Tag: Physics

Science, Math, and Nature as Inspiration for Themes in Writing and Beyond

October 25, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

Long-time readers of the Observation Desk might remember that I’m a fan of science. Some of my old posts include “We Are All Stardust”, “Big New for the Big Bang,” and “Seems the World Will End in a Bang, Not a Whimper.” I find science and nature (and even sometimes math!) to be a great source of inspiration, not only for writing but for my life.

There are so many wonderful, beautiful, crazy aspects of our universe. An exploding star, called a supernova, sends particles shooting across the universe. These happen all the time in our universe and have been happening for billions of years. All the elements that make up earth, including our own bodies, were once ejected particles from a supernova.

Then you have the Fibbonacci Sequence, which starts at 0,1 and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two (0,1,1,2,3,5,8, etc…) and put in order in boxes make a spiral. Many things in nature follow this pattern, from flower petal and seed arrangements to how spiral galaxies are formed.

To take a look at a math example, did you know that a computer cannot truly generate a random number? Because computers function via algorithms, or sets of rules programmed in to the computer, it’s not possible for a computer to do random.

And whether or not I totally understand all these concepts that fascinate me (spoiler alert: I don’t, but I keep trying anyway!), they never fail to inspire me. They push me to examine the patterns in my writing. On a micro level, I look at the the words, language, and sentence structure patterns I fall back on, so I can push myself beyond my own cliches.

On a macro level, it pushes me to recognize emerging themes in my writing. What themes did I go in with and maybe didn’t follow through on properly? What themes didn’t I notice, ones that maybe stemmed from my subconscious, that can make my story better if I tease them out more and reinforce them? Where are there more opportunities to refine any symbols I’ve used or places where I can introduce more?

Taking a patterned analysis to my writing allows me to make sure every detail (word, sentence, symbol, description, etc…) counts to work toward a greater whole through theme and plot.

To take all this a step further, trying to understand the science and math that governs nature can help me examine my own life for themes and patterns. It pushes me to a greater level of introspection and hopefully to a better place as human being. And that will only contribute to me being a better, more deliberate writer.

When I work at honing that merging of the creative and analytical thinking, stuff moves in ways I could never have imagined before. The world, my stories, my life…everything reaches a whole new level of understanding in my mind. And that feels like a pretty incredible phenomenon.

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.

We Are All Stardust

November 7, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve been watching reruns of Discovery Channel’s series How the Universe Works on the Science Channel lately. It’s totally blowing my mind!

I did take physics in high school and college, but I don’t remember it being anywhere as awesome as this program is. Maybe I’m just late to the party, but being a physicist is probably one of the coolest jobs in the world…or the universe (second only to writing, of course!).

The other night I stayed up late to watch an episode about supernovas (exploding stars) and then a second one about stars in general. I learned something that made my skin tingle: We are all made of stardust.

That’s right. When you look up in the sky at night and see those twinkling burning balls of gas, you came from that. Are you wondering How is that possible? I could try and explain how when a star explodes it shoots out the elements that create pretty much everything in the universe, but the Discovery Channel does a much better job of it in this video.

As if it weren’t enough to realize you’re a star-child, here’s another video about just how tiny we are relative to the largest known star. We’re talking size on a level that I can’t even really imagine (and I have a pretty endless imagination).