Open questions and ideas

Miscellaneous Ideas on Science, Economics and Other Stuff

I work as a biochemist, so I admit that I know nothing about the below topics except at a very superficial level so these questions and ideas are just thinking out loud from an interested amateur. They're probably totally wrong, but I wanted to throw them out there.

1. Physics

A. Physicists say that matter, like the sun, curves the fabric of space-time and that if you took the sun away, the fabric would undergo a snapping motion as it re-equilibrated. But a fabric seems like a flat thing in one dimension. If there were another massive object right above the sun, wouldn't that curve the fabric of space-time, too? Does it curve a different fabric? Also, because space-time seems to be 3-dimensional, is it better to say that space-time isn't so much a fabric but a 3-dimensional thing? But, then if that's true, how does a mass embedded in a 3-dimensional thing curve that thing? Also, if you remove the sun from a 3-dimensional thing, it seems like, unless the 3-dimensional thing is like a fluid and rushes in to fill the void, nothing would change. This is the question I have. Based on the thinking in the previous papers, I would say that matter is neither curving a separate fabric of space-time nor embedded in a separate 3-dimensional space-time. Instead, space-time is made of the existent entities described in paper 1 at this website and that matter and energy are just due to the shape changes and relative motion of these entities. So, matter doesn't sit on top of a separate space-time; matter is made of the same units as space-time and is just vibrating/changing shape in a different way than the units that we call space. And, it exerts it's gravitational effect by affecting the shape changes and relative motions of the entities surrounding it.

B. As I understand it, the way particle colliders work is by slamming particles at high speeds into either stationary targets or other moving particles. The things that come flying out are supposed to provide information on the components of the particles. To me, this seems very similar to crashing a car moving at a high speed either into a wall or another speeding car. What come out of this, though, is lots of mangled junk made of several different parts of the car and that bears no resemblance to the original components of the car. Why isn't this the same as what comes out of the collision in a particle collider? I assume physicists perform various positive and negative controls and other tests to make sure what comes out is meaningful? Do they?

2. Economics

A. In the body, balances of opposing forces and processes are very important for maintaining health. For instance, when two opposing sets of muscles like the biceps and triceps get out of balance, injuries can result. In healthy cells, there's a balance of competing forces like phosphorylation (adding a phosphate group to a molecule) and dephosphorylation (removing a phosphate group from a molecule). When a mutation causes one of the proteins doing these things to increase or decrease its activity or amount, a disease like cancer can result. The same seems to be true in economics. The economy is like a big body and when its counteracting processes get out of balance, disease, recession and social unrest can result. Examples of how an economy can get out of balance are:

When there's either too little regulation (as happened from about 1995-2010) or too much regulation.

When there's too much wealth concentration in the hands of a few and too little in the hands of the rest. One goal of society and the government should be to try and maintain some balance between these opposing forces to try and prevent economic and social diseases (recession, social unrest, etc.) from occurring. This doesn't mean that every individual should earn the same amount, and having the ability to accumulate wealth does motivate many people. What it does mean is that the spread between the wealthiest and the poorest or between the amount of regulation and the things that need to be regulated (e.g., Wall Street, lobbying, money in politics, etc.) has just gotten too big. At this big a spread, it's unhealthy for society. From roughly 1940-1980, there were still rich people despite the highest tax rate being 90%. I suggest increasing the tax rate on the very wealthy a lot, making it easier for workers to unionize, eliminating money from all local, state and federal elections, etc. There also needs to be enough opportunity for socioeconomic mobility so that people in the poorer and wealthier areas can interact and change places.

B. An article by A. Ananthaswamy in the March 7, 2009 issue of New Scientist magazine reviewed work by Osvanny Ramos on predicting avalanches by measuring the space surrounding each bead in a growing pile of beads. If the space around the beads gets bigger as the pile grows, an avalanche, or movement of many of the beads, is more likely. It seems like this could also possibly be used to predict economic collapses. If one considers each person, company or governmental unit in an economy to be a bead and the space between them a measure of how far each person or organization can move before coming to a stable resting place again, then the greater the distance between beads, the greater the chance of an economic collapse. Two possible measures of the space between beads in an economy might be the difference between incomes of people or organizations and the amounts they owe or the difference between the financial or health risks of people or organizations and their levels of insurance. By using these as measures of the space between beads in the economy, one might be able to predict economic or stock market collapses?

3. Computer security

A. In the body, the immune system can recognize the difference between normal cells of the body ("self" cells) and cells from outside the body like bacteria or abnormal cells like cancer cells ("non-self" cells) because the self cells present certain antigens on their surfaces that mark them as self cells which other cells like lymphocytes recognize and therefore do not kill. Because non-self cells don't contain the self cell antigens, lymphocytes kill them. I'm not an immunologist, but I think this is how it works. I wonder if this could work in computer security? Maybe, every program and file that's supposed to be in a computer could be marked with a "self" tag. Then some killer computer program could delete all programs and files, like computer viruses, that don't have this tag. An article on page 16 of the Aug. 15th, 2009 issue of "New Scientist" mentioned something about a computer immune system, too.

4. Self/Non-self discrimination by the brain

A. This will sound pretty disgusting, but I've noticed that my own body's various smells (sorry) aren't quite as repulsive as the same types of smells from other people. This self/non-self distinction also applies to sexual orientation, but in the opposite way. Heterosexuals find members of the other sex more attractive and members of the same sex less attractive or repulsive. Homosexuals are the reverse. What is the biological mechanism that causes this differentiation between self and non-self? I wonder if there's some kind of self/non-self filtering system in the brain that filters sensory input like smells or gender? This could almost function like the immune system, mentioned above. Maybe, incoming sensory electrical impulses representing odors from one's own body are associated with other incoming sensory electrical impulses saying these odors are from self. Then, the odor/pleasure perception systems in the brain might recognize this self tag and let it through without giving it a different "displeasurable" tag. This system wouldn't find the self tag associated with odors from other people and would therefore give these a "displeasurable" tag. The same may work for sexual images, but in the reverse? One other way I could think of that a self/non-self differentiating system might work would be through some kind of receptor-ligand interactions. Perhaps, there are "self" receptors in the brain that need to be activated or inhibited by "self" ligands in order to recognize "self" perceptions? I'm just thinking out loud about possible mechanisms.

5. Modeling

A. Even with all the growth in computer power, computers still have trouble modeling complicated systems like proteins (these can contain thousands of atoms) at an atomic level and over longer time periods. This next idea probably wouldn't work, but I was wondering if you could assemble hundreds of people in a big field where each person would represent one atom and would be given instructions on how that atom behaves. For instance, an atom/person like oxygen would be told to attract but not quite hold onto an atom/person like hydrogen to form what's called a hydrogen bond. Using this type of atom/person modeling would be like agent-based modeling, but the agents (ie, the people) would be able to act for longer times and with a lot of intelligence. Then, maybe, an aerial video of how these people interact with each other could be used to model and visualize a large system at an atomistic level for long periods of time. This could probably be done online somehow in one of those distributed at-home systems where each person's computer in their house could be given instructions on how to behave as a particular type of atom. Then, over the internet, the interactions of these atoms/home computers could be studied.