New Friends

Chen Shi-Zheeng, director of operas and the movie DARK MATTER. Chen was inspired by a 1991 incident at University of Iowa, when a physics grad student from China killed 5 colleagues and himself. An innocent woman named Miou had been assigned to the physics department as a pool secretary, and was caught in the crossfire. She was severely injured but survived to enjoy the movie Saturday.

Chen noted that at least 1000 suicides occur each year on campus (more Americans than are killed in Iraq). For some reason the schools don't tell our parents about this, or the many assaults and crimes against women. Along with all the other hazards, there is great pressure for us young minds to conform. Anyone on physics will tell you how difficult it is to propose new ideas. After the New York screening of DARK MATTER, astrophysicist Neil Tyson stood up and said, "that's the way it is!"

Each individual life is valuable, and you may note some additions to the blogroll. Long overdue for a link is Carl Brannen, who singlehandedly has come up with some fascinating ideas about masses and "snuarks." He has noted that if c ~ t^{-1/3} and R(t) ~ t^{2/3}, we could just as easily write c(t) = R/t. Black Hole radius, Planck length, wavelength of photons and even the scale of magnetic fields would also vary proportionately to R. Keep up the good work, Carl!

We are fortunate to have heard from Robin Booth. As an MSc student at Imperial College he had Joao Maguiejo as supervisor and heard many things about a changing speed of light. His paper has many parallels with other research on "c change." Expect to hear many good things about Robin's work. Look for his link "Insular Institute." (slow download)

Carl and Paul Nielson also point out a paper by Alexander Unzicker, which reexamines Dirac's large number hypothesis. Paul Dirac, one of the biggest names in quantum mechanics, noticed some strange coincidences in the fundamental values. Putting c ~ t^{-1/3} neatly solves Dirac's mystery, something even a hostile questioner at St. Louis noticed.

Robin reminds us that the Alternative Cosmology Group, is having their conference September 7-11 in Port Angeles, Washington. The location is a national forest at the entrance to Puget Sound, across the strait from Victoria BC. Sometimes a walk in the woods is the best way to find new insights. One can also observe salmon swimming upstream! Carl, Robin and others show that real breakthroughs come from outside the mainstream.