Bubble of Viral Spacetime

‘The achievement of the Kaminari-zoku implies that there are other spacetimes. Certainly other regions of the Universe beyond our causal horizon. If rational actors have evolved in them, they will have broken their Planck locks – or worse, evolved natively in an environment with no restrictions on computational complexity. If so, it is likely that they will have optimised the expansion rate of their spacetime, turned into an expanding bubble of thought. ‘If so, such a bubble of viral s...

 Hawking's Equation

awking has written down an equation which looks rather like Planck's equation. Hawking's equation is S = kA, where S is the entropy of a black hole, A is the area of its surface, and k is a constant which I call Hawking's constant. Entropy means roughly the same thing as the heat capacity of an object. It is measured in units of calories per degree. A is measured in square centimeters. Hawking's equation says that entropy is really the same thing as area. The exchange rate between area and en...

 Plank's Constant

In the year 1900 Max Planck wrote down an equation, E = hv, where E is the energy of a light wave, v is its frequency, and h is a constant which we now call Planck's constant. Planck's equation was the beginning of quantum theory. It said that energy and {22} frequency are the same thing measured in different units. Energy is measured in ergs and frequency in cycles. Planck's constant gives you the rate of exchange for converting frequency into energy, namely, 6 × 10–27 ergs per cycle. B...

 Definition of Plank's Constant

Just as you can't have one-third of a penny or two and a half quarters, Planck declared that when it comes to energy, no fractions are allowed. Now, our monetary denominations are determined by the United States Treasury. Seeking a more fundamental explanation, Planck suggested that the energy denomination of a wave—the minimal lump of energy that it can have—is determined by its frequency. Specifically, he posited that the minimum energy a wave can have is proportional to its frequency: ...

 Science Virtue and its Impact on History

So proud men have thought, in all walks of life, since Giordano Bruno was burned alive for his cosmology on the Campo de' Fiori in 1600. They have gone about their work simply enough. The scientists among them did not set out to be moralists or revolutionaries. William Harvey and Huygens, Euler and Avogadro, Darwin and Willard Gibbs and Marie Curie, Planck and Pavlov, practised their crafts modestly and steadfastly. Yet the values they seldom spoke of shone out of their work and entered their...