Like curiosity, beauty is a motivational force, an emotional reaction not to the perfect or the complete, but to the imperfect and incomplete. We know just enough to know that we want to know more; there is something here, we just don’t what. That’s why we call it beautiful.
On a whim, I came up with an alphabet made up of organic molecules. Does anyone want to turn this into a font?
On Monkeys, Shakespeare and the Universe
Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa
Trial and error.
What artist has not at some point resorted to “I’ll just try this and see if it looks better.“?
You might say that, in light of Darwin’s model of natural selection, nature itself does the same: make a genetic mutation or two, or a billion, and see what works.
Swedish programmer Roger Alsing has created a playful experiment in “genetic programming” applied to image making, in which he wrote a small program for rendering 50 translucent polygons into an image area….
genetic algorithms are BAMF
theoretically, given enough precision and accuracy and computational time, could you reverse-engineer the conditions of the big bang/early universe such that the end of the simulation is representative of today’s universe?
Good question. I would think not, given quantum fluctuations. This is similar to the question: given a monkey with a typewriter and infinite time, will they produce the complete works of Shakespeare? There are programs to simulate this (though obviously not infinite), and here’s what they’ve managed to produce so far:
One computer program run by Dan Oliver of Scottsdale, Arizona, according to an article in The New Yorker, came up with a result on August 4, 2004: After the group had worked for 42,162,500,000 billion billion monkey-years, one of the “monkeys” typed, “VALENTINE. Cease toIdor:eFLP0FRjWK78aXzVOwm)-‘;8.t” The first 19 letters of this sequence can be found in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”. Other teams have reproduced 18 characters from “Timon of Athens”, 17 from “Troilus and Cressida”, and 16 from “Richard II”.
A website entitled The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator, launched on July 1, 2003, contained a Java applet that simulates a large population of monkeys typing randomly, with the stated intention of seeing how long it takes the virtual monkeys to produce a complete Shakespearean play from beginning to end. For example, it produced this partial line from Henry IV, Part 2, reporting that it took “2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years” to reach 24 matching characters:
- RUMOUR. Open your ears; 9r”5j5&?OWTY Z0d…
Because the universe is guided by randomness at the quantum level, and because we don’t have infinite time or infinite computing power, it would be virtually impossible to recreate the universe today from the initial conditions of the Big Bang. My guess is that a few slightly different quantum fluctuations at the beginning of the universe would drastically change the future.
More Science Haikus
My twin is ancient
Tricked into staying at home
While I toured the stars
A quantum kitty
By any other measure
Would purr as strangely.
Creationist rant:
“My ancestors were not apes!”
Rave on, monkey-boy.
A stone falls to earth
Matter warps space around it
Albert described it
Droning on and on
Talking about the atom
What an awful Bohr.
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Science Haikus
C60 islands.
molecules do not like salt;
strange shapes resulting.
-“Buckminsterfullerene on KBr studied by High Resolution NC-AFM: Molecular nucleation and growth on an insulator”
Peaks in the spectrum!
Is that spin transfer I see?
No! Blasted cellphone!
-Paper, in preparation, on GHz noise in TMR junctions
Supernovae Flame
Miles-per-second fire
Slows down when bended
-“The Response of Model and Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flames to Curvature and Stretch”
Waves crashing, cold spray,
Churning the hot rain inwards,
On ember of star.
-“On Heavy Element Enrichment in Classical Novae”
Chlorite, iodide.
What makes such oscillations?
Perturb, gauge response.
-“Experiments and theory toward the determination of bifurcation features and the deduction of the mechanism of the oscillatory chlorite-iodide reaction”
Epsilon-Delta
the limit as x nears y
Joys of basic math!
-“On basic (higher-level) math”
Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses - especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
“
| — | Leonardo da Vinci |
ridethecollapsingwavefunction:
This electric gravity will kill me in my sleep
I have only distance over lightspeed to escape
I’ve got to
Run away, a superimposed wave imposing at the door
Transferring quanta of knocks
Till someone opens this goddamn quantum box!:
Oh, no! You’re looking at me!
Oh, no! I’m collapsing inside
Out
Side
In!
Oh, no! My wave’s totally lost!
Constructive interference just makes things worseDestroy all but one!
:
One localized wavepacket.
:
In such a duality of peace and storm
I can’t sine ‘less you cosine this (wave)form;
Because it has no norm to its vector space
It just waves and waves from here to outer space
While that something’s in my space all I can really do is space
Until the spacings let me defract away:
Oh, no! I can’t reflect
When there’s no solid wall to hit
What else do you expect?
Oh, no! Your state’s predictable as snow.
Even the ancient contemporary visionaries don’t know.
Oh, no! There’s nothing.
Oh, no! There’s something.
Oh no! Oh, no! Oh, no it don’t!:
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, is anything classical at all?
I miss having some real momentum.
This imaginary state needs its complex conjugate
Can we drop all but one term and square me
Out of this quantum square well?:
Well?
:
Don’t you think it’s madness when every next step is insane?
“Don’t you think it’s boring knowing everything, given anything?”
It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
“
| — | Carl Sagan |
There is a place where time stands still. Raindrops hang motionless in air. Pendulums of clocks float mid-swing. Dogs raise their muzzles in silent howls. Pedestrians are frozen on the dusty streets, their legs cocked as if held by strings. The aromas of dates, mangoes, coriander, cumin are suspended in space.
As a traveler approaches this place from any direction, he moves more and more slowly. His heartbeats grow farther apart, his breathing slackens, his temperature drops, his thoughts diminish, until he reaches dead center and stops. For this is the center of time. From this place, time travels outward in concentric circles — at rest at the center, slowly picking up speed at greater diameters.
Who would make pilgrimage to the center of time?…
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science…
“
| — | Albert Einstein |
There are the rushing waves…
mountains of molecules,
each stupidly minding its own business…
trillions apart
…yet forming white surf in unison.
Ages on ages…
before any eyes could see…
year after year…
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
…on a dead planet
with no life to entertain.
Never at rest…
tortured by energy…
wasted prodigiously by the sun…
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar.
Deep in the sea,
all molecules repeat
the patterns of another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves…
and a new dance starts.
Growing in size and complexity…
living things,
masses of atoms,
DNA, protein…
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.
Out of the cradle
onto dry land…
here it is standing…
atoms with consciousness
…matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea…
wonders at wondering… I…
a universe of atoms…
an atom in the universe.
-Richard Feynman, “The Value of Science,” address to the National Academy of Sciences (Autumn 1955)
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere”. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part… What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
“
| — | Richard Feynman |
