Trapped In The 3-D

We are all trapped in space, held captive by three dimensions. We’re completely stuck, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Let’s say you’re hiking in the woods, when suddenly, you notice a forest fire. To evade the flames, you can either run down the path you’re currently traveling on, or turn and run back the way you came. You can turn left or right into the brush around you and bushwhack your way out. If there’s a waterfall nearby, you could jump off that. Or, if your backpack just happens to be a jetpack, you could fly away to avoid being burned to a crisp.

Those are your only options, because you’re three dimensional.How would a fourth dimensional or  higher being escape a forest fire? I suppose we’ll never know.

Just like Paper Mario can’t picture our dimension, we can’t picture those higher than ours. If we were to take Paper Mario out of his world, giving him a break from trying to save Princess Peach, what he considers to be his insides would just appear to us as more flat surface. Basically, all of  his innards would become his “outtards”. Paper Mario would lose a life, and be sent back to his 2-D world.

Conversely, if a 4-D or higher object or being came to our world, it would not be able to fully immerse itself with us, as we could only deal with the 3-D section of it. Kip Thorne, a physicist who worked on the blockbuster hit Interstellar, claims that if life is greater or less than three dimensions, that particular life form cannot be made of atoms, as those are inherently 3-D. So, then, what does life/matter that isn’t made of atoms look like?

Yet, “dimensions” were created by humans for coordinate and mathematic use. In bosonic string theory, spacetime is 26-dimensional, and in superstring theory spacetime is 10-dimensional. Yet, for now, and most likely for all eternity, we will remain confined in three spatial dimensions.

“Upward, not Northward.”-Edwin Abbott

Additional resources:

• In What Ways Does it Become Manifest in The Fundamental Laws of Physics that Space has Three Dimensions? (PDF)
• Inside the Klein Bottle: breaking the coordinates of 3-D
• Flatland: A romance of many dimensions by Edwin Abbott: a story of 2-D and 3-D beings interacting

What Science Means to Us

I remember, back in grade school, filling out flow charts of the scientific process. Later on, in high school, I took science labs, performing rudementry experiments that had been copied by thousands of students, just like me. None of it was all that fun, and it never felt like science. The reason I enjoy science today is due to my own curiosity; in my free time, I read articles, journals, books, and so on, about the history of science and current findings and processes. My schooling does not deserve any credit for my love of science. And that’s unfortunate.

A poll in London conducted by the Science Communication journal asking people on the streets whether they “liked” science or not prompted one woman to say, “Where do these people come from, that actually understand these things?” implying that they could not “come from” the world she herself lived in. I find that rather depressing.

Many people view information such as force =mass x acceleration as science. Yes, that equation is a tool for science, but science is a way of thinking and solving problems, it is not trivia.

Why doesn’t everyone care about science?

Science tends to interact with a majority of people in two different ways: either through usage of science, such as technical applications, or as metaphysical issues, such as the origin of life, when the universe will end, and so on. This information is spread through schooling, books, articles, television, and peer conversations. The problem isn’t that information is not available, it’s that there’s a growing distance between what most people want to see, and scientist’s interests. A recent example that I can give deals with gravitational waves; the general public simply doesn’t care about them, as they can’t see how it impacts them directly.

I’m not calling anyone stupid. I’m just calling them selfish.

Often, people claim to want certain things, but know nothing about them. For example: the battle going on between the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, two competing virtual reality headsets. Another example is the Amazon Echo, the leading technology in a future without screens for a fully integrated life between technology and humans.

Aside from technology, there’s the repeated detection of gravitational waves, the discovery of flowing water on Mars, a new human ancestor, Homo naledi, Stephen Hawking’s Project Starshot, car-to-car communication, the James Webb Space telescope, and much, much more. If any of these are unfamiliar to you, I greatly suggest you look into them; they’ll blow your mind.

Science isn’t self-tying shoes, time traveling machines, or lightsabers. Scientific discoveries can produce these technologies, but at it’s core, science is an idea and quest for discovery that applies to each and every one of us. The processes all around us are science, from opening a door to your bedroom to cooking macaroni on your stove to peering through a telescope.

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”-Carl Sagan

The Killer Bathtub

Do you know the feeling of getting into a tub full of hot water? I’m sure you do. But then after awhile, the heat in the water becomes more evenly distributed as it begins to match up with the temperature of the chilly air around you. Then suddenly, you’re freezing and all dried up like a prune.

You can thank thermodynamics for that. Because the reason why your bathtub grows cold will also be the cause for the end of the universe.

We all know about the arrow of time, the nasty little concept that keeps a drop of ink from reforming or the smoke from going back into a cigarette. Well, this arrow of time dictates entropy, the second law of thermodynamics (source). The Big Bang sent the universe into a constant state of dissipation, one that will eventually end in thermal equilibrium, meaning  no left over energy to do work, since all particles will have reached their lowest energy state.

The hot water in that bathtub of yours is constantly flowing towards cooler particles, preventing anything from being in a perfectly stable state–and we don’t want everything in a stable state. Entropy is either always increasing or remaining constant, it never decreases, due to Loschmidt’s paradox (concept of irreversible processes).

So, in a way, our universe is just a giant bathtub. Now, of course, it’s going to take a great deal of time until the universe grinds to a halt–the earth will be long gone by then.

“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”-Anthony G. Oettinger

“Improving” Reality

Reality: [noun] the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.

According to the Oxford dictionary, we can’t change reality–it’s fixed in place for us. We  can build upon it, add to it, and avoid it, but we cannot change reality itself.

Take a look at this fictional (yet based on real technology) video by Keiichi Matsuda showing an average day in the life of augmented reality https://player.vimeo.com/video/166807261” target=”_blank”>here (I highly recommend watching it. I would’ve put it in this post if I could, but WordPress doesn’t like me today).

screen shots from Matsuda’s video

Looks like Pixar’s film Wall-E (2008) wasn’t too far from hitting the mark after all. After watching the video, I was a bit stunned, but it no longer seemed like something out of a sic-fi film. Instead, it looked like our future.

Grit: The New Buzzword

We’ve all “hit a wall” in some point in our lives, all for various reasons. To cope with this, Angela Duckworth, a well-known psychologist, has rallied behind the word “grit”. Now, grit is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “courage and resolve, strength of character”, in other words, what you do next after hitting said wall. In her TedTalk with over 8.4 million views, she defines grit as a “passionate commitment to a single mission and an unanswering dedication to achieve that mission”. Now, that may sound a bit overdramatic (because it is), but Duckworth truly believes that grit is an unyielding quality necessarily for the current generation.

Her studies show that current school systems across the country work against the value of grit by creating the false belief that failure equates to doom. There’s a high amount of one-shot testing in grade school, from the SATs and ACTs to midterms and finals where students receive a score and no other feedback on their performance. Success and failure in the current education system is measured by a single number, and that number has nothing to do with grit. Older education ideals, which are still in place today, centered around creating workers, but now, the current world demands thinkers.

Grit means staying committed to your goals and working hard after either wanting to quit or experiencing failure. The Millennials, raised on pop music and action movies, have developed a “break the wall” mantra, often forgetting that sometimes it may be worthwhile to simply walk around the wall rather than smash through it.

The problem now, it seems, is between grit and conscientiousness. After the buzz of Duckworth’s newly released novel revolving around grit, people finally began to question her findings. From her urging, many schools have worked to apply her ideals, only to find that her concepts haven’t quite had all of their kinks worked out. As with any new research, theories must be read and reread by both the community and fellow practitioners of psychology.

Many similar tests have already debunked parts of Duckworth’s argument, such as IQ, not grit, leading to higher test scores on more than one occasion. But, to her credit, grit is an equal combination of both determination and passion, and how many students are passionate about standardized testing? Without the compassion component to grit, grit wouldn’t be grit at all, it would be drudgery. The word “grit” doesn’t help itself out too much; it tends to remind us of sweat and dirt, often causing us to forget that grit can be fun. When dealing with the concept of grit, people tend to lack interest and commitment, two qualities that can drive a person to dedicate years, sometimes their entire lives, to an issue or concept.

Whether Duckworth’s concept is a flop or not, the idea of grit raises some interesting questions around standardizing schooling, careers, and hobbies. As these studies are relatively new, we’ll have to wait and see what future results may show.

“We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it. Oh no! We’ve got to go through it!”-Barney the Dinosaur

Possible Interstellar Travel?

A few days ago at noon, Stephen Hawking, along with Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg, announced Breakthrough Starshot–a plan to leave the solar system and visit our neighbor, Alpha Centauri. Even though its 24,800,000,000,000 miles away, or, 4.22 light-years away, Starshot has a plan to utilize currently existing or nearly existing technology to start their mission. We’ll be “one world, reaching out to the galaxy”, as Milner eloquently puts it.

So…what has changed that makes interstellar travel achievable?

First off, they have a clear set of expectations. This mission is not about space travel, but about exploring interstellar space and sending photos back to earth. In a few decades, hundreds of “space sails” the size of potato chips will be launched into space, moving at about 1/5 the speed of light. In just 20 years (instead of the 30,000 years it would take with today’s spacecrafts), the probes will hopefully arrive at Alpha Centauri.

What Does this Mean for Science?

We haven’t seen a star or supernova from interstellar space–were always looking through the lens of our own solar system. Starshot isn’t a new idea, either; it was previously proposed by Bill Nye, although there wasn’t enough funding or materials to lift the idea off the ground.

If the trio succeeds, the activity may convince other billionaires to invest in similar space missions, though it’s too hard to predict the outcome of this test for now. If Starshot works, similar probes can be sent to Mars in a matter of hours, or to Pluto in a few days, at the cost of only a few thousand dollars.

By the end of this operation, Mark Zuckerberg will be 85 years old. These men, along with a collection of scientists and specialists, could create a stepping stone for future probes that may one day carry seeds, algae, bacteria, or even DNA to far away areas of the galaxy.

One thing is for sure, no, it will not look like the blockbuster film, Interstellar. If anything, it might be much cooler than that, because it’ll be real, and we’ll experience it in our lifetimes.

Further reading on the structure of the probes here, via Scientific American

The Future of Your Living Room

Generally speaking, the living room of a house is the designated area for social gathering. Equipped with a couch, a television, maybe some chairs and a coffee table, this household space, though morphing slightly over the years, has generally remained the same. In fact, the last greatest change to the classic living room was most likely the addition of the television, and now, in 2016, we’re about to gain a new groundbreaking addition.

You’ve probably heard the terms “augmented reality” and “virtual reality” tossed around in conversations a few times lately. Articles across the internet have been increasing by the week on these two innovations, although, it’s usually as a competition. Neither AR nor VR are being pitted against each other.

• Virtual reality: Immerses user in a digital world with simulated people, objects, and surroundings
• Augmented reality: Adds a layer of 3D content to the user’s pre-existing surroundings

One enhances reality while the other creates it, though both strive to immerse the user.

• VR on the rise: Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard, HTC Vive, Sony Project Morpheus
• AR on the rise: Google Glass 2, Microsoft HoloLens, Sony SmartEyeglass, Recon Jet, Magic Leap, Vuzix, ODG R-7

The main hurdles that both VR and AR have been and continue to deal with are funding for technology, field of view size, and ready-made apps, experiences, and games for all users.

For most users, the “cool factor” is the content, not so much the technology. The better demo presented to buyers will be dubbed the better technology (which can be a bit of a downer for those coming from a strictly tech-based background).

In 1953, sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel in which citizens are consumed by technology. In the living room of each household were four television screens covering each wall, along with “seashells” (the equivalent to today’s earbuds) to hear audio from the screens. Now, 63 years later, Bradbury’s vision is coming to fruition with the rise in popularity for VR and AR.

By 2025, it’s projected that 500 million headsets for both virtual and augmented reality devices will be sold per year (source). As for this year, the sales for Oculus Rifts, Samsung VRs, and PlayStation VRs will be in the millions as well (continue reading here).

So what does this mean for all of us? Well, for one thing, both AR and VR will become more mainstream in less than 365 days. By this December, who knows what your living room will look like?

How Do You Want to Be Remembered?

As finite beings, many people look at death as a “final destination” of sorts. We all have a desire to be remembered, both as individuals and as a species. The earth is currently 4.5 billion years old, and is projected to exist for another 4 billion before the sun engulfs it.

The fact that a star that is as large as 1.3 million copies of our blue planet will one day bring all life that we know of to an end gives more than a few people a headache to think about. Naturally as humans, we want to preserve our knowledge, stories, and culture for anyone, or anything, that survives after our extinction.

The solution to preventing complete inhalation of homo sapiens was originally devised in 2013 under the nickname ‘Superman memory crystal’.

Debuting at the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre in the UK, scientists have managed to capture hundreds of terabytes in one small quartz disc. 360 terabytes, to be exact. It’s known as a 5D storage unit due to its three-dimensional nanostructure in addition to its size and orientation (Kaluza-Klein theory).

By firing pulses at this slice of quartz glass, the 3D crystal structure is altered, now containing the encoded information. To retrieve it, light is pulsed at it again as a specialist records the polarization of the waves the light creates.

Currently, the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Newton’s Opticks, and the Magna Carta have been “uploaded” onto one 5D disc. But, this is just a small example of this device’s capabilities. It’s estimated that an e-book takes up 2 MB of space, meaning that with 360 TB, 180-million e-books could be crammed into one disc. Now, only about 130-million books have been written across human existence, so nearly all of our culture could fit into something you can hold in the palm of your hand.

But our problem spawn from the search for eternal existence. The disc seems to conquer that too, as it can survive about 13.8 billion years at temperatures of 374 degrees fahrenheit and below–that’s about 1.5 times the projected span of our planet.

What’s the takeaway from all of this? Well, billions of people find solace in the fact that all we have learned will not be forgotten. If you had access to one of these, which is extremely plausible in the near future, what would you upload? How do you want to be remembered?

Unethical Treatment Part 2: Machine Thought

If your iPod doesn’t work, you can throw it on the ground and stomp on it. Nothing immoral about that. But, if you want something from a person and they fail to fulfill your want, it’s frowned upon to then throw them down and stomp on them.

We’re dealing with utilitarianism ethics here; the consequences between what we define as “right” and “wrong”. In my previous post, Unethical Treatment Part 1: Clone & Punishment,  I discussed the consequences of cloned consciousness. Here, I’ll be delving further into the concept of machines and their treatment in society.

The Good, The Bad, & The Robot

The popular question in the science and technology world today is, “when will robots think just like us?” Instead of tackling that question, I’d like to propose two others in it’s place:

1. What do we mean by “think”?
2. Why do we expect computers to think like us, if we created them to perform different functions from those of humans?

We long for the R2-D2s and C-3POs of science fiction to become a reality, to talk to us, interact with us, to act similar to humans. Intuitively, when we consider a “thinking” robot, our minds jump to a human thinking pattern. But what about an animal thinking pattern? Or alien? What if there was a step further than the human thinking process (I’m sure there is)? But, of course, humans seem to be more than brain states. Robots thus far just don’t seem to have that…spark. You know what I mean; that thing that allows us to recognize each other as innately human. Consciousness, perhaps.

I mean, if everything was about computing numbers and variables, then why would the human mind be so bad at it, and the robotic one so powerful? Generally speaking, what computers are good at (raw data manipulation), humans aren’t too great at, and vice versa (complex behavior, holistic judgement).

We need to take some time to think about what we envision a “thinking” computer to be. Generally, computers perform a great deal more “thinking” than you and I do each day; constantly running system checks and performing maintenance updates, and much more, depending on the equipment.

Robots don’t care about morals or ethics. In fact, they don’t care about a single thing at all. We assign those human qualities to them. A computer is neither good nor bad, it is merely a set of algorithms implanted by a human. If we consider the entire human central nervous system, all 86-billion neurons of it (source), each other those connecting to another 100,000 neurons for a grand total of 860 connections, we have no current knowledge of how to “upload” a human mind to a machine. Sure, we can try to create a program like it, but we’re nowhere close to making a robot think like a human. What’s the gain in that? We’d just be creating a Frankenstein-like outcast made of nuts, bolts, and hardware.

Parts of the Whole

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”-John Muir

Traditionally, we distinguish different entities from one other via categories and properties. Take two apples, for instance. They both most likely have different masses, but they share similar properties; they’re both about the same size, shape, and texture. These properties determine the ways entities behave with one another. There are other ways the apple is, the apple has the property of being either an apple or a chainsaw. It could be me, or your lunch yesterday, or the president of the United States.

Yet, properties are repeatable; particulars are not. How many things differ? I mean, the world isn’t one “thing” but many things, and they’re all different.

Here are two things: a chair and a boomerang. There’s another: a turkey. The first two are similar, neither of the first two resembles the third. This argument is quite appealing yet fallacious. The table and boomerang resemble one another, and they don’t resemble the turkey in that way.

These categories, one by one, make up reality. In a sense, it’s a way for the human mind to take “inventory” of what’s around it. It answers one of our most common questions, “what is this?”  I put each of my blog posts in a category. That being said, it contains different properties from that of my other writings. This is the only post to exist exactly in the way it is now, all due to categories and properties.