Origin of our solar system Idealizing chaos Transforms Commentary

Pierre-Simon Laplace astronomy

Origin of our solar system

• The nature of spin
• helps explain how our sun
• with its planets spinning around it
• roughly in circular orbits and in the same plane
• formed from a hot mass of spinning gas.
• Laplace calculated how, as the gas contracted,
• the nebula separated from its equatorial rings
• due to turbulence and centrifugal forces,
• how each ring coalesced into a planet,
• and how heavy the sun would have to have been
• to have pulled back all its light into a black hole.

Idealizing chaos

• Our solar system isn’t perfectly aligned.
• The planets don’t spin in perfect circles,
• their orbits aren’t exactly in the same plane,
• and comets and asteroids fly all around.
• But in mathematics we have expressed its essential principles
• and, outside of time, have rewound the system back to its beginning
• as a spinning, incandescent cloud.
• Here we discover there never was chaos except in our minds,
• only conditions unfriendly to life,
• conditions unfriendly to our arrogance,
• unfriendly to our romantic idea of progress.
• We have rolled back the universe to a point
• but we have discovered that we can compress the known
• into a remote and nested set of infinitely small homunculi
• only in our minds.

Transforms

• Laplace taught
• that an equation expressing a function of time
• can be transformed to express
• a function of complex angular frequency
• to simplify the analysis of a system.
• If the blank page seems inviolatable, then,
• listening to your thoughts,
• begin at the upper left
• and write them down as quickly as you can
• without stopping for any reason.
• If finding a creative solution doesn’t seem likely
• then change the problem;
• change the assignment;
• change your mind;
• change your life.