Real Science According to scientists at Edinburgh University, there will be 1 billion acts of sexual intercourse in Great Britain this year. How they know I'm not sure--but scientists know many amazing things, so if they say so. In very round numbers then (it's difficult to attain precision here) this means that, world-wide, there are about 89 billion acts of sexual intercourse on Planet Earth each year. This qualifies sex as a significant human activity I would think, and hence, it should be a legitimate domain for scientific inquiry. Some reckless souls, beyond the chaps at Edinburgh, have done interesting science in this area, to be sure. For example, scientists have calculated that the average couple generates about 3 kilowatts of energy during 10 minutes of vigorous sexual intercourse. This is enough energy to operate their household appliances during this same 10 minutes. (I am not making this up!) During their lifetime, this same couple will generate cheap (usually), clean (let us hope), renewable (after a few moments of rest), non-polluting energy equal to 1 ton of TNT. Which means that the 3 billion or so sexually active people on the planet can generate a force equal to 100,000 Hiroshima bombs during their lifetime. Now that's something to think about. Think about this: if there are 89 billion acts of sexual intercourse on the earth each year, then this means that at any given moment about 340,000 people are so engaged. Let your imagination roam free for just a moment. At this very moment, somewhere 340,000 people are naked and sweating, huffing and puffing, sighing and crying, in that peculiar performance which only seems seems less than comical when one is in it. This is a cosmological paradox of the highest order! How can it be that at the very same moment I am politely reading the newspaper on the cross-town bus, or you are reading these words with dignified aplomb, other people are screwing away with abandon? Let us call this the "Paradox of Anomalous Moments." That's a space/time paradox Einstein never touched! After giving us the considerable amusements of the Special and General Theories of Relativity, he lost heart for the really big ones. Instead, he spent his declining years in vain pursuit of a Unified Field Theory joining the four basic domains of physics in one neat and tidy package of equations. And the reason he spent his time in such desultory pursuits, to tell the truth on him, was that the laws describing one of those domains (quantum physics) contained scandalous hints of a universe that did not run according to clock-work rules, but was instead unpleasantly probabilistic. Einstein, being a regular meat and potatoes kind of a guy, balked at such anarchistic nonsense. His thundering dictum was: "God does not play dice with the universe!" No, I suppose not. But then, God clearly is playing something with the universe, although I suppose just what, is not so easy to say. Although dice sometimes seems a charitable description of God's sport. But I think it's high time someone said a word or two in defense of Ole Al. You see, we have gotten pretty carried away with all this quantum mechanics stuff. Quantum mechanics is the science of the tiniest particles of matter. In some sense, the most fundamental particles of matter. These particles have wonderfully whimsical names, like Charm and Strange and Top Quark. Many of these names were given them not by God, but by a Caltech physicist named Murray Gell-Mann. A fellow student of mine in grad school once went camping with Murray and as they walked along the Herr Professor passed the time by reciting the Latin name of every plant, tree, scrub and blade of grass they saw. And who said physicists aren't a madcap group? According to quantum mechanics, the underlying structure of the universe is such that the act of trying to observe it closely alters its state, and so, the story goes, we cannot ever really know anything much for certain because our attempts to know cause the thing to squiggle out from under our gaze. This truth about physics has now invaded popular culture and has become the sloppy notion that the universe doesn't have an objective reality to it and that we create reality by our acts of observation. Al and I beg to differ. The problem in quantum mechanics, described simply, is that the size of our probes are too large relative to the size of the objects we are trying to observe. Consider an analogy. If I have a large circle on the ground full of marbles, and I want to count the marbles, this is a pretty simple matter if I just look at them and count them out as I go. The reason this works is that the size of the particles of light bouncing off the surface of the marble (my probe) are very small relative to the size of the objects I am observing. No problem. In quantum physics the problem is that the smallest probe possible in the physical universe (a particle of light) is so big, and the things we are tying to observe are so small, that even light bumps the things around every time we try to get a bead on them. This leads lots of people to say that the precise state of these tiny little subatomic particles is unknowable. O.K. And this then leads other people to say that since the act of trying to observe the fundamental stuff of the universe changes it, this means we can't meaningfully talk about any underlying objective state of the universe; or even more extravagantly, that the universe is a subjective creation of our grasping minds. Not so O.K. Let's return to my marbles. What if I tried to count them, not using particles of light, but using an Allison-Chalmers backhoe? Wouldn't my crude probe knock them around hopelessly, making it impossible to ever know precisely how many marbles I have? Is anyone anywhere tempted to describe this as proving that I have no marbles? (No wisecracks now!) I mean does this prove that marbles have no objective reality since I can't observe them in this way without destroying some of the information about their state? Of course, with marbles we have alternatives--we can select another probe. But with elementary particles, all the world's a backhoe. So what? It is sometimes said that the very equations which successfully describe the microcosm are themselves inherently probabilistic, and this proves that the underlying nature of things is not fixed but is undetermined--that it is not just a matter of ham-handed probes. But Al and I would ask: "How, pray-tell does one decide which theories are right and which are wrong?" By testing them with empirical observations. And, we all now see and do freely profess and acclaim, that all possible empirical observations are limited by the size of any possible probe. So the only evidence we could ever have for any theory of the microcosm is evidence fitting probabilistic theories. It is then not so very surprising that these are the very types of theories which are "successful" in describing the realm of the very tiny. It's sort of like the old observation that if the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look a lot like nails. Let me try one more analogy, just for Al's sake. We live on a planet of water and mud. Great oceans of air swirl in our atmosphere. Water evaporates then condenses and falls to earth as rain. The sun passes from horizon to horizon each day, painting the sky scarlet in the west each evening. All of which happens pretty much independent of our puny minds and our knowledge or lack of understanding about all this. Now humans just might someday succeed in our ages-old quest to destroy ourselves and all sentient life on the planet along with us. If we do, will not the rain continue to fall and the wind to blow, and won't the sun paint the western sky each night even if nobody is around to appreciate its beauty? Beauty will die, and art will die, and poetry too. But sunsets will linger each evening for an audience who has left the theater. God's creation does not depend on the human mind to keep it humming. By the way, since we are off on this pleasant tangent, the current quest for a unified field theory goes by the sobriquet of the Grand Unified Theory (or GUT). The current thinking is that a unified theory is coherent only if the universe is assumed to have ten dimensions. So if the universe has a GUT, it's one with ten dimensions! "What's that?," you say. Yes, I said ten dimensions. You already know three of them, and a fourth, in another guise. The familiar three are: length, width and depth. The fourth is time. For a long time now physicists have spoken of time as a fourth dimension. They do this because when doing the math of the universe the factor for time looks like the factors for the other three and so they are, mathematically speaking, pretty much one kettle of fish. How we get from there to ten dimensions is as simple and slick as you please. You see, in order to have a really workable GUT, the physicists have to stuff their equations with ten sets of factors in order for everything to balance out just right. And once you stuff the equations, all the factors look pretty much the same, and so a ten-dimensional universe is really no more troublesome than a four-dimensional one. What in heaven the other six dimensions are, I have no idea, and neither do the physicists. They just know that it's mathematically elegant, and that's good enough for them. Of course, it may turn out that the universe really is a ten-dimensional manifold (God help us). My own opinion is that we have enough trouble taking out the four-dimensional garbage; I grow faint at the prospect of these same responsibilities plus six!. Poor Einstein, while we're on the subject, was a victim of our age. In more genteel times the innovator could make his little revolution, then have plenty of time to die-off before the next revolution came along. After all, Einstein was gracious enough to wait 200 years before debunking Newton's sensible universe. Those irreverent quantum physicists waited less than 10 to assault's Einstein's. This is a damnable age we live in, in which change out paces the best of revolutionaries. But I digress terribly. What were we talking about? Oh yes, SEX! Einstein's problem, if I may be so bold, was that he picked the wrong problem to spend his dotage on. If he would just have concentrated his talents on the Paradox of Anomalous Moments, I am sure his reputation would have been made! Now there are plenty of opportunities for scientists of other stripes to get involved here. It's not just the physicists who have unfinished work here, there is plenty for psychologists, anthropologists and even political scientists to ponder. I will offer a couple of examples. In addition to contemplation of the Paradox of Anomalous Moments, sometimes when I see people on the street, or when I meet someone, I try to imagine what they would look like naked. (Only sometimes though, and come on, you do this too.) Especially if they are self-important types. It's a great social equalizer to imagine the boss, or the IRS Agent who is auditing your taxes, or that wind-bag the Senator, in a state of felicite delicado. At some point I suspect every adolescent wonders this about their parents. These days I find it more fun to imagine the pious and important, the emperors and empresses, without their clothes. You may pick your own subjects, I won't titillate you with mine. Then there's the little matter of le petite mort. If all that sweating and huffing and puffing seem undignified, how much more so the finale. I once had the pleasure of knowing a lovely young woman who always moaned three times to announce the arrival of her coming. Loud and abandoned. There are even politics in such matters. She was relentlessly orgasmic, almost as a matter of political duty. Having grown up on the feminist faith, she was damn well certain he was going to get hers. Not entirely for hedonistic reasons I sometimes thought, but also in order to manifest the proper political consciousness. Anyway, it was the moaning which struck me. I mean some women come with dainty little shudders, some with a modest "oh" or two, some indicate the finale only by an unwillingness to go on (at least in my limited experience in these matters). Moaning ran in her family she said, having overheard her sisters and her mother giving evidence of the same trait. I wonder, could such things be genetic? There are inexplicable cultural differences to be explored as well. I remember once during my teenage years reading a serious article in Playboy (didn't you read the serious articles?) which revealed the mind-boggling fact that different nationalities express characteristic utterances and unique sounds when locked in the throes of passion. How is such a thing possible? I mean there is very little overt cultural instruction in the etiquette of lovemaking noises--at least not in my neighborhood! These are the things I wonder about! Einstein explained to all who would ever wonder, precisely what would happen to a clock accelerated to near the speed of light. Good show. Now that that's out of the way, would someone kindly tell me how moaning can be inherited? Or how Russians all know how to swoon like good erstwhile Bolsheviks? Why is it that the scientists never take on the really tough ones?