MPJ

Let's turn our imagination to the edge and do something different today. We can call it thought experiment, childish game, day dream, science fiction, pure fantasy or whatever we want but let's move the boundaries far away from Earth, far away from our Solar system, even farther from our Galaxy and do something wild. Let's choose a planet. Or to be more precise, let's select one in the vastness of cosmos and move away from this Earth and start new life. Of course in day dreams we are allowed to do this just because the imagination is what our species differs from others on Earth. Ok, to begin this little endeavor, we need a little astronomy to start with. What we know for sure is that our galaxy alone contains more than 200 billion stars, majority of them not so much different from our Sun and by using basic statistical study based on planet finder's microlensing technique there are approximately 100 billion planets orbiting them. Perhaps more. Multiple that b...

"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 referring to the life forms only but all matter in the cosmos. For all we know, this might not be true within our own macroworld alone, but also deep below, the same goes for particles in the quantum realm as well. The fact is that everything in the universe has 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. F...

Do you gamble? I don't. Not because it is not fun nor because it is one of famous five sins. It is simple for me. I never win. I tried couple of times with lottery tickets and I never won a dime. Not to mention that I am terrible at predicting sport results or to win any kind of gambling event. I remember once I watched Euro-song contest and had strong feeling that Austrian band will win big time. Their performance was great and the song was pretty good.. I even typed one of those SMS messages to support them. And yet, they scored exactly zero points! Were they bad? No. Check the video within YouTube refs below. They were pretty good. Only sometimes, the luck doesn't come with quality.. It chooses by some strange criteria, as it seems, I will never understand. When I was in high school I thought I was smart enough to build some system by analyzing previous results in national lottery and to win at least the second prize which would be enough for me to buy super home compu...

Most of famous movies and novels that are dealing with remarkable and bold scientific ideas in existence, like plotting the script behind the most intriguing property in the latest string theory called "Holographic principle", lack one main attraction I am always looking in science fiction. The plausibility of the story. To get to the wider audience, science behind is somehow always pushed below the main layer and the result is either too philosophical, ridiculous or unnecessary too complex (like planting humans for energy in 'Matrix' by AIs) or simple love story, like in case of "The Thirteenth Floor" or other simple and proven Good-vs-Bad chases in virtual realities, like those portrayed in Caprica. The Thirteenth Floor* But, if I had to choose one of those Hollywood fictions, maybe you would be surprised if I preferred "The Thirteenth Floor" over all the others I had chance to watch or read. For one simple reason. Like with holographic p...

In the last post of the Beth's Q&A we tried to understand four basic forces and their corresponding particle carriers or bosons. With almost certain discovery of the Higgs boson physicist completed the search for this last mystery of the standard model and we now know how larger particles get their mass and how interact with each other. Now is the time to bring this story up one level and write about chemical elements representing basic 'lego' blocks of almost everything in the universe we currently comprehend. Hmm, everything but mysterious dark matter that we still don't have a clue what it's made of. Every now and again in media (mostly internet) we can read about how we all are made out of stars and other violent events in the universe dating back in time even so far in the past to the Big Bang itself. Following some of this articles Beth posted another idea for the thread and I am paraphrasing her thoughts: "I keep reading we are made from the ...

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 ...