This is a collection of 12 of my most popular Medium stories and a little reflection on what made them popular.
28K views, 9.7K reads, 277 fans, 130hr 20 min reading time (Dec 2019)
My most viewed and most-read article is about speed through the 4D Minkowski spacetime. Everything travels at the same speed if we include the 4 dimensions of spacetime, hence the three spatial dimensions and one temporal. The faster your travel through space, the slower through time. If you stand still in space, you travel at maximum speed through time.
13K views, 6.9K reads, 628 fans, 201hr…
“Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.” — Paul Klee
Is the sky really blue? Is white color made up of all colors? It sure seems like it, but it only does so, because our brain makes up such properties.
You have probably learned in school, that light is an electromagnetic wave, and the wavelength of this wave will determine the color of the light if it’s in the visible spectrum. …
Recently, I had a muscle biopsy that was taken from my thigh — for science(!), of course. After the biopsy, the researcher said that I had a very resilient fascia. Usually, the fascia would become “mushier” with age, he said. (Did he just call me old? Oh well … 140+ is no age for a dragon!)
I was like: “The fascia? What is fascia?”
“It’s a thin film between the muscle and the rest of your body,” he said.
I got curious, and when I got home I did a little research. Apparently, it’s fascinating and not that well-known tissue…
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” — Ellen Parr
What is curiosity and how is it related to science and scientific thinking? Neil deGrasse Tyson said:
“When I think of science and scientists I think of kids who never lost their curiosity and wonder and then woke up one day as adults with the very same sense of search for what is and what is not true in the world.”
As children, we were naturally curious. We had to learn everything about the world and our place in it from scratch, we got the…
I recently read about the natural biorhythms of hormones following our inner circadian clock. Cortisol is rising in the morning and awakens you together with higher levels of adrenaline. This means that in the very early morning, you are naturally awakened by your own body (although I am sure that it works for some better than for others. I’m already an early bird, so easy for me to say, right?).
“What’s the point of racing around the galaxy if you aren’t going to have fun?”― Zoraida Córdova, A Crash of Fate
We live on a spinning globe orbiting around a yellowish star in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The daily spin makes the view of the neighboring stars of the Milky way seem to rotate one round around us daily, but as we only see the stars at night when the planet surface turns away from the Sun, we only see about one half of them.
It’s a good thing that the planet also goes around…
The answer depends on your angle: Are we talking about the measurement of time? Clocks, time scales, and calendars? Or are we talking fundamental spacetime-level? Or maybe the philosophical implications of past, present, and future? Or even biological and how evolution on Earth has shaped us and our time perception, or neurological, how this time perception is being handled in our brain?
Even with a specific context, there is no one specific answer. Time is an abstract and fascinating concept. We can only move in one direction, always what seems to be at the same speed. …
In 1905, Albert Einstein published his special relativity theory, which stated that the Universe has a speed limit, which is the same as the speed of light. He has been fascinated by the nature of light for many years before that, entertaining the idea of what it would be like to catch up with a beam of light.
How would it be to catch up with a beam of light?
Would you then observe a standing wave of light? But that would be impossible according to Maxwell’s equations.
In a sense, you can view the speed of light as “infinite”…
‘Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.’
The above is a quote from the movie, Tenet. While we tried to feel it in the movie theater, in this article, we will try to understand it. The arrow of time, entropy, reversed universes, and the science behind it.
Bonus in the end: A silly analogy of entropy that leads to maximizing happiness. Based on the same analogy in my university thermal physics book, and expanded a bit.
Last, but not least: If you are curious about the time concept, and would enjoy a free challenge to change your perception of time…
Computer scientist and almost-astrophysicist. Curious about life, the universe, and everything. Are you too? https://www.facebook.com/groups/scienceandcuriosity