PLato said,"Look to the perfection of the heavens for truth," while Aristotle said "look around you at what is, if you would know the truth" To Remember: Eskesthai
The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) 2nd International Conference in Ponta Delgada, Azores. July 7-12, 2009. Topics include cosmology, astrophysics, gravity, quantum gravity, quantum theory, and high-energy physics. http://www.fqxi.org/
The Meduso-Anthropic Principle is a speculative theory by Louis Crane (1994). The theory develops Cosmological natural selection by leading cosmologist, Lee Smolin and suggests the development of the universe is similar to the development of Corals and Jellyfish. The Medusa generations alternate with Polyp generations. Similarly it is suggested, the Universe develops Intelligent life and Intelligent life produces new Baby universes. Our universe may also exist as a Black hole in a Parallel universe. Extraterrestrial life there may have created that black hole.
Bringing the Heavens down to Earth
If mini black holes can be produced in high-energy particle interactions, they may first be observed in high-energy cosmic-ray neutrino interactions in the atmosphere. Jonathan Feng of the University of California at Irvine and MIT, and Alfred Shapere of the University of Kentucky have calculated that the Auger cosmic-ray observatory, which will combine a 6000 km2 extended air-shower array backed up by fluorescence detectors trained on the sky, could record tens to hundreds of showers from black holes before the LHC turns on in 2007......Thus, hypothetically, the energy required to produce black holes is well within the range of the LHC, making it a "black-hole factory". As Stephen Hawking has taught us, these mini black holes would be extremely hot little objects that would dissipate all their energy very rapidly by emitting radiation and particles before they wink out of existence. The properties of the Hawking radiation could tell us about the properties of the extra spatial dimensions, although there are still uncertainties in the theory at this stage. See: here
We have been assured black hole production can be quite safe so we can deal with the idea that such production quickly dissipates on the level with which we would and can make them?:) So the level at which such an idea is presented would of course be as suggested as to say that this universe in all it's ability is at the level with which we can make black-holes useful? Black holes of sufficient size.:) I find that really interesting, just because we are here.
We argue that the following three statements cannot all be true: (i) Hawking radiation is in a pure state, (ii) the information carried by the radiation is emitted from the region near the horizon, with low energy effective field theory valid beyond some microscopic distance from the horizon, and (iii) the infalling observer encounters nothing unusual at the horizon. Perhaps the most conservative resolution is that the infalling observer burns up at the horizon. Alternatives would seem to require novel dynamics that nevertheless cause notable violations of semiclassical physics at macroscopic distances from the horizon. Black Hole: Complementarity vs Firewall
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| See:The elephant and the event horizon 26 October 2006 by Amanda Gefter at New Scientist. |
Various neutron interferometry experiments demonstrate the subtlety of the notions of duality and complementarity. By passing through the interferometer, the neutron appears to act as a wave. Yet upon passage, the neutron is subject to gravitation. As the neutron interferometer is rotated through Earth's gravitational field a phase change between the two arms of the interferometer can be observed, accompanied by a change in the constructive and destructive interference of the neutron waves on exit from the interferometer. Some interpretations claim that understanding the interference effect requires one to concede that a single neutron takes both paths through the interferometer at the same time; a single neutron would "be in two places at once", as it were. Since the two paths through a neutron interferometer can be as far as 5 cm to 15 cm apart, the effect is hardly microscopic. This is similar to traditional double-slit and mirror interferometer experiments where the slits (or mirrors) can be arbitrarily far apart. So, in interference and diffraction experiments, neutrons behave the same way as photons (or electrons) of corresponding wavelength. See: Complementarity (physics)
Plato likened our view of the world to that of an ancient forebear watching shadows meander across a dimly lit cave wall. He imagined our perceptions to be but a faint inkling of a far richer reality that flickers beyond reach. Two millennia later, Plato’s cave may be more than a metaphor. To turn his suggestion on its head, reality—not its mere shadow—may take place on a distant boundary surface, while everything we witness in the three common spatial dimensions is a projection of that faraway unfolding. Reality, that is, may be akin to a hologram. Or, really, a holographic movie.
The journey to this peculiar possibility combines developments deep and far-flung—insights from general relativity; from research on black holes; from thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and, most recently, string theory. The thread linking these diverse areas is the nature of information in a quantum universe.
Physicists Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking established that, for a black hole, the information storage capacity is determined not by the volume of its interior but by the area of its surface. But when the math says that a black hole’s store of information is measured by its surface area, does that merely reflect a numerical accounting, or does it mean that the black hole’s surface is where the information is actually stored? It’s a deep issue and has been pursued for decades by some of the most renowned physicists. The answer depends on whether you view the black hole from the outside or from the inside—and from the outside, there’s good reason to believe that information is indeed stored at the event horizon. This doesn’t merely highlight a peculiar feature of black holes. Black holes don’t just tell us about how black holes store information. Black holes inform us about information storage in any context. See:Our Universe May Be a Giant Hologram
AS with Einstein, who was Socrates daemon?:)See:Fullerane and Allotropes
In Plato's Apology of Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimonion (literally, a "divine something")[6] that frequently warned him - in the form of a "voice" - against mistakes but never told him what to do
Death of Socrates by Jacques Davidthis picture depicts the closing moments of the life of Socrates. Condemned to death or exile by the Athenian government for his teaching methods which aroused scepticism and impiety in his students, Socrates heroicly rejected exile and accepted death from hemlock.
Self portrait of Jacques-Louis David, 1794, Musée du LouvreHere the philosopher continues to speak even while reaching for the cup, demonstrating his indifference to death and his unyielding commitment to his ideals. Most of his disciplines and slaves swirl around him in grief, betraying the weakness of emotionalism. His wife is seen only in the distance leaving the prison. Only Plato, at the foot of the bed and Crito grasping his master's leg, seem in control of themselves.See:Jacques-Louis David: The Death of Socrates
Plato defined a philosopher firstly as its eponymous occupation – wisdom-lover. He then distinguishes between one who loves true knowledge as opposed to simple sights or education by saying that a philosopher is the only man who has access to Forms – the archetypal entities that exist behind all representations of the form (such as Beauty itself as opposed to any one particular instance of beauty). It is next and in support of the idea that philosophers are the best rulers that Plato fashions the ship of state metaphor, one of his most often cited ideas (along with his allegory of the cave). "[A] true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship" (The Republic, 6.488d). Plato claims that the sailors (i.e., the people of the city-state over whom the philosopher is the potential ruler) ignore the philosopher's "idle stargazing" because they have never encountered a true philosopher before.
Stargazers by Paul Rossetti Bjarnson, Pg 102, Chapter XV
Dennis William Siahou Sciama FRS (November 18, 1926–December 18, 1999) was a British physicist who, through his own work and that of his students, played a major role in developing British physics after the Second World War.Sciama also strongly influenced Roger Penrose, who dedicated his The Road to Reality to Sciama's memory. The 1960s group he led in Cambridge (which included Ellis, Hawking, Rees, and Carter), has proved of lasting influence.
Plotinus (Greek: Πλωτῖνος) (ca. AD 204–270) was a major philosopher of the ancient world who is widely considered the founder of Neoplatonism (along with his teacher Ammonius Saccas). Much of our biographical information about him comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' Enneads.Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity or distinction; likewise it is beyond all categories of being and non-being. The concept of "being" is derived by us from the objects of human experience called the dyad, and is an attribute of such objects, but the infinite, transcendent One is beyond all such objects, and therefore is beyond the concepts that we derive from them. The One "cannot be any existing thing", and cannot be merely the sum of all such things (compare the Stoic doctrine of disbelief in non-material existence), but "is prior to all existents". Thus, no attributes can be assigned to the One. We can only identify it with the Good and the principle of Beauty. [I.6.9]
For example, thought cannot be attributed to the One because thought implies distinction between a thinker and an object of thought (again dyad). Even the self-contemplating intelligence (the noesis of the nous) must contain duality. "Once you have uttered 'The Good,' add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency." [III.8.10] Plotinus denies sentience, self-awareness or any other action (ergon) to the One [V.6.6]. Rather, if we insist on describing it further, we must call the One a sheer Dynamis or potentiality without which nothing could exist. [III.8.10] As Plotinus explains in both places and elsewhere [e.g. V.6.3], it is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-aware Creator God. At [V.6.4], Plotinus compared the One to "light", the Divine Nous (first will towards Good) to the "Sun", and lastly the Soul to the "Moon" whose light is merely a "derivative conglomeration of light from the 'Sun'". The first light could exist without any celestial body.
What good is a universe without somebody around to look at it?
Robert Dicke
John Archibald Wheeler (born July 9, 1911) is an eminent American theoretical physicist. One of the later collaborators of Albert Einstein, he tried to achieve Einstein's vision of a unified field theory. He is also known as the coiner of the popular name of the well known space phenomenon, the black hole.COSMIC SEARCH: How did you come up with the name "black hole"?
John Archibald Wheeler:It was an act of desperation, to force people to believe in it. It was in 1968, at the time of the discussion of whether pulsars were related to neutron stars or to these completely collapsed objects. I wanted a way of emphasizing that these objects were real. Thus, the name "black hole".
The Russians used the term frozen star—their point of attention was how it looked from the outside, where the material moves much more slowly until it comes to a horizon.* (*Or critical distance. From inside this distance there is no escape.) But, from the point of view of someone who's on the material itself, falling in, there's nothing special about the horizon. He keeps on going in. There's nothing frozen about what happens to him. So, I felt that that aspect of it needed more emphasis.
“Roger Penrose and I worked together on the large scale structure of space and time, including singularities and black holes. We pretty much agree on the classical theory of theory of relativity but disagreements began to emerge when we got into quantum gravity. We now have different approaches to the world, physical and mental. Basically, he is a Platonist believing that’s there’s a unique world of ideas that describes a unique physical reality. I on the other hand, am a positivist who believes that physical theories are just mathematical models we construct, and it is meaningless to ask if they correspond to reality; just whether they predict observations.”See: Phil Warnell's comment.
( Chapter Six-The Large, the Small and the Human Mind-Roger Penrose-Cambridge University Press-1997)
Whereas Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne firmly believe that information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden from the outside universe, and can never be revealed even as the black hole evaporates and completely disappears,
And whereas John Preskill firmly believes that a mechanism for the information to be released by the evaporating black hole must and will be found in the correct theory of quantum gravity,
Therefore Preskill offers, and Hawking/Thorne accept, a wager that:
When an initial pure quantum state undergoes gravitational collapse to form a black hole, the final state at the end of black hole evaporation will always be a pure quantum state.
The loser(s) will reward the winner(s) with an encyclopedia of the winner's choice, from which information can be recovered at will.
Stephen W. Hawking, Kip S. Thorne, John P. Preskill
Pasadena, California, 6 February 1997
Drawing Credit: XMM-Newton, ESA, NASA-Image sourced from: Pictured above is an artist's illustration of a black hole surrounded by an accretion disk.The black hole Information Paradox results from the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It suggests that physical information could "disappear" in a black hole. It is a contentious subject since it violates a commonly assumed tenet of science—that information cannot be destroyed. If it is true, then cause and effect become unrelated, and nothing science knows, not even our memories, can be trusted.
Professor Sir Roger Penrose, OM, FRS (born 8 August 1931) Before the Big Bang Three Different Views of Quantum Weirdness
(and What It Means)
A: According to the orthodox view of quantum mechanics, called the Copenhagen interpretation, a system (represented here by a child’s block) does not occupy a definite state or location until it is measured. Before then it is just a blur of overlapping possibilities.
B: The many worlds interpretation insists that the system occupies all its possible states but that every one of them exists in its own alternate universe. Each universe sees one state only, which is why we never observe the block in two states at once.
C: In Penrose’s interpretation, gravity holds our reality together. In each potential state, the block generates a separate gravitational field. Over time, the energy required to maintain these multiple fields causes the block to settle into one state only—the one that we observe.
See:If an Electron Can Be in Two Places at Once, Why Can't You-by Tim Folger, Photograph by David Berry, Illustrations by Don Foley?
See:Quantum State reduction as a real phenomenon by Roger Penrose (Oxford)2 Sep 1999Dennis William Siahou Sciama FRS (November 18, 1926–December 18, 1999) was a British physicist who, through his own work and that of his students, played a major role in developing British physics after the Second World War.Sciama also strongly influenced Roger Penrose, who dedicated his The Road to Reality to Sciama's memory. The 1960s group he led in Cambridge (which included Ellis, Hawking, Rees, and Carter), has proved of lasting influence.
Sciama was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1982. He was also an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Academia Lincei of Rome. He served as president of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation, 1980-84.
In 1959 he married Lidia Dina, a social anthropologist, who survived him, along with their two daughters.
However, if the second is taken as truth and all is remembering, then what can the force of gravity do to a memory that is not in any, yet of all? So if all were to collapse would the memory not persist, since it is not of what vanished. Strangely, Hawking proved it so and yet he still denies his mentor who advised not only that it would be so, yet why
The Navier-Stokes equations, named after Claude-Louis Navier and George Gabriel Stokes, are a set of equations that describe the motion of fluid substances such as liquids and gases. These equations establish that changes in momentum in infinitesimal volumes of fluid are simply the product of changes in pressure and dissipative viscous forces (similar to friction) acting inside the fluid. These viscous forces originate in molecular interactions and dictate how viscous a fluid is. Thus, the Navier-Stokes equations are a dynamical statement of the balance of forces acting at any given region of the fluid.
A more fundamental property than the disappearance of viscosity becomes visible if superfluid is placed in a rotating container. Instead of rotating uniformly with the container, the rotating state consists of quantized vortices. That is, when the container is rotated at speed below the first critical velocity (related to the quantum numbers for the element in question) the liquid remains perfectly stationary. Once the first critical velocity is reached, the superfluid will very quickly begin spinning at the critical speed. The speed is quantized - i.e. it can only spin at certain speeds.
Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid to deform under shear stress. It is commonly perceived as "thickness", or resistance to flow. Viscosity describes a fluid's internal resistance to flow and may be thought of as a measure of fluid friction. Thus, water is "thin", having a lower viscosity, while vegetable oil is "thick" having a higher viscosity. All real fluids (except superfluids) have some resistance to shear stress, but a fluid which has no resistance to shear stress is known as an ideal fluid or inviscid fluid (Symon 1971).
On the other hand, gravity in the form of curved space would permeate the whole bulk of the higher dimensional spacetime …. Stephen Hawking1
In writing this review, we have tried to discuss the different building blocks that are needed if one wants to construct a relativistic theory for fluids. Although there are numerous alternatives, we opted to base our discussion of the fluid equations of motion on the variational approach pioneered by Taub [108] and in recent years developed considerably by Carter [17, 19, 21]. This is an appealing strategy because it leads to a natural formulation for multi-fluid problems. Having developed the variational framework, we discussed applications. Here we had to decide what to include and what to leave out. Our decisions were not based on any particular logic, we simply included topics that were either familiar to us, or interested us at the time. That may seem a little peculiar, but one should keep in mind that this is a “living” review. Our intention is to add further applications when the article is updated. On the formal side, we could consider how one accounts for elastic media and magnetic fields, as well as technical issues concerning relativistic vortices (and cosmic strings). On the application side, we may discuss many issues for astrophysical fluid flows (like supernova core collapse, jets, gamma-ray bursts, and cosmology).
In updating this review we will obviously also correct the mistakes that are sure to be found by helpful colleagues. We look forward to receiving any comments on this review. After all, fluids describe physics at many different scales and we clearly have a lot of physics to learn. The only thing that is certain is that we will enjoy the learning process!
The popular belief is that an antimatter particle coming in contact with its matter counterpart yields energy. That's true for electrons and positrons (anti-electrons). They'll produce gamma rays at 511,000 electron volts.
But heavier particles like protons and anti-protons are somewhat messier, making gamma rays and leaving a spray of secondary particles that eventually decay into neutrinos and low-energy gamma rays.
And that is partly what Schmidt and others want in an antimatter engine. The gamma rays from a perfect reaction would escape immediately, unless the ship had thick shielding, and serve no purpose. But the charged debris from a proton/anti-proton annihilation can push a ship.
"We want to get as close as possible to the initial annihilation event," Schmidt explained. What's important is intercepting some of the pions and other charged particles that are produced and using the energy to produce thrust."
It sounds like science fiction, but researchers are learning to create and store small amounts of antimatter in real-life labs. A portable electromagnetic antimatter trap at Penn State University, for example, can hold 10 billion antiprotons. If we could learn how to use such antimatter safely, we could impinge some on a thin stream of hydrogen gas to create thrust. Alternatively, a little antimatter could be injected into a fusion reactor to lower the temperatures needed to trigger a fusion reaction.
Anti-protons, explained Dr. Gerald Smith of Pennsylvania State University, can be obtained in modest quantities from high-energy accelerators slamming particles into solid targets. The anti-protons are then collected and held in a magnetic bottle.
However, by using "matter/antimatter annihilation", velocities just below the speed of light could be reached, making it possible to reach the next star in about six years.
Cern IMagery takes a "dramatic position" on what it is saying about itself? :) I would like to think that the fun is in how "mirror world" has somehow been transposed into what we know of the develpmental processes we are given as we now lok at what may help us move into the cosmos. 
This image had horns drawn on it, with a tail attached. Something about “angels and demons?” I don’t think we should take the “anti” too literal in face of an outcome, or should we?
However, by using "matter/antimatter annihilation", velocities just below the speed of light could be reached, making it possible to reach the next star in about six years.
However, by using "matter/antimatter annihilation", velocities just below the speed of light could be reached, making it possible to reach the next star in about six years.
More modern variations of tomography involve gathering projection data from multiple directions and feeding the data into a tomographic reconstruction software algorithm processed by a computer. Different types of signal acquisition can be used in similar calculation algorithms in order to create a tomographic image. With current 2005 technology, tomograms are derived using several different physical phenomena including X-rays, gamma rays, positron electron annihilation reaction, nuclear magnetic resonance, ultrasound, electrons, and ions. These yield CT, SPECT, PET, MRI, ultrasonography, 3d-TEM, and atom probe tomograms, respectively.
While occasional discoveries, such as the Antikythera mechanism, have forced scientists to reassess the technology of ancient civilization, critics regard most cases of OOPArt as the result of mistaken interpretation or wishful thinking. Supporters regard them as evidence that mainstream science is overlooking huge areas of knowledge, either willfully or through ignorance.
So should we let the resistance of fear insight distrust of the media, and have good science minds disrupt by instigating false reports like the one did by Alan Sokal in regards to quantum gravity? Nice way to treat those who move up to face the challenge of a theoretical world that expects the same validation as any process?
Although it didn't properly describe strong interactions, in studying string theory physicists stumbled upon an amazing mathematical structure. String theory has turned out to be far richer than people originally anticipated. For example, people found that a certain vibrational state of the string has zero mass and spin 2. According to Einstein's theory of gravity, the gravitational force is mediated by a particle with zero mass and spin 2. So string theory is, among many other things, a theory of gravity!
TWO UNIVERSES of different dimension and obeying disparate physical laws are rendered completely equivalent by the holographic principle. Theorists have demonstrated this principle mathematically for a specific type of five-dimensional spacetime ("anti–de Sitter") and its four-dimensional boundary. In effect, the 5-D universe is recorded like a hologram on the 4-D surface at its periphery. Superstring theory rules in the 5-D spacetime, but a so-called conformal field theory of point particles operates on the 4-D hologram. A black hole in the 5-D spacetime is equivalent to hot radiation on the hologram--for example, the hole and the radiation have the same entropy even though the physical origin of the entropy is completely different for each case. Although these two descriptions of the universe seem utterly unalike, no experiment could distinguish between them, even in principle.
Holography encodes the information in a region of space onto a surface one dimension lower. It sees to be the property of gravity, as is shown by the fact that the area of th event horizon measures the number of internal states of a blackhole, holography would be a one-to-one correspondence between states in our four dimensional world and states in higher dimensions. From a positivist viewpoint, one cannot distinguish which description is more fundamental.Pg 198, The Universe in Nutshell, by Stephen Hawking
This year marks the hundredth anniversary of Einstein's "miraculous year", 1905, when he formulated special relativity, and explained the origin of the black body spectrum and Brownian motion. In honor of this occasion, I will describe the modern view of spacetime. After reviewing the properties of spacetime in general relativity, I will provide an overview of the nature of spacetime emerging from string theory. This is radically different from relativity. At a perturbative level, the spacetime metric appears as ``coupling constants" in a two-dimensional quantum field theory. Nonperturbatively (with certain boundary conditions), spacetime is not fundamental but must be reconstructed from a holographic, dual theory. I will conclude with some recent ideas about the big bang arising from string theory.
The tests use the ALICE cosmic muon trigger detector ACORDE, as well as a specially designed UV laser system, to produce tracks in the detector. Preliminary analysis of the cosmic-ray events and the laser-induced tracks indicate that the drift velocity and diffusion of electrons liberated by traversing charged particles, as well as the spatial resolution, are very close to the design values.
For example, people found that a certain vibrational state of the string has zero mass and spin 2. According to Einstein's theory of gravity, the gravitational force is mediated by a particle with zero mass and spin 2. So string theory is, among many other things, a theory of gravity!
What happens when you throw an elephant into a black hole? It sounds like a bad joke, but it's a question that has been weighing heavily on Leonard Susskind's mind. Susskind, a physicist at Stanford University in California, has been trying to save that elephant for decades. He has finally found a way to do it, but the consequences shake the foundations of what we thought we knew about space and time. If his calculations are correct, the elephant must be in more than one place at the same time.
While empirically Aristotle has lead the thinking, you know how I think don’t you:) Do you see me stand apart from Aristotle?
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013. JWST will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way Galaxy. JWST will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. JWST's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.
JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only once JWST is in outer space. JWST will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.
JWST Science
The JWST science goals are divided into four themes. The key objective of The End of the Dark Ages: First Light and Reionization theme is to identify the first luminous sources to form and to determine the ionization history of the early universe. The key objective of The Assembly of Galaxies theme is to determine how galaxies and the dark matter, gas, stars, metals, morphological structures, and active nuclei within them evolved from the epoch of reionization to the present day. The key objective of The Birth of Stars and Protoplanetary Systems theme is to unravel the birth and early evolution of stars, from infall on to dust-enshrouded protostars to the genesis of planetary systems. The key objective of The Planetary Systems and the Origins of Life theme is to determine the physical and chemical properties of planetary systems including our own, and investigate the potential for the origins of life in those systems.
What makes modern cosmology an empirical science is that we are literally able to peer into the past. When you look at your image reflected off a mirror one meter away, you see the way you looked six nanoseconds ago--the light's travel time to the mirror and back. Similarly, cosmologists do not need to guess how the universe evolved; we can watch its history through telescopes. Because the universe appears to be statistically identical in every direction, what we see billions of light-years away is probably a fair representation of what our own patch of space looked like billions of years ago.
The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down. Nevertheless, the way the universe began would have been determined by the laws of physics, if the universe satisfied the no boundary condition. This says that in the imaginary time direction, space-time is finite in extent, but doesn't have any boundary or edge. The predictions of the no boundary proposal seem to agree with observation. The no boundary hypothesis also predicts that the universe will eventually collapse again. However, the contracting phase, will not have the opposite arrow of time, to the expanding phase. So we will keep on getting older, and we won't return to our youth. Because time is not going to go backwards, I think I better stop now.
In classical physics, empty space is called the vacuum. The classical vacuum is utterly featureless. However, in quantum theory, the vacuum is a much more complex entity. The uncertainty principle allows virtual particles (each corresponding to a quantum field) continually materialize out of the vacuum, propagate for a short time and then vanish. These zero-point vibrations mean that there is a zero-point energy associated with any quantum field. Since there are an infinite number of harmonic oscillators per unit volume, the total zero-point energy density is, in fact, infinite. The process of renormalization is usually implemented to yield a zero energy density for the standard quantum vacuum, which is defined as no excitation of field quanta, i.e., no real particles are present. In other word, the quantum vacuum is at a state of minimum energy - the ground state.
A Chladni plate consist of a flat sheet of metal, usually circular or square, mounted on a central stalk to a sturdy base. When the plate is oscillating in a particular mode of vibration, the nodes and antinodes set up form a complex but symmetrical pattern over its surface. The positions of these nodes and antinodes can be seen by sprinkling sand upon the plates;
Physically, the effect can be interpreted as an object moving from the "false vacuum" (where = 0) to the more stable "true vacuum" (where = v). Gravitationally, it is similar to the more familiar case of moving from the hilltop to the valley. In the case of Higgs field, the transformation is accompanied with a "phase change", which endows mass to some of the particles
If you sprinkle fine sand uniformly over a drumhead and then make it vibrate, the grains of sand will collect in characteristic spots and figures, called Chladni patterns. These patterns reveal much information about the size and the shape of the drum and the elasticity of its membrane. In particular, the distribution of spots depends not only on the way the drum vibrated initially but also on the global shape of the drum, because the waves will be reflected differently according to whether the edge of the drumhead is a circle, an ellipse, a square, or some other shape.
In cosmology, the early Universe was crossed by real acoustic waves generated soon after Big Bang. Such vibrations left their imprints 300 000 years later as tiny density fluctuations in the primordial plasma. Hot and cold spots in the present-day 2.7 K CMB radiation reveal those density fluctuations. Thus the CMB temperature fluctuations look like Chaldni patterns resulting from a complicated three-dimensional drumhead that
The star Eta Carina is ejecting a pair of huge lobes that form a "propeller" shape. Jet-like structures are emanating from the center (or "waist"), where the star (quite small on this scale) is located.
The plates can be made visible by mounting a mirror behind the row of plates, angled so that the top of the plates are visible to the audience (same idea as in Polarization by Scattering). Create the optimum angle for the front rows, as the back rows will be looking down on the plates anyway. Make sure the cello bow is nice and tactile by treating it with rosin before the performance. Sprinkle the sand on the plates so that it forms an even cover. Don't overdo the amount.
