Taoyuan Nights

Today, I stumbled upon this link to a wonderful article at the New York Times. Normally I’d just hit forward and send it to a few friends, but the ideas are so intriguing that it deserves a blog mention.

Essentially, it asks: Why is the universe “human-suitable” in terms of the difficulty of understanding what’s going on out there? Really, what are the odds that the complexity of reality should be (more or less) comprehended by a small, squidgy piece of goo weighing a few kg?

The rather concerning answer that is put forward is: “What if it isn’t?”. In other words, what if the stuff we’re comprehending and measuring when we do physics is just a mere fragment of the ‘real’ reality - and in fact we lack the kind of thinking power that would be needed to ever deal with the ‘real thing’?

Now, my normal reaction to any kind of limit being needlessly imposed on the human ken is ‘poppycock’, but still, it’s an interesting read.

Another article I’d like to draw your attention is about some Malaysian Monks with an Ant Dilemma at the BBC. Worth a read - the final paragraph is genius.

Last of all, some interesting pictures from the New Horizons Pluto probe: The rings of Jupiter (I didn’t even know it had any!) and Volcanoes erupting on Io (one of Jupiter’s moons). Pretty unbelievable stuff.