Sunday 30 July 2017

Our Watery Moon, The Inevitability Of Life, And The Height Of A Sheet Of Paper


Recent reports tell us that there is an abundance of water on the moon , more than was previously thought
Time for a re-think / return to the moon ?
Sub-lunar bases ?
At a mere 230,000* miles distant, it's a lot closer than Mars - and with possibly as much water as Earth- (beneath the surface), I say that we should go for it.
Not to be outdone, we hear evidence of ancient bodies of water on Mars.

It appears that particles have been detected in the atmosphere of  Titan which could serve as the building blocks of life - speaking of which, this article asserts that life on Earth was an inevitable result of physics, rather than a biological fluke...
upper atmosphere of Titan         Cassini image : NASA/JPL 

On the subject of moons, the first exo-moon has possibly been discovered - it's four thousand light years distant, but hey- its an exo-moon.
My enthusiasm is muted, as I ponder the many unexplored moons in our own solar system.
Still, it's a new thing....even though it has not yet been confirmed -  infact the whole thing was made public on social media by a third party, thus forcing the hand of those involved, and creating a premature media hype.
This is the downside of social media.

A sheet of paper- relevant ...
My personal interest is in the burgeoning world of quantum mechanics.
I'm not smart enough to fully grasp what's going on, but that's part of the wonder.
The fact that it seems to defy accepted laws of physics,
whilst allowing for almost magical interactions,
is what attracts me to it.
The sense that there is much more to come;
that there is a missing key somewhere...
I think we have problems even describing this new ' realm '
For instance :

Excerpt from this article :

Mir Faizal, one of the three-strong team of physicists behind the experiment, said: “Just as many parallel sheets of paper, which are two dimensional objects [breadth and length] can exist in a third dimension [height], parallel universes can also exist in higher dimensions.”

Surely even a humble sheet of paper has height ?
Which means that a sheet of paper is not two-dimensional, technically.
My assertion is that this metaphor is clumsy.
We need to stop thinking in terms of human scale.
Our visual perception is limited
Which is why we have aids to vision;
Spectacles, contact lenses,
Microscopes and telescopes.
I don't think we'll ever truly understand the quantum world
Until we stop making comparisons
And there's the rub - without comparisons, how can we define something enough to understand it ?
Until next we meet...


G



* Arbitrary figure, unscientifically guesstimated.

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