Thoughts from Trampoline 4

The latest Trampoline was held the weekend before last and there a multitude of different, and amazing, topics and thoughts that wove together throughout the day.

To name but a few:

• We had Cam McGrane run a great session on humans being ‘Born to Run.’
• Don Miller ran a session walking us through a tale of a tiger and a man.
• Daniel spoke about Autism
• Kate Kendall and Kealy Nutt spoke about a new woman’s start-up group they’re getting going: Women Hatch

My session

I ran a session discussing the book I read recently, called Massive: The search for the God particle, by Ian Sample. The book was a phenomenal read and I highly recommend it. The book discusses the current hunt for the Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field. Essentially, these things are thought to provide the universe we all know and love, with mass.

What I was stunned to find when reading the book, and what I shared at Trampoline, was how amazing this theory is and what it might point to. If we can understand where mass comes from then we can also theoretically do lots of things that we currently can’t. More importantly, I wanted to discuss the idea of time. Time, at a sub-atomic level, doesn’t really exist. The Higgs Field essentially states that mass is simply the product of how quickly a particle can travel through space. If something can travel very quickly through the Higgs Field, then it doesn’t have much mass (eg – Light). If it moves slowly through the Higgs Field, then it has a greater mass.

At a particle level, time therefore becomes very relative. If you can move quickly enough (or, reduce the amount of friction your particles experience) through the Higgs Field, then what is time? If we can navigate our way not only through our three known dimensions (forwards/backwards, left/right and up/down) but also through other dimensions indicated by the presence of the Higgs Field, then measuring ourselves by days and nights begins seems pretty useless.

Google, I believe, is beginning to push the boundaries of time presently. There are 24 hours worth of video uploaded to YouTube every minute of the day. With different algorithms in place and Googles ‘smarts’ they are learning a lot of information about the human condition at an alarming rate. They are essentially living ‘YouTube Days’ every minute. Can you imagine what you would learn if you could speed up your uptake of information like that? Imagine living a decade, and all that it teaches, in only 60 hours. That’s what YouTube is currently experiencing. Time doesn’t seem so relevant at that rate. And there are more and more examples beginning to present themselves which show it’s not just YouTube experimenting with the limits of time.

I’m fascinated about time and about the findings these scientists are turning up by searching for the Higgs Boson using things like the Large Hadron Collider. I love how Trampoline gives me the ability to share this with people who may find that interesting and I really enjoyed listening to the multitude of other interesting things that people spoke about during the day. You can see some photos from the day on flickr pool.

I’d like to also to thank our fantastic sponsors, without whom the day wouldn’t have been possible – Lantern Mental Health, Ai-Media, CircusOz, Nodecity, Ergo Consulting and Web Directions South, which is taking place next week.

If you want to find out about the next one, simply sign up at www.trampolineday.com.