According to World News Forecast, 11:11am on 11/11/11 could, if Uri Geller is right, be a portal to another universe. This is from Geller’s web-page on the subject:
String theory is said to be the theory of everything. It is a way of describing every force and matter regardless of how large or small or weak or strong it is. There are a few eleven’s that have been found in string theory.
I find this to be interesting since this theory is supposed to explain the universe! The first eleven that was noticed is that string theory has to have 11 parallel universes (discussed in the beginning of the “11.11” article) and without including these universes, the theory does not work.
The second is that Brian Greene has 11 letters in his name. For those of you who do not know, he is a physicist as well as the author of The Elegant Universe, which is a book explaining string theory. (His book was later made into a mini series that he hosted.) Another interesting find is that Isaac Newton (who’s ideas kicked off string theory many years later) has 11 letters in his name as well as John Schwarz. Schwarz was one of the two men who worked out the anomalies in the theory. Plus, 1 person + 1 person = 2 people = equality.
Whether or not a portal to another universe does open up, there will be a film opening that day about the topic, see here. In possibly related news, Brian Greene’s Fabric of the Cosmos series will start appearing on broadcast TV 11/2/11, with the first episode already available here if you are an iperson.
Amazing! So if there are 11 characters in a phrase then it’s proof of string theory? How about “W+h+a+t + a+n + i+d+i+o+t” = 11 ?!!
Also, there are 4 letters in John and 7 letters in Schwarz, and Schwarz’s ideas about 3-dimensional superconformal field theories (hep-th/0411077) paved the way for ABJM to figure out the dual theory for AdS_4 x S^7 (arXiv:0806.1218).
And while we’re on the topic, the period between the discovery of the Veneziano amplitude and the Green-Schwarz second superstring revolution was 1968-84; and 196884 is the coefficient in the j-function which led to the discovery of monstrous moonshine.
Obviously, we’re all living in the M(atrix), and string theory is not a theory of physics, it’s a set of cheat codes for the corny MMORPG we all happen to be trapped in.
Best post I’ve read lately! (I’m not a spambot.) In Germany, Nov 11th (at 11:11am) is the begin of the carnival season. If you’re not German, I suppose it may appear like a portal to another universe 😉 Widely used paper streamers are clearly a connection to string theory.
Interesting is also, that this guy is reading a sting theory related article and the most he can say about is something about counting the letters. I think kids over 1rst class elementary school can do better.
Terrifying is that there is still people considering him a kind of a genius or something.
When a scientific theory becomes part of the popular culture it means that a paradigm shift indeed took place in the public eye.
I knew that Ed Witten was a traitor ^_^
I think your point is well taken, particularly as a thread enhancer (or, given this one deteriorated pretty quickly, and perhaps predictably so, in this instance more of a savior), but I suspect Gellar doesn’t regard himself as part of pop culture (whether his self awareness is important being maybe another sort of thread enhancer); indeed, his periodic encounters with James Randy would suggest he’s perfectly aware he’s something more like the vulture in the famous cartoon telling his companion that sometimes he just feels like going out there and actually killing something.
Ach: I meant to make clear I was addressing my earlier comment to Giotis.
Perhaps we are going to close the time loop reported in http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/parodies/sam/sam.html “The Nobel Prize Singularity”: “the time of the work for which they were awarded has long since converged to 1973; It is not yet clear exactly what happened that year: perhaps a time loop or phase transition”
I hope the dimensional portal will be open 11:11 am GMT otherwise it will be a mess of portals opening all over the planet at different times and places. Well if no GMT, people in Australia will be one of the first to enter the portal. I’m afraid the portal in New York will be one the last ones to open, unfortunetly for you Peter.
I don’t see anything about string theory on the “iperson” link.
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There’s also a new Tarsem Singh (director of “The Fall”) movie coming out 11/11. I think I am more excited about that.
Hey, what’s the next big prophesied-doomsday date after 2012’s past? Do we just start worrying about the Year 2038 Problem?
WTF is this pathetic clap trap doing in your blog?
TR,
The link just advertises the “PBS” app, if you install that you can then download many of their programs, including the first episode of the Nova series.
ja carl,
Either trying to provide entertainment, or warning that you really should watch out for that portal at 11:11 on 11/11/11.
11:11 am US time ? East coast or west coast ?
I know Newton did a lot of weird stuff, including alchemy, but who could imagine his ideas kicked off string theory many years later ?
Peter,
considering the fact that your blog is quite popular, I think that by accident you just made an advertisement of Brian Greene’s Fabric of the Cosmos series. Perhaps he should thank you 😉
Did anybody catch this amusing detail:
“HOWEVER, if you count the fingers on your hands in unary arithmetic – no zeros – then 10 fingers, in unary mathematics, = 11111111111 – EXACTLY 11 ONES”
What, does Uri Geller have an extra finger or something?? 😉 Or is he just a bit confused about “unary mathematics”?
Do people like Geller actually believe their own ramblings?
That’s not a rhetorical question – I am genuinely curious. I see two possibilities:
1. For reasons unknown (Attention? Psychological games with the naive?) they make absurd statements, but don’t actually believe the nonsense.
2. They truly believe in what they say (A much scarier scenario.) One wonders how many numerological calculations were thrown out when they failed to support the hypothesis. Calling such behavior delusional is an understatement.
–
If only I knew how to enter the multiverse’s Konami code… I could transport to a universe anthropically tuned for less stupidity.
I think 12/12/12 is much more likely to be important. After that, the next triple date is 1/1/1; 89 years later, and I don’t plan to be here for that.
This dude is seriously on to something! Barack Obama has eleven letters in his name. Coincidence? i think not!
“Do people like Geller actually believe their own ramblings?”
Do you think there is even the slightest possibility that he believes it? Do you think he might believe that he uses magic to bend spoons too? I think he has amazing powers. Powers of persuasion that is.
Don’t forget that the number of generators of E8 x E8 is 496, which, when multiplied by the number of large spacetime dimensions, gives 1984, the year of the first superstring revolution!
I actually think it makes sense that to draw attention to himself, he chose the most sci-fi topic.
Thomas R Love: I think, when the date 13/13/13 comes, THAT is when we need to be really concerned
Those 11-lettered guys might be pretty good, but Edward Witten goes to 12.
You would think that after all his years in this game Geller could produce something more than fourth-rate numerology.
Check out his appearance (many years ago) on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, which can be found on YouTube. Carson (a good amateur magician himself) consulted with James Randi beforehand, and made hash of Geller, and he did it in the nicest, least confrontational way one can imagine.
its a really interesting perception you have there, but at the end of the day, 11/11/11 is still an ordinary day like any other. It is just my birthday.
wow, you are going to be born next month?
The stupid, it burns!
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don’t know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Well, 11 o’clock on 11 Nov *was* the original Armistice Day (and hour) so you can’t quite say it’s just another day.
In important scientist sartorial news, 11|11|11 is The Date that Most Closely Resembles Corduroy, Ever.
“The second is that Brian Greene has 11 letters in his name. …”
Lisa Randall also has 11 letters in her name. This proves that the universe has 11 dimensions and either that God is androgynous or that God loves show business.
Surely this insight is worth a Templeton Prize!
crazy yeti: The “unary” he was referring to is probably the one from automaton theory. In the usual formulation, a Turing machine can only store two distinct values on its tape: marks (or 1s) and blanks (or 0s). So the usual method of representing the natural numbers is as a sequence of marks separated by blanks and since having an empty sequence of marks represent a value is inconvenient, zero is usually represented by a single mark and the representation of N+1 is the representation of N followed by another mark.
What this has to do with portals to other universes isn’t clear, unless he thinks life is like The Matrix only with hardware even more impractical than that shown in the movies.
I think Uri Geller is right with his addiction to the 11 at least in one respect: In Germany the carnival season starts at the 11th of November at 11:11h which means you can expect all sorts of foolish behaviour on that date.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival#Germany.2C_Switzerland_and_Austria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_Carnival
So what happened on 10/10/10?
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Is today Peter, you still have a chance to see it in New York.
No portals opened in Europe unfortunately.
Here in New York we seem to have survived…
Everything is OK in the Pacific Northwest. That’s ok, there will be other portals to look forward to.
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