Monday, February 02, 2004

This weekend was study weekend. You would think that since I'm out of school I wouldn't have to study any more. Well you're right. I don't have to study. I actually like to learn new things. This weekend I learned about the Loop Quantum Gravity Theory. A masterful theory that attempts to connect the Theory of Relativity with Quantum Theory. For those of you that are not familiar with these theories I will summarize very very very briefly. The Theory of Relativity was conjectured by the great Einstein. He was named after a popular element called Einsteinium. Anyway, old Einie said that space and time are intermingled and if you have an object with enough mass, such as a sun or black hole, it can distort both the space around it as well as time. Quantum Theory basically predicts the movement of particles and their spin. In simpler terms, Relativity does big stuff and Quantum does itty bitty tiny stuff. The Holy Grail of science is to find a theory that connects the two. This Loop Quantum Gravity Theory attempts to do that. Basically Loop theorizes that space and time are not continuous. For instance, when you go to the movies and watch a film, it appears that it's all one continuous movie. However, our eyes are very misleading. In fact, a movie is made up of 24 frames per second. If you've ever slowed your home movies down with the slow-mo button on the VCR you'll see that your movie is actually made up of thousands of still pictures. A movie must then have a minimum amount. A movie cannot be shorter than one frame. In the same sense, time as we experience it is not continuous. It can be broken into the smallest time unit possible called Plank time, or 10-43 second. Stay tuned for more terrific insight tomorrow!

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