Newsflash: Ours is a universe of limits.“Physics,” as Adam Frank writes for NPR, "has known for a long time that there are real physical ceilings in the physical world." These ceilings are all around us, propped up (pulled down?) by Conservation Laws. Charge conservation dictates electromagnetic systems like radio towers beaming out signals. Angular momentum conservation dictates rotating systems like figure skaters locked in spin. Energy conservation, "the holiest of holies," has long befuddled physicists, as energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.Constraint's a nagging bitch. And yet "the constraint of energy conservation (or any form of conservation law)" can be a boon to physicists. "When formulated in the language of mathematics," Frank explains, "conservation laws can be unpacked to become the poetry on which all physics is built." Look at our understanding of stellar formation. Clocking speeds of whirling dervishes of collapsing interstellar gas clouds is no small task, but angular momentum conservation gives us a handle on systems that must stay the same as all else changes. And look at our sub-atomic strides at Fermilab and at CERN, made possible by energy conservation "providing a sheltered place of constancy during the chaos."Washington is another place of constancy during all manner of chaos – and its lack of constraint is even more of a nagging bitch. Politicians have finally cobbled together an agreement just days before defaulting on all our loans (and a day after Gabrielle Giffords, the victim, it could be argued, of an especially virulent political culture). It was a thorny process, but not one ruled by limits: "Their real problem is not that they have too little freedom in choosing a direction but too much," Frank adds.Debt ceilings are imaginary human constructs, the products of man's (literally) activities and imaginations. And while those to the right are all about hard-and-fast ceilings, they, like every last one of us, "want to dine on our cake while still leaving it on the table." We brush off the reality that ours is a world of finite natural resources and workable land so that we can continue fostering limitless economies. Capitalism is inherently anti-ceiling. It does not play well with physical constraints.And that's the problem. "We appear to be living in the first human era that will be forced to watch that fact move from abstraction to global reality Frank says. Maybe when the fantasy world of economics considers the laws of conservation will our leaders have "firmer ground to stand on." Up with ceilings.
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