I said it first

This line came to my mind suddenly, then I googled it and found that nobody said it before. So I want to write it down here, in case this line becomes a famous quote in the future, people will know it's me who's the first one who said it.

"To understand women is just like understanding Quantum Mechanics, they both are defying common sense!"

Choy Onn , 29/10/2006

Universe is a child of previous one (from BBCNEWS)

A joint UK-US team has put forward an alternative theory of cosmic evolution.

It proposes that the Universe undergoes cycles of "Big Bangs" and "Big Crunches", meaning our Universe is merely a "child of the previous one".

It challenges the conventional view of the cosmos, which observations show to be 12-14 billion years old.

The new ideas, reported in the journal Science, may explain why the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, the researchers say.

"At present the conventional view is that all of space, time, matter and energy began at a single point, which then expanded and cooled, leaving the Universe as it is today," said Professor Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, New Jersey.

"However, this new theory suggests that there's a continuous cycle of universes, with each a repeat of the last, but not an exact replica.

"It can be thought of as a child of the previous universe."

Cosmological constant

The new idea builds on previous work by the same team, and is set to challenge the current model.

Back in the 1920s, when Einstein was developing his general theory of relativity, he introduced a constant, known as the cosmological constant, to explain his idea of a static Universe.

Einstein's equations predicted a Universe collapsing under its own gravitational force, whereas observation showed it clearly was not contracting.

The cosmological constant represented an inherent pressure or force associated with free space, which would be resisting the gravity-drive contraction.

The concept was later abandoned when observations showed the Universe to be expanding - causing Einstein to label the cosmological constant as "the greatest blunder of my career".
In 1998, a form of the constant was re-habilitated when it was found that the Universe's expansion was actually speeding up.

Unanswered questions

Although the re-introduction of the constant enabled calculations to match theory, it also raised the question that there was something in physics that was "missing".

Professor Neil Turok, of Cambridge University, told the BBC News website: "When the value of the cosmological constant was calculated, it was found to be much smaller than expected.
"The explanation as to why this constant is so small has become one of the biggest problems in physics.

"At present, the only explanation for this is that things just have to be that way." This theory leaves many questions unanswered, but now Professors Steinhardt and Turok have developed a new theory to explain why the cosmological constant is so small.

They suggest that time actually began before the Big Bang, meaning there was a pre-existing universe.

This would also mean that the current Universe is much older than presently accepted.

Dark matter

"At present there may be an alternative 'dark matter' universe that exists at the same time as ours, but we could never reach it," explained Professor Turok.

"The best way to think of this is to think of a pane of double glazing with a fly on it. The fly is unable to cross over from one side to another, just like we are unable to get from one universe to another.

"These two universes are drawn together by the force of gravity and will eventually collide.

"This means that things that are happening now will help to create another universe in the future."

The right Formula

Formula 1 season started not too long ago, but this time with brand new rules and even more constrictions. The greatest being the use of smaller, less powerful engines. Instead of the screaming V10s of the previous years, all cars have 2.4 litre V8s under their hoods, or in this case their carbon fibre monocoque chassis. My good friend, Colin Charles, had the privilege of going to the Melbourne Grand Prix this year, and he tool some spectacular shots, eventhough he was standing behind a stupid fence.





Why do you think they changed the rules? This is not a rhetorical question. Please comment! It may seem counter productive, because reducing engine power reduces speed, which reduces lap times, etc; and this would reduce the spectacle as a whole right? I watched a few minutes of this weekend's qualifying, and I noticed that the sound of the engines seem abit more docile, not like that beautiful scream of those V10s as they feel the pain of going past their own limits. I also noticed that the tachometer shown on screen was easily going past 19,000 RPM, which as I recall is not at all different from the V10s. So are the lap times slower? I really don't know. Please tell me. I can't be bothered to watch Grands Prix anymore!





Ferrari have lost their dominance ever since that tyre rule came about. Bridgestone could not produce a tyre that came close the Michelins. This could bring one to think that all the new rules were introduced to end Ferrari's dominance.




But are these rules really counter productive? I don't think so. In the long run, it will be beneficial not only to the teams, but to the whole automotive industry, and thus to us. The engineers are forced to take all the raw power out of those engines and convert it into sheer speed. And from what I saw this weekend, those V8s make me more excited than the old V10s. Just the thought of those V8s going even further past their limits than the V10s ever did makes me all tingly inside. This is what engineering and machine development is all about; maximising the output no matter what the constraints are.

So these new rules might just rekindle my interest in F1 (not to mention the other spectacles that F1 brings with it)..................................






note: my excellent friend rocks hard at his flickr site.

There is no god

As I promised Ruben, I will write something about GOD. I told him I finally realized what is god. So, I would like to talk a little about it here.

Ok before I get started. Let’s ask ourselves, what is god? Different religions have different gods, but generally, god can be considered as an almighty being, which stands above everything. What do I mean everything? Ok, if you want to be a god, here are some qualities you must have:

You need to know everything. What do I mean by everything? As a Physicist, when I say someone knows everything, then he/she knows exactly the values of both the position and the momentum of every single particle in the universe.
You must be able to do anything.
You must stand above all dimensional spaces, time, moral…. everything.
You must be good, but not evil! Of course, we all know god is good, but is that really true?

Ok for the first quality, which is god must know everything. If you read Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle before, you know that this is not possible. If you know everything, then you must violate this law of Physics. So now, what is the result if we follow this theory? This theory tells us, even god himself doesn’t know everything! He cannot predict both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. If god himself doesn’t know everything, do we still call him god?!?!

Let’s discuss 2nd quality now. God can do everything. Come on, do you really think it is possible to do anything? Can 1+1 be anything other than 2? Can a 2-D being see exactly how we 3-D beings look like? The answer is no. Next time if the religious people still argue with you, ask him this “Can god kills himself?” If god can kill himself, then he is not almighty being because he dies. But if he cannot kill himself, that means he cannot do something, again, he is not almighty. Need me to prove more?

3rd, he must stands above time, all dimensional spaces, moral and …. This is the most interesting and funny one. Let’s imagine a little about god, he stands above time, spaces, moral, existence… he is self containing… When you think deeper about it, doesn’t this sound exactly like our own universe? If our universe must be created by god, then who created god? Ok, you can say no one created god. Then tell me why universe must be created by god then? Why not unverse created itself? Like the theory of Big Bang? God is not the answer to everything, but it is a barrier for us human beings to find the answer to everything.

The last quality. God must be good, shouldn’t be evil. If god is really the best in the universe, or even outside the universe, then why he made evils or evil things to happen? If he got no choice but to make it, then he is not invincible, cos he got no choice. But if he got a choice, but still created evils, then he is not good. If he is not good, then why call him god?

Well, I want to tell everyone here something. There is nothing called INVINCIBLE in this universe. If there is, then paradoxes will appear. Don’t believe me? Let’s go back to god knows everything. If he knows everything which included the past, present and the future. What will happen? He will just become like a ‘factory worker’ or worse than that, he does whatever it is destined to be done because he knows everything. For example, he knows I was going to write this article, and now I am writing it, and he knows I am going to put it in my blog. So, he cannot do anything but just follow the order, and let me do all these. If he felt pissed and decided to make me not to criticize him in the article, and he wanted to make me to write an article which praises him. But the problem is, he couldn’t!!!! Because he knows everything. He got to let me finish this article to criticize him. If he could change my mind somehow, then he doesn’t know everything.

So now, why believe in god? Why pray? Why not read Physics and explore the universe together? Why not go outside and make a better world yourself? Instead of praying to god and ask him to do it? Furthermore, if there is god, he would have known everything, he would have made the most ideal universe he could. So, there’s really no point in praying.

So you think you really have faith? Think about it! For any religion, there will be something which they call it the ‘truth’. For examples, Christians have bible, Muslims have koran. Now, the followers accept the ‘truth’ and they need to have faith in those believes. What does this sound like? This sounds like you first decided to believe something, then you try to convince yourself and everybody around you to believe that the ‘truth’ is true.

Let me tell you a story. When I was a little kid, I believed in a lot of crazy things. For example, let me tell you a funny one. I was very naughty when I was young, I always fought with my mom. She was angry and told me “You better listen to me and stop fighting, for a kid to fight with the mom, the god will punish you with lightning strike!” Haha… I was so scared, I didn’t really dare to fight with my mom especially during raining. When I think about it now, I have no idea why I believed that. Perhaps because it was my mom who told me, and I chose to believe that it is a ‘truth’, and I convinced myself to believe it. By the way, if what my mom said was true, I would need many lives to survive till today. Hahahaha…

-Choy


(edit)
The following is a reply to the above post.

There is one more thing you forgot to mention Choy. As you know I have been thinking alot about this subject and I came to one of many conclusions about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Perhaps God's intention is not to interfere with his creations. Perhaps he is just like you and me; a scientist. But maybe we humans overestimate his powers. Let me explain.

We know about M-theory and all, which says there are an infinite amount of universes. Ignoring the paradox about who created God first, thing about this. Maybe God created all the Laws of Physics in order for the multiverse to self-propagate. Then he added one last thing, that we call Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, so that noone, including himself, can ever interfere or know what is going to happen within the multiverse, or any of the universes. This means that even God cannot know what is going to happen in the future. The universe is entirely random, and God is just an Observer who cannot manipulate events. And since there are an infinite number of universes, he has an infinitely large sample of data to work with.

About God being good and not evil, look at what we are taught when becoming scientists or engineers. We must not involve any emotion in our experiments, analyses or research, for this may cause us to become biased. Just like this, God is void of any emotion and cannot and does not exist in our plane of existence, since he has no power to manipulate our universe due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

The result of all this randomness in the universe may even suprise God. For example the phenomena of life, or even intelligent life. Imagine what God may think of us. Is he interested? Is he afraid that we may one day come to learn of all the Laws of the universe, and even find a way around the safety of his Heisenberg Principle? If this happens, he would be in big trouble.

This of course is just one thought of God, if he exists at all. I think at this stage, we cannot really be sure whether he does exits or not, just like how we are unsure of how the universe works.

-Ruben

Funny Malaysia

Guess everybody should feel the pain of the RM0.30 increase in fuel price. Well, I am not going to comment anything politically about that but I just felt very funny when reading the news. Why? Ok, I will show you why...

See, for people who have stayed in Malaysia for some time will know that the government talk bullshits all the time. I mean we are used to things like these:

"whatever savings the Government could make from this increase would be channelled towards making the public transport sector more efficient. " which can be translated into "The government is damn broke now, you guys take care of yourselves, I am not any better than you, I just changed my order of S500 to S350"

or

“Hopefully, the people can adjust to the new price and change the way they use fuel”, can be translated into the golden line "There is nothing you people can do, just accept it, or else leave this country"

BUT LOOK AT THIS!

“The increase this time is 30 sen. But we won’t be raising fuel prices again this year because we understand businesses need to plan for the long term and need this stability.”

Can you believe something like this came out of the mouth of our Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister? In order to say that, he must have assumed all the Malaysians are extremely bad in Mathematics, anyone who went to high school would prefer the government to raise the petrol price several times a year in a smaller amount each time (i.e 10 sen every 4 months) than 30 sen a year.

When they are going to stop? Malaysia government has been famous lately for many scandals, and now, they are humiliating the public by assuming we are all retards who cannot count by saying low quality words like that...... Where is our future?!?!?!

Choy

Candle in the dark

Hi, my friend sent me this picture of a painting, drawn by a French artist. I found it can actually match the title of the blog, so I decided to post it here.

Choy

The Properties of Dark Matter (Latest News)

Not long ago, my professor told me Physicists and Astronomers have no idea what is dark matter. But now, a team from Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge has been able to place limits on how dark matter is pack in space and measured its temperature.

The team used the VLT, Very Large Telescope (You know, astronomers really not fancy to name things, there is another telescope coming soon called OWL, guess what does that mean? Overwhelmingly Large......), made a 3D maps of the galaxies, using the movements of their stars to trace the impression of the dark matter aming them and weigh it. (Of course, it involved a lot of Physics here...)

Ok, about the properties:

"It comes in a 'magic volume' which happens to correspond to an amount which is 30 million times the mass of the Sun."

"It looks like you cannot ever pack it smaller than about 300 parsecs - 1,000 light-years; this stuff will not let you. That tells you a speed actually - about 9km/s - at which the dark matter particles are moving because they are moving too fast to be compressed into a smaller scale."

"These are the first properties other than existence that we've been able determine."

"If this temperature for the dark matter is correct, then it has huge implications for direct searches for these mysterious particles (it seems [science] may be looking in the wrong place for them) and for how we thought the galaxies and clusters of galaxies evolve in the Universe."

"Having 'hotter' dark matter makes it harder to form the smallest galaxies, but does help to make the largest structures. This result will generate a lot of new research."

"It turns out the Milky Way is more massive than we thought,"

"It now looks as though the Milky Way is the biggest galaxy in the local Universe, bigger even than Andromeda. It was thought until just a few months ago that it was the other way around."

Human beings are one step forward again to understand our universe! This is exciting!!!