I needed a new pair of heels for summer to match my new brown handbag. I couldn't find any brown heels in the stores that were the right color or design, so I whipped out my supplies and made and cut these new shoes in under two hours. Total production cost about $3. Money well spent I think.
These shoes were a pair of black pumps that I had for my first high school prom. Later though, I had cut them and redesigned the peep-toe and accents and detailing on the sides of the shoe. A second prom came up, and so I made them into a pair of white heels with pink flowers to match my second prom dress.
And now, they are my brown summer shoes.
I'm wearing my pajamas in the video, as I've said, I suffer from summersonia,
-Deena
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
In the meantime....
What is a singularity?
If the matter in the universe were spread uniformly, then it must have been infinitely compressed at the first moment. In other words, the entire cosmos would have been squeezed into a single point. At this point the gravitational force, and the density of material, were infinite. A point of infinite compression is known to mathematical physicists as a “singularity”.
Although one is led on quite elementary grounds to expect a singularity at the origin of the universe, it required a mathematical investigation of some delicacy to establish the result rigorously. This investigation was mainly the work of British mathematical physicists Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking. In a series of powerful theorems, they proved that a big-bang singularity is inevitable as long as gravity remains an attractive force under the extreme conditions of the primeval universe. The most significant aspect of their results is that a singularity isn’t avoided even if the cosmic material is distributed unevenly. It is a general feature of a universe described by Einstein’s theory of gravitation – or, for that matter, any similar theory.
There was a lot of resistance to the idea of a big-bang singularity among physicists and cosmologists when it was first mooted. One reason for this concerns the above-mentioned fact that matter, space, and time are linked in the general theory of relativity. This linkage carries important implications for the nature of the expanding universe. Naively, one might suppose that the galaxies are rushing apart through space. A more accurate picture, however, is to envisage space itself as swelling or stretching. That is, the galaxies move apart because the space between them expands. (Readers who are unhappy about the idea that space can stretch are referred to my book The Edge of Infinity for further discussion.) Conversely, in the past, space was shrunken. If we consider the moment of infinite shrunk, it must literally disappear, like a balloon that shrivels to nothing. And the all-important linkage of space, time, and matter further implies that time must disappear too. There can be no time without space. Thus the material singularity is also a space-time singularity. Because all our laws of physics are formulated in terms of space and time, these laws cannot apply beyond the point at which space and time cease to exist. Hence the laws of physics must break down at the singularity.
The picture that we then obtain for the origin of the universe is a remarkable one. At some finite instant in the past the universe of space, time, and matter is bounded by a space-time singularity. The coming-into-being of the universe is therefore represented not only by the abrupt appearance of matter, but of space and time as well.
The significance of this result cannot be overstressed. People often ask: Where did the big bang occur? The bang did not occur at a point in space at all. Space itself came into existence with the big bang. There is similar difficulty over the question: What happened before the big bang? The answer is, there was no “before”. Time itself began at the big bang. As we have seen, Saint Augustine long ago proclaimed that the world was made with time and not in time, and that is precisely the modern scientific position.
No space, no time, no matter
No matter how hard you try you will never be able to grasp just how tiny, how spatially unassuming, is a proton. It is just way too small.
A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is itself of course an insubstantial thing. Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on this ‘i’ can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, or rather more than the number of seconds it takes to make half a million years. So protons are exceedingly microscopic, to say the very least.
Now imagine if you can (and of course you can’t) shrinking one of those protons down to a billionth of its normal size into a space so small that it would make a proton look enormous. Now pack into that tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter. Excellent. You are ready to start a universe.
I’m assuming of course that you wish to build an inflationary universe. If you’d prefer instead to build a more old-fashioned, standard Big Bang universe, you’ll need additional materials. In fact, you will need to gather up everything there is – every last mote and particle of matter between here and the edge of creation – and squeeze it into a spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimensions at all. It is known as a singularity.
In either case, get ready for a really big bang. Naturally, you will wish to retire to a safe place to observe the spectacle. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to retire to because outside the singularity there is no where. When the universe begins to expand, it won’t be spreading out to fill a larger emptiness. The only space that exists is the space it creates as it goes.
It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no around around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be. We can’t even ask how long it has been there – whether it has just lately popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there for ever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time doesn’t exist. There is no past for it to emerge from.
And so, from nothing, our universe begins.