Higher education is cool

Alright, I haven't posted anything for quite some time and I probably should, but there's not much to say. The people here are really cool and life as a student is great.

The journey begins!

I must apologize for being late on this. Yesterday was the opening ceremony... two of them, actually. One took place in the main building and the other in a more specific institute. We had the minister of education during the first one, as well as a few cameras. There was a song in Latin, which was probably the hymn of the university ( now I shall play you the song of my people ). A bit foreign to me, seeing as how I can't speak any of that language. I just stood up and watched the older guys sing along. Most of the greenies didn't sing, either.

The first ceremony only lasted an hour or so. The second was followed by a tutor lesson and took up 5 hours as a whole. I think the introduction was a little too long.

Next day ( today ). My first day as a student ( we don't call high schoolers students here ). I had the privilege to make the schedule myself, but I was a bit late and had to settle with a bad one, but I'll probably change it for the better when opportunity arises.

 Anyway, my first lesson started at 8:15 AM and it was higher mathematics. One of my favorite subjects of the day. We revised some of the old stuff and also took a look at complex numbers ( don't know if the wording is the same in English as in Estonian ). The second lesson was physical worldview. Loved the teacher. Not much on the subject itself, he was more into getting familiar with the 100 students in his class. Oh, and before someone says I shouldn't call him a teacher, he said himself that he is totally fine with people calling him so and regards it as an honor. Third up was programming. I had no idea that I have actually programmed before, but it turned out so. There is this game called Morrowind I have written a few scripts for, but the scripting language is not the same as Python, which we will be learning. I have thought of making a seperate blog for Morrowind where I show how to do stuff with the game, but I fear that would be one hobby too much. Fourth... computer hardware. I think those lectors didn't plan much for the introduction and were hoping for questions to fill out the 1,5 hours. Didn't work and we learned nothing about the subject itself. Fifth was the basics of mathematics, a class where we took a look at highest and lowest common denominators of two or three numbers. I do not know if it's called the same in English, so I'll just give you a little example of what I'm talking about. The lowest common denominator of 6 and 9 is 3. The highest is 36. Pretty basic stuff, huh? Well, it's the basics of mathematics. But this seems very abstract to me and a specific way to find these common denominators sounds a bit excessive. I have learned it in school and never used it again because in my experience there simply is no need for it. In situations where I've needed to find these, I have only had to use my head a little and voila!

Overall, I had a lot of fun. Oh, wait, I forgot to tell you about the really funny parts. Aside from jokes made by the lectors now and then, I saw some really cliche stuff during the lectures. A girl playing minecraft on laptop. A guy watching lolface memes on 9gag.com. Since that guy was sitting in front of me, it was nice to glance over what he was looking now and then and have a laugh. Despite that, people here have some property I can't quite explain, especially some of the lectors. It's slightly foreign to me, but I like it.

Also made a few friends. You should have seen the face this one guy made when I told him what subject I was on. I've heard that you get that from most who are studying something else. Not my roommate, though. He didn't spend the entire day ( 8:15 to 17:45 ) in school like I did, but he got some homework involving memorizing spinal bones and their Latin names. He's studying to be a doctor, in case you didn't already figure that out. Anyway, he's also feeling a bit of heat, but looks like he already handled it all. Well, I'm off to read a book about Python.

Tartu

I arrived in Tartu yesterday and I'm surprised with how well I am coping. I haven't done much other than familiarizing myself with the town and the places that I might be frequently visiting. It's quite nice here.

The university's buildings are mostly grand. Aside from those, there's some interesting architecture and art on the streets. Shops are a walk away and there's an above average looking swimming pool near the center of town. Perhaps I'll visit it soon.

I was fortunate to get an okay roommate. At least he's not acting nuts yet.

I've also been making all of the food myself. Well, I haven't made much so far, but I haven't been starving, either. I thought of making ice tea and got the necessary equipment today. I think I'll do fine.

So why physics?

While I am very inexperienced when it comes to this, I dare say that the most important part of a profession is that you are able to enjoy your work. While everything in physics does not appeal to me, most of it does and I find it fun learning about the nooks and crannies of the world we live in, so I think it`s safe to assume that I meet that prerequisite.

But that`s not always enough. Indeed, some people find it sufficient to live a hedonistic life. While it may be gratifying for them, I eventually grow restless. I get the urge to do something. 

They call it the theory of everything. Or sometimes the grand unifying theory. Whatever people choose to call it, to me it is the answer to every question. Things are not so simple, ofcourse, but I think it`s a shot worth taking. Certainly better than taking no shot at all. And just like that I`m off to the seemingly impossible quest of finding the holy grail of science.

String theory promises me the answers. It`s not sure if it even has any basis in our Universe. If I were hearing about it making successful predictions that match observation, I`d be much more encouraged to investigate further. Instead I hope to find what I seek in the most simple things in life - elementary particles.

It could very well be that the final theory itself is of the utmost simplicity. Should that be the case, it`s only a matter of finding the actual elementary particles and their behaviors, then slowly zooming outwards to more complex scales. But it is also a very dark matter. We might still be missing a big piece of the puzzle.

Book review: „A UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING“ by Lawrence Krauss

Normally I don`t do any reviews on the books I read, but because this one is related to what this channel is about, I`ll be expressing the thoughts and ideas I got while reading it.

Before I start talking about the book itself, here is his talk about the same subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

The book itself is written after that conference as an extension. I saw the conference before reading the book and did not find it informative enough. Indeed, the book is much more elaborative when it comes to the actual subject.

The first thing you might notice about the book is its controversial name, which is, no doubt, purposely written in all caps in order to give nightmares to any philosopher who might unsuspectingly glance at it. As the readers of this no doubt know, philosophy has gotten unwarranted authority over questions about the Universe and continues to poke its nose in what is actually the field of science to this day. Lawrence rightfully dismisses philosophers and theologians who you might hear dogmatically repeating „something can`t come from nothing!“ in the preface of his book. Later towards the end of the book he goes back to the beginning, summing up why he did so:

One thing is certain, however. The metaphysical „rule“, which is held as an ironclad conviction by those with whom I have debated the issue of creation, namely that „out of nothing nothing comes“, has no foundation in science. Arguing that it is self-evident, unvawering, and unassailable is like arguing, as Darwin falsely did, when he made the suggestion that the origin of life was beyond the domain of science by building an analogy with the incorrect claim that matter cannot be created or destroyed. All it represents is an unwillingness to recognize the simple fact that nature may be cleverer than philosophers or theologians.

-Lawrence Krauss

With such things out of the window, Lawrence gives us an overview of some important scientifical discoveries which you probably already have heard of. I myself have gotten many bits and pieces from watching many documentaries at a certain stage of my life so most of it was not very new to me, but I guess it is necessary for those who just picked up the book without any prior knowledge of the history of science.

It also served a second purpose – to lead us up to the question of how our Universe is shaped. Three options.

With information obtained from BOOMERaNG and a NASA project which provided a more accurate result than the aforementioned Balloon Observations Of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics, he deducts that the Universe, according to the data available us, looks flat. Now I get the feeling that everyone reading his book might not agree. I remember meeting a physicist a year ago, according to whom we are living in a closed Universe. That is perhaps half the truth and Lawrence elaborates more on this later in the book.

Having done that, he goes on talking about virtual particles and how they can permeate empty space. At this point of the book you might be thinking that he likes to go from one irrevelant subject to another and this is not really leading up to the big question and the reason you started reading in the first place. It all comes together when you reach over a 100 pages.

You are probably wondering as to what you will find there. I am nowhere near as fluent and lack the knowledge, charm and eloquency to describe in a few words what Lawrence needed an entire book for, but I`ll try to atleast give you an idea of what you can expect.

Dark energy. Virtual particles traveling back and forth in spacetime, allowing a real particle to jump in timespace. They`re everywhere, even in empty space. Quantum mechanics. Inflation. A Universe out of nothing.  

Did you understand anything? Thought not. So if you really want to, read the book.

I sometimes found myself re-reading paragraphs in order to understand what exactly I had just read. While I was well in my comfort zone in the first chapters of the book, Lawrence had certainly kicked things up a notch. Perhaps I was not yet entirely ready to digest all of the information, but atleast I got an idea what he was saying.

To this point, aside from the preface, there was no mention of God. However what he wrote is easy to misunderstand if only the reader has a certain bias. I doubt such a situation would happen, as the book is most heretic just by the title and even more blasphemous in its content when looked at from a less scientific perspective. Yet if someone like that would persist, it would be easy to point at several things and say: „Look, God did that!“. Lawrence counteracts this as explaining at nearly every possible opportunity why one should not assume too much about the things he says. While it seems a bit redundant, I do not blame him for doing so as people in the past have fallen victim when they express themselves in a way that you could understand both ways. Here`s a great example:

"God does not play dice." - Albert Einstein

This is very well-known and can be interpreted in more than one way. Superficially, it looks exactly like he is talking about God and a pair of dice. And ofcourse, he is talking about my God, because Einstein is too smart to be worshipping Zeus or someone else. But here`s another quote.

Did God have a choice in creating the Universe? - Albert Einstein

Okay, so now the average believer of an omnipotent God might find himself in a bit of a disagreement with what he said, but the point is Einstein still talked of God as if he believed in him.

Einstein himself probably noticed that people were understanding things he said differently and decided to say the following...

"It was, ofcourse, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein

You can draw your conclusions about what he was talking about when invoking God from that quote, but many people today look at the first quote and think that this guy was really talking about a God of some religion. The reason I am mentioning this in this review is that those words were in vain. And so it will be when it comes to Lawrence. He can write an afterword to every chapter where the more religious reader may misunderstand the implications of what he wrote, but you can be sure that someone will come along and only quote the parts he finds personally appealing and ignore what comes after. The preface should have sufficed, as it already threw God out of the window.

In the last chapters of the book, when Lawrence is not beating religion away with a stick, he expands on how exactly empty space could have came about and how it brought about everything else. He also talks about quantum mechanics and a theoretical Universe popping into existence while maintaining zero energy as a whole by being closed, then slowly changing its shape into flat through inflation. I feel as though the first part of the book had more observational evidence to support it while he left mathematics, quantum physics and implications towards the end.

All in all, this book was worth reading (for me). It doesn`t replace a textbook, so you won`t become a whole lot smarter after you`ve read it and it also assumes that you`re not hearing about physics the first time in your life. If you haven`t, then I wouldn`t suggest it. If you`re interested in these kinds of things, go ahead and read it.

August the third

In exactly a month, I will be entering the Physics institute in Tartu as a student of physics. It all sounds a bit surrealistic to me. I`m not sure how I`ll be able to manage. My knowledge around that field has slowly diminished throughout the Summer.

And that`s exactly why I want to be prepared. I`m planning to shake down the rust by going through everything I`ve learned so far in school. Come to think of it, it`s not that much. 6 years of physics classes, yet we were occupied with so many other things that it didn`t get a lot of attention. Surely compressing it into one month should be possible.

One with the universe

There was a time when I wished to be whole or, in other words, perfect. Being whole did not mean that I'd be a mixture of Brainiac and Superman, just that I'd be able to be calm in any situation, having no fear nor regret. It would have also implied that I would have reached a level of matureness, being able to accept my role and who I am on this tiny blue dot in the middle of a vast sea of stars and galaxies.

I tried to achieve this by working on myself, exercising both mentally and physically. For a moment, it seemed to work, but I keep reverting to my old self. Perhaps it is a wish to prolong childhood and not grow up just yet.

I'm not sure whether it was thanks to my studies or simply my ever-changing worldview, but I think I've found what it means to be whole. We tend to think of ourselves seperate from nature, but that is just an illusion conjured up by our ego and lack of knowledge. Earlier in this post I compared tiny Earth with our gargantuan Universe. That is perhaps our mistake. We forget that we are part of the Universe too. We may seem puny compared to it, but together with the Universe we are whole. This is the death of our ego, who is jealous because he wants to be big, yet is everything but significant - something he cannot accept. Take that jealousy away and he might as well not exist.

Maybe this realization has not changed much, but I no longer seek unobtainable perfection as I have discovered something just as good.