cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, and Maxine Shirts.
"This week Andrea went to Utah to help Kate with the baby during Paul's first full week of school. Rachel and Matt, you kids are very quiet when Mom's not around. Overall it was another quiet week. Because my ankle is still swollen half a size too large (0201.html) I didn't go running in the mornings. So I spent an hour reading each morning after my normal reading of a chapter from the Book of Mormon. I finished the book Andrea gave me for Christmas: Stephen Hawking's `The Universe in a Nutshell.' It is one of those books I expect to go back to again and again. Although it is very readable, I didn't understand everything as well as I would like to. Each sentance is packed with meaning, and there is a lot to comprehend. The figures are phenomenal, and it is written so most folks will get a pretty good intuitive feel for the concepts he writes about. I hadn't read where Hawking defines an event horizon and wrote Des last week for help. Actually, having read Des' explanation, when I got to Hawkings, I was better able to understand it. Thanks again Des, you gave me a more inuitive way to understand of the spherical nature of an event horizon.
When I started reading the book at Christmas I was struck by the fact the famous equations are proportional. For instance, Einstein's famous equation E=MC^2 is simply E=Me where e is what could be called Einstein's constant, i.e. the speed of light squared. In other words Energy is proportional to Mass. Stephen Hawking is famous because he has a similar equation: S=hA. Of course, it looks much fancier in his book, because h, or the Hawking constant, is written out as:
However, K = Boltzmann's constant, C^3 = speed of light cubed, P = Plank's constant, and G = Newton's gravitational constant. Since all of these are constants they can be reduced to h, which I call the Hawking constant. By the way, S = Entrophy, or loss in information, and A = the area of an event horizon. So Hawking is really saying Entropy is proportional to the area of an event horizon.
I think of all of the information I have lost over the years, and I try to personalize this equation, which was derived for better understanding black holes. So I asked Des to explain to me what an event horizon is. I figure if I can measure the area of the event horizons in my life, I ought to be able to figure out what information I have lost. Alternatively, if I can measure lost information, I should be able to determine the the area of the event horizon. Des pointed out these event horizons are spherical, so knowing the area, it is straight forward to calculate the diameter and the radius (A=4*pi*r^2, so the radius, r, = square root of A/2*pi and the diameter = 2*r). It therefore seems logical that when I sense I am going into a funk, i.e. crossing the boundary of an event horizon, I should be able to figure out how far, in terms space and time, I will end up traveling through this period of blackness.
Of course, scientists teach us that we can never escape from a black hole once we have entered one. However, Hawking points out there are virtual particles both appearing and annihilating one another, close to the event horizon of a black hole. If one of a pair of particles falls into the blackhole, its twin is free to escape. My conclusion is that the particle that escapes the black hole will always miss its companion, and yet it can find ongoing value in existence by finding and joining with another particle of the opposite polarity which has also lost its companion.
In `The Universe in a Nutshell' Hawking points out other linear, or should I say proportional, equations:
Roice also gave me a book for Christmas, which I mentioned last week I have read. It is called `The Laws of the Web, Patterns in the Ecology of Information.' Based on the decrease in the cost of communication (it cost $300 to talk from London to New York in 1934 and now it costs less than a dollar) and the increase in the power of computers (Moore's Law tells us we will keep getting smaller, cheaper computers for years to come), the Internet was created. There were a few web sites available in 1993 (including HyperMedia Corporation), and there were 320 million in 2000, showing the Web doubling in size every six months. One of the `laws' is that the probability of finding a web site with a given number of pages, n, is proportional to 1/n^b, where b is a number greater than or equal to 1. An example of the impact of this law is that a logarithmic plot of Number of Sites vs Number of Pages forms a straight line. A logarithmic plot of the Number of Sites vs the Number of Out Links is also a straight line. These power laws also imply some users have a lot of links to others while most users have few links to others.
As I read and contemplated these relationships, my mind went to the scriptures, which I firmly believe have eternal truths written on their pages:
In otherwords B = kO, where B = blessings, O = obedience,
and k is a constant tied to the number of talents we have
been given. This same formula is repeated many times in
the scriptures: Proverbs 10:6; Proverbs 11:11; Proverbs
28:20; Malachi 3:10; James 2:14-18; II Nephi 1:28; Mosiah
2:24, 41; Mosiah 24:13-15; III Nephi 24:10; D&C 58:2-4;
D&C 59:3-4; Moses 6:4; etc. And, like any law, the
opposite is true, i.e. -B = k*(-O), or in the words of
the scriptures (D&C 20:20):
Getting back to my theme of `The Universe in a Nutshell,'
I am particularly impressed by the words of Lehi to his
son Jacob in the wilderness (II Nephi 2:13-16), where we
are taught there are `both things to act and things to
be acted upon,' i.e. A = p*U, where A = things to Act,
p = a yet to be undefined universal constant, and
U = things to be acted Upon.
This is similar to an insight some time ago from the book `Why? Science Unveiling the Mind,' by R. Colin Johnson (see ../0018.html). In that book he defines levity as the opposite of entrophy. As those of you who made it this far will realize, Entropy, or S, is one of the basic parameters in Hawking's book: S=hA. So is there a proportional relationship between S and levity, i.e. does L = nS, where L = Levity and n is another yet to be defined universal constant. If so, is it the destiny of the universe to become full of L, and is life winding the clock we call universe up, rather than winding it down, as the first law of thermodynamics would have us believe?
As I walk by the TV and see today's sitcoms, I think the world is winding down. There is little of good report or praiseworthy to be found here. And those who fill their mind with this stuff (-O, disobedience) are bound to find -B (sensual and devilish and fallen). And I am drawn to another conclusion, i.e. the longer the television is on, the more probability we will see every movie that has ever been filmed; i.e. M = t*N, where M = Movies, t = time televisions are on, and N is a constant related to the number of new movies that are being created. Hawking indirectly talked about this idea in `The Universe in a Nutshell' pages 71-72:
So coming back to earth, my week was pretty quiet. The
biggest events each day seemed to be fixing a breakfast
before seminary or cooking dinner. When Paul called
the first night he said, `I bet you cooked rice! I used
to hate it when Mom would leave, because you would always
cook rice!' Out of the mouths of babes! Yes I cooked
rice and chicken Tuesday night, Speghetti Wednesday,
leftovers on Thursday, and Rachel and Matt didn't want
any dinner on Friday. Oh well! We had pancakes on
Wednesday morning, biscuits and gravy on Thursday, and
Matt cooked french toast on Friday.
I worked at home all week, redoing the main Dynamic web pages (see http://www.walden3d.com/dynamic) and my resume (see http://www.walden3d.com/resumes/hrn_c_v.html for a reference to each of you and .../hrn_short.html for a more typical resume), and calling folks to set up sales meetings. Evan Genaud came by on Wednesday evening and helped me lay out a plan for getting the Rio Grande County, Colorado prospect drilled. I sent e-mails to Jim Jinright, Scott Lackey, and Trey Sibley of the Rudman Group as a result. I had a nice lunch with Don Cauldwell, a Marathon Oil research scientist at the Houston Club in the Galleria on Thursday, and with Jim Hurn of Petris at Beef N' Bird Rotesserie on Friday. He things Petris will pick up the lifetime Landmark license Continuum is no longer using, which is good. Sam LeRoy and I made a great presentation to two folks at Duncan Oil at Post Oak and Woodway on Friday afternoon. Busy for next six weeks, and then he said they are interested in working with us. Trust the process (../0146.html). I keep telling myself all of what is going on in our life right now is a proportional formula, and the only unknown quesion is `What is the size of the unknown constant?' Surely the answer is simpler than it was to define the universe in a nutshell."