It must have been 1995. I was playing in my first real band - “Krusters Kronomid”. I was in my one bedroom appartment in Bellingham getting ready for a show at the Viking Union, when Chris Walla showed up. He seemed concerned that maybe I had been in an accident.
At that time, I was having a lot of fun connecting electronic sounds into my guitar. Rafe Wadleigh (the guitarist/bassist) for Krusters had taken some headgear out of a construction helmet. I wired up a strange voice changing toy and connected it to the headgear.
Chris snapped this picture of me as I was testing it out.
Later that night, I tested it out on stage. The following is a worn-out tape recording of that test.
Rafe starts out playing a bass line causing the robo-headgear to go haywire. Then Jason McGerr (the drummer) comes in with the drums … and Mike Seilo (the singer) just looks on in disbelief.
The robot voice blares out - seemingly with a mind of its own. I was suppose to be in control of it. It had other ideas.
I yell “Wait … wait … quiet down … wait … it’s picking up too much stage noise.”
My favorite part is when Mike says “Let’s cut the side show and play a tune!”
WATCH YOUR EARS AND SPEAKERS! VERY HARSH SOUNDS!
It ended up sounding like a naughty robot throwing a tantrum. It broke the moment I took it off and I never bothered to fix it.
A few years back, people believed the world to be flat. It is now generally accepted that the world is spherical. One has to be appreciably far from the earth to observe its spherical form. The fact that it is a sphere allows airplanes and communication satellites to circumnavigate around it and connect our world. Otherwise, we all keep pretending it’s flat anyway and don’t think much about it.
Similarly, our universe has three possible shapes: flat, positive curvature and negative curvature. The jury is out as to which form it has. To understand the implications of curved, or non-Euclidean space, let’s imagine a triangle overlaid on top of the globe.
From this picture, we can see that the triangle intersects the equator at right angles. Our curved space triangle now contains more than 180 degrees within its angles, not possible in Euclidean geometry.
If our universe is curved, an object traveling in a straight line may not be going straight at all. A jet flying north may seem to be flying straight on to its passengers, but in reality it is following a curved path around the globe.
If we were to aim a beam of light towards a Alpha Centuari (towards where it would be four years from now of course), it would most likely arrive in tact due to the incredibly boring and empty stretch of four light years that separate us. Like our airplane, would the light have traveled in a straight path to get there?
Light sent from Earth to Alpha Centauri
Double click to play:
I had an idea about measuring the shape of the universe. Using some basic geometry, spectroscopy and simple measurements, we might be able to look deeper into this.
Modern telescopes allow supernova events to be recorded with great detail. If one of these explosions can be observed inside a symmetrical nebula, the light energy escaping from it could tracked over a series of years.
Double click to play:
(I got this movie from here.)
The luminous border of the nebula, depending on its composition and density, would expand at or nearly the speed of light. This has been shown in Supernova 1006, which took place about a thousand years ago.
The lateral growth of the nebula represents the base of our interstellar right triangle. With a little geometry, we might be able to figure out how our universe is curved (at least between us and the supernova).
Light emitted from a Supernova heads to Earth
Double click to play:
Why does it matter?
The shape our universe is what will determine its fate. Without going into details, if you have any interest in the future, higher powers, fate and such, this is it.
Concerns:
The gas particles in the nebula will slow the light down. Absorption spectra could be used to determine the composition and (possibly?) the density of the nebula.
Space may not be curved enough to be observable at the given distance.
Does light play by the rules? We know it is affected by gravity but how would it interact with curved space?
This is not meant to be a scientific exploration. It’s just a thought I had while daydreaming in class.
We should make some big triangles to figure out how it will all end…
Way back in the year 2005, on the way to attend the wedding of my good friend Chuck and his soon to be wife Stephanie, I shot a series of time lapse movies.
The wedding was in the Cascades near Mazama and Winthrop Washington. The scenery was great … late summer.
Liz and I were just starting our tubin’ phase so some of the mountain rivers and lakes looked pretty good!
I dug up the footage and made a soundtrack for it today. The music was created using a non-repeating permutation pattern like this:
Each number 1-4 stands for a musical phrase. The permutation allows for all combinations of the pattern without repetiton. Sweet … I’m a nerd.
I also bought my last physics textbook today:
Here is the movie “Mazama”.
Because it is a timelapse film, the file size is huge in order to retain the quality. Let it download for a while before you start it.
On Friday, the 28th of March 2008, we observed the passing of our friend Hitachi hard drive #HTS721080G9SA00. It was a good friend for almost two years of continuous and faithful service. It enjoyed rendering, audio recording, video capture and the decoding of the occasional mp3 file in it’s time off.
Although it struggled with a life long 8 meg buffer, it’s 80 gig capacity and 7200 RPM spin rate were quite top notch for it’s time. Not to mention a robust SATA interface.
The cause of death is uncertain, but a faulty windows installation may have led to its early demise. We hope it may continue on in the afterlife as a short term backup drive in an external home.
It is survived by one 2GB SD card and four external 3.5 inch USB 2.0 IDE drives.
