Nerd News: San Diego Comic Con

There has been a good amount of excitement coming out of San Diego after this weekend's convention with some that are even more surprising than the Royal Baby (oh my god, it's a boy, though it could still be a werewolf, if Doctor Who is to be believed.) Since I am out of ideas for blog postings for this week, I want to break down some of that news and add my own two cents into the mix, (which after you take into account the conversion rate from my mind to the Internet, actually amounts to about .08 cents.)

1. Maria Hill on ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. This is not exactly earth-shattering news, as Maria Hill is a big part of the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division, also you have to remember the actress Cobie Smulders got her break-through role as a TV actress on some show or other I've never really watched (Hey, if I wanted to see a thirty-something year old who continually fails at finding the person who will become the mother of his children, I will just look in the mirror.) What is reassuring about this news is that Whedon and Marvel are really lining up this show to work on all levels. I am very excited for AOSHIELD, (will work on acronym.) Not only will the show help give depth to the Marvel cinematic universe by allowing for the introduction of lesser known and fan favorite heroes (Iron Fist, fingers crossed,) but it will help sustain the universe through those long slogging stretches between movies. This news also means that I would not be surprised to see a cameo or two from Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., or any of the other Avengers.

2. New Captain America Costume Revealed So Cap is getting a new outfit for his next movie, Captain America: Winter Soldier. I am torn on this one to tell the truth. On one hand, in my opinion Captain America is a walking flag for good reason. Its part of who he is and what he represents. When you see the red, white, and blue super soldier you get a sense that everything is going to be alright. That is part of his persona, he stands out and stands proud and his presence is a constant reminder to the other heroes of what they are fighting for and who is leading them. On the other hand, the new costume is based upon the Super Soldier Steve Rogers costume of the comics and admittedly it looks pretty freaking cool, though I would still argue he is giving up the red, white, and blue way too soon... And I am disappointed in the color change of the shield. Regardless of how he looks I am very excited to see this movie. Captain America is my favorite of favorite superheroes, and the Winter Soldier storyline is one of the best (up there with Red, White, and Black, which I would love to see made into a movie, if only done as a one shot.) I am also disappointed we didn't get to see the Falcon costume, but I guess that will be kept under wraps.

3. Days of Future Past Reveals Marvel released a look at some of the characters from their upcoming X-Men movie, Days of Future Past including a look at the sentinels, Trask Industries, and a very impressive-looking Bishop. I have such high hopes for this movie that I might even be running the risk of PMS (Phantom Menace Syndrome). However, not only is Days of Future Past one of the most classic of classic X-Men story lines, but by combining the newest movie with the original X-Men movies there is a potential to not only fix the mistakes of X-Men III but re-energize the entire franchise. I suppose we will just have to wait and see if this latest attempt is going to be First Class or more like X-Men Origins: Wolverine... On the plus side... Patrick Stewart... Need I say more?

4. Warner Brothers Announces Flash and Justice League It's about time, DC started getting their act together. Regardless of my thoughts on some of the choices that the Man of Steel movie made, I do think that as a stepping stone to a larger DC Cinematic Universe, it was a good one. Superman is always the logical place to start when it comes to DC. On the coattails of the success of Man of Steel, Warner Brothers has announced that we can expect to see a Flash movie by 2016 and a Justice League movie by 2017. On the surface, this seems like amazing news, but then I am reminded of 2011's Green Lantern, and somewhere deep down inside I cringe a bit. Also DC has a horrible track record of actually keeping the promises they make about superhero movies, (just ask Joss Whedon about his Wonder Woman project.) For now WB is staying tight lipped about the whole thing, but it seems to be that Man of Steel is set to be the first movie in this larger universe (Because we are forgetting that Green Lantern ever happened, and Nolan's Dark Knight universe will stand alone, but that leads me to my next point...)

5. Man of Steel II: World's Finest Zach Snyder has announced that the second installment of his Superman franchise will be a Superman/Batman storyline. Obviously it will not be Nolan's Batman, because he exists in a different universe all to himself. Also, the title has not yet been confirmed, but going with World Finest would go a long way in restoring my faith in this new Superman franchise and show a glimmer of hope for an expanded DC Cinematic Universe. This, to me, has to be the biggest news to come out of San Diego Comic Con, because let's face it... this is the movie we have all been waiting for since... well, since ever. It also could possibly mean that we are only a few years away from the events of I am Legend. (If you don't get that joke, look it up.) I am possibly worried that the bat symbol resembles Frank Miller's Dark Knight, and I hope this movie will be more original than some kind of gritty rip-off of that classic comic. My only request, (well I have a few, but my top one,) is please put Batman in a costume that is not all armor, foam rubber, and George Clooney nipples. I am really getting sick of that look. For a more realistic costume that would mesh well with the new (*ick*) Superman look refer to any of the Arkham games. The batsuit in those looks, not only comic faithful, but realistic and kick ass.

6. The Age of Ultron Joss Whedon revealed the name for the second Avengers movie, Avengers: The Age of Ultron. As much faith as I have in the Whe-man, I find myself hesitating over this one. Let me start by saying that Ultron is a perfect choice for villain. I have been waiting for Ultron (and by proxy, maybe Vision) to appear since the beginning, and after the semi-sentient armor of Iron Man III it does seem the next logical evolution for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to take. However, Whedon also confirmed that Hank Pym will not be in the movie, and that the origin of Ultron will come about through some other means (probably via Tony Stark.) This news mostly confused me, because I though Ant-Man was scheduled to be part of Marvel's Phase II, but upon further digging I found out that Ant-Man will not be released till Phase III, right after Avengers II. This news doesn't bother me so much as disappoint me. I would not call Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Yellow Jacket/Whatever my favorite superhero, or even top fifteen, but I do think that he and Wasp (his wife) have a vital role to play as an Avenger. Also I was really hoping that the Avenger roster would expand before AII, but that may only be because I am routing for Avengers III: Civil War... Hey it could happen.

A Quick Moment of Quantum Mechanics

May the f=ma be with you.

I am a writer. You may already know that, but what you may not know is that I am also fascinated with science, specifically in ares such as physics, astronomy, and quantum mechanics. Whenever I'm at work and doing mindless data entry my favorite thing is to go to YouTube to listen to lectures on string theory, Einsteinian relativity, dark matter/energy, blackholes, and any other buzz word you might find in a script of Star Trek: Voyager. These concepts fascinate me even though I really only have the most basic of grasp on any of it. So, I with that most rudimentary understanding, I wanted to try giving you, my reading public, a primer on quantum physics from Aristotle to M-theory.

Now before we can even begin to talk about quantum physics, you're going to have to forget everything you think you know about how the universe works. It's kind of like becoming a Jedi, "You must unlearn what you have learned." You see, we live in a world of Newtonian Physics. In our world the Apple falls from the tree because (it was poorly designed by Steve Jobs and because) the force of gravity of the Earth acts upon it to do so. To us that is logical. We take all of Newton's laws as a constant because we can observe them. If I throw a ball up into the air, it will drop back down to Earth because of gravity. If I hit a puck across the ice it will keep moving, but it will eventually slow because of friction, however if that puck was in the void of space it wouldn't slow its momentum unless acted upon by another force. Instinctively most people understand such things, but Aristotle would not have. According to Aristotlean physics, "Objects that are in motion eventually tend to rest, because they will become tired." That, to Aristotle and the people of his time, made sense. It was what they could observe and until Newton that was the prevailing theory.

A very similar sort of thing happens when you move from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics/quantum physics. Like Aristotle we must move our way of thinking from the familiar and the observable to that of the exotic. Einstein's laws do not normally affect us on a day to day basis, (well they do, but you just don't observe them as often as you think.) Even when we are launching rockets to the moon or Mars we are still doing it based off of Newtonian physics, because the calculations of Newton are still relevant today. Yet, even though Newton is still right, its not the full picture. Einstein talked about a world we couldn't readily observe or even make calculations about. He described a universe not based upon what we can see but upon theory and math. As a result, quantum mechanics breaks our universe down into smaller and smaller parts governed by four fundamental forces, Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Weak Nuclear Force, and the Strong Nuclear Force. All of these forces act upon us at our smallest minute levels and govern everything in our world from why our feet are on the ground to the movement and speed of light. This is not the intuitive world you grew up believing in.

Gravity according to Einstein.

For instance, in QP, space and time are not two separate entities, but one fabric, and gravity (which we often thing of as such a strong force) warps both space and time (and it is actually the weakest of the forces that act upon us.) You need to think of space/time as a bed sheet pulled taught and each object with mass is laid on top of that bed sheet. The more mass the object has the more it flexes the bed sheet around it. Object which are caught in that flex are then pulled down into the valley created by the larger object. In essence everything is falling into something else, the moon is falling toward the Earth, and the Earth toward the Sun, but because we are also rotating and moving, (as is the sun and the moon,) we never collide. Astronauts in space are always falling to Earth, but they never collide with us. We call that orbiting... Okay, but that's space, how does gravity affect time? Well, depending on where you are on that slope warped bed sheet will alter how you experience time. Gravity affects time the same way it affects space, because the two things are one in the same.

Did you know that satellites in orbit above the Earth have to be programed with slower internal clocks, (I'm talking nanoseconds slower,) because due to their distance from the Earth and the lessened gravity that is acting upon them, if their clocks were allowed to run at (Earth standard) normal speeds, eventually they would go out of sync with the clocks on Earth? Now when you are talking a GPS satellite that is controlling where you drive, a one second loss of time or even a half second loss of time could result in your navigation being off by several miles. That is an observable and unbelievable affect of gravity affecting space/time, just as Einstein theorized. It is also the example I use when people claim that QPs doesn't affect their lives in any meaningful way.

So, now that you have a very very very brief gist of QP, lets talk about something even more complicated, M-theory. It is my favorite theory of all time, and more importantly has the potential to be the unifying theory, the theory that explains how everything in the universe works. Also, don't get caught up by the name, as the "M" doesn't really stand for anything, Magic, Mother, Mystery, Membrane, etc. This new theory emerged as a branch of string theory. So in order to better explain M-theory we should probably pause for a moment and look at string theory.

String theory is a way of looking at the microscopic world in a whole new way. If you break all matter down you will find atoms. If you break atoms down you will get electrons, neutrons, and protons. If you break those subatomic particles (or hadrons) down you will get quarks, which can have different properties based upon things like color, spin, and taste, but we won't go into that, because that would require another lecture altogether. All you need to know about string theory is that these, the tiniest of subatomic particles, may in fact not be particles as we perceive them, but really vibrating strings. Change the harmonics of a string and change what kind of particle it is, like plucking the string on a guitar to change the note. However, the mathematics of string theory don't work unless the string is allowed to vibrate though several different dimensions, (and I don't mean dimensions like Dimension X, the home universe of Krang, I mean dimensions,) like 3 dimensions of space, 1 dimensions of time, and 7 dimensions which are so small we cannot perceive them with our naked eye. Also, they are curled up over themselves and we can't correctly guess the shape or size of these dimensions. We have some idea through math what they must look like, but there are literally millions of billions candidate shapes that these dimensions can be, but that is a digression from my main point.

"I created also Calculus. You are welcome future generations
of high school math students." - Sir. Isaac Newton.

M-theory takes everything a step further to unify the (what were) 5 disparate string theories. What I find so fascinating with M-theory is that it postulates that, with 11 dimensions, the strings which theoretically exist on the quark level could possibly be, not just strings, but membranes that extend to... well everything. The membranes... for lack of a better explanation... "surround us and bind us, they hold the Galaxy (our Universe) together." I am not at all suggesting that these subatomic membranes are like the Force... but when you think about it, they could be.

 

I mean that is what I love so much about quantum physics, it is like philosophy and science combined into one elegant harmonic vibrating membrane of awesomeness. The further into it you go the more questions arise and the stranger the universe seems, but strange is good. Hell, strange is great and wonderful. Its a world of surreal wonder and that excites me more than anything, because with wonder and strangeness comes possibility. The universe is something we can figure out, we can calculate and postulate on. Think of what this means for our future as a race. Its one thing to pay lip service to the fact that human beings really have not even begun to understand the mysteries of the universe, but it is entirely another thing to begin your trip down the rabbit hole and scratch the surface of what we don't understand. You begin to truly understand how amazing our world is and how exciting it can be.

 

In all fairness, I haven't explained QP or anything I've talked about even half as well as they can be explained, but maybe I am hoping that with a taste there will be more people out there who will want to learn about quantum physics and string theory and M-theory and all the rest. I believe if more people start to understand how wondrous science can be, the better off we will be. Science breeds exploration which breeds cooperation, which breeds a humanity that is not only smarter but peaceful.

 

I am a poor poor teacher, so please don't take my word for how awesome this stuff is. To learn more about quantum physics and other amazing facts of science visit some of my favorite places on YouTube to watch and read more:
 

Sci Show

V-Sauce
Khan Academy
Crash Course

Michio Kaku

Nova

Brian Greene

Making Sense of String Theory

Through the Wormhole

And much much more...

 

Not to sound too much like a public service announcement, but America is falling behind in science. We need to energize our next generation and show them how important, strange, wondrous, amazing, incredible, (and any the other sort of adjectives you can think to insert,) science is.
 

Summer Vacation

I have been on vacation for the past weeks and have not had time to blog, but stay tuned for next week, when I will be releasing all new content, and boy do I have a lot to say. Until then I will tide you over with my new favorite song from the boys at The Lonely Island: