posted December 21, 2002 05:46 PM              

Now before we start, im a bit of a physics freak as well as an archetypical computer nerd. I tend to view the world in as much as a scientific way as in a mystical way...one could say i try to fuse the two most of the time.

SO here we go:

Astrology relies on the effect planets have on ones natal chart, a sequence, or snapshot of values at the point of your birth.

One might argue why this isnt conception, or when you turn 1 year old, or ten, or 18 - even if it did, i beleive the results would still be consistent because utilising celestial objects as a reference point is merely a large instrument, so the results would be consisistent independant on how that instrument is calibrated.

Bearing that in mind, most people ask me about astrology - How do the planets affect you?

Well, the only forces our physicists currently know about that have long range effects are gravity and Electromagnetics, carried by the theoretical Graviton and Photon, respectively.

Light is the world our eyes see, but what of the world of gravity?

We cant detect it, we dont even know exactly how gravity works, its almost a total deadzone.

Sure, newtonian physics and General Relativity can predict the effects of gravity, but on a quantum, subatomic level every theory has fallen flat on its face.

Several recent discoveries (mostly M-theory and things like supersymmetry) got me thinking though..

Basically, we experience 4 dimensions.

Width, Depth, Length and time.

The last one of which we are tagged to, expanding in a direction relative to entropy (the increase of disorder in a system).

However quantum gravity theories predict anywhere from 11 to 26 dimensions.

Through supersymmetry one can condense these dimensions down to the minimum of 11, mainly because after a while it became apparent many competing theories were just "different ends" of one larger picture.

The general idea is that when the big bang happened (and it did, the universe has a microwave background radiation of about 3 degrees kelvin, or three degrees above absolute zero, which is taken as evidence for such an event) the universe suddenly splashed into life very quickly in all 26 dimensions.

However soon after this, in order to prevent the density of matter exerting such a pull on the universe via gravity that it would collapse into a giant black hole/singularity, it must have began expanding at a very fast rate.

Enter the rapid inflationary model of universal expansion - and this is where it gets interesting.

The universe became supercooled - much like water when it is cooled VERY quickly, pockets of the liquid remained liquid at a temperature BELOW the freezing point of water.

In this respect, it is possible for "regions" of the universe to have curled up dimensions. In our region, the 4 we know must have unfurled, in a nother region it is entirely possible for others to have changed.

Now these other dimensions exist in continuity with ours, its just their real space is exceptionally small, even on a subatomic scale (and this makes the nucleus of an atom look like the size of the sun in comparison to a dust mote)

But my thinking goes, and this is the big sticking point -

What if ones' soul resided in some of these curled up dimensions?

And the evidence for this is astrology.

We dont know what dimensions gravity propagates through - it may well affect these tiny curled up realms of spacetime our physical bodies do not extrude through.

Isn't it possible then that such a poorly understood force would exert a pull on ones' "soul"?

Of course this doesnt mean you cant fight it, you can go the opposite direction, but if you do nothing and remain inert obviously you will "move" in whatever direction that force is pushing you in.

This isnt a scientific paper, plus i dont have the grounding in either astrology nor physics to really make this an academic work, its just something i've thought about for a while now - and i cant see any reason why it wouldnt work.

Sources:
Lindaland (yay)
Stephen Hawkings' a Breif History of Time www.science.box.sk
Peter F Hamiltons' "The Nights' Dawn" Trilogy (the origional idea at any rate)
My own dysfuntional brain

posted December 22, 2002 09:13 AM              

there four fundamental forces in quantum mechanics-

Gravity

Electromagnetism (light, basically, although it covers from radio waves right through to gamma waves)

Strong Nuclear Force (this binds quarks together to form subatomic particles like protons and neutrons)

Weak Nuclear Force (this is the force carrying particle, or boson, thats' responsible for radioactive decay)

Of all of these, Gravity is the least well understood, imo followed closely by strong nuclear force because quite frankly, although all the maths works and predicts these things nobody can quite work out how they actually work.

Anyways, there's so much maths involved we're talking whole walls full of equation-swamped blackboards, and while I kindof understand the theories I can't make head nor tail of the mathematics.

Now obviously what might be interpreted as a totally new force could quite easily be one of the above four, because at higher energy states (IE, when local space gets very hot and dense) they start looking like the same thing - this has been shown in particle accelerators like CERN and LHA.

They can combine the other three into one force and the maths works fine...but add in gravity and things break. Which is the holy grail of modern physics really - a Grand Unification Theory as its' called, because at one time very shortly after the big bang there was just this one, unified force, and as it cooled they seperated out.

So in answer to your question, no I dont think there's another force out there - but I DO think there are other manifestations of forces we know about that we havent detected yet.

posted December 22, 2002 04:27 PM              

The Casimir effect is caused by vacuum fluctuations - because at very small scales you cant be totally sure if space is entirely empty. Its kind of an odd get-out clause physics uses - look up the "uncertainty principle" in a quantum mechanics book - explains it all better than I can