New Symphony of Science Video and "The Grand Design"

Those of you, who know me, know that I am a sucker for science-y things. I'm even more of a sucker for science-y, auto-tuned things. So when I found out there was a new Symphony of Science video, I nearly squeed myself to death.


If you haven't seen the other Symphony of Science Vids, I'm so sorry for you. Get up to speed right now. Some of my favorites include: We Are All Connected, Poetry of Reality, The Unbroken Thread, and A Glorious Dawn. But really, they all are pretty much brilliant. I probably account for half of all the YouTube view hits.

The thing I liked about the latest one is that it reminded me of what I learned about in one of my fairly recent reads, The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.

In it, the authors write a lot about particle wave duality, and how the structure of the universe on a grand scale seems to operate under different laws than the cosmos on a quantum scale. It was amazing. They talked a lot about Richard Feynman's huge contributions to quantum physics, and my brain nearly imploded when I considered that any one electron can be everywhere and anywhere in the universe at any given time. Near the end of the book, the authors also point out a nifty game called "The Game of Life" by John Conway.

It is basically a tiny closed "universe," in which a square can either be alive or dead. It is a universe with very simple rules:

The Rules
For a space that is 'populated':
Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by loneliness.
Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.
Each cell with two or three neighbors survives.
For a space that is 'empty' or 'unpopulated'
Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated.

So after you set up all the conditions of your universe (select the squares you want to be "on" or "alive"), then you hit go and see what happens. They also have some preset conditions for you to play with and see how they work.

Try it out for yourself. Is your universe sustainable? Or will entropy take hold quickly?