Blog

Flatland

03/21/2018

“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.” Thus, begins the classic science fiction book, Flatland, written in 1884 by Edwin A. Abbott. Abbott was not a writer or a scientist or a mathematician – he was a school teacher – and while his story never had the impact of his contemporaries, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, it remains today a masterpiece of imagination. The story is told by A
Infinity

02/16/2018

The Infinity Motel. It’s a welcoming place where the vacancy sign is always lit. The room numbers start at 1 and by the time you get to room 24,578,378,833,012 you’re still no closer to the end of the hallway. Dang, should have opted for the suite by the pool. The concept of infinity isn’t easy to fathom. No matter how big a number you can imagine it’s puny by comparison. Here’s a pretty big number: if you could compact quarks literally side-by-side, how many would it take to fill the entire
The Double-Slit Experiment

02/08/2018

People often describe quantum physics as “weird”, a branch of science that produces results that boggle our delicate minds. But to fully appreciate how our universe works, we might need to toughen up and be ready for whatever reality throws at us. The universe is under no obligation to make sense. The double slit experiment is a good example. It was first performed by Thomas Young way back in 1801 using light. Physicists at the time wanted to know if light was like a wave and Young showed that
The Spiegel Formula

01/01/2018

Writing science fiction is more fun. A romance author might produce the world’s most interesting bare-chested lover, but a sci-fi author gets to mess with the rules of the universe! Way better. Of course, when an author extends the laws of physics, the new rules must be believable, otherwise, the story plunges into the Chasm of Abandoned Reason (a.k.a. the Fantasy genre). Which brings me to the Spiegel Formula: "This equation will be famous someday," Nala Pasquier tells us in Quantum Space. It

I'm using this space to post thoughts about the characters, settings and concepts presented in the books... and other fun stuff that comes up!

05/30/2017

Fermilab's 50th Anniversary

Douglas Phillips Books RSS Feed

Douglas Phillips Books

Talking About Science & Fiction

Flatland

Infinity

The Double-Slit Experiment

The Spiegel Formula

Read Next

Fermilab's 50th Anniversary

Tags

Talking About Science & Fiction​​

Flatland

Infinity

The Double-Slit Experiment

The Spiegel Formula

Read Next

Fermilab's 50th Anniversary

Tags

Talking About Science & Fiction