Quantum weirdness Now let’s consider whether God can be in more than one place at the same time. Much of the science and technology we use in space science is based on the counter-intuitive theory of the tiny world of atoms and particles known as quantum mechanics. The theory enables something called quantum entanglement: spookily connected particles. If two particles are entangled, you automatically manipulate its partner when you manipulate it, even if they are very far apart and without the two interacting. There are better descriptions of entanglement than the one I give here – but this is simple enough that I can follow it. Imagine a particle that decays into two sub-particles, A and B. The properties of the sub-particles must add up to the properties of the original particle – this is the principle of conservation. For example, all particles have a quantum property called “spin” – roughly, they move as if they were tiny compass needles. If the original particle has a “spin”...
Once called “the best journalist in America” by The Washington Post, John Angus McPhee (born March 8, 1931, in Princeton, New Jersey) is a writer and Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Regarded as the key figure in the field of creative nonfiction, his book Annals of the Former World won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. Early Life John McPhee was born and raised in Princeton New Jersey. The son of a physician who worked for Princeton University’s athletic department, he attended Princeton High School and then the university itself, graduating in 1953 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He then went to Cambridge to study at Magdalene College for a year. While at Princeton, McPhee appeared frequently on an early television game show called “Twenty Questions,” wherein contestants attempted to guess the object of the game by asking yes or no questions. McPhee was one of a group of “whiz kids” appearing on the show. Professional Writing Career...
One property that astronomers have tried to use to help them do this, however, is a number known as the Hubble Constant. “It’s a measure of how fast the universe is expanding at the current time,” says Wendy Freedman, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago who has spent her career measuring it. “The Hubble Constant sets the scale of the Universe, both its size and its age.” It helps to think about the Universe like a balloon being blown up. As the stars and galaxies, like dots on a balloon’s surface, move apart from each other more quickly, the greater the distance is between them. From our perspective, what this means is the further away a galaxy is from us, the faster it is receding. Unfortunately, the more astronomers measure this number, the more it seems to defy predictions built on our understanding of the Universe. One method of measuring it directly gives us a certain value while another measurement, which relies on our understanding of other parameters about the ...
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