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Justin Gallagher

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  1. Justin Gallagher
    In 1889, inspired by a famous astronomical drawing that had been circulating in Europe for four decades, Vincent van Gogh painted his iconic masterpiece “The Starry Night,†one of the most recognized and reproduced images in the history of art. At the peak of his lifelong struggle with mental illness, he created the legendary painting while staying at the mental asylum into which he had voluntarily checked himself after mutilating his own ear.



    But more than a masterwork of art, Van Gogh’s painting turns out to hold astounding clues to understanding some of the most mysterious workings of science.

    This fascinating short animation from TED-Ed and Natalya St. Clair, author of The Art of Mental Calculation, explores how “The Starry Night†sheds light on the concept of turbulent flow in fluid dynamics, one of the most complex ideas to explain mathematically and among the hardest for the human mind to grasp. From why the brain’s perception of light and motion makes us see Impressionist works as flickering, to how a Russian mathematician’s theory explains Jupiter’s bright red spot, to what the Hubble Space Telescope has to do with Van Gogh’s psychotic episodes, this mind-bending tour de force ties art, science, and mental health together through the astonishing interplay between physical and psychic turbulence.


  2. Justin Gallagher
    What is the Meaning of Life and Why are we Here? Most if not all of you readers thought of the number 42. Well even though we can thank Douglas Adams for that one in his novel, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy†the answer is not that simple. Some would claim the answer to these questions is that there is a God. One who chose to create the universe the way it is. It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is that “God chose toâ€, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. In this view, it is accepted that some entity exists which needs no creator, and that entity is called God. Personally, I feel that the reason we are here is very simple.

    Everything, the meaning of life and why we are here, is nothing more than the laws of physics at work.

    As discovered throughout time. The sun, the moon, and the planets are governed by fixed laws rather than being subject to the arbitrary whims and caprices of gods and demons. At first the existence of such laws became apparent only in early civilizations. The behavior of things on earth is so complicated and subject to so many influences that early civilizations were unable to discern any clear patterns or laws governing these phenomena. Gradually, however, new laws were discovered in areas other than astronomy, and this led to the idea of scientific determinism: There must be a complete set of laws that, given the state of the universe at a specific time, would specify how the universe would develop from that time forward. These laws should hold everywhere and at all times; otherwise they wouldn't be laws. There could be no exceptions or miracles. Gods or demons couldn't intervene in the running of the universe. At the time that scientific determinism was first proposed, Newton’s laws of motion and gravity were the only laws known. We have described how these laws were extended by Einstein in his general theory of relativity, and how other laws were discovered to govern other aspects of the universe. The laws of nature tell us how the universe behaves, but they don’t answer the why?

    Life's Improbability

    How could the apparently miraculous design of living forms appear without intervention by a supreme being?

    This can be shown, as part of M-theory, by what is known to today’s sciences as the multiverse theory. It states that there are billions upon trillions of other universes. To visualize all the universes, we can describe them as a line. A line stretching in both directions endlessly. Any point on the line would be a universe with certain values to the fundamental laws, such as strength of the strong nuclear force, and the gravitational constant. Some points will create a universe that, just after creation, will destroy itself, falling back into a single point. Others will not have a strong enough binding force and never create any large mass objects and just expand faster and faster indefinitely. If you pick two points at random, the universes you pick would seem very differently. However, by picking two points close to each other you see that they fundamental laws are very similar with only the slightest variation between each. This represents how the multiverse concept explains the fine-tuning of physical law without the need for a benevolent creator who made the universe for our benefit. If you keep going down the line of infinite universes, you will eventually get a universe that can sustain itself. Then a little farther, you will find one that can support galaxies, then stars, then solar systems with orbiting planets. Just a tiny fraction father you will find one that can support life.

    This is a video Stephen Hawking did for his series Into the Universe. It helps to describe this idea.
    http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/other-shows/videos/other-shows-into-the-universe-with-stephen-hawking/

    Tune in to part 2
  3. Justin Gallagher
    As I said in Part 1, which you should read before this part, Some would claim the answer to these questions is that there is a God. One who chose to create the universe the way it is. It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is that “God chose toâ€, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. In this view, it is accepted that some entity exists which needs no creator, and that entity is called God. It has been claimed, however, that it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings. According to the idea of model-dependent realism our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the outside world. We form mental concepts of our home, trees, other people, the electricity that flows from wall sockets, atoms, molecules, and other universes. These mental concepts are the only reality we can know. To put it more simply: We see the universe the way it is because we exist only in this universe.

    There is no model independent test of reality. It follows that a well-constructed model creates a reality of its own. An example that can help us think about issues of reality and creation is the Game of Life, invented in 1970 by a young mathematician at Cambridge named John Conway.

    The word “game†in the Game of Life is a misleading term. There are no winners and losers; in fact, there are no players. The Game of Life is not really a game but a set of laws that govern a two dimensional universe. It is a deterministic universe: Once you set up a starting configuration, or initial condition, the laws determine what happens in the future.




    What makes this universe interesting is that although the fundamental “physics†of this universe is simple, the “chemistry†can be complicated. That is, composite objects exist on different scales. At the smallest scale, the fundamental physics tells us that there are just live and dead squares. On a larger scale, there are gliders, blinkers, and still-life blocks. At a still larger scale there are even more complex objects, such as glider guns: stationary patterns that periodically give birth to new gliders that leave the nest and stream down the diagonal.
    If you observed the Game of Life universe for a while on any particular scale, you could deduce laws governing the objects on that scale. For example, on the scale of objects just a few squares across you might have laws such as “Blocks never move,†“Gliders move diagonally,†and various laws for what happens when objects collide. You could create an entire physics on any level of composite objects. The laws would entail entities and concepts that have no place among the original laws. For example, there are no concepts such as “collide†or “move†in the original laws. Those describe merely the life and death of individual stationary squares. As in our universe, in the Game of Life your reality depends on the model you employ. The example of Conway’s Game of Life shows that even a very simple set of laws can produce complex features similar to those of intelligent life.
  4. Justin Gallagher
    To really sum everything up is quite simple.

    According to the strong anthropic principle, there are either many different universes or many different regions of a single universe, each with its own initial configuration and, perhaps, with its own set of laws of science. In most of these universes the conditions would not be right for the development of complicated organisms; only in the few universes that are like ours would intelligent beings develop and ask the question: "Why is the universe the way we see it?" The answer is then simple: If it had been different, we would not be here!




    There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle parts. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero.

    Now twice zero is also zero. Thus the universe can double the amount of positive matter energy and also double the negative gravitational energy without violation of the conservation of energy. One could say: "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary." The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.

    The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started - it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundaries or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. Like the south pole on the earth. What is south of the south pole? When you understand what I am saying, then as yourself: What place, then, for a creator?

    So when people ask if a God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn't exist before the big bang, so there is no time for God to make a universe.

    It's like asking for directions to the edge of the earth. In early history, the answer would simply be travel in any direction and you will eventually get there. But eventually one person came along and asked for proof and found everything about the earth having an edge was wrong. The earth is a sphere. It doesn't have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.



    We are each free to believe what we want, yet it is my view that is the only one that has evidence. The one that is always the simplest explanation:


    There is no god.
    No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.
    There is no meaning to life.
    We are here by the tweaking of laws over an infinite number of time.
    This leads me to a profound realization. There is probably no heaven or hell, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.
  5. Justin Gallagher
    For my Final blog of the 1st quarter, I decided to include some planetary destruction. One might say it is "Planetary Annihilation". So I present...

    Planetary Annihilation

    Planetary Annihilation is a real-time strategy computer game developed by Uber Entertainment, whose staff include several industry veterans who worked on Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander.
    Throughout my childhood, I loved strategy games due to the almost infinite possible outcomes, and the idea that one move could be the downfall of your empire. I enjoyed the Supreme Commander Series as a kid. The Idea that Literally, you could control a thousand plus units at one time, and obliterate the enemy.

    When I saw Planetary Annihilation, and who made it, I had to get it. But enough boring childhood memories that I cherish. LETS START PHYS-X-ING!!!!!

    One of the coolest concepts about Planetary Annihilation is the idea that not only can you leave the starting planet to go to others, but you can attach massive rockets to the planets and force them to crash into other planets. Here, take a look at the trailer which uses actual game footage...




    In the trailer, you can see how one can move planets to devastate the solar system. Lets say we wanted to move the Moon 1 meter with the use of four massive thrusters in only 10 seconds. What would the force be. Well the Moon has a mass of 7.34767309 × 10^22 kilograms. For this time interval, it would have an acceleration of .01m/s^2. That means that out of four thrusters, each one would have to exert at least 7.347 x 10^20 Newtons. This is insane, imagine what force it would take to move the moon into a collision coarse with the earth in only three minutes. Even Though mostly improbable, this is still a very cool aspect of the game.

    Even though smashing planets is fun, the real destruction comes from the "Annihilaser", a massive moon sized laser that can destroy entire planets in a matter of seconds. Sound a bit familiar? To do this, one has to travel to the Metal Planet and build five massive Catalyst which guide the massive energy through the planet and harness it to a single point.




    Let us use the Death Star from Star Wars to help us with this project because the output power of the Annihilaser is unknown. To obliterate a planet, we first must decide what to destroy. This planet is going to be modeled after earth with the exception that it is a solid planet. It is then possible to use the gravitational binding energy of the target planet to estimate the amount of energy required to be supplied to the Death Star's laser beam in order to destroy it. The energy required to destroy the planet in question is 2.25 x 10^32 J. However, the destruction of large planets such as Jupiter can require much larger energy demands. We can estimate this energy to be 2 x 10^36 J

    Since the Death Star outputs energy equal to several main-sequence stars, even if the actual composition of Earth is used in equation, the value yielded is only a few orders of magnitudes larger and the Death Star can still easily afford to output that energy due to its tremendous power source. However as mentioned above Jupiter requires much greater energy demands which would put considerable strain on the Death Star. To destroy a planet like Jupiter it would probably have to divert all remaining power from all essential systems and life support, which is not necessarily possible.
    If you have not guess by now, which would be quite sad, this laser was clearly inspired by the Death Star from Star Wars. If you have not seen Star Wars, shame on you, but here is a video of the Death Star Destroying a planet, with an added bonus.




    If you have seen all of the six Star Wars movies, you would have found that that bonus was to watch Jar Jar Binks get annihilated by the Death Star, which is a great thing to see.

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