During dinner today I got an idea how to combat global warming  as a solution after the fact, long after we passed the so called “point of no return”.  My idea is to detonate a bunch of nukes in large uninhabited forest areas on earth which hypothetically triggers a nuclear winter.

Sure, an ice age might not be great, but better than global warming. Besides, what do we have to lose after passing the point of no return and plant life (in effect all life) is dying? If the idea fails, at least humanity goes out with a bang! I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’ve thought a bit about this and my humble advice is to adopt a shameless attitude towards learning in general, all the information is out there on internet these days if you dig deep enough.

Want to learn a new physics theory? Watch a lecture when the professor who won the recent Nobel price for it explains the theory in detail, made freely available as a video by some University or foundation. If there is something he/she is talking about you don’t understand, then search and learn about that as well. Just keep trying, give it time, eventually you will learn. After doing this you will start to get your own ideas and think about solutions to problems not yet solved.

Want to learn hardware design? Learn electronics. Read primers and books (PDF) about VHDL/Verilog on internet until your eyes bleed. After a couple of years, when you design your first state machine (simple CPU) and code a little program running on it, all the effort will be worthwhile.

Want to learn software engineering? Learn the basics of a computer language, anything will do, and then, for example, look at the fastest known sorting method. Tweak something in the code, experiment, watch what happens, even if it gets slower, why did it get slower? One morning you might wake up with a tweak idea which makes it slightly faster. The thrill of that might inspire you to write your own sorting method one day.

Want to learn philosophy? Good, it will help you to think out of the box, and come up with new ideas because suddenly abstraction takes you beyond previous borders of comprehension.

Why not learn all of the above? You can do it, don’t let anyone make you think otherwise.

Don’t worry about a career, don’t worry about academia and titles. Instead, use internet and learn for the sake of knowledge which is its own reward.

I’m not sure how this turned into a science blog, but it feels good. I’ll try not to spam too much by waiting patiently a few years between each post.

After reading this story over at arstechnica.com (also on slashdot.org) about a quantum experiment showing “effect before cause” it slowly dawned on me how this could happen, and perhaps explain a few other odd occurrences in quantum physics. I’ve made an illustration (below) of my theory how time might be curled up when you look close enough on the quantum level (think fast enough).

If I’m right this could explain why it happens, perhaps also shed some light over the double-slit experiment. Feel free to leave a comment.

I have an ongoing discussion with my friend Weirdzo over at #dextrose (EFnet IRC) who pretty much disagree with me most of the time regarding science, this is also one of the reasons I respect him.  After thinking some things through I thought it was time to try and provoke people on a global scale for the sake of science and see how it pans out.  I’ll start out by humbly stating the following:

E = mc² E = mq (where q = quantum unidentified)

Yes, you read it right, I’m changing the mass-energy equivalence formula. This will be an attempt to back my theory by ramblings rather than concrete evidence, but don’t let that deflate your curiosity to read on. I don’t really believe in anything relying on time (perhaps related to my constant problem being “on time” in real life). However, I do believe in motion, everything around us is moving, especially on the scale of quantum mechanics. In my opinion time is a construct invented by us to cope with our limitations and means to experience the world around us. In that sense it is time (yes, I’m unfortunately as indoctrinated by the concept of time as the next person) to remove  c² (lightspeed squared) from the equation. If we necessarily need to stick with a constant (though lightspeed isn’t even constant since it is affected by gravity), why not use something that is faster than light to begin with instead of compromising it by a factor of two? I was reading about quantum entanglement and how it is at least 10,000 faster than the speed of light, that is better but still not good enough. What if we could rule out the speed factor entirely and just use a constant that makes sense in the quantum world? Keep that thought in mind, let me know when you figured out what to use.

This brings me to another matter which requires my immediate flame. Why do so many people in the quantum field of expertise seem so afraid of using the word random? Do we really need to invent parallel universes just to sleep at night knowing that nothing can be random? I tried to find the core of this unfunded fear and came up with two suggestions; first off it breaks the world of  determinism and then there is that old famous quote by Albert Einstein: “God does not play dice” which makes me think of the dark ages and how that affected science. While contemplating this I was reminded how the Roman empire lacked zero in their numeral system, and the effects it had on their math. I think it is high time we face reality and accept true randomness. We could always sleep comfortably at night knowing we invented a proper digit (or symbol) to represent it.

BTW: I’m a father of two wonderful kids and see randomness every day in their lives (while my own is getting way too predictable).