Constructal Theory of Everything?

A very interesting text that describes what appears to be a bold new approach to modeling many possible systems - even human ones - is about to be released. Titled Constructal Theory of Social Dynamics and  edited by Adrian Bejan and Gilbert W. Merkx, the text "brings together for the first time social scientists and engineers to develop a predictive theory of social organization, as a conglomerate of mating flows that morph in time to flow more easily (people, goods, money, energy, information). These flows have objectives (e.g., minimization of effort, travel time, cost), and the objectives clash with global constraints (space, time, resources). The result is organization (flow architecture) derived from one principle of configuration evolution in time (the constructal law): "for a flow system to persist in time, its configuration must morph such that it provides easier access to its streams."

Begin and Merkx are from Duke. The Duke press release  is very enticing - this is certainly a text that will serve as a reference for the chaos and fractals course, or perhaps a primary source.

Some tantalizing tidbits:

Why does a railway network look like a river? Why do the streets of old Rome look like a leaf? Because whether their shape is determined by the interactions of molecules or the choices made by individual humans, all of these systems of flow are governed by a relatively simple new principle of thermodynamics.

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Newtonian Determinism and Pathological Aloneness

Newton's Alchemical manuscript. Click to  enlarge.Newton's Laws applied to physical situations describe a Universe that is totally deterministic. For scientist-modelers, the canonical methodology for predicting future events is based on Newton's process: stuff the initial conditions of a system into the appropriate "laws", and let time increase in the resulting equations of motion. Here's your prediction as a time series extending as far out into the future as you need. Next problem!

Chaos theory does not violate this Newtonian modeling process. Instead, chaos demonstrates that the equations of motion are so non-linear that small inaccuracies in the initial conditions lead to wildly varying future predictions - the so-called sensitive dependence on initial conditions that is the foundation of the butterfly effect. In effect prediction becomes limited in many situations, with weather one of the chief systems where predictability is desperately needed, but often leaves all of us wondering where the TV weather people ever got their degrees...So prediction is diminished, even though determinism is as strong as ever.

I was thinking about Newton's legacy of determinism as I read a piece on Newton written several years ago by James Gleick for Slate, titled Isaac Newton's Gravity. Gleick, the author of the text that brought Chaos to the masses (Chaos - The making of a new Science) is also the author of a well-received 2003 bio of Sir Isaac.

Gleick argues convincingly for the need to display Newton's achievements in the context of his rather bizarre life (of which the pathological aloneness in the title of this post is one of Gleick's signature descriptions). In this his approach reminds me very much of the recent biographies of Einstein.

Was Newton as methodical as the way physics is now presented seems to suggest? Were his life, beliefs, etc., a product of immutable beliefs and processes?

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Cross-Species DNA and Accelerated Evolution

Protein molecular evolution. From M. Deem.A recent article in the May 2007 APS News describes the use of a physics model to understand accelerations in evolution that occurred between the appearance of 1-celled organisms 3.5 billion years ago, multi-celled organisms 1 billion years ago, and everything other organism that has since appeared on earth in only the last billion years.

The modeling is by Michael Deem of Rice U. His model allows for  "cross-species genetic exchange" - in effect DNA from one species is adopted by another which then realizes an evolutionary advantage. Successful DNA adoption is called HGT - Horizontal Gene Transfer. Deem's approach is based on field-theoretic techniques. The net result: species can evolve much quicker because they contain fully-functioning "genetic modules" from another species. The implications for our own genome are startling, and it may be that a "significant portion of our DNA was donated by viruses and bacteria that infected our ancestors" over millennia.

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Relative Time and Swiss Clocks

The recent books on Einstein by Isaacson and Neffe (see reviews) cover the development of special relativity in great depth, with special attention to the development of an operational definition of time duration that vanquishes the prior notion of simultaneity. Indeed, simultaneity is now accepted as observer-dependent, thanks to Einstein's Special Theory.

Both books do refer to the role played by Poincaré- although "role" is not necessarily the operative term here. No doubt Poincaré was thinking deeply about time, but did not make Einstein's leap to codify the relative nature of time duration.

An excellent book on the Einstein/Poincare connection is Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, by Peter Galison. Here Galison tries to relate Einstein's experience as patent clerk who most likely saw patent proposals for clock synchronization between different Swiss cities to his ongoing thought -experiments in the foundations of physics. ( In a generally very favorable review by R. Wald for Physics Today, this idea is called into question.)

But the Poincaré connection is fascinating because it is not clear to what extent, if any, Poincaré's writings on time were even seen by Einstein. (And the title of the book is itself a play on words, because a Poincaré Map is a fundamental analysis/visualization tool of chaos and fractals.)

The new Einstein bios have really opened up new avenues of thought on how Einstein came to be Einstein. The Poincare connection is fascinating, and a potentially important piece of the answer.

Most amazing of all is the pictures these books paint of the intellectual ferment taking place in Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It is hard to imagine a similarly exhilarating time of new, earth-shattering theories that can possibly duplicate these years for excitement and creative brilliance.

Woodstock and Superconductivity

Physicist lowers body temperature to achieve a superconducting state.

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
- Joni Mitchell

I never made it to Yasgur's farm - I was just too young in 1969 to head to New York to catch all of the acts that I loved. Later that summer I did make it to the Atlantic City Pop Festival , which was a much-sanitized version. No rain, no mud slides, no babies born...and there was certainly no one making movies or disclaiming about the AC Pop Festival Generation.

Many years later I finally made amends for my serious cultural lapse in '69 and attended the next Woodstock - the Woodstock of Physics. This 1987 event was a wild affair as the news of high-temperature superconductivity was just breaking, along with promises of a Jetson-like future soon to be commonplace. There were thousands at the session in NYC, with most (including this author) watching the presentations via monitors in the corridors, straining to hear every word, to make out every blurred overhead with a hastily sketched graph, waiting to hear what would be the next latest (and higher) superconducting temperature...

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

A surprising fact about HTSC is that discovers  Karl Müller and Johannes Bednorz received the Nobel Prize that same year -an amazingly short time for the Nobel committee to name an award winner. (They had first noticed the effect only a year earlier.) Typically it is many years between discovery and award, with other experimenters and theorists demonstrating that the original discovery was both true, and truly significant for physics. More amazing, there was no consensus on why HTSC occurs.

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Improve Your Home Run Chances - Walk Softly But Swing a Small Stick

From Baseball Physics: Anatomy of a Home Run by Davin Coburn in the June 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics, comes some interesting data/trends on home runs. Some of these are contrary to baseball-lifers' opinions, but I assume that some players will take heed of the predictions. After all, one thing not in the article because it is obvious is the direct relation between salary and home-run prowess.

Check out the article for some interesting graphs that illustrate the following findings:

• The sweet spot is larger than previously thought
• Batted Ball Speed (BBS) is more of a determining factor in home runs. This leads to a prediction that increasing the swing speed is better than increasing the bat weight. A corollary to this is that lighter bats (31-32 oz) are ideal bats for pro players.
• Because of the direction of spin when they reach the plate, curve balls can be hit farther than fast balls, even though fast balls leave the bat traveling faster.

Other interesting facts that can be derived in an introductory physics class is that the average pro swing imparts 4145 pounds of force to the ball, and the farthest a ball can be hit (with no wind to help it, and no rarefied air such as in Colorado) is approx 475 ft.

Although no physicist is quoted by name in the article, I believe that some, if not all, of the topics discussed come from Alan Nathan's Physics of Baseball work, described in my earlier post on Willie Mays and Global Warming.

Solar Cycle 24 Predictions

Cycle 23-24 sun-spot predictions. Click to enlargeIn a post last year titled Solar Activity Modeling: Great Predictions, Lousy Understanding? I described the current state of solar cycle modeling. Solar storm cycles are approximately 11 years in length.

We are now entering Cycle 24, which will start in March 2008, and reach a peak in 2015. The prediction from the NOAA (National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration) is that "the Earth will soon experience a period of intense solar storms and the exact number of solar storms expected will become clearer in time."

Read the NOAA release of these findings here.  This is an excellent article that describes how sunspots form, the nature of the 11-year cycles, and how the predictions are made. Sun spot activity can be extremely deleterious to transportation and communication infrastructure, and therefore predictions have to be accurate. The care with which the predictions are made is evident in the statement by solar-physicist Doug Biesecker:

“...there are approximately six techniques used to predict the intensity of a solar cycle,” said Biesecker. “The first three are based on statistics and provide a sound historical baseline upon which to forecast future cycles. The other three are based on physics and the sun’s dynamo conveyer belt theory.”

An overview of these techniques can be found in last year's post.

When Monty Met Erwin

It may be that only Monty Python's exquisite blend of slapstick/farce/erudition/absurdity can take on the infamous cat of Erwin Schrödinger...

Schrödinger, one of the giants of Quantum Mechanics, truly believed that his cat presented an absurdity that undermined the probabilistic interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. QM was not undermined, and still continues to beguile and bedevil all who try to grasp its implications about the nature of the world.

Cecil Adams' "epic" poem The Story of Schrödinger's Cat, is a great riff on the Krazy Kat. A choice excerpt:

Now, you'd say the cat either lives or it don't
But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.
Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer, "Tough @#&!

Of the many thousands of S-Cat web sites, one of my favorites is The Well-Intended, but not quite interactive Schrödinger's cat: A Rather Silly Experiment in Quantum Mechanics.Click here to try your luck at predicting whether you can indeed let the cat out of the bag...

Cartoon info: By Paul Dlugokencky, concept by Zachary H. Levine, for the American Physical Society

The Two Einsteins

A lot has been written about the latest Isaacson bio of Einstein, and it's now on all US best-seller lists.  Remarkably, there is another Einstein bio just released by Jüurgen Neffe (actually released 2 years ago in Germany and then most of  Europe where it has been a best-seller equivalent to Isaacson) .

I was lucky enough to get the Inquirer assignment for both of them. See the full review. (Because the Inquirer piece was restricted to 850 words, I will have much more to say about both of these books shortly.)

They're both amazing books, with Neffe's maybe the more interesting... If you have the time, read them both!

Real Physics and Faked Farm Music

The ultimate in modeling occurs when a simulation of physical events is so real that reality pales in comparision.

Consider, for example, the case of the University of Iowa Farm Music Machine, as described in a recent e-mail making the rounds:

This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa.

Amazingly, 97% of the machines Components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft Iowa, yes farm equipment! It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video but as you can see it was WELL worth the effort.

It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.

If you haven't seen/heard this device, check out the video. (Note - this is a wmv file. If your media player can't play it, try viewing the film at any one of hundreds of websites, e.g. digg)

While this is an amazing video, the Farm Music Machine is obviously not true - it is a brilliant computer animation produced by Animusic titled Pipe Dream. The e-mail describing the FMM may just be the most benign, and popular urban legend listed on Snopes.

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