Filed under: YouTube
…to my post earlier, here’s this:
There’s a weird Zen quality to watching it.
Jim Downey
The morning after a “wave election“, this seems like the perfect time to talk about: 
Wait – what?
I noted about a month ago that I was going to stop writing ‘reviews’ of the Sixty Symbols videos, though I intended to keep working through them for my own edification and enjoyment, and I left open the possibility that I might again blog about a particular video. Well, that particular wave form has collapsed, you might say.
So, let’s talk about art. (Trust me, this actually makes sense.)
One of the things I most loved about owning and operating an art gallery was getting to know more artists, better. I’ve always been fascinated by intelligent and creative people and how they view the world – how they can almost see more deeply into reality and understand relationships which are otherwise opaque to the rest of us. A good artist uses that insight, shares that vision, by translating what they perceive into a form which is understandable to others. The character of Duc Ng from Communion of Dreams is supposed to be this kind of person, and the insight he shares about the alien artifact is crucial to understanding the mystery at the heart of the book.
This idea is hardly new – indeed, it is one of the fundamentals of good philosophy as well as good art. And so while I was very pleased to see it brought out in the “wave function” video (at about the 8:00 mark) I wasn’t terribly surprised. The point made was that Claude Monet, founder of the Impressionist school of art, had the ability to mentally ‘step back’ from his paintings, and envision them as they would be perceived from a distance, thereby providing a bridge between the microscopic and the macroscopic.
And this is a very good metaphor for the differences between the quantum mechanical world where the wave function rules and the classical physics world we live in.
See, this is the problem – quantum physics is so counter-intuitive that the tag line for the Wave Function video is: “If you think you understand this video, you probably don’t.”
So why make it? Well, because.
Because you can start to approach an understanding of what is happening at the quantum level through analogy and art and metaphor, even if you can’t quite wrap your head around what is actually going on with the math. Or at least you can be pushed to realize that the reality you have been living in doesn’t exactly jibe with the one which actually functions in terms of probabilities and possibilities. We deal in hard facts – or at least think we do. We make decisions. We put that daub of paint in one particular place, and so freeze our vision into a frame.
And yet . . .
And yet we edit. Stories are tweaked. A line sketched here is erased. A new daub of paint is put down, covering the last one. A new fact appears, and our understanding of the past changes – the universe changes before our eyes. We realize that the world we live in is somehow in flux – unable to be pinned down.
Just as a certain alien artifact appears just a little bit different to everyone who sees it.
Just as an election is interpreted from each unique vantage point.
Jim Downey
I’ve been on some pretty nerve-wracking paths. But this one makes me laugh nervously, just watching it.
Um, if you’re afraid of heights, probably best not to watch.
I’m particularly fond of the places where the bed of the path has just started to crumble away…
Jim Downey
Thanks, Jerry!
Gotta love the geeky stuff. What happens when you drop water onto a superhydrophobic carbon nanotube? This:
The header reference starts about 2:25.
I love this sort of stuff. And it seems really timely to come across it when I am wrapping up work on the minor revisions of Communion of Dreams, since in there I have descriptions of superfluid materials which behave in non-intuitive ways. Kinda fun!
Jim Downey
OK, I made it through one-sixth of the Sixty Symbols. And I’ve enjoyed them. I’ll probably make it through the rest of them. But I don’t think I’ll do any more reviews of the videos. They’re good, but there really isn’t much for me to say beyond what I have already, since while the content changes, there isn’t much more to add other than that.
So, today’s symbol 
will be the last, unless one of the other videos I look at prompts me to write something.
Dark Matter is like a chocolate pie. No, seriously. Except it doesn’t really interact with the matter of most of the rest of the universe, so it’s like a chocolate pie that you could eat but wouldn’t taste. Oh, it would make you fat if you ate it, since it does have some effect on gravity. Or something like that.
OK, snark aside, this is a good recap of why scientists think that some 23% of all the matter in the universe seems to have gone missing, but has to be there somewhere. It’s worth watching this video in order to understand the issues involved, even though the science to date is very uncertain, as are the models suggested to provide an explanation. And don’t even get me started on theories concerning the 73% of the dark energy which is also missing. Because the vid sets that aside as a whole ‘nuther problem.
So, farewell, Sixty Symbols, at least for now. But thanks at least for giving me a craving for chocolate this morning.
Jim Downey
is the symbol for random force or Brownian motion. I did not remember this, if I ever actually knew it. So, score one for this Sixty Symbols video.
And I’m not sure whether it was intentional or not, but the actual video has echoes of randomness that are kinda funny. Some of the cut-aways to show a little bit of styrene bouncing along on a vibrating bed of small brass spheres seem pretty random, and the person doing the narration ends with a recap of what he’s just said, then sort of turns from the camera and asks “Have I finished?” I like that kind of structural consistency and ambiguity.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Music, Science, Science Fiction, Sixty Symbols, YouTube
“Now it’s complete because it’s ended here.”
That’s from Dune, of course. The context is that it sums up the practical attitude of the Fremen – no dithering, no misgivings, just figuratively take a knife and cut the thing off, so you have a conclusion.
But that is also the attitude of scientists, when it comes to 
, at least according to the Sixty Symbols video about infinity.
It’s a good vid, and I recommend it. No, nothing terribly impressive about the images or production values. But it has a clarity that conveys how scientists think: they may be theoretical, but they’re also practical. They don’t like the concept of infinity, at least not when it is applied to understanding the physical universe. They’d rather leave that to the mathematicians. As a number of the scientists say, when infinity shows up in one of their equations/models, then there’s something wrong with the equation/model.
Jim Downey
A hand mirror? I think I had forgotten that. Which is interesting, because I know full well what the symbol 
means, both in astronomical terms and otherwise.
Anyway, the bit about the mirror is about the only new thing I got out of this well done but very pedestrian video. But part of that may simply be due to the fact that I’m a space exploration geek from way back, and remember following the different probe missions sent to Venus when I was a kid. And the thing is short – less than five minutes – so if you need a refresher course about what we know about Venus, take a look.
Jim Downey
OK, as you might guess from my BBTI project, I am a sucker for “homebrew science”. I love people who are willing to spend some time and a little money to sort out the various issues and make use of current tech in order to do their own type of research, just for shits and giggles.
This is one such project: using a weather balloon, a digital video camera, and an iPhone, combined with a bit of styrofoam and ingenuity, these guys sent a camera into the edge of space – to some 100,000 feet. And then they recovered the camera, which landed just 30 miles from their launch point, thanks to the GPS tracking of the iPhone.
Now, how cool is that?
My hat’s off to you, Luke Geissbuhler & crew.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 