Why Do You Dream of flat tires?

You may recognize the title of this article as a verse of a song by Joni Mitchell. I found it so poignant that has remained with me from the moment I heard many years ago. All history is full of recorded evidence of how the human race has dreamed flat tires with the creation of physical models of the universe that were later found to be in error. One of the most famous was a model of the Earth as the center of the universe. As a person who always looks on the changing position of the sun and moon across a diurnal cycle and ties this information to the idea that the Earth seems to be still, it's no surprise that the intuitive conclusion would be that the heavens are in motion around a positioned centrally planet.

In modern times, the prevailing view on why the masses were loathe to give up this idea, even if given mathematical proof on the contrary, was that being on a planet that was the center of the universe included a privileged position for its inhabitants with the creator of that universe. But this is not entirely the reason for the delay illumination. History of education is often focused on a few brilliant minds who came forward and gave us ideas raised by these Dark Age. History shows that in general do not have the brilliant minds that have developed mathematical models that equally impressive entrenched notions accepted. The ancient greek astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy built a very sophisticated machine clusters that have not only demonstrated the stroke of the sun around the Earth, yet accounted for the retrograde motion of the planets known at that time. This model has been so overwhelmingly convincing that he was for almost 1000 years. Although his idea was disgraced in 1492, the work of Ptolemy was still so revered that Columbus used his maps of the world when you set sail to discover new lands. The diagrams of these maps were just because Columbus thought he had landed in India.

Given the complexity of our technology, it is likely that we would discredit the idea that we live in a time limit like in the previous models. The truth is that, instead of building models designed with precision gears, we use powerful super-computer to mathematically extrapolate the motion of the heavens over eons of time. This is exactly like the professors at Princeton developed the theory of dark matter and dark energy. Ptolemy the machine perfectly represented by the data collected by observation. In other words, Ptolemy already knew what the result should be the first to build the machine.

The super-computer experiment in Princeton has done the exact opposite. The teachers included in the data obtained by observing the universe and then asked the computer to run through the universe billions of years of motion. To their surprise, the whole universe is thrown into oblivion. They concluded that there must be more than simply present the gravity of what would be the observable mass and gravity in the most must have been what was holding the universe together. From this theory have developed a precise mathematical model to explain the extra gravity. In this model, the universe is composed of only 4% visible matter, 22% cold dark matter, and 75% dark energy. So far this formula has held up to rigorous investigation. In fact if the percentages changed from just a little, cause the computer models of the universe fly apart. The real question is, this theory will hold up over time? Ptolemy's theory of a geocentric universe held for a millennium. Perhaps as more and more powerful telescopes and varied, the observed data will change. Just this progress has recently changed our ideas about the rate we think that our galaxy is rotating. Or, perhaps, another theory will surface to replace the current idea. Recall that a system of helium-centric eventually replaced Ptolemy's long-standing paradigm.

For many lay people, ideas about cosmology are only mind-candy. They do not seem to have any real impact from day to day life. But there are a lot of limit models in recent history that they do. In 1920, people were so enamored with the novelty of the first electroencephologram (EEG) measures brain waves, which were sure it was a test of telepathy. Today, neurologists claim to measure exactly the thoughts that have developed a way to control a robotic arm to simulate the movement of the arm of a monkey simply by mapping the neurons that fire when the monkey plans to move his arm. This is an important step forward, which lead to the development of devices that will unlock the ability of a quadriplegic to manipulate the objects again. Although this result is worthy of celebration, we must also be careful that we get stuck in a pattern that limits, stating that the energy of the current thinking is being recorded. Brain activity is the shadow of the thought process. For example, if you're singing a song in your head, your brain activity can be measured and recorded, but not the song itself. Japanese scientists have made a step forward in making this kind of dream, claiming that they can reproduce an image outside of the eyes are seeing simply measure and record brain activity associated with a very specific vision. Again, this is an important step forward in research on the brain, but is measuring the energy of thought?

Technologically speaking, we are on the verge of several major research breakthroughs such as those already mentioned. Great care must be taken in the way we build our models so as not to fall into the trap Ptolemy to frame our ideas around a concept limiting. Otherwise, it could be another millennium before a brilliant mind comes by showing that we were just dreaming of flat tires .......