René Descartes

Today one idea of this man leads me to write this note. I think, therefore I am. I mention also Guillermo González, More names: Andrea Ghez, Carlos Frenk, James Cronin , and I.
Most of all this is inspired by Stephen Wolfram.

I hope I am clear and tie these men and a woman together in a coherent fashion. It all started last night when I was reading a White Paper by some Astronomers, Ms. Ghez among them. It happens that we have a physics laboratory in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Since 1992 new telescopes in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, for the first time in Human History

were directed in that direction and we saw what lurks in there. A huge black hole, called Sagittarius A*, Sgr A* (pronounced "Saj A-star") for short, has over one hundred stars moving around it at relativistic speeds, i.e. close to the speed of light. In fifteen years one of them, S2, has gone around a whole elliptic orbit. Only an intense force can make a star move so fast.

As Guillermo González says, it is like somebody put that lab there so we can learn what a black hole is.

The purpose of the White Paper is to request research funds for that study. We have a General Relativity Laboratory waiting so we direct our telescopes there and learn Einstein's theory in action.
Now let me turn to Carlos Frenk. This Mexican-British scientist published a paper on the Los Alamos National Laboratory electronic repository with a report on the use of Artificial Neural Nets (ANNs)to calculate the properties of many galaxies for an electronic catalog for future research. The ANN speeds up the calculations, that would take one hundred years otherwise.


James Cronin successfully organized an international collaboration to study what may well be the highest energy particle accelerator we will get information from in the foreseeable future. The south part of the detector is operating in Argentina already. This is the Pierre Auger Observatory for cosmic rays. The north section part of the apparatus is planned for construction in Colorado, USA. This collaboration already spent money to look into the results of another experiment set up for us more than fifty million light years away.


Now we come to Rene Descartes and I finish with Wolfram and I.

Descartes follows an old sceptic tradition in Philosophy. How do we know? What is true?

Our senses lie. As we age we don't have the same quality of perception. When young we hear from 20 cycles per second to twenty thousand, when old, both ranges change, the low frequencies and the high frequencies are perceived differently. So which is the true sound of our voice?

It stands to reason that our thoughts also change, we know more, and think less fast. So again: How do we know, and what is true?

Descartes gave a simple answer. I think, therefore I am. Cogito, ergo sum.

If I am thinking, I must exist, and I can start my inquires from that standpoint.

To me this statement seemed useless when I was younger. Now I am starting to understand. We live in a specific Universe of many we can think of. In this place Newton's laws, and Einstein modifications are useful. Ghez black holes in her laboratory in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, can be used to test for the first time the extent to which General Relativity is true. Electromagnetism as expressed by James Clerk Maxwell, and modified by Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga is good to describe what elementary particles do at the highest energies we can test them on. Cronin's laboratory will help us sort that out. This is the universe we live in, it is not an arbitrary place, laws seem to be obeyed. Natural Laws, we call them.

It is because there are three stable space and one time dimension that we can ponder these questions at all. It is becasue that S2 star takes exactly fifteen years to go around Sgr A* that we can set up out our telescopes in that direction and check. It is because of all this, that I think therefore I am, is possible. It is not an idle statement that everybody knows and is therefore useless. Descartes was a deep thinker, as his work in Analytic Geometry demonstrates.

Now I come to Wolfram and a conclusion for this note.This scientist invites us to look into concrete mathematics. I mean by this that computer programming teaches us, when run in digital instruments what we would've not known otherwise, or at least not that easily. Mathematics is not just inside our heads, it has gone outside, towards our artificial brains, that can run the Artificial Neural Nets, or any other program we choose to try. We gain objectivity by using the New Kind of Science, as he calls his proposal. This universe of ours seems to run as a computer program, how else if not for that, Frenk's calculations can be used instead of galaxies? How else if not for that, the predictions made with computers can guide Auger cosmic ray observations?

Now I finish with me.

I do not believe that some intelligent being set up these experiments for us. I do not believe that the usefullness of mathematics in Physics is a proof of the existence of God; but I do believe that we live in a peculiar universe where a New Kind of Science, and I think, therefore I am, are very important guides for our efforts to understand the world around us. A code word I use for this is, Information. There is information out there, just waiting for us to wise up and get it. There are records all around us, that we can decipher and live happier in the world.