36P

Stopping me in my tracks

Page 80:

"Something that happens over here can be entwined with something that happens over there even if nothing travels from here to there - and even if there isn't enough time for anything, even light, to travel between the events.This means that space cannot be thought of as it once was: intervening space, regardless of how much there is, does not ensure that two objects are separate since quantum mechanics allows an entanglement, a kind of connection, to exist between them. A particle, like one of the countless number that make up you or me, can run but it can't hide."

Waking up

I don't know a lot about physics, or math or any scienc-y type stuff, as the Dutch would say, I'm alpa all the way (alpha meaning language and history and beta is science subjects). I only have a few years of the beta subjects under my belt, not really taking to them instinctively at secondary school and dropping them as soon as I could. So to start off with The Fabric of the Cosmos is proving a more challenging read than my normal fare, especially since my reading speed usually ensures I can race through a book and get the gist of it, in this case that doesn't work. I have to slow down and sometimes actually stop reading and think a lot and work hard to ensure I grasp the concepts fully. But that's such a small price to pay for finally kinda understanding at a very high level what Einstein was on about. It's waking up parts of my brain that I didn't know I were asleep. Addictive stuff. 

Book 1: day 1

I don't know. Does that make sense? Calling posts by the number of the order I read 'em in? For now, it's the best thing I can think of, so I'll keep it this way.

Started reading on the tube this morning on the way to work. Usually I write on the way in, but today I lost interest after Westminster, so decided today was as good a day as any to start off with the universe.

Book 1: Brian Green The Fabric of the Cosmos

The Penguin page is here, the Wikipedia entry on Brian Greene here, and Wikipedia entry on the book here*. Brian Greene on TED here.

I knew this was going to be good when a while back I'd picked up this book and opened it to the introduction and read

'Space and time capture the imagination like no other scientific subject. For good reason. They form the arena of reality, the very fabric of the cosmos. Our entire existence - everything we do, think and experience - takes place in some region of space during some interval of time. Yet science is still struggling to understand what space and time actually are. Are they real physical entities or simply useful ideas? If they're real, are they fundamental, or do they emerge from more basic constituents? What does it mean for space to be emtpy? Does time have a beginning? Does it have an arrow, flowing inexorably from past to future, as common experience would indicate? Can we manipulate space and time?'

followed by the first line of the first chapter

'None of the books in my father's dusty old bookcase were forbidden.'

I knew right then and there this will be a good book.

* note: I know, I know. Wikipedia. Some love it, some hate it. What I love about it is that they have articles on stuff that you can't really find anywhere else, and links to great sources sometimes. Something that a lot of people seem to overlook. For the sheer vast amounts of information (not always very good, but sometimes surprisingly so) I love it.