The Twelve Days of Christmas for Physicists:

The Twelve Days of Christmas for Physicists:

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me (etc.)

A glimpse of the Higgs Boson

Two spin dimensions

Three quark flavours

Four outer planets

Five years of funding!!

Six carbon protons

Seven new dimensions

Eight branes a-bumping

Nine telescopes tracking

Ten neutrinos speeding

Eleven strings vibrating

Twelve theorists thinking

A Eureka Moment About Genes

For a while, now, I’ve been intrigued by the parallels between genes/DNA and computer programming.

The salient points are:

                Modular programming

                Self-modifying code

Computer programs are structured as functionally oriented, self-contained modules. The advantages being:

The programming task can be shared between many programmers to reduce development time.

If the program is subject to modification, only the relevant module(s) need be amended and released to the user, reducing download time

A specialised module can be given to a similarly specialised programmer, to improve the quality of the developed module

Every program application on your computer has large numbers of such modules (suffixed by “.dll”).

The relevance to genes should be partly apparent by now. Genes are also functionally specialised.  We have learnt to swap out troublesome genes from an organism and replace them with good ones.

Question: how does a single egg, divide in two, repeatedly, until, 9 months later, we have a human being containing thousands of different types of cells, when we started with only one type?

A partial answer would be a form of self-modification.  In computer programming there are several types of language or development tool.  The most primitive form of programming is direct operating code programming, but more usually assembler programming, as it’s called. At this level, the program code can directly address memory locations to modify data but also its own program code.  So we can have a code loop (sorry, lots of “gotos” involved) and incorporate an instruction that modifies one of the others in the loop, so that it does something different each time around. A similar operation in genes would enable a cell in, say, the liver to evolve to connective tissue instead of liver cells, next time it divides. In a computer program we would use counters and change cell types on reaching a specified value in the counter.  We could, in fact, develop a complete computer model of the development from egg to human using this method. I had been wondering how this counter approach could be implemented in genes/DNA. Then I watched Prof Jim al-Khalili’s chaos TV program. 

Now to my “eureka moment”:

It took a while, then I realised that cells don’t need to count as such, they just do their thing. It’s all down to chance. If it makes too many, or not enough, cells of the right type, the organism will, as likely as not, be sickly and perhaps die.  The rest is up to Darwin. Eureka!

Kids and Programming – The Issues

The issues can be categorised by:

Public ignorance (including most teachers)

One-size-fits-all education system

Lack of expertise within education

Geeky image, uncool

The Great British attitude – knock anything that’s good

Lack of respect in the class (putting people off teaching)

Taking these in order:

When people buy a car they don’t expect to build a better gearbox for themselves, and they know they couldn’t.  The car comes complete and you use it as it is.  Customizing means adding ICE or body kits.  Likewise a computer is bought and used “as-is”, with maybe some extra software packages. How would they know that they can download open source development tools, or even MS Visual Studio Express, for free, and do real programming?  Who shows them how to do this?  Mind you, some kids not only know how to program, but are highly competent hackers!

Sadly our educational system has been bankrupt for years, and succeeding governments have sought to disguise this in many ways.  One-size-fits-all is cheaper than tiered education.  “Elitism” is the excuse used to remove the higher tiers.  But, notice where the politicians send their kids to school.  So talented children must put up with the pace of the slowest, and not receive the stretching classes they deserve.  And, again, the government spoils things for the teachers by the top heavy administrative load that extends working hours and leaves teachers short of creative thinking time.  It is worth mentioning here that ADD/ADHD is a growing problem.  It is passed on by a positive gene, which pretty much guarantees this growth.  These kids are wired differently (not wrongly!) and need a different approach to teaching. How can this be done in the current set-up?

As mentioned above, there is mainly no perception that the computer is a home-programmable device, and many teachers even struggle with basic ICT.  That means bringing in professionals.  I have tweeted before on employment conditions.  Good programmers can earn much more in business than in education: often, newly graduated computing students can earn more than the lecturers who taught them.  Getting real, qualified programmers to teach in mainstream education, in any numbers, is a problem.  Older people may be available, (we get pensioned off at 50) but will their skills be up to date?  And, by the way, what child wants to work in computing when they’ve just had a holiday cancelled because their dad has been pensioned off?

Kids want to be footballers or pop stars.  You don’t need education, or for that matter good manners and self-discipline, for that, they think.  The public example of behaviour set by many such is a disgrace. Some kids bully those who appear to achieve, so best to keep a low profile and avoid doing anything clever.  Heaven forbid that you might ask a question in class.

That brings us to the great British attitude.  Anybody who is any good at anything has to undergo trial be media.  The media do this because they know the general public like it.  Got to bring people down to size, because they think (wrongly of course) that bringing somebody down makes themselves look better.  If they can’t find anything derogatory to say, they’ll call them by some pathetic nickname.  So who would want to be good at anything?

Continuing the theme, we get to classroom attitude.  Teachers used to be held in high regard by the community at large.  If a kid got a smack in class and told his parents, he would get another smack from his parents (or worse).  Nowadays, in many schools, children are almost beyond control, and school heads, in many cases, have not the wit to back up their staff by dealing with the trouble makers. Then there is the public misconception, encouraged by government, that teachers earn £37k, work 9-4 Monday to Friday, and get 25 weeks holiday per year. So who would want to work in education?  Of course I know many who do, and who love it, because they feel this inner need to teach, and it can certainly be emotionally rewarding to witness the intellectual growth of individuals.  My son is a science teacher, and has been lucky in getting a post at a good school.

What would I do?

(And I wouldn’t limit this to computing, but science and technology generally)

Let’s have programming on TV in a fun context during children’s peak hours.

I like what Young Rewired State are doing.  But we should extend it by providing specialist out-of-school classes (much like some schools have a sports afternoon, why not a special classes afternoon?)  We can get better value from better paid industrial staff by limiting classes to those who want to do it, and making up numbers by covering more than one school in a class.

We should campaign for TV programme makers (perhaps soaps especially?) to present high achievers in a positive light in their programmes.  Let’s have programmers and scientists in soaps!

I don’t in anyway advocate diminishing freedom of speech, but surely something can be done through legislature to stop the media knocking for knocking’s sake?

It is the last of the above that worries me most.

When is proof not proof?

This is a story (with a moral) about an HQ type office, of a large corporation, in a big city. 

It had been noticed, by the staff, that one of the middle-aged male executives and a younger female supervisor, both sparkle in each other’s presence, although no obvious social contact takes place between them. 

A rumour starts.

She lives to the east and he to the west.  Sure enough, on Friday evenings, he has been seen to head east, after work. The rumour escalates. 

One of the young guns decides to follow him.  About 5 miles out of town, the exec stops to buy flowers.  The youngster drives past and ceases to follow, suspicions strengthened.  Next working day he reports back, and the rumour strengthens again. 

But no smoking gun yet.  So next Friday, the exec is followed again.  This time, the pursuit continues until, a few miles later, the exec turns into a care home car park, parks, and takes the flowers inside.  After an hour he has not emerged, so the sleuth goes home, concluding they have all been barking up the wrong tree.  And so, on Monday, he duly reports back and the rumour dies.

Meanwhile, though, after his care home visit, to his grandmother, the exec had headed off to have dinner and “afters” with the young lady supervisor.  Story to wife: “I’ll visit grandma, and, as it’ll be late, I’ll stay overnight in a hotel.”

The moral of that story is not to jump to conclusions till you have all the data. This was a favourite ruse of Agatha Christie, of course (which is why I like watching Poirot on tv).

Now try to think of as many theories, or predictions, as you can, that have been “proved correct” on the basis of a limited amount of evidence...........

When is a Wave not a Particle?

I consider myself to be an open-minded sceptic, where science is concerned, as you might have gathered from my previous blog.

In physics you have to be very careful that you understand what you are working with.  Appearances can be deceptive: most people would be shocked to discover that, actually, there is no such thing as white light!  Our brains react to the different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (if that’s what it is!.....) by creating different colour images in our minds.  In other words, colour is a figment of our imagination!  White is what you get when the brain can’t unscramble a complex combination of wavelengths and amplitudes, and is similar in nature to discords in music/sound.  I have often wondered whether the colour images in our minds actually correspond: my green might look like your red.  We both look at something blue and agree it is blue, but our in-mind image might be different.  Deep one, that!  Perhaps, one day, when tv monitors can be wired up to show what’s in our minds, we’ll find out: one way or another.

One sometimes feels that, in physics, the left hand knows not what the right hand doeth.  Much of astronomical measurement depends on the fact that light travels in straight lines.  Telescope lenses certainly depend on it.  So, why are some people hell-bent (sorry!) on saying that light is carried by particles?  I can’t see any way that a particulate medium can carry a ray of light faultlessly in a straight line over many miles, let alone billions of miles.  Hmmm.  The debate rages on?

Look at what happens to sound.

Our auditory perception is much more detailed than our vision.  Our eardrums are sensitive to the slightest changes in waveform, so that the musically trained ear can not only tell which instrument played a particular note, but can identify the individual instruments playing in unison in an orchestral movement. 

Still, this can only happen if the musical waveforms are faithfully transmitted, from the instrument to the ear. 

Studying, on an oscillator, the intricate waveforms of a full orchestra, reveals just how complex these waveforms are, and, therefore, the exacting part that the air must play, in transmitting them.  I find it impossible to reconcile this situation with the notion that gas molecules are in a state of random excited motion.  This is sometimes explained on the basis that sound is carried by changes in pressure, so that what matters is the pressure in the intervening air.  But it seems unlikely to me that such intricate pressure variations can be faithfully transmitted, as they are, across the full length and breadth of a large auditorium, while the individual molecules are supposedly in such haphazard motion.  There ought to be significant pressure variations throughout the airspace due to this molecular agitation, which would therefore, surely, interfere with the transmission of sound.

By contrast, if you listen to music in the open air, it is subject to pronounced fade effects, depending on wind speed and direction, and convection currents.

Conclusion: something else must be maintaining the separation between molecules in a gas:  dark energy?

You read it here first!

How Principled is Physics?

I believe that some of the established physical laws, that are normally regarded as being cast in stone, need to be subject to critical review. Exploring the farthest reaches of the universe (inwards and outwards!) is exciting, but just how much can we rely on any conclusions we make?

While early scientists, such as Boyle and Newton, were undoubtedly brilliant, and also meticulous in their work, the fact is, that they actually knew very little, compared with current knowledge.

In Boyle’s and Newton’s time, the seventeenth century, they still believed that everything was made from earth, fire, air and water.  The point being, that their imaginations, and therefore their ability to interpret scientific observations, were limited, by their relative lack of knowledge.  True, their deductions have apparently stood the test of time, but has anybody really asked the questions?

Newton’s laws of motion and gravity are regularly reaffirmed by their use in space missions, apparently, but I wonder whether the gravitation law is in fact a summary of the situation: why, for instance, do the dimensions of the force of gravity not correspond with those of the factors within the mass/distance function? (It is surely not valid to ascribe physical dimensions to a constant without identifying the underlying basis).  The gravity equation was derived from orbital data supplied by Kepler et al, not by empirical calculation from fundamental entities, and we can’t just go up to a planet and weigh it!

The laws of thermodynamics lean heavily on the original work of Boyle, Charles, Kelvin, et al.  The idea that the presence of heat excites molecules in varying degrees, to represent solid, liquid and gaseous states, was the best idea they could achieve in those times of relative ignorance, before the subatomic particles and their binding fields and forces were known.  Again, these ideas seem supported by modern practice, but are they really?  And what is the underlying basis for entropy?

Surely, the advent of particle physics and quantum theory beg the question as to whether these long-held “beliefs” are still valid.

To further underline the point: around 1850, the world’s scientists believed they knew how everything in the universe worked.  Then some silly chap called Rutherford had to spoil everything by splitting the atom, and opening up a whole new can of worms!

While the above-mentioned theories have been subject to peer review, in the past, the peers were in the same knowledge state as the theorists.

Equally importantly, how much are we still in the dark? And what future revelations might completely overturn current theories?

Will we ever be able to say, truly, that we know how everything in the universe works?

It seems to me that we need to establish a programme to routinely audit the longer-established physical laws; to make sure they are still in keeping with the latest theories. 

Hello World

This is to introduce myself before I start spouting.

I became interested in astronomy at an early age, via The Eagle (boys' magazine), which led me to choose "The Spangled Heavens" as a school prize and to watch early broadcasts by Sir Patrick Moore.  Visits to my local library, prompted by general science lessons, saw me acquiring an interest in the structure of the atom.  So I determined to be a nuclear physicist and subsequently achieved the required "A levels".

The early 1960s were a troublesome time, for science projects in the UK, and I was the shy type who did not relish the "brain drain".  What to do?  Some idiot showed me how to program a computer.  So I've had a long, and mostly useful, career in software development and the management thereof.

Meanwhile, I yearned for a telescope, and retained an ambition to, one day, do research in physics.  And, of course, I maintained my interest in physics, by following the TV documentaries.  Reading "A Brief History of Time" was, of course, a must.

Retirement and divorce mean I am now free to do as I choose, so, now I have a telescope. And I have returned to my studies, seeking a degree at the Open University, by way of revision, and, hopefully, to prepare me for research work.

I am particularly (no pun intended) interested in  the fundamental particles and forces.  I have always been amazed that something as huge as the universe could be built from such minutely tiny entities.