PROSTHETICS

I went to the TED conference yesterday, all day, and it was very mentally engaging. I was on the edge of my seat until i had been sitting there for four hours and, during the talk about Matthew Barney and prosthetic legs, my behind got numb. So i had to get up. But, i have to mention two themes that i found very interesting--the definition of human beings and video games-as-art. The prosthesis speaker talked about the redefinition of human beings due to blossoming technologies. How much of a human being can we replace with man-made stuff--petry dish grown ears, hearts augmented with mice stem cells that literally begin to beat again, and whole prosthetic limbs--before we no longer call it 'human.' Will our definition of 'human' change as time goes by....is incorporating technology into our bodies a part of the evolution of our species? Big questions. The video games-as-art, once it was brought to my attention, was more of a no brainer. There's this new game called Flower where you spend your time as a flower petal, whisping through grass blades, picking up friends in the wind, and turning green the dead foliage. Maybe its girly to like this kind of thing. But, i think it's profound, too. As the speaker said, this technology ignites human emotions, an integral part of being human that has not really been spoken to before. (human tools such as strategy, communication, etc have all been dealt with, but not the more fine-tuned melancholies or small pleasures in life.) So, is technology becoming more and more human, or are humans becoming more and more technology?

DARK ENERGY

My roomate just bought a ticket to go to London in September and was so excited--she was sitting by the printer, trying to figure out how to print her boarding pass so she could nail it to her bedroom wall and anticipate the trip all summer long. I had to let her down easy. You only really get a confirmation number and receipt now--you get your boarding pass later, at the airport. Tangible proof is often very satisfying. But, in physics, almost everything is found out through indirect evidence, since our eyes cannot see all the way into deep space or inside of an atom. But, how indirect is too indirect? I recently saw Dr. Radu Popa speak at USC, and he had a very pessimistic view of dark energy as a suitable scientific theory. "Dark energy is a placeholder," he said, "physicist simply sub the word for a hole in their calculations about gravity and our universe." As far as i understand, the reasoning that led to the naming of dark energy was this: for everything in the universe to keep expanding like it does, some force must exist that opposes gravity which holds planets together. Dark energy is this force. It kind-of acts like a field, keeping our universe relatively flat. But, we have not observed direct evidence of it, only the fact that gravity is not crunching the universe together and a mathematical hole that might correspond to this. So, that led me to think....how much and what kind of indirect evidence is needed to debunk a theory? I think Popa's point was that it is limiting to human thought to let a timid hypothesis become a theory or paradigm--people will trust your authority and stop questioning it. It's a good point, but, in this case, i think putting some sort of semi-tangible name on a theory is a necessary part of progress-- in the case of dark energy, or the Greek concept of ether and humors, it gives working scientists something to disprove.

BLACK HOLES AND STRING THEORY

Stephen Hawking is speaking tonight at Caltech and i can't go--im relegated to bed, trying to make a hasty recovery. Ugh. Absent from this (undoubtedly) great talk where probably the most interesting questions are being answered, the most fascinating theories are being expounded, and the most yummee coffee in the world is being brewed in those tall silver coffee jugs at the Beckman Center (have i idealized the situation enough?), i speculate what Stephen might be saying about black holes: Are they really black? I give in, Susskind is right....stuff might come out of them. Can black holes be pathways into other universes? If i had been witness to this fun speculation, i would have asked, How does string theory explain or relate to black holes? (Hmph) According to superstringtheory.com... A special type of black hole that is very important in string theory is called a BPS black hole. A BPS black hole has both charge (electric and/or magnetic) and mass, and the mass and the charges satisfy an equality that leads to unbroken supersymmetry in the spacetime near the black hole. This supersymmetry is very important because it results in the disappearance of messy quantum corrections, so that precise answers about the physics near the black hole horizon can be found by simple calculations. Since a point can be thought of as a zero-brane, a natural generalization of a black hole is a black p-brane. And there are also BPS black p-branes. This was the basic answer as to how black holes relate to string theory--WHAT?! Until i can get around to reading Black Holes and Timewarps, i'll have to settle for picturing it like a Richard Deacon sculpture.