Reality hangs by a thread …

I was channel surfing last week, stopped on a rerun of the “King of Queens” for a bit and then decided to check out what was on PBS just in case one of my faves, History Detectives, was back on (I can never figure out that show’s schedule).  Instead I came across an image of a bearded man talking about his father, a physicist.  There was something truly engaging about the frankness with which this man was talking about his family and I stayed and watched.  Mark Everett, aka “E,” is the lead singer of Eels, an L.A. band that was consciously unknown to me.  Subconsciously I had enjoyed their music in the Shrek movies and many other television shows (Scrubs for one) and movies.  Hugh Everett was Mark’s father.  

Hugh Everett was the proponent of the parallel universe theory – the same theory I read about a few years ago that sent me into a mental free fall when I started thinking about what it truly meant and all the implications.  For a non-mathematician and one prone to flights of fantasy, the idea of the existence of  infinite universes where every possibility of every moment is played out is just mind-blowing.  I distinctly remember driving after having read an explanation of the idea on the Internet and just imagining every possible variation of every action I was taking and multiplying that by the actions of everything around me and arggghhhhh….. And what seems to me at this moment in 2008 to be fantastically “out there” in terms of science was put forth in the mid 1950’s by Everett.  Amazing.

But the true reason, you should make sure to watch Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, is the film itself. The examination of the life of Hugh Everett and Mark Everett as it relates to the father/son relationship is given equal if not more weight to the scientific life of Dr. Everett.  It shows Mark going back and discovering who his dad was through meetings with  his father’s colleagues and people who were deeply influenced by his father’s work.  The documentary does not drop to the level of maudlin sentimentality over the facts of the Everett family’s life nor is it some sort of rock exposé.  It just is and it is fascinating to watch.

Mark Everett makes a comment about how we should all be so lucky as to be able to make a documentary about our dads.  He is right.  Check your PBS schedules and make sure to catch this if you can.

Here are some links that give a more cohesive explanation of the film, the Everetts and E:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/

http://www.readmetro.com/show/en/Boston/20081021/1/26/

 http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-eels19-2008oct19,0,3359693.story

The documentary opened doors for me – further exploration into Hugh Everett’s theory (that I will do slowly and carefully, lest I myself take a trip to a parallel universe) and the music of E and the Eels whose lyrics, music, style, whatever you want to call is so in tune with what I am drawn to, that I wonder how I was not truly aware of it before now.  Wow. That was a poorly constructed and convoluted sentence but I can find no other way of structuring the words so that it carries the same meaning.  I don’t think any one will read this far down in the post anyway, so I won’t worry about it too much.

BTW – the film’s director and producer is Louise Lockwood who did an excellent job.  I could find next to nothing about her in a limited IMDB search but I will keep an eye out for her future projects.

3 million dollar overhead projector?

During last night’s debate, Sen. McCain made a reference to a three million dollar “overhead projector” for the Adler Planetarium as an example of wasteful spending.  Spacewriter eloquently explains the difference between an “overhead projector” and a planetarium projection system here “Who Knew a Planetarium Was a Political Weapon” to John McCain (I think the rest of us know the difference).  

Also here is a follow up which includes a statement from the Adler Planetarium: An Interesting Use of Facts 

There’s no need for me to write about this Spacewriter says it all.

Watch the skies…. please?

From a CNN story

On Monday night, an asteroid that may be the size of a car will likely burn up in the atmosphere over northeastern Africa, according to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. But the planet is not in peril. The asteroid, spotted by an Arizona observatory only Monday afternoon, will burn up in the upper atmosphere at about 10:46 p.m. ET (2:46 a.m. GMT).

…. We want to stress that this object is not a threat,” said Dr. Timothy Spahr, director of the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center. “We’re excited since this is the first time we have issued a prediction that an object will enter Earth’s atmosphere.”

There are a few things I don’t like in this story:

1.  I don’t like how many times words such as “likely,” “maybe,” “could” and “may” appear – it gives me the impression they’re just guessing.  I understand these kind of predictions aren’t exact but it gives me an uneasy feeling about their abilities to calculate just how innocuous this asteroid will be.

2.  I don’t like the fact that an asteroid the size of car was only spotted hours before it was due to make its entry into our atmosphere.  Kudos to our Arizona observatory for spotting it but shouldn’t someone have seen it before?  Are we keeping an eye out for stray objects?  How will we have time to build our huge rocketship so we can leave the planet before the asteroid hits?  Dang – I can see the movie in my mind but I can’t remember what it is – its an old one, black and white, possible early fifties, maybe even late forties.  Earth is about to be destroyed and they’re building a rocketship – its a classic and has a great looking rocketship but I can’t remember the name of the movie. I’ll update if I remember or some one would be so kind to leave a comment as to what the movie is.

3.  Yes.  I understand — the planet is not in peril and you’re excited because this will be the FIRST TIME you have issued a prediction that an object will enter the atmosphere.  First time!!  I wished they hadn’t mentioned that.

Anyway, I’d like a little bit more watching the skies for large objects hurtling at us and less playing around with particle colliders from you scientist types out there.

Is this what happened to the Krell?

Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

I assume everyone has heard about the experiment that was started up today in Switzerland – they’re trying to recreate the Big Bang in miniature form.   Its been on all the news programs and smiley faced anchors laugh it up about how this may be the end for all of us.  The switch was thrown on Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator in an effort to find/create Higgs boson, sometimes dubbed the “God particle” (that in and of itself sounds like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie).  Check this link out where the particles are explained Higgs Boson and this link that explains the Large Hadron Collider experiment -LHC.  According to the Wikipedia article one of the many questions they hope to find answers to with this experiment is  — Are there extra dimensions, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we “see” them.   WHAT?  What!!!  I’m having flashbacks to The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension.  Maybe Dr. Lizardo wasn’t wrong, monkey boy! (This is another movie you – whoever you maybe – should check out if you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing it.)

Well, as it turns out, there really is the hypothetical potential of creating mini black holes that could consume the earth from the inside out.  From what I’ve read it is just a very few physicists who say a tiny potential is there to destroy our planet and all of us along with it.  Uhm, EXCUSE ME, shouldn’t we have been consulted about this?  “We” being the people of the earth?   Now granted, it is a very small, tiny, wee, infintisimal possibility that an itsy-bitsy black hole will be created and suck us all into non-existence but, still in the future, I’d like to be consulted on things like this.  

I particularly like this quote from an article from March, 2008, by Dennis Overbye in the New York Times,

Dr. Arkani-Hamedsaidconcerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.” 

Its nice to know scientists have a sense of whimsy about these things.

By the way, the title is yet another reference to Forbidden Planet, just in case you were wondering…  I just wish I could get that darn R.E.M. song out of my head…