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RE: Hey Steemit users! I'm Alex. I'm hoping my experience here will be more pleasant and enjoyable than other networks!
Welcome to Steemit, and hope you will enjoy your time here! I'm also interested in physics, and love reading books about famous physicists, quantum theory, the nature of the universe, etc. At one time I was a physics major, but I reached a point where my brain just couldn't keep up with the math involved so I switched to computer science and became a software engineer instead.
I'm following you now. Sounds like you will be writing some cool content, so looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
Hey thanks @cryptomancer! I'm also very fascinated by quantum mechanics - a fictional book I read as a teenager called Discipline had a profound impact on my interest in this area. In a sense, it was the beginning of my curiosity of possibilities and probabilities. String theory was still pretty hot at the time! I've often wondered if I I should have gone that route, but I'm happy doing what I do right now. You've provided me some validation too that I'm doing the right thing haha.
Thanks for the follow and encouragement! I will surely be laying out some of what's been brewing up very soon :)
String theory and its big brother M-theory blew my mind when I first learned about it. I was particularly attracted by the idea that it might take 11 dimensions to provide a unified "theory of everything". As a hobbyist in computer graphics, I spent a lot of time in university trying to imagine what it might be like to visualize higher dimensions by taking various 3D slices of hypercubes & the like and trying to animate them on the computer. Fun times, and a lot more interesting than the business software I write for a living these days!
Who's the author of Discipline? I might have to look it up, always interested in finding new reading material. And have you read Flatland? I think that was the start of my fascination with abstract geometrical spaces.
Same here! I am still utterly fascinated by the concept - and I wish we could really test for these maths to see of there is more validity behind it. I love trying to visualize what higher dimensions might look like -- the way space bends on itself is so cool! I can't say I've tried doing that exactly, but I have messed around with making some 3d fractals at least!
Discipline was written by Paco Ahlgren. I believe it's the only novel he has written and I don't think it had tons of sales, but I met him totally unplanned when I took a visit to Barnes and Noble as a young teenager. He said some things that really resonated with me as a kid that, if I'm being totally honest, had a profound impact on the way my life played out. I don't think I have read Flatland, but I've heard it mentioned before! I will definitely see if I can snag a copy next time I'm at the local library.
I just checked out the Amazon page for Discipline. I think I'll make that my next read, looks like a great book. Thanks for the recommendation, and very cool that you got to meet the author!
Have you looked into quaternions? That's a good way to produce 3D fractals. I took a computer graphics course once where one of the class projects was to make a raytracer, and I spent some time playing around with raytracing quaternions. It amazes me how relatively simple looking mathematical equations can produce such endless beauty!
I thought you might like to see one of the quaternion images I raytraced:
I'd love to see some of your artwork too; might be a good topic for a future post!
I hope you enjoy the read! I will definitely share some art soon, I have plenty in the archives. I have never heard of quaternions but they sound right up my alley. That images is the exact kind of weird / organic looking shape that I love about 3d fractals!