The other day, I read about radiation pressure, and how there’s the formation of the comet’s tail, at first, I really hadn’t noticed it. Heh, like in dad’s words, I thought it was like a trail sorts, but true, there is no atmosphere there, so trail of what, also it doesn’t follow the comet’s orbit pattern, so what was it that was causing it to be the way it was. So its all about radiation pressure, the source of electromagnetic waves generating it. And in this case, it was the sun. So I did the calculations and finally figured out, why it is the way it is. Thanks to Resnick ;) I still don’t understand why we don’t have Resnick and Halliday in our course, as the main book of reference, it makes you see a lot deeper into the universe, and your concepts get cleared out perfectly. Like just yesterday, I found the real age of crab nebula is 5500 BC since it was recorded by the Chinese first seen in 1054 AD and it is 6500 light years distant, which was infact not so difficult to calculate at all, but at the same time you get the essence of it, you see. Also, physics I shall say has the easiest names to remember e.g. WIMPs or MACHOs, even the names of nebula are what they look like e.g. crab nebula etc. (unlike the way biologists' who give incomprehensible scientific names :P ) .
So the other day, I was washing my plate, there were a lot of things I noticed; the stream flow of water, reminding me Reynold’s constant. Then the mechanism of how soap works and detergent, the soap molecules attaching to oil part and the ionic part as the tail forming micelles, then watching bubbles and thinking about thin surface reflection and interference, watching the plate and seeing my reflection, reminded me of the blog I’d read about the uncertainty with which photons would reflect and which would get transmitted through, which was explained via chaos theory or non-linear dynamics.
And just yesterday I read a note about the physiological aspect of the eye, written by Feynman, which got me so hooked, that I didn’t attend to calls for breakfast by dad, lol. But it was interesting to notice how brain works, and how eye is actually an extension of a of the brain : the optical nerve fiber connection, and how if you cut one of the many in the bundle, it finds it way to grow back again, they experimented with salamander, you see. Also, how we don’t start seeing by learning as we are born, but we actually know what is, cause of the way we see it. You see, the same salamander, its one optical nerve was cut and eye placed upside down, and it saw the world as upside down, the fly was “down there” instead of “up there” and it attacked in the wrong direction. Thus we don’t learn seeing, we are inherited with seeing. Oh, and how the binocular vision works, the left eye information is sent to right part of the brain while the right eye information is sent to left part of brain, and there’s a mid slit in the brain, which causes the object that are near apart to be farther apart. And also how signals are first sent to the mid-brain, which tells the iris how to focus, and how to change the radius to capture light of right amount. Also, how weird it is, that the contraction of the pupil is directly connected to the optical nerve system, while the expansion has a very weird long route through the spinal cord, to everywhere, and so on. Yes, really weird. But its magnificent, how the eye works. Really magnificent. One can appreciate the beauty only when one realizes its workings. Also, in Resnick I was reading about the diffraction patterns and spots that we see, it happens in the vitreous humour which has exactly the same refractive index as water, 1.33, and that’s why we can’t see too clearly in water. Heh, there was actually a question and an experiment to be done, to calculate the size of the spots. Yay ! Interesting XD
And well, yesterday only, had a long chat with a friend (Angel Starr) about the working of quantum field and how much is missed in the mathematical abstracts. Yes, I too am skeptical about the string theory, the last funny thing I heard was about blackholes being fuzz balls (extended strings, and mathematically proven, by some Indian in California or so). Here I am skeptical, cause I doubt the explanation of gravity, and very clearly we discussed about gravity arising from geometry. And yesterday we further discussed about neutrinos and its purpose, about its existence meaning a different force field that we’ve missed out somehow. 'Cause it just isn’t noticed. Or the explanation of dark matter and dark energy that accelerates the universe expansion. And oh the last I remember about the universe acceleration was, either all of it, goes into cold state and dies, or it leads to the big rip, where even the protons and neutrons disintegrate… speculations there are, and they shall persist throughout.
Or maybe we are just fish in the fishbowl (in hawking’s word) ;) [what we see is only a distorted picture of the actual reality]
I deeply admire hawking especially after I watched the BBC horizon show on hawking’s paradox. And the information paradox. Hawking believes in parallel universe and without black hole all shall be well, while Susskind believes its all a projection and 3d is a projection of 2d surface, and information being coded on the surface of black holes, at the event horizon. But hawking’s equation, of s=c^3kA/4hG (for black hole) is the most beautiful and elegant I have known after e=mc^2. So that’s about a day’s diary. Cya next time, if I ever come up with more metaphors, curious questions after long chats with myself, or dad or Padma or angel starr, or get stimulated by another video or Resnick. I wish my diary entries to be frequent though. ;)
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