She's a brainiac! Brainiac on the floor! And she's solvin' problems like she never has before.
So far, this has been a great week for Science. And not the Ms. Sakamoto, you're beautiful! kind either. Apparently proof for dark matter was finally discovered. (I've always had faith in dark matter --- look who our president is.)
And Math isn't doing so bad either -- the Poincare Conjecture -- a famous math problem about the shapes of space first posed by Henri Poincare in 1904, has been solved by a reclusive Russian mathematician.
4 comments:
fascinating (in my best Mr. Spock voice).
okay, so i have an elementary idea of what dark matter is--the unexplained "other stuff" that seems to be providing the other portion of the gravitational pull that stuff we see could not be doing alone. and, it's interesting that some scientists are asking that this stuff we can't see has to isolated in a laboratory in order to prove that it exists--a paradoxically conventional way to show something that clearly exists in an unconventional manner. not that i am on anybody's side per se--just making an observation.
on the Poincare conjecture, i still don't have the foggiest idea of what it is this Russian dude even solved. however, for spatial dimension nerds, i do have a book to recommend: Flatland, and if you can't get enough of that, there's Spaceland, too. gentle reader, MV can vouch for me here.
RE: Dark matter --- the universe can't be contained in a lab. I don't know if this proof (caused by the galaxy clusters colliding) is really the end-all be-all; however, if anything, it's one step closer to showing that there are things in the universe that may be on other planes of existence. Pretty cool stuff.
As for the conjecture solution -- the guy on NPR said only about 20 ppl in the world understood the proof. Big whoop. For all intents and purposes, it was a way to measure a doughnut by ulitmately reaching one singular point on said doughnut. Spheres were easy (supposedly) as they are whole and allow one to mathematically reduce to one point. Doughnuts have those pesky holes in them, thus cocking up any "easy" solutions.
By the way, the "hole" is my favorite part of the doughnut. A dozen Shipley's doughnut "holes" and a chocolate milk were and still are a delightful treat.
mmm...doughnuts....
the only force more powerful than science, or mathematics...
Yes, I can vouch for Flatland being worth the read. It's relatively short, and in its own mathematical way, the narrative illustrates the value of viewing situations/cultures from different perspectives and dimensions.
MV
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