🚀 go-pugleaf

Einsteiniana's marauders combining science and culture:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/06/brian-greene-wants-to-put-emotion-back-into-science.html
"Now physicist Brian Greene has left hard data and cryptic equations
behind to venture into classical mythology, reimagining the Greek
story of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun. In 2008,
Greene came out with an illustrated book version of Icarus at the Edge
of Time (watch New Scientist's video interview with Greene about the
book). Last week, the full multimedia musical premiered at the third
annual World Science Festival in New York. The Festival itself is a
project created by Greene and his wife that seeks to combine science
and culture. (...) Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts
that for someone approaching a black hole, time slows down relative to
the external universe. Greene uses this concept of "time dilation" to
help Icarus avoid death."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jun/19/saturday-interview-physicist-brian-cox
"...presenter and particle physicist Brian Cox snuggling down on to
the floor of Death Valley with an umbrella, a can of water, and a
thermometer, and proving (after Herschel) just how hot the sun
actually is. Suffused in smiles, he punched the umbrella bashfully
into the sand. "And that's why I love physics." (...) ...the general
theory of relativity was a genuine aesthetic choice, really. There was
no experimental justification for going beyond Newton's laws of
gravity. It was purely aesthetic. "But it predicts things. I find it
amazing, for example, that you get binary pulsars" – a kind of small
but dense star - "orbiting around each other a thousand times a second
– the most violent thing you can imagine, churning up space and time.
And you make measurements with radio telescopes, and you get the
answer that Einstein's theory predicts - and he wrote that in 1915,
when he didn't know about pulsars, and he didn't know about radio
telescopes. But you're right - a good scientist, a really pure
scientist, would have to accept that that constant drive to unify
forces together and to find a simpler, more economical description of
nature, is really a choice - it's an act of - I was going to say an
act of faith, but that makes it sound mystical, and there's nothing
mystical about science actually."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ExiJKbeuY
Prof Brian Cox explores Einstein's understanding of time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiSpNh_e-0o&NR=1
Prof Brian Cox explores Time in super slow motion

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/article1985696.ece
"They call me the Liam Gallagher of physics. (...) But now consider
Professor Brian Cox, the 40-year-old who's turning the image of
physics on its head. He's the bloke who used to play keyboards in
D:Ream, the dance-rock band behind New Labour's anthem Things Can Only
Get Better. He cites Einstein as his inspiration, the No1 daddy of
physics who was actually a bit cooler than we think (...) He says:
"Close to the speed of light, you can go anywhere you want in the
future. You can get as far into the future as you want. That's just
orthodox. It was known in 1905." And get this..."If you go on a flight
to New York then come back again, you'll have aged slightly less than
the people who stayed here because you've gone into the future
slower!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b558kjihQQg&feature=PlayList&p=27DFC0155A909EEF
Silly Walks Applicant: "Well sir, I have a silly walk and I'd like to
obtain a Government grant to help me develop it....I think that with
Government backing I could make it very silly." Silly Walks Director:
"Mr Pudey, the very real problem is one of money. I'm afraid that the
Ministry of Silly Walks is no longer getting the kind of support it
needs. You see there's Defence, Social Security, Health, Housing,
Education, Silly Walks ... they're all supposed to get the same. But
last year, the Government spent less on the Ministry of Silly Walks
than it did on National Defence! Now we get 348,000,000 a year, which
is supposed to be spent on all our available products."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com