Tag Archives: time

Exotic Not-Erotic Hadrons vs Gravitational Ripples

I’m taking time out from Pristina. Exotic hadrons are the rage this week. Suddenly a cipher, Z(4430), seems to be sexy. What’s exotic? Well, not-exotic, plain-vanilla hadrons are particles of matter. They include baryons―the protons and neutrons that are stable in nuclei of atoms that we see, and unstable particles called mesons that fly unseen […]

Lemaitre, Penrose and the Original Order of the Universe

Life is all about order. Life forms use energy to organize themselves. Their often-exquisite order is created at the expense of disorder which they dump somewhere else. The net effect is always a decrease in total order of the universe. It’s basic physics (the Second Law of Thermodynamics, if you care). The Second Law says […]

Fair Go at Sochi Olympics

In Aussieland, from whence I am, Fair go is slang for reasonable opportunity. In New Zealand it’s a TV show. What’s a fair go on the ice or snow or track or in the pool? Picture this. You’re in the starting blocks at the Olympics. You’ve trained for years to make it for your one […]

String Things

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]