Monday, September 27, 2010

Quantum Physics. A hiding to nothing.

Imagine a computer program that wanted to analyse itself to the most fundamental level. By knowing its own source code, then relating that to the instructions created by the compiler, a level of insight might be gained.
A more complex program might be able to deduce the structure of registers and maybe even something about the internal workings of the processor and make a fairly good guess at deeper aspects of the system.
Unfortunately, a quantum analysis of a "bit" within a word cannot reveal the structure of a transistor or the type of substrate upon which the transistor is constructed.
Quarks, Leptons and Bosons all make up the base classes of our universe. However, even though we may be able to analyse them. How can we be aware of the "transistors" upon which they are expressed?

Saturday, September 04, 2010

Splash

Odd, how inspiration can come from the most mundane sources. I was looking at the screen savers on a Windows XP box the other day and realised that the screen saver with the OpenGL "tambourine" onto which something drops, causing a splash could be the model for the formation of Saturn's rings.
One could imagine that a liquid body such as a gas giant planet could ring like a bell with shock waves that travelled all around the planet and back to the point of origin such that a splash of planet material might be ejected back into space.
A little angular momentum due to spin and the planet moving on it's course around the sun would spread the ejected material along it's orbit enough to create a ring.
I appeal to Sony for 32 Playstation 3 boxes so I can number crunch the math and write a paper.