Steve Michel’s Journal of Lateral Modernism************************ Vol. VI• No.6•July. 2006
summer reading
This book as read and reviewed:
by Steve Michel
Recently I read Einstein's Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time by Marcia Bartusak and let me tell you I enjoyed it very much. The author's succinct and factual account of Einstein's continuing legacy was both objective and well detailed. The read was exciting and suspenseful as Marcia traces the historic journey of Einsteins' discovery of the theory general relativity and the experimental physics that Einstein as inspired to this day. The book wades through the Einstein's scientific theories correctly without burying the clarity with mathematical physics of space-time. Anyone with a high school science background can pick up this book and learn something about relativity. Marcia's' presentation of facts was so effective, it enabled me to surmise the elegance of Einstein's theory that masses distort the fabric of space-time to produces what we know as gravity. That stands as the book's greatest strength: the background info about Einstein's theories and the accurate chronology of the science and players in the field. From Weber's first efforts with bar detectors to astronomical phenomena, the book correctly presents these efforts as the culmination of the Einstein's legacy or Unfinished Symphony. More than half the book focuses on these detectors, based entirely on the foundations of Einstein's work. And that was the book's main drawback IMHO: the over emphasis on the LIGO (Laser Interferometry Gravity wave Observatory) gravity wave detector and similar such detectors being brought on line around the world. The current LIGO detectors worldwide are touted to promise for the 21st century what telescopes and radio astronomy did for previous generations. But the way LIGO and other gravity wave detectors were being presented in the book, I just felt too many pages were devoted to 'selling' the LIGO gravity wave detectors. For one, I would have preferred the book to provide more background about Einstein himself with anecdotes. But since as book's title suggests, the main thrust of the book was to examine the continuing efforts founded on his legacy. I invite anyone to read the book and see it for themselves.
What are LIGOs anyways?Laser Inteferometry Gravity-wave Observatory (LIGO) experiments are a method to detect the space-time distortions caused by spinning neutron stars, black holes and quasars and other gravity related phenomena. LIGOs facilities built on Earth are to measure the slight disturbance of space-time from intense gravitational events in the universe eg. colliding black holes or supernovas by measuring with unerring precision the slight difference in two laser beams travelling through two vacuum tunnels at right angles to each other. These laser travel back and forth between mirrors spaced 4meters to 4kilometers apart. The LIGO detector in Louisiana spans hundreds of meters. The principle is that one beam facing incoming space-time waves would take longer then the other beam running parallel to the incoming beam. Due to distortion of spce-time. No gravity wave, has been conclusively detected yet with LIGOs. But Einstein's theory about space-time distortions is correct and proven during a solar eclipse experiment off the coast of West Africa in 1919. Basically, light rays from constellations, photographed during the eclispe, were bent by the sun' s mass or distortion of the rubber sheet of space time. IE the light rays dipped into sun's imprint on the fabric of space-time before reaching the observation point on Earth. Stars close to sun's periphery, were out of normal position. That experiment was conclusive and explained by Einstein's theory.
The Fifth Dimension: My view of space-time
By Steve Michel
Now let me tell you about my perspective on space time, the fabric of the universe and gravity wave detection. A re-occurring image of something disturbingly obvious crept up in my mind while reading about gravity wave detection: two dimensional cartoon characters attempting to detect the folds, creases and waves on the sheet of paper on which they are drawn. That is to say the cartoon characters exist in two dimensions as we exist physically in three dimensions (four with time being the fourth dimension). WE can SEE if the sheet of paper is bent, folded or wavy because we exist in three dimensions- thus outside the frame of reference of two dimensions. But the cartoon characters cannot because their instruments exist also in two dimensions and are part of the sheet of paper just as we are part of the Einsteinian space-time fabric. Light travels in a straight line. In our cartoon analogy, light is a line drawn on that sheet. So even if the sheet is wavy, the light must follow the surface contours of the sheet and would be seen as such by our imaginary cartoon characters. Even if under the gravitional grip of a heavy object (eg the Sun) light rays would be straight. The eclipse experiment does corroborate this because the light source was bent in the slight bump of space-time but light travels straight to Earth.
(CAUTION: OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR!)Light rays take slightly longer to reach us, in those conditions, than a flat Newtonian universe would calculate. Now the LIGO method requires un-erring precision because it must detect an incoming gravity wave from afar and is quickly embedded in the gravity-wave which would remain undetected if the two points of the laser are on the crest or valley of the wave. Thus the 'flat' distance between the laser paths are the same and un-detectable. In the eclipse experiment, the cartoon character looks to the sun and see the sky as we do but the space-time bend or wave crest lies between the viewer and the light source. The discrepancy between Newtonian and observable Einsteinian physics is what allowed us to see the pertubation. Drever (the innovative Scottish physicist who had worked on LIGO) thinks that space communications signals of farway probes would better detect incoming gravity waves. In the cartoon analogy, the wave would interpose itself between Earth as recieving station and the probe (causing a signal delay). There are so many variables but basic Newtonian physics may account for the varying positions of planets and moons in between. Perhaps the real answers are in detecting particles that travel truly in a straightline bypasing the bends and folds of space-time. I don't have the math background to prove any of my theories here. I leave it to more capable minds to prove, elaborate or disprove or any combination thereof, my analogy. Time will tell. SM06
Photography 101: Memory Cards for Digital Cameras
By Jennifer Clarkson
What is a Memory Card? A memory card is a storage device commonly used by digital cameras to write digital photos. It is a mechanism to store your photos, and later transfer them to computer for processing and printing. Essentially, a memory card is to a digital camera what a hard drive is to a computer. That means that the size of your memory card directly affects how many images you can store, and the speed of your memory card directly affects the how fast your camera can read and write photos!
The Need for Speed. As digital cameras evolve to store higher quality images, image size increases, and it becomes more important to find a memory card that is fast enough to write these images before you want to take another shot. Compact Flash (CF) and Secure Digital (SD) formats are two types of memory cards that are improving their speeds dramatically to keep up with high megapixel counts in newer cameras.....read more
Jennifer Clarkson is a Canadian Photographer living in Ottawa. To browse her Photo Galleries and read more of her Photography Tips, please visit her website at www.jclarksonphotography.com
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