Physics String Theory dimensions mirror Archives

Seeing Imperfectly

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will…

We’re Just Here To . . .

Previously I have recommended the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar (here and here) and I will continue to sing its praises even while encouraging us to see it for all it is and look discerningly at its message. As the main character, Cooper, says his good-byes to his family and prepares to leave the galaxy, he…

Exploring Life

New Horizons, Rosetta, Mars Curiosity, The International Space Station, Cassini, Hubble, and Mars Express, many of these missions, spacecraft, and satellites have become well-known to us over the last few years. NASA, ESA, and the international space community have accomplished magnificent feats of exploration and the news media has shown us the significance of these…

Gravity and Skiing

Nobel Prize Laureate Peter Higgs in Stockholm, December 2013 I “went down a rabbit hole” in Wikipedia today. I wanted to better understand gravity. On the face of the matter, it seems like a simple enough question: “What is gravity and how is it mediated?” I went cross-country skiing on Saturday and felt its effects;…

Interstellar 2014

Once again Christopher Nolan (writer and director) and Jonathan Nolan (writer) have succeeded in changing our perceptions with the visually stunning, Interstellar (2014). If you have not seen the movie, you may want to see it before you continue to read this blog which contains elements of the plot (in other words: spoiler alert). From…

Slide Rules and Gopher Protocols

(Click on the thumb-nail image for a larger picture.) In my junior high education we used logarithm tables to do specific types of math and in grade 10 science I purchased a slide rule to do my calculations. In 1975, calculators were not very sophisticated, they were expensive, and my physics teacher believed we all…

Magneto and Sodium Man

When I was a kid, I used to look at my compass and imagine why one end of the needle pointed 17 degrees east of north. I imagined that there was a large chunk of negatively magnetized metal sitting just a little to the right of the north pole and another positively magnetized chunk of…

Mesons, Antimatter, and Why Things Exist

I enjoy reading about recent developments in science even when I find the specific concepts hard to understand. Particle physics is one of those areas in which my math is not up to reading the original publications so I read the summaries of recent discoveries on websites that give a simple explanation. Reading such articles…

Higgs and Bosons

I have been giving some thought to the implications of the likely “discovery” of the Higgs Boson particle that accounts for the Higgs field. I am sure you have read something about it by now, but if you haven’t, get caught up here.1 Professor Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh (score one more for the…

Cosmos

Check out my guest blog at Cosmos: reFaithing Science: http://cosmos.regent-college.edu/2012/04/25/space-by-keith-shields/