Category: Physics (Page 2 of 3)

The #InkRipples Inspiration Continues with Science

July 18, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

I’m a bit of a science nerd at times. I have a layman’s fascination with astrophysics and love watching programs and videos, reading books, and visiting exhibits on the many topics it covers. (Long time readers of the blog may remember these classic science posts on the Large Hadron Collider, the Big Bang, and dark matter.) And that’s what brings you today’s #InkRipples moment of inspiration.

The boys joke that when they see too many cool things (i.e. trains, fire trucks, police cars, construction vehicles, and the like), their heads explode, complete with hand gestures and sound effects. I feel that way about science. It can make my head spin, but it’s an endless source of head-explosion moments…and inspiration!

The thing about science is that it can make you feel very insignificant, as it does in this video about how small we are in comparison to the largest known star. (I may have shared this video and the following one on the Observation Desk before, but they are totally worth a rewatch if you’ve already seen them.)

With information like that, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the large scale of the Universe and to think that nothing you could ever do in your puny, little lifetime could have any kind of lasting effect. So before you begin to despair, let me share this next video with you, which I think helps us to appreciate the intricate way we are all connected to each other and the Universe. When famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked what the most astounding fact in the Universe was, he head this to say:

So now I want to know what kinds of things induce your head-explosion moments.

Big News for the Big Bang

March 18, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, you might have noticed I stray from the writerly and motherly topics to science every so often. Black holes, the Large Hadron Collider, and the Big Bang are among some of my favorite topics.

While the first two episodes of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey linger, unwatched on my DVR (because the hubby and I want to watch them together and haven’t been able to find a time where we both have the mental acuity to actually enjoy them), a big scientific discovery about the Big Bang occurred just yesterday. No, I’m not talking about how it was recently announced that The Big Bang Theory was renewed for three more seasons (though that was pretty exciting news), I’m talking possible world-changing scientific news.

So picture a group of scientist in the South Pole gazing out into the depths of the heavens via a very powerful telescope called BICEP2. Now imagine they look so far and deep that they discovers very old light waves (as in nearly 14 billion years old), like the oldest light waves to ever have been detected. Well, you don’t really have to imagine it because that is exactly what they did.

It is believed that they detected cosmic microwave signals that show what happened shortly after the Big Bang. In short the Big Bang theory says that in a very, very, very, very miniscule moment in time, a hot, dense, teeny tiny singularity (which held all the matter and energy in the universe) expanded rapidly and in seconds stretched across space to create the universe, which we know is still expanding.

In order for that theory to hold water, something called cosmic inflation had to occur. Cosmic inflation is what happened just after the initial Big Bang, in which the universe went from essentially nothing to something 100 trillion trillion times that size in a ridiculously small amount of time, and the rapid (which I think is an understatement here) moment (which is an overstatement here) of expansion slowed to a pace closer to what we experience now in the universe.

Of course (as so many of our modern physics theories do), this idea stems back to Einstein theory of relativity, but had never been able to be proven. However, with the observation of these very old light waves, scientists believe we now have evidence of cosmic inflation. So it seems we have new insight into the birth of universe, which is certainly a very exciting moment indeed.

A few articles of further reading are in these articles: “A New Window On The Big Bang Has Been Opened” and “Big Bang, Inflation, Gravitational Waves: What It Means”. I leave you with this (lighter) explanation of the universe as provided by The Barenaked Ladies, a video that is one of The Boy’s favorite things to listen to (perhaps he’s a little scientist in the making!).

Dark Matter, Alternate Universes, and a Story Idea

January 22, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

I haven’t had a science update lately, mostly because my favorite science project the Large Hadron Collider is on hiatus. It’s being upgraded to increase its power so it can smash teeny, tiny particles even faster and harder. Scientists are hoping to unlock the secrets of dark matter.

Dark matter is thought to make up a large part of the universe, but so little is known about it. Thinking about the universe and great mysteries like dark matter get my creative juices flowing. One of my favorite science programs is Discovery Channel’s How the Universe Works. It kind of make my head hurts because the theories and science discussed are so mind-blowing in both concept and scope, but boy it’s so exciting to think about the universe.

I took physics classes in high school and college and found them, frankly, boring. Nothing we discussed ignited any sense of excitement. I get that you have to learn the basics to better understand the bigger concepts that theoretical and astrophysicists study, but I wish those basic physics classes had at least sparked some interest in learning more. And they just didn’t do that. It wasn’t until I was an adult, long out of school, that my own curiosity lead me to a passion for learning about the universe.

I hope to one day use a fictional story to meld my passion for writing and creating worlds and characters and my excitement over the universe. It’s been percolating for some time now and I think I have a premise and a main character. But I need to finish up a couple of other projects first and school myself more on the scientific concepts I’ll need to know to make the story authentic. Anyone want to give me a crash course? 🙂

I’ll leave you with this little gem of an article called “Quantum Theory Proves That Consciousness Moves to Another Universe After Death.” It definitely sounds science-fictiony, but it’s one of those ideas that I love reading about, if only to make my head spin a little with both excitement and confusion.

Confessions of an Author: Ideas

April 26, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

Business first: I’m over at author extraordinaire Kai Strand’s blog today with a character interview of Katora, the main character from Elixir Bound.

Confession #5: I have more ideas than I’ll ever be able to write.

Seriously, though, I’m not even sure where most of my ideas come from. I’ve mentioned this before, but often ideas (or solutions to plot problems) just pop into my head while I’m in the shower. Or maybe I’ll see some random person at the mall or the playground or wherever and *poof* I’ll have a new character with a backstory and goals and conflicts.

While watching the Oscars this year (and admittedly feeling tired in general and very bored with the whole awards/skit thing), my next Great Big Idea appeared. The idea took my obsession with physics (you know how I love black holes and the Large Hadron Collider) and gave it a character. There isn’t quite a fleshed out plot yet, but the character is very clear to me now. Before this moment (literally a very brief moment…no idea one minute, a great idea the next) I only had an intellectual interest in something, and now I have a real, solid character.

Not all my ideas are great either. Some pop into my head and fade away. Some I might think about for awhile and eventually jot down or even work on fleshing out a bit, but they don’t really come together. One of the reasons I don’t like to write my ideas on paper when they first come to me is because I have so many ideas. I know the ones that stay with me, the ones I can’t stop thinking about, are the ones that are good fodder for a story.

I’m not really sure exactly what parts need to come together to make this magic happen. I’ve always been a creative thinker, so part of it may just be my mind is always working in the background, synthesizing input and my thoughts while I’m doing other things. Part of it, too, is because I’m open to new ideas because it’s those Shiny New Ideas are what keep me excited about writing.

Writing a first draft of a novel is tough, revising a novel is tough, editing a novel is tough…the ideas are the fun part…they’re the things that give me the rush of adrenaline, that make me push through a tough middle when drafting, a tough scene when revising, or line edits (which are just plain boring).

So I’m afraid I can’t share what makes me a creative person or where my ideas come from…because I really have no idea. But there are people who know about creativity, who study it. The good news is recent research indicates you can train your brain to be more creative. I’m not sure I’ll be partaking in any of those exercises, though. I just don’t think my brain can handle any more Big Ideas right now!

Seems the World Will End in a Bang, Not a Whimper

February 20, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve had so much books news going on lately that I’ve neglected to update you all on any science news. My longtime followers know that I’ve been very interested in the progress of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the discovery of the Higgs boson, also called the God Particle. For new readers, some back articles about this topic include what the God Particle is, LHC creates primordial matter, and disproving Einstein.

Well, I reported back in July how scientists “discovered” the God Particle. Awesome news! So the face of physics and what we know about the world has changed, right? Ummm, not exactly. Subsequent analysis of the particle has not found any evidence to say it isn’t the God Particle (how’s that for a double negative!). And earlier this month, CERN shut down the LHC for two years for scheduled maintenance (imagine if your car maintenance took that long!).

Don’t worry, though. Even though there won’t be any subatomic particles smashing together at the LCH for awhile, I’ve still got some mind-bending news to report. Recent calculations regarding the Higgs Boson indicate that in tens of billlions of years, another alternate universe will expand far enough out that it will reach our universe, which will then disappear in a catastrophic event. And it will happen at the speed of light…how’s that for a Big Bang!

But don’t worry about that either. We’ll be long gone before then…and not just you and me and our grandchildren. The whole Earth will be gone when the sun burns out in another five billion or so years!