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   mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:23:04 JST mcc

   • myrmepropagandist

   @futurebird I've been thinking about this last night and I've decided that the weirdest thing in the universe is that the moon and the sun are the same size in the sky. This is incredibly freaky actually. For this to happen we had to roll a very specific combination of moon count, sun count, moon size, and time in the evolution of the earth-moon system (the moon is moving away from the earth)

   • Embed this notice
     John Carlos Baez (johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:22:59 JST John Carlos Baez

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist
     • jon ⚝

     @yala @mcc @futurebird - I think the weirdest thing in the universe is life: for example the way water, ammonia, methane and the like, under the right conditions, slowly turns into butterflies, sequoias, philosophers, con artists and music. It may be common, it may be rare, we don't know.

     I would love loop quantum gravity to explain matter but nobody has gotten it to work yet. People have tried:

     Sundance O. Bilson-Thompson, Fotini Markopoulou, and Lee Smolin, Quantum gravity and the Standard Model, https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0603022.

     But it doesn't work so far.

   • Embed this notice
     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:23:01 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist
     • John Carlos Baez
     • jon ⚝

     @yala @johncarlosbaez @futurebird …You tagged without including my caveats post! https://mastodon.social/@mcc/113777162976368540

   • Embed this notice
     jon ⚝ (yala@degrowth.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:23:01 JST jon ⚝

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist
     • John Carlos Baez

     @mcc
     Due to the way how Fedilab pulls in other messages up to the OP when I've entered the thread further down.
     @johncarlosbaez @futurebird

   • Embed this notice
     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:23:03 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist

     @futurebird If the fine structure constant is fine-tuned, we can appeal to anthropics (or multiverses even?) and say a particular fine structure constant was necessary for intelligent observers to arise and measure a fine structure constant. The moon and sun having similar arc sizes? Has to be a coincidence. BUT IT'S SUCH A WEIRD COINCIDENCE. Why would the only known self-reflecting intelligent species in the universe HAPPEN to pop up in the exact slice of time and space for Good Eclipses. Why!!

   • Embed this notice
     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:23:03 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist

     @futurebird On the way to this conclusion, I spent some time thinking about a slightly different question: Things that are "Interesting" rather than "Weird". Conclusions:

     The most interesting thing in the universe: Bacteria astronauts https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8867-earth-rocks-could-have-taken-life-to-titan/ (this is based on simulations and isn't proven to be true. but it's POSSIBLE, and this is enough)

     The most interesting idea: Braid matter http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.0037

     The most interesting manmade thing: LISA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna

   • Embed this notice
     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:23:03 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist

     @futurebird Elaborating on "braid matter": There is a theory called "loop quantum gravity". It tries to make gravity quantum-physics-y (this is hard) by first developing a quantum theory of space. It works, but has a problem: It has no way to represent matter. So THIS theory suggests every piece of matter is a tiny persistent twist in spacetime. A bit of space got caught in a knot, and you can slide the knot along the "rope" but you can't untie it, unless it encounters another knot and rewinds.

   • Embed this notice
     jon ⚝ (yala@degrowth.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:23:03 JST jon ⚝

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist
     • John Carlos Baez

     I would be interested to hear the thoughts of @johncarlosbaez to the points stated in the thread above, including the question in the OP.

     @mcc
     @futurebird

   • Embed this notice
     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:23:32 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist
     • John Carlos Baez
     • jon ⚝

     @johncarlosbaez @yala @futurebird I think the thing to me is, it is interesting even if it doesn't describe the universe. It seems to be describing *something*. And the something seems(?) easier to simulate than the real world. The real world has like, path integrals and other gross stuff going on. I just want to put a bunch of spin networks in a computer and see what they do.

   • Embed this notice
     John Carlos Baez (johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Monday, 06-Jan-2025 16:23:32 JST John Carlos Baez

     in reply to

     • myrmepropagandist
     • Greg Egan
     • jon ⚝
     • Dan Christensen

     @mcc @yala @futurebird - I agree, it would be good to put spin networks on a compute and let them evolve in time and see what they do. We need to accumulate knowledge about such things.

     I helped invent "spin foams" because they're a spacetime way of thinking about how spin networks evolve in time. Later @jdchristensen, @gregeganSF and I simulated some on a supercomputer (actually a "Beowulf cluster"), and we learned some stuff, mainly that existing theories of spin foams didn't work the way people were hoping.