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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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Congratulations on winning an honorable mention for Best Blog at the 2018 Quill Awards for [Link To Item #1196512] . *^*Smile*^* This award was sponsored by the blogging consortium including [Link To Item #30dbc] , [Link To Item #blogcity] , [Link To Item #bcof] and [Link To Item #1953629] . For more details, see [Link To Item #quills] .](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Blogging-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Highly Recommended
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| A timely article. Well, not really, but it's about time. That is to say, the subject of the article is time. Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion  Getting human feeling to match the math is an ultimate goal in physics. In his book Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, Max Tegmark writes that “time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is.” Finally! Someone agrees with me. The article is from back in 2019, but it's not like time's gone anywhere since then. And it's largely a transcript of an interview from 2014; thus, there's more to it than I can cherry-pick. But this question, I felt was important: Is it part of the scientist’s job to explain why things feel the way they do? Part of his reply: As physicists, that’s ultimately what we need to explain: Why does everything feel the way it does? We shouldn’t be so naive as to think that things will always feel the way they actually are, because the history of physics is a long sequence of examples of where we realize that the ultimate nature of things is very different from how they feel. I have some issue with the phrase "ultimate nature," but this is an ad-hoc interview response, so I'm not going to quibble. Take temperature, for example. Temperature is a bulk effect of particle motion/vibration within an object or volume of fluid (air in this sense is a fluid). At the smallest scales we can contemplate, there's only vibration—not temperature. People don't say that temperature is an illusion, but I keep hearing "time is an illusion" even though it, too, is a bulk property of matter. Anyway. The interview goes on to talk about some other interesting aspects of time, space, the universe, etc., with a bonus Monty Python quote, which I'm always a sucker for. But I won't bore you any further, not today. |
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Damn your pedantic ways. I was hoping to justify a vacation to Venus (which I still argue would be a much better holiday destination than fr-fr-freezing Mars, Elon. Ugh.) Now I guess I'll have to settle for the Cancun plans we already made, since my mass (and waist diameter, and thigh diameter) will be exactly the same regardless. 
