Posted on Thursday, the 8th of July 2010, at 11:55

Subject: Big Bang Faster Than Light?

 "The proton is a persistent thing. The first one crystallized out of the universe's chaotic froth just 0.00001 of a second after the big bang, when existence was squeezed into a space about the size of the solar system."
(Popular Science, http://www.popsci.com/michael-moyer/article/2008-09/breaking-open-unknown-universe)

 The big bang started from a singularity. I single point. If the matter in that point expanded to the size of our solar system in just 0.00001 seconds, it was traveling MUCH faster than the speed of light. How can this be?

 Or, does it not count because it's the creation of the universe. Maybe the outer edge of the universe isn't technically traveling through space, but rather is the creation of space, so it can expand as fast as it wants to...?

Posted on Friday, the 4th of July 2008, at 01:00

Subject: Adventures in Oregon with Sam

 Sam and I left Sunday for Oregon. The drive went smooth and we were surprised at how hot it was up there. I always imagine southern Oregon as being on the colder side, but it was hot and muggy in Ashland that night. We got settled in to our hotel room, then headed out for our 8:30pm show of Othello. The show was quite long, 3 1/4 hours with a short intermission, ending at 11:45. Sam was so tired she was nodding off during the show. I thought it was cute, and at the same time felt bad for her for being so tired. We both thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

 Monday morning we slept in a little and took our time getting going. We got out of the hotel about 10:45 and headed to downtown Ashland to find breakfast. We were very hungry and discovered that all the restaurants there open for lunch at 11:30. We had a nice lunch at a hotel restaurant. I had a fillet of tilapia and Sam had halibut fish and chips. Both were pretty tasty, but nothing to write home about (though apparently I'm doing just that...). Next stop was the grocery store for some organic fruit and other food for camping. We probably got on the road to Crater Lake around 1:30 or 2.

 We made it to the campground without any trouble, and were surprised to find quite a bit of snow on the ground. No snow on the roads, but we were told they got their last snow just a few weeks ago. We set up camp and got back in the car to head to the lake, 7 miles away. With all the snow they only had a couple trails open, one half way around the lake that actually makes it down to the lake. Determined to make it to the lakeside we drove around the lake and found the trail. Stopped a couple times on the way for the beautiful views! The hike down to the lake took about 20 minutes and we were swatting mosquitoes nearly the entire way down. I, of course, had to strip down and get in the freezing cold water. There is a picture of my smiling (crying?) face after re-emerging from dunking under. It was very cold... The hike back up took about twice as long as the way down, and there were about twice as many mosquitoes. When we got back to the car we were literally being swarmed by the little fuckers. We dove in the car, killed those that made it in with us, and then gaped in amazement as several mosquitoes landed on the windshield and windows, bloodthirsty and desperate to get at us. Some were still hanging on as we set out driving back around the lake.

 Pasta for dinner and cribbage in the tent.

 We set out for a little more hiking Tuesday after packing up camp. Hit the road early afternoon to get home in time for Sam to rest a bit before going to work (graveyard shift at Raley's). We got to Sam's apartment in Davis around 7 or 8, got settled in and napped for a couple hours. We left around 10:30 for Sam to get to work by 11 and I headed home. Got back to my apartment shortly after midnight...

 Photos from this past weekend are online on my photos page and Sam's online photo album at Picasa.

Posted on Wednesday, the 12th of March 2008, at 12:00

Subject: Googol and Googolplex

Just how big are these numbers? I was curious about this and did a little research on Wikipedia...

Googol is equal to 10^100. This is the digit one followed by one hundred zeros.

Googolplex is equal to 10^googol. This is the digit one followed by one googol zeroes. This is 10^(10^100).

While poking around to find this information I learned about some other scientific terms I had never heard before: Planck Length and Planck Time. The Planck Time is the time it would take a photon traveling at the speed of light in a vacuum to cross a distance equal to the Planck length. The Planck length is calculated by a convoluted equation I won't bother typing out here, but it comes out to approximately 1.6×10^-35. This is a small fraction of the distance spanned by the diameter of a proton. As a result, the Planck Time comes out to be incredibly minute, about 10^-43 seconds. This is currently the smallest unit of time considered to have any meaning in quantum physics.

So, what does this mean for googol? Consider the length of time believed to have passed since the Big Bang, approximately 13.7 ± 0.2 billion years. Compare this with the Planck time of 10-43 seconds. Imagine how many Planck time units have passed since the universe started. It's phenomenally large and seems impossible to consider, but comes out to 'only' about 8×10^60. Consider something a little larger, the number of elementary particles in the observable universe. Even this has been estimated 'only' from 10^79 up to 10^81. How about if we put them together... List the state of every particle at every measurable unit of time since the Big Bang... At about 8×10^140, this does manage to beat a googol, but still gets nowhere near a googolplex...