Here is a sample subscription for you. Click here to start your FREE subscription
- Rebooted By Nothing
- Knowing Self
- Words Visualized by Algorithm
- Fireworks, SuperNovae and Legacy
- Fireflies and Suns
- More Recent Articles
- Search Archetyper
And so I reboot this blog after attending some conferences held by The World Science Festival. First was "Nothing: The Subtle Science of Emptiness."
Paul Davies, one of my favorite authors was one of the panelists, as well as John Barrow.
Of course, the question of "Why is there something instead of nothing?" inevitably came up. Paul Davies shared his answer which rather stuck to my mind. He said that Nothing has only one way, while Something has a lot of ways to come about. So that is why there is something!
I like the last "what if" question of the moderator, where he followed up a question from the audience about the role of consciousness in all there is. What if--he asks while gesturing an inifinitely-scaled universe where the gradient will never be resolved--everything is just a reflection of humanity's yearnings?
I came home in a blank pith of "nothing" for I had a nagging question along the way: When a person dies, does he return to nothingness? Or does he return to Infinity?
It's best, I reckoned to myself--to keep it unanswered. That'll keep me yearning.
Links:
My Flickr Photo Set of the Event
I can't sleep.
Might as well blog.
More massive than previously known.
That's the latest finding about our very own Milky Way.
How much detail can we find out about our own galaxy?
There is a limit.
Why?
Because we live in it.
Can we truly know ourselves with our own efforts?
I think not.
I remember: The very act of observing changes that which is being observed.
The uncertainty is always there, no matter how much detail you gain from observing your own brain.
Do we need someone to tell us about that which we cannot truly know?
Yes? No?
Do we need to get out of the system to see things better from a "bird's eyeview"?
Yes? No?
Certainly someone from outside our galaxy can tell us more details about our Milky way.
Certainly some astronomer from Andromeda can tell us better how many arms our Milky Way has.
Who then can tell us better about our self?
Advanced beings?
God?
What is the only way for man to truly know himself? To "get out of the system", to die?
They say the universe is starting to become aware of itself.
I say the universe can never truly know itself.
Because the universe is itself.
I'm now sleepy.
I ran Wordle for this archetyper blog and this is what it came up with. Neat. Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds”.
On the 4th of July, I chanced upon a documentary about fireworks. What caught my attention was the modern technique in crafting specific patterns and shapes of fireworks in the sky (Katamono). Controlled patterns of shapes such as a heart or star can be lit up in the sky by arranging how the explosive pellets are arranged within the shell and its core.
In essence, the shape of an explosion tells much about the explosive. I call it The Fireworks Principle. If we apply this principle to Astronomy, by examining the shape of a supernova we can probably know much about the qualities of the star that produced it. For example, the polar regions of the star that spawned Eta Carinae can be discerned from the two points where the bulk of stellar mass is ejected.
The Fireworks Principle is the same in terms of life: As we live, we are fashioning the core within that will someday explode as a "lifework" - the patterns will become apparent in due time. Our character and our legacy will persist even as this body, the temporary shell gives up the spark of life.
Each human life is a supernova in the making. The legacy we leave behind - the shapes of our lifesparks will tell much about the very core of our soul.
Links:
How Fireworks are made
Eta Carinae
Something magical about fireflies on summer nights like these. Watching the flickering of evanescent lights from fireflies has been a wonderful experience for me, a bit spiritual and existential I suppose. Makes me think of how stars are not so different from the fireflies' ephemeral sparks of light.
To us, the Sun means everything for life. Yet from an observer with a relatively longer span of life (perhaps infinite and eternal) a few billion years of a star's lifetime is like a few seconds in time--mere flashes of light--like the sparks from fireflies.
More Recent Articles
