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I am currently trying to thoroughly understand some topics that are active areas of research in theoretical physics, namely the black hole information paradox and the principle of holography. I find these endlessly fascinating, and I haven't seen much content on the internet trying to explain them in an easy way. And I can see why: To really understand this new research you need a lot of background knowledge first. And it is also very much in progress, so there is simply not much awareness currently.
But niche topics also represent an opportunity, because maybe I could do something that hasn't already been done. I do have the background to understand at least the gist of some of these new developments, and I would really like to share what I have learned so far. I should emphasize that I am by far not an expert, I'm just an undergraduate student, but I'd like to deepen my own understanding and teaching is the best way to do it. Now I am pondering which medium would be the best suited for this.
If done well, videos would probably be the best way. But I have no experience with animation so this would be a huge undertaking for me, and is probably not what I should be focusing on right now. So my plan would be to have a written version first, for example in the form of a series of gemlogs, and depending on feedback could some day tackle the project of creating explanatory animations if I still want to.
But I'm wondering if gemtext is really an appropriate format... I'd love to contribute original content exclusively to the smolnet, but I don't think there is any way around using equations when trying to explain things like entropy. I see people writing LaTeX code in preformatted blocks on here, but I wouldn't want to unnecessarily burden readers with difficult to decipher strings of symbols (and it also doesn't go well with my sense of aesthetics). Perhaps images would be a way, with the LaTeX code as alttext, but that is also not very elegent.
I think this is really what HTML5 is best for. The best way to learn is through a multitude of different media, and on a normal webpage I could provide text, beautiful formulas, interactive graphs, a comment/help section, etc. The problem with this approach is that realistically speaking, I'd probably suffer from feature creep and give up midway through.
This leads us back to gemtext. Its biggest advantage is that the focus is on the content, which prevents distractions not just for the reader but also the author. So perhaps the best way would be to just let my thoughts flow in a series of posts on this gemlog, and sacrifice quantitativeness in favor of qualitative explanation. I believe it is not possible to truly understand theoretical physics without really doing calculations, but maybe that is beside the point and outside the scope of what I could convey anyway. A lot of handwaving will be required, but maybe there are enough people who aren't bothered by that and are interested in hearing the story of how black holes can be viewed as holograms.
Sorry for rambling, I started this post still undecided on what to do, and writing it helped clearing up my thoughts. Thanks for reading, and if you have any interest in such a blog series please let me know in a comment below!
Posted 2021-12-19
2021-12-19 | Just go ahead :)
2021-12-19 | Nothing wrong with rendered latex images with the latex source as link description. This seems a very nice way to present displayed equations. For little inline things you can use unicode mathematics symbols, like wikipedia does.
2021-12-19 | I am thinking about the same things, except for some condensed matter topics. Simple equations can be approximated with unicode, but that's not good enough. I would suggest a more natural description of the equation (as compared to latex) in the link body to the rendered image. There are a few mathy gemspaces out there, you can seek out what they do.
2021-12-19 | Thanks for the suggestions everyone! - Rie
2021-12-20 | Just describe in text, and for those that want to dig into the calculations, you can include a link to a PDF at the bottom.
2021-12-29 | I think that text is the medium that everyone will appreciate most, and a PDF is a good idea. Still the topic is almost out of the bounds of any meaningful observation and I feel most of the discussion about the topic is absolutely ficticious without more sources of observation. Especially the ramblings of Machio Kaku... When the idea that black holes are not a hole, but the reclaimation of a star burnt out, the other side of the solar process, I will be praising that author's name. Sorry to be wry, byebye --- Sentinel1980
2021-12-29 | Yes the topic is highly theoretical. I find it interesting on its own, but there are applications of the holographic principle (which was inspired by these extremely theoretical ideas about black holes) in solid state physics, and there is also some relation to the fractional quantum Hall effect as I understand. So there is definitely more to those ideas than fiction, but I can understand the doubt. I find Kaku's books too sensationalized for my taste so I don't know what he has to say on this. - Rie