Shahn Majid looks at dark energy. Will it herald a revolution in our understanding of fundamental physics?

CREDIT: NASA

Last week I explained what I argue to be the greatest theoretical challenge facing fundamental physics today; that the very concept of the spacetime continuum is flawed and in need of revision. This week I want to explain what I think is the very greatest challenge coming from the experimental and observational side. Science thrives on a dialogue between theory and experiment and when you put all this together you arrive, as I see it, at the most exciting time for theoretical physics for a century, perhaps even since the 17th century in terms of the expected level of shake-up.

The experiments and observations that I refer to do not relate to the Large Hardon Collider. While that should be interesting especially if they don’t find the Higgs particle … well the LHC is now broken for a few months and that gives us a chance to see what else is going on. What is going on is the possibility of testing physics at the Planck scale, i.e. at energies 10 million billion times greater than the LHC could ever produce. It’s a brand new field, hitherto considered by physicists completely impossible, called ‘quantum gravity phenomenology’.

Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing from last Thursday - Don Albers’ long interview with math puzzle legend Martin Gardner.

Yes, he once edited a magazine for girls.

Newcomers: start from the beginning here >>

Humpty Dumpty’s

Gardner: That’s right, it’s not until I started selling stories to Esquire that I thought I could make a decent living as a freelance writer, but Esquire changed editors after I had sold them many stories. The new editor had a different policy, and he didn’t care for the kind of stories I was writing. So I moved to New York City because that’s where all the action is for writers. And that’s when I got a job at Humpty Dumpty’s Magazine.

DA: Now that’s a curious move.

Gardner: I had a friend who worked for Parents’ Institute, and who was in charge of their periodicals for children. They were starting a new magazine called Humpty Dumpty’s, and were looking for activity features, where you fold the page or stick something through the page, or cut; where you destroy the page. So he hired me to do the activity features for Humpty Dumpty’s.

DA: Had you ever done anything like that?

Gardner: No, but I grew up on a magazine called John Martin’s Book. Everybody’s forgotten about it. It flourished in the twenties, and the art editor, George Carlson, did activity features for John Martin, where you cut things out of the page and fold them intothings, pictures that turned upside down, or you held them up to the light and saw through. I’d always been intrigued by George Carlson’s activity features, and so I started out just sort of imitating George Carlson, taking up where he left off, and inventing new ideas of my own. I did that for eight years. I did the activity features, and I did a short story in every issue about the adventures of Humpty Dumpty, Jr. The magazine is supposed to be edited by Humpty Dumpty, who’s an egg. The wife of the publisher thought of the idea of having Humpty edit the new magazine. She suggested a series of tales about a little egg, who was Humpty Dumpty’s son. I started with the first issue of the magazine, and continued as a “contributing editor” for eight years. The magazine came out ten times a year, so I had eighty short stories about Humpty Dumpty, Jr. that I’ve never had reprinted. I haven’t found a publisher for them yet. Most of the books that come out for children now are done by artists, and they’re mainly art books with small amounts of text underneath the pictures. Not being an artist may be one reason I can’t sell any of these stories. I worked hard on these stories. I have the rights to the stories but not to their illustrations.
I also did a poem in every issue —“Advice from Humpty Sr. to His Son.” —Poems of moral advice. They’re just jingles, and I did get a book out of them. It was published by Simon and Schuster, titled Never Make Fun of a Turtle, My Son. The title refers to a poem about how you shouldn’t make fun of people who are different from you.

DA: This must have taken a lot of time to do.

Gardner: Yes, it was my only job. I’d gotten married and we had a son to support, and I couldn’t make a living in New York freelancing. I made maybe a sale or two of something trivial, but not enough to live on. So I jumped at the chance to work for Parents. I worked at home. There was a short period where I went to the office and edited a magazine for girls called Polly Pigtails. I was Polly Pigtails. I wrote a letter for each issue from Polly Pigtails to her readers. It later changed its name to Calling All Girls.

DA: So you actually edited a magazine aimed at girls.

Read the rest of this entry »

A San Francisco Chronicle reporter recently met with Future Imperfect author David Friedman, to speak about the book. The interview appears in today’s Chronicle. Aside from discussing the usual doomsday scenarios, they enter a larger debate about the role of government in private life.

Technology as lens to ponder imperfect future

In a century-old former farmhouse in San Jose, David Friedman is a living paradox who writes about the promise and perils of futuristic technologies even as he collects medieval weapons and other artifacts from the past.

The 63-year-old Friedman, who earned a doctorate in physics but teaches law at Santa Clara University, is the author of a new book, “Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World.”

As the son of the late economist Milton Friedman, he takes a laissez-faire approach to technological advances, arguing that they could lead to a range of outcomes from the beneficial extension of human life spans to the possible extinction of the species.

Rather than try to predict outcomes, he paints the future as a series of coin tosses that will depend on countless private decisions beyond human comprehension or government control.

Speaking recently at an authors’ panel at the Mountain View headquarters of Google, Friedman likened technology to an unstoppable train.

Read the rest of this entry »

Justice Denied author Marci Hamilton sent me yet another story demonstrating the frustrating position that law enforcement finds itself in when dealing with childhood sex abuse and the Statute of Limitations.

DALLAS - While authorities said they have solved the case in the rape of a child in 1983, justice will not be served.

Through DNA tests, police said they discovered Dewayne Douglas Willis, a man presently sitting in a Texas prison for burglary, was the man responsible for the crime. However, in three weeks, Willis will walk out a free man with no parole or restrictions due to the statute of limitations.

It’s another sad example of how the Statutes completely cut off prosecutors for pursuing these cases. But further into the article, some heartening news:

Now, DPD, along with Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins, are pushing for new state laws that would make rape suspects who cannot be prosecuted at least register as a sex offender or have it noted in their criminal history that DNA has linked them to a rape.

“This is all new, going into uncharted territory,” Watkins said. “I think here in Dallas and Texas we can be on the forefront of making a real difference in how we progress in the criminal justice system.”

Perhaps a step in the right direction, but Marci has a better answer — just abolish the statutes for rape cases.

The full article >>

Future Imperfect author David Friedman talks to Forbes about potentially painful technologies. Future Imperfect is full of ‘em. But it’s not about how to stop it, it’s about how to manage.

Even the most wonderful technology has unintended consequences. And for many technologies, no consequence can be more unintended than this: pain.

And let’s not miss Sadhika’s favorite quote:

How will we live with computers that are smarter than us? We’d better hope they like pets.

Read the full article >>