The Elegant Universe

The Lie we Live by Inocente Diaz At this moment you could be anywhere, doing anything. Instead you sit before a screen. What’s stopping us from doing what we want or where we want to be? Each day we wake up in the same room and follow the same path, to live the same day as yesterday. Yet there was a time when each day was a new adventure. However, something changed. Before our days were timeless, now our days are scheduled. Is this what it means to be grown up? To be free? But are we really free…

Normally, as someone who is highly invested in the idea of science and creation, there is a lack of understanding when it comes to thinking about the different myths of creation. For me, creation all started when a group of molecules happened to join together and eventually evolved into the many organisms that are seen every day. It never occurred to me that there is such a difference between different creation myths. During the first couple of weeks in the semester it became clear that…

the probability of the discovery of extraterrestrial life within the entirety of the unknown universe. This equation combines the things science knows and does not know to come to the equivalent of N, if N is the number of intelligent species in the universe that are communicating amongst each other right now. The Principle of Mediocrity is essentially the assumption of similarity throughout the universe, pertaining to this solar system being the original copy. It allows for scientists to obtain…

Are we alone in the universe? Men have struggled with this idea throughout the whole of human history. M. Night Shyamalan takes a fresh look at this idea in his sci-fi blockbuster film Signs as he follows the journey of a family in crisis as they face an alien invasion. As the story unfolds, Shyamalan reveals his ideas on the universal theme of man’s struggles with faith and a belief in the divine design of the universe through his use of allegory, conflict, and character. The primary way…

Which three enlightenment scientists contributed greatly to the sciences and the modern world? The enlightenment period was a very important time in history. During this time, everything was changing. Politics, science, and the old way of life were radically changing. As time went on, many geniuses began to change the scientific way of thinking and challenge the old ideas. Although many had good ideas, but there were some that changed their world and had lasting effects in the modern…

Many scientists, starting with Galileo, had noticed there was something strange because of a small fleck they saw in the sky. These scientists had try to discover something new, but each time, their ideas were dismissed. This went on for several years, before William Herschel had the motivation to figure it out for himself. At first, he thought it was a comet, but through a mirror he had built, was able to verify that this object wasn’t making the same motion as a comet would. This is where his…

There is without a doubt a correlation between astronomy and the ancient Greeks. This correlation became more prominent as the curiosity of the idea of not being alone in the universe and scientifically explaining what's out there became stronger. The idea that the Greeks relied on their religion to explain the things they did not understand is a great one. It is clear and easily proven that astronomy played a huge role in the religion, even in the beginning of it. "The nocturnal character of…

We’ve been listening for alien signals for several decades, though the silence has led as many to wonder if we are listening for the right things as those wondering if there are any aliens at all. What many fail to understand is how many signals a civilization like ours produces that are lost to the background noise before anyone outside our system would hear it, much less what they might learn if they were able to pick up our signals? What signals would an alien civilization detect? And what…

the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. But understanding the amounts of lithium observed in stars around us today in the Universe has given astronomers headaches. Most heavy elements are produced during supernovae, as massive stars explode in their death throes. However, these events were believed to be too rare to produce the vast amount of lithuim seen in the modern universe. Starting in the 1970s, astrophysicists began to explore the idea that the smaller but far more common novae could…

Reno begins the discussion of Stranger in a Strange Land by explaining how Heinlein was able to develop the material for the novel through the already present concepts in the 1950s. However, not only does Heinlein use the 1950’s social culture as inspiration for sexual exploitation of female characters, but Heinlein also uses inspiration from the Whorfian hypothesis in order to develop Smith’s Martian background. Reno states that the Whorfian hypothesis is the basic idea that people see the…