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The Space Doctor’s Big Idea
- emddudley 11y agoBy Randall Munroe. If the pictures didn't already make it obvious.
- swiley 11y agoSo this is why what-if hasn't been updated.
- jbob2000 11y agoThis was really hard to read. I feel like I'm reading a redacted science text book, with all the important bits removed.
- kbenson 11y agoI found it very easy to read (as in understand), but very hard to read (as in finish), because I'm a bit sleep deprived at the moment and it was putting me to sleep. It would be interesting to compare explanations like this[1] to mostly equivalent explanations as they would traditionally be presented for learning on a few topics I'm not familiar with to see if the concepts conveyed came across better. 1: With footnotes for specific terms so the jargon can be linked.
- ben0x539 11y agoInspired by http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html ?
- vanderZwan 11y agoDidn't Guy Steele's "growing a language" also start with the 1000 most common words?
- pcmonk 11y agoIIRC he started with one-syllable words, but same idea.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoIf I am right, I think he did but just with words with just one sound. FTFY ;-)
- bitwize 11y agoI think it was more inspired by Munroe's brushes with Simple English Wikipedia, but that's a fantastic one too.
- buzzdenver 11y agoThat was funny, but it would be easier to digest if he used a few extra words.
- drcode 11y agoIf you improve on it with a modified approach, buzzdenver, I'm sure many of us on HN would be happy to give you feedback.
- benten10 11y agoIdea: pull requests, but for essays.
- chmullig 11y agoWasn't that sort of what medium was pushing originally?
- benten10 11y agoWas it? Not sure. It's too new-agey and commercialized for me, so I never checked. Blogger and Jekyll-github all the way! Perhaps if someone leveraged those technologies well, you actually would have source control for essays.
- koenigdavidmj 11y agoSee also 'Uncleftish Beholding', a text about atomic theory using English as it might be without borrowing so much from Latin and friends: https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language.artificial/ZL4e3fD7eW0/_7p8bKwLJWkJ https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language...
- archangel11235 11y agoThat was fun. Thanks.
- Albright 11y agoThank you, Mr Munroe, but I still can't wrap my feeble mind around it. It's still just too weird.
- bosdev 11y agoAh, so you understand it perfectly.
- kodis 11y agoHe's also done a similar piece explaining how rockets work using only the thousand most common words in English. The one detail that I remember is that apparently "thousand" is not one of the thousand most common words, as it was rendered as "ten hundred".
- drcode 11y agoI'm tempted to read this story to my 4 year old daughter and see what her opinion is of this "space doctor".
- ismail 11y agoI just did. Her question was: "what does a space doctor checkup"
- codyb 11y agoI liked "Space boats", I bet kids do too.
- drcode 11y agoWhich shows part of the problem of this approach: The word doctor is in the top 1000 words in its usage for "medical doctors" but it's not in the top 1000 words in its usage as a reference to PhD graduates.
- DrScump 11y ago"Dammit, Jim! I'm a doctor, not an astronomer!"
- axg 11y agoTitle should be "Theory of relativity explained by xkcd author Randall Munroe".
- dang 11y agoThe original title has its charm. Not everything should be fully explained, and on HN it's better if readers occasionally have to work a little.
- SilasX 11y agoNote: Munroe did the same thing in an xkcd for explaining the Apollo rockets (I think that's what it is): https://xkcd.com/1133/ https://xkcd.com/1133/
- MrApathy 11y agoMunroe recently wrote a book full of these explanations, "Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words." Bill Gates' review is here: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer
- JumpCrisscross 11y agoClose! The Apollo programme used the Saturn V rocket [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V
- jrockway 11y agoBut his comic _is_ about Saturn V.
- zuck9 11y agoHe wrote a book called Thing Explainer that is going to be published in a week, which uses 1000 words to explain lots of things. It was reviewed by Bill Gates recently: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer This article is likely an excerpt from that book.
- mhb 11y agoDiscussion of book and Gates' review: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546194
- ctchocula 11y agoI think you absolutely need mathematics to understand the theory of relativity. Freeman Dyson writes when he was a child "I had read some of the popular literature about Einstein and relativity, and had found it very unsatisfying. Always when I thought I was getting close to the heart of the matter, the author would say, 'But if you really want to understand Einstein you have to understand differential equations,' or words to that effect." Later on, he goes on to say how he ordered Differential Equations by H. T. Piaggio with over seven hundred problems, most of which he solved over Christmas vacation. Then when he attempted Peter Eddington's Mathematical Theory of Relativity, it came very easily after the differential equations practice.
- ghaff 11y agoStipulating that "understand" can cover a lot of territory, one can perhaps develop a surface and somewhat metaphorical understanding of aspects of modern physics without math. However, you're almost certainly right that any deep understanding of, say, the standard model or relativity is deeply rooted in the math.
- dean 11y agoBut math is just a bunch of ideas expressed in a very efficient notation. All those notational squiggles represent ideas, and ideas can also be represented with words. It would be much less efficient, but anything explained by math should be able to be explained by words.
- joakleaf 11y agoNot just an efficient notation. Also very precise. Natural languages are not precise, and they lead to misunderstandings.
- adrianN 11y agoThe Greeks did that for a while, before the efficient notation was invented. It didn't work out too well, the explanations get very complex very quickly and it's hard to hold all the facts in your head without some convenient shorthand.
- KenoFischer 11y agoIt is worth pointing out that only about 10% of Mercury's parahelion shift is due to the effects of general relativity. The other 90% are due to gravitational influence of the other planets. It is really quite remarkable that astronomers of the 1800s made precise enough observations to be able to tell that the parahelion shift was not entirely explained by known objects in the solar system (since the effect is on the order of 10%, you have to know the mass and position of every other major object in the solar system to about that accuracy to be able to tell).
- Jtsummers 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(hypothetical_planet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(hypothetical_planet) I believe this was posted recently, or linked like I'm doing now in a comment. Scientists in the 1800s tried to explain that 10% with a hypothetical 10th planet within Mercury's orbit.
- bitwize 11y agoStill not as good as "Einstein's Theory of Relativity in Words of Four Letters or Less". Excerpt follows: A few more of us got it, then. But most of us just said, "What are you two on? Put down the bong and get real! This is way too wild to be true." But they just said, "Just try and see if it isn't true." So we came up with ways to test old Al's idea, and each time Al hit the gold. His idea had the sun's rays a tiny bit more red than what Izzy said. They were. His idea put Mars a tiny bit off from how Izzy had Mars. It was. The big one, the one that got told over and over, was the one with the dark-at-day time. You know, when the moon gets in the way of the sun. At that time you can get a real good look at a star when it's up next to the sun. (Next to it in the sky, that is. Not next to it for real. You know what I mean.) They went off and got a good look at a star that was very near the sun, and then they used a book to see just what spot that star was in. You see, the rays from the star pass so near the sun that they get bent, on the way to us. Old Al, his idea said just how much the rays get bent. With Izzy, the rays get bent, too, but only by half as much. So they took a look at the star, and they took at look at the big book, and ... well, I'll bet you can tell me as well as I can tell you just how far off that star was. A-yup. And then all of us, we all just sat back and said: "Whoa." http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html
- euyyn 11y ago> With Izzy, the rays get bent, too, but only by half as much. What does this refer to?
- andy_ppp 11y agoI for one hope that Thing Explainer is converted into Spanish[0]; it'd be a quick win to learn the 1000 most used words in Spanish in context! [0] May also apply to other languages.
- andor436 11y agoExcellent. I also enjoyed Brian Greene's visuals on the Late Show recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jjFjC30-4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jjFjC30-4A
- 0898 11y agoThere's an XKCD-inspired writing tool that only lets you use the most 1,000 most-common words in English: http://splasho.com/upgoer5 http://splasho.com/upgoer5
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoAlso, the official one: http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/ http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/
- jmilloy 11y agoI guess this comment probably comes up every time Munroe's common-word pieces come up, but I can't help but feeling like you only really understand (or care) about the article if you already know enough about relativity. > The first idea is called the special idea No, it's not. Relaxing the rules to use key words (especially proper nouns) would go a long way. You can call it Special Relativity and still "explain relativity using only common words", can't you? The result is that instead of an article explaining relativity, you end up with an article about relativity translated into a common-word subset of English. Of course, I do enjoy decoding into normal English in my head as I read!
- phkahler 11y ago>> Of course, I do enjoy decoding into normal English in my head as I read! I enjoy trying to minimize the amount of decoding I need to understand it. Only when I was about 2/3 of the way through did I realize it wasn't just someone using Munroe's style, but that he was actually the author. His ability to do this is probably unique.
- lelandbatey 11y agoI find I really like the labels "the special idea", and "the big idea." I like it because it introduces the nature of the theory quite approachably, where a theory is at it's heart an idea or a concept. Then, by labeling one "special" and on "big", the relationship between the two is immediately obvious; we see that one idea is covering a smaller but more particular area, while the other idea covers a larger but potentially less-special and more general area. The piece isn't as "strictly accurate" as it could be, but that's the point. By making something approachable you'll hook into many more minds than otherwise, and the knowledge of the reader that "this is not all, there is more to learn" is powerful bait for the curious.
- dgritsko 11y agoBill Gates recently reviewed Munroe's "Thing Explainer" (a book consisting entirely of explanations written in this style), and in his closing paragraphs states the following: "If I have a criticism of Thing Explainer, it’s that the clever concept sometimes gets in the way of clarity. Occasionally I found myself wishing that Munroe had allowed himself a few more terms—“Mars” instead of “red world,” or “helium” instead of “funny voice air.” Of course, that would defeat the purpose of the book. And Munroe himself is aware of the tension. In “Page Before the Book Starts”—a.k.a. the introduction—he acknowledges that some terminology is inescapable. “To really learn about things, you need help from other people, and if you want to understand those people, you need to know what they mean by the words they use. You also need to know what things are called so you can ask questions about them. But there are lots of other books that explain what things are called. This book explains what they do.” And it does that beautifully. Thing Explainer is filled with cool basic knowledge about how the world works. If one of Munroe’s drawings inspires you to go learn more about a subject—including a few extra terms—then he will have done his job. He has written a wonderful guide for curious minds." http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer I completely agree. Things written in this style occasionally start to feel a bit clumsy, but the fact that my curiosity has been piqued to delve deeper into a given topic is more than worth it.
- gp7 11y agoFor a layman's mathematical understanding of relativity I recommend "Why does E=mc^2" by brian cox and jeff forshaw, which explains both the theory and why the equations used to describe the theory, well, describe the theory. It does it all with a nice just-so narrative that builds on physics from galileo all the way through to einstein and ends up at particle physics. It's just a very good book.
- trequartista 11y agoI ran the entire text of this article through XKCD's simple writer tool (http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/ http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/) and it pointed out that "movement" is not among the 1000 most common English words. The word "movement" is used exactly once in this article. So I guess this should be Theory of relativity explained using the 1000 most common English words and one additional word :)
- XaspR8d 11y agoTrue, though Munroe has been quite liberal about word derivations, and '-ment' is a somewhat salient morpheme in English, despite not being very productive. But still I'm surprised the article didn't pass the updated validator. Perhaps an editor actually made the change?
- suprgeek 11y agoA fun exercise in 'constrained' writing about a complex topic. However making that claim that it 'explained' Relativity is not valid in any reasonable sense. I found the reliance on keeping to the 1000 most commonly used words to be actually fairly painful to read thru to the end and even harder to understand. Perhaps "Relativity as explained to a 6 year old" might make it more accessible. A 6 year old has a vocabulary of ~5000 to 10000 words (for reference) and being able to take these "verbal shortcuts" aka words would make for better understanding.
- btilly 11y agoI disagree. I have never before seen a popularized attempt to explain things like light bending that managed to get things right. He even took time to mention that the popularized image of a sheet of rubber with a ball in it is an incomplete way to think about things. If it does not match your previous understanding of the topic, I'd suggest reading it again. The only better explanations that I've seen involve tensor calculus.
- Steuard 11y agoI read the previous comment not as saying that this explanation was wrong, but that it's just unlikely to be truly enlightening to someone who didn't already know the subject reasonably well. I'm on the fence about whether I agree: the cognitive load of interpreting the odd phrasing certainly does compound the cognitive load of understanding the deeply non-intuitive physics. This is quite a good presentation of the topic (or, parts of it), but if clarity of understanding were the primary goal you could probably do substantially better by translating it at least partway back into ordinary language. (But then, fewer people might be intrigued or entertained enough to read that version. So I'm not really complaining.)
- rubyrescue 11y ago"If you’re in a car, you see watches outside the car go slower. They only go a little slower, so you wouldn’t notice it in your normal life; it takes the best watches in the world to even tell that it’s happening. But it really does happen." He said it backwards...
- Steuard 11y agoThe crazy thing about special relativity is that from the perspective of the observer in the car, they're sitting still and everyone else is moving. That means that the observer in the car will see the watches of people on the sidewalk ticking slowly, at the same time that the people on the sidewalk will see the car's clock ticking slowly. Everyone sees everybody else's watch ticking slowly (unless they appear to be at rest). And yet it all hangs together in a beautifully consistent way. The catch is that moving observers don't just disagree on whose watch is running slow, they also tend to disagree on whether distant clocks are correctly synchronized or not. The disagreements about which clock is ticking too slow always perfectly balance out the disagreements about which clock chimed noon earlier.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- btilly 11y agoIn the path from special to general you have to give this point of view up. More exactly, special relativity starts with the assumption that there are special inertial frames of reference, here is what they look like, and here is what they look like relative to each other. General relativity starts with arbitrary coordinate systems, and ways of expressing physics such that whatever was measured in one coordinate system can be translated into what should have been measured in another. These coordinate systems can have any mixture of weird effects. The physics involves something called a metric. General relativity is what falls out if you insist on the following statements: 1. "Locally" things behave like special relativity. 2. Given only low velocity and low mass, things behave like Newtonian gravity. 3. The terms of the metric satisfy a first order differential equation whose definition is independent of the chosen coordinate system. This gives you general relativity up to an arbitrary constant of integration (the cosmological constant). And in the presence of mass it gives you the prediction that no truly inertial frame of reference exists over any region with matter in it. (The effects of gravity are all due to stuff being non-inertial.) From that prediction we find that the point of view and understanding from special relativity is only a local approximation. You can't really describe any interesting system that way.
- scott_karana 11y agoIs this a typo, or just a misunderstanding on my part? These two quotes seem to be diametrically opposed in their explanation of Special Relativity in two parts of the article. > When you go fast, he said, the world around you changes shape, and time outside starts moving slower. > Since the boats are going fast, the space doctor’s special idea says that their watches will run a little slower than the ones on Earth. Shouldn't time outside start moving faster in the first quote?
- Strilanc 11y agoIt's not a typo. When two ships are moving fast relative to each other, they both determine the other's clocks to be ticking slower. http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/sr/paradox.html http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/sr/paradox.html
- phasmantistes 11y agoThat's the beauty of relativity, and why it is called relativity: it's all relative. When you go fast, and look outside, it looks like it is the outside that is moving fast (unless you are experiencing acceleration, at which point General Relativity kicks in). Therefore, to you, it looks like time outside is moving slower. When the space boats are doing their thing, to us on the outside it looks like they are moving fast. Therefore, to us, it looks like time for them is moving slower.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoYes. No. Maybe? If I'm moving very fast with respect to you, I see your watch running slow, and you see my watch running slow. So the first paragraph is true, if it's talking about your view - the world around you changes shape, and time outside moves slower, as seen by you. The second paragraph is true, as seen from Earth, not from the boats.
- ultrafilter 11y agoI think your watch is slow and you think mine is slow in the following sense. For each of many events, I record their time t and position x while you, moving relative to me at constant velocity, observe a different time T and position X. Between two events with the same X-value, such as ticks of your pocket watch, the difference in t-times is larger than the difference in T-times by a factor gamma. Conversely, between two events with the same x-position, such as ticks of my pocket watch, the difference in T-times is larger than the difference in t-times by that same factor gamma. There is no contradiction because events with identical x-positions do not have identical X-positions. If you already know what a partial derivative is, see the first paragraph of this: http://mathpages.com/rr/s4-07/4-07.htm http://mathpages.com/rr/s4-07/4-07.htm
- MarcScott 11y agoThe prose remind me of the writings of Kurt Vonnegut, particularly of Breakfast of Champions.
- krazydad 11y agoAnd so it goes. * * *
- rbanffy 11y agoBrilliant, as always.
- webwielder2 11y agotl;dr: Numbers.