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Re: The Note That Began All....



> I just saw the fascinating two hours about this on PBS as Scott suggested.

Pretty cool shit, huh?  Are you filled with the wonder of Science?  ;-)
The final hour airs next Tuesday.

> This is some brainy stuff I know, but it can be broken down into some cool

> discussion for any who are interested in this facet of Pete's vision of 
> things.  This is a legitimate Who topic.  Pete is really onto something I 
> believe.

And even more ironically, Pete was coming up with those Lifehouse ideas
right around the time String Theory was beginning in earnest (late '60s /
early '70s).

But before we go recommending Pete for a Nobel Prize we should realize that
there are differences between Pete's "story" & String Theory as it's known.

For example, Pete speaks of "one note."  A note that "began all" which "can
also destroy."

Now, String Theory speaks of many "notes" or variances of fundamental energy
vibrations which translate into the fundamental particles we know today.

And String Theory doesn't say that one of these "notes" or energy vibrations
*caused* the universe to come into being (although many believe our universe
may have popped into existence via some sort of quantum fluctuation).

However, one could argue (and many physicists do) that at the very moment of
the Big Bang, when all the universe was unimaginably hot, all energy strings
*were* of the same vibration, meaning that there were countless identical 
"notes," which didn't form other "notes" (vibration patterns) until the
universe sufficiently cooled enough to allow those other "notes" to come
into existence.

So, in a sense, at the earliest stage of our universe, all "strings" *were*
vibrating the same way, expressing the same "note."  One note.  In tune.  In
that sense, Pete may have been "correct."

But really, is this whole String Theory part of the underlying reason why
humans (intelligent beings) are so fascinated with music:  the string vibra-
tions on musical instruments, the adjustable chambers of a French Horn?
Why does it compel us so?

Is music (vibrations, resonance) something fundamental that we humans sense
on an unconscious level?  Is that why we search it out when we're happy,
sad,
excited, bored, etc.?  Why should music, or being in tune, be pleasing to
us?

Another aspect of the String Theory documentary last night that I find fasc-
inating every time I think about it is Einstein's brain-storm that gravity
is simply the curvature of space (and time) made acutely aware to us via the
warping caused by massive things (planets, stars, galaxies).

So, when Pete tosses his guitar up in the air (!), it's not being "pulled"
back to the ground by a force necessarily, it's simply tumbling back down
curved space in the only path it can follow - like on a two-dimensional 
level if you were standing at the foot of a smooth hill & rolled a basket-
ball up that hill.  Pete's guitar isn't being pulled back to the ground;
it's
simply tumbling back down, following the curvature, the warping, of space 
because of our massive planet Earth that we live on.

(Incidentally, even small things like people cause their own tiny space-time
warping.  It's way too small an effect to notice but it *does* exist.  Every
time you jump up in the air you pull the Earth *ever so slightly* upwards to
meet you!  It's true, I tell you!  Ah, lovely science....  However, the
massive Earth wins out in the warping department & *you* fall back rather
than having the ground move up to meet you.)


- SCHRADE in Akron

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science
makes skepticism a virtue.
     - Robert Merton, 1962