Its about time

So I have had a self instigated moratorium on blogging for a while. Largely due to good weather (don't fancy being stuck at the computer for too long), good wine (couple of 'scoops' at the end of the day and I'm poleaxed), too much work (although I am conscious of the Steerpike maxim from my last attempt at this excuse - "you choose how much you want to work" - a little simplistic for my ethos but a grain of truth nonetheless) and too many end-of-term events. Anyway, with holiday season almost upon us I thought I'd better get this one off my, errr..., chest.

I've recently downloaded an app for my iPad (device review is long overdue - suffice to say 10:10) and it has pushed many buttons for me, the app I mean. I find a great satisfaction in knowing that mechanical watches with ever miniaturised and complex, accurate movements are manufactured - yes I love watches - I am also fascinated with Astronomy, thats the study of celestial objects not the study of terrestrial newspaper fillers. If you were confused by that reference you're probably a sagitarian - they always struggle with concealed irony. This app then, observatory, is designed for people like me - in fact its so perfect I sat there wondering for a brief egocentric-moment if I had actually commissioned it.

I'm not sure the purpose of the app is immediately clear, nor should it be, I have used it to marvel at the differences in various measures of time, to explore the heliocentric movement of the planets, to examine the "accuracy" of time at different points in history, to discover the position of celestial bodies at specific historic events and finally and most importantly to explore the physical, conceptual and philosophical nature of time. I have flicked back and forth between graffiti-pedia and the app grappling with the meaning of Solar Time, the Solar Day, Sidereal Time, The Equation of Time and now I am astounded by the complexity of evaluating what we simply call "a day".

Eventually, as is its wont, my mind drifted off to the subject of time perception. I remember reading that in reality our brain processes a sequence of images and uses "trickery" to make us believe we are seeing a continuous stream rather than this continual stream of separate stills. If one were able to process more images, one would in effect see the world in slow-motion (relatively speaking). This is one reason why we can't catch the fly with chopsticks, it processes many more images per second than we do. So where did this lead me? beyond the capacity to reason is the honest answer, so I was able to experiment - the app can "animate" the solar system with a number of different frequencies. Year, Month, Phase, Day, Hour and Minute. Enough for eons of experimentation. I'll publish the results when I'm done.

Sent from my iPad

Existential Angst

Recently I have been reading Steerpike’s blog (http://beyondswelterskitchen.blogspot.com/) and we have entered into some offline discussions that have prompted me to want to “blog”. So please any complaints, leave on his page.

The human condition is a confounding one, just when I have managed to (re-)bury my head in the sand with regard to the perpetually perplexing question of “where do we come from?” something shakes me back to awe of existence. I watched a TV programme the other night on BT Vision (whole other blog about this) that presented the current belief about black holes. It was partly about general relativity’s failure to accommodate them as real, which I’m fairly sure wasn’t new to me. Also, the fact that super-brains have been exploring quantum mechanics as a method to explain the bewildering fact that they shouldn’t exist, even though there is significant physical evidence, was vaguely in my consciousness. Quantum mechanics is the physics of the very small and the belief was that the core of a black hole is indeed very small, albeit on a stellar scale initially. This field called quantum gravity has failed completely – if I understand the programme correctly. So I’m left feeling frustrated that humanity still doesn’t know the answer – although surely we’ll establish that it was 42 after all – but excited by the fact that the quest is still on.

There was a moment where anyone in close proximity to me would have heard the penny clunk on the floor of my scull. It’s safe to say, if you were interested in this subject previously, you have already seen images of a 2-dimensional representation of space-time warping under immense mass.
This image has never really helped me understand this concept. Yes, I can imagine the ball-bearing rolling across the sheet and circling around a heavier ball-bearing, but still what does this say. The moment of understanding was when this programme declared that this “warping” was gravity. Gravity is the warping of spacetime. To labour the analogy to breaking point – if a heavier ball was laid on a cloth, it would create a steeper fall, indicating a stronger force of gravity. I thought I’d share this epiphany as it has now opened a whole new bag of worms (worm-holes surely) for me. So gravity is us sliding down a 3-D slope! Taking this concept and trying to perceive it in 3 dimensions is fascinating. Let’s say you are sitting in a train carriage at the far end and the opposite end is heading into the black hole. The very fabric of space will be warping, from the outside we would perceive the carriage stretching to a thin point as it sucked into the black hole. But what would you see if you were on the carriage? Would you see space and time stretch out in front of you? Eek this is too much to hold in my brain, I’m off to watch Dr. Who....