Saturday 19 March 2011

A Matter of Gravity



Here's a thought from a nice little compendium of "shocking" facts from the  recently published book, The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow:


"No matter how thorough our observation of the present, the (unobserved) past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities."


Ah yes - observation. The physics equivalent of the Holy Grail... and just as elusive.
What is observation - this force that makes infinite potentialities and probabilities collapse into one observed "reality"?

It is an acknowledgement of sorts, yes - but does it have anything to do with consciousness, in the (admittedly limited) sense that we understand it? 

The father of the "many worlds theory", Hugh Everett, is said to have vehemently refused the idea.
Apparently, very many physicists still do.
But it should also be said that Everett's conception of consciousness itself was, inevitably, limited.

A friend of mine, also a physicist (the same one that shared a pizza and Australia's Next Top Model with me), recently said something that is now stuck in my mind like a silly tune, a jingle that won't go away:


OBSERVATION = GRAVITY
GRAVITY = OBSERVATION 


The problem is, gravity itself is much more of a mystery than apple-stricken Isaac Newton and his followers (especially his followers) would have us believe.
Yet this same force seems to be dictating Time - arranging timespace - itself.


Something to ponder about on this almost-spring Saturday, when so many people seem to be expecting so many terrible wonders from our dear puny little Moon.


 The Moon (who else?) from Georges Méliès' 1902 film, A Trip to the Moon.



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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been following this blog from the begninning and I remember, I hope I got it right, you were the user posted the original post in this discussion, yes?

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread498244/pg1

How come you never wrote about this in this blog?
That was one hell of a thread.

Myosotis said...

Thank you very much for stopping by. :)

Yes, that was indeed the user name of this blog's head mistress. :)
And we agree, that was one heck of a thread. Pity it wasn't more long-lived.

The truth is, the subject of that thread - the theory - is rather difficult to wrap one's head around it. And we like to have a clear idea about any theory before writing about it here.

But you are right, it probably SHOULD have been discussed here.

We'll see what the current status of that theory is, and think about mentioning it here.

Thank you very much for bringing it to our attention.