Happy new year!
We don’t know who we are.
We don’t know why we are here.
We don’t know what death is.
(And yet we crave for life…)
We are happy only because we cry.
(And yet we crave for bliss…)
We seek health.
(And yet it is the pain that makes us think)
Deeply irrational beings we are!
In a deeply irrational cosmos!
One could call us crazy that we dance.
Within the silence of the void.
Does it really matter if we are?
A few years ago, a team of scientists at EPFL’s Laboratory of Nanoscale Biology, headed by Aleksandra Radenovic in the School of Engineering, developed an algorithm that can estimate a microscope’s resolution in just a few seconds based on a single image. The algorithm’s result indicates how closely a microscope is operating to its full potential. This could be particularly useful for the automated microscopes that have started appearing in research labs. The team’s findings have just been published in Nature Methods.
The scientists used Fourier’s transform as the basis for their algorithm, but they modified it so as to extract as much information as possible from a single image.
The results indicates how closely a microscope is operating to its full potential. The algorithm performs the calculation in just a few seconds and generates a single number. “Researchers can compare this number with the microscope’s maximum possible resolution to see whether the instrument can work even better or modify the experimental conditions and observe how the resolution evolves” says Adrien Descloux, the study’s lead author. (1)
We want to see better. We want to see everything.
So we magnify.
Until we see all the details.
And more.
And more.
And more!
Pushing it to the limit! To see everything!
Until we can distinguish nothing anymore!
Isn’t it funny? The more we analyze the cosmos the more we reach absolute zero. At the end, the point is a circle with zero radius. (source) At the end, in the midst of our greatest triumph, we will see nothing.
Ghosts casting shadows…
In a cosmos without any light…
Except the light we bring on our own…
An international group of physicists led by Stevens Institute of Technology, University of Vienna and University of Queensland reveal the quantum properties of time, whereby the flow of time doesn’t observe a straight arrow forward, but one where cause and effect can co-exist both in the forward and backward direction.
To show this scenario, researchers merged quantum mechanics and general relativity to conduct a Gedanken experiment.
To illustrate what happens, imagine a pair of starships training for a mission. They are asked to fire at each other at a specified time and dodge the fire at another time, whereby each ship knows the exact time when to fire and when to dodge. If either ship fires too early, it will destroy the other, and this establishes an unmistakable time order between the firing events.
If a powerful agent could place a sufficiently massive object, say a planet, closer to one ship it would slow down its flow of time. As a result, the ship would dodge the fire too late and would be destroyed.
Quantum mechanics complicates the matter. When placing the planet in a state of superposition near one ship or the other, both can be destroyed or survive at the same time. The sequence of events exists in a state of superposition, such that each starship simultaneously destroys the other. (1)
An interesting idea.
But why stop at the spaceships?
Why not extrapolate to planets?
To the cosmos?
To existence itself?
Look around.
So many things to doubt. And yet you know you shouldn’t.
Close your eyes.
There is nothing there. And yet, you know there is…
Once upon a time you were born.
Once upon a time you have died.
But it matters not.
For you will always be here now.
Look around.
So many things to believe. And you know you should.
Close your eyes.
Everything is there. And yet you know nothing is…
Once upon a time you died.
Once upon a time you were born.
But it matters not.
For you were never here anyway.
Move is relative.
Does your train move? Or the one next to your train?
Are you running? Or is the whole Earth moving under your feet?
You put your keys in the pocket.
Or do you… move the Earth, the people on it, the solar system, the galaxy, the whole universe so as to make the pocket “engulf” them?
The latter seems impossible.
And yet, we do it!
Two possible choices here.
We either do not do ANYTHING at all. [Zeno-like skakos paradox]
Or we… move mountains and whole planets every day.
Your choice. Make it an interesting one!
