Einstein's Clocks and Thought Experiments

 Einstein's Clocks 

 OR 

 A Flight Of Imagination  

 That Revealed The Real World
 In 1905 

 About Einstein's thought experiments
 and his ability to imagine in the moment 

Left: Full shot of the Zytglogge tower in Bern Switzerland,

 with the astronomical clock on the bottom and the bell at the top in the tower

Right: Close-up of the bell and bell ringer in the tower

Full shot of the astronomical clock (left) with the animated figures (right) 

that parade and move every hour, known as the Zytglogge bellworks

Close-up of the hour hand and Zodiac wheel

Father Time sits next to the astronomical clock 

and presides over the animated figures who parade every hour

                                  A sketch of the Zytglogge tower and clock from 1534                                                      

A figure representing Chronos, the Greek god of time,
who strikes the bell, that was cast in 1405, on the hour

A shaft of light

 Late one night 

 after struggling with the physics of light, 

 Albert heard the distinctive ring 

 of Bern's Zytglogge clock tower, 

 with its 500 year-old bell 

 struck by a figure 

 representing Chronos, the Greek god of time. 

 In a flash 

 he was riding a streetcar 

 at the speed of light 

 and looking back at the time 
 on the Bern clock 

 which froze 
 because the light from its later time 
 could never catch him. 

 Yet he could see the minutes 
 on his pocket watch were 

 continuing. 

 And then he knew 

 time was relative. 

A streetcar with the clock behind it 

around the time Einstein lived in Bern

Bern streetcar around the time Einstein lived there

Streetcar interior

Left: Inner workings of a pocket watch

Right: A Swiss pocket watch made around 1900 with Roman numerals

The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.

Plato

There comes a point where the mind takes a leap 

— call it intuition or what you will — 

and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, 

but can never prove how it got there. 

All great discoveries have involved such a leap.

Albert Einstein

Franz Schubert's Last Sonata

Franz Schubert's Last Sonata: 

Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat Major, D. 960 

 How amazing 

 that just before he died 

 Schubert 

 can speak to me 

 across the centuries 

Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat Major, D. 960 

Completed September 26, 1828

Schubert died November 19, 1828, age 31

Recording on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7cc2FD06FM&t=920s

Franz Schubert: 1797 - 1828 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert

About

"...until the last weeks of his life in November 1828, he continued to compose an extraordinary amount of music, including such masterpieces as the three last sonatas."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schubert%27s_last_sonatas 

End of the World

The End of the World

They
said
the world
was going
to end
today

so I took the day off --

and listened for the end of time

This is great I thought

we should do this more often

Just let it stop

let the future become a blank

a question we don't have to answer

Prometheus in the 21st Century

Prometheus in the 21st Century

Really when you think about it, our patron saint 

[of the modern technological world] 

is Prometheus who stole fire from the gods.

Eugen Weber, Professor of History, UCLA

Public Television Series: The Western Tradition

 The Greek God Prometheus, father of mankind, stealing fire from the Gods

Stealing fire from the Gods -- 

Have we taken on too much? 

(Left) A simple match (Right) A midsummer bonfire

Our fate is now

tied to our ability

to understand 

and then to manage nature

To become managers 

of planet Earth

 (Left) Fire out of control (Right) Photo of the fireball of first US atomic bomb test, Trinity

The question is:

Are we up to the task?

 (Left) NASA composite of the Earth and moon (Right) NASA Earth monitoring satellites 

No society has ever yet been able to handle the temptations of technology...

We have to learn to cherish this Earth and cherish it as something that's fragile, that's only one, it's all we have. We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the dangers that have come from science and technology.

Margaret Mead

I Think, Therefore I Am

What Is Existence?

What does it mean to be? To say I am? 

This Haiku-like blog is the sequel to the previous blog: 

A Chorus of Frogs After the Rain (just below this one)

"Diagram from one of René Descartes' works." https://commons.wikimedia.org

I think, therefore I am.

René Descartes

Also: Cogito ergo sum.
Je pense, donc je suis.

Portrait of Rousseau dressed in an Armenian outfit.

I feel, therefore I am.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(a distillation of Rousseau's thought)

I continue, therefore I am.

Rick Doble

Yet even more fundamental than thought or feeling
is that awake or asleep we continue
and keep on going as long as we exist.

A Chorus of Frogs After the Rain

The Rain Is Over

We know the rain is over --

the rain so hard it shook the roof,

blurred the windows,

and darkened the sky

till it was almost night --

We know the rain is over

because now

the choir of frogs

has grown

and reached a pitch

almost as loud as the rain

A chorus with that traditional song

and those old familiar words:

"I am"

"I am"

"I am"

Poem to Digital Photography

A POEM TO DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Note: In 1999 in the darkening twilight, the coarse pixels on my first digital camera, a primitive Casio, changed back and forth on the monitor from color to darker color as the sky faded and as I framed the scene for my next shot. Crude as it was, to see a photograph in real time was a miracle -- as this had never been possible during my 30 years working with film photography.

REAL TIME

On the edge of darkness

I have seen the twilight sky

do it's digital dance

in real time --

pixels pulsing from

cerulean blue to black

on my LCD screen --

van Gogh's deepest colors

outside his cafe in the evening

or his starry starry night

Rick Doble, 1999

(An early selfie -- my face was lit with a neon light.)

Layers of Language

 IT'S ALL LANGUAGE 

 Literal: 

 This rose is red. 

 The sun is setting. 

 Abstract: 

 The sun sets later in the summer 

 than in the winter. 

 Many flowers display various shades of red. 

 Metaphoric: 

 A young girl is like a beautiful flower. 

 When the sun sets, it is like a door closing. 

 Creative: 

 The girl in her red dress dances 

 like the sun's last moments before it sets. 

 Synthesis: 

 At the darkest days of the year 

 our tribe lights fires 

 to prevent the sun 

 from being swallowed by the darkness. 

How To Shoot Camera-Movement Light-Painting Abstract Photographs

'Recipe' :) For Camera-Movement
Light-Painting Abstract Photographs

All photographs by Rick Doble.
Note: This recipe is like baking cookies, one cookie at a time.

We recommend 'baking' these photos for at least an 8 second shutter speed with a very low ISO and a dark environment. You move the camera to "spread, fold, chop, sprinkle and knead." You might also want to experiment using different white balance settings.

Find a piece of light

A crack around a door

a glint through a window --

it does not have to be large

as a little goes a long way

And remember each glimmer is different:

one can be smooth and limber

another sharp and brittle

Next hold that streak

then spread, fold, chop, sprinkle, knead

until the shutter closes

Then take a look,

take a bite

And go back and grab another piece of light

Living in the Moment

 LIVING IN THE MOMENT 

 For only a minute 

 once a day 

 turn off your cell phone 

 put your mental checklist aside 

 stop thinking about 

 what you're going to do next 

 and 

what you should have done earlier 

 and 

 just 

 listen 

What People Say And Do Is Different

  What People Mean  
  by Margaret Mead  

 What people say 

 What people do 

 And what they say they do 

 Are entirely different things 

 Margaret Mead 

Words Can Only Describe

 Words Are Not Real 

 Words describe

 but are not things 

 in themselves

 except for 

 occasional magic 

 when sound and rhythm 

 combine to make 

 an incantation 

 known as poetry 

An incantation or enchantment is a charm or spell created using words.The term derives from Latin "incantare" (tr.), meaning "to chant (a magical spell) upon," from in- "into, upon" and cantare "to sing".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incantation 

Considered by many to be the most perfect poem in the English language, Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan sings with its own enchanting music.

 Kubla Khan 

 or  

 A Vision In A Dream 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 

A stately pleasure-dome decree: 

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 

Through caverns measureless to man 

   Down to a sunless sea. 

...

...with music loud and long, 

I would build that dome in air, 

That sunny dome! those caves of ice! 

And all who heard should see them there, 

And all should cry, Beware! Beware! 

His flashing eyes, his floating hair! 

Weave a circle round him thrice, 

And close your eyes with holy dread 

For he on honey-dew hath fed, 

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Complete Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43991 

What Is Now Proved Was Once Only Imagined

 The Power 

 of Imagination 

 William Blake 

 What is now proved 

1972: Apollo 17 command module floating above the moon in 1972. Notice the similarity in shape and even the similarity in construction with the module (below) in the Méliès 1902 sci-fi animated film: A Trip to the Moon. 

 Was once 

 1902: Still from the Méliès 1902 sci-fi film: A Trip to the Moon. The command module that held the astronauts was inserted into a super-gun to send it to the moon.

 Only imagined 

See my related in-depth blogs about 
The Work of the Imagination
http://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-work-of-imagination.html
and
The History of the Future
http://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-history-of-future.html

What Is Knowledge?

What Is Knowledge?

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility … 

The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.

Einstein

What we can *know*

is confined

by our ability to imagine

realities 

in the universe

that can be translated 

into our narrow 

symbolic thought

Part of a draft of a letter by Galileo in which he described the power of his new telescope. In these drawings he noted what he observed when he first looked through the telescope at Jupiter and was able to see its four moons. 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Galileo_manuscript.png