This is my last maple tea bag.

In my mind this time had already been signed away for other things, but things get postponed. The typical attractions have worn out for the moment, which is fine by me since they aren’t really that attractive to begin with. Instead here I am.

Tourist trinket though it may be, it’s hard to otherwise find a good ceylon blend. This maple tea from its little wooden box, Earl Grey with lemon, and peach green are the staples of my winter diet. I’m much more comfortable wrapped up in layers upon layers with tea in hand than coaxing a few more kelvin out of my heaters. It’s only kinetic energy, and I hardly need that burrowed down in the depths of my couch.

All the books lying around have been read, so the afternoon has passed with pictures, both still and otherwise. A picture can’t be worth a thousand words, since there’s no way I could describe everything in them with words at all. They’re just little coloured pixels, right? Laughter on the street, feet in the sand of a tropical beach, a kiss above Nagasaki. Pixels on a computer screen, neurons firing, molecules reacting, electrons moving.

There’s kinetic energy in my tea, too.

This past Thursday evening I attended the Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium. It’s a highfalutin name for either a very important or completely useless question, depending on who you ask. The audience in the package Leacock 132 lecture theatre, I would guess, consider it to be the former.

The topic was this: Why is the universe just right for life? There are various approaches one can take in an attempt to answer it. One speaker broke it down into three possibilities:

1. The universe must be the way it is, and it’s just lucky that it supports life at all.
2. There are an infinite number of universes, so one suitable for humans was bound to show up eventually.
3. God did it.

The discussion largely ignored the third option, which was fine by me. As for the first two, though, there were some interesting points made. As many people see this question as being highly controversial, especially with you involve intelligent design, I found the most significant statement of the night to be “There is no controversy, only questions,” from Leonard Susskind.

Fine tuning of the universe is a significant part to the problem, and is often used as proof of intelligent design. One of the scientists on the panel (I forget which) made a good analogy to water. We often talk about how if ice were heavier than water (as is the case with most other substances) all the oceans and lakes would be frozen solid and life wouldn’t be able to survive here. Whether that’s true or not, it’s based on the idea that the densities are parameters we could have arbitrarily set. However, now that we have more knowledge of atomic physics than a hundred years ago, we can see that water and ice density is not an arbitrary parameter at all but a consequence of something more fudamental. Thus, it’s quite likely that the many arbitrary parameters people point to to claim fine tuning are just manifestations of something deeper that may yet be explained and nothing special at all.

Similarly, one panelist (either Susskind or David Gross) provided an example that two years before the discovery of DNA, someone published a paper proving that there was no way enough information could be coded in a cell to be passed on to create new generations. With a little more understanding this biological miracle isn’t so miraculous afterall. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the water molecule analogy is apt here as well, to explain the supposed irreducable complexity of biological systems. Yes, proteins and their functions are incredibly complicated, but it’s all just atoms and fundamental forces scrammbled together in chemical reactions. As Douglas Adams said of evolution, “We may never know precisely what steps life took in the very early stages of this planet, but it’s not a mystery.” No controversy, only questions.

However, I noticed a complete lack of addressing the question of (in the case of number two) where the infinite number of universe came from in the first place, or why, if there is a single unified theory (as implied by number one), it’s that particular unified theory and not some other. Well, Paul Davies did address it for a moment, but only to acknowledge the problem — that no matter which position you took there still seemed to be a appeal to something outside the universe.

It actually boils down to the question of why there’s something here at all and not nothing. A few weeks ago my dad posited at the dinner table that the most important question people ask themselves is “who am I?” or something of that ilk. My reply to that wasn’t a well formed philosophical question and nothing interesting could come from asking it. I still believe that. Interestingly, the response David Gross gave to the question “why is there something and not nothing?” was that it wasn’t a well formed physical question and nothing could come from asking it. “What is nothing?” he asked.

Originally, I posed that question as being much more important than simply “who am I?” and it probably is the biggest question there is, in a sense, but I realise that Professor Gross is right in his suggestion that there’s no point in thinking about it yet since it is so far outside the realm of what science can say. Perhaps sometime it will be within reach, but not today, and probably not for a long time.

I’m happy to say that this site now supports OpenID for logging in to make comments (thanks to this plugin). That means, for example, livejournal users can just type in their LJ address (http://yourname.livejournal.com) and, assuming you’re already logged into LJ on that computer, the comment will go through under your name. Technorati, Moveable Type, and soon Wikipedia, also support OpenID.

If you do log in with OpenID, I recommend you edit your profile by clicking “Admin” at the top of the page. Otherwise your nickname on this site will just be an ugly URL. Let me remind you, though, that there’s absolutely no reason in doing any of that, since you can also just type in your name and address without logging into anything at all. It’s just a geeky bit of fun.

I learned a lot of things from Professor Hanna in my Astrophysics class, this being one of them. I’ve already given away the punch line, but for those who aren’t familiar with it:

A farmer is having trouble with a cow whose milk has gone sour. He asks three scientists—a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist—to help him. The biologist figures the cow must be sick or have some kind of infection, but none of the antibiotics he gives the cow work. Then, the chemist supposes that there must be a chemical imbalance affecting the production of milk, but none of the solutions he proposes do any good either. Finally, the physicist comes in and says, “First, we assume a spherical cow…”

Physicists use the phrase to poke fun at themselves for all the simplifications we tend to make. Another McGill prof, Cliff Burgess, was heard to say, “Life is either a free particle or a harmonic oscillator,” and I think most physics students would believe it, even though most things in everyday life are neither free particles nor harmonic oscillators. What does everyday life have to do with physics, anyway?

But it’s not all crazy talk, for I did see a spherical cow yesterday. Metaphorically at least. I’ve heard it said a couple times that many things, even non-fluidic things, can be modelled as fluids. In particular, people, physically speaking, behave like fluids. Not an obvious jump, sure, but it works.

I was coming down to the Milton gates just past 17h, when the majority of people are walking home through the ghetto. The light changed from red to green and a massive hoard of people surged ahead to cross Rue University, each one darting around obstacles and jostling for a position among the other pedestrians. On one side of the corner a stream of people splashed onto a car turning right, some people being diverted away from Milton and up University, others flowing down the middle of Milton. As people spread down the street they spread out, the pressure that had built up at the stop light releasing. Faster people passed others on the inside by skipping along the curb or going into the street, while the average paced people were buffered from the buildings by the occasional group of people who had stopped at the side to talk, mimicking the way water moves down a pipe. We were all just molecules in the same fluid.

That was the subject of a debate I saw tonight. But of course the question remains unanswered, at least in any sort of unanimous way. These debates rarely, if ever, result in anything else.

The theist position was actually very well presented. The speaker had a lot of presence on the stage, lots of fancy slide transitions in his slides, and impressive animations. He spoke with a lot of authority and communicated his arguments well.

The atheist, too, was a good speaker, but in a completely different way. While the theist’s presentation was comparable to a physics colloquia, with the atheist I felt like I was listening to Stuart McLean read a story on CBC’s Vinyl Cafe. No, there was no narrative per se, but he did speak directly to his audience as if it were one-on-one, merely talking about the nature of religion without presenting an argument. It was almost hypnotic.

But we were not there to judge speaking styles. I thought it was almost ironic that, at least as far as opening statements, the theist’s sounded more scientific (at times). However, every argument he made I found either horribly exaggerated, naive, or based on false assumptions. The only argument that I wouldn’t have felt comfortable addressing with any sort of strength was the biochemical one, but of course just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean I need appeal to God (although I admit it could turn out that way).

I was disappointed, though, in the atheist response to his arguments. He certaintly dismissed them all, but I think some of them required more attention than he gave them. Objective moral theory and evidence from scripture are two that I have no problem waving away, but the cosmological and biochemical ones are perhaps not so easy. The atheist did make a good point about cosmology, but it served to show that the theist’s argument that there could only be one God and not “gods all the way up” was not sound, rather than that there could be no God at all. It was certainly a valid point, but only one direction of many he could have used to approach it.

So, I guess I did learn a little something. I also got two free books and a CD from it, and you can’t knock free books. Sure, one is the New Testament, of which I already have one copy, and the other is about Jesus, which is really the least of my concerns, but they’re books nonetheless.

(Incidentally, this is the 500th post in this blog, which surpassed 100 000 words last month, and in a few days will be 5 years old. Happy birthday.)

There’s something about this book that looks very inviting. It’s got a nice velvety matte burgandy cover, simple text layout, and a artistic phographic inset right in the middle. I see this book and I think it will be filled with similar artistic renderings, bright and colourful, illustrating all the wonders of the universe, like an art history of cosmology. But alas, upon opening it, we see the same old stuff from every one of my plain cover physics and math textbooks:

I suppose I just built myself up for disappointment. But there’s something deeper doing on here. I think everybody, at some point or another, gets a semester or at least one class in their university careers where everything starts being woven together. For me I suddenly saw complex variables being applied in signal processing, differential equations solving mechanics problems, mechanics in quantum physics, quantum physics explaining particle behavior, and looking at particles in special relativity. Suddenly it was obvious that all these classes were talking about the same thing. Here it happens again, except this time the connection is of a much different nature.

It is this: The page above, in my General Relativity textbook, covers the same material as a textbook in one of my philosophy classes, even with the same terminology. I always said there was a connection between physics and philosophy.

Such thoughts always bring me to think about where I want to take my studies after undergrad. I still can’t decide if I like philosophy because it’s just one step higher in abstraction than cosmology (one step too far, say some), or if I like cosmology because it’s one of the areas of physics that has the most philosophical implications. I tell people that I want to study “Philosophy and Physics” but not “Philosophy of Physics”. Unfortunately there are many graduate programs in the latter but only a couple of the former.

But what would a program in “Philosophy and Physics” be, anyway? Today I realised what was lacking about the phrase, and refined it. What I’m really interested in, what’s been my motivation all along is this: The Philosophical Consequences of Physics. In particular, the philosophical consequences of cosmology. Now all I have to do is find a graduate program for it.

As if I needed another reason to not go outside, I now officially have my own washer and dryer in the apartment. The washer on the right is Bradley, and the dryer on the left is the bowman’s daughter. I don’t know who the bowman is, but that’s his daughter. Her name, in all likelihood, is Bertha. Cute couple, eh?

The only downside is, of course, that I can’t actually use them. At least not until I somehow manage to stop the cold water tube from spraying water everywhere. Loose connexion? Old washer? Damned if I know. Time to work on my plumbing skills.

Well, I gave it a try.

The wonders of the universe awaited me! How can I turn that down, even if the wind chill was -24 degrees? Half an hour past sunset I put on my winter gear and headed up the mountain, camera in hand. But as I wandered my way up the winding road to the summit (unable to find the direct route of the staircase, hiding in the snow as it was) the cold made its way into my socks and gloves. Good enough though they may be to get me to and from campus on paved sidewalks, they weren’t quite up to the windy mountain snow covered paths.

Before long I had to admit to myself that it was getting darker much faster than I was climbing the hill. I knew Comet McNaught, if it had been visible at all, was quickly setting beyond the hill. I should have brought my compass, but it would have been fairly useless anyway. “Montreal West”, I guessed, was probably too close to being south, meaning the sun had gone down on the other side of the buildings on Redpath Cresent, which I stilll hadn’t overcome, and maybe even on the other side of the mountain entirely. My comet, which had gone down with it, was not going to show herself to me tonight.

At least the view was nice. The more astute of you might notice that this photo was taken facing east, entirely in the wrong direction for chasing a setting sun, but I wasn’t about to go home empty handed.

My childhood is punctuated with memories of my dad waking me up in the middle of the night, driving me to unknown locations, and then pointing something out in the sky. The earliest I can remember was driving over an hour, thermos of hot chocolate in hand, to Fundy National Park, where I saw the rings of Saturn through a telescope for the very first time. Once, while camping in that same park, he brought me out into the woods away from other campers and pointed out the diffuse glow spanning the sky that is our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Perhaps less visually impressive but equally memorable was when we went out into the back woods of French Village to see a small seemingly insignificant fuzzy dot—a comet.

Naked eye comets are rare enough as it is, but this month Comet McNaught has been making headlines around the world. In this picture, from Nasa’s Astronomy Pic of the Day, it can be clearly seen above the city of Krakow, Poland, just after sunset. Now there’s word (eg. from Phil Plait and Astroprof) that the comet is so bright that it’s visible in broad daylight.

Unfortunately, not only has the brightness probably piqued this past weekend, so with each successive day it’ll get harder to see, but Mother Nature chose today to finally start winter, so the Montreal sky is full of snow and clouds. Otherwise I’d be tempted to trek up Mount Royal and try to get a look at it. Hopefully it’ll be nice and clear tomorrow, so I’ll finally be able to get a look at this, the brightest comet in 30 years, far surpassing that fuzzy blob of my youth, if only in aesthetics and not significance.

A year and three months later I’m starting to put a little artistic effort into decorating my apartment. Ten points to anybody who can figure out what this is supposed to be! That’s right, my art means something. In fact it even looks like what it’s supposed to look like in two ways, which I think is pretty cool, but I’m a big geek like that.

Hint: You biology or biochem types are definitely familiar with it, and quite possibly even in the way it’s displayed, in an abstract kind of way of course.