A holograph of itself All [physical properties of matter] derive from the different patterns of the interaction of electrons and photons within the fields of the positively charged atomic nuclei, stabilized in a particular morphology by the interaction of the levels themselves. Matter is a holograph of itself in its own internal radiation. Matter versus Materials: A Historical View physics
Reality just seems to go on crunching I once met a fellow who thought that if you used General Relativity to compute a low-velocity problem, like an artillery shell, General Relativity would give you the wrong answer—not just a slow answer, but an experimentally wrong answer—because at low velocities, artillery shells are governed by Newtonian mechanics, not General Relativity. This is exactly how physics does not work. Reality just seems to go on crunching through General Relativity, even when it only makes a difference at the fourteenth decimal place, which a human would regard as a huge waste of computing power. Physics does it with brute force. No one has ever caught physics simplifying its calculations—or if someone did catch it, the Matrix Lords erased the memory afterward. Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality: From AI to Zombies physics
Corpuscles of nothing and atoms of something The structure of matter devolved ultimately into the intimate coexistence of something like corpuscles of nothing and atoms of something, segregating through the accidents of history to yield regions differing in density intimately interwoven on different scales. The experience of the world as well as human perception and analysis of any part of it is a matter of the angular scale of resolution and of the time necessary for making comparison between the different parts. Without such variations and without time to compare remembrances of them, nothing can be experiences. Cyril Stanley Smith, The Tiling Patterns of Sebastien Truchet and the Topology of Structural Hierarchy physicsperception
I know all about entropy Adell: I know as much as you do. Lupov: Then you know everything's got to run down someday. Isaac Asimov, The Last Question timedeathphysics
The Iridium System Several Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) networks were proposed, but only one got off the ground: the Iridium system. The original Iridium proposal called for a "constellation" of 77 satellites, which gave the plan its name: the element iridium has atomic number 77, meaning that an iridium atom has 77 orbiting electrons. Before the satellites were launched, the constellation was scaled back to 66 active satellites, but no one wanted to change the name to Dysprosium. Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape physicscommunicationaerospacecosmos
Fermi Estimates and Dyson Designs An Article by Venkatesh Rao www.ribbonfarm.com A Fermi estimate is a quick-and-dirty solution to an arbitrary scientific or engineering analysis problem. Fermi estimation uses widely known numbers, readily observable phenomenology, basic physics equations, and a bunch of approximation techniques to arrive at rough answers that tend to be correct within an order of magnitude or so. The term is named for Enrico Fermi, who was famously good at this sort of thing. …It struck me that there is counterpart to this kind of thinking on the synthesis side, where you use similar techniques to arrive at a very rough design for a complex engineered artifact. I call such a design approach Dyson design, after the physicist Freeman Dyson, who was one of the best practitioners of it (not to be confused with inventor James Dyson, whose designs, ironically, are not Dyson designs). designphysics
The Circus An Essay from Every So Often a Talking Dog Appears by Smiljan Radić EnduranceThere it is againPreparing a stage
Endurance For Alfred North Whitehead, a car accident and the exposure of a pyramid to the sun on any given day are equivalent events: We are accustomed to associate an event with a certain melodramatic quality. If a man is run over that is an event comprised within certain spatio-temporal limits. We are not accustomed to consider the endurance of the Great Pyramid throughout any definite day as an event. But the natural fact which is the Great Pyramid throughout a day, meaning thereby all nature within it, is an event of the same character as the man's accident, meaning thereby all nature with spatio-temporal limitations so as to include the man and the motor during the period when they were in contact. Alfred North Whitehead time
There it is again Apparently architecture does the same job as set design, "it creates units of environment, atmosphere, or events"—whatever you wish to call them—but with more weight, carrying more material, slower. This is why it can raise the curtain more times and repeat "there it is again" for longer. Perhaps for this and other reasons there are periods in the history of architecture in which stage design or the folly, for example, have been an effective field of experimentation for serious architects. Follies architecture
Preparing a stage When a client arrives at my studio, my job consists of preparing a "stage" for the length of time he desires, whether it be for a day or years, it is irrelevant in the end. A stage in which he can move under the sun "as if he were at home," though he walks stuttering at first before learning what will come in the script, be it kind or not, and which he will repeat a thousand times until he tires. When he tires, a panel is disassembled to readapt the children's room, the roof is demolished to make a study, the façades are decorated and life continues unperturbed. design