MPJ

"At some point, the gluons will no longer be able to hold the quarks together, and the hadrons will decay. Which will mean the end of matter in this universe." - Albert Einstein  1 As it seems, in our universe, nothing is made to last. Eventually, everything gets old and dies or changes or decays into something else and I am not refereeing to the life forms only but all matter in the cosmos. For all we know this might not be true within our own macro world alone but also deep below the same goes for particles in the quantum realm as well. The fact is that everything in the universe have a tendency to achieve the lowest energy state and to finally rest within a stable system even if that means going through various changes or decays. In the quantum world, this could be true for the Higgs field as well. According to Hawking, if it becomes meta-stable, the vacuum decay bubble will emerge and consume everything in order to eventually reach the lowest energy state possible. For

Last night I had a vividly strange science fiction dream. Like with most of my dreams, and dreams in general I guess, it was hard to recall all the details in the morning and this one was no exception, but in the nutshell the scene started with me in some science lab, describing the idea of how to effectively make a tiny hole in the universe. It was pretty simple - I was using four Tesla coils, perfectly positioned in the corners of the large square with edges of about couple of meters long and with a small, battery sized, two metal plates positioned in its center of the square. The experiment was that at the precise moment, Tesla coils fired four filaments of thunder, reaching the center point exactly between two metal plates in the same time, initiating a process that in the end created a tiny breach in the universe that I was describing in the dream as a brane between dimensions and within the void between multiverses. Anyway, in the process, one plate goes from metallic through dar

I remember reading an article in the Guardian last year with title "Our galaxy may contain billions of planets with the same mass as Earth". Surely, it is valid scientific guess as it is but if it is really true, my first thought would be that intelligent life as we know it (assuming we are intelligent species) is as rare as we can imagine. If they are not, the big question is why we are still not able to detect any single proof of their existence or still not eaten by some violent alien species? The only logical answer that we are first one walks on the edge of impossibility to me. Most likely we are missing something important, a discovery as important as fire was. While this statement is still accurate and generally speaking plausible, let's think a little more about it. So to start with the original statement, is there really that many planets with Earth like properties in our galaxy? Ever since I read the Drake equation for the first time (shown above), I coul

Until recently I had a toy-model of Russian space station Mir hanged in our living room settled nicely between two more common house decorations. It was small in size, no bigger than five cubic inches with two teeny tiny Soyuz spacecrafts docked at their designated locks and numerous solar panels all over the place. The plastic toy is long gone now but still from time to time it raises some nice memories, especially those moments when couple of our guests after close inspection from all directions asked questions like "What the heck is this?" or "Is this art?". Not many of them recognized the most challenging technological endeavor of the last two decades of previous century at first glance. On March 23, 2001, all the biggest Mir's fragments after surviving hellish re-entry through the atmosphere hit the Pacific ocean and ended 15 years of various scientific experiments performed by 28 long duration multinational crews with total of 104 people from 12

I don't really remember what was the name of the novel I read for the first time in my life. Probably one of those great books for children, like Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" or several of those with treasure hunt in story line with pirates and children in main character roles. It seems that it happened ages ago and whichever the book was, ever since then, especially in first decade or two after I learned to read, I swallowed a big amount of novels in realms of science fiction and different variety of adventurous stories. If I add tons of magazines, short stories and comic books to my reading habits back then, I think I can't be too much wrong if I say that my personality is shaped, more than I am ready to admit, with that big pile of paper I held in my hands decades ago. My early reading gave me one more thing besides pure knowledge and as weirdly as it sounds it is the smell of paper. Especially, the odor of printed paper just got out of printin

Not so long ago I mentioned great city of Alexandria in post Constantine & Naissus when I described the horrible misfortune and death of Hypatia, one of the greatest philosopher and astronomer of 4th century AD, who lived at the very end of classical Greek era of prosperity. Within the same city walls, couple of centuries before, one of the equally greatest and famous scientists of all times, Claudius Ptolemy was living, exploring, teaching and dedicating his life in various disciplines including astronomy and, of course, unavoidable astrology which was considered to be "connected science" for centuries, especially in the old ages. Rachel Weisz as Hypatia of Alexandria in Agora (2009) Among other things, Ptolemy will be remembered as the one of first scholars who described and identified 48 constellations of clear and unpolluted nightly skies above Alexandria so many centuries ago. One of the biggest constellations in his list was the great constellation of Gem

Before I start writing about this amazing sea, first of all I have to say that this story is equally about Greece, the oldest European country and the first known civilization in Europe. Surrounded with three seas, Greece is probably the most interesting place in the Mediterranean basin ever since it is formed and filled with water many millenniums ago. Aegean sea keeps the most important part in the history of mankind being natural barrier between civilizations independently developed over the west, east and south. Once in those past times, today known as B.C. this was the center of the World. It was also the place where many amazing things were born we know today as science, democracy, philosophy, mathematics, culture and sport along with all those "other inventions" like modern armies and wars, dictatorships, religion, divine beings... Aegean Sea Today after two millenniums, looking to this part of the world from my point of view and my own relations to the Aegean

Indeed, this should be a provocative post because of it's oxymoron in title. Surely I will not going to try to comprehend what I can't explain myself, just to put couple of thoughts on paper. So let's start from the word itself. God. What could it be?  There is one widespread theological simple explanation where all nowadays religions and the ones extinct in the past define this divine being(s) as extra powerful entity(ies) capable of the creation of everything. The mighty one(s) if you will. The history of God in all religions are more or less the same. It is full of wonders and love but also violence especially when two cultures collided or shared the same habitat with each other. Good thing today the habitat now is the whole planet and there are no big crusades any more, just small sparks here and there, but the danger of big explosion is always in the air and it is everywhere, Europe, Middle East, Far East, Americas.. The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo The big