1 Towers, Galileo and the Importance of Physics and Mathematics

It has been reported that Galileo Galilei took advantage of the architectural error made with the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa,(Tuscany, Italy) to carry out succesful experiments regarding gravitational acceleration, g, of falling massive bodies in The Gravitational Field G of the Earth.

On the other hand, there are of course many other towers that are successful and famous even though they may have contributed little to the development of theories in physics or mathematics.

2 Successful, Famous Towers

No.1 Favorite: Empire state building

http : ∕∕i3.photobucket.com∕albums∕y90∕hillaryk∕EmpireStateBuilding.gif

No.2:

Sears Tower:

I admire No.1 , but take your pick!

No.3:

Eiffel Tower

Here is also a green picture of Eiffel Tower that many Parisian artists didn’t seem to like when it was built.

(See linked picts.)

There are many other towers–such as the ones shown above– that have been major architectural successes but may not have contributed anywhere near as much to physics as Galileo’s experiments from the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa ; this may also lead one to suspect that there is some hidden, negative (inverse) statistical correlation between successful physics experiments and architectural disasters. The new London bridge, with its forced oscillation problems– uncovered promptly by the Nobel Laureate, Professor Brian Josephson (at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), and reported by him a few years back in “The Times” in London– may be one other such improbable indication of the possibility of such an inverse correlation, but– more importantly– it is a strong reminder to all of us of the leading role of physics and mathematics in relation to all sorts of human engineering (including civil engineering, machines, computers, robots, nanotechnologies, biotech, and so on).

The ‘other side of the coin’ is that, when physics and its –preferrably stated in mathematical language– universal laws are ignored, the results can be disastrous. Furthermore, when any mathematical calculations are incorrect or plain wrong in engineering apllications, constructions, computers, machines of any kind (e.g. Universal Turing Automata (UTA)), etc., one can expect almost with certainty all kinds of disastrous consequences. Hence all engineers must master both physics and mathematics to a sufficient degree that such disasters do not recur and, well, most of the time they do not. But one should not, and cannot, forget either the famous disaster of the Titanic, or of the rapid burning of the compartmented Hydrogen-filled zeppelin dirigible “Hindenburg” at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937 –yet another disastrous, but not so tall tower. Here, there is no need for one to look for possible, or improbable, hidden statistical correlations as the lack of understanding–or just the misuse–of both physics and mathematics was clearly the cause of such disasters, along however with the widespread human greed.

2.1 ‘Accident’– Disaster ‘Towers’

More recently, such misuses of physics and mathematics are also the cause of the A- disaster and the potential H-uncontrolled nuclear fusion tests or H-fusion weapons, or actual, far worse catastrophes–as for example the Chernobyl reactor disaster in SU that affected much of the world, even outside Europe and Asia; in the former two cases, however, this involved certain famous physicists’ dismal failure to fully understand the social, political and human consequences of the newly acquired high power of physics in the new atomic and quantum world that physicists created, somewhat like making ‘a car without brakes’. Is it, then, at all surprising that one the most famous mathematicians (with interests in both physics and biology), Alexander Grothendieck –repeatedly and quite strongly– objected publicly to the use of theoretical work for covert goals that could lead to the doom of the entire human race ? What is much more surprising is that most of his close associates did not agree with his most reasonable stand against destructive uses of powerful theoretical tools that they developed or helped develop; their negative reaction to his protests was thus a great surprise and source of severe disillusion to Alexander Grothendieck about some of his closest coworkers; he must have felt the same as Caesar uttering “Atque Brutae!”, or as Galileo might have said again: “Et pur si muove!”.

2.2 Potential, global disasters stemming from ignoring physics and mathematics

Global warming and the ozone layer depletion are in the same category of potential disasters on an unprecedented scale for the human race. Beware that forgetting about physics and mathematics, and only playing ‘politics’ with ‘green’ words, has no chance at all of either solving these problems or averting such impending disasters.