Horizon's How Small Is The Universe

[Joseph C.]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01mmrc0/Horizon_20122013_How_Small_is_the_Universe/

Ex-Pat Shield is required for those outside of the U.K.

What a mind-boggling programme.

Difficult to know where to start with this one. Some of the components have been done before but it put them all together very nicely - I feel a great unification is about to happen in physics.

• The speed of light in space-time appears to not be constant.
  An hypothesis as to why gravity appears to be so weak when it is actually very strong.
  An excellent visual interpretation of string theory (although really it should be called The String or 'M' Hypothesis :x ).
  An admirable attempt at explaining extra-dimensions.
  Fundamental particles not being fundamental.
  Scientists splitting electrons into three sub-particles.
  Photons having different energy states.
  The fundamental surface of space-time is rough.
  The coolest set of Russian Dolls.

Breath-taking stuff.

 

[amberwolf]

I will have to look that one up and watch it (probably someone will YT it).

My personal feeling (without being capable of understanding the mathematics underlying all these things) has been that there is no actual "matter" and that everything is some state of energy flux, with the flux (change) being what makes various things appear what they are, from interactions with each other. When "string theory" began to be popularized and I heard of it, it sounded rather like what I imagined, though I hadn't really visualized it as "vibrations" and ST had been thought of a lot longer ago than I had even pondered such questions. :lol:

I am one of those people that wants to know so much more about things than I can really ever know, partly because I can't deal with the math necessary to really understand how these things work, and partly because no one really DOES understand exactly how these things work, so they can explain it to me (us).

I watch the various popularized treatments of theories, and try to get thru various "online course videos" that explain them (mostly I glaze over at the math terminology though), and I visualize what might be happening, and how it does so, from those explanations. Some things I feel like I *almost* grasp something just beyond what they are explaining, something that ties stuff together, but there's somehting missing that keeps me from quite making the connections, or my mind loses track of some of the things I was holding onto, and I lose the moment. It is frustrating, but it is probably how lots of people end up in their ponderings. More frustrating is that I cannot express my visualizations to anyone; they are only in my head with no way to get them out short of pure visual telepathy. But that's ok--they're probably very wrong anyway.

 

[Joseph C.]

I will have to look that one up and watch it (probably someone will YT it).

http://www.free-tv-video-online.me/player/gorillavid.php?id=7whc7iq24ko9

There is always another way.

Yes, maths was never my strong point either. Besides mathematical physics is highly specialised. As for visualisation, well the only way to get something like that out is to animate it using computer graphics.

I hope after CERN has run its course that they find a knew method of finding out about sub-atomic particles rather than building larger and larger colliders. They will never be able to build a big enough particle accelerator to get down to the smallest scales. There must be another way.