The Darkest Corners of the Universe

Okay, black holes might not be corners, and sometimes they can be ironically bright, but we still recognize them as some of the darkest things around. The idea of black holes has been around for a long time. Since Einstein's theory of general relativity, physicists have solved the equations for a variety of different situations in which the equations could be useful. Eventually, the object is squeezed into a such a small volume that the density of the object approaches infinity. As the density approaches infinity, the change in curvature of space-time is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape its gravitational force. This is the basic explanation of a black hole.

Since black holes were theorized, they have been a huge part of the physics pop culture, everyone hears about black holes and wants to know more of what they are, and for good reason. They are some of the most exotic objects in the universe, and they can do some pretty crazy stuff, and we really don't know much about them.

As I said, they are basically an infinite source of density. This is referred to by physicist and mathematicians as a singularity, because it is impossible to actually deal with numbers at infinity. Instead they look at how things react when they approach infinity. 

Since the centre of matter is so condensed, this is not actually what you "see" if you were to observe a black hole. You would really see the event horizon, or a point of no return for the black hole. If something were to pass a black hole's event horizon, it would be gone forever. At this point the gravitational force is so strong that nothing could pull the object out. As you passed the event horizon, nothing would change from your perspective. You would pass through without nothing changing at all to you. As you approach the singularity at the centre, gravity would get so strong and would change so drastically as you go further that you would get spaghettified. Your feet would be pulled stronger than your head and you would literally be stretched out like a piece of spaghetti. Eventually, you would reach the centre of the black hole but your body would have gone through so much force that you would not recognize yourself. You would be a lifeless clump of matter.


This creates another interesting problem; what does an observer on the outside see when something falls in? According to general relativity, the object would be redshifted. What this means is as the object approaches the event horizon, the observer on the outside would look like they are constantly moving further and further away, so the wavelengths of light get longer and longer until they essentially disappear before ever crossing the event horizon.

Another answer to this question, from the point of view from string theory, is something called a firewall. As the object passes the event horizon, nothing on the inside of this area can ever get out, not even light so it would be impossible to see the object past this point. Obviously we don't see the object just disappear, instead we see something called matter annihilation. This is just as extreme as it sounds. Basically the object entering the event horizon appears to be completely converted into energy. This gives a pretty good ending to the object on the outside, but really it falls forever to infinity at the centre. When dealing with singularities and infinity, these counterintuitive paradoxical situations are essentially a necessity. Infinity does strange things to the world.

Now that you have the basic idea of what a black hole is and where the problems come from, we will be able to go even deeper into these conundrums of the cosmos in the next posts.

Taking a Step Back

Life is a pretty crazy thing. I don't mean the scientific portion of biology that focuses on how life is created, I mean the human aspect of living that everyone of us experiences every day, well I hope you do. Living in todays world there are a lot of distractions that can take away from the joy of life, and if you don't try to see it you may be missing out. 

Every day, people are busy with school for us university students, maybe a job, a family, significant other, or other tasks that are considered vital to living a good life. With all these things putting stress on people and distracting them from enjoying living life. Im not trying to say that these things aren't important, of course you should have a job and a family and anything else like that to fulfill certain aspects of basics life, but these things should not BE your life.

Every day around the campus of uWaterloo, I see people rushing off to class, or stressing out over homework, and not enjoying where they are. University specifically is a great place, its a place for ideas, to collaborate with people interested in the same things as you, meet lifelong friends, and enjoy everything around them. But some people seem to always be concerned about only their studies. This is only part of the experience, just like a job is only one part of life. Sometimes you need to take a break from what you think is important and just relax.

A personal example of this happened to me yesterday. I was reading for my philosophy course and decided to take it outside to enjoy the nice fall day we were having on campus. I was getting distracted pretty easily with some people watching and admiring the setting I was in, looking at the buildings around me. This sounds like I was slacking off but it was really why I was out there, to enjoy it all. Then I looked over and saw a little squirrel just minding his business completely calm around all the bustling people around him. He was going through a garden just looking for some nuts, as squirrels do, but I had realized that even though I knew this is what squirrels do, I had never really seen one go about and find a nut. I spent about 10 minutes not even realizing what I was doing just staring at a squirrel, something everyone sees every day. This is what I mean by taking a step back and enjoying the little things life has to offer, because they're everywhere if you just take a look.

The point of all this is that life isn't about what is important to be successful. Being successful is being happy, and to be happy all you need to do is take everything for what it is, and enjoy everything you see. Don't get to overwhelmed with anything you're doing because it is only really important to you, and if you aren't enjoying what you're doing well the answer is simple: stop doing it. Life is anything but static so don't think change isn't an option. Most of all, do what you love and love everything you do. We only get one shot at life so why not have some fun with it whatever you end up doing.

The Seams of the Cosmos

Ever since there really was a field of study known as physics, those studying it have wondered about what makes up the smallest constituents of everything we see around us. The ancient Greeks came up with the word "atom" to describe the smallest possible, indivisibles piece of matter. Since then, we have been finding smaller and smaller things that make up matter, even smaller than the atom as we call it today, things such as quarks and electrons. But still, scientists must probe further and further to try to find what really makes up everything around us.

One of the leading theories in particle physics, the specific area of research devoted in part to finding the smallest particles, is called string theory. You may or may not have heard about string theory for its claims and unusual methods of getting there, but even if you haven't not to worry. I am going to give you a very basic intro to string theory as best as I can so you can have an idea as to what we may really be made of.

The central theme of string theory comes right out in its name: strings. The theory goes like this: all matter we see around us is made up of vibrating strings as small as physically possible, at a distance called the Planck length (the smallest unit of space allowed). Every different piece of matter, such as quarks or electrons, is made of a string vibrating at a different frequency. A way to think about strings could be similar to notes on a guitar, every note has a different frequency at which the strings vibrate, just like every constituent of matter is just a different vibrational pattern of the string.

So far I've only mentioned matter, like you and me, but string theory can also be used to describe particles of energy, like a photon, or even a particle which transfers a force, like the different types of bosons, which transmit the strong and weak nuclear forces. Any basic particle of the universe, in theory, can be described by string theory. String theory has even been used to predict elementary particles with corresponding masses and spins to their vibrational patterns.

To me, this part of string theory is quiet elegant. The fact that every particle in our entire universe can be described by the same thing is quiet remarkable. However there are some things that hold string theory back, at least in my opinion.

The first is that it will be nearly impossible to actually observe and test string theory because the things we will be trying to see will be smaller than the things we are trying to see. To be able to observe something precisely, we need to probe it with something smaller than the object we are probing. For example if you were trying to map the surface of a golf ball and its dimples by bouncing something off the surface and measuring its path, you would not get a very precise measurement by using a basketball because it could not go inside the dimples, or even close. In the same way, to measure the exact shape of strings and their properties, we would need something smaller than the string itself. The theory proposes its own problem here, since it says strings are the smallest constituents, there literally shouldn't be anything smaller to probe them with if the theory is correct. So if we can see them, it proves part of the theory wrong, and until we can see them the theory can never really be proven right. Seems like a problem to me.

Another problem is that for the math to work in string theory, which I myself don't yet understand, there must be at least 9 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension, for a total of 10 space-time dimensions. Even for a someone in physics like me, who can come up with some pretty radical theories and proposals, the idea of 10 dimensions making up our universe does not make sense to me. It doesn't fit our idea of the universe at all, and the theories used describe the dimensions are anything but elegant. And to me, elegance is part of a good scientific theory.

This was a very basic introduction to string theory but I will almost certainly post more about it in the future. It is a very exciting and interesting aspect of physics in todays world, and I myself am very intrigued to see where the theory takes us.

Research Jobs as an Undergrad

Many of the people reading this blog I'm sure are undergraduate students, just like me, and are probably interested in a research lab assistant job for either a summer job or a Co-op position or something along those lines. Again, just like me. Sometimes information can be difficult to find about such positions. Thats what the Research Jobs for Undergraduate Students page is for, for people to post about interesting openings, cool faculties, and experiences in research positions if you've had them! So please comment something on the page if your interested, or just check it out if your looking for something cool.

A Simulation of the Universe - Part 2

Have you considered where our universe came from? If you read the last post of this blog you certainly must have. Its a very intriguing question and depending on how your brain works there are many different ways to approach it. In the last post, which if you haven't read I strongly recommend you do before reading this one, we talked about one especially interesting possibility of the origins of our universe, and an infinite number of collateral ones.

This possibility is that our entire universe and everything in it exists only as a simulation. This possibility comes from the observation that simulated realities are extremely more common in our world than "actual" realities that we live in. Simulations range to pretty much every aspect of human life, from things like traffic simulations and weather which are quite common all the way to simulations of our entire universe's growth. Even things such as dreaming, books, video games, movies and other sources of fiction could be considered simulations. As you can see, the simulated realities greatly outweigh the actual one that we live in. Based on these numbers, we can draw a conclusion that our universe and the reality we seem to experience every day is also a simulated one.

At this point it would be natural to seriously question this idea. How could the entire world and universe that every human has ever lived in not actually be real? At the appropriate time in history, this question would have been akin to ones such as how could the Earth not be the centre of the solar system? It brings in a particular human arrogance that has built the society we see around us, but I urge you to for a second put it to the side.

Consider one specific simulation now, whichever you like for example a video game like the Sims (a game in which the player controls the entire life of an animated avatar they created). Imagine you are in the game as a character someone else created but you didn't know it and had no way of figuring it out. You would be carrying out a life that someone else had created in a simulation. It would feel like you were living your own life, like everything was normal, you could do anything you felt like doing, you had all your usual free will. But really you would have none of it. Now think about your own life. Do you see any real differences between our life and unknowingly living in a simulation from the inside? I certainly don't. 

So based on this reasoning, we could be living in a simulation our entire life, and never know it.

Of course, theres the element of humanity we have to consider. If we have the presence of mind to ask questions about our creation, and if we are actually real and if we actually exist, could this suggest that we aren't just running the course of someone else's video game? Its a very interesting question that we really can't prove because we would need to probe outside our universe. It also involves the question of God, because if we are a simulation, someone must be running it. These are all questions that I do not have the answers to and as a society we may never have, but nevertheless its very thought provoking. 

If you have any arguments you may have come up with that I overlooked, add it in the comments below!

A Simulation of the Universe

Every day, thousands of simulations are run around the world to take care of many different things, like traffic, weather and other aspects of normal human life. There are even some slightly more extravagant simulations done for things such as tectonic activity, black holes or even simulations of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and our neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, colliding (heres a short video of this9 simulation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4disyKG7XtU). The point is, simulations are going on all the time, we simulate and predict countless parts of life. You probably even simulate things in your own head, when you're day dreaming in class.

With all of these simulations in our own world suggest something profound about the existence of our whole universe. This idea is a pretty unusual concept, and in earlier times would probably have been considered blasphemous for the very thought, but may not come easily so as I try to explain it keep an open mind, explore the suggestions and arguments for yourself. Try to come to your own conclusion about it, because this is just one side to the story. Before I explain the thought behind it, all of these simulations suggest that our entire universe itself, including everything in it (and us), is a simulation. Let me explain.

As I said before, there are countless simulations we do everyday all around the world covering an immense variety of situations. As far as we know, the "reality" that we experience every day is the only one that is what the adjective suggests; real. Just in sheer numbers, there are incredibly more simulated realities than there are real ones, and just based on these probabilities it seems incredibly unlikely that our universe actually is real.

At this point you're probably asking yourself where the simulation could have come from, who or what is running it, and many more questions which I earlier asked you to keep an open mind about and consider. These are important questions to look at because they reveal things about our universe and possible others that you may not have thought of before. 

First, who or what is running the simulation? As I said before, that the whole simulation idea is blasphemous, this question suggests something like a godlike figure, someone or something carrying out this simulation is basically controlling our entire universe. It could be some alien race, just a giant computer, or really any possibility you can think of. Another thing you might think is maybe the thing controlling our universal simulation is only in their own simulation, and then someone else controlling the ones controlling the simulation controlling us, and so on and so on to infinity. This really proposes that everything in our universe is not real at all.

This is a lot of information to take in and it can be a hard concept to grasp. I would be lying if I said I fully understood it, but it is intriguing to think about nonetheless. I encourage you to think about this idea more and in the next post I will try to do a better job at explaining my thoughts on the subject more deeply.

The Mind of a Physicist

Most people who genuinely like studying physics and getting into the deep dark questions about the universe, myself included, can be a little quirky. Again, myself included. This isn't meant as an insult in the slightest, its truly a huge compliment. Being quirky is what makes people themselves and what makes them interesting. This being said, physicists are some of the quirkiest, most interesting people you will ever meet. 

Being an aspiring physicist, this makes me think about what I must be like... and I definitely fit in the overly quirky category. I must be honest though it makes life more interesting, at least in my own head. But physics isn't a subject for the faint of heart, and thats where these quirks come in handy, and in my case I think I'll be able to survive undergraduate physics. I hope may be a better phrase...

In the first Physics Club meeting at uWaterloo today, filled with primarily first year students such as myself, many upper year students were less than optimistic with their predictions for how us Frosh will do in our upcoming studies. They said at least 70% of the students in the Physics Department will drop out of the program by the end of first year. Thats more than 2 of every 3 kids. So sitting in a lecture hall in between 2 people, both of them won't be here in a years time. A little depressing for an enthusiastic 17 like me.

But then I looked around the room at the upper year students who were still fighting for their undergrad, seeing how they acted and taking in some of their tendencies. Then I listened to them for a while, for how they spoke in general and to each other. And while doing these observations I noticed something: these people who are actually making it through physics, in the lucky 30%, have just as many quirks as I do. They have similar interests, similar dialects and even similar idiosyncrasies. Based on this I told myself, hey maybe I'm one of the lucky 30% too. I fit the image, I have the drive, and I want to be where they are in a few years so why not.

So, by being a good scientist and observing my surroundings, making connections, and drawing conclusions I figured out that I'm exactly where I should be. Thats a very good feeling to have at such a young age, and I know I'm lucky for that, even if I'm not in that elusive 30%. I know there are people that go their whole life and don't have this feeling of total content, knowing you are exactly where you should be and you're doing exactly what you should be. And even though it will be a lot of extremely hard work I'm extremely grateful to have the opportunity that I do to explore the universe and do exactly what I want to.

There are a lot of people, at any age, but especially at mine who don't have this feeling, who are just uncomfortable doing what they're doing. And I encourage these people to never give up when it comes to finding your niche, to always be open minded and to not be scared of change. Because sometimes you never know when you're going to find the thing thats perfect for you, so take a chance and go find it. Take it from someone with more than their fair share of quirks, finding something that fits you is the most worth it and fulfilling thing you can do and the more work you put into the pursuit the more rewarding your happiness will be.

An Infinite Number of Yous

This week for many people my age marks the first week of freedom in their young lives, their first university classes, and the first time meeting friends they'll keep for the rest of their lives. Its a very exciting time for us youngsters. But it also gives us the opportunity to think about if things were different. Theres an endless number of things that could be different for us right now, and really for anyone at any point in their life. But your life is the way it is for a reason... or so we think.

In quantum mechanics, everything is based off probabilities of certain situations happening, or not happening. A simple example of this is concept is flipping a coin. When you are about to flip a coin there are two possible outcomes, before you even start. They are heads or tails. Once you flip the coin, you observe one or the other probability occurring, either heads or tails. But what happens to the other probability?  Does it not occur, does it go somewhere else? What exactly happens? 

According to the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, if our universe is infinite, every probability that could occur, DOES occur somewhere in the universe. This can be a difficult concept to wrap your head around. In our coin example this would mean that even though you may have seen your coin land on heads, somewhere in the universe the same exact situation played out and it landed on tails. I know its not that easy to visualize.

Think about the word infinity. This basically means there is no end, whatever it is being referenced to goes on forever. So in the case of the universe, this means its spatial and time expanses never end, they goes on forever. If you could see infinitely in every direction it would never stop. In most occurrences in life, which take place within our "infinite universe", there are only a finite number of possible outcomes. Finite would mean there are only a certain number of things, whereas infinite means the list of things that could happen never end. So, in our infinite universe, when there are only a finite number of things that could happen, the finite list will run out before the infinite. Since something has to be filling this space, this means the list of finite things will repeat eventually, but only after every possible outcome has occurred. For our coin example, after you flip heads, somewhere in the infinite universe you flipped tails. 

While trying to explain this concept, which you may still not be getting which is completely understandable (were talking about infinity which is never easy), I have only eluded to our universe being infinite. The other side of the many worlds theory is that there are and infinite number of universes where in each one a different outcome occurs. This is intriguing because in every universe everything could be exactly same except for one small difference. For example in one universe you are a dog and that is the only difference. Or in one universe every person has 5 eyes but everything else is exactly the same. If the many worlds theory is correct, this would mean every one of these possibilities does happen. Every movie you've ever watched, book you've ever read, or even dream you've ever experienced does happen. So Star Wars actually happened, Star Trek will happen, and the Leafs are the defending Stanley Cup Champions. Yes some of these are far fetched but if quantum mechanics is right this is a reality.


This idea can make you feel really small. It essentially says that every good thing you want to happen does happen somewhere, just maybe not to you. To me its humbling. It shows me that nothing in this life is that important, nothing matters at all in the grand scheme of things, unless you make it matter. Everything we do as individuals has no real meaning at all, even as a society. The universe will keep expanding, time will continue on. I don't mean to sound like a defeatist, but my message is this: make sure that whatever you do in life matters to you and you're doing what you enjoy, because when it all comes down to it you're only one of an infinite you's and whatever you do is only important for you. Live life for you and do what makes you happy.

Living the life of Star Wars may be closer than you think

Since moving in on Sunday morning, I have now been a resident of Waterloo for a full 3 days. 3 days of finding my classes, meeting new students, and all around getting orientated with my new home. I guess thats why they call it orientation week. What these three days has done most however, is get me more excited for what the rest of university will be like. After all the meeting and greeting is over this coming saturday, I can't wait to see what its like being in a lecture hall and actually learning what I'm here to learn. Wandering through the library earlier this morning I saw more books than I could imagine all about science and math. Things like this are bringing out the real school nerd in me and I could not be more happy.

I apologize for the life anecdotes of late, but this is WATERLOO Physics so things about the University will come up from time to time. I will be getting back to more physicsy posts in the coming days because I know you all miss them. For a little bit of physics to brighten your day for now, I have this for you.

Researchers at MIT have found a state of energy, or light, that when manipulated in a certain way behaves like matter. In normal terms this basically means lightsabers, which I think will make every part of life better because whats not better with a lightsaber. I'll go more in depth with this topic in the future but I thought you might all like to know that the greatest movies of all time, Star Wars, may soon become a reality.