Arsenal .. lucky

While preparations for the second leg match between FC Barcelona and Arsenal on March 8th are underway I would like to discuss my thoughts on the previous match they had and why Arsenal didn't deserve to win.

First off, I have nothing against Arsenal, in fact they are my favourite team in the Premier League, and that pure class 83rd min strike from Arshavin was a thing of beauty. Even though Barca was in a state of severe fatigue since it was during February, and some major players were missing from that match, that's still no excuse given the results. But, based on the given statistics it seemed more of a miracle that Arsenal actually pulled through with the win. Furthermore, Messi's headed goal wasn't offside and the fact that Arshavin intentionally got a hand ball near the end just adds up to the mere chances Arsenal had in order to win. To me it just seemed impossible for Barca to lose after the amount of success they were having this season.

One thing I am certain of however is that when Arsenal arrives in Camp Nou in 7 days, it will result in an entirely different outcome as the energy and sheer madness that Barca fans bring with them will ultimately end with the demise of the Emirates.

Circles?

As I was doing some last minute practice problems before tomorrows CCC I thought of a possible mathematical paradox involving a simple geometric problem with circles. The problem itself is not the interesting part but the thought is:

As everyone knows, a circle is defined as the locus of all points equidistant from a center. Furthermore, a circle has both a diameter(d) and a circumference (c), and the relationship between the two is:

However, one must realize that pi is an irrational number (some of you might know where i'm going with this), which means we can never say with absolute certainty what the value is. Therefore, even if we know the diameter with absolute certainty, we can never know the circumference, and if we know the circumference with absolute certainty, then the diameter is in doubt. Therefore, we can say that one can never know both the diameter and circumference of a circle. Since a circle has to have both a definable diameter and circumference. We run into a mathematical paradox.

Then I began to think, "Ok, so what does this mean? What's the resolution to this paradox" and soon enough I compiled a list of possible outcomes:

1) There are no such things as circles or any other geometric figure that's dependent on pi.

2) String Theory is to blame as higher dimensions account for the uncertainty in circle geometry (ie. 2D Euclidean Geometry is a simplification even in the flattest worlds).

3) Pi is not a constant but somehow we say it is. Kind of like a mathematical illusion.

4) Pi is in fact a rational number.

5) Because Chuck Norris said so ..

Another thing to consider after this realization: Is circle uncertainty the mechanism behind Heisenberg Indeterminacy? If so, how does it effect observation?

... Worth a thought? At least this distracted me for a while so that I don't fall asleep before the competition.

El Clásico!

What a match - One that will go down in history between bitter rivals FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. Barcelona's brilliant performance on Monday was absolutely mesmerizing, to the point that I literally had my jaw dropped by the 90th+ minute. Vamanos Blaugranas! 5-0 in favour of Barca.

Not only is the result so astonishing, but the fact that Real Madrid's perfect winning streak during la liga was finally broken, and Barcelona took over the leader-board as headed by Barca's great coach, Pep Guardiola. In my opinion, Guardiola has done so much in his young career, he has the potential to be the greatest coach Barca has ever had. Much better than Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho.

However, as always, there was some great controversy to be handled during the match in Camp Nou. First of all, when Cristiano Ronaldo (aka; the greatest poser to have ever lived, over hyped, and one who has no respect for the beautiful game) had the audacity to push Pep Guradiola, in order to get the ball for a throw in. Second of all, when Sergio Ramos deliberately tackled Lionel Messi, and later on continued to shove fellow national team mate captain Carles Puyol in the face to finally get a red card. (Not to mention he got a red card from his previous match along with Xabi Alonso). All I can say is that Real Madrid played a very dirty game, while Barcelona's performance was simply breathtaking (Over 600 passes made!).

.. Yes, this is biased. So what?

Here are some of the highlights of the game (I recommend for any avid fan to watch the entire match):



Barça, Barça, Barça !

Life as I know it

In honor of my grandfather, whom I've learnt everything from.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.” – Albert Ellis

“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.” – Bill Copeland

“If what you’re doing is not your passion, you have nothing to lose.”

“The person who says something is impossible should not interrupt the person who is doing it.”

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot

“All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney

“What the mind can conceive, it can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.” – Seneca

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” - Milton Berle

“The sky has never been the limit. We are our own limits. It’s then about breaking our personal limits and outgrowing ourselves to live our best lives.”

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” – Life’s Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“When you can’t change the direction of the wind — adjust your sails.” ~ H. Jackson Brown

“Everything you want should be yours: the type of work you want; the relationships you need; the social, mental, and aesthetic stimulation that will make you happy and fulfilled; the money you require for the lifestyle that is appropriate to you; and any requirement that you may (or may not) have for achievement or service to others. If you don’t aim for it all, you’ll never get it all. To aim for it requires that you know what you want” ~ Richard Koch

“Confidence comes not from always being right but not fearing to be wrong”

“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

Hawking on God again - "The Grand Design"

I woke up this morning to the news that, according to Stephen Hawking, God did not create the Universe but it was instead an “inevitable consequence of the Law of Physics”. By sheer coincidence this daft pronouncement has come out at the same time as the publication of Professor Hawking’s new book, an extract of which appears in todays Times.

Before I express my viewpoints, I'd like to establish that I do not believe in God, and yes, that means i'm an atheist. Therefore, my remarks might seem biased, but that's what keeps the debate on religion vs science going. I'm sure I will have several more posts on this topic in the future.

Stephen Hawking is undoubtedly a very brilliant theoretical physicist, though I wouldn't rank him in my top 20 all time physicists. However, something I’ve noticed about theoretical physicists over the years is that if you get them talking on subjects outside physics they are generally likely to say things just as daft as some drunk bloke down the pub. I’m afraid this is a case in point. And it's quite saddening to think that numerous fans follow every one of his remarks - no matter how religulous they may be.

God and physics are in my view pretty much orthogonal. To put it another way, if I were religious, there’s nothing in theoretical physics that would change make me want to change my mind. However, I’ll leave it to those many physicists who are learned in matters of theology to take up the (metaphorical) cudgels with Professor Hawking.

Though I haven't read the book yet, i'm sure it will be the usual nonsense some people put just to get media attention for a while to fund their studies. No offense to Professor Hawking, whom I respect very much.

Everything is Emergent ... Really?

It’s funny how when one thing is going good, it’s going great. And no one portrays that better than Erik Verlinde, who has made a claim that the reason why physicists do not understand the fundamentals of gravity is due to the fact that gravity is an emergent phenomenon, or an “entropic force”. As usual, the media gets all hyped, and so his claim ends up in the New York Times.

Now, if there is one model in physics that I am truly not very fond of, it would be the Standard Model. However, Verlinde has took his claim one step further with the help of Peter Freund, to claim that the Standard Model is also an emergent phenomenon. In fact, Freund has a new paper out on the arXiv entitled “Emergent Gauge Fields” with the following abstract:

Erik Verlinde’s proposal of the emergence of the gravitational force as an entropic force is extended to abelian and non-abelian gauge fields and to matter fields. This suggests a picture with no fundamental forces or forms of matter whatsoever.

And the appreciation:

I wish to thank Erik Verlinde for very helpful correspondence from which it is clear that he independently has also arrived at the conclusion that not only gravity, but all gauge fields should be emergent.

Geoffrey Chew's failed "bootstrap program" of the sixties - much the same reminiscing theoretical idea:

It is as if assuming certain forces and forms of matter to be fundamental is tantamount (in the sense of an effective theory) to assuming that there are no fundamental forces or forms of matter whatsoever, and everything is emergent. This latter picture in which nothing is fundamental is reminiscent of Chew’s bootstrap approach, the original breeding ground of string theory. Could it be that after all its mathematically and physically exquisite developments, string theory has returned to its birthplace?

It is still puzzling to me as to why this is a good thing. During David Gross' (a former student of Chew's) Nobel prize lecture, he explains:

I can remember the precise moment at which I was disillusioned with the bootstrap program. This was at the 1966 Rochester meeting, held at Berkeley. Francis Low, in the session following his talk, remarked that the bootstrap was less of a theory than a tautology…