Becoming The Overman

The following is an informative speech written and performed by C. Nicholas Walker, meant to inform an audience about the concept of String Theory and its possible advances in theoretical physics...in only five minutes.

IN 1915, ALBERT Einstein came up with and proved a singular idea that changed the face of all science forever; he showed the displacement of a star by the gravitational disturbances of the moon. In one fail swoop, he created an entirely new field of study and wiped away beliefs about the universe that had existed since Sir Issac Newton, and although still in its infancy, String Theory is revolutionizing the face of modern science and philosophy, and may be the next step in discovering a unified field theory.

There is a problem in the universe; two different sciences are in conflict. To explain the very large, such as planets and stars, there is Einstein’s General Relativity. To explain the very small, however, such as particles and forces, there is Quantum Mechanics. These two sets of laws work perfectly in their own terrain, but when intermixed or used in tangent with one another, they become useless. Numbers stop making sense. Mathematics become useless. This would seem not to be a problem; however, there are some instances where both theories apply at the same time. For instance, in the center of black holes it is both extremely massive and extremely small, and in its beginning the universe was smaller than an atom but infinitely dense and hot. In order to explain such phenomenon, it has been a constant search to find a single theory that applies to and governs both the very large and the very small.

This is the gist of it. String Theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects (strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (particles) that are the basis of the Standard Model of particle physics--that probably means absolutely nothing to the average person, so let me say it another way. Until now, most people who pictured particles in their heads pictured little balls of matter. This is not unseen before, considering the model for atoms has changed nearly half a dozen times since its discovery almost 500 years ago. They thusly believed that different particles, such as electrons and quarks (which are the particles that make up the atom), were actually different things. Now, scientists are beginning to theorize that particles are actually little tiny strings of energy that can be open like a guitar string, or closed like a rubber band. All strings are simply bands of energy, but depending on how they wiggle (or oscillate), they can become different particles. Therefore, an electron is the same thing as a quark, they simply wiggle a different way, giving them their different characteristics. In this way, even forces like electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces (which hold atoms together and produce radiation), and even gravity are nothing more than strings wiggling different ways. General Relativity explains gravity on an everyday scale, but no one has ever been able to explain gravity at the quantum state. String Theory has the capability not only to explain quantum gravity, but also to write a single equation that governs the entire universe at the same time (otherwise known as the "unified field theory"). Not only does String Theory hope to find a single “theory of everything,” but it also opens the door for other phenomenon...such as extra-dimensions.

One intriguing feature of String Theory is that it predicts the number of dimensions which the universe should possess; nothing in Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism or Einstein's theory of relativity makes this kind of prediction--these theories require physicists to insert the number of dimensions "by hand." When the calculation is done, the universe's dimensionality is not four as one may expect (three axes of space and one of time). In fact, Bosonic string theories are 26-dimensional. Now, Superstring and M-theories turn out to involve less than that, only a more managable 10 or 11 dimensions. These dimensions are considered “hidden,” because they cannot be seen or experienced from our perspective. A good analogy is imagining a water hose in the distance, which appears to have only one dimension: its length. Even if we could place a ball through it, the ball would only move along that single dimension. Upon closer inspection, however, we would realize a second dimension: its circumference. An ant walking the inside could experience even more dimensions, while a fly buzzing around inside could experience far more than that. In order to explain most of these extra-dimensions, scientists use something called Calabi-Yau manifolds (see picture) to show how these dimensions all contract and fold back onto each other.
This is all good and fun, but someone once asked me a serious question. Someone once asked me why anyone would need to know this information. What does it mean to them? The truth is, you could live the rest of your life without the knowledge of relativity or strings, or anything else physics for that matter. However, the search for truth and understanding of our universe has been a challenge of man’s ever since the beginning of time. Even Einstein once said, “I wish to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.” So, you can easily marvel in the natural makings of the Earth, or of the perfection in the human body and the beauty in the sunset, but to live your life without the knowledge of the invisible rules and wonders of the infinite cosmos as well--and thusly confine yourself only to this little Earth--would be blasphemous at best; living a life blind to the wonders around you.

Labels: physics, public speaking, relativity, strings, theories

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 3:04 AM | Permalink | Comments

An Epic Poem by C. Nicholas Walker

We saw the ship fall down and rain like fire
From a dark and solemn, whispering cloud,
That ran its arms the length of Heaven's sky
From one bright peak that brought along the dawn,
And fell down into the darkening dusk
Whose light they pulled its soulful embrace.
And there it streaked down with a golden glow
That bore, like a lightning that shakes the ground,
A quick and brightly born streak in the sky.
We marveled in its beauty, in the gold
Of what was like the almighty light of
God, our good and gracious, most giving host;
O' our shining and gracious creator.
Huitzilopochtle, we worship your name;
And there in the sunlight call out your name;
And there where the moonlight is rising up
Through the starry pole that glows in the dark,
There echoes your voice in billowing pain.
And there it opened up my fears to fall,
A silver beast, a metal hand, and then
A glowing ember died away at last,
And cooled away against the colder air,
Steaming up and hissing out a breath
That reeked and rolled as out a dragon's head.
The thing was large, and golden grew among
The trees and sand, and call again I heard
The voice; a voice of He, of us, of Him.
And there we go to save the wayward day;
A cellar door, a fire hardened bridge,
And down upon the ground it fell, alas!
But there I saw two giants tall step out
To rest their feet upon the earthy sand.
We bowed to them, and there we held our face
As up they stretched their legs above the trees,
Their hair a mess atop their eerie heads
So tangled down across four sunken eyes.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments

Written by C. Nicholas Walker

1

I've seen the highest of the bad;
I've seen the lowest of the good.
I've seen the evil daemons clad
Do all the worst they ever could.
I've seen the trading of the souls
For things bequiling e'er to last;
I've seen the best of future goals
Become regrets of futures past.
But all in all, I'd have to say
Those blind events of hate and spite
Are worst of things to come my way,
For then that candle cuts thy night.
There darkness gives no more a shroud
Than evil's heated light allows.

2

Ah, dear, the sweetness of my dreams
Rows saddled with the lighted moon,
And swims the sky like filter’d stream
In night, yet not in afternoon.
It’s opposition, thus, in day?
The sun in sky to trail after,
Heav’ns fire and night’s hot prey--
That present, pulsing pleasant laughter.
For years I watched the moon above
Play silly chases with the light,
So knowing when she caught her love
That day would certain turn to night.
Still the Sun, dream, the anything,
Ought to be caught without its wings.

3

Too oft a life may be seen as a point,
Calling a “Wherefore is a life to be?”
Questions that oft lead into disappoint
As they pilot so these false guarantees.
The truth in points is not the truth at all,
For it lives and it breathes and it changes--
All these things that may lead a man to fall
Through those sweet and those dismal exchanges.
We give the truth in the silence of words,
There are inconstants and not-all-the-sames!
The truth is soundings that no one has heard
Plainly displaying unknowable games!
If the truth is found on the tops of hills,
The truth must be dying and lying still.

4

The summer wind doth fly across the trees,
And in its arms there goes a scent of spring--
So silent glad are the waves of the seas
That silent too they carry merry rings.
And even in the sun that shines the ground
With the heated light of the starry eye,
There is no whisper or a shining sound
Along the wayward path a sun doth lie.
Yet hold, alas! There goes the silent man
Whose voice as the wind doth fly against speech,
Who speaks his words as do the waves of sand
Make toiling troubles with the brackish beach.
But here I speak my words in silence still,
And still in these resides the lives of will.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments

The following is a brief essay written by C. Nicholas Walker for his Major British Writers class, which discusses the final battle in the epic poem Beowulf and how the poet portrays the hero and his struggle with threats to Anglo-Saxon culture.

IT IS THE assumption of many Old English scholars that Beowulf is a three-part poem, encompassing the battle with Grendel as the first, the battle with Grendel’s mother as the second, and the deadly battle with the dragon as the last and final part. I maintain, however, that Beowulf is only a poem in two-parts, the first being the story of an indestructible, pagan warrior and the latter being that of the weary, death cognizant and almost Christian-minded king.

The dragon of the last battle Beowulf encounters is a very powerful symbol. As kryptonite is to Superman, so the dragon emphasized Beowulf’s mortality and sense of inevitability. Even before the battle, Beowulf could feel this essence running through him like a disease, almost at the same time as the dragon awoke and emerged from his cave. Only at this point in his life does Beowulf begin to question his own wyrd, or fate, and his disinclination to “give ground like that and go unwillingly to inhabit another home in a place beyond” (2588–2590). This sort of realization, however, of death being the moving on from one place to another, from the real earth to “a place beyond,” is an extremely Christian ideology. In the same way, however, this reluctance to enter into the nether region also represents the pagan and Anglo-Saxon belief that one’s homeland is their identity, and that the leaving behind of which would be a difficult task indeed.

In traditional Anglo-Saxon culture, it is important to remember the significance as well of treasure and its relationship to one’s own personal value and family. Beowulf is relieved to see such treasure before he dies as a personal representation and reinforcement of his own beliefs that, as a good king, he left behind great things for his people. This feeling most likely spawns from the fact the Beowulf is without son, and therefore without one to bequeath such things to; he even mentions his own desire to pass down his armor had he a son to accept it. What is the point in victory, so the Anglo-Saxon warrior says, if without the physical ratification of such deeds?

Even the treasures with are unearthed mirror the state of Beowulf in each battle. When his first two confrontations ended with victory and splendor, the treasures were rich and plentiful, worthy of such great actions. However, after meeting the fateful claws of the dragon and passing away, the treasure is rusted and worthless and typifies his own propinquity to death. There is a subtle note that usually goes unnoticed after this, in that Beowulf has the treasures buried with him in the stead of distribution as the creed of the good king would have him do. This is most likely because of his realization that, without an heir, his lineage has no need to continue or any cause for endowment. This is where we begin to see the splitting of the poem into two separate parts, one being the story of an indestructible, pagan warrior and the latter being that of the weary, death cognizant and almost Christian-minded king.

In the absence of an heir, Beowulf seems to almost adopt Wiglaf in the final scene before his passing, taking the golden collar from off his neck and placing it in the hands of Wiglaf, a warrior just as was Beowulf, who protected his king no matter what and strictly followed the warrior code throughout life. In Old English, Wiglaf means “war survivor.” So, in the end, the battle with the dragon is only Beowulf’s realization that, indeed, he is only a mortal capable of “Christian” death, but that through legend, poetry and Wiglaf, he will truly be immortalized for the eternity to come on earth as well.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments