Year: 2022

SO ENDS this first of two weekends on the merger of embryology and genetics. It is simplistic of me to suggest here that this is a case study of where science resists new ideas. Rather, the entire philosophy of the two disciplines was genuinely different, namely wholistic embryologists and reductionist geneticists, and this was at least a major part of the friction as the disciplines came closer together. View in LinkedIn

Clockmaker’s shop in La Bisbal D’Emporda: dear clockmaker, do you know that time does not exist and that spacetime expands and contracts or even ceases to be altgether? View in LinkedIn

FEW MEASURABLES. “If the matter is captured while circling the hole, its associated angular momentum is added to the black hole's angular momentum. Both the mass and angular momentum of a black hole are measurable from their effects on spacetime around the hole.” https://lnkd.in/draqjTW View in LinkedIn

BIG PROBLEM. “In this way, the laws of conservation of energy and angular momentum are upheld by black holes. Another fundamental law, the second law of thermodynamics, appears to be violated.” https://lnkd.in/draqjTW View in LinkedIn

INVARIANT LAW. “The second law of thermodynamics summarizes the familiar observation that most processes in nature are irreversible: a teacup falls from the table and shatters, but no one has ever seen shards jump up of their own accord and assemble into a teacup. The second law of thermodynamics forbids such inverse processes.” https://lnkd.in/draqjTW View in LinkedIn

THE SECOND LAW. “It states that the entropy of an isolated physical system can never decrease; at best, entropy remains constant, and usually it increases. This law is central to physical chemistry and engineering; it is arguably the physical law with the greatest impact outside physics.” https://lnkd.in/draqjTW View in LinkedIn

HUGE APPARENT TRANSGRESSION. “As first emphasized by Wheeler, when matter disappears into a black hole, its entropy is gone for good, and the second law seems to be transcended, made irrelevant.” https://lnkd.in/draqjTW View in LinkedIn

GLIMMER OF SOLUTION. “A clue to resolving this puzzle came in 1970, when Demetrious Christodoulou, then a graduate student of Wheeler's at Princeton, and Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge independently proved that in various processes, such as black hole mergers, the total area of the event horizons never decreases.” https://lnkd.in/draqjTW View in LinkedIn

PLACE-MARKERS. “Space and time are merely bookkeeping devices for conventiently summarizing relationships between objects and events in the universe. The location of an object in space has meaning only in comparison with another. Space and time are the vocabulary of these relations and nothing more.” (Excellent review of relativity). https://lnkd.in/dJ6fFGM View in LinkedIn

It is commonplace to see ancient treasures strewn around in stonemason’s shops in Spain, waiting for homes. View in LinkedIn