No, I did not discover some quantum wormhole that allows me to post from the future.
Because some of these posts read best in a certain order, and I could not find any easy way to have this blogger tool show posts in "oldest first" order, I've had to hack the dates of my posts to make them appear in the order I would like to have them appear. So pretty much ignore the post dates. Sorry about that.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Tripp, WTF??!!!
Yup, that was my wife's reaction to telling her about my planned trip to CERN. It was a bombshell, for sure, and she actually handled it very well, and she certainly did not use explicit language, and I am grateful for all of that. I really am. And I know she doesn't like to hear my 'explanations,' which to her are rationalizations, and I love the fact that I have her to point that out to me, to keep me grounded, but I need to give an explanation, which might be a rationalization, and if you don't know the difference go ahead and google it. Seriously, if you haven't figured out that the internet, the web, google, is the biggest baddest bestest encyclopedia you have ever seen then you just simply do NOT want to learn. And that is okay, do your own thing, as my hippie-self would say. But if for some odd reason, perhaps curiosity, which is innate in most of us and will probably be found to be one of the basic emotions in our brain and will have an actual cluster of neurons associated with it, but I'm rambling, if for some reason you want to hear my explanation then read on.
I'm setting the ground rules here, kinda copying from John Scalzi, who is an excellent sci fi writer and who has the whatever blog (I think he still has it) and I'll admit right from the start I prefer to learn from the best and I doubt anything I do is original and everything here is simply a retread from the geniuses before me so accuse me of being a copycat or whatever, I don't care. I'm mostly copying from the *best*, and John Scalzi is one of the best.
The thing is this is *my* blog and at the moment I am allowing public comment but I will turn that off if I need to, either for spam (does it really account for 70% of all internet traffic??) or for any reason whatsoever so put that in your pipe and smoke it! And don't even try the free speech thing on me, youngster, because I was all over it when you were doing poo poo in your didees and I don't put up with willful ignorance. Not here. I'm gonna call stupid stupid and ignorant ignorant and if you don't like it take a hike son, take a hike.
Back to the topic - why CERN, why the large hadron particle accelerator?!
I'm not totally sure. I don't believe in destiny, I believe in reality. I believe very much in reality. And yet particle physics has always been a passion of mine. I want to know the complete nature of reality. It is an itch that I simply must scratch. I have always had it, and I used to say that when I die if I get to meet God and if I get one question I'll ask "What is the complete nature of reality?"
Yeah, I used to say that, but I don't anymore. Why not? Because I was fortunate enough to briefly share an office for a few months with an incredibly brilliant new graduate from MIT and I told him my "question for God" story. Hey, it is an amusing story and it gets people to talk about themselves and you can find out the most interesting things when you get people talking about themselves. Not everyone, I suppose, but an MIT graduate?! You know that guy is going to be very interesting. Seriously, do you know how hard it is to get in to MIT?! For me - it was the University of Illinois - with no questions asked because I lived in Illinois and our family had four children (did I say I was the oldest) and while my Dad had a good job, working for IBM (back when IBM was good to work for), we were not made of money and, as Tom Cruise playing Joel Goodman said in Risky Business - "U of I here I come!" If you don't know the movie you should. Great movie.
So I went to U of I, third in the nation in Engineering, woohoo!! (Behind MIT and CalTech). That is what we told each other when we were studying our butts off while those at Western Illinois were having all the good parties. Or so we thought. After college I found out *everybody* thought they came from the third best Engineering college in the nation. Nobody gave a crap that I came from the U of I. So what was all my hard work for? I'm not sure. Maybe it would have paid off if the market was tight for Engineers, but luckily when I graduated everybody and his brother was trying to hire engineers. A lot of the work was working on weapons, but that is a story for another time.
Anyway, Gabby, (pronounced "Gobby," a nickname. Obviously) the brilliant young man from MIT said something nobody else said when I told my "question for God" story. He said "What if God answers "I dunno, I just did it. I'm God. I can do whatever I want. You're so smart you figure it out for yourself." I laughed at the time, because it was a clever response, and we were bored, passing time doing some stupid boring task to make some rich man richer, and we didn't want to get to the truly hard, boring work that would really make some rich man richer, so we had time to laugh. And we did. Gabby quit IBM after about six months. I told you he was smart.
But I stayed. Because I had obligations. And plenty of time to think. And Gabby's quip began to eat at me. And I saw that while my idea of asking God made for a funny story, and he had made it funnier, I might not actually get the chance to ask God that question, and even if I could, I might not get an answer. And even if I did get an answer, it might not be the answer I want. Which reminds me - do I believe in God? Yeah, pretty much. I'm spiritual. Let's get that out of the way right now. But that topic, dear reader, is for another time, and I could fill volumes on that topic.
But I digress once more. Why CERN? When I was in high school we took a field trip to the Fermilab in Batavia IL. I was lucky to live kinda close to it, and I was lucky to be good at sports so I could also be good at school and not get hazed, and I was lucky enough to listen to good advice from good people, so I went to FermiLab on a HS Physics class tour. I also saw Armstrong walk on the moon when I was about twelve, and I drank that koolaid, long and deep. I drank that koolaid.
So science and exploration got ahold of me good and hard, and stuck with me while I lived life and made money and survived long enough to reproduce. And particle physics was nice enough to give me interesting questions without the answers, bless its heart. And those questions stayed with me.
So fast forward about thirty five years and here I am, some free time and the best research tool at my finger tips. So what would you do? I should mention that at work (and also at home too) the internet porn thing was out of the question. It gets boring, too. So I did not do what you would do, my secretive reader.
I studied. That is what I did. My main areas were politics and economics, mostly because at the time those were having the biggest impact on my life, and not in a good way. I pretty much figured those two topics out (there are some more topics for future posts), and then I got back into quantum mechanics and particle physics.
Well shoot, the whole time I had been making rich people richer and also having kids and raising them, helping my wife, there were whole battalions of other people, smart people, finding out some of the answers for me! And they were willing to tell me about it! I didn't have to read between the lines and interpolate and consider the underlying motives like you have to do when reading about politics or money.
No. They just came right out and told the truth as best they knew it, and were even willing to admit mistakes if proven wrong.
How refreshing. Really. It reminded me of why I had probably chosen science in the first place, although when I was a youth that was mostly done out of gut instinct.
But dammit this post has really gone on long enough. Now I'm gonna have to proofread it all and that is a big chore.
So why CERN, and why now?
Particle physics is incredibly interesting, and at this moment it is also incredibly topical. You think energy research is not important?! Do you know that CERN will hopefully be starting up again in November, knock on wood, and if so the physics world will be flooded with a deluge of brand new data? More on that later.
And yes, the internet is incredible for research but sometimes you just gotta be there. You gotta be there in person, if you get the chance. Watching the world on TV is OK, and playing a persona in a simulation can be very very compelling, but sometimes you simply must leave the Matrix.
Because reality is where it is at, dude. Reality is where it is at.
I'm setting the ground rules here, kinda copying from John Scalzi, who is an excellent sci fi writer and who has the whatever blog (I think he still has it) and I'll admit right from the start I prefer to learn from the best and I doubt anything I do is original and everything here is simply a retread from the geniuses before me so accuse me of being a copycat or whatever, I don't care. I'm mostly copying from the *best*, and John Scalzi is one of the best.
The thing is this is *my* blog and at the moment I am allowing public comment but I will turn that off if I need to, either for spam (does it really account for 70% of all internet traffic??) or for any reason whatsoever so put that in your pipe and smoke it! And don't even try the free speech thing on me, youngster, because I was all over it when you were doing poo poo in your didees and I don't put up with willful ignorance. Not here. I'm gonna call stupid stupid and ignorant ignorant and if you don't like it take a hike son, take a hike.
Back to the topic - why CERN, why the large hadron particle accelerator?!
I'm not totally sure. I don't believe in destiny, I believe in reality. I believe very much in reality. And yet particle physics has always been a passion of mine. I want to know the complete nature of reality. It is an itch that I simply must scratch. I have always had it, and I used to say that when I die if I get to meet God and if I get one question I'll ask "What is the complete nature of reality?"
Yeah, I used to say that, but I don't anymore. Why not? Because I was fortunate enough to briefly share an office for a few months with an incredibly brilliant new graduate from MIT and I told him my "question for God" story. Hey, it is an amusing story and it gets people to talk about themselves and you can find out the most interesting things when you get people talking about themselves. Not everyone, I suppose, but an MIT graduate?! You know that guy is going to be very interesting. Seriously, do you know how hard it is to get in to MIT?! For me - it was the University of Illinois - with no questions asked because I lived in Illinois and our family had four children (did I say I was the oldest) and while my Dad had a good job, working for IBM (back when IBM was good to work for), we were not made of money and, as Tom Cruise playing Joel Goodman said in Risky Business - "U of I here I come!" If you don't know the movie you should. Great movie.
So I went to U of I, third in the nation in Engineering, woohoo!! (Behind MIT and CalTech). That is what we told each other when we were studying our butts off while those at Western Illinois were having all the good parties. Or so we thought. After college I found out *everybody* thought they came from the third best Engineering college in the nation. Nobody gave a crap that I came from the U of I. So what was all my hard work for? I'm not sure. Maybe it would have paid off if the market was tight for Engineers, but luckily when I graduated everybody and his brother was trying to hire engineers. A lot of the work was working on weapons, but that is a story for another time.
Anyway, Gabby, (pronounced "Gobby," a nickname. Obviously) the brilliant young man from MIT said something nobody else said when I told my "question for God" story. He said "What if God answers "I dunno, I just did it. I'm God. I can do whatever I want. You're so smart you figure it out for yourself." I laughed at the time, because it was a clever response, and we were bored, passing time doing some stupid boring task to make some rich man richer, and we didn't want to get to the truly hard, boring work that would really make some rich man richer, so we had time to laugh. And we did. Gabby quit IBM after about six months. I told you he was smart.
But I stayed. Because I had obligations. And plenty of time to think. And Gabby's quip began to eat at me. And I saw that while my idea of asking God made for a funny story, and he had made it funnier, I might not actually get the chance to ask God that question, and even if I could, I might not get an answer. And even if I did get an answer, it might not be the answer I want. Which reminds me - do I believe in God? Yeah, pretty much. I'm spiritual. Let's get that out of the way right now. But that topic, dear reader, is for another time, and I could fill volumes on that topic.
But I digress once more. Why CERN? When I was in high school we took a field trip to the Fermilab in Batavia IL. I was lucky to live kinda close to it, and I was lucky to be good at sports so I could also be good at school and not get hazed, and I was lucky enough to listen to good advice from good people, so I went to FermiLab on a HS Physics class tour. I also saw Armstrong walk on the moon when I was about twelve, and I drank that koolaid, long and deep. I drank that koolaid.
So science and exploration got ahold of me good and hard, and stuck with me while I lived life and made money and survived long enough to reproduce. And particle physics was nice enough to give me interesting questions without the answers, bless its heart. And those questions stayed with me.
So fast forward about thirty five years and here I am, some free time and the best research tool at my finger tips. So what would you do? I should mention that at work (and also at home too) the internet porn thing was out of the question. It gets boring, too. So I did not do what you would do, my secretive reader.
I studied. That is what I did. My main areas were politics and economics, mostly because at the time those were having the biggest impact on my life, and not in a good way. I pretty much figured those two topics out (there are some more topics for future posts), and then I got back into quantum mechanics and particle physics.
Well shoot, the whole time I had been making rich people richer and also having kids and raising them, helping my wife, there were whole battalions of other people, smart people, finding out some of the answers for me! And they were willing to tell me about it! I didn't have to read between the lines and interpolate and consider the underlying motives like you have to do when reading about politics or money.
No. They just came right out and told the truth as best they knew it, and were even willing to admit mistakes if proven wrong.
How refreshing. Really. It reminded me of why I had probably chosen science in the first place, although when I was a youth that was mostly done out of gut instinct.
But dammit this post has really gone on long enough. Now I'm gonna have to proofread it all and that is a big chore.
So why CERN, and why now?
Particle physics is incredibly interesting, and at this moment it is also incredibly topical. You think energy research is not important?! Do you know that CERN will hopefully be starting up again in November, knock on wood, and if so the physics world will be flooded with a deluge of brand new data? More on that later.
And yes, the internet is incredible for research but sometimes you just gotta be there. You gotta be there in person, if you get the chance. Watching the world on TV is OK, and playing a persona in a simulation can be very very compelling, but sometimes you simply must leave the Matrix.
Because reality is where it is at, dude. Reality is where it is at.
Monday, December 29, 2008
My CERN visit is ON!
I have received confirmation from CERN that I will be joining an existing group for a tour of CERN. I am very excited about this! The group I will join is from Wellington College in the UK. I know little about this college, but I don't think that will matter much. I was very fortunate to be able to spend about six months in England years ago, doing work for IBM at the Hursley site, and overall that was one of the best experiences of my life. I was able to live, with my family, in a rented house. My daughter was accepted to start Kindergarten there, and I was very grateful that they allowed her to attend class at no fee. I loved living the regular day to day life with the people there, and it was probably the first time my eyes were opened to the fact that so much of what I KNEW in the US was either untrue, or taken for granted. My perspective on a lot of things changed greatly, and even though I came back to the US feeling like somewhat of a misfit I am very grateful to have had the opportunity of taking that trip. I must admit I owe IBM a great debt for giving me that opportunity.
But enough of that. No more looking back. I am going to look forward to my upcoming trip! I am not going to disclose the actual date of the trip, because of the internet and the security thing and all that, but I don't think that matters too much. In general the trip is in November and I will be preparing for it!
One thing I do know about the internet is that it can be a great place to get help from people, so if anyone has any travel tips for someone going to spend a week in Switzerland I am happy to hear them. I can get the weather info and directions and things like that from the web, but I am looking for any insider tips or where to eat in Geneva and any other places, besides CERN, that I absolutely must visit.
But enough of that. No more looking back. I am going to look forward to my upcoming trip! I am not going to disclose the actual date of the trip, because of the internet and the security thing and all that, but I don't think that matters too much. In general the trip is in November and I will be preparing for it!
One thing I do know about the internet is that it can be a great place to get help from people, so if anyone has any travel tips for someone going to spend a week in Switzerland I am happy to hear them. I can get the weather info and directions and things like that from the web, but I am looking for any insider tips or where to eat in Geneva and any other places, besides CERN, that I absolutely must visit.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Reality and blowing your mind.
OK, dear readers, it is time to freak out. Time to blow our minds. I'm gonna talk about Tripp and entanglement. Please note that I have bit the bullet and finally ordered some college texts on this subject, but they have not arrived yet, so I am going to be exposing my current ignorance here. At this time I am not speaking as an expert. I admit it. I'm just letting you see what happens in my noggin when I try to learn stuff.
Why should you care about this? I have no idea. If you don't, then skip on down, skip on down. If you stay, though, you'll hear about a really cool puzzle that just might blow your mind. I'm serious. And it is all legal, too. Safe for work as well. I promise.
Come with me to Tripp at age ten or so. I've picked up a layman's book about Einstein and relativity from my Grandpa, a guy who started out very humbly as one of about a dozen farmer kids who was so shy he ended up marrying one of about a dozen farmer kids when he was, like thirty-five and she was like twenty. My grandpa led a very quiet, shy, humble life, and never got to college. I don't even know if he finished high school. Looking back I have no idea how he got that book on relativity, but he did have it, and he gave it to me to read, and that book was perfect for me. I think my Grandpa was a REALLY smart dude who never reached his potential. That book explained, in layman's terms, what was going on in Physics from around 1900 to 1930 or so and what Einstein had done with his theories of General and Special Relativity. That book stopped before quantum mechanics, but that was OK, because it did a great job of filling the gap from Newton through Einstein to Quantum Mechanics.
As an aside, I have started to think that how we teach modern physics might be kinda wacked. It is interesting to get the historical perspectives, and it does follow a logical path, except it also requires the student to learn a subject and then unlearn at least parts of it to learn the next step, because that is what has happened with Physics - there is a breakthrough in understanding and the geniuses explore that and learn tons about it but then reach a dead end, and it seems as if all of them need to die off before another breakthrough happens, usually from someone who is not encumbered with all the traditional thinking.
Maybe I am full of it, I dunno, but it seems like there is some of that going on. At the same time there is also unchanging reality, so there is an absolutely objective external reality upon which every experiment and every theory and every hypothesis can be measured. Thank God. Seriously. Because unlike the endless debates that can happen with subjective things like religion, morals, people, politics, societies, etc, in physics there really is one absolute standard for what reality is. Reality is that standard.
And yes, I take that as a matter of faith, I can't prove it, and I don't want to get into that debate at this time, although it would be a really good topic for another post.
So reality - can you dig it? Reality is absolute truth. Can you appreciate how great that is? I do. It is so refreshing to have an ultimate arbiter. Reality is NOT a matter of opinion, and I thank God that there is an absolute reality. I think this is a wonderful blessing that, in my opinion, too few people notice and appreciate.
Let's put aside that stuff for a minute, put aside the past and seeing how we got here, and I'm asking you, for the next few minutes, to just trust me, knowing that I am giving an imperfect explanation of things that are still very cool and I would dearly love to hear corrected or clarified. My quest, actually, is to correct my understanding of quantum physics, so I greatly appreciate any input on this topic. But I think I will end this post and cut to the chase in the next one.
Why should you care about this? I have no idea. If you don't, then skip on down, skip on down. If you stay, though, you'll hear about a really cool puzzle that just might blow your mind. I'm serious. And it is all legal, too. Safe for work as well. I promise.
Come with me to Tripp at age ten or so. I've picked up a layman's book about Einstein and relativity from my Grandpa, a guy who started out very humbly as one of about a dozen farmer kids who was so shy he ended up marrying one of about a dozen farmer kids when he was, like thirty-five and she was like twenty. My grandpa led a very quiet, shy, humble life, and never got to college. I don't even know if he finished high school. Looking back I have no idea how he got that book on relativity, but he did have it, and he gave it to me to read, and that book was perfect for me. I think my Grandpa was a REALLY smart dude who never reached his potential. That book explained, in layman's terms, what was going on in Physics from around 1900 to 1930 or so and what Einstein had done with his theories of General and Special Relativity. That book stopped before quantum mechanics, but that was OK, because it did a great job of filling the gap from Newton through Einstein to Quantum Mechanics.
As an aside, I have started to think that how we teach modern physics might be kinda wacked. It is interesting to get the historical perspectives, and it does follow a logical path, except it also requires the student to learn a subject and then unlearn at least parts of it to learn the next step, because that is what has happened with Physics - there is a breakthrough in understanding and the geniuses explore that and learn tons about it but then reach a dead end, and it seems as if all of them need to die off before another breakthrough happens, usually from someone who is not encumbered with all the traditional thinking.
Maybe I am full of it, I dunno, but it seems like there is some of that going on. At the same time there is also unchanging reality, so there is an absolutely objective external reality upon which every experiment and every theory and every hypothesis can be measured. Thank God. Seriously. Because unlike the endless debates that can happen with subjective things like religion, morals, people, politics, societies, etc, in physics there really is one absolute standard for what reality is. Reality is that standard.
And yes, I take that as a matter of faith, I can't prove it, and I don't want to get into that debate at this time, although it would be a really good topic for another post.
So reality - can you dig it? Reality is absolute truth. Can you appreciate how great that is? I do. It is so refreshing to have an ultimate arbiter. Reality is NOT a matter of opinion, and I thank God that there is an absolute reality. I think this is a wonderful blessing that, in my opinion, too few people notice and appreciate.
Let's put aside that stuff for a minute, put aside the past and seeing how we got here, and I'm asking you, for the next few minutes, to just trust me, knowing that I am giving an imperfect explanation of things that are still very cool and I would dearly love to hear corrected or clarified. My quest, actually, is to correct my understanding of quantum physics, so I greatly appreciate any input on this topic. But I think I will end this post and cut to the chase in the next one.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Things you think you know but you are wrong
If you are going to come along with me then you are going to have to accept the fact that there are things you think you know, assumptions that make sense for you and which have worked in your life, but assumptions that are just plain wrong.
I want to take a little time giving an example of common assumptions about reality that are useful but completely wrong. And yeah, for those who have taken notice of certain cultish religions this does sound a little like a pitch for them, but I promise that is not what this is. I am not talking about spiritual things here, I am talking about cold hard reality.
I assume you have all seen optical illusions, and you all accept the fact that sometimes, in some situations, what you think you see is not actually what is there. As scientists are finding out more and more about how our brain does visual processing, they are starting to find out some interesting things. For example, you all know about our blind spot and how it works. You've probably seen demonstrations of your blind spot. I learned about it back in high school. What I did *not* know until recently, though, is that our brains actually 'fill in' the blind spot with what we see around the blind spot. I think this even applies to an edge that we see going through the blind spot. We will see an unbroken line going through the blind spot. Our brain fills in the blank and we see what may not, actually, be there.
Moving on from our blind spot, let us go on to the act of throwing and catching a ball. When I was younger I greatly enjoyed playing baseball, and I still love coaching and playing softball. When I throw a baseball I look at the receiver's glove and I try to throw the ball straight to the glove. If I am really good I can come pretty close. A major league pitcher may have "pin-point" accuracy, meaning they can throw to an area maybe a foot wide in each direction.
Did you notice what I said though? I used 'they' as the third person singular pronoun for indeterminate gender when I should have used 'he/she'. That usage of 'they' used to really bother me, and it is still an incorrect usage, but I have almost totally given in to the current usage. I know why the usage is changing, we used to use 'he' but that assumes too much and we simply do NOT have a good word to use for the third person singular pronoun, and I also know that good writers should write around the problem, but those people are dying off, and I concede to the change, even though it is simply incorrect.
But what I really meant with my questions is did you notice that I said I throw the ball _straight_ to the glove, but clearly that is not the path the ball takes. The ball takes an arc, pretty much a parabola, rising up and then dropping down. In addition, good pitchers can curve the ball even more, and plenty of batters have swung as best they can at where they think the ball is and have missed the ball, so obviously they did not really know where the ball was.
Even if all we know is that the ball starts at my hand and eventually hits the catcher's mitt, we still think we know the path the ball takes. Maybe we use the wrong word like "straight" but we know, in our gut, that a baseball leaving my hand must have followed an arc to get to the catcher's mitt. If we watch from first or third base we can see the arc of the ball without much trouble. But think about that. For us to know that the ball travels an arc we have to see it along the way. If we had a screen up hiding the flight of the ball, and if all we could see was the pitcher releasing the ball and then the catcher catching it, we would assume that the ball traveled the arc because we have seen that a million times, and maybe we have even measured the force of gravity and we can predict, with great accuracy, where the ball is even if we do not see it. So even when we cannot actually see every single position of the ball along the way, we know the path of the ball. We know it so well we have the science of ballistics and aeronautics and we can predict with extreme accuracy the path of a projectile and the orbit of a satellite. Up here, at the macro level, we 'know' stuff even when we don't really observe it. We make assumptions, and a lot of times we make assumptions without even knowing it, and that usually works out pretty well for us, although that is a topic big enough for another post.
Moving on to the quantum level though, where the moving objects are extremely tiny, a lot of our assumptions are just plain wrong, and that is pretty cool, because it gives us a puzzle with an absolute answer as well. It gives us an interesting problem to think about, a puzzle that has an objective answer, and that is worth a fortune.
At the quantum level there are only a couple ways and times when we can 'see' an object. There are ways to do it, take my word for it, but unlike big things like a baseball at the quantum level we pretty much can only get brief glimpses of quantum things with a lot of blind spots in between.
The quantum phenomena that really got my attention back in my youth was an experiment that can be done with photons. Photons are one of the basic objects way down at the quantum level, and for right now as a simplification let's just talk about the photons that are the smallest bit of visible light. Some of the things that can happen to these photons are creation, movement, interaction with other quantum objects, and destruction. From way up here at the macro level, studying optics, we know that light more or less goes in a straight line, it can be reflected, it can be refracted, and it can be absorbed by matter. We know other stuff about it too, a lot, but forget about that for now.
Here is the experiment: Say you have a light source and you shine it onto a semi-silvered mirror. By that I mean a piece of glass that has a partial mirror surface on it, like the 'two way' mirrors they use in stores to observe people to make sure they are not stealing. Assume that the mirror lets half the light through and the mirror reflects the other half. Assume we angle the mirror so that some of the light is reflected and the rest of the light is refracted through the glass. By the way, this is a real experiment that really has been done zillions of times.
So far I admit this is rather boring, but stick with me. What if use semi-silvered mirrors to split the light beam into two parts which each take separate paths but then the separate beams get recombined later by using another semi-silvered mirror?
How can we do this? We take the reflected beam of light, the part that reflected off the semi-silvered mirror, and we reflect that beam again with full mirrors a couple times so that it goes out and then back in again and it gets combined with the original beam by using another semi-silvered mirror. I can't draw the diagram for this, but the light that is reflected by the first semi-silvered mirror takes a left, then a right, goes parallel to the original beam, and then takes another right, then into a final semi-silvered mirror where it is reflected and re-joins the original beam. The part of the original beam that is refracted through the first semi-silvered mirror goes straight for a distance and then through another angled semi-silvered mirror, where it combines with the detoured beam. Think of the light as a marching band going down a street, then some of the band takes a detour to the left for a block, turns right and goes down a parallel street for a couple blocks, and then turns right and then left again to join the rest of the band that had walked straight and never turned.
One of the interesting aspect to light is that, since 1909 or so, it was known that while light moved and bounced like a stream of tiny particles, it also had some wave-like properties. Specifically when light passes through a slit in a barrier the light that comes through on the other sides shows interference patterns. These interference patterns happen when waves interact, and viola (yeah, I know, puns and all that), light flies like an arrow and bounces like a ball and has interference patterns like a wave. For a long time, even up to the time when I was born in the 1950s, there was a debate about whether light was a wave or a particle. (As an aside, it is good to know that a 'false dilemma' is a classic logical fallacy. Keep your eyes open for them.) The debate is now over. The 'particle or wave' thing is a false dilemma. Photons are neither, they are a localized waveform that has the properties of both a wave and a particle. How stupid were we to think light had to be either a wave or a particle? We were like the Greeks saying "Earth Air Water and Fire." But I digress. Back to our experiment.
We split the light, then recombine it, and then pass it through a slit, and we see interference patterns just as if the light had not actually been split at all. Well, you say, what is the big deal? And you are right, it is not really a big deal - we have shown that photons can interact with each other to form interference patterns. We already knew that. And also, did you notice the two ways a photon could escape from our experiment? I forgot to mention that, but those paths don't really matter.
The mind blowing thing is this. What if we change the photon generator in our experiment in such a way that it sends out not a gazzilion photons in a beam, but a single photon at a time. Can we do that?! Oh yeah, we can do that. People have done this.
Let us follow a single photon instead of a beam of photons. We are able to detect when a single photon is created and emitted. Can we tell if it is reflected or refracted through the first semi-silvered mirror? Oh yeah, we can do that, by placing detectors in each of the paths, and when we do that we will see that the photon is either detected on the reflection path or on the refracted path through the first mirror, one path or the other. Trust me. The photon is detected either on one path or on the other, and never on both paths at the same time. This experiment has been done a zillion times, but so what, this is about as interesting as flipping a coin and seeing that half the times it is heads and half the time it is tails, and never both at once. Exactly so. This is boring, but what is not boring is the fact that if we remove the detectors and let the photon pass all the way through the slit at the end, taking only one path or the other but never both guess what? We will see an interference pattern at the end.
No lie.
A single photon takes one of two paths, paths which for all I know could be very long paths and of differing lengths, and yet when that photon goes through the final slit it will show an interference pattern.
Go ahead, say it - WTF?!! Interference patterns are caused by photons interacting with each other. Also, there is no such thing as half a photon. There just isn't. Quantum means no halfsies any more. Things are divided this far and no further.
This is pretty much what I learned back in the Seventies. I'm pretty sure that is all we knew back then, or at least it was all I could get in a college level text book at the undergraduate level. Keep in mind this was pre-internet, and at the time I was looking at some other really cool things that could make me money, so at the time I didn't really dive very deeply into this.
This is one of the questions which I set aside and which gnawed at me off and on for over thirty years. I'm pretty sure I know we now have an answer for this, and I'm pretty sure I know what the answer is,
but I need to save that for another post.
Can anyone else see why this is such a great puzzle to work on?
I want to take a little time giving an example of common assumptions about reality that are useful but completely wrong. And yeah, for those who have taken notice of certain cultish religions this does sound a little like a pitch for them, but I promise that is not what this is. I am not talking about spiritual things here, I am talking about cold hard reality.
I assume you have all seen optical illusions, and you all accept the fact that sometimes, in some situations, what you think you see is not actually what is there. As scientists are finding out more and more about how our brain does visual processing, they are starting to find out some interesting things. For example, you all know about our blind spot and how it works. You've probably seen demonstrations of your blind spot. I learned about it back in high school. What I did *not* know until recently, though, is that our brains actually 'fill in' the blind spot with what we see around the blind spot. I think this even applies to an edge that we see going through the blind spot. We will see an unbroken line going through the blind spot. Our brain fills in the blank and we see what may not, actually, be there.
Moving on from our blind spot, let us go on to the act of throwing and catching a ball. When I was younger I greatly enjoyed playing baseball, and I still love coaching and playing softball. When I throw a baseball I look at the receiver's glove and I try to throw the ball straight to the glove. If I am really good I can come pretty close. A major league pitcher may have "pin-point" accuracy, meaning they can throw to an area maybe a foot wide in each direction.
Did you notice what I said though? I used 'they' as the third person singular pronoun for indeterminate gender when I should have used 'he/she'. That usage of 'they' used to really bother me, and it is still an incorrect usage, but I have almost totally given in to the current usage. I know why the usage is changing, we used to use 'he' but that assumes too much and we simply do NOT have a good word to use for the third person singular pronoun, and I also know that good writers should write around the problem, but those people are dying off, and I concede to the change, even though it is simply incorrect.
But what I really meant with my questions is did you notice that I said I throw the ball _straight_ to the glove, but clearly that is not the path the ball takes. The ball takes an arc, pretty much a parabola, rising up and then dropping down. In addition, good pitchers can curve the ball even more, and plenty of batters have swung as best they can at where they think the ball is and have missed the ball, so obviously they did not really know where the ball was.
Even if all we know is that the ball starts at my hand and eventually hits the catcher's mitt, we still think we know the path the ball takes. Maybe we use the wrong word like "straight" but we know, in our gut, that a baseball leaving my hand must have followed an arc to get to the catcher's mitt. If we watch from first or third base we can see the arc of the ball without much trouble. But think about that. For us to know that the ball travels an arc we have to see it along the way. If we had a screen up hiding the flight of the ball, and if all we could see was the pitcher releasing the ball and then the catcher catching it, we would assume that the ball traveled the arc because we have seen that a million times, and maybe we have even measured the force of gravity and we can predict, with great accuracy, where the ball is even if we do not see it. So even when we cannot actually see every single position of the ball along the way, we know the path of the ball. We know it so well we have the science of ballistics and aeronautics and we can predict with extreme accuracy the path of a projectile and the orbit of a satellite. Up here, at the macro level, we 'know' stuff even when we don't really observe it. We make assumptions, and a lot of times we make assumptions without even knowing it, and that usually works out pretty well for us, although that is a topic big enough for another post.
Moving on to the quantum level though, where the moving objects are extremely tiny, a lot of our assumptions are just plain wrong, and that is pretty cool, because it gives us a puzzle with an absolute answer as well. It gives us an interesting problem to think about, a puzzle that has an objective answer, and that is worth a fortune.
At the quantum level there are only a couple ways and times when we can 'see' an object. There are ways to do it, take my word for it, but unlike big things like a baseball at the quantum level we pretty much can only get brief glimpses of quantum things with a lot of blind spots in between.
The quantum phenomena that really got my attention back in my youth was an experiment that can be done with photons. Photons are one of the basic objects way down at the quantum level, and for right now as a simplification let's just talk about the photons that are the smallest bit of visible light. Some of the things that can happen to these photons are creation, movement, interaction with other quantum objects, and destruction. From way up here at the macro level, studying optics, we know that light more or less goes in a straight line, it can be reflected, it can be refracted, and it can be absorbed by matter. We know other stuff about it too, a lot, but forget about that for now.
Here is the experiment: Say you have a light source and you shine it onto a semi-silvered mirror. By that I mean a piece of glass that has a partial mirror surface on it, like the 'two way' mirrors they use in stores to observe people to make sure they are not stealing. Assume that the mirror lets half the light through and the mirror reflects the other half. Assume we angle the mirror so that some of the light is reflected and the rest of the light is refracted through the glass. By the way, this is a real experiment that really has been done zillions of times.
So far I admit this is rather boring, but stick with me. What if use semi-silvered mirrors to split the light beam into two parts which each take separate paths but then the separate beams get recombined later by using another semi-silvered mirror?
How can we do this? We take the reflected beam of light, the part that reflected off the semi-silvered mirror, and we reflect that beam again with full mirrors a couple times so that it goes out and then back in again and it gets combined with the original beam by using another semi-silvered mirror. I can't draw the diagram for this, but the light that is reflected by the first semi-silvered mirror takes a left, then a right, goes parallel to the original beam, and then takes another right, then into a final semi-silvered mirror where it is reflected and re-joins the original beam. The part of the original beam that is refracted through the first semi-silvered mirror goes straight for a distance and then through another angled semi-silvered mirror, where it combines with the detoured beam. Think of the light as a marching band going down a street, then some of the band takes a detour to the left for a block, turns right and goes down a parallel street for a couple blocks, and then turns right and then left again to join the rest of the band that had walked straight and never turned.
One of the interesting aspect to light is that, since 1909 or so, it was known that while light moved and bounced like a stream of tiny particles, it also had some wave-like properties. Specifically when light passes through a slit in a barrier the light that comes through on the other sides shows interference patterns. These interference patterns happen when waves interact, and viola (yeah, I know, puns and all that), light flies like an arrow and bounces like a ball and has interference patterns like a wave. For a long time, even up to the time when I was born in the 1950s, there was a debate about whether light was a wave or a particle. (As an aside, it is good to know that a 'false dilemma' is a classic logical fallacy. Keep your eyes open for them.) The debate is now over. The 'particle or wave' thing is a false dilemma. Photons are neither, they are a localized waveform that has the properties of both a wave and a particle. How stupid were we to think light had to be either a wave or a particle? We were like the Greeks saying "Earth Air Water and Fire." But I digress. Back to our experiment.
We split the light, then recombine it, and then pass it through a slit, and we see interference patterns just as if the light had not actually been split at all. Well, you say, what is the big deal? And you are right, it is not really a big deal - we have shown that photons can interact with each other to form interference patterns. We already knew that. And also, did you notice the two ways a photon could escape from our experiment? I forgot to mention that, but those paths don't really matter.
The mind blowing thing is this. What if we change the photon generator in our experiment in such a way that it sends out not a gazzilion photons in a beam, but a single photon at a time. Can we do that?! Oh yeah, we can do that. People have done this.
Let us follow a single photon instead of a beam of photons. We are able to detect when a single photon is created and emitted. Can we tell if it is reflected or refracted through the first semi-silvered mirror? Oh yeah, we can do that, by placing detectors in each of the paths, and when we do that we will see that the photon is either detected on the reflection path or on the refracted path through the first mirror, one path or the other. Trust me. The photon is detected either on one path or on the other, and never on both paths at the same time. This experiment has been done a zillion times, but so what, this is about as interesting as flipping a coin and seeing that half the times it is heads and half the time it is tails, and never both at once. Exactly so. This is boring, but what is not boring is the fact that if we remove the detectors and let the photon pass all the way through the slit at the end, taking only one path or the other but never both guess what? We will see an interference pattern at the end.
No lie.
A single photon takes one of two paths, paths which for all I know could be very long paths and of differing lengths, and yet when that photon goes through the final slit it will show an interference pattern.
Go ahead, say it - WTF?!! Interference patterns are caused by photons interacting with each other. Also, there is no such thing as half a photon. There just isn't. Quantum means no halfsies any more. Things are divided this far and no further.
This is pretty much what I learned back in the Seventies. I'm pretty sure that is all we knew back then, or at least it was all I could get in a college level text book at the undergraduate level. Keep in mind this was pre-internet, and at the time I was looking at some other really cool things that could make me money, so at the time I didn't really dive very deeply into this.
This is one of the questions which I set aside and which gnawed at me off and on for over thirty years. I'm pretty sure I know we now have an answer for this, and I'm pretty sure I know what the answer is,
but I need to save that for another post.
Can anyone else see why this is such a great puzzle to work on?
Friday, December 26, 2008
Entanglement, Information, and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
Time to get down to business. Every day life has kept me a little busy but no more excuses. I have found an excellent book, Entanglement Information and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. I have tried three other books, sort of "Quantum Mechanics for Dummies," and they were all pretty disappointing. But it seems to me that the book "Entanglement Information and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" will not disappoint. Granted the book is expensive, nearly $90, but so far it is worth it.
The author of the book, Gregg Jaeger, was a triple major in mathematics, philosophy, and physics at the U of W at Madison! My eldest recently graduated from Madison and I have great respect for that Institution. Granted it is no University of Illinois, my alma mater, but Wisconsin had reciprocity with Minnesota, and it is hard to argue with that.
Gregg Jaeger earned a doctorate at Boston University, and currently hold a professorship there, so the guy knows his stuff. Also, the book is current, having a copyright of 2009.
The book is dense, so I'm going to try to blog my way through it, starting with my next post.
The author of the book, Gregg Jaeger, was a triple major in mathematics, philosophy, and physics at the U of W at Madison! My eldest recently graduated from Madison and I have great respect for that Institution. Granted it is no University of Illinois, my alma mater, but Wisconsin had reciprocity with Minnesota, and it is hard to argue with that.
Gregg Jaeger earned a doctorate at Boston University, and currently hold a professorship there, so the guy knows his stuff. Also, the book is current, having a copyright of 2009.
The book is dense, so I'm going to try to blog my way through it, starting with my next post.
Why care about this?
Already a couple people have emailed me and essentially asked why anyone should care about this.
In general I think that people are free to care about whatever they want, and I think I have made the origins for my personal interest on this topic pretty clear.
But the question is still a good question, and I must admit that I think to some degree _everyone_ should care about quantum physics, although in no way do I think people should be compelled to care about it.
So why do I think _you_ personally should care about quantum physics? Yes, I mean you - the person reading this right now. Before I tell you that I want to tell you a little more about my background.
For the past ten years or so I have been a Java programmer for IBM. For those of you that don't know, the Java programming language is important in a couple ways. The main way, at least as I see it, is Java gives programmers the ability to really reuse, and extend, programming work that other people have already done. Java programmers do not have to "reinvent the wheel." This has allowed a whole list of things to happen - for one thing new Java functions and programs are written in a fraction of the time that it used to take, because the programmers don't have to redo everything. That explains why the introduction of new programs has pretty much exploded in the past ten years, and it is one of the reasons even the open source programing stuff has been able to get so big and so powerful and so full of features.
During the past ten years my personal job changed from writing new java programs to just porting existing programs to a new platform. The porting idea is that a relatively small group of programmers can produce big, great programs and then a few more of us would 'port' these programs to different servers, saving money. The idea makes good business sense because it allows all of us to be more productive.
In theory, porting the program should mean running it on the new server platform and watching everything working great with no changes. The theory is that Java is "write once, run anywhere."
In practice, though, while we are getting closer to that ideal, we are not there yet. Many times when I ran a java program on a new server platform something would not work. That was the main reason I was paid to port the program, my job was to find those failures and make sure they got fixed.
In many ways those java programs were like icebergs, where the part above water is the statements that are in the source code, and the huge amount below water is all the statements and methods and programs that were already written to support the new stuff. The new programmer could be very productive because he/she didn't have to re-write or even worry about all the underwater stuff.
But sometimes he/she did have to worry, because sometimes, when I tried to run the new stuff on a new server, somewhere, below the surface, the dang iceberg was hitting a snag and sinking the Titanic. I gotta tell you, to0, that because these java 'icebergs' were constantly being added to on the surface, they were getting to be HUGE, like huge enough to sink the Titanic, and big enough that they had to be shipped on multiple DVDs.
Trying to trace down and find where, underwater, the collision was happening was much worse than finding the gouge in the side of the Titanic. There were literally thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of places that failure could be. Granted I didn't need to examine by hand thousands of places one after the other, but I still needed to peel the onion, one layer at a time, to get to the origination of the problem. Sometimes there could be over a hundred layers of the onion to dig through.
My point is that, like java programs, reality is also 'layered,' with one level resting on the one below it, and like java programs, usually it is just fine for us to not worry about the stuff underneath, because the surface is working just fine and we know most everything about it.
Yet sometimes, in rare occasions, what happens below the surface matters a lot to what happens up here. Much of our history of physical science, and everything that rests on that, like chemistry and mechanics and computer chips and optics and a whole lot of other things, has been the process of looking below the surface and understanding what is happening down there.
So why should 'we' care about quantum physics? Because down there, in certain limited but very important ways, what happens _does_ affect all of the physical reality we have at the macro level. There is a good chance that some very rare cases, something we don't really know about yet, could have a very big and very beneficial effect on our daily lives. Think of what our understanding of electricity has done for us. Think of what our understanding of chemistry has done for us.
That's why I think we should care about this.
In general I think that people are free to care about whatever they want, and I think I have made the origins for my personal interest on this topic pretty clear.
But the question is still a good question, and I must admit that I think to some degree _everyone_ should care about quantum physics, although in no way do I think people should be compelled to care about it.
So why do I think _you_ personally should care about quantum physics? Yes, I mean you - the person reading this right now. Before I tell you that I want to tell you a little more about my background.
For the past ten years or so I have been a Java programmer for IBM. For those of you that don't know, the Java programming language is important in a couple ways. The main way, at least as I see it, is Java gives programmers the ability to really reuse, and extend, programming work that other people have already done. Java programmers do not have to "reinvent the wheel." This has allowed a whole list of things to happen - for one thing new Java functions and programs are written in a fraction of the time that it used to take, because the programmers don't have to redo everything. That explains why the introduction of new programs has pretty much exploded in the past ten years, and it is one of the reasons even the open source programing stuff has been able to get so big and so powerful and so full of features.
During the past ten years my personal job changed from writing new java programs to just porting existing programs to a new platform. The porting idea is that a relatively small group of programmers can produce big, great programs and then a few more of us would 'port' these programs to different servers, saving money. The idea makes good business sense because it allows all of us to be more productive.
In theory, porting the program should mean running it on the new server platform and watching everything working great with no changes. The theory is that Java is "write once, run anywhere."
In practice, though, while we are getting closer to that ideal, we are not there yet. Many times when I ran a java program on a new server platform something would not work. That was the main reason I was paid to port the program, my job was to find those failures and make sure they got fixed.
In many ways those java programs were like icebergs, where the part above water is the statements that are in the source code, and the huge amount below water is all the statements and methods and programs that were already written to support the new stuff. The new programmer could be very productive because he/she didn't have to re-write or even worry about all the underwater stuff.
But sometimes he/she did have to worry, because sometimes, when I tried to run the new stuff on a new server, somewhere, below the surface, the dang iceberg was hitting a snag and sinking the Titanic. I gotta tell you, to0, that because these java 'icebergs' were constantly being added to on the surface, they were getting to be HUGE, like huge enough to sink the Titanic, and big enough that they had to be shipped on multiple DVDs.
Trying to trace down and find where, underwater, the collision was happening was much worse than finding the gouge in the side of the Titanic. There were literally thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of places that failure could be. Granted I didn't need to examine by hand thousands of places one after the other, but I still needed to peel the onion, one layer at a time, to get to the origination of the problem. Sometimes there could be over a hundred layers of the onion to dig through.
My point is that, like java programs, reality is also 'layered,' with one level resting on the one below it, and like java programs, usually it is just fine for us to not worry about the stuff underneath, because the surface is working just fine and we know most everything about it.
Yet sometimes, in rare occasions, what happens below the surface matters a lot to what happens up here. Much of our history of physical science, and everything that rests on that, like chemistry and mechanics and computer chips and optics and a whole lot of other things, has been the process of looking below the surface and understanding what is happening down there.
So why should 'we' care about quantum physics? Because down there, in certain limited but very important ways, what happens _does_ affect all of the physical reality we have at the macro level. There is a good chance that some very rare cases, something we don't really know about yet, could have a very big and very beneficial effect on our daily lives. Think of what our understanding of electricity has done for us. Think of what our understanding of chemistry has done for us.
That's why I think we should care about this.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
I'm here!
Hey, guess what? I'm here, in Geneva, Geneve, CH, within, I believe, a couple miles of the CERN ring. Hold on a sec - yup, I could just feel a proton or two whizzing by at relativistic speeds. It felt like it made it more than half the way around or so, but I'll find out more tomorrow. Today is tourist day.
Did you notice I got here on Xmas day?! How cool is that? I suppose technically I arrived yesterday, but I was so beat I hardly remember it. Let me give my impressions.
I stopped overnight in Toronto, which normally I love, but between 10 PM arrival and a next day afternoon departure there wasn't time to see much. Nothing at all, really. Oh, except the Hertz car had GPS for no extra cost! Talk about a blessing. Pretty much, although I heard "computing new route" so many times I was sick of it. And if you ever get off the 12-lane highway in Toronto by accident it is a REAL pain to get nagged back onto it. Oh, and after arriving and while trying to find the rental counter in the Toronto airport I met, I kid you not, three other groups of people (a couple, and two other guys) lost just like me, looking for the rental counters! We grumbled briefly together, then set off in all directions. I mean really, who in the world sticks the rental counters in the middle of the car park on the bottom floor??
Oh, and why oh why did I think splitting my load among two bags and a carry-on would somehow be easier?! My carry on was the heaviest of all, because I had my laptop PLUS power supply PLUS Thoreau in it. I tell you what, that Thoreau guy wrote sentences that are heavier than some essays from other guys. And if my High School English teacher Mrs. Griese (no, not the football player. Or his wife.) ever saw his run-on sentences she would red check his butt toot suite! Hey, do you think Thoreau got his writing style from me? Am I Thoreau, traveling back in time? If so, I think I will take note that silver colored minnows do not actually get their pigment from silver. Or wait, maybe I better check on that first to be sure.
I was so pumped to be traveling that I refused the porters and little trolly cars and hefted my own three bags, pretending it was nothing, a trifle, a mosquito for such a manly traveler as I (was), and strode with shoulders back and chest out.
Then I found out that the flight actually stopped in Montreal before going to Geneva, and we ALL had to get off, get our luggage, and get back on again, and the cutie pattooty stewardess I had been chatting up in preparation for the long flight to Geneva got off in Montreal!! So I walked, got my bags, then dragged them back through security, then slumped down by the gate. It was maybe eight at night and the terminal was DEAD and we all looked very tired. And then when I got into my seat on the plane it was an aisle seat (shoulders) near the bulkhead, which normally I like, but I forgot that families with small children sit near the bulkhead, so I was torn. I was next to a single woman, and I like that, because it gives me shoulder room, but there were two fussy toddlers. What to do, what to do? There were plenty of open seats on the plane so I moved back to the middle, which was nice, because I could sort of lay out and sleep across the three seats, sort of.
Geneva airport was a BREEZE. Customs and immigration nothing but a wave of the hand. This was good because I had run out of steam, big time. I got to the hotel at about 10:30 AM and thank God my room was ready. I was feeling ill and run down. The steak dinner I had on the plane (very nice actually) was still sitting in my stomach, so the calories refused to get into my system, and I was NOT hungry. I was car sick a bit, and I think I lost five pounds of water weight. I am pretty sure I did, because someday I will tell you how I lost ten pounds of water weight in one day, and got paid for it, too!! Under a Dr's care, for a study.
Well I crashed from about noon until midnight, up a couple hours, crashed again, and this morning I am feeling almost 100%. I drank a lot of water and I splurged on the minibar chocolate. Lemme tell you, that chocolate was PERFECT! You know what they say about Swiss chocolate don't you? "Temp a woman with that and you are nearly half way there." I know. I KNOW! It is good for recuperation, too. I also had a nice breakfast this morning and the breakfast is sitting well, so I think my calorie burning machine is back up and running.
I have a ton more to say about just my hotel but it is now 10:17 on a Swiss morning and I need to get a mass transit pass, some supplies for the room, and then either go downtown to walk around, or maybe go to this museum I've read up on.
So aue reservoir, as the Swiss say. Switzerland is Europe's water tower!
Did you notice I got here on Xmas day?! How cool is that? I suppose technically I arrived yesterday, but I was so beat I hardly remember it. Let me give my impressions.
I stopped overnight in Toronto, which normally I love, but between 10 PM arrival and a next day afternoon departure there wasn't time to see much. Nothing at all, really. Oh, except the Hertz car had GPS for no extra cost! Talk about a blessing. Pretty much, although I heard "computing new route" so many times I was sick of it. And if you ever get off the 12-lane highway in Toronto by accident it is a REAL pain to get nagged back onto it. Oh, and after arriving and while trying to find the rental counter in the Toronto airport I met, I kid you not, three other groups of people (a couple, and two other guys) lost just like me, looking for the rental counters! We grumbled briefly together, then set off in all directions. I mean really, who in the world sticks the rental counters in the middle of the car park on the bottom floor??
Oh, and why oh why did I think splitting my load among two bags and a carry-on would somehow be easier?! My carry on was the heaviest of all, because I had my laptop PLUS power supply PLUS Thoreau in it. I tell you what, that Thoreau guy wrote sentences that are heavier than some essays from other guys. And if my High School English teacher Mrs. Griese (no, not the football player. Or his wife.) ever saw his run-on sentences she would red check his butt toot suite! Hey, do you think Thoreau got his writing style from me? Am I Thoreau, traveling back in time? If so, I think I will take note that silver colored minnows do not actually get their pigment from silver. Or wait, maybe I better check on that first to be sure.
I was so pumped to be traveling that I refused the porters and little trolly cars and hefted my own three bags, pretending it was nothing, a trifle, a mosquito for such a manly traveler as I (was), and strode with shoulders back and chest out.
Then I found out that the flight actually stopped in Montreal before going to Geneva, and we ALL had to get off, get our luggage, and get back on again, and the cutie pattooty stewardess I had been chatting up in preparation for the long flight to Geneva got off in Montreal!! So I walked, got my bags, then dragged them back through security, then slumped down by the gate. It was maybe eight at night and the terminal was DEAD and we all looked very tired. And then when I got into my seat on the plane it was an aisle seat (shoulders) near the bulkhead, which normally I like, but I forgot that families with small children sit near the bulkhead, so I was torn. I was next to a single woman, and I like that, because it gives me shoulder room, but there were two fussy toddlers. What to do, what to do? There were plenty of open seats on the plane so I moved back to the middle, which was nice, because I could sort of lay out and sleep across the three seats, sort of.
Geneva airport was a BREEZE. Customs and immigration nothing but a wave of the hand. This was good because I had run out of steam, big time. I got to the hotel at about 10:30 AM and thank God my room was ready. I was feeling ill and run down. The steak dinner I had on the plane (very nice actually) was still sitting in my stomach, so the calories refused to get into my system, and I was NOT hungry. I was car sick a bit, and I think I lost five pounds of water weight. I am pretty sure I did, because someday I will tell you how I lost ten pounds of water weight in one day, and got paid for it, too!! Under a Dr's care, for a study.
Well I crashed from about noon until midnight, up a couple hours, crashed again, and this morning I am feeling almost 100%. I drank a lot of water and I splurged on the minibar chocolate. Lemme tell you, that chocolate was PERFECT! You know what they say about Swiss chocolate don't you? "Temp a woman with that and you are nearly half way there." I know. I KNOW! It is good for recuperation, too. I also had a nice breakfast this morning and the breakfast is sitting well, so I think my calorie burning machine is back up and running.
I have a ton more to say about just my hotel but it is now 10:17 on a Swiss morning and I need to get a mass transit pass, some supplies for the room, and then either go downtown to walk around, or maybe go to this museum I've read up on.
So aue reservoir, as the Swiss say. Switzerland is Europe's water tower!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Did the world end and I didn't notice it?
I'm pretty sure the world has not ended yet, but unfortunately I can explain why that is so.
CERN scientists are being incredibly cautious bringing the ring up this time. Last week the status was that the ring was half-tested, meaning the protons had been extracted from hydrogen, accelerated by a linear accelerator (LINAC2), shaped by the PS Booster, then go into the Proton Synchrotron (PS), followed by the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), before finally reaching the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and going half way around. When this thing finally gets all fired up the protons will circulate in the LHC for 20 minutes before reaching their maximum speed and energy.
The synchrotrons mentioned above are rings, and the Super Proton Synchroton was started in 1976, halfway through my college studies. Each one of these devices has been a workhorse for experiments, and new discoveries were found when using every single one of them. In addition, the beauty of CERN is that the design is open-ended, with every stage leading into the next stage - they built what they could, built useful tools, used them, and then added on to them for the next stage. This last stage, the Large Hadron Collider, is the first stage at CERN that uses superconducting magnets. That has helped them achieve much higher energies.
At least in theory. In practice the doggone thing is not yet fully operational, and they expect half-speed collisions before Christmas but not before. I had to guess about when to come here when I was planning this trip. I had to guess when the final ring traversal would be made, and when the first collisions would happen, and doggone it but they are only about 90% there, and no farther at this time. They use the weekends to try the full functional runs, then work like crazy during the week to get everything in order for the next run.
Whew.
Because of the US holidays my travel was the best, and cheapest, this week. I really wish I could have been here for the first actual collision though.
Oh well.
I found out many interesting things while here, even though the world did not end. I'll try to share them here.
The scientists in the control rooms are so YOUNG. How must it be for them, to be so young and to have such a huge future ahead of you? They are so fortunate!! I found out that the beams - they will start with protons - are very carefully shaped. They are clustered into packets, with short gaps between packets, so that they travel similar to cars in a train. Because the protons all have the same positive charge they repel each other, so they must be focused and clustered together by special magnets. In addition, each channel in the tube (there are two channels, one for each direction) can have four beams at the same time! I did not know this! In that way the beams can be different - different energies, and even different materials. They have plans to use lead ions in some of the beams! Wow.
The physical size of the thing is staggering. The ring itself just less that 27,000 meters in diameter. It is 100 meters underground, for a couple reasons. First, it rests on bedrock, and if the bedrock was at 50 meters they would have built it only 50 meters down. Second, they did not want to disrupt the countryside. I am glad that money is not king in every part of the world. I think the ground helps with insulation against the elements, although that could be done above ground, even for the super conducting magnets.
Speaking of magnets, they have four different sets of magnets running. The first set curves the beam into a circle. The second set compress or focuses the beams. The third set fine tunes the aiming of the beams to a precise X,Y location. The fourth set accelerates the beams, and it will take about twenty minutes to get the beam to full speed, 7 TeV.
Wait, I think there must be a fifth set of magnets, because to force a collision, once two beams are ready to go, whirling around in opposite directions, they use magnets to push a few of the packets (train cars) into each other to collide.
This is not as easy as it may sound. The timing is very critical, so the collision happens in one of the four pre-set detector areas - Atlas, CMS, Alice, or LHCb. Also, the beams are VERY narrow, and even then there is a large amount of empty space between the protons.
Speaking of empty space, the air is evacuated from the entire ring, including the detector chambers. The vacuum is ten times greater than the vacuum on the moon. That is so the protons do not collide with atoms or gas molecules.
And speaking of empty space, I think I hard my guide say something like empty space repels itself? I need to follow-up on that, I knew that on the quantum level photons are created and annihilated all the time, and if you put two metal plates near each other the photons created between them will have lower energy, so the plates tend to get pushed together, but I have never heard about the empty space repelling itself thing.
The other mind blowing thing I heard from my guide is that some interpretations of the Heisenberg equations suggest perhaps there is an underlying fabric to space-time, and the interaction of matter with the fabric manifests itself as what we call mass? I need to check on that, too. I know they are hoping to find the Higgs boson, the so-called God Particle, the particle that gives the property of mass and transfers the force of gravity.
I think. Dang it all. I really wish I was smart enough to understand all this. It is very frustrating to be curious and to not understand all the possible answers, but perhaps it is also a blessing to have such a puzzle to ponder on?
Some of the engineering challenges were staggering, too, but I must leave those for another post.
CERN scientists are being incredibly cautious bringing the ring up this time. Last week the status was that the ring was half-tested, meaning the protons had been extracted from hydrogen, accelerated by a linear accelerator (LINAC2), shaped by the PS Booster, then go into the Proton Synchrotron (PS), followed by the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), before finally reaching the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and going half way around. When this thing finally gets all fired up the protons will circulate in the LHC for 20 minutes before reaching their maximum speed and energy.
The synchrotrons mentioned above are rings, and the Super Proton Synchroton was started in 1976, halfway through my college studies. Each one of these devices has been a workhorse for experiments, and new discoveries were found when using every single one of them. In addition, the beauty of CERN is that the design is open-ended, with every stage leading into the next stage - they built what they could, built useful tools, used them, and then added on to them for the next stage. This last stage, the Large Hadron Collider, is the first stage at CERN that uses superconducting magnets. That has helped them achieve much higher energies.
At least in theory. In practice the doggone thing is not yet fully operational, and they expect half-speed collisions before Christmas but not before. I had to guess about when to come here when I was planning this trip. I had to guess when the final ring traversal would be made, and when the first collisions would happen, and doggone it but they are only about 90% there, and no farther at this time. They use the weekends to try the full functional runs, then work like crazy during the week to get everything in order for the next run.
Whew.
Because of the US holidays my travel was the best, and cheapest, this week. I really wish I could have been here for the first actual collision though.
Oh well.
I found out many interesting things while here, even though the world did not end. I'll try to share them here.
The scientists in the control rooms are so YOUNG. How must it be for them, to be so young and to have such a huge future ahead of you? They are so fortunate!! I found out that the beams - they will start with protons - are very carefully shaped. They are clustered into packets, with short gaps between packets, so that they travel similar to cars in a train. Because the protons all have the same positive charge they repel each other, so they must be focused and clustered together by special magnets. In addition, each channel in the tube (there are two channels, one for each direction) can have four beams at the same time! I did not know this! In that way the beams can be different - different energies, and even different materials. They have plans to use lead ions in some of the beams! Wow.
The physical size of the thing is staggering. The ring itself just less that 27,000 meters in diameter. It is 100 meters underground, for a couple reasons. First, it rests on bedrock, and if the bedrock was at 50 meters they would have built it only 50 meters down. Second, they did not want to disrupt the countryside. I am glad that money is not king in every part of the world. I think the ground helps with insulation against the elements, although that could be done above ground, even for the super conducting magnets.
Speaking of magnets, they have four different sets of magnets running. The first set curves the beam into a circle. The second set compress or focuses the beams. The third set fine tunes the aiming of the beams to a precise X,Y location. The fourth set accelerates the beams, and it will take about twenty minutes to get the beam to full speed, 7 TeV.
Wait, I think there must be a fifth set of magnets, because to force a collision, once two beams are ready to go, whirling around in opposite directions, they use magnets to push a few of the packets (train cars) into each other to collide.
This is not as easy as it may sound. The timing is very critical, so the collision happens in one of the four pre-set detector areas - Atlas, CMS, Alice, or LHCb. Also, the beams are VERY narrow, and even then there is a large amount of empty space between the protons.
Speaking of empty space, the air is evacuated from the entire ring, including the detector chambers. The vacuum is ten times greater than the vacuum on the moon. That is so the protons do not collide with atoms or gas molecules.
And speaking of empty space, I think I hard my guide say something like empty space repels itself? I need to follow-up on that, I knew that on the quantum level photons are created and annihilated all the time, and if you put two metal plates near each other the photons created between them will have lower energy, so the plates tend to get pushed together, but I have never heard about the empty space repelling itself thing.
The other mind blowing thing I heard from my guide is that some interpretations of the Heisenberg equations suggest perhaps there is an underlying fabric to space-time, and the interaction of matter with the fabric manifests itself as what we call mass? I need to check on that, too. I know they are hoping to find the Higgs boson, the so-called God Particle, the particle that gives the property of mass and transfers the force of gravity.
I think. Dang it all. I really wish I was smart enough to understand all this. It is very frustrating to be curious and to not understand all the possible answers, but perhaps it is also a blessing to have such a puzzle to ponder on?
Some of the engineering challenges were staggering, too, but I must leave those for another post.
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