Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Martin Gardner "The Ambidextrous Universe" (Pelican)





This is an extraordinary study within scientific dissemination, and already a classic on the subject. Gardner acknowledges that he was motivated by what he considered an apodictic principle, the total symmetry of nature, which became outdated when the violation of the parity principle was discovered with the verification of some fundamental asymmetry. But after the book was published, some concepts that Gardner considered unchangeable, such as the invariance of temporal symmetry, also had to change, which was also violated. The analysis of symmetry (mirrors, human bodies, crystals, molecules, and many more examples) leads to questions that are more quasi-philosophical than scientific, such as the arrows of time, the fourth dimension, or chrono-retrograde worlds. Essential for those who want to know some of the fundamental principles of the universe.


Martin Gardner, a famous columnist on mathematical topics in Scientific American magazine, invites us in this book to explore, in his clear and pleasant company, the fantastic world of symmetry and asymmetry in the Universe. Left and right are reflected in Science as well as in Man, both in Physics and Biology, as well as in Poetry, Art, and Magic, until culminating in the recently discovered lack of parity of the nucleus, which constitutes one of the deepest mysteries of the current physics.

From the Preface -

"The year 1957 was perhaps one of the most exciting years in the history of nuclear physics," wrote DY Bugg, in a book review on beta degradation, in The New Scientist, August 16, 1962." "In early That year the news that parity does not hold spread like lightning from lab to lab, and the professors waved their arms and talked excitedly about spin and mirrors and antiworlds, and even the students realized that something remarkable was afoot. .>

The ordinary public also realized that something extraordinary had happened, especially when two Chinese-American physicists, Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work that led to the overthrow of parity. But what is parity? How was she overthrown? Why were the physicists so excited?"

Fortunately, it is not necessary to know higher mathematics to understand the answer to these questions. It is necessary to have a clear idea of ​​left-right symmetry and its curious role in the recent history of the physical and biological sciences. In this book, we discuss a simple and tricky question about mirrors. After examining mirror inversions in one, two, and three dimensions, followed by an interlude on left and right in sleight of hand and fine art, we launched into a broad exploration of left-right symmetry
and asymmetry in the natural world. This exploration culminates in an account of the overthrow of parity and an attempt to relate it to some of the deepest mysteries of modern physics.

This Pelican paperback edition may be out of date (1970) but what it conveys is fascinating, and if your curious tastebuds are whetted by this book, then it is a good primer to further delve into the mysterious realms of the physical universe.

Remember when Matt Hancock of the government said that they would reach 100,000 tests a day on COVID 19 by the end of April? Well, the figure they gave on the last day - that deadline was last Thursday - was 122,347. So everyone was happy. Well, that figure is somewhat distorted. 100,000 tests were not done in a day They started to include home testing kits which were sent out on that day. Some were sent without return labels. Some may not be used. It is the epidemiological equivalence of "the cheque is in the post". In other words, they changed the number of tests completed midstream. In fact, 40,000 of which two-thirds were home kits and the rest to hospitals that requested them, were posted on that day. So roughly 82,000 tests were actually carried out.

In economics and policy studies there is a law called Goodheart's Law which states "Goodhart's law (an adage named after economist Charles Goodhart) is when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

One way in which this can occur is individuals trying to anticipate the effect of a policy and then taking actions that alter its outcome such as that with these tests. So imposing a target distorts the measure. Not too dissimilar to Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle. In its defence targets are goals to be met and without it, we would have not gotten this far. Massaging the figures like this though is not on.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000htw2

Let's celebrate pie day or more precise within certain error limits, Pi Day, thye celebration of Mathemematics.

http://www.piday.org/

Just watched a BBC TB prog on the genius that was James Clerk Maxwell, a scientist who should be known better than he is. It was he who realized that electricity and magnetism were two parts of just one force, the electromagnetic force and that these forces are waves that eminate all of space.

"James Clerk Maxwell: The Man Who Made the Modern World
Professor Iain Stewart reveals the story behind the Scottish physicist who was Einstein's hero; James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell's discoveries not only inspired Einstein, but they helped shape our modern world - allowing the development of radio, TV, mobile phones and much more.
Despite this, he is largely unknown in his native land of Scotland. On the 150th anniversary of Maxwell's great equations, scientist Iain Stewart sets out to change that, and to celebrate the life, work and legacy of the man dubbed "Scotland's Forgotten Einstein".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06rd56j/james-clerk-maxwell-the-man-who-made-the-modern-world



Maxwell–Faraday equation - integral equation




and the differential equation.

Meaning - The voltage accumulated around a closed circuit is proportional to the time rate of change of the magnetic flux it encloses.

This morning my cousin asked me if I knew anything about Riemann's Hypothesis. This was the eight problem that David Hilbert posed early on the 20th century.

Bernard Riemann had a very short life, born 1828 and died 1866. He founded the field of Riemann geometry, which enabled Albert Einstein to formulate his theory of general relativity and space-time. He was the first to suggest using higher dimensions (other than that of three and four dimensional space) in order to describe physical reality.

Riemann's published works opened up research areas combining analysis with geometry, as well as number theory specifically to do with primes and how you could predict the next prime in a number sequence.

This area of mathematics is part of the foundation of topology, and is still being applied in novel ways to mathematical physics. Topological spaces are use in everyday life, such as the maps used in the London underground, and why a torus, such as a bagel can be deformed into a cup as they have the same topological properties.

He made some famous contributions to modern analytic number theory. In a single short paper (the only one he published on the subject of number theory), he introduced the Riemann zeta function and established its importance for understanding the distribution of prime numbers. He made a series of conjectures about properties of the zeta function, one of which is the well-known Riemann hypothesis, which is still not proven. Several mathematicians have addressed the Riemann hypothesis, but none of their attempts have yet been accepted as correct solutions

Riemann's idea was to introduce a collection of numbers at every point in space (i.e., a tensor) which would describe how much it was bent or curved. Riemann found that in four spatial dimensions, one needs a collection of ten numbers at each point to describe the properties of a manifold, no matter how distorted it is. This is the famous construction central to his geometry, known now as a Riemannian metric. Manifolds are an important contribution to the membrane theory of cosmology.

The Riemann hypothesis implies results about the distribution of prime numbers that are in some ways as good as possible. Along with suitable generalizations, it is considered by some mathematicians to be the most important unresolved problem in pure mathematics

If the hypothesis is solved and proven, apparently;y it would make any code breakable, including that which credit cards rely on. The film “The Echelon Conspiracy” is based on this notion of the ability to crack any code and why the military, spies and banks would love to bank roll such research with a prize of a million dollars to prove and solve it.

Riemann was the inspiration for mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll) to write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.