cellular automata

[Betsy -]

is there a link to this particular article, or has it already been archived?
Thanks

-betsy

>From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at hotmail.com>
>To: RuudSaurins at aol.com, chesnics at nhlbi.nih.gov, sam at zeppomusic.com,   
>pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: cellular automata
>Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 10:12:49 -0500
>
>
>>From: RuudSaurins at aol.com
>>      At the risk of sounding like I have gone postally epistemological; 
>>Wolfram's book is an outstanding catalog of fascinating observations that 
>>reveals to the reader that much of the "natural world" can be "derived" 
>>from elemental paradigms that can be consistently identified and given 
>>mathematical designations....call them cellular automata or what have you.
>>      In the grand scheme of things, however; it is my impression (_not!_ 
>>criticism) that this only serves us with a more all-encompassing catalog 
>>of the "what?" of the natural world, with some clever insight into the 
>>possible "how?", but no new clues to "why?".
>
>From the "In the Beginning" article on the NYTime's web site:
>
>In 1979, Dr. Alan Guth, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
>realized that a hypothesized glitch in this process would have had drastic 
>consequences for the universe. Under some circumstances, a glass of water 
>can stay liquid as the temperature falls below 32 degrees, until it is 
>disturbed, at which point it will rapidly freeze, releasing latent heat in 
>the process. Similarly, the universe could "supercool" and stay in a 
>unified state too long. In that case, space itself would become temporarily 
>imbued with a mysterious kind of latent heat, or energy.
>
>Inserted into Einstein's equations, the latent energy would act as a kind 
>of antigravity, and the universe would blow itself apart, Dr. Guth 
>discovered in a calculation in 1979.
>
>In far less than the blink of an eye, 10-37 second, a speck much smaller 
>than a proton would have swollen to the size of a grapefruit and then 
>resumed its more stately expansion, with all of normal cosmic history 
>before it, resulting in today's observable universe — a patch of sky and 
>stars 14 billion light-years across. All, by the magical-seeming logic of 
>Einstein's equations, from about an ounce of primordial stuff.
>
>"The universe," Dr. Guth liked to say, "might be the ultimate free lunch."
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: 
>http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx




http://www2.bc.edu/~yoonel

The addict regards his body impersonally as an instrument to absorb the 
medium in which he lives, evaluates his tissue with the cold dead hands of a 
horse trader.  "No use trying to hit there."  Dead fish eyes flick over a 
ravaged vein.
          -Burroughs, Naked Lunch


_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: 
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx