What Day is It?

 Astro class 2025:

Regular

Goofy

Tardy

Me, Space-Time, and Cycles

         "There is no such thing as an empty space...Space-Time does not claim existence on its own, but only as a structural quality of the [gravitational] field."  - Albert Einstein, 1952 

This idea of Space & Time not really meaning anything outside of the context of gravity is something I've been trying to wrap my mind around ever since I started teaching astronomy: The ever expanding universe creating space-time as the masses separate and the meaningless of space-time outside of or before the universe ( as opposed to the Newtonian view that the stage already set and the universe plays out on that pre-existing stage).  

Before the discovery of Dark Energy (our short hand for the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe), most scientists thought the universe would end in a Big Crunch.  The story was that gravity would eventually win over the expansion and bring everything crashing together again... and maybe we could return to the Big Bang.  Such a cool idea since this eliminates the awkwardness of a one-and-done Universe with a questionable beginning and final end.

However, with Dark Energy, it appears we are doomed to the Big Chill and we will be forever haunted with the strange uniqueness of our finite-in-time Universe.

Or are we?

I recently came across this idea of Roger Penrose  (Conformal Cyclic Cosmology) that, when the Universe ends in its ultimately highest entropy state with either no mass or mass evenly distributed, Space-Time will once again be meaningless.  Highest entropy begins to look like lowest entropy and, voila, we have recovered the initial conditions of our Universe... so another Big Bang can occur.

Reversing the concept of what Space and Time are is a really powerful frame shift, is it not?  Instead of mass moving around in space and time, mass is the creator of space and time.  Once there is no interesting movement of mass, there are not relationships to have and Space and Time just fade away as meaningful concepts.

Kind of like how Who-I-Am is somehow encoding in the details of the relationships between all these atoms in my body.  It's not actually the atoms themselves, but the interesting relationships between them.  Lay out all my carbons, hydrogens, oxygens, and nitrogens in a regular array and I guarantee you that guy will not be anything like me.  Long after I'm gone though, the elements in my body can be re-used in some future self-aware sentient creature.  

"There is no such as an eternal Ken Rideout, Ken Rideout does not exist on his own.  He is an emergent property of the C H O N atoms in his body."

Freedom in a Well

"What is Freedom?" is a question my son asked of the extended family last summer for his AP Government class.

My mother had the best answer of all of us: "Freedom doesn't exist.  When you love other people, when you have responsibilities, you give up freedom."  Deep, Mom!  Freedom is just an ideal that you don't really want because you do actually want to be caught up in a web of relationships and responsibilities that give your life meaning and ground you in society.

Sure, I am in principle free to roam this Earth however and whenever I choose, but I am constrained by choice... and by gravity.

I live in a well that's inside of a well inside of another well that is itself in a large, abstract well.  

I have a family I provide for, a school I work in with its students and faculty that have certain expectations, a country that I pay taxes to and owe some measure of allegiance to, a species that I want to see thrive and survive into the future, a beautiful and delicate ecosystem of plants and animals I would also like to see thrive.  Responsibilities galore (and their incumbent limitations on my freedom).

I also live in the bottom of gravitational well created by the mass of this planet which is, in turn, nestled deeply in the well created by the Sun.  The entirety of that deep Solar well is buried within the wide well of the entire Milky Way Galaxy.  The big, fat abstract well of the Milky Way is actually loosely buried in an even fatter, wider well created by our local group of galaxies as we all fly towards each other in the midst of ever-widening ocean of receding galaxies. (So, no, it's not turtles all the way down... but it is several layers of turtles stacked on top of each other I grant you).

So, here I am: Trapped within traps within traps.  Some of my own devising and others I was born inside of.  I can despair of my Sisyphean plight, or I can go all Camus on my lot and think "Freedom is here, in my mind, as I enjoy reflecting upon the fact that I can appreciate all the wells I find myself inside of."

How's that, Mom?

Many thanks to Isabelle for the art to go with this post!

Perspective

Astronomy is a great subject to remind us how what we see and experience is often just a perspective on things rather than an actual perception of what is "out there".

Take for example, the phases of the Moon.  Do you recognize a first quarter vs. 3rd quarter Moon by which half is lit?  Well, 50% of the planet will not agree with you.  You see all those folks below the equator are looking at that same Moon more or less upside down from you:

Look at this cool time-lapse photo taken of the recent lunar eclipse from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres: (note how it goes from upper left to lower right in the North but upper right to lower left in the South)

from https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

I've blogged about it before in terms of the Chinese terms for the quarter moon being more about up and down than left and right, but the truth is that which half appears lit to you depends on the season and the location of the Moon in the sky and your latitude:

https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/phase.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nikon/comments/j7xqb2/moonrise_and_moonset_of_the_10820_waning_gibbous/

Astronomy, Bald Spots, and Witty Students

Today, in Astronomy class while reviewing the seasons and the axial tile of the Earth for a quiz tomorrow, I pulled a classic Rideout non sequitur.  

I spontaneously made the leap from how the sunlight in Antarctica never heats up that continent despite months of continual daylight to how I discovered that I had a bald spot by getting a sunburn on the top of my head while mowing the lawn.  When I ended with something like "... and then I cried in the bathroom until I felt better", the class of seniors were all looking at me a bit strangely (it is, after all, only our 6th time meeting so it was, perhaps, bit much).

To ease the transition back into the material, I looked around the room and said, "You all thought you were taking Astronomy but really this is my therapy session."  Then, without hesitation, a student in the second row (RH) calmly asks "So, this will be on the quiz tomorrow, right?"

Well played sir, well played.

Me and My Two Seniors

 (note that these events are separated by two years)

A retired teacher friend of mine does senior portraits so twice now I have had the pleasure walking around the Wellesley campus while he takes pictures of my soon-to-graduating senior.  Both times he had me jump and pose with them once:

Three Juxtapositions

From the Funny to the Sublime:

Grilling Tofu on the grill for the first time (because you want to lean into vegetarianism) but you quickly add sausage because there won't be enough to eat

Looking for a new home for my French grandmother's engraved flask and matching glasses when I remember my American grandmother's engraved end table 

Noticing this East-meets-West display at a friend's house (WW), I then ask to take a picture because it is as if someone stole an interior image from my own psyche.  Could write a whole blog post on this one, but I'll let the juxtaposition speak for itself for now.

More Adventures in Fermentation

Made kombucha for the first time.  I long have been a fan of fermentation (beer and wine), but this was kind of an odd choice since no one in the immediate family drinks kombucha.  That didn't stop me - ha ha ha!  Part of the appeal was the similarity to beer brewing that I engage in regularly:  a primary fermentation in a vat then a secondary one in the individual bottles for natural carbonation.  Adding flavors of your choosing for the secondary fermentation also sounded fun. I bottled one plain, one with honey, two with orange juice, and two with mango/pineapple. 

This afternoon we had our first degustation and the summation from the fam was "I wouldn't choose to drink it but I wouldn't reject it outright either".  Okay, fair. I was pleasantly surprised that the plain one wasn't as sour as I thought it would be.  (for the record: 2 weeks primary fermentation in the gallon jar pictured below plus 3 days secondary fermentation in bottles (very mild carbonation but I was a bit nervous to let it go longer without checking on it))

Note that I kept the SCOBY so I can make it again in the future!  (Part of the appeal for me in getting the starter kit)  Look out fam, strange and unusual flavors coming up later this summer!

A bit of history:  apparently the idea of drinking fermented black tea and flavoring it goes back centuries in China but the word "kombucha" comes from a poorly transcribed word from Japanese that refers to seaweed tea (an entirely different beast).  

Pi, Light, and Bird Poop

 A common (good) question* I get from students is "Why can't anything go faster than the speed of light?"  A great question but the reason the question occurs is because the name is misleading.

When we first encounter the transcendental number represented by the Greek letter pi (π), it is to find the circumference of a circle (2πr).  Later in our studies we are surprised to find it in so many places: trig function, exponential functions, integrals, and one of the most famous quantum equations, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle:

But really, it's because pi is always there in nature when we have symmetry (either geometric like we first encounter it or in symmetrical motion like oscillations).  When you reframe the role of pi away from the circumference of a circle into this larger role of symmetry, it is less mysterious when it pops up.

Likewise, the universe has a limit on the speed at which information can spread.  In order to preserve causality, there must be a constraint on this speed (if everything everywhere could happen at once then there would be no cause and, then, effect!).  Light is one example of massless information transfer.  So, once this mental reframing has happened, the original question really isn't the right one is it?

The other day, I was walking to school under the most perfect of spring mornings:  The blue sky was smiling down on me, the green leaves of the trees and the grass was glowing out at me, the birds were chirping, and my steps were light and confident.  I was taking a slightly longer way to work to appreciate nature in all its glory when a bird pooped right onto the back of my hand.

Bemused, I thought to myself (as a wiped it off when one of those bright green leaves I was admiring so) "well now this could really mar the enjoyment of someone's day but I'm going to be thankful it didn't land on my head and that it was apparently from a small bird" followed a little later by "I can even make myself see this as increasing my appreciation for this fine day by being reminded that birds pooping on people is part of it all".  Happy with my reframing, I walked on with long strides.

Vincenzo_Mirabella_20210529_134459.jpg (3964×2972)

* The most common 'bad' question I get is "Will this be on the test?"

You never know...

 ... my Dad took us all to the MFA today and it was a poignant reminder to me how you just never know what's going to strike you.  I predictably enjoyed the Van Gogh focus in the special exhibit and the Picasso's in their permanent collection.  But I was sailing through a room of Winslow Homer (never one who especially stuck me in the past) when I saw the "Gloucester Mackerel Fleet at Sunset".  Suddenly I was unexpectedly transfixed and teleported.  (I thought of how Christopher Reeve fell in love with a woman from another time by looking at her portrait in "Somewhere in Time")

I felt like I was looking at a memory of my own that was somehow made manifest on the wall.  Of course it wasn't, but that's how it felt to me.  I was reliving a false memory in the middle of this room in the middle of this museum.  It was akin to an out-of-body experience but in reverse.  Winslow inserted a memory into my own brain!

We actually build entire buildings to house art for us to look at and appreciate!  I guess humans aren't all bad after all!

Side note:  At one point, My Dad, My Son, and I all took a rest on a bench arranged from Oldest to Youngest.  I leaned over to my Dad and asked him "Do you think other people look over at us and see the three generations arranged in a row here?"  He replied "Nah...."

From Yellow to Blue

 Well, it was overdue, but we finally updated the siding on the house.  Less character but much more modern:

For all the Moms out there

Just outside the kitchen window, I have been watching a robin hard at work: keeping her three eggs warm and protected.  Lots of rain this past week and she was there, sheltering miserably.  She stares me down if I get too close as you can see:

It's hard work being a mom, huh?  Happy Mother's Day, world!

(By the way, the dad is out there too - patrolling the perimeter, but looks like the easier job if I'm being honest)

------------- follow up 24-May----------------

A Tale of Two Soloists

Within the past couple of months, I have been lucky enough to take each of my kids to really great concerts at the Boston Symphony Hall. (round two!)

Often, music will give me visual impressions - a feeling of flying through a landscape, patterns swirling and hopping; visual feelings like these.  With these two soloists, I got more than that.  The physicality of the players, their instruments, and the pieces they played... well, they all added in some way that I can only describe as spiritual.

Ray Chen playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D, Opus 35 seemed to be about to lift off from the stage physically.  Violin held high and almost escaping upward from his grasp.  One foot only lightly touching the ground.  He body arched towards the sky.  And the music just seemed to soar right over me in heavenly pyrotechnics.  His million-dollar smile shining across the hall.

Yo-Yo Ma playing Shostakovich's Cello Concert No.1 in E-Flat, Opus 107 seemed to push the music down into the ground and then erupt up through my feet and out of my own chest.  His musical punctuations so dramatic that he physically forced his chair to hop into the air on more than one occasion.  Seemingly playing a duet with himself at times, his body was an extension of his cello.  Rather than a celestial lift, there was a tender cradling.   In lieu of a megawatt smile, there was a blissful submergence in the music.

Two different men, two difference pieces, two different instruments.  But, in each case, those elements blended into something sublime and intense.  

Not only to have the pleasure of being there, but to share it with my two favorite people.  What a blessing.

Just another part of the teaching life...

Obviously part of some sort of social media trend, but I remain blissfully unaware...
 

You Are What You Eat

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what LLM's might be telling us about what thinking is...

Today I'm pondering the slightly dated observation that early LLMs had so many biases on account of their training data (like facial recognition doing a better job on white male faces since it was trained on predominately white male face data sets).  Even though we're doing a much better job with our training sets for modern LLMs (perhaps obtained illegally but that's a tangent for another day) - there must be biases always.   The nature of human generated data is going to be biased, no matter how large the data set.  

Now I'm thinking about how much I love the occasional K-Drama or Tom Clancy novel.  But if my entertainment diet consisted strictly of these unsophisticated foods, who would I be? What would my thinking look like if I had only had such a diet my whole life?  We have to make the effort to consume an occasional Moby Dick or Seven Samurai every now and then or else our own biases will default to another not-so-useful LLM spewing trite nonsense.

If we're going to have biases, let's bias higher rather than lower. Eat well my friends!

The Ecliptic, Thinking, and the Power of Reframing

Lately, there has been a lot of noise about how many of the visible planet will be lined up.  

Although it is cool to look at, this is no syzygy.  

If you reframe your point of view of stargazing around the fact that you live in a roughly planar solar system embedded a 3D field of stars, you realize that the sun, moon, and planets will all appear roughly along the same line in the sky from our point of view (the 'ecliptic').  

Actual arrangement of the planets - not really 'lined up'

I thought of this last night when I stepped into the backyard and observed Venus right next to the waxing crescent moon.  It wasn't even completely dark out yet but these two were just popping out of the sky, begging to be noticed:

my phone camera did not do this justice

I've been thinking ever since of how lucky I am to be able to have these two points of view:  A raw appreciation for the splendor of this serendipitous sight and the deeper appreciation of how these two point of light are nowhere close to each other and not lined up in any other way.

One morning, I was appreciating the Sunrise and thinking about how I was the one actually moving on a rotating rock at over 400 MPH* ('Earthturn' I've been trying to get my astronomy students to rebrand that old word 'Sunrise').  It was intoxicating and I got a little dizzy which then broke the spell of having that perspective (like how realizing you are in a dream will often wake you up).

source: https://physics.uwo.ca/~basu/teach/ast020/notes/nightsky.pdf

Reframing is a powerful tool.  When I think about how hard it is to learn a new thing or to actually think clearly, I remind myself that thinking is primarily (entirely?) an emotion-driven thing.  We are constant victims of our emotions.  Most of the time, our 'thinking' is just a way of justifying what our emotions have already 'decided'.  When I find myself baffled by others (or myself!), this perspective gives me comfort.

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”

― Richard Feynman

______

*rotational velocity of the Earth about its axis (approximate since this speed is dependent on your latitude of course)

Holiday Film School

 When Isabelle was home from college, the four of us watched (in order)

The Seven Samurai 1954 Kurosawa	The Magnificent Seven 1960 Sturges	The Magnificent Seven 2016 Fuqua

Aside from the fact that the original Kurosawa is legendary and influential in a way none of the derivative movies could possibly be, here are a few interesting observations we had as a family:

Classic       ----------------------------------------------------------------->     Modern

Bandits Need Food to Survive                 Bandits have a              Bandit leader of pure evil (leader’s identity not critical)                     named leader                Weapon of mass destruction Motivations are less personal                                                  Lead hero has personal vendetta

Funny Scenes                                                                                     Less comedy, more cool Intense acting, physical comedy                                                                   Hair cutting/head shaving important                                          scalping referenced

Role of Farmers                                 Townsfolk are farmer Emphasized                                    (one hero is former farmer)           Farming/Farmers (one samurai is secretly                                                                           not important farmer) (gold is!) In the end, the farmers are the winners emphasized (also their willingness to do anything  to  survive)

40 Bandits                                               40 Bandits                                   40 Townsfolk,  7 Heroes, 4 die                                     7 Heroes, 4 die                    hordes of bad guys                                                                                                                       7 Heroes, 4 die Romance ends                                      Romance succeeds                        Sexual references throughout                                                 No romance or references to sex Sacrifice theme                                     personal PTSD                         PTSD emphasized,  (houses, stolen wife, heroes deaths)                                                       Hero self-sacrifice                                                                                                                  is belabored, heroic Yoda-like old man                                 Old man less iconic                         no old man

No religion                                           Religion in background              Explicit Christianity No racial diversity Race important Racial identity important

Additionally, the classic Kurosawa had carefully composed shots that could work as photography whereas the more modern films were more concerned with action and transitions.

Is the 1960 film the origin of the story about the man falling to his death and saying "so far so good" on the way down? 

Yet another Lucas-Kurosawa link?

It's all in the relationships 2.0

 Two Precursors to this Post:

1.  My old blog post about physics and relationships.

2. You know how sometimes you have to hear something twice in order to really understand it?  I had watched the really great 3B1B explainer video about LLMs (all screenshots below are from that video) a few months ago which really primed me for this story.

And now on to the post:

My brother and I were visiting my parents over the MLK Day weekend when he began to talk about AI, LLMs, and where the meaning of things seems to be embedded in language.  After he explained tokenization:

(that's when human speak is translated into mathematical objects):

He then explained that embedding of these tokens into an abstract multidimensional phase space (which is what all the training of the LLMs is primarily doing... constructing the right encoding for these tokens) actually contains more information that the words themselves.  

Where these various tokens lie in this multidimensional phase space is meaningful in that the relationships between these tokens is geometrical and those relationships are what makes them useful to perform operations on.

As he was explaining, I had two simultaneous realizations.  This is how the universe itself works and this may be how thinking happens in the human mind.  In the universe, the properties of an object only become significant or meaningful at all in relation to other objects (how would you even know if something were charged electrically if there were no other charges in the universe?).  When you are thinking subconsciously and having feelings about things... how does all that nonverbal thinking happen?  We have actual multidimensional representations for concepts in the weighting of and the connections between the neurons in our brains.  

Of course this second realization seemed a lot less insightful when I remembered than human neuronal connections are the inspirations for neural nets which (once you add back propagation to train them) become LLM's which everyone is now calling AI.

For everyone who thinks that humans are so special with our ability to think and communicate, what are LLMs demonstrating about our vaunted abilities?   So rather than be impressed with how AI-like LLMs are, maybe we should just be less impressed with ourselves filling in the next word in the sentences we are constructing in our heads...

In the end, maybe the machines are not being promoted but we are being demoted?

I used to try to correct people who say "AI" when they mean "LLM" but now I'm just fine with it because I am going to start telling people who say or do something smart that they are a fairly effective LLM rather than say they are naturally intelligent.

Star Trek, Wine, and Religion

When your wife gets you a Star Trek Wine Advent calendar, that's a home run right there!

We shared the bottles over about 1 month and a half and tried to guess the varietal used in the wine before looking at the label.  They had a few weird ones in there, but in general I think they did an excellent job of choosing wines that had strong varietal characteristics (I got five correct!).

A very fine way to enjoy the dark days around the solstice!