klog

Sorry if this post is totally bonkers - I’m a layman but like to think about this stuff.

Got an email newsletter from Galaxy Zoo today. In it was a link to a recent Telegraph article pointing out the apparent lopsidedness of the universe. In short, most galaxies that we see in the universe appear to be rotating in the same direction, where the direction should be random.

I had a thought about this, and it occurred to me that this could be explained if there was some sort of “coriolis force” acting on space itself.

How can this be? Surely space is just space? Well, not according to quantum loop gravity, which describes space as a load of interlinked nodes. Where you think there is nothing, there is actually a load of interlinked points.

The “coriolis force” is hard to explain. A short explanation might be this: on a planet that is spinning, if you have a solid object which is sitting still (relative to the planet surface) on any latitude of the planet other than 0 or at the axis, then one side of the object is actually moving through space faster than the other because of the slight difference in radius of the sides’ paths through space as the planet rotates. Yeah - headrush.

Anyway - what it means is that objects sitting on the “north” hemisphere tend to turn clockwise instinctively, and vice versa.

So, what does this have to do with galaxies?

Well, if most galaxies are rotating in a specific direction, then that could indicate a coriolis effect happening on space itself. This could happen if the universe itself was rotating.

A further implication is that if you map the rotation of all galaxies and analyse them carefully, you may find that you can actually pinpoint the centre of that rotating universe. This is something that traditionally has been thought of as impossible, because the universe might not have a “centre” at all.

Anyway, please comment if you think this is stupid, but give a reason why it is.

okay - “nigger”. this word is so bloody annoying. It’s not even the word itself, which is just a colloquialised version of “negro”, but rather the stupid stigma which has risen around it.

Bronwyn likes to watch Big Brother. Personally, the show annoys me - it’s composed mostly of very stupid people who will soon be very rich for no good reason.

Last year’s season included a scandal where a group of girls bullied Shilpa Shetty. What people should have been annoyed at was that bullying had taken place, but that appeared to take second place to the fact that Shilpa is not british. So?? Bullying is bullying, no matter where someone was born!

Now, this year, an eejit on the show uses the word “nigger” in a mis-guided effort to be cool.

“Wazzup my nigger”. Is that okay to say? Apparently, it is okay to say if you have dark skin (”black”? no-one has black skin - dark brown, maybe). If a non-”black” person says the word, they are immediately and incontrovertibly branded as racist, and have absolutely no defense. Stupid? Yes.

The problem here is not that “nigger” is an insulting word, but that it is apparently only insulting if it is used by a “white” (pink, maybe - how many people do you know that have white skin?) person.

The problem here, then, is that the actual usage of the word is racist. If used by a white person, it is insulting. If used by a black person, it is not. I wonder if Channel 4 would have given out at all if one of the black people on the show had used the word? They haven’t so far…

It might be tempting to ban the word, but that leads to extremity. What if people then start saying “wazzup, N?”, where ‘N’ is obviously a shortened version of “nigger”? You cannot ban a letter.

It’s all stupid.

I like to think I am not racist. Who knows… am I? After all, I did just write the word “nigger” a few times!

Just to make it absolutely clear, as Bronwyn has read through tis article and not gotten it - I am annoyed that people misunderstand where the racist connotation is with the word “nigger” - I’m annoyed that only black people can use it without being branded - that is racist. The word itself is racist as well, obviously, but to say it is okay for some and not for others is bloody stupid.

Another “by the way”. Bronwyn does not like me to even use the word “nigger” in this article, even though the whole thing is about the word. I believe that if we hide away from it, then we perpetuate the whole stigma against the discussion of the word.

Yes, the word is an insult, but we should still be able to talk about it.

What is energy made of? When someone says “that has potential energy”, or “electrical energy” or “nuclear energy”, you know exactly what they mean, but what is energy actually made of? Can you extract energy from some action and show it to someone? Can you draw energy? Possibly a silly question… - maybe “energy” is an example of a “meta-attribute” (something which does not physically exist, but only exists in context)

Why does refraction happen?The usually metaphor used to describe refraction is a model car rolling along on a smooth surface like Lino, and encountering a rougher surface such as carpet, at an angle. Because a car is multi-dimensional in shape, part of the car will move onto the carpet before the rest, which causes that part to slow down, which causes the entire car to turn towards that side of the car (thus, the car is “refracted” by the carpet). Light, however, is usually portrayed as a single point which is travelling really fast. Does a point have sides? When entering a refractive object, can part of a photon be said to be “in” the slower medium, while the rest is still outside? If so, then I understand refraction, but it seems to me that light needs to be explained a bit more clearly in school…

Is the speed of light a constant or not? There have been reports of scientists recently slowing light to a crawl. Surely, that makes the speed of light a variable? Or, is c (the letter used to describe light-speed in physics) not actually “the speed of light”, but “the maximum speed of light”?

When approaching the speed of light, does “time” actually slow? It seems to me that if the speed of light is the fastest speed possible, then that can cause perceived time dilation while moving, without inventing actual malleable time. For instance, imagine a simple action such as passing a cup from one hand to another. Easy - takes a second. However, imagine you are now sitting in a spaceship travelling at the speed of light. Logically, you cannot now pass a cup from hand to hand, as simple vector math will show that be doing that, the cup will actually be travelling faster than c. Similarly, if perceived time depends on, say, an electron “ticking” around an atom, then at the speed of light, time must seem to stop altogether, as the electron will not be able to orbit the atom, as part of that orbit will be travelling faster than c. (similarly, as you /approach/ c, time will appear to “slow down”, when in fact, it just takes longer to perform any task, including thinking)

Am I wrong? Enquiring minds want to know…