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Jun. 20th, 2014 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pustomytnykПочав читати Max Tegmark. Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)
to me, an electron colliding with a positron and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?
He raises his hand, and I gesture to him that it’s okay to ask his question. “Does space go on forever?” he asks.
My jaw drops. Wow. I’ve just finished a little astronomy presentation at Kids’ Corner, my kids’ after-school program in Winchester, and this extremely cute group of kindergartners is sitting on the floor, looking at me with big inquisitive eyes, awaiting a response. And this five-year-old boy just asked me a question I can’t answer! Indeed, a question that nobody on our planet can answer.
Amusingly, Christopher Columbus totally bungled this by relying on subsequent less-accurate calculations and confusing Arabic miles with Italian miles, concluding that he needed to sail only 3,700 km to reach the Orient when the true value was 19,600 km. He clearly wouldn’t have gotten his trip funded if he’d done his math right, and he clearly wouldn’t have survived if America hadn’t existed, so sometimes being lucky is more important than being right.
to me, an electron colliding with a positron and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?
He raises his hand, and I gesture to him that it’s okay to ask his question. “Does space go on forever?” he asks.
My jaw drops. Wow. I’ve just finished a little astronomy presentation at Kids’ Corner, my kids’ after-school program in Winchester, and this extremely cute group of kindergartners is sitting on the floor, looking at me with big inquisitive eyes, awaiting a response. And this five-year-old boy just asked me a question I can’t answer! Indeed, a question that nobody on our planet can answer.
Amusingly, Christopher Columbus totally bungled this by relying on subsequent less-accurate calculations and confusing Arabic miles with Italian miles, concluding that he needed to sail only 3,700 km to reach the Orient when the true value was 19,600 km. He clearly wouldn’t have gotten his trip funded if he’d done his math right, and he clearly wouldn’t have survived if America hadn’t existed, so sometimes being lucky is more important than being right.
