By Pie Guevara who appears in Post Scripts through the gracious invitation of the blog creators Jack Lee and Tina Grazier, two wonderful people whom I have never met. Pie Guevara is an unregistered trademark of Engulf and Devour Investments LLC which is wholly owned by David Walton.
Astronomy and cosmology have long been amateur interests of mine. I recently re-read Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe by Martin Rees. It is one of my favorite books on study of everything. That is to say the study of fundamental physical forces that make our universe what it is.
Martin Rees is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He has held positions as Astronomer Royal, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and President of the Royal Society. His accomplishments include Order of Merit, Fellowship of the Royal Society, Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In a conversational tone he not only addresses the major issues in the sciences of astrophysics and cosmology but also discusses associated puzzles of antimatter, quantum effects, cosmic string, magnetic monopoles, cosmic inflation, dark matter, Planck time and mini black holes. All in a friendly style that does not require the reader to have a background in mathematics and physics.
Excerpt —
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” is one of Einstein’s best-known aphorisms, expressing his amazement that the laws of physics, which our minds are somehow attuned to understand, apply not just here on Earth but also in the remotest galaxy. Newton taught us that the same force that makes apples fall holds the Moon and planets in their courses. We now know that this same force binds the galaxies…
Today I discovered this work comes in the form of an audio book. It can be found on the Internet Archive but that site is currently down for maintenance. Here is the same reading by Martin Rees on YouTube, Part 1 of 4. I hope Post Scripts fans find it as interesting, informative and enjoyable as I do —
I consider myself a bit of a numbers nerd. There are so many different numbers with explanations that are fascinating. The numbers in this lecture fall in the group of fascinating numbers, but there are also numbers that come into play that involve things that are much easier for most people to relate to. One number that I love to present to people involves the shuffling of a common deck of playing cards. The intent of shuffling the cards to randomize the sequence of cards to facilitate the playing of some card game. The questions that might pop up are: 1. How many different sequences of the deck are possible given there are 52 cards? and 2. What is the possibility that one shuffle will produce the same sequence as another shuffle?
If you have 2 cards from a deck there are only 2 possible sequences. For example A followed by K or K followed by A. If you have three cards there are six possible sequences. Four cards yields 24 possible sequences. The calculation is just based on factorials. The number of sequences with two cards is 2! (the ! is the factorial operator) which is 1 x 2. The number of sequences with three cards is 3! which is 1 x 2 x 3. And the number of sequences for 4 cards is 4! or 1 x 2 x 3 x 4. So the number of possible sequences for 52 cards is 52! or ………. are you ready …….. 8.066 x 10^67. In other terms it is approximately 8 followed by 67 zeros. (If you have an Amazon Echo ask Alexa to calculate 52 factorial and see if you can wait until she is finished.) In comparison the number of atoms in our solar system is estimated to be 1.2 x 10^56. There are more possible card sequences in a deck of cards than there are atoms in the solar system! Not just more, but about 7 x 10^11 times as many. What this also means is the probability that two shuffled decks have the same sequence is 1/(8.066 x 10^67). It is reasonable to assume that every time you shuffle the cards you are producing a card sequence that has never occurred, …….. ever, even with all the casinos in the world shuffling cards over and over 24 hours a day since time began. Should we even consider the possible unique sequences in a standard 6 to 8 deck black jack shoe? Not today!
I love this kind of stuff, so I guess I am a nerd too. I read a book about 15 years ago that addressed chaos theory…mind blowing.
Chaos theory is a mathematical theory that can be used to explain complex systems such as weather, astronomy, politics, and economics. Although many complex systems appear to behave in a random manner, chaos theory shows that, in reality, there is an underlying order that is difficult to see. One of the mind blowing things that came up was how seemingly impossible odds actually do reoccur with almost predictable regularity. As I recall one example, if you have 18 people gathered around, at least two will generally have the same birth date for month and day. Impossible? Apparently not. Here’s another weird example, in June 1977, 205 players guessed the six correct lottery numbers that had been drawn at the British lottery a week earlier. Wha? Yeah, impossible, but it happened.
The 50 years of lottery in the UK have shown that the most frequently drawn Lotto number is 32. What’s 32 got that the other numbers don’t? Who knows – it just is.
By playing numbers more frequently drawn you may not win the lottery, but you will improve your rate of return dramatically.
One more … everything is forever and everything is connected. Impossible? Nope, not at all. If you burn a pile of wood, it’s gone right? Wrong. See, the mass is still there somewhere, it’s just changed form. The exact same weight of the wood can be found in smoke particles, ash, gas and many other things, it’s just not visible as wood anymore, but its still with us…somewhere, that original matter is still matter somewhere and we can’t erase it. Weird, eh? How about separating photons. When photons are divided the other half reacts simultaneous to whatever action the other photon experiences no matter how far apart they may be. Okay just one more and I’ll stop. Researchers say a germ in California will develop the same resistance properties to a germicide (drug) applied to like germs in Europe or anywhere else for that matter. There is no apparent physical connection between the similar germs – it just happens. The implications here are kinda scary given the way we use (abuse) antibiotics.