Riv-bar

Why is Kaku commenting as an expert on the Fukushima Disaster?

2011-03-17T22:20:00.006-04:00

Who do you go to when complicated sciencey stuff happens that needs to be broken down to the general public? Why, a physicist who writes books, of course!

Except Michio Kaku is not a nuclear scientist or engineer or energy policymaker (fundamental physics is not nuclear physics), he is not Japanese (perhaps relevant - he is born and bred American), and he most certainly is biased. Apparently that reasoning didn't stop ABC's Weekend Edition from having Kaku on as "our expert ... all through this crisis".

His lack of expertise makes commenting as an expert irresponsible - granted, we in physics often feel all-powerful in understanding everything, but when laypeople actually take us seriously, we have to give every possible inch of humility in our conclusions. His comparisons to Chernobyl (the comparison was even worse the next day) are sensationalist, as the disasters are nothing alike in mechanics or magnitude.

But he is not only irresponsible, but unethical, in that he never reveals his quite-relevant 30-year NNP activism for a complete dismantling of nuclear energy on Earth. See a response from Nuclear Dreams with full quotations given in a 2008 interview with the India Times. In addition, I refer you to the following quotation from a commentary Kaku wrote for The Guardian ("Ban Nuke Power, Ban Nuke Weapons") in 1979 while a highly-public activist:

"Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are two sides of the same coin. They are controlled by the same people, produced by the same corporations and serve the same political and financial interests. They give off the same radioactive poisons, generate the same deadly waste that nobody yet knows what to do with. And both threaten catastrophic destruction. The people who brought us Hiroshima now bring us Harrisburg."

Scientists grow up with all sorts of biases and shouldn't have to cite them in their work if they have sound reasoning. However, Kaku has a history of vocal political activism in this subject, but rather than giving a disclaimer or stating up-front his views on the complete dismantling of nuclear power, he uses his scientific authority (in spite of his field being completely unrelated) to spread hyperbole and misinformation -- in effect, fear-mongering.

His is an extreme case, but scientists in general have to be very careful about the topics on which they are sought for comment or authority. News reporters often think they can write accurately on biology, economics, and psychology, but admit ignorance on physics, seeking the most famous name they can find to comment on other people's research or topics outside their field. For those sought, famous or not, it is absolutely unethical to exert argument by authority alone. You are a journalist within science - speak carefully and cite your facts.

The Secret Language of World of Warcraft

2009-02-08T21:56:00.005-05:00

A journalist has no clue. This has been covered in many many blogs already (kotaku, worldofwar, tetonhammer). But now the video has been taking down from youtube due to copyright claims, but more importantly it has been removed from the official website of the San Francisco Bay NBC 11 KNTV affiliate whence it aired! I recovered the video from the affiliate's google cache which may reset soon, and a second-person filmed copy of decent quality off youtube.

Meanwhile, I will try to give the ripped video some extra life from a direct link (flv) and from another source.

My comment on this: first, see the above blogs for why this is so funny (simple answer - she was "pwned" with a bit of an inaccurate portrayal of the use of language in WoW). Now, I was big into news/feature journalism in high school and undergrad, with several awards under my belt, even having attended summer camp in TV and print journalism at Northern Illinois University. One thing they told us at NIU though, as we were struggling in front of the cameras, is that us Chicagoans were putting ourselves under the pressure of the highly-polished standards of major metropolitan news outlets, whereas the professional nowheresville networks of this place just beyond the rural ring of Fermilab were decidedly amateurish - thus these journalism students in DeKalb had a bit more confidence in their performances than we who received metro Chicago broadcasts.

The point is that this report was horribly amateur by any metropolitan standards, even for a five-minute throwaway feature. She is blatant in personalizing the story (which is in itself a way of trivializing what is actually a very complex and important phenomenon) and even more blatant in not checking facts with even a quick Google search, which would reveal that she'd been a bit taken in by her "boyfriend". In raw substance, this could only be characterized as a personality piece about her live-in lover (since he was the only source, and not authoritative at that) which really merits her canning from a major metropolitan outlet.

The implications are twofold. First, I can decry the state of TV journalism, and I will. This was primetime, after the superbowl, on a major metro outlet, and let crap slip by, even possibly advertising for it beforehand as some comments have mentioned. Frankly, the best reliable TV journalism you'll get will be from the international outlets, like BBC, Fox (yes, they have journalistic merit of a different type), and cable (CNN, MSNBC, The Daily Show, etc). But for local coverage, I'd recommend two sources: local PBS and NPR carriers (Chicago Tonight is what I always used to watch growing up, which continues to maintain excellent standards of discourse) and specialty feature shows like 190 North, an ABC show covering plenty of cultural nuances from both the deep and shallow ends.

The second implication that troubles me is the state of linguistics in popular culture. Linguistics in itself is a very wide, multidisciplinary field. I studied and did some research in computational and generative linguistics as an undergrad, which encompass mathematical approaches to theoretical models and simulation of language, and which actually have very important predictive capability (as well as marketable results, as seen in every manner of computer speech recognition). However, many other slices of the pie exist in the forms of psycholinguistics, historical linguistics, and, as would be relevant to this broadcast, anthropological (or social) linguistics (and this even excludes relevant clinical and literary cross-disciplines). In most cases, these people are serious, methodical scientists who are fortunate enough to be higher than most social sciences in terms of empirical purity due to the inherent rule-based and objective grounding of their medium of study.

But when a layman thinks about a "linguist", he sees the Grammar-Nazi columnist in the New York Times "society" sections, or the gifted, well-mannered Victorian polyglot translating for the Congolese savages (or his sci-fi equivalent of C-3P0). This is soooo not the scope of academic linguists that it's almost funny.

Almost. Except the public never takes academic linguists seriously. [further rant on linguistics in the public sphere saved for later]. One of many cases in point is that the perceived "expert" on WoW language and its interpretation is some amateurish reporter and her WoW-addicted boyfriend who sabotages her story.

The real tragedy for the public is that there is so much depth to the amazingly intricate linguistic change happening all around us every day. When "pwned" enters everyday conversation like it did in grad school among us who were non-gamers, you see one of the first truly English words (derived almost exclusively within our own language and culture) to utterly defy conventional typology. Or, in a more classical example, when we can document and possibly predict a continued changing (general frontening, actually, by some conjectures) in the pronunciation of vowels in Standard American English, that may give the older generations a greater appreciation of some of the tangled accents of today's youth. Or maybe, at the end of the day, if we simply understand the argument to raise awareness of how native dialects can affect students' benefit from grammar classes in America, we might be able to respond intelligently when such arguments are made instead of grossly misinterpreting them.

Top 5 greatest popularizations of science

2008-08-17T17:35:00.003-04:00

DISCLAIMER: There are many great popularizations to choose from, and I can only accurately rank those that I've read. Please, post your own suggestions and/or lists. A thorough discussion is also available in the Cosmic Variance blog.

To complement my "jerks" post, I'd like to list the greatest pop-sci books by living popularizers in science based on how significantly they have helped their field.

Honorable mention: Stephen Hawking, "A Brief History of Time" (physics - alive, a jerk, but a jerk who turns physics books into bestsellers, even though they're very misleading. I just can't put him on the list.)

Honorable mention: Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene" (biology - alive, writes bestsellers, but has damaged science in recent years with his alienation of the "atheist scientist" from the mainstream.

Honorable mention: Carl Sagan, "Contact" (astronomy - dead, but would easily be #1 because of his encouragement of women in science alone, not to mention his powerful illustrations of the importance of astronomy, space exploration, and SETI)

Other honorable mentions for dead people: Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, Jules Verne, George Gamow, D'Arcy Thompson,

Suggested by others: Douglas Hofstadter "Godel, Escher, Bach", Matt Ridley "Genome"

5. Kip Thorne, "Black Holes and Time Warps" (physics - it inspired me into the field - it may be too complicated for people not yet in high school, but it explains the weirdest research in physics without claiming more than what the math says)

4. Michael Crichton, "Jurassic Park" (lay-author, paleontology - his sci-fi is actually reasonably accurate and very popular, giving new generations a reason to get excited about dinosaurs)

3. Steven Pinker, "The Language Instinct" (linguistics - a sorely-needed poster boy for a very publicly-scorned discipline, he's not the best writer but he's a very welcome change from Chomsky and newspaper grammarians)

2. Simon Singh, "Fermat's Enigma", "Fermat's Last Theorem" (physics, mathematics - these and "The Code Book" helped romanticize and solidify the importance of mathematics and computer science in the public eye)

1. Steven Levitt and Stephen D. Dubner, "Freakonomics" (economics - no book has ever been more important in explaining the importance of mathematical logic and correlation vs causation, and in getting people excited about a traditionally boring field. Truly revolutionary for all sciences, soft and hard)

The big Olympic halftime post

2008-08-16T01:53:00.005-04:00

This will be happy post. Here I'd like to give my thoughts on the Olympics as they are now halfway into it. Most of this has been posted previously on private forums.

I've been watching all the Beijing Fencing events online religiously this past week, and I must say that I am absolutely as happy as can be that I can watch any bout on any piste I like as they happen (though only the finals are available for re-watch, and I can't download).

I think I have a problem with womens sabre. The speed, the aggression, the screaming, the intensity... my future wife may have to be a sabreist. Just so you know, I've fenced sabre a little, and I still can't follow the attack sequence (FYI, the electronics are pretty useless since almost everything is simultaneous; right-of-way is the determining factor). So I figure if I can't follow the action, I may as well think about the ladies.

Now you may think it weird that I think about fencers more than, say, womens beach volleyball players. But I love watching the sport for its own sake, and there's too little for the imagination in beach volleyball. The fencing lames (uniforms) reveal nothing, which means every one of those ladies has a flawless body. Am I an ass? Yes, but still not as much of one as Stephen Hawking.

Meanwhile, mens epee is full of jerks. See, in sabre you scream after every point to try to convince the judges that you had right-of-way. But then at the end, you act civilly. In epee, there is no right-of-way, yet the guys still have to scream occasionally, and then they (the winners, mind you) throw absolute fits at the end of the match. They don't salute or shake hands until the ref yells at them to do so. Also, I hate the jumpy-feet in epee and foil. The people I root for are those with deliberate, classical footwork. Finally, I'd like to see corps-a-corps rules reformed - there has to be some way of getting around these too-close messy touches and make things more classical. Thank god there's no more flicking, anyway.

Then there is Gymnastics, with its new scoring system. This arose in no small part because in 2004, the crowd booed the judges continuously for a low score given to the Russian in the high bar individual event finals, until finally the judges cave and raised the score. Note that in theory, judging in gymnastics is 95% objective (now closer to 99%), so there is no reason for such a reaction from the crowd, nor such a response from the judges. Of course, in judging, not everything is caught or compared accurately, so there is some room for error. However, as in many situations (like when some less-pure sciences enter public scrutiny), the audience should know that most of the time they need to shut up and defer to the experts. Side note: I think the science comparison is best taken in Linguistics, where every ordinary person thinks they're an expert (they are in some ways, being as they all know at least one language fluently), and this is precisely the science that needs to be able to assert its authority better.

The event for which I am most excited is Modern Pentathlon, the most eclectic mix of sporting events that one sees: distance running, sprint swimming, pistol shooting, epee fencing, and unfamiliar horse jumping all in a 12-hour endurathon. It was one of the original events of the modern Olympics, invented by the founder himself and modeled after a similar event in ancient Greece designed to seek the "ideal soldier". Unfortunately, it is threatened with cancellation in 2016. A side note:

Katy Livingston, will you go out with me?

So how can the sport be saved from oblivion? Should it be saved from oblivion? Isn't it our duty to try to preserve at least the spirit of combat that Coubertin wanted to preserve from the ancient Greeks?

If such be the case, my proposal for a reformed Modern Pentathlon would be as follows: run and swim as before, but also trap rifle, judo or freestyle wrestling, and jukendo (Japanese bayonette fencing). Of course then we'd have to introduce jukendo or at least kendo into the Olympic mix (the latter of which isn't far off, though). I also would vie for competitive skydiving (such as for landing accuracy), though my brother is convinced nobody would care to watch that. His idea for reforming the event would include tactical automobile driving (like slalom or autocross), incidentally. What other possibilities for a "modern" Modern Pent could be proposed?

Finally, on the subject of events on the cutlist for 2016 (baseball and softball are on it with taekwando narrowly escaping, by the way) what should be added and/or removed from the Olympics?

I'd like to see, of course, kendo added. Naginatado would also be great. I also think there's a military market for competitive skydiving (targets and landing formations are how it's scored). Muay Thai may have enough following these days for inclusion, though there's plenty of controversy around boxing in general. And then there's the modern "chariot race" of auto racing, and its many sub-events.

I'd like to remove the "dance"-like events: synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics, just because of Olympic history: there used to be an "artistic" Olympics for literature, music, and visual art, but because of matters of taste, it simply didn't work. So aesthetic events are a bit of a slippery slope (yes, invalid argument, I know).

Top 5 jerks in science

2008-08-14T13:06:00.007-04:00

These are jerks in science, most for being bad popularizers, but some for being bad scientists (yet respected nonetheless). To make the list you have to be both a jerk and living. If you'd like to add to the list, comment here. I hope to write a book on this once I get a top 10 list of people who are dead.

Honorable mention: Carl Sagan (Astronomy - dead, lots of self-promoting, some crap in Cosmos, but did proper popularization and inspired young women especially to go into science)

Honorable mention: Sapir and Whorf (Linguistic Anthropology - dead, BS hypothesis of language controlling thought, still influences anthropologists today despite BSery)

Honorable mention: Francis Crick (Biology - dead, listed mostly for the Rosalind Franklin data controversy, but also for being an ass, still a good popularizer of cognitive science)

5. (Tie) Richard Leakey and Donald Johanson (Palaeoanthropology - hominid skeleton-finders, both thought their skeleton was better and represented early man more accurately, both made human evolution look like a complete public mystery and strengthened the Creationist cause in America)

4. Stephen Wolfram (Computer Math - published A New Kind of Science which was basically a treatise on BS physics, charges too much for his Mathematica software)

3. James D. Watson (Biology - same boat as Crick, also an actively-stereotyping bigot in race and physical appearance)

2. Noam Chomsky (Linguistics - did great work in the 50s, then became a stubborn self-promoting jerk, and is now a socialist anti-media jerk)

1. Stephen Hawking (Physics - a jerk)

Cells, visualization, and quantum consciousness nonsense

2008-08-11T20:41:00.002-04:00

I'm a big fan of computer visualizations in science, both for the general public and for science students themselves (researchers, too). One project that I've been hoping to get off the ground soon is to build virtual worlds in special relativistic and quantum mechanical domains to help in building the modern "physical intuition" that all us students seem to lack.

Anyway, a couple videos caught my eye that were linked on Brain Windows: I enjoyed the videos by Drew Berry immensely (see Aptosis), as well as Harvard's The Inner Life of the Cell. Many more videos are available at the main site. Berry's videos were especially nice because of the use of environmental sound: there is a lot of useful information that can be effectively transmitted by sound. Accurate or not (and it's not, but neither is the visual information, since the scales of these videos are well below 400nm), it immerses the viewer in the environment.

One thing that kind of got me chuckling was the visualization of cytoskeletal microtubules and cytoplasm ions. Cytoskeletons are a nice modelling problem in physics (and under a lot of research at that), but I also came across them a lot in some light cog sci reading on quantum consciousness, or quantum computation in the brain (sometimes people, especially researchers in the field, confuse the two).

Yes, light cog sci reading. I could put the sum of physics in quantum consciousness theories on a napkin. I've seen two theories dominating the "literature" in this "field", with some overlap. The first is called Quantum Brain Dynamics (QBD), which asserts that applying the wave equations to the water in the brain creates a model for EEG signals while also creating quantum effects of wavefunction collapse and superposition. Then people decided a more convincing, less pseudoscientific mechanism for quantum processes than "water, ordinary water (laced with a healthy dose of LSD)" would be that computation occurs in the cytoskeleton of brain cells.

I won't say anything about the physics, because all the math that they do is probably fine enough, just not very interesting and certainly not enough to draw any conclusions from. But many good scientists (key example being Roger Penrose, a proponent of quantum consciousness theories) can fall victim to biasing their opinions based on how they think things should be. In spite of there being no reason for us to suspect quantum mechanics plays a role in cognition (no evidence for humans being capable of quantum computation, for example, and plenty of evidence that classical mechanics can model many cognitive processes), QBDers invoke it because consciousness is "exotic". I suppose it's an important idea to play around in just because any idea is worth investigating, but without even a mechanism for communication of quantum states between cells in the brain, the attention is very unwarranted. I shouldn't even be calling it a theory, since it has no basis in experimental or theoretical principles and makes no predictions.

Also, I will punch the next person who tells me to watch What The Bleep Do We Know?

Abortion and animal rights: the post that gets me pipe-bombed

2008-08-10T12:50:00.003-04:00

Okay, so physics and philosophy isn't the most exciting thing in the world. Let's talk abortion! I just saw this video that asks abortion protesters whether women who have illegal abortions should go to jail. Most said something along the lines of that women who have abortions are "punished enough".

It's an important question, and has actually changed my mind: from a purely social-pragmatic standpoint, it seems clear that abortion has to be legal. Nobody is prepared to let poor people die on the street, so medical care must be socialized. Nobody is prepared to send desperate women to jail (except for one person in the video), so abortion must be legalized. Makes sense to me.

But I'm pretty terrible at political issues and often flip sides (or do what my brother, an army language/diplomacy officer with an economics degree, tells me). On the abortion issue I've always just stayed out of it - as a man, it's not my place to presume how women perceive life in their bodies, or how their psychology works (lord help us), or anything else about them for that matter. Ethically, I still feel that way - it's not my place to judge. But law must be pragmatic, not necessarily "moral".

But you didn't ask how I felt scientifically: in this sense I think that if it's okay to kill great apes, it's okay to kill fetuses and infants up to three months (or was it years? I can't remember the research) old or so, depending on when they reach a measurable state of self-awareness.

The point is that it's NOT okay to kill great apes, dolphins, elephants, or any other higher animal with demonstrable self-awareness. As said before, I think there may be a measurable phase transition of self-awareness, at which point we must step back and stop invasive testing.

Counting: science we can all count on

2008-08-08T15:22:00.005-04:00

I'm browsing blogs regularly now to steal ideas, and this one caught my eye with a funny line from an actual scientific paper quoted in the New York Times:

While attending lectures on dementia, the doctors, Kenneth Rockwood, David B. Hogan and Christopher J. Patterson, kept track of the number of attendees who nodded off during the talks. They found that in an hourlong lecture attended by about 100 doctors, an average of 16 audience members nodded off. “We chose this method because counting is scientific,” the authors wrote in their seminal 2004 article in The Canadian Medical Association Journal. (emphasis added)

Is this the funniest thing ever in a scientific journal? There's the old tale of the paper with a one-sentence abstract, "No, it does not," but I think this is in a league of its own.

Now to over-analyze it with two related questions: is counting scientific, and is it science we can all agree on?

In the mathematics of set theory, we begin to answer that question. In logic, counting numbers is an extension of the propositional logic that is so familiar to lawyers in philosophers (hence, I don't like it much). Also, I've never formally studied logic, am not a logician, and can't do it justice. But being outside my specialty hasn't stopped me so far on this blog.

The counting numbers (integers) are called a mathematical group, while the real numbers as a whole are a field. The main property that defines these sets is closure under some operation, like addition or multiplication. This means that any elements of the set that are operated on will generate other elements of the set: add two numbers and get a number, multiply them and get another number, etc. You cannot add apples and oranges to get a pear is the point.

What is interesting about this subject is that our numbers are only one type of field. There's the complex field, the quaternions, the rationals, vectors, matrices, and all sorts of stuff that do not behave like "counting" should. In matrix multiplication, for example, A*B does not equal B*A: it is noncommutative (in the real world, this is why quantum mechanics works the way it does: the universe is not commutative).

But the concept of a field can be too restrictive. A while back some crackpot math teacher proposed adding a new number to math classes called "nullity." While I could analyze it briefly but incorrectly with my limited topology background, the idea is cleanly shot down by Cale. I would make a simple analogy: we count on a number line that extends to infinity in both directions. But what if we added an extra point to that line where infinity should be? Then we have a closed ring (reminds me of the temperature scale that includes negative temperature, actually). We can even add two more points above and below and get a sphere, or something even more exotic, leaving our simple linear counting structures far behind.

At the same time as we destroy the infallibility of counting, set theory reminds us that it's all good: through homomorphism, we can still understand systems in the real world by ordinary counting. Physics, even though it sees the world in exotic groups and complex fields, still works in a counting framework.

I will address briefly whether or not counting is a universal science. It is not. See an article on the Pirahã tribe for an example of people whose concept of integers fades at "3 or more" (see also the original paper, Nevins et. al.'s response, and Everett's response). And before anybody brings it up, Sapir and Whorf are still idiots. So is Stephen Hawking.

Several Amazonian and Austronesian tribesmen have settled in the cities, many with similarly exotic languages. The human mind can adapt - it's not a slave to language or culture - but you'd have to start learning by counting on your fingers by going back to kindergarten. I wonder again what logic is universal. Obviously it's not first-order or second-order, and I would still argue that it's not even basic propositional: according to me, all logic is learned from the environment.

Epistemology, logic, and a quantum universe

2008-08-07T19:57:00.000-04:00

I stumbled on this old blog post about people who argue that not reducing something to self-evident truths is equivalent to having a foundationless theory of circular logic that doesn't explain anything.

Philosophically, we observe something nice about the universe: symmetry. That is, if I observe some kind of process, then set up the same process some time later (or in some other galaxy somewhere) and observe it again, there won't be any difference. Observed phenomena are invariant in space and time: our universe is consistent. This is great because it gives us the power of prediction - without it, Tom Hanks could never say that "Tomorrow, the sun will rise!"

We need that to do anything in science, and, as I argued in a philosophy essay, symmetry combined with entropy could give rise to deductive logic (a "learned" trait among animal species, perhaps not instinctual?). That gives us the power of evidence and hence experimental science. Maybe other people perceive a different reality (hell, with enough shrooms, you can't count on anything being consistent in the world), so as I said in the last post, the question of who's right is open.

The point I want to bring up is the origin of the universe, because such a scenario requires two assumptions (regardless of the theory used to generate it): quantum fluctuations and symmetry. Symmetry allows, by Noether's Theorem, all the a priori laws of mathematical physics (such as conservation of energy) to hold. But how are we so confident in the quantum nature of reality? I'd just look to the axioms of QFT for inspiration: anything that's not forbidden is required, or, you might say, "Sorry, but while you weren't looking, everything that could possibly happen, happened!"

I imagine the pre-universe to be completely undefined (because any definition means something specific is there), so of course there's symmetry in every metric you want (in any number of dimensions). Now it's just a matter of having something appear out of nowhere, and we have mountains of experimental evidence supporting the notion of a quantum reality. It's philosophically "nice" to have a free lunch appear in a blank-slate universe.

It's not a Q.E.D. moment, but I keep wondering what's Latin for "From nothing, everything," or perhaps more appropriately, "Science: it works, bitches!"

Note my possible circular logic: we observe symmetry, incorporate it in our logical thought, and then assert that it must always exist.

Atheistic cosmology does not imply atheism

2008-08-06T18:36:00.002-04:00

To conclude my two posts below, I will talk about theism and consciousness. If we don't have or don't need a first cause, is there still room for god?

Incidentally, god is not throwing dice to make quantum mechanics work. It is simply not "how it works" - true randomness is the rule, not the exception. There is a multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics that would contradict me, but I think that's a bit of a cop-out.

Anyway, I make room for the possibility of god, since other people seem to know god so well. I call myself ignostic, meaning I recognize I have no concept of what god is as other people understand it.

What keeps me from pure atheism is my understanding (or lack thereof) of consciousness. There are certain philosophical problems with it: consciousness is wholly our own phenomenon, yet other people have it, and we can never know for sure if it's the same as ours; it is immutable, in that there is no meta-awareness of a change in awareness; and it appears to have a mostly-definite transition point between consciousness and unconsciousness, a phase transition if you will.

The first two points seem unlike anything we have encountered, and are suggestive of the need for a new physics or an impenetrable barrier for physics (which may leave room for a god). The third point gives me hope that we can crack consciousness with ordinary physics, because we have a clear indication of something measurable that interacts with it.

I have faith in physics and objective reality, but there's little that can be argued against me saying that I may be the only person with true consciousness, or that someone's reality of knowing god is fundamentally and possibly even measurably different from mine.

You might say I am an atheist who believes in (or is at least agnostic about) a god that only others know.

The answer

2008-08-06T16:18:00.002-04:00

What do most physicists believe the origin of the universe, or first cause, is?

First of all, I would like to say that if you want more information or need clarification, get it yourself. Wikipedia is an infinitely useful scientific research tool, even though the liberal-artsies hate it for some reason. Alan Guth also has a good, technical but math-light review article.

Assuming we have some familiarity with the Big Bang and evolution, most of the universe seems to work like clockwork if you take it back to 10^-34 seconds after the first explosion of a lot of mass-energy that was the Big Bang, which essentially started in an infinitesimal point, a singularity (which is a fancy word for our ignorance which will be resolved with a theory of quantum gravity).

Where does all that energy come from - what is the first cause, and how do we get something out of nothing? The simple first cause is quantum mechanical fluctuations in the vacuum. Energy can be spontaneously created from nothing, as can mass, as long as it's destroyed quickly. This is a theoretical and observational fact of quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics is weird stuff, I know, but if you don't know it and don't care to, all I ask is that you believe it. Believe it because it's the reason why MRI, electron microscopes, and lasers all work, and why we know mathematically how they work to a precision equivalent to knowing the distance from New York to Los Angeles with less than a human-hair's width of error (yes, this is all quantified).

So mass-energy gets created, as does the stuff to destroy it, in the middle of a perfectly symmetrical unscaled pre-universe which we can call the true vacuum, or the simplest state possible (It is only now that we need even consider the specifics of 4D spacetime - up to now all that we care about is symmetry, which ensures our math to work). This mass-energy is no longer vacuum, and so usually it's unstable and destroys itself quickly. But sometimes it's enough to climb into a new kind of stability called a false vacuum, a metastable state, where it can rest easily and not get destroyed. Here's the real kick - this mass-energy can be self-repulsive and actually expand out in the true vacuum, where it can spontaneously (because of quantum mechanics) have pieces break off, either collapsing into the true vacuum or some other, more stable false vacuum. These pieces are trapped inside this false vacuum bubble, and the break-off moment releases lots of energy, up to as much as was used to create this mega-universe in the first place. BANG!

This scenario is quite nice, in that it explains a lot more about the universe than what I've mentioned here (see the WP article on cosmic inflation). It requires two theories: quantum field theory and general relativity, the former of which is the most accurate description of nature ever, and the latter is widely accepted with only some points contested on the largest and smallest scales. One consequence is that it opens the door to multiple universes with differing fundamental constants of nature. It has many flaws, however, which are not addressed and likely won't be addressed until the particles involved in this theory are sorted out and we understand quantum gravity. Another bad point is that since we're in a metastable state, there could be a true vacuum seed that wipes out the entire universe at the speed of light, the ultimate catastrophe. Whatever, you won't feel a thing.

To summarize: quantum mechanics allows for something out of nothing, which can find itself a stable home and with general relativistic theories of gravity will expand out and form Big Bang universes.

A question about life, the universe, and everything

2008-08-06T00:50:00.000-04:00

Do regular people know that we're pretty sure what the origin of the universe is? Like, not the Big Bang - that's observational fact - but rather, the origin of the Big Bang and everything that we see and know? Do you realize that we don't need God as even a deistic first cause anymore (though we may need him for other stuff, as I'll explain later)?

I'll explain it all in the next journal post, but I'm curious what non-physicists have to say on this. Do you know that we know, and do you want to know?

(If you're curious and want to Wikipedia it already, I'm referring to Cosmic Inflation, which is a string-theoryless, Hawkingless, and thus very successful model)

Kittens!

2008-08-05T19:55:00.000-04:00

I came home today to find Patches (my cat, whom I adopted off the street a month and a half ago only to find out she was pregnant) a lot thinner than usual. Sure enough, she had a surprise waiting in my closet behind a bunch of boxes. I'm leaving most of the boxes there for tonight so that they have some security, but I have some low-light pictures posted.

Five kittens: three tabbies, one brown-on-black patches (like Patches, the mother), and one white-on-black splotches (like who I think the father is, another stray who won't come near me).

Name suggestions will be considered, though Maggie (Magnetism) and Tessie (Tesla) are already taken.

Tasteless physics joke 1

2008-08-04T23:02:00.001-04:00

Q. What's red, spinning rapidly, and one way of resolving the black hole information loss paradox?

A. Stephen Hawking in a blender!

Stephen Hawking is to blame for all science misconceptions

2008-08-04T21:18:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago, I was discussing what I do with a friend. After the usual "wow, physics, that's intense" reaction, he asked how it was going. I told him how classes were becoming annoying, and he said...

"Yeah, I guess at that level it's mostly philosophy anyway."

What??? Is that what people think about modern theoretical physics? Well, I think if you did a properly-formatted survey, the answer would be yes. I doubt there are many people who know that all theoretical physics is applied mathematics and that facts and hypotheses are all in the equations. Who's to blame? who's responsible for this horrible misunderstanding of the most fundamental of sciences? Who wrote bestseller after bestseller implying that unfounded hypotheses in string theory were scientific fact, and that scientific facts could be effectively reduced to cute allegories without a single equation ever printed?

Stephen Hawking.

See - tech - astronomy

2008-08-04T20:42:00.002-04:00

Bonus points for who gets the title of this post, a reference to one of the greatest movies of all time (with the greatest Sydney Poitier role of all time!).

So I finished teaching the last AST104 lab on Thursday, which was quite a lame but quick one. It's amazing how much we're able to cram into these non-science kids' heads in a 6-week summer course, but my hope is that they come out of this with two things: first that they appreciate the artistic beauty of what's in the universe, and second that they have some understanding of how science works. For most of these people, this will be the first, last, and only science course they will take in college, so it's absolutely critical that they get particularly the second point.

Now I love astronomy. Always have. But I'm also a physicist, so it makes it easy for me to appreciate it. How about the non-scientists who can get into this stuff - what motivates you? What is it about astronomy that you find interesting, that you'd like to learn more about? The students have a week left of class and then they're done with science for good, but many of them will still be coming to observation nights with me and turning in labs, so I'd like to be able to give them some final word to take home.

And as far as the tech goes, a college education cannot be complete without learning computer operation and basic programming. There is nothing more fundamental to the understanding of logic and scientific thought, and nothing more useful to every field. Programming should be a part of every student's computer education, especially since most students don't need basic computer operation in the first place since they probably know more about them than their teachers.

Common underrated veggies

2008-08-04T20:42:00.001-04:00

I'm going to recommend five fruits and vegetables that are underused in American cooking, but often available at grocery stores and absolutely delicious.

1. Jicama - like a carrot, but sweeter and juicier. Can be deep-fried like a healthier french-fry, or just eaten raw with or without dip. Makes great salads and stir-fries as well.

2. Habanero peppers - I spent all last summer making salsas, and habaneros were my favorite pepper not because of their legendary hotness, but just due to the sheer amount of flavor they pack. Carefully remove seeds and the whitish lining inside before using, and use sparingly since they have an awful lot of flavor (and some residual spice), but put it in omelettes, stir-fries, sauces, or anything that you want a summery mexican feel to.

3. Olives - Kalamatas have a very acquired taste to them, and even I really can't stand eating them plain (though canned black olives are fine for me). But like a habanero, they just have a very concentrated flavor and need to be added sparingly - in proper quantities they will add a new dimension to omelettes and salads - another great summer fruit.

4. Artichokes - one of these days I'll use the leaf scrapings as a curry base. These were always my favorite vegetable as a kid - I demanded to have them for my 6th birthday dinner. The hearts are well-known, but the full vegetable makes a great meal - simply steam/boil for an hour, let cool, then pull off leaves and use your teeth to scrape the meat off the inside of each leaf. Finally, you get to the heart and the very best treat at the end. Serve with butter or mayo.

5. Avocado. Christ, need I say more? It's not so underrated, but I may have to spend a month in Mexico this year just so I can eat them every day. Use in everything in large portions. Hell, just plop one on my plate for dinner, I don't care!

The corner grocery birthday cake

2008-08-04T20:40:00.000-04:00

It was my birthday a bit more than a month ago. I was waiting for the weekend to party, but as I was talking to my mom on the phone she insisted I spoil myself with a cake. It was 9pm - I wasn't about to make it from scratch. More importantly, my roommates had all moved out a couple days earlier and took all the baking pans.

Crap.

Trip to corner grocery store: a tiny, tiny place that overcharges on bare essentials for the local hippies who lack cars. I go in looking for something to bake in. The only thing they have a is a chocolate-graham-cracker pie crust. Fine.

Need something for cake. I have an unopened box of spice cake mix - sounds better than mixing my own. That just leaves frosting. I have powdered sugar lying around, and I have cream cheese in the fridge - five minutes later I've got cream cheese frosting. This is starting to sound good...

Pie crust is ready to go, about half-full with batter, in the oven for 20 minutes. Pull it out - now what the hell do I do? I do the obvious thing - I flip it over onto a plate and frost the crust which is now face-up. It's the most geometrical tank-like cake I've ever frosted.

Friends are outside. Moment of truth. We're all taking bites. "Holy s***", someone says, "This is the best cake I've ever eaten". Sure Enough, I finish one piece and I feel like I've eaten the richest thing my stomach could take. Everybody else was floored, too. Not bad for 20 minutes prep. It also looks like it was very difficult to prepare, since it's so perfectly shaped and intricately layered.

Got the idea? Spice cake + chocolate graham crust + cream cheese frosting = win.

KISS in the kitchen

2008-08-04T20:39:00.000-04:00

(Originally posted Jul 17, 2008)

I need to keep it simpler when I'm in the kitchen. The recipe I just posted (with which I just stuffed myself to finish the leftovers) seemed a bit much. I mean, it worked, but I want to start developing dishes which max out at 5 ingredients, not necessarily, but usually, including spices.

The best guacamole I ever made had two ingredients. Here's the recipe:

1 fresh roma tomato
1 firm, newly ripe avocado

Dice both into one-cm cubes. Put in bowl. Insert tortilla chip. Get at least one piece of tomato and one piece of avocado per chip. Insert into mouth.

The guy with whom I was living at the time, who was also really into cooking (and better at it than I was, having taken some courses) laughed at me when I made this. But the taste is firmly in my memory - the mix of salty fruitiness of avocado and lightly sweet juiciness of tomato works so perfectly, and any complexity in flavor that you want is controlled by the tortilla chip. And the freshness, my god...

This is just my taste. I don't do salt, I am sparing with pepper; I live for the simple, pure flavors that I can get out of food, though maybe it's just my inexperience talking.

One more rant, speaking of guacamole, salsa, etc. If you're gonna make it yourself, don't use a blender unless it's not for viewing. I like my dips and sauces chunky and rustic. I want to be surprised by each bite - this one had an extra tomato chunk, or this one had a giant leaf of cilantro on it - not be dipping endlessly into boring, homogeneous slurries.

Tricks to a great summer curry

2008-08-04T20:35:00.000-04:00

(Originally posted Jul 17, 2008)

So I had a lot of fruit on the verge of spoiling yesterday, so I mixed it all into a delicious summer-flavor Indian dish. I'd like to share the recipe with you all and give my suggestions on how to give such dishes a more summertime appeal. You'll need

- about 1/4c onion and 2 cloves garlic, both minced/diced
- 2 ripe bananas or 1 plantain, mashed.
- 1/2c fresh cilantro
- 2 tsp lemon/lime juice
- 1c diced fruit - I used an overripe pear, but tomatoes, mango, or squash are all fine substitutes
- 1c chickpeas or some other protein - tofu, or if you must, chicken...
- spices: I recommend a Carribean curry mix for this dish: 2tsp turmeric, 1tsp cumin, 1/2tsp coriander, pepper to taste, and chili powder if desired. I also used 1/2tsp garam masala for a bit more grounding in the subcontinent.

To cook, fry up your garlic and onions in oil on low heat for a good time until nice and moist and soft, then add spices and banana (I recommend thinning the banana with about 1/4c milk or water) and let it start oozing out its natural oil a bit. Once that happens, just throw in the rest in whatever order. The fruit should probably go first, though, as it needs a minute or two to soften and absorb everything on its own.

What I think is key for this summer flavor is the cilantro and lemon. I'd like to try adding fresh basil next time as well, and probably chives too. The only objection I had is that the banana is a little too sweet, so I would also try using underripe bananas instead, which have a much fruitier flavor. You may also consider thinning the mixture with coconut milk.

The other thing I like to do with these dishes is mix up the oil base. Mashed bananas, potatoes, yams, or cream of coconut all work wonders. Pumpkin is great too, but if it's in the can it definitely needs some condensed milk or cream of coconut to sweeten a bit. I've been trying to get it to work with avocado, and I think that will be my favorite dish once I cook it right (and an amazing summer flavor). The thing I forgot last time was just how powerful cream of coconut was in terms of flavor and sweetness. It's easy to let it overpower a dish, so I use it only rarely now. Anyway, if you don't want any of those thick bases, just add another cup of fruit and let it simmer in for a while with a bit more oil. You can also do a cream base with heavy cream and/or milk, or use one of those "cream of" soups, but that puts you into a different dish category entirely.

I dunno, I'm just an amateur at this, so it's nice to have such a successful dish.

Origins: choose your coordinate system carefully

2008-08-04T20:20:00.000-04:00

The first post must be a meta-post.

Riv-bar is a kanji mistranscription of my last name, given to me when I competed in my first kendo tournament. I used it as the title for this blog because it reminds me of Planck's constant, h-bar, which describes the scales at which systems behave quantum-mechanically.

This blog will be a dumping ground for recipes, research notes, cartoons, cognition, and admittedly angst, at least until I figure out what kind of posts get the most attention.

My background: I graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 2007 with a BS in Mathematics and Physics and a BA in Linguistics and Computation (self-declared). I finished my first year of grad school in theoretical biophysics, but am taking the year off because I am totally burnt out and am in an identity crisis. As I seek employment in some mathematical field, I also hope to continue exploring the world of research in my area of interest: brain and network theory.