Saturday, September 13, 2008

Lisa Randall on the Universe, Edward O. Wilson on the Creation ...

NOTES FROM LISA RANDALL

Einstein helped develop a toolbox to look at space, particles and other breakthroughs

We are trying to understand how the forces are related, learn more about gravity and why its weaker than other forces...

How does gravity manifest itself?

4 dimensions -- up down, left right, forward backward, and time

String theory -- branes could be in universe that don't spread, and things are stuck on those surfaces -- example is water droplets on a shower curtain. there's a dimension stuck on another.

what does gravity look like? Energy allows it to be concentrated, otherwise it would just be spread out. meaning what? as you move away from branes, gravity gets weaker, and could create another dimension and be concentrated on another gravity brane

we percive gravity as week, because it is concentrated elsewhere in an extra dimension, and we are getting the tail end of gravity

space time is warped.. we rescale things in extra dimensions. Things aren't alwasy heavy, just in the gravity brane. So warp space time effects various dimensions

Its very hard to measure extra dimensions, but if they do exist it would change the way everyone views the universe, both phsyicists, mathmaticians and cosmotolocists.


What is the universe in which we live? Are there other dimensions, other forces, other people?

We are just a small part of something very big..

There could me a multi-verse, where we don't have access, tools or the capacity to measure or find them...

We live on a brane, if there's another brane, it wouldn't apply on another brane, due to the totally different forces.

Maybe the only force we have in common with othter branes is only gravity



Effective theory -- you can learn about things on a large scale, and compare and relate them to smaller scales to come up with conclusions


EDWARD WILSON NOTES

The Creation - an appeal to save life on earth-- latest book
an effort to bridge the gap between scientists and evangelicals

It's agenda is to call on the religious faithful to join scientists, environmentalists etc to show respect to each other

We, as humans, should be promoters and preservers of the planet, not destroyers and just consumers.

Wison argues that christians, or theists in general, need to address the earths issues together with scientists, and unite the two social forces.

It's not AGAINST religion to be against the world, and he argues scientists think the two can't cross paths or coincide at all, and thats not true.

We need to do several things to save the planet, we need to define what the problm is and make it known to the public. Need education, define and measure.

People want to know what the problem is, the consequences, how to fix it (what science can contribute) and how much it will cost to fix things (economist).

To save the hottest of the hot spots (hawaii, madagascar and all the plants, species etc) and put an umbrella over them, and save the core area from the 3 remaining tropical rain forests (amazon, congo, new guinies) would cost 30 billion dollars

which is 10% of what the Iraqi war costs!!!

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