Nils Andersson's Blog, page 4

The voice from space

So you think you’re original?            Depending of what you are up to, originality may be something to aspire to but how likely do you think it is that an idea or concept is truly new? Not very, is the obvious answer. I had the pleasure of discovering this quite recently. And it really was a pleasure. I am not being sarcastic.            What on Earth am I on about?            Well... having written a set of short stories involving a bumbling Professor/inventor that seeks inspiration from science, I was curious to find out to what extent this part of the literary landscape had been explored before. I won’t go into stuff I was already aware of, as I want to focus on what I discovered in the process. After some googling and random internet browsing (truly professional “research”!) I stumbled on a series of kids books by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin. The hero of these books, which were written in the 1950s-60s, is a boy called Danny Dunn. Danny is very keen on science, and he is fortunate enough to live with the very clever Professor Bullfinch. The Professor is a great inventor (uh, where have I heard that before?) that comes up with all sorts of schemes, usually leading to Danny and his two friends Joe and Irene having some kind of madcap adventure. There are, I believe, 15 Danny Dunn books in total, all now out of print. When I first saw the list of titles I was astonished. My own short stories had covered about half of the themes! Yes, some were obvious (like time travel) but nevertheless.            Naturally, I ordered a couple of second hand Danny Dunn adventures. They arrived, I have read three so far and I am now a fan. This is great stuff. Why? Surely the world has moved on in the past 50 years and anything that was modern in those long gone days is boring old nonsense now? Well... in a sense yes, but good storytelling still has the power to keep your attention. There is another side to it, as well. Science may have moved on, but this does not mean that the actual ideas have changed much and sometimes there are funny and unexpected connections.            Let me give you an example.            In the story “The voice from space” Danny and his friends travel to England to use the fictitious Grendel radio telescope to listen to signals from intelligent life in outer space. (This is a theme I have been thinking about, but I haven’t managed to find the right angle yet.) The story is clearly inspired by the early days of what eventually became the SETI programme.            I am not going to spoil the story by telling you what happens, but I would recommend the book to anyone that is keen on radio astronomy and needs to find some suitable reading material to corrupt their kids. Instead, I want to make an observation. The Danny Dunn book was written in 1967. It came out just a few months before... guess what? A young PhD student named Jocelyn Bell found some odd periodic signals in data from... What? A radio telescope. Initially the new objects were referred to as LGM (Little Green Men) but soon so many of them were found that they needed a proper scientific name. They became known as pulsars, and we now know that they are the remnants of dead stars. These are fascinating objects, and if we want to understand how they work we need to push the boundaries of known physics. I find this seriously cool.            Anyway, I can’t help wondering if Danny Dunn would have had a different slant to his adventure if Nature’s own Little Green Men had been discovered just a couple of months earlier...

A man of principles

"By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox."
Galileo Galilei, born 15 February 1564
Last week saw the passing of two important dates. If you happened to forget the first of them, you may have ended up in domestic trouble. The second you may not have been aware of. The first date, the obvious one, was Valentine’s Day. Dating back to the days of the Roman Empire this celebration has been completely taken over by commercial interests. These days Valentine’s Day seems more about the purchase of roses and boxes of chocolate that any true sentiment. The other date, actually the day after, is more obscure. The 15th of February was the birthday of Galileo Galilei, often considered the father of modern science. This year he would have been 449 years old, so you might think it would have been wise to wait until next year to celebrate. I disagree. Since 449 is a prime, I think dear old Galileo would have been more keen on this celebration than the boring 450.            I wasn’t really planning on turning this into an admiration session for a long dead Italian chap that may, or may not as the case may be, have dropped some balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa hundreds of years ago. But then a couple of things conspired to turn my attention in this direction. The first was a lecture I gave on the principles behind Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the one that uses wonky space and time to explain gravity. Key to this theory is something called the Equivalence Principle. This essentially goes back to Galilei’s apocryphal experiment, as it states that two falling bodies accelerate at the same rate (as long as you ignore air resistance). In my opinion, the most stunning demonstration of this fact was when Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, dropped a feather and a hammer to show that they landed at the same time. I don’t know who suggested adding the hammer and feather to the moonlander’s payload, but the video of the event is just great. I particularly like Buzz’s comment (“How about that!”) when things worked out as they should. I wonder what he would have said if there had been a different outcome....            The scientific method, of which Galilei was an early supporter, basically decides what is credible and what is not in the world of research. Ideas are only valid if they can be backed up by experiment. The experiments don’t have to easy, they may require a future civilization with an arbitrary advanced technology, but they have to be possible in principle. If a theory is not testable in this way, then it is not proper science. As an example, consider Peter Higgs’ boson. This little thing has long played a central role in particle physics (explaining why particles acquire mass). Yet it was only very recently, and after the astronomical expenditure involved with building and running the Large Hadron Collider that there was any tangible evidence for this idea.             The other side of the coin, an example of an idea that may remain more philosophy than science, is the so-called Anthropic Principle. This provides an answer to the vexing question of why the Universe in so fine-tuned, and why we happen to live on a planet that is so perfectly suited for humans. The explanation draws on a notion that is popular in string theory; the Multiverse. The idea is that there are many (read: an infinite number of) parallel Universes. We live in this one simply because we can. Most alternative worlds would be too hostile for us. This is undoubtedly an elegant way to argue yourself out of a corner. But... and this is a major reservation... it is not science in the sense of Galilei unless you can somehow demonstrate the presence alternative worlds. I guess all it would take is a portal to a different Universe. Wouldn’t that be something? It would, but I suspect we will have to wait for that arbitrarily advanced technology.

It's just a matter of time

A very odd thought came into his head. It was something he'd heard when he was young. Possibly part of some oddball scientific theory, perhaps complete nonsense. It didn't really matter. It was still an interesting thought.            "We travel into the future at the speed of one second per second...", thought the Professor.            "Nice thought," he mused.            "Is it true, though?"            He couldn't help wondering, and once he started thinking about it he couldn't stop.                                                           from Professor Kompressor: The Time Traveller
This may be a bit confused, but I can always come back yesterday and fix it. You'll see what I mean in a while (or perhaps a while ago?).            After thinking this through, it is about time that I write something down. No. Sorry. Having though it through, I want to write something about time. Time progressing like an unstoppable stream, second by second. Based on everyday experience this progression towards the future is inevitable. It is simply the way that Nature works. Cause and effect. In that order. Not the other way around. Why should it be like this? What would happen if it were not so?            If one could figure out a way to reverse the flow of time, one might be able to do a whole lot of peculiar things. This has been well explored in science fiction where time travel remains as fresh a concept as in the Victorian days of H.G. Wells. A recent, and in my mind quite enjoyable, example is Mark Hodder’s The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack. The usual idea is that the time explorer ends up in trouble after doing something that in the extension affects his or her own existence. The classic thing to avoid, according to page 1 in The Time Traveller’s Guidebook (if it hasn't been written yet, it should be), is killing your grandfather. If you did this then you would make sure that you could not exist in the first place. But this is problematic because if you did not exist how could you carry out that heinous crime? You end up with the kind of time paradox that is often taken as proof that you can't travel into the past. Another common argument is that, if time travel is possible at some point in the future then why are we not swamped by time-tourists in odd futuristic clothing? Either our future selves have not cracked the problem, or maybe the present era is just too boring for tourism. A bit like Milton Keynes, perhaps?            Anyway, I started thinking about this after making an interesting discovery. Not really new, although it was to me... It’s called the Tachyonic Anti-Telephone. The idea is simple. In Einstein’s theory of relativity there is an absolute speed limit, the speed of light. Nothing can go faster, no matter how hard you try. And you can’t accelerate anything up to this limit, either. The upshot of this is that the future is hardwired in and you can’t suddenly reverse to the past.            However... physics may allow a loophole. You see, there are these hypothetical (no one has every seen one) particles called tachyons that always travel faster than light. If they exist, they have the opposite problem. You wouldn’t be able to slow them down. However, if you could catch and tame these guys then you could use them to communicate with the past. That’s the idea behind the Tachyonic Anti-Telephone.            I don’t personally believe these faster-than-light particles exist, but I do like the idea of the Tacky-phone. So... I set out to write story involving this kind of device, aiming to end with a confused conversation between the inventor and his past self. The problem was... I got a bit tangled up in different timelines and the bits of the story did not come out in order. I guess I could do some work (Heaven forbid!) and fix this, but I’m not sure I should. After all, communication across time is supposed to lead to confusion so... is it not natural that a story like that is a bit confusing?            Having finished writing and thought about this some more, I wonder if I missed a trick. I only considered what might happen if you tried to invent a device that would allow you to call back in time and make sure you avoided any trouble you had in fact already ended up in. I guess I wanted to highlight how it is actually quite good to have a few mishaps - as long as they don’t kill you - because it helps you learn and makes you wiser (at least in theory). What I didn’t think about was the chaos that would be inevitable if everyone had this kind of device. People would be changing their past all the time, as it were, and this would impact on everyone else they had ever interacted with. And so on... I’m not sure you could actually make anything out of that idea, but it does sound like beautiful madness!

The man that invented the future

Our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the Universe. Throughout space there is energy.Nikola Tesla 1892
In case you didn't know this already, Professor Kompressor is an entirely fictional character. The invention of this excellent inventor was just one of those things that seem to happen for no apparent reason. A few whimsical bedtime stories, involving some crazy inventing antics, and the Professor was off. He was not modelled on a real life character. No way!            Imagine my surprise the other day when, trying to finish a story intended for the Professor's sequel, I stumbled upon his real world alter ego. An individual that made such a massive difference to the world that the genius label is inevitable. The man that "invented the 20th century", Nikola Tesla. Of course, you think. Jump on the bandwagon by dragging old Tesla out of the cupboard. How predictable.             Maybe so. But if you are looking for a role model for the "greatest inventor ever" somewhere in the borderland between reality and fiction (with the potential of some fun thrown in for good measure) then Tesla is your man, for sure.            Let's take a look at the evidence.             If it hadn't been for Nikola Tesla's inventions, the world would have been a very different place. You may not appreciate it, few people do, but Tesla's ideas laid the foundation for many things electric and electronic, from the power supply in your house to the TV remote control and the wireless network you might be using to access the internet.            Nikola Tesla was born in what is today Croatia. His imaginative brain was in evidence already when he was a young man, but his rise to fame did not truly start until he immigrated to the United States. Pretty much without a penny in his pocket. He found a job as assistant to Thomas Edison (of obvious lightbulb fame). This turned out not to be a marriage made in heaven, however, and it was not long before the two inventors fell out.            The two were soon engaged in an all out battle for electric supremacy. Tesla's new system emerged as the winner when it was used to light up the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. His Alternating Current is still used to bring power to homes around the world today. Following on from this success, Tesla designed the first hydro power plant at Niagara Falls, thus bringing practical energy to the people. This idea, to provide everyone with cheap (or indeed, free!) energy is a key theme of Tesla's career. His vision ranged from wireless transmission of energy straight into people's homes and extraction of this energy from medium that surrounds us. Awesome! Of course, it never happened. Big business was not prepared to support someone that wanted to simply give the product away. There was too much money to be made in selling the stuff.            Nikola Tesla can stake a claim to many other inventions as well. In fact, he was the first to come up with the lightbulb. Edison was the genius behind the mass market, but the thing itself was Tesla's idea. He invented the radio. Wasn't that Marconi? you ask. Well, no. Tesla got there first. This was even recognized by the US Supreme Court in 1943 when they overturned Marconi's patent. X-rays? Yep, Tesla fiddled with those too. Time to rewrite the history books!            What about the fiction side to this? Not surprisingly, someone of Tesla's immense creativity provides inspiration for speculation. He predicted microwaves, TV and interplanetary communication. It also doesn't hurt that many of his claimed inventions remain "lost". This involves his death ray, an extension of the wireless energy idea. Rumour has it that when Tesla died in 1943, alone and destitute in a New York hotel room, government representatives raided his laboratory and seized all notes and paraphernalia. None of this material has yet been made public. Excellent material for a conspiracy theory.             The larger than life character of Tesla and his amazing ideas have often been called on by authors and moviemakers. Powerful Tesla coils were used to spectacular effect in The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and the inventor himself played a role in The Prestige. Death rays are of course staple diet of science fiction. How about the main weapon of the Death Star in the first installment of the Star Wars saga?             Allowing for a slight revision of history, it is obvious that Professor Kompressor draws on Nikola Tesla in many ways. Each individual a singular genius with more than a bit of eccentricity to the character. Their inventions draw on real science but often stretch the ideas beyond what might seem possible. The Professor's intentions are good and honourable, just like Tesla's, but things don't always end well. A real shame, isn't it?

Magic always leads to trouble

I picked up this piece of profound wisdom from kid’s TV. If you have to know, it was Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom. Can’t say we usually watch this in my house, but I guess someone was too lazy to change channel... or couldn’t find the remote control. Tells you all you need to know about Sunday mornings, really.            Anyway, this brought back an idea I have been thinking about for a while. Nature is governed by a number of pesky principles that dictate that so and so is possible but such and such is not likely. We refer to these as “laws”, but you would hardly be sent to prison for breaking them. It’s simply not a matter to be settled in court.            However, suppose we allow ourselves just a little bit of (black) magic. Suppose it was in our power to repeal these laws. Why not? We invented them, didn’t we?            Which law would you get rid of first?            I have two prime contenders, but unfortunately there are problems with both.            I’d like to start by getting rid of gravity, this terrible law that holds us in its grip and ties us down. Every single day of our lives. If there were no gravity, then we’d be able to fly. Wouldn’t that be great? I have this strange feeling that I actually used to be able to fly when I was little. It is a really weird “memory” because it seems so real. I can even recall what it feels like to kick off from the ground and float up in the air. I’d like to experience that again.            Wouldn’t it be great to get rid of gravity? Well, perhaps not. It is true that gravity holds us down, but isn’t that actually a good thing? Without gravity we might all float off into space. Someone would have to invent velcro boots, or something, to keep us on the planet. There would be no up or down, which I think could be quite confusing. Even worse, the solar system would fly apart. The moon would drift away. There would be no night and day, so poetry would take a bit of a hit. Repealing the law of gravity suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good idea.            What about thermodynamics and that annoying second law? It might be ok if we understood it, but we don’t so can’t we just get rid of it? Surely that ought to be good? Without the need for entropy to keep increasing, nature wouldn’t have to evolve towards disorder. Things would stay neat and tidy and a lot of domestic effort could be saved. It could be fun, as well. You’d be able to throw a broken glass on the floor and see it come together again. Stuff like that. Like magic.            I’d settle for this. Get rid of thermodynamics. What’s the problem with that? Uh... well... for a start... Heat might flow from cold to hot. This would upset quite a few things, like the fridge in your kitchen. The central heating system would become more temperamental. There is a much bigger problem, though. The entropy law is one of the prime contenders for an “arrow of time”. The underlying reason why we experience the world as evolving rather than standing still. No one really understands how this works, it remains one of the unsolved mysteries of physics, but it might be a bad idea to get rid of the thermodynamic laws just in case they have something to do with it. Who’d want to run out of time, as it were?            There we are. Two suggestions, neither entirely satisfactory. Begs the question, are there laws of nature that we can get rid of without ending up in trouble? What are the pros and cons or meddling with this? Why not have a go at this yourself? Let me know where it takes you.

Don't argue. It's the law.

Professor Kompressor's house was a complete mess. It didn't matter that Maud, the once-or-twice-a-week housekeeper, did her best to tidy up. The Professor was simply too good at picking things up, moving them about and leaving them where they weren't supposed to be. When Maud complained, the Professor muttered something about the "laws of thermodynamics" and that "disorder must increase". This sounded like complete gobbledygook to her, so Maud ignored the Professor and quietly carried on cleaning. She knew perfectly well that it was possible to keep a home nice and tidy. There was absolutely no reason why chaos should be allowed to reign.
                                                from "Professor Kompressor: The Mechanical Maid"
I think you're familiar with the idea. You spend hours tidying up; bedroom, living room or desk. After some effort it looks nice and tidy, and it seems incredible that it could ever have got into such a deplorable state. However, as soon as you turn your back on it the decay begins and before too long the mess has returned. Why does this happen?             A common explanation from people with some understanding of physics, like the Professor, is that the "second law of thermodynamics" is at play. This sounds terribly serious, getting the law involved in everyday happenings. This kind of law is different, though. It is not the kind enforced by people in uniform. Rather, it is part of the rulebook for the Universe that is being pieced together by people in lab coats (although they may not actually be wearing them these days).            Let's take a closer look at this particular rule. First we need to understand the main word a bit better. "Thermodynamics" is the name for the part of physics that describes processes involving hot and cold. It's basically a simplification, where very complex systems are described in terms of a small set of numbers describing the average behaviour.             To understand how this works, imagine zooming in on a digital photograph. At first, on the large scale, the image seems perfectly smooth. As you take a closer view you can start to see the individual building blocks (the pixels). Finally, on the small scale, these building blocks dominate and you can't see the big picture any more. When you look at the original picture, your eyes average over the pixels and make the image appear nice and smooth.            Everyday physical systems work in the same way. They are built from individual particles (atoms, or at the even finer level, quarks), but it is generally too difficult to keep track of the movement of each of these little guys. It is more practical to zoom out (average over a large number of particles) and focus on a few numbers that describe the collective behaviour. Information is obviously lost in this process, but one can often get away with ignoring this.            The temperature of a system depends on how active the individual particles are. Basically, if they don't move at all then the temperature is zero. In a typical situation they whizz around madly. The temperature encodes the averaged energy associated with their motion.             The laws of thermodynamics are the rules that describe how you measure the temperature and how it evolves as time passes. The famed "second law" deals with a somewhat mysterious quantity called the entropy. It used to be that scientists thought that heat was carried by a quantity known as the caloric. Hotter objects simply had more caloric in them. However, this idea didn't quite work out. Instead, the entropy took centre stage.              The entropy describes the amount of order (or lack of...) in a system. Think of the amount of papers, pens and various bits on an office desk, or perhaps toys on the floor in a playroom. If they're all put away neatly, then the system is ordered and the entropy is low. If they're spread in a random fashion, then the entropy is high. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy can never decrease (as long as you ignore outside influences). All systems become more random with time.             The entropy law was a great breakthrough for science because it allowed people to work out why it is that heat flows from hot to cold and not the other way around.  An overall colder system is more random, and therefore more likely, than one where the particles bunch up in local hotter region. The second law led to the development of kitchen refrigerators, which are obviously great inventions, and is important for many other physics problems, like the evolution of the entire Universe, as well.            What do we learn from this? All things tend to disorder and chaos, pretty much as the Professor suggested. The law says that entropy must increase, so any effort to tidy up is futile. Not quite! You can "break the law" by tinkering with the system. This is exactly what you do when you spend your precious energy tidying up. You can lower the entropy of a room, desk or whatever by using your free will to expend some energy. Thermodynamics says that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Ultimately you can't win, but you can chose to spend some energy getting things back in order for a while.             It's such a shame! I can't use thermodynamics to excuse the mess on the desk in front of me, so I guess I have to admit that I am too lazy to do anything about it.

Introducing: The Professor

Professor Andersson is scientist. He is not Dr Who, yet he deals with issues involving space and time. He is an expert on Einstein's theory of relativity and extreme astrophysics. At work he worries about black holes, dead stars, white dwarfs and waves of gravity. He has a keen interest in the public understanding of science, and firmly believes that anything and everything can be explained to pretty much anyone. Not easily, but it is possible. 

In his spare time, the Professor likes to read - always did, ever since he was little. He continues to be excited by books for younger readers, great stories that inspire developing minds and make the next generation fall in love with books. He is particularly interested in stories that draw on real science for their inspiration, yet blend in a healthy amount of wild speculation and madness. This interest inspired the creation of Professor Kompressor, an excellent but accident prone inventor. 

Professor Kompressor is a fictional character (certainly not based on the other Professor!) and his adventures are completely made up. Yet, the various episodes in the book draw (to some extent) on ideas from science and the modern world. The intention is to show that you can have a lot of fun with science and technology. In fact, Professor Kompressor is a perfect illustration of how we learn in life, by making mistakes over and over again. The key lesson is to never give up, even when things don't come easy.

In reality, as in fiction, the unexpected consequences of some action may be the most interesting. And entertaining...

Introducing: The Professor

Professor Kompressor is an inventor. He is excellent at inventing, but the inventions are not always excellent.

This first collection of Professor Kompressor stories recalls a number of episodes from his inventing career. The ideas may seem sound, and perhaps quite original, but they don't always work out as intended. In fact, they very rarely do. It was perhaps predictable that an invisibility cloak would be easily mislaid, but who could have guessed that tinkering with an old Volkswagen Beetle would be so dangerous? There is plenty of evidence that Professor Kompressor is a genius, but this does not in anyway prevent him from accidents and mishaps.

The book is aimed a children (age 7-11, perhaps) and is intended to inspire developing minds. The Professor is a fictional character and the adventures are completely made up. Yet, the various episodes draw on ideas from science and the modern world. 

This "literary masterpiece" is available from Amazon (and is most reasonably priced!):

Amazon com link: http://amzn.com/B009TQ73VK

Amazon.co.uk link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009TQ73VK

Don't despair - you can get it in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Brasil, Canada and Japan, too. 

Total world domination unlikely!