One of the neat things about the way the universe began is that it brings out principles that help to follow physics and philosophy that, without them, appear beyond reason. They simplify what lies behind some deep ideas, such as strings. String theories abound in many versions. They are based on fancy math. Their math […]
Science Seen
Physicist and Time One author Colin Gillespie helps you understand your world.Potter in Physics
Thinking about physics showing up in unexpected places gets me thinking about Harry Potter movies. A whole muggle generation cut its independent-thinking teeth on that magic. How much of it might be almost true? For example, there is Hagrid, late for his appointment with Dumbledore, teleporting off the overpass at King’s Cross Station. Teleporting? Maybe […]
Eye on Doyle
Arthur (latterly Sir Arthur) Conan Doyle, a practising physician, surgeon and ophthalmologist is well known for his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. I, too, am a fan. Doyle is less known for the sharp eye that he kept on physics. It shows up in the way his fiction promotes then-new physics-based ideas. Through the 1900s these […]
Going Google
If it weren’t so serious it could be quite a lark. I am setting out to tell the true tale of the universe’s birth and will need some research to fill in the story. There is this narrator who is somehow writing for me. He’s an aging beach bum, a rootless hacker from the first days of […]
Why the Eye?
I bite the bullet and start pounding out the story of the way the universe began. As I write, the story keeps on growing — guess I should have known. But I’m enthusiastic as I try to make it easy for the reader to understand. Doug’s a friend who reads some early drafting. He tries […]
What’s It to You?
So―a bolt from the blue as the saying goes―I’ve come to understand the way the universe begins. And I’ve concluded I should write a book to share this long-sought understanding with everyone. Why would anyone set out to write a book for everyone? I can think of only one good reason: Because its subject’s something […]
Here and Now: New Words
Man in motion (myself, not the Night Ranger album), I could get conflicted (once again): The universe moves on, I see this, yet I know it never moves. It has no way to move. It has no time. At any given now it simply is; so now is all it ever has. It is a […]
Whose idea?
After I stumble on the answer to the question of how the universe began, I’m sweating what to do next. I figure that another question―Whose discovery is it?―should point me to the answer. It would be pure conceit to think that it is mine alone. I just sorted through the thoughts of others, starting with those […]
The Big Picture
Last week I described stumbling on the answer to the universal question: How did the universe begin? Knowing this leaves me conflicted. I’m in awe at its simplicity and beauty and how much it may explain. But to conceive that I have figured this out is, to say the least, presumptuous. I mean, it’s one […]