretical Physicist?  How about someone outside of the military who developed what is commonly called A Dirty Bomb, back in the late 1970s?  While most of my college buddies at the University of the Pacific were working on designing the perfect beer bong, a fraternity brother and I designed a nuclear device the size of a beach ball that would catalyze reprocessed uranium from an old nuclear reactor facility and create an explosion such that it would spread radioactive particles across several miles.  Such was the result of a paper for a Special Topics course in Nuclear Terrorism 20 years ahead of it’s time.

With that work I backed into the world of Quantum Mechanics and the unique world that exists not based on certainty but probability.  It is akin to living your life inside a Las Vegas casino.  And yet, all of life that we see and experience each day, the nature of what we see as certain, shakes and shimmers and flies about in ways that are astounding.  Things we take for granted from the world of high school  physics, rules that we think are hard and fast, are beginning to be broken in ways we are only beginning to understand.

And with the start up of the Large Hadron Collider, the world of Quantum Mechanics is literally abuzz with possibilities. What better time to launch a blog on the subject of God (the God Particle), Creation, the nature of Space Time, and where to get a good hamburger …

Join me, here, on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of each month, for Quantum Leap.

Issue 001 – 2009Nov06:  What the ?

Consider, if you will, the possibility of living in an alternate universe, where action does not lead to reaction, where outcomes are determined by a toss of a coin, a statistical probability.  Imagine staying in bed all day and getting up to find $1 million dollars in your bank account.  Or working like a dog only to be paid $1.00.  (Well maybe in this economy that happens anyway.)

The literal world we live in, that we take for granted as being predictable, at the fundamental level , masks the craziness of the elements that make it up.  It is as if you had a jig saw puzzle whose pieces danced and blurred and spun in circles on your coffee table as you sought to try and assemble the picture on the cover of the box that you poured the contents out of.

The world of Quantum Mechanics appears at times to be unapproachable but that isn’t always the case, it just depends on how one approaches the subject.  My purpose here is to sort of lead a tour guide through the world of quantum mechanics and a way to think about the subject that can help to make sense of that world and what it means to our readers.

We’ll begin our tour with Issue #2.  Watch for it, here, on November 20.