All of science is connected.
Attention fellow science nerds.
Click to embiggen. Like big time embiggenating.
That map sorts 800,000 scientific papers into 776 related scientific paradigms based on the papers' cross-references.
I thought it was also cool that the map plotted out my interests where science is concerned. I'm at the top of the map, almost squarely on Computer Science. That's my career, my side jobs, my college major, and sometimes in my dreams at night. But on the map, Computer Science is directly related to Brain Research and Astrophysics. Plus, with a step through Math, you're linked right to Quantum Mechanics. Those topics are all I've been reading about lately. (The other end of the science map -the Organic Chemistry, Virology, Ecology and whatnot- are things I know nothing about and have really little interest in.)
Now before you tune out this huge science nerd with a wave of your manicured hand, let me just tell you about some of what my fellow nerds are doing in these topics. It's seriously cool stuff, for science nerds and normal people alike! See if these topics are anywhere near your end of the science map...
Brain Research
Current studies in Brain related technology both thrill and terrify me. Did you know that there is already technology that allows you to type with your thoughts alone? Robots and other mechanisms are also being controlled by thought. I've even seen the video game that allows you to control the movements of your character by strapping a small tube on your finger and THINKING things like "right" or "left". This stuff is exciting, but where does it lead? I've lost the link, but scientists have developed a way to accurately identify pictures in subjects minds. Where do we legislate who is allowed to read my mind and how? And can we expect the government to hold up those bargains? Is personal privacy, even in my own mind, a thing of the past?
Quantum Mechanics
Quantum Computers are not far off. Current computers are based on electrons being excited or not. 1 or 0. But electrons have 'quantum states'. Dozens of them. If we can store information in dozens of quantum states, instead of 2 states (0 or 1), than our computing power just improved by a factor of thousands. Imagine a computer that is thousands of times better/faster/powerful than the one you're using now. I can't even fathom what we'll be able to do with that.
And quantum theory is thrilling on a metaphysical level. I mean, for informing some of the bigger meaning-of-life type of questions. I'm currently reading The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life by Evan Harris. It's not light reading, by any means, but he details the connection between consciousness and all particles in the universe. At a quantum level, different tests are proving over and over again that these tiny particles are affected by our mind. Not our instruments, but our mind. And the significance of that puts the universe in a strange state. Does all matter depend on a consciousness? Does that prove a God exists?
Further, quantum entanglement, or the fact that manipulation of one electron changes the state of another electron regardless of the distance between them is being hailed as a type of teleportation. In fact, it can be viewed as a type of time travel. The implications of these applications are astounding. Not in a "look what we can do" sense, but in a "the universe does not actually act like we all thought" sense. Laws about Physical Impossibilities are out the window.
Astrophysics
And those concepts border on astrophysics. Quantum Mechanics upends typical views of the nature of the cosmos. The speed of light, gravity, time, matter, distance, electrons... are they pieces of the same thing? Are they the physical protrusions of something inconceivable in another dimension? If you believe in God, as many physicists do, where does he physically intersect these concepts? To interact with this dimension and our consciousness, is His holy spirit affecting electrons in our brain? in solid matter? in celestial orbits? These are philosophical questions that science actually considers. And that borders on Theology, which influences morality and sociology, which takes us into every other aspect of the human condition.
Science is pivotal. These connections and their progress excite me like almost nothing else. Tell me some of you have a little bit of a science nerd in you too. What do you think?
Posted by heydomsar
2007-03-21
go back | random brainstorm | go forth
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