Ninth and Prospect will be Avenged!

I live in a suburb of Cleveland, and work in the city proper–that’s probably the first time I’ve mentioned that in this blog. Anyway, parts of downtown are blocked off because a director of whom I have formed an opinion is shooting a quirky little indie film called (checks IMDB) “The Avengers.” Today, I ducked out of my internship early to check out the set on Prospect and East 9th Street where they’ve been blowing up cars all week (surreally enough, about two blocks down from the insurance company at which my father works). I saw some cool stuff, but saw nothing happen.

Most of the set on Huron was obscured by a white screen for moderating light, and platform for equipment I’m not going to guess the function of. It’s the sausage making-machinery of movie magic.

A security officer told us gawkers that the real action was happening at the other side of the street, on Prospect. A small contingent of us then set down a freakishly and nonthreatening clean alleyway (way to be on your best behavior, Cleveland!), and past some catering trucks. I was afraid crew would look at me weird if I took pictures of their food trailers, so I didn’t.

But when we got around to Prospect, there was no one close enough to give us weird looks; onlookers were sequestered a couple hundred feet from the staged wreckage of a Times Square battle involving Captain America (Chris Evans) and a foe yet to be confirmed, but which everyone who knows The Avengers comics* assumes are the Skrulls.

Here is my Sasquatch hunter-caliber photo of two men in contemporary Army fatigues walking away from the wreckage site. I saw several more on the Huron side of the set earlier.

Here are a few vehicles on site with New York-y markings. Thoroughness!

Nothing was happening, and my meter was running out, so I headed back down the nonthreatening alley. It was occupied by some extras in FDNY firefighter and EMT costumes. Some hipsters were engaging them in conversation; my social anxiety and the specter of a Meter Valkyrie kept me from doing the same.

I hope to make it down to the set again before Whedon wraps the Cleveland leg of filming at the end of the month, and file another report. With good fortune, the next one will have a more exciting takeaway than the fact I WAS WITHIN ONE CITY BLOCK OF JOSS WHEDON. We probably breathed the same air at some point, and if I were a superstitious man, that would mean something. But I’m not (my own views on heroic object veneration are close to this essay), and it doesn’t.

*I am not such a person. The only title I ever read as a kid was The Amazing Spider Man. Granted, it took place in the Marvel universe continuity–the same occupied by the Avengers–but there was never a crossover in the few years (months?) I followed it.

 

 

Inflationary multiverse theory may have recieved first direct empirical evidence

Democritus, or perhaps Leucippus, was the first Western thinker to propose an infinite universe. Many of Democritus’ commentators in early Greek philosophy, most notably Aristotle, found the hypothesis extravagant. However, numerous strands of 20th century physics suggest Democritus not have gone far enough, and advance a succession of theories positing an infinite number of universes.

Quantum physicists following Hugh Everett argued the jittery indeterminism and anti-realism of quantum mechanics was an illusion, and every possible wave function realized itself in some parallel plane. String theory posited our universe was a four-dimensional membrane or “brane” in an unfathomable stack of cosmic tissue. The inflationary cosmologies of  Guth, Vilenkin, and Linde predict the universe created in our Big Bang is merely one bubble in an inexhaustible foaming spacetime sea.

Now, none of the theories of a multiverse are interchangeable. All posit the existences of universes causally isolated from, but equally real from our own. But each theory posits their own universes exist in a different way from those predicted by other theories. Proving one right would not be a “proof” for another–but it would also not be a refutation of the other two. The theories attempt to describe different phenomena, so aren’t in competition. As they are not mutually exclusive, it is possible to believe in all three without contradicting oneself–though I would not recommend making this leap yet, because it is still something of a leap of faith. The mathematical descriptions of quantum mechanics, string theory, and inflation are all incomplete, and the latter two are still controversial in-of-themselves in their respective fields, regardless of their content on parallel worlds.

And, more importantly, there has been no unambiguous empirical evidence for the existence of any parallel universe, let alone an infinite quantity of them. Quantum physics and inflation have both made mathematical predictions which have been confirmed in observations. This has led some of their defenders to claim that because these theories maths have proved consistent with experiment, they should also vouch for their content which is beyond our current capacity to test. In short, they say because the theories apply to accessible parts of reality have proven true, they are likely true when they speak of the inaccessible parts, too. But this is not solid science. As the English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley said, “Many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.” Whether the facts compliment the beauty of our best and brightests’ equations has yet to be determined.

However, we may finally have the first solid fact (ugly or otherwise, depending on your commitment to human exceptionalism) to put one multiversal hypothesis to the test. A recent paper in Physical Reviews letter claims to have observed the “shadow” of four other universes created by inflation:

The idea that other universes – as well as our own – lie within “bubbles” of space and time has received a boost. Studies of the low-temperature glow left from the Big Bang suggest that several of these “bubble universes” may have left marks on our own. 

… The preliminary work, to be published in Physical Review D, will be firmed up using data from the Planck telescope. For now, the team has worked with seven years’ worth of data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which measures in minute detail the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the faint glow left from our Universe’s formation.

The theory that invokes these bubble universes – a theory formally called “eternal inflation” – holds that such universes are popping into and out of existence and colliding all the time, with the space between them rapidly expanding – meaning that they are forever out of reach of one another.

But Hiranya Peiris, a cosmologist at University College London, and her colleagues have now worked out that when these universes are created adjacent to our own, they may leave a characteristic pattern in the CMB.

Dr Peiris’ team first proposed these disc-shaped signatures in the CMB in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, and the new work fleshes out the idea, putting numbers to how many bubble universes we may be able to see now.

Crucially, they used a computer program that looked for these discs automatically – reducing the chance that one of the collaborators would see the expected shape in the data when it was not in fact there.

The program found four particular areas that look likely to be signatures of the bubble universes – where the bubbles were 10 times more likely than the standard theory to explain the variations that the team saw in the CMB.

However, Dr Peiris stressed that the four regions were “not at a high statistical significance” – that more data would be needed to be assured of the existence of the “multiverse”.

“Finding just four patches is not necessarily going to give you a good probability on the full sky,” she explained to BBC News. “That’s not statistically strong enough to either rule it out or to say that there is a collision.”

Dr Peiris said that data from the Planck telescope – a next-generation space telescope designed to study the CMB with far greater sensitivity – would put the idea on a firmer footing, or refute it. However, the data from Planck cannot be discussed publicly before January 2013.

So, things to stay alive through 2013 for: Cabin in the Woods, The Avengers,  and evidence for or against a multiverse.

Further reading suggestion:  Many Worlds in One, by Alex Vilenkin, father of eternal infation. A popular, accessible, and funny, but by no means breezy, exposition of the theory Peiris and her team are trying to prove.

Some hobbyists collect stamps; others probe the very heart of matter

(above) Richard Handl, whose name is sometimes transliterated as "Ray Palmer"

To each their own. Via the Washington Post:

 A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby.

Richard Handl told The Associated Press that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material.

…

Although he says police didn’t detect dangerous levels of radiation in his apartment, he now acknowledges the project wasn’t such a good idea.

“From now on, I will stick to the theory,” he said.

Usually, I find private experimentation that could potentially bring harm to unwitting bystandards reprehensible—hell, I don’t even like fireworks. But for some reason, I can’t help but admire Handl.

I’m brought to mind of Michio Kaku, the theoretical physicist who as a teenager built a functional particle accelerator in his parents’ garage. Both stood upon the shoulders of giants and reach to touch the world’s deepest core with their own hands, reaffirming the accessibility and practicality of knowledge we usually assume can only be uttered in the esoteric cloisters of the ivory tower.   

Which is not to say what Handl did was probably not incredibly reckless and deserving punishment. Yet I still hope Handl gets a light sentence and, before fading from the public consciousness, goes on to become a popularizer and demystifier of nuclear physics. As the industrial world burns off its fossil fuels, the much maligned specter of nuclear power could use a friendly public face.