Energy, Matter, and Force (Week 4)

Based off of Peter Meyers' post in Symmetry Magazine, it would seem that my body is alive thanks to Einstein's equation. Especially as someone who eats an especially large amount of plants since I'm a vegetarian, I have a great gratitude for the process of the sun's mass turning into sunlight energy that fuels the growth of the plants I so enjoy eating. The gorgeous sunny weather we've had for the last two days has been so lovely and feeling the sunlight on my skin has felt so delicious especially with the knowledge that it will help my body create Vitamin D which is useful for so many things including maintaining bone health, which as someone with scoliosis I need to be especially mindful of.

Just to have some fun with it: If the four forces were beverages...

The Red Eye, also known as a cup of coffee with an espresso shot in it, would be the Strong Nuclear Force. It's unfamiliar to most. It holds things together that might otherwise fall apart (like an exhausted desk worker). It only works on a very short distance; the consumer of such a beverage must have their cup by them at all times or they lose their strength.

The Regular Cup of Joe or coffee would be Electromagnetism. It's polarizing: you either love it or you hate it. It's still strong but not the strongest. The messenger particle of electromagnetism is the photon which travels at the speed of light, similar to the thoughts of one who has just had their morning brew.

A cup of Black Tea with milk & sugar would be the Weaker Nuclear Force. It's a bit less familiar than the cup of coffee. And the tea's messenger particles of sugar and milk (like the W & Z bosons) are heavy and slow, inspiring the drinker to consume their beverage slower resulting in less caffeine consumption (strength) than the cup of coffee.

Lastly, the cup of Rooibos Tea...Gravity. Such a subtle influence you'd hardly realize it's having any effect at all. There isn't any caffeine in rooibos tea and yet there is something in it that is gently stimulating, a bit mysterious, just like this supposed graviton particle that no one has found just yet. ;)

The function of gravity is to keep masses from going too far astray from one another. It maintains the greater community of the galaxy.

Synchronicity (Week 3)

Well I got a bit ahead of myself and wrote a bit about synchronicity in my last blog post, not realizing it was material for the following week. I guess I shall write some more. There are the times when a friend calls just as I'm about to dial them and so I pick up before it even rings and there we are able to chat. While I'm sure it could easily be considered coincidence, often it feels like synchronicity that we were both calling one another at the relatively same time. Of the examples I can think of for synchronicity at present, most of them I can see how I'd like there to be an apparent synchronicity. My favorite example, because it makes me the happiest to consider, is that of my husband and I.

We went to high school together and fancied each other but were both incredibly shy and so no sparks flew. It wasn't until a little over six years ago that I got out of a major relationship at the same time he moved back to the US from living in Italy for two years. So the synchronicity I suppose is us both entering the San Francisco dating scene simultaneously. If he hadn't just returned or I hadn't been liberated from my previous relationship the timing may have been wrong and who knows when we would have begun dating! Fortunately it seems the odds were finally in our favor.

I see connectivity as the way two things are connected, which may be when they are very clearly connected like twins or further removed like yoga students who have studied with the same yoga teacher for years but they do not necessarily know each other or live near one another. Connectivity can explain similarities and occurrences that might seem random otherwise. Like if those two yoga students took vacations to the same place (assuming their destination had a desirable yoga scene).