Relativity, Black Holes and Big Bang

Once upon a time there were two students sitting in your classroom, unaware that love was about to strike. Off they drove into the sunset after their wedding to start their lives together.

Alas,

Love is a harsh taskmaster, 

and soon after the birth of their triplets, the lovely bride sets off on a voyage around the galaxy, leaving Mr. Mom at home with the three charming children.

She returns in time, in a relative way, to her relatives, to discover that Einstein has done terrible things to them while she was gone.

She was still young and beautiful, and they were old, wizened, and bitter.

The End.

Many physicists, including Einstein himself, were also bitter to discover that the universe was not infinite at all, but extremely finite in time and space.

Quantum Physics

Science...

...had not even really gotten comfortable with space and time warping, the universe having a starting point, and all of that relativistic confusion before Quantum Weirdness arrived on the scene. Einstein, finally comfortable with his own discoveries, spent much of his life pretty aggravated over quantum mechanics.

Sadly for him, but good for us, he was (how to say this nicely?) completely wrong. In a really intelligent way, of course.

There were particles going through two holes at the same time.

Cats neither alive nor dead unless somebody looked at them.

Particles not only knowing when someone was looking at them, but changing their little particle minds back in time, just to tick us off.

Particles not bouncing off lead walls, and not going through lead walls, but just...skipping the walls altogether.

And the entire universe starting up from a tiny little particle that only would have given us a universe to look at if someone had been there, before time and space existed, just to look at the tiny little particle.

Not so much the Big Bang as the Big Look.

And then they tell us that if we think we understand all of this, well, then we just haven't thought about it enough yet.

Einstein wondered, "Does God play dice with the universe?"

Yup. In a manner of speaking.

And so the universe is not purely deterministic, since things happen without a cause all the time at the quantum level.

And it is not purely reductionistic, since when we take things apart to the smallest level, not only don't we understand them better, we don't understand them at all.

Isn't that comforting?

Chaos Theory...

...tells us that sometimes things just fall completely apart for no apparent reason.

That sometimes things happen, and nothing happens, and sometimes the same things happen (more or less), and all hell breaks loose.

Like the Challenger Space Shuttle.

One tiny rubber ring gets a little bit cold, and boom.

It wasn't pretty.

But Chaos also tells us that sometimes, unpredictably and wonderfully, we get order out of chaos.

Like fractals.

And maybe even life itself.

Chaos out of order. Order out of Chaos. Makes about as much sense as particles knowing that you are looking at them.

Good science seems to work that way. The universe may be a machine, but it's unpredictable and prone to collapsing into chaos.

You'd think that in the computer age, we'd have no problem with that.

Complexity Theory

Chaos Theory...

...tells us that sometimes we get order out of chaos.

Complexity Theory tells that we get order for nothing.

That the universe seems compelled to order itself spontaneously.

It's unpredictable. It's complicated. It's interdependent.

That the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts.

The question becomes, where does the complicated, unpredictable, fascinating compulsion to higher order come from?

As Stephen Hawking wondered, "Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"

Indeed.

A Brief History of the Universe

The Anthropic Principle...

...presented to the physics world by physicist Brandon Carter and championed by Princeton’s John Wheeler (who gave Black Holes their name), postulates that not only is the universe precisely balanced so as to produce life, it also states that the universe needs intelligent observers living in it to give it a real existence.

Because, as Quantum Mechanics insists, nothing happens in nature without an observation.

Does it all come down to this then?

Unless we are here to look at the universe, it wouldn't exist?

And who looked at it in the first place, back before time and space, to bring it into existence at all, and to keep it running until we arrived on the scene?

“Copernicus may have dislodged man from the center of the universe, but the Anthropic Principle seems to restore him to that privileged position.

“Many physicists despise it; one has depicted it as a ‘virus’ infecting the minds of his fellow theorists.

“Others accept the Anthropic Principle, but in a spirit of gloom.

“Still others seem to take perverse pleasure in it.

“The controversy among these factions has been likened to ‘a high-school-cafeteria food fight.’”

And if you thought that was controversy, wait till you hear about the Multiverse.

Black holes, fractals, squids in love, and more fractals

Climate Collapse Could Happen Fast: As temperature and weather records fall, Earth may be nearing so-called tipping points. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/07/climate-change-tipping-points/674778/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20230720&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily

New Theory of Everything Unites Quantum Mechanics with Relativity ... and Much More

Stephen Wolfram, a controversial physicist and computer scientist, has united relativity, quantum mechanics and computational complexity in a single theory of everything.

www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/new-theory-of-everything-unites-quantum-mechanics-with-relativity-and-much?fbclid=IwAR0hAPMHX4OO2KmpNGJPitaoIWOaMQHSr55AwnaCHAOWIWnJk4BM5kVdZ4Y

When octopuses get cold, they rewire their brains and hijack their RNA

www.zmescience.com/science/biology/when-octopuses-get-cold-they-rewire-their-brains-and-hijack-their-rna/?goal=0_3b5aad2288-6fc0668823-242766289

Is Consciousness More Like Chess or the Weather?

nautil.us/is-consciousness-more-like-chess-or-the-weather-304796/?utm_source=nautilus-newsletter&utm_medium=email&he=d829d130a47574eea56f0793d594b493

One of Evolution’s Biggest Moments Was Re-created in a Year (emergence) www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/05/multicellular-organism-evolution-yeast-experiment/674030/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20230512&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily

Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine’ www.quantamagazine.org/inside-the-proton-the-most-complicated-thing-imaginable-20221019?utm_source=nautilus-newsletter&utm_medium=email&he=email

Life Is an Accident of Space and Time Even if life existed on every planet that could support it, living matter in the universe would amount to only a few grains of sand in the Gobi Desert. www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/09/multiverse-hypothesis-cosmic-life-rare/671371/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-wonder-reader&utm_content=20221203&utm_term=The%20Wonder%20Reader

WHY EARTH’S HISTORY APPEARS SO MIRACULOUS The strange, cosmic reason our evolutionary path will look ever luckier the longer we survive. www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/human-existence-will-look-more-miraculous-the-longer-we-survive/554513/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-wonder-reader&utm_content=20221203&utm_term=The%20Wonder%20Reader

The most extreme celestial objects in the universe: The cosmos has a knack for forming extreme — and sometimes weird — objects.

https://astronomy.com/news/2022/10/most-extreme-celestial-objects?utm_source=acs&utm_medium=email&utm_email=andyfletch42%40gmail.com&utm_campaign=News0_ASY_221014_000000&eid=andyfletch42%40gmail.com&eid=andyfletch42%40gmail.com

The Origins of Covid-19 Are More Complicated Than Once Thought: Scientists used painstaking research, genomics, and clever statistics to definitively track two distinct strains of the virus back to a wet market in Wuhan. https://www.wired.com/story/tracing-covid-pandemic-origins/?redirectURL=/story/tracing-covid-pandemic-origins/

Rare Earth hypothesis: Why we might really be alone in the universe https://astronomy.com/news/2022/07/rare-earth-hypothesis-why-we-might-really-be-alone-in-the-universe?utm_source=acs&utm_medium=email&utm_email=andyfletch42%40gmail.com&utm_campaign=News0_ASY_220805_000000&eid=andyfletch42%40gmail.com&eid=andyfletch42%40gmail.com

Is reality a game of quantum mirrors? A new theory suggests it might be www.scientiststudy.com/2021/10/is-reality-game-of-quantum-mirrors-new.html?fbclid=IwAR1O8fXdUb4zzLPiHfusKdOt8GIxnZZ-EizKOeLZIqrxNiY7ECuOcSZgnx4

Experiment shows that two observers experience different realities: Experiment validates a paradox of quantum physics: researchers show that two observers can experience different, conflicting realities. https://wiredpen.com/2019/03/18/experiment-two-observers-different-realities/

Do we create space-time? A new perspective on the fabric of reality www.newscientist.com/article/mg25333720-800-do-we-create-space-time-a-new-perspective-on-the-fabric-of-reality/?utm_source=nsday&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NSDAY_030222

If the atmosphere is chaotic, how can we trust climate models? There's a lot of chaos in the atmosphere. But that doesn't mean we can't model it. https://www.zmescience.com/science/if-the-atmosphere-is-chaotic-how-can-we-trust-climate-models/

How Einstein Saw the World https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/how-einstein-saw-the-world/?fbclid=IwAR2Z_mwXpNm_IpW2hbIAHCaH1Dg0x1nitgbcTN8156gTyQVFs4tQm1pAqUs

Study challenges evolutionary theory that DNA mutations are random www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220112121512.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

Chaos Theory and the Pandemic: Understanding the global chip shortage, a big crisis involving tiny components www.popsci.com/technology/global-chip-shortage/

Why Atheists Need Faith: Science is becoming more mystical as we learn more about the universe. www.wsj.com/articles/atheists-need-faith-christianity-science-reason-physics-math-astronomy-11632426886?st=b7muqkjn7og1tkw&reflink=article_email_share

Your Brain Makes You a Different Person Every Day: Our brains are wired for new sensations. https://nautil.us/issue/91/the-amazing-brain/your-brain-makes-you-a-different-person-every-day 

Neuroscientists Have Discovered a Phenomenon That They Can’t Explain www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/the-brain-isnt-supposed-to-change-this-much/619145/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1RQZTrjVNwJPyViPpwoT20kP0Cdy9ea_lYb3gE1s9sPzauqqn9brf0_9c

We’ll Have to Wait About 3,000 Years for a Reply From Intelligent Civilizations www.universetoday.com/152112/well-have-to-wait-about-3000-years-for-a-reply-from-intelligent-civilizations/

Vantablack? Meh. Meet the Ultra-Black Vantafish. Scientists have found that some fishes absorb up to 99.956 percent of the light that hits them. www.wired.com/story/meet-the-ultra-black-vantafish/?bxid=5bd66cf52ddf9c619437c0df&cndid=11594740&esrc=AUTO_OTHER&source=EDT_WIR_NEWSLETTER_0_ENGAGEMENT_ZZ&utm_brand=wired&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_content=B&utm_mailing=WIR_Classics_070821&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl&utm_term=WIR_Daily_TopClickers

The Link Between Bioelectricity and Consciousness https://nautil.us/blog/the-link-between-bioelectricity-and-consciousness?mc_cid=4b3e255907&mc_eid=f07611bee9

The Unexplained Efficiency of Photosynthesis https://medium.com/discourse/the-unexplained-efficiency-of-photosynthesis-d700a99675a9

The father of the quantum multiverse didn’t actually think of it as a multiverse. http://cosmos.nautil.us/short/95/the-many-mice-theory-of-quantum-mechanics?mc_cid=0237f74cc8&mc_eid=f07611bee9&fbclid=IwAR3BzZQhdGW0tpDUGmqobsxIeGcpiKNXsM9dbn2ZS42OUDAziNo4umtIA3k

How Space Tries to Kill You and Make You Ugly. Oh also, it makes you blind and stupid, too. https://www.wired.com/story/how-space-tries-kill-you-make-you-ugly/?bxid=5bd66cf52ddf9c619437c0df&cndid=11594740&esrc=AUTO_OTHER&source=EDT_WIR_NEWSLETTER_0_DAILY_ZZ&utm_brand=wired&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_mailing=WIR_Daily_042720&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl&utm_term=list2_p5

Lamarck is back, and has been since 1953. https://aeon.co/essays/on-epigenetics-we-need-both-darwin-s-and-lamarck-s-theories?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=68587d2fb6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_4_6_2020_15_6&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-68587d2fb6-68940989

Reality is not what it seems https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532670-800-what-you-experience-may-not-exist-inside-the-strange-truth-of-reality/ plus https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532670-700-what-is-reality-why-we-still-dont-understand-the-worlds-true-nature/

The Space Problem of Time Travel https://medium.com/swlh/the-space-problem-of-time-travel-93b873264b98

Has physics ever been deterministic? https://phys.org/news/2019-12-physics-deterministic.html

Through two doors, How a sunbeam split in two became physics’ most elegant experiment, shedding light on the underlying nature of reality https://aeon.co/essays/the-elegant-physics-experiment-to-decode-the-nature-of-reality?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=9c4c054e74-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_12_09_03_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-9c4c054e74-68940989

How The Planck Satellite Forever Changed Our View Of The Universe https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-the-planck-satellite-forever-changed-our-view-of-the-universe-3b94484f376d

How special was the big bang? (from the Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose, pp 339-345 copyright 1989, Penguin Books) https://www.ws5.com/Penrose/

Is Consciousness Fractal? https://medium.com/nautilus-magazine/is-consciousness-fractal-246e6aa96e65

The New Model Universe The old universe an illusion - https://medium.com/@mike.meyer/the-new-model-universe-d405c331a0df

Evolution unleashed Is evolutionary science due for a major overhaul – or is talk of ‘revolution’ misguided? https://aeon.co/essays/science-in-flux-is-a-revolution-brewing-in-evolutionary-theory?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=74b7df1338-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_09_01_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-74b7df1338-68940989

How Rare is *Intelligent* Life in the Galaxy? The Current State of the Drake Equation and the Chances for Intelligent Life Beyond Earth - “Earth may be the 1.” https://medium.com/predict/how-rare-is-intelligent-life-in-the-galaxy-7ca94162e569

The Brain That Remade Itself Doctors removed one-sixth of this child’s brain — and what was left did something incredible https://onezero.medium.com/the-brain-that-remade-itself-bcc7b3a43cff

Neutron Stars: Nature’s Weirdest Form of Matter https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neutron-stars-natures-weirdest-form-of-matter/?utm_source=promotion&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mar-sa-alert&utm_content=article&utm_term=SI-SCA-20190301_CVP_v1_s1_____OptinYes&spMailingID=58518266&spUserID=NTY1MTYwODUxMwS2&spJobID=1582358236&spReportId=MTU4MjM1ODIzNgS2

The Inflated Debate Over Cosmic Inflation

Why the majority of physicists are on one side of a recent exchange of letters https://medium.com/@NautilusMag/the-inflated-debate-over-cosmic-inflation-bc1c28deb6b3

Your brain doesn’t contain memories. It is memories.

https://www.wired.com/story/your-brain-is-memories/?CNDID=11594740&CNDID=11594740&bxid=MjM5Njc3MzQ2MjExS0&hasha=d829d130a47574eea56f0793d594b493&hashb=60c75670dbdeab3069adf9cd6ed8e73fa13b1f1c&mbid=nl_013119_engagement_list1_1p&source=ENGAGEMENT_NEWSLETTER&utm_brand=wired&utm_mailing=Engagement%20NL%20013119%20(1)&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl

A Single Cell Hints at a Solution to the Biggest Problem in Computer Science One small amoeba found a solution to the traveling salesman problem faster than our best algorithms. What does it know that we don't? https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a25686417/amoeba-math/?source=nl&utm_source=nl_pop&utm_medium=email&date=122718&src=nl&utm_campaign=15336293
The Strange Similarity of Neuron and Galaxy Networks Your life’s memories could, in principle, be stored in the universe’s structure. https://medium.com/s/nautilus-emergence/the-strange-similarity-of-neuron-and-galaxy-networks-8edb83bb8b1f

Bee-brained: Are insects ‘philosophical zombies’ with no inner life? Close attention to their behaviours and moods suggests otherwise. https://aeon.co/essays/inside-the-mind-of-a-bee-is-a-hive-of-sensory-activity?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MIT_DAILY_CAMPAIGN_2018_11_27

How The Planck Satellite Forever Changed Our View Of The Universe Humanity’s greatest-ever view of the Big Bang’s leftover glow has just released their final analysis. Here’s what we’ve learned. https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-the-planck-satellite-forever-changed-our-view-of-the-universe-3b94484f376d 

When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it. https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

Here Are 50 Possible Solutions to the Fermi Paradox: We're pretty convinced that Donald Trump, Madonna, and Dennis Rodman are aliens. Maybe Lady Gaga. They're just messin' with us. https://curiosity.com/topics/here-are-50-possible-solutions-to-the-fermi-paradox-curiosity?utm_campaign=daily-digest&utm_source=sendgrid&utm_medium=email

How Many Galaxies Have Already Disappeared From Our Perspective? Dark energy tells us that the Universe’s expansion is accelerating. Here’s what that means for our disappearing Universe. https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-how-many-galaxies-have-already-disappeared-from-our-perspective-27fcd3e7377e

Really Smart Birds doing really clever things: https://aeon.co/essays/how-city-birds-evolved-to-be-smarter-than-rural-birds

Brainless learning by slime molds, pea pods, potted mimosas, and sea slugs, but not politicians: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531340-700-smart-but-dumb-probing-the-mysteries-of-brainless-intelligence/

A solar mass black hole would live for about 10⁶⁷ years before evaporating, but the black hole at the center of our galaxy would live for 10^20th times as long before decaying. The crazy thing about it all is that right up until the final fraction-of-a-second, the black hole still has an event horizon. Once you form a singularity, you remain a singularity — and you retain an event horizon — right up until the moment your mass goes to zero. https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-what-happens-when-a-black-holes-singularity-evaporates-217a3eae467f

Bad language but very funny alert. Quantum Mechanics explained in 5 minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lstXHHlLrKo&feature=em-subs_digest

Is Matter Conscious? - http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious

The Laniakea Supercluster (actually kind of the mega super dooper supercluster), the Virgo Supercluster, and our place in it: https://futurism.com/videos/detailed-map-date-place-universe/ 

Materialism is out and the Quantum is in: https://aeon.co/essays/materialism-alone-cannot-explain-the-riddle-of-consciousness?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b381752f7b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_03_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-b381752f7b-68940989

Lamarck is back? - Radical, paradigm-shattering evolving evolution -  https://aeon.co/essays/on-epigenetics-we-need-both-darwin-s-and-lamarck-s-theories?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=17a198ea34-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-17a198ea34-68940989 

Moons over Jupiter - first time ever to see moons rotating around a planet - http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/07/the-dreamiest-view-in-the-universe/489956/?utm_source=nl-atlantic-daily-070516 

The very funny (bad language alert) Theory of Everything - http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-a-sh-tty-explanation-of-the-theory-of-everything

The largest galaxy in the universe - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE8yHySiJ4A 

Voyage into a black hole - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI9CvipHl_c 

Watch the sun burn for 30 minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tmbeLTHC_0 

The Two-Slit Experiment with molecules instead of just photons - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLRMbVCrcLc 

Reality, relativity, causality or free will? Take quantum theory at face value and at least one of them is an illusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShD_tCdfYSk

Our supercluster of galaxies in 3D: http://vimeo.com/104704518 

Nature is made of math, and it is so cool - http://aeon.co/film/nature-by-numbers-a-short-film-about-the-elegance-of-mathematics/

Space and Time - one of them has to go? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umfjGNlxWcw (from Science of the Day page, 28 Aug 2014)

The Fermi Paradox - Where is Everyone? Why haven’t we found any aliens yet, or why haven’t they found us?  http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html 

Watch the ocean currents flow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/7009056027/

Watch the winds blow: http://earth.nullschool.net/

North American Wind flow in real-time: http://hint.fm/wind/index.html

The Zombie Ant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuKjBIBBAL8 

String theory deftly explained by, um, Queen? Queen-ish. Brilliant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2rjbtsX7twc

The Atlas of the Universe - from our neighborhood to the Local Group to the Virgo Supercluster and beyond - http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/ 

The sound that Big Bang made, the sound of the universe coming into being: 

http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BBSound_2013.html 

A journey through the universe at an unimaginably large scale - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74IsySs3RGU&feature=related  

 The emergence of a galaxy - 14 billion years in a minute or two - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h9za1CP9ImA

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg 

Taking a tour of Orion - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Xd8KPzJP0_U#

Quantum Mechanics explained, again, sort of - http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9622000/9622751.stm 

Quantum Levitation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ws6AAhTw7RA 

Going at light speed - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JQnHTKZBTI4#! 

Science put to music - http://www.symphonyofscience.com/videos.html 

Star size comparison - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q

Power of Ten - from the largest to the smallest - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

From the founder of fractals, everything is fractals - http://www.ted.com/talks/benoit_mandelbrot_fractals_the_art_of_roughness.html

African fractals - http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_eglash_on_african_fractals.html

Seeing Saturn - www.ted.com/talks/carolyn_porco_flies_us_to_saturn.html 

Brian Green on String Theory - http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_greene_on_string_theory.html 

From quantum foam to the edge of everything, the size of everything - http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347 or here http://scaleofuniverse.com/ 

How long is a piece of string? All of humanity fits into a sugar cube? - check it out on the BBC - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8363934.stm 

Water Drop at 2000 Frames per Second - http://www.flixxy.com/water-drop.htm

Jet smashes into concrete wall at 500 mph - http://www.strimoo.com/video/14427516/concrete-plane-Veoh.html 

Water balloon burst at 2000 frames/second - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vajL48mwsCA 

Lamarck is back - evolution happens outside of random mutation - www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090412081315.htm 

Can fractals make sense out of quantum mechanics? www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127011.600-can-fractals-make-sense-of-the-quantum-world.html?full=true

Metal bits self-assemble into snakes: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/snakes.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp

The inner life of cells, from Harvard: 

The magical version with cool music: www.studiodaily.com/main/searchlist/6850.html 

The academic version with inscrutable biological language: http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/media.html 

Anatomy of a Black Hole (animated): www.thinktechnologies.com/portfolio/demos/Blackhole.html

Fractal Recursions: www.fractal-recursions.com/

Squid Dating: http://video.aol.com/video-detail/deep-sea-dating/280342036

Blue Oyster Fractal Spiral Zoom: www.infectiousvideos.com/p/1596

Evidence for Big Bang: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_tests.html 

Astronomy Picture of the Day: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html 

The Following...

...is a partial bibliography of the resources used to develop the seminars. 

The Best Books by Topic:

Relativity/Big Bang/Black Holes

Relativity, Albert Einstein, pub Crown; Big Bang, Simon Singh, Fourth Estate/HarperCollins; Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster; The Edge of Infinity, Paul Davies; The Empire of the Stars, Arthur I. Miller, pub Abacus

Quantum Mechanics

Einstein Defiant, Edmund Blair Bolles, Joseph Henry Press; Quantum Enigma, Rosenblum/Kuttner, pub Oxford; Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics, Amir Aczel, pub Four Walls Eight Windows NY

Chaos

Chaos, James Gleick, pub Viking

Complexity

Complexity, M. Mitchell Waldrop, pub Touchstone/Simon & Schuster; Emergence, Steven Johnson, pub Touchstone/Simon & Schuster; At Home in the Universe, Stuart Kauffman, pub Oxford; The Cosmic Blueprint, Paul Davies

The Anthropic Principle/Fine-Tuning/Multiverse

The Goldilocks Enigma/Cosmic Jackpot, Paul Davies; The Fingerprint of God, pub Promise Pub., Hugh Ross; Alone in the Universe, pub Wiley, John Gribbin

Time

The Physics of Time, Richard Muller, pub WW Norton & Co., Reality is not what it seems, The Order of time, Carlo Rovelli, pub Riverhead Books

Other Books. The best and most useful are in boldface and listed first.

Superforce, God and the New Physics, The Mind of God, About Time, The Accidental Universe, The Last Three Minutes, pub Touchstone/Simon & Schuster,  pub Houghton Mifflin - Paul Davies

Schroedinger’s Kittens.. Pub Little/Brown, Q is for Quantum, Pub Free Press, The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Everything, Pub Little Brown & Co., The Origins of the Future, pub Yale, Annus Mirabilis, pub Chamberlain Bros, John Gribbon

A Brief History of Time, Black Holes & Baby Universes, pub Bantam, The Theory of Everything, pub New Millennium, Stephen Hawking 

The Science of God..., Pub Free Press, The Hidden Face of God, Pub Simon & Schuster - by Gerald L. Schroeder

The Elegant Universe, Pub Vintage, The Fabric of the Cosmos, Pub Knopf, Brian Greene

The Evolutionists, Richard Morris, pub Owl Books

The Genius Within, Frank Vertosick, Jr., pub Harcourt

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson, pub Broadway

The Emergence of Everything, Harold Mororwitz, pub Oxford

The Fire in the Equations, Kitty Ferguson, Templeton Foundation Press

Fractal Cosmos, Jeff Berkowitz, Pub Amber Lotus/Lifesmith  

How the universe got its spots, Janna Levin, Phoenix/Orion Ltd.

Just Six Numbers, Martin Rees, Basic Books

God's Equation, Amir D. Aczel, MJF Books/Fine Communications

Origins of Existence, Fred Adams, Free Press

Infinite in all Directions, Freeman Dyson, pub Harper & Row  

In Search of Deep Time, Henry Gee, Comstock/Cornell

A World without Time, Palle Yourgrau, pub Basic Books

The Dependent Gene, David Moore, pub Times

There is a God, How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, Antony Flew, pub HarperOne

The Language of God, Francis Collins, pub Free Press

Albert Einstein’s Vision, Barry Parker, pub Prometheus

The Universe in the Rearview Mirror, pub Dutton - Dave Goldberg

Creation and Time,  Beyond the Cosmos,  Creator and the Cosmos, pub Navpress - Hugh Ross  

Investigations, Stuart Kauffman, pub Oxford

Death by Black Hole, Neil deGrasse Tyson, pub Norton

Faster than the Speed of Light, Joao Magueijo, pub Perseus

The End of Time, Julian Barbour, pub Oxford

Einstein’s Universe, Calder, pub Nigel/Wings Books  

The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg, pub Basic Books  

Coming of Age in the Milky Way, pub Morrow , The Whole Shebang, pub Simon & Schuster, Timothy Ferris

Cosmic Coincidences, John Gribbon & Martin Rees, Pub Bantam  

The God Particle, Leon Lederman, pub Houghton Mifflin

The God Experiment, Russell Stannard, pub Hidden Spring

The Matter Myth, Paul Davies/John Gribbon, pub Simon & Schuster

Superstrings, Peat, pub Contempory Books  

Wrinkles in Time,  Smoot & Davidson, pub Morrow  

Einstein, Ronald Clark, pub Avon

Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosko, pub Hyperion

Vital Dust, Christian de Duve, pub Basic Books

Cosmic Code, Heinz Pagels, Pub Simon & Schuster

Alice in QuantumLand, Robert Gilmore, Pub Copernicus  

The Moment of Creation, James Trefil, Pub Collier  

Shadow of the Mind, Pub Oxford, The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind, Pub Cambridge, Roger Penrose  

African Exodus, Christopher Stringer & Robin McKie, Pub Henry Holt  

The Quark and the Jaguar, Murray Gell-Man, Pub WH Freeman

Quantum Questions, edited by Ken Wilber, Pub Shanbhala,

Finding God in Physics, Roy Masters, Pub Foundation of Human Understanding

God and the Astronomers, Robert Jastrow, Pub Warner

The Collapse of Chaos, Jack Cohen/Ian Stewart, Pub Viking

Conscious Mind in the Physical World, Euan Squires, Pub Adam Hilger

Quarks, Chaos, & Christianity, Pub Crossroads; Belief in God in an Age of Science, John Polkinghorne, Pub Yale

Beyond the Quantum, Pub Bantam, The Holographic Universe, Pub Harper Perennial, Michael Talbot

Our Cosmic Habitat, Martin Rees, Pub Princeton University Press

Chaos and Complexity, Russell/Murphey/Peacocke, pub Vatican Observatory/Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, Berkeley CA

Where does the weirdness go?, David Lindley, pub Basic Books

A Shortcut through Time, George Johnson, pub Knopf

Nature's Chaos, Gleick/Porter, pub Little/Brown

Sudden Origins, Jeffrey Schwartz, pub Wiley & Sons

The Quantum Brain, Jeffrey Satinover, pub Wiley & Sons

Fragments of Infinity, Ivars Peterson, pub Wiley & Sons

Atom, Lawrence Krauss, pub Little/Brown

The End of Certainty, Ilya Prigogine, pub Free Press

The Garden in the Machine, Claus Emmeche, Pub Princeton

Quantum Theology, Diarmuid O’Murchu, Pub Crossroad

Rock of Ages, Stephen Jay Gould, Ballantine

The Bigger Bang, James Lidsey, Cambridge 

Liars, Lovers, and Heroes, Steven Quartz/Terrence Sejnowski, William Morrow/Harper Collins

Signs of Life, Richard Sole/Brian Goodwin, Basic Books

The Third Culture, John Brockman, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster

Why God won't go away, Newburg/D'Aquili/Rause, Ballantine

Origins, Neil deGrasse Tyson/Donald Goldsmith, Norton

God at the speed of light, T.Lee Baumann, ARE Press

The Meaning of it all, Richard Feynman, Helix/Perseus Books

The Big Bang, Joseph Silk, WH Freeman & Co.

A Shortcut through Time, George Johnson, Knopf

Quantum: a Guide for the Perplexed, Jim Al-Khalili

Cosmos, Bios, Theos, Margenau & Varghese

Setting Sail for the Universe, Donald Fernie, pub Rutgers University Press

Alpha & Omega The Search for the Beginning and the End of the Universe, Charles Seife, pub Viking

Of Moths and Men, Judith Hooper, pub Norton

A Different Universe, Robert B. Laughlin, pub Basic Books

The Measure of God, Larry Witham, pub Harper SF

The Genius Within, Frank Vertosick Jr, pub Harcourt

Challenging Nature, Lee Silver, pub HarperCollins

Magazines/Newspaper Articles/Websites

Beyond Einstein issue, Scientific American September 2004

From the Big Bang to Fridge Magnets, Paul Davies, IB World Magazine December 1997

Science Sees the Light, by Gregg Easterbrook, The New Republic Magazine, Oct 12 1998

The New Convergence, by Gregg Easterbrook, Wired Magazine Dec 2002

Science Finds God, Newsweek, July 20 1998

Beyond Physics - Renowned Scientists contemplate the evidence for God, Scientific American website

Science Finds God, The Saturday Evening Post, Jan/Feb 1999

Reaching to the stars -- and beyond, James Gleick, from The New York Times in the San Jose Mercury News, date?

Physics Coup: Atom in 2 Places, Denver Post, Feb 22, 2000

Quantum Wizardry, Dallas Morning News, July 30 2001

Schroedinger's Cat, www.lassp.cornell.edu

Team discovers way to put brakes on the speed of light, San Jose Mercury News, Feb 18, 1999

Scientists tackle 'Schroedinger's Cat' paradox, www.cnn.com

Quantum computing with molecules, Scientific American website

Life, the universe, and everything, Time, Feb 22 1993

Wasp uses spider..., Denver Post Dec 3 2000

The Mimic Octopus, Asian Diver, www.asiandiver.com

www.learningkingdom.com

many others