Saturday, July 29, 2006

Leaves and Strings



We see a leaf in a tree. It is beautiful, simply as a visual representation. If we examine, investigate and measure the leaf there would be some that say we have damaged its simplicity. I disagree. There is nothing wrong with simplicity and there is nothing wrong with measuring and defining. They are just different views of perception.

We can apply a multitude of methods to investigate such as algebra, geometrical, biochemical, its symbiotic relationships and so on. A leaf is a leaf and it is beautiful. A leaf can be much more and still beautiful.

When it comes to string theory I understand about 1% of what I read. A current view of the “string theory” is that the universe exits in eleven dimensions. We perceive the world in three dimensions plus one. An object has height, width and depth (three dimensions). The plus one dimension is time. Time is a coordinate in geometry. If time is a coordinate, then instead of three coordinates to describe a leaf, we have four coordinates to describe any object. So our ability to investigate has four dimensions.

And the other seven dimensions? They can be partially represented mathematically. The math works but our ability to have scientific verification is not there yet. So STRING is a theory. We lack the ability at the moment to prove whether STRING is a true or a false representation. Research with particle accelerators may be able to verify or dismiss STRING in the foreseeable future.

The site http://superstringtheory.com/basics/basic4.html describes string as follows:

“Think of a guitar string that has been tuned by stretching the string under tension across the guitar. Depending on how the string is plucked and how much tension is in the string, different musical notes will be created by the string. These musical notes could be said to be excitation modes of that guitar string under tension.”

If STRING proves to be true then the elementary particles of a leaf can be thought of as musical notes that emit a specific vibration.
A leaf is green, it blows in the wind and it is beautiful. A leaf according to STRING may also be a series of musical notes in this magical universe.

Bobby (Whats Shakin') Bacon

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

"i have heard a tree sing/as if a chorus of a million birds/how lucky i have been."

The string theory in action then, the tree I heard singing that day...

I have also heard poplar trees whisper and humph and make other breathy noises. That too must be the plucking of the string theory...

Anonymous said...

Poplar trees whisper many secrets. The wind plays their leaves in random harmony. When I was a baby in a crib, I listened to the song of the poplar trees on sunny, open window days. Sunday mornings the bells of the nearby catholic church chimed in with them. And the pigeons rrroo-cood, and the rooster cockle-doodle dood, and the sparrows and robins also participated to create a symphony of sound among the poplar trees.

Near the cabin, trees dressed with icicles, tinkled melodious fairy songs.

Birds communicate with each other through song. It seem so very likely that flowers communicate with each other, and with their flying variety the butterfly, similar fashion. Songs not audible to the human ear.

Looking at creation, thinking about it, anticipating, reasoning, experimenting even, brings about change. Change is constant. Maybe meant to be. Birth and death. Similar and new varieties. Shifting patterns.

"No form of life should be boxed in. A vision may be temporarily framed to emphazise the beauty of a single image, but around every idea there should be space, for life is a host of images, delicately shifting into integrating patterns; fast flashes upon the senses, never to be captured and held" I once wrote. Long time ago.

Human curiosity invites experimenting, causes change. Is that bad? I don't think so unless the purpose is to gain power. Ruthless destruction to make it rich. (Money/power rich.)

I am reading a book where when you die you go to a land called "Elsewhere". In Elsewhere you continue life pretty well as you knew it on Earth, but live it backwards. Like Merlin, you get younger every year. Until you are a baby, and then go back to Earth to be born again. People that arrive in Elsewhere are pretty confused for a while.

Oh, how green
the threads of the willow,
Over the sliding waters!

(Onitsura)

A flash of lightning!
The sound of the dew
Dripping down the bamboos

(Buson)

Japanese Haiku. Simplicity. Still a form of measuring. To arrive at form, not so simple.

A simple song. Which combination of complexities make it sound simple?

A simple leaf. Viewed at subatomic level, where is simple?

Anonymous said...

The string theory proposes a myriad of dimensions exist parallel to us - each like a slice of bread. So Elsewhere would be a different slice of the loaf...

Sheesh - what about toast? As in, you're toast? Say, a super nova?

"When the world goes nova... I don't wanna be alone, so baby please come home."

Or something like that... can't remember the exact lyric.

Anonymous said...

When atoms split into waves and particles, they show different behaviours at the same instant of time. In Schrodingers cat, the cat can be dead and alive at the same time, in different universes. In a book I just read, called "Dreaming in Black and White" an ancester scientist has designed a maze to heal. A boy is in a wheelchair, cannot walk, his destiny getting weaker and dying. His sister 's task is to wheel him around. He likes to be in the garden. He believes he can heal there. It makes him stronger. Especially by the pond. They are not to go there. People fear the pond. Strange flowers pop up everywhere. When they go there, they learn that the path moves and they come out where they were not going. They end up at the maze. Entering it they see, after every turn, themselves split up in a myriad of themselves. Some older some younger, some sick, some healty, futures and pasts all mixed up. They read the ancester uncle's theories, trying to make sense of it all. Every time they leave the maze, life has changed some. They don't seem to be able to return to the same universe. The boy though feels stronger in some even finds himself walking and then collapsing again. The theory is that they by no means should meet themselves. It would be fatal. They see their family in different stages in diffent situations, older, younger,odd behaviours. In the end when they finally believe they are in their own universe and everything seem the same, the boy has healed, is a baseball celebraty, but his sister now is cripple and in the wheelchair. All that based on Schrodingers theories. Multiple existance.

Richard Bach and his wife Leslie, in "The Bridge Across Forever" space travel and meet themselves in different universes at different times, in different situations. No matter which universe they are always together. they are soul mates. All these existances also go on at the same time. When you make a choice in life from many possibilities, you follow that path, but also live the other possible choices elsewhere.

String theory, eh? What about garlic bread? The loaf I slice, insert with garlic butter, wrap in foil and pop in the oven to simmer to perfection. Very garlicky dimensions.Differences with a common thread. (String?)Oh well!

Anonymous said...

Well, take cheese strings.... maybe they know something we don't...

Anonymous said...

When I came over on the boat from Holland to Canada, I had never tasted asparagus. Didn't know what they were. Then they were served with a meal on the boat. They were stringy. For years after I believed that I didn't like asparagus. So string was a false representation of the asparagus. The right representation is mmmmmmm, yummy!

Larry Keiler said...

Wonder what Gypsy Rose was thinking when she composed Ode on a G String...

Anonymous said...

no strings attached?

I wonder what BB thinks what happened to his leaves. His theories have gone all stringy. Except for singing trees we strung together the many dimensional possibilities of strings. I am trying to think of anything else funky, but I am all strung out and am leaving now. On a jet plane? With new strings on my guitar? with ivory leaf inlay?

You should see the leaves on the tall growing sunflowers and the ourageously huge pumpkin plants in my funky backyard.

Anonymous said...

I am lost in space-time... I keep thinking I am going to post or comment every day but I get distracted easily.

STRING… PROBABILITIES… NUMBERS

What about them? I like um.

But will never understand them... I am still trying to figure out 0 + 0. No joke!

The chances of me winning lotto are 1 in 13 million. The chances of me meeting Larry when I was one year of age were 1 in 7 million.

But Larry is an imaginary number.

Some say the chance of getting hit by lightening is 1 in ten million. Not true. Each year you live the odds and chances change.

So it might be one in millions when U are five... but if you live 80 years it can be something like one in five thousand.

That said the lotto odds never change.

Personally I like roulette...I am fascinating by spin…

The chances of Netty meeting me someday (when she was five years old) was one in hundreds of millions...

Netty is not an imaginary number but she is magical just the same...

smiles

Anonymous said...

Zero is uninmaginable. It's a number. A number that means nothing. When we say "there is nothing there", it is not true. Maybe nothing we can see. But there is always something.

So maybe zero + zero is twice the nothing that contains something, which all together may be a lot. A lot of hot air? There were two balloons floating over our roof, this morning. Simon took a fit. Balloons make him nervous, the hissing sound and the sight. Outside he chases them. Goes up a hill if there is one, thinking it gets him closer. At least I think that's what he thinks. I also think that he may think that balloons are aliens from outer space out to get him.

I am facinated to think, imagine, with no clue, what is in the spaces between atoms. Other dimensions?

Me meeting What's shaking when I was five how would I know him? When I was five in linear thinking, there was no Bob and certainly no What's shaking. What's shaking is only born very recently.

But maybe. I can see a star that died long ago. Am I a star? Can the star see me? If the star is allready dead when I see it, how can it see me after I am long dead?

Am I a star or a universe? A milky way? There is talk about Dutch milk and blood children. Meaning strong and healthy.

My dad sold lottery tickes. State Lottery, I think. He had to go out on his bike to sell them. I think he combined it probably with his paper route. For all those years doing that, he never won. The best he ever did was getting back the money the ticket had cost him. The odds may be the same but are not the same for everyone. My mom's reasoning was that when you are born a dime you never become a quarter.

She also said that when one is lucky ( as in fortunate)in love one would be unlucky with games, like roulette and so. And the other way around. Maybe that means the same as "you can't eat your cake and have it too."

My dad when he was a lad always won roulettes. The ones on midways, and so. I don't think he did casinos. If there even were casinos then. My dad won because he could figure it out mathematically. Does that rule out chance? Is that winning? But later those games were tempered with, set so they broke the system. I think by then my dad had too many worries to try figure it out. Too time consuming.

Talking about systems. Our new "Real Canadian Super Store" accross the street has shopping carts that cannot be taken outside the perimeter of the property. Some electronic devise stops them, locks the wheels. I wondered how the system can be beat. I've seen people's carts get jammed. I tried. I tried if they would go over the grass. Just for kicks. Didn't work for me. But time and again I see those shopping carts outside the perimetar. Two accross the street, today, and one by the creek. I wonder. Have some people allready come up with a counter device, or do some strong guys lift up the carts and air travel them???

I saw one woman travel with such a cart,going towards the store. "How did you get it out?" I asked. "I didn't" she said, "I found it." She was going to bring it back. I ran around the corner to see her go, wondering if the cart would lock bringing it in. It did!

Well, it approaches midnight. The magical hour. The clock may strike 13. Who knows what will happen then? Maybe the pumpkins in my garden will...???

The moon, full to nights ago, has started to wane.

Anonymous said...

Am I a butterfly dreaming?

smiles...

0 + 0 has no potential, no probability and has no universal will to be. So it can't exist in my current view of time.

Beyond my ability to comprehend. Which is okay

Anonymous said...

so no use in zeroing in on 0+0 'cause it ain't there?

0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0 a string of zeros.

zero is none
zero is nothing
zero is a circle
empty inside
zero is nil
zero is void until
married to one

married to one
it becomes ten or
minus one but
minus one is zero and
zero is not one but
none and none is
nothing again

add two zeros to one
and suddenly there are
one hundred
one thousand even with three
but on the other side they
make hundreds and thousands or more
nothings

zero sure is powerful
mighty powerful
for not being
for being empty
for not being anything
for being nil
to be or not to be...

is that the question?