Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Brian Greene "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Penguin)









Brian Greene is a very smart fellow, with a deep understanding of physics, and a wide range of knowledge in other disciplines. He is at his best when explaining cosmology and theoretical physics, but less convincing towards the end of the book, when discussing consciousness and meaning.

The relentless increase in entropy is the major villain of this book, sending the universe towards a dark future without organized matter. Evolution has locally produced molecules, life, and temporary order, by using sources of low entropy energy, but in turn dissipating the heat produced by the processes producing the order into the surrounding universe. There comes a time when the universe has no more low entropy sources of energy.

I wish Greene hadn't come up with the term "entropy two-step" to describe this exchange and then proceed to use it every few pages as a shorthand. He is worried about extracting free will and philosophical meaning out of the idea that physical systems can be described, in theory, completely by the movement of their particles. I see this worry in many books about consciousness, and I think it is overstated.

The very readable narrative portion of the book is 326 pages, and the more exacting mathematical and physical details, index, and bibliography comprises another 102 pages.

Brian Greene "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality (Penguin)




The Fabric of the Cosmos is a long, comprehensive overview of the nature of space and time. It begins with a short history of our view of time and space, moving quickly to Newton and then the precursors to relativity, before covering special and general relativity in detail, before carrying out the same treatment for quantum mechanics. The middle sections cover how relativity and quantum mechanics can start to explain what space and time actually are. Topics such as the big bang, and inflation, are described and brought in to further illuminate the latest scientific views of space and time. The final sections of the book are more speculative, first covering string theory, including branes, and then moving on to a very speculative final part, looking at whether time travel or teleportations are consistent with the current view of reality, and then about where physics might be going next in the coming decades. As is apparent from the above, the structure of the book is strong and very well-judged. I preferred it to The Elegant Universe for its broader remit, and because not so much of the book was describing ideas no one as yet has any evidence for.

In the end, I was left with an unsettling sense that the universe is utterly alien, compared with our everyday notions - that the real action is happening at scales so small even our most powerful particle accelerators don't have access to them. Even if they did, it could be that our entire sense of reality, of time and space, and the fabric of it all, might be a holographic illusion. It's as if we see a smooth 3D world in a holographic picture when what we're really receiving is just different pixels on a 2D surface.

There were just a couple of niggling issues: first, sometimes the explanations weren't precise or clear enough (for instance, special relativity was explained far better by Isaacson (not a physicist!) in his Einstein biography). This extended to the endnotes, which were meant to clarify, but the mathematical explanations seemed rushed to me - sometimes there more as a demonstration of his knowledge, rather than for pedagogical reasons. Second, this book is now a decade old, and it is calling out for either a second edition, or at least an update to the endnotes - when he speculates about what the LHC will discover and so on, this just seems so dated, and we really need a way for him to rewrite or add sections in the light of the latest developments.

But overall this was an incredibly fascinating, astonishing, thrilling, beguiling ride - and a fantastic achievement. I felt privileged to have read it.

Brian Cox "The Quantum Universe" (Penguin)





Disappointing. The attempt to simplify some of the difficult concepts of quantum mechanics by the use of analogy only manages to confuse the reader more. Introducing clocks with one hand to represent waves and probability amplitudes was a big mistake, in my opinion. If this is your first introduction to quantum theory you may be discouraged from reading more. I recommend "Quantum: a guide for the perplexed" by Jim Al-Khalili.

Carlo Rovelli "The Order Of Time" (Penguin)



It is a commonplace of accounts of physics, especially quantum physics, that the world is not exactly the way we think it is. After all, contrary to appearances, the earth actually circles the sun rather than vice versa. And gravity turns out not to be as simple as an apple falling from a tree. But in all the disorder brought to our view of the universe by physicists, at least time, one damn thing following another, has stayed fixed in place. Right? Wrong. Time, it turns out, is just as illusory as everything else, at least when seen without the myopic eye of “ordinary” experience. Seen clearly, time does not exist. And yet…

Carlo Rovelli masterfully explodes our preconceptions about space and time before gently reconstructing the world anew. It’s a fascinating account drawn directly from the physics of the 20th and 21st century. Rovelli is no journalist hyping the confusing world of the quantum. He’s a well-respected quantum loop theorist who brings healthy regard for clarity to his subject. You never feel patronized when reading Rovelli. On the other hand, like me, you may feel a bit inadequate. So I’m glad there are people out there like Rovelli who do seem to understand both the equations and their implications.

Rovelli writes with patience but not condescension. He is at his best when discussing the subject in which he specializes — quantum physics. And his references to analytic philosophers (in the endnotes) all seem entirely apt. I marvel at his breadth. When he strays outside this core his writing becomes more florid and the philosophers he cites switch from analytic to continental, possibly tellingly. But he doesn’t linger in the long grass.

Very likely you’ll want to read this book more than once. I’m sure I would get much more out of it on second reading.

Highly recommended.

Carlo Rovelli "Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey To Quantum Gravity" (Penguin)




Sometimes it's not what you understand or what you know for certain that really matters. It's acknowledging the limits of your understanding and still to be willing to press on. That, in fact, is close to what Carlo Rovelli identifies as the chief virtue of science. It's a point he makes in the final chapter of this fascinating journey from Anaximander past Copernicus and Newton, to Einstein, Dirac, and a host of other startlingly brilliant physicists, all of whom ventured forth from that initial point of ignorance. I feel like I'm in good company even though my ignorance may be clouding out my brilliance.


I must congratulate Prof. Rovelli because he was able to convey the gist of loop quantum gravity without diving deep down into the gory mathematical details. Of course, without even summarizing such details, one can only get a very fuzzy and intuitive grasp of the matter, but that's better than nothing.

I was also excited to learn about LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), a mission designed to detect and accurately measure gravitational waves from astronomical sources. According to Rovelli, what the famous LIGO did for detection of gravitational waves caused by black holes colliding, LISA will do for ancient black holes exploding, sort of a cosmic quantum gravitational background effect, similar to the famous cosmic microwave background radiation.

I also liked how Rovelli connected some of the scientific themes to literature and history, especially his references to "De rerum natura" and Dante, as well as establishing continuity with the great thinkers of ancient Greece.

I think the chapter regarding the concept of "information" and the role it plays in modern physics theories could be expanded and clarified more. Instead of trying to introduce quantum mechanics and relativity for which we have great popular accounts, he could've used those pages to explain his ideas about information in more depth.

I can recommend this book to people who'd like to have an intuitive overview of an important direction where modern physics research is headed to. And it's always nice and inspirational to read an Italian author who knows his history and literature so well.

The libration of the moon  is the wagging or wobbling of the Moon perceived by Earth-bound observers which is caused by changes in their perspective. It permits an observer to see slightly different halves of the surface at different times. The libration is a product of the moon's elliptical (elongated) orbit. Although the moon's rotation, or spin, goes at a nearly constant rate, its orbital speed varies, going fastest at perigee (moon's closest point to Earth) and slowest at apogee (moon's farthest point from Earth).

Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw "Why Does E=mc2?: (and Why Should We Care?) (Da Capo)






Cox and Forshaw have presented a streamlined, focused popular science book aimed at teaching relatively new science readers the basics and history of the famous equation in the title. While experienced physics readers will not likely learn new information, the book offers an approachable description of relativity, how we know it works, and why it is important in the modern world and beyond.

While I personally didn't gain much new from this book (as an experienced non-professional physics reader/enthusiast/nerd), I believe new readers could be in for a treat. I'd certainly recommend starting a discovery of relativity with this book if the concept seems difficult. The authors take time to explain various concepts and make solid efforts to present reasonable analogies to aid in the explanation. Combined with a singularly-focused subject, the book is an excellent starting point for curious, intelligent readers wishing to know more details about E=mc2.

When i woke up this morning it was teaming with rain but now it has dried up. No visits planned today or tomorrow but as i am heading off to Faversham on Saturday i will probably either do Whitstable or Sheerness. I have ten charity shop visits this month that includes Hythe, Deal, Rochester, Paddock Wood,Tenterden and Lewes.


I have almost finished another paperback book , an easy to read primer on quantum physics. No complicated maths involved although anything to do with quantum physics is counter intuitive. Such concepts as superposition , quantum entanglement and quantum tunnelling are head spinning. This book is one of those New Scientist Instant Expert paperbacks. I find the whole subject as fascinating.

As i write the sun has come out and now we have blues skies.

Roger Penrose "The Emperor's New Mind : Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics" (Verso)






Roger Penrose isn't just any old boffin: he is the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University and has been knighted for his services to Science. The Emperor's New Mind is his attempt to crack that perennial philosophical chestnut, the Consciousness/Artificial Intelligence problem. Penrose's view is that Strong AI is simply wrong and that a computer could never replicate (functionally or actually) what we know as "consciousness".

Originlly published in 1991 this was a long, grueling read. I won't say I clearly understood (or even dimly understood) all this book. At times my eyes glazed over, and my comprehension phased out only to resume later usually after long passages of mathematical symbols ,though the math in this book was relatively simple, and i had encountered Hamiltonians and vector spaces in an O.U. second level pure mathematics course.



It helpd that I'd read other things about artificial intelligence, computers, relativity, cosmology, and quantam physics. By his own admission, Penrose finds it difficult to explain mathematical things verbally and his arguments often go on and on without tying them into the central question of the book - is algorithmically based AI possible? In the end I think they all show to be relevant.

Penrose ventures into widely speculative ground by saying he believes consciousness will be better understood when quantum mechanics and relativity are joined, probably, he believes, by quantum gravity. He makes the startling the proposal that the brain is a quantum computer computing numerous quantum possibilities until gravitational collapsing the quantum wave-function and realizing one quantum reality.

Penrose concludes with some intriguing paradoxes in time perception. Do we really, as certain experiments suggest, experience everything two seconds behind and are limited by a half-second delay before conscious action is realized? Penrose doubts it, but it's intriguing. Penrose isn't afraid to consider philosophical questions which most scientists shy away from and firmly grounds, unlike most philosophers, human behavior and consciousness in the physical world and its laws. Some of Penrose's approaches were different than the usual treatment his topics get, particularly de-emphasizing quantum mechanics' indeterminism and imprecision as others do, but, rather, the precision and predictions the theory does allow.length to explain, and their relevance, without having to get your head around every complicated equation.

I think that some of his theories are enticing, and altogether this was a good read, but perhaps could have benefited from a more decisive outcome. The ending comes an an anti-climax, but getting there is worth the whole trip.

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.