Remember the original Revenge of the Nerds? It was an absurd 80’s movie. Some may say cult classic, some might say lame — some might say both. Anyway, there’s one line in the end, when Ogre joins the nerds, in which a drug induced nerd says, “What if along with infinite bigness, is infinite smallness?”
That’s followed by Ogre’s famous line, which is also the title of this blog entry.
What IF infinite smallness does exist though? And what does infinite bigness really mean? You’d have to be a total tool (the 80s did have fun slang, no?) to deny the similarity between atomic structure and interstellar structure. Both are governed by distinct energy types, and both interact similarly in some regards, and drastically different in others.
Is atomic energy (or quantum energy if you’re particularly geeky) and gravitational energy just an “energy order of magnitude apart” ? That opens up a ton of other questions, the likes of which I ponder often.
Where does magnetic energy fit into the bill? Is there a quantum equivalent to dark matter? Since the larger scale energy (gravity) sparks change in the quantum world (fusion in a star anyone?), is there a larger magnitude of energy and existence in play that we can’t detect? Are there infinitely many?
I find it really odd that EVERYTHING scales up. Atomic energy states are absurdly quick, and yet a black hole takes millions of years to eat a star. Same with orbital speeds, my very rough estimates seem to place them on scale too.
And still my brain trudges on…
If space and time can be warped (gravity does this, I’m not talking the Enterprise or anthing), are the ideas regarding non-linear space travel possible? Since time is our adversary when it comes to interstellar travels, should we focus on a solution to the problem of our short lives? If so, what is the best way to do that? Cybernetics? Stasis? Near light-speed travel? Generational ships?
These are the things I ponder, and I’m gravely concerned that our next generation will care more about youtube videos and blogs like this than in actual learning and exploration. NASA is worried that 20 somethings really don’t care about another trip to the moon, or a manned mission to Mars. Are we raising a generation no longer inspired by Star Trek? Is the Friday night trip to Atlantis now our end goal instead of a reason to explore in real life? Have special effects gotten better than reality?
I hope not. I really hope not.
Finally catching up on your blog. Neat post.
One thing is that so far most types of energy relationships have been figured out. Check this wikipedia article as a starting point. The odd man out of all the equations is gravity. We can predict it’s effects on the large scale but it still doesn’t quite make sense smaller down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction
The pattern matching in your head that sees similarities between galaxies and atoms is nostalgic but cosmology involves lots and lots of math and there’s no theories on the books right now that would suggest anything more then 5 types of forces and even then the 5th one is mostly people trying to explain why the light goes off when you shut the fridge by suggesting something in the fridge must go flip the switch. 🙂
There is actually a pretty interesting similarity between money flow and physics. The quantum version of money would be like tracking every transaction and every penny in all the peoples pockets in all the world. You woulnd’t know for sure if someone would choose pepsi or coke , but you could say reliably he’ll get a drink.
Relativity would look at national budgets, trade deficits and mega corporations. It would reliably predict which companies would go up or down in value, future stock price and so on.
The problem of course is you can’t tell if the US dollar will rise against the japanese yen but measureing every cash register in the world. Or more accurately if it can be done we’re not aware of how it can be done. Similarly looking at corn prices in the US vs China won’t help you predict if joe blow will buy a can of creamed corn for dinner.
One of the major goals of science and economics is to figure out the ONE equation you can use to compute big and small values.
Now as far as the infinite amount up or down that’s something we’re pretty sure isn’t happening. Again with the money model… it would be like noticing we don’t see any money smaller then pennies and we don’t see any money / spending bigger then country and corporate level spending with the occasional billionaire for estimates. There’s no larger source of money coming from the moon or Mars – we are pretty solid on the upper and lower end of the scale.
So if you can come up with a formula to show how your decision to purchase skittles for lunch affects the price of 3 speed bicycles in china and it’s right, or how the us dollar vs indian ruppee predicts if you’ll buy a bag of m&ms instead – then you’ve got a good idea about what physicists are trying to accomplish. Rocket science look easy by comparison.
You can’t crush my imagination. Dream crusher. 🙂
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Good read. I wish I felt inspired enough to write such good posts onto my own blog. It is hard.
Was from Revenge of the Nerds II
Came here to say Revenge of the Nerds II.
Almost 6 years after the post and it’s still ranked #3 on Google for “what if cat spelled dog” [without the quotes]. High time you did a quick edit.