What is Reality?
"What is Reality?" is an art series created in 2018.
After reading the two books "A Brief History of Time" and "The Grand Design" by Stephen Hawking I was fascinated by the way he explains complex physical theories in such an accessible and thought-provoking way. It inspired me to I create this surreal series of images, where each artwork visualizes a different physical concept from Hawking's writings, while also standing as an independent piece of art.
Dimensions
It seems clear then that life, at least as we know it, can exist only in regions of space-time in which one time dimension and three space dimensions are not curled up small. This would mean that one could appeal to the weak anthropic principle, provided one could show that string theory does at least allow there to be such regions of the universe – and it seems that indeed string theory does. There may well be other regions of the universe, or other universes (whatever that may mean), in which all the dimensions are curled up small or in which more than four dimensions are nearly flat, but there would be no intelligent beings in such regions to observe the different number of effective dimensions.
Stephen Hawking, "A brief history of time", 1988, p. 89, 90
Carbon Element
For beings such as humans to exist, the carbon must be moved from inside the star to friendlier neighborhoods. That, as we've said, is accomplished when the star, at the end of its life cycle, explodes as a supernova, expelling carbon and other heavy elements that later condense into a planet.
Stephen Hawking, "The grand design", 2010, p. 127
Spacetime
The concept of gravity in general relativity is nothing like Newton's. Instead, it is based on the revolutionary proposal that space-time is not flat, as had been assumed previously, but is curved and distorted by the mass and energy in it.
Stephen Hawking, "The grand design", 2010, p. 85, 86
Cosmic microwave background radiation
This cosmic microwave background radiation, or CMBR, is the same as that in your microwave oven, but much less powerful. You can observe the CMBR yourself by tuning your television to an unused channel—a few percent of the snow you see on the screen will be caused by it.
Stephen Hawking, "The grand design", 2010, p.103
Distortion of Reality
Few years ago the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved goldfish bowls. The measure's sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? Might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have our vision distorted by an enormous lens? The goldfish's picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?
Stephen Hawking, "The grand design", 2010, p.37
Gravity
Gravity is the weakest of the four forces by a long way; it is so weak that we would not notice it at all were it not for two special properties that it has: It can act over large distances, and it is always attractive. This means that the very weak gravitational forces between the individual particles in two large bodies, such as the earth and the sun, can all add up to produce a significant force.
Stephen Hawking, "A brief history of time", 1988, p. 39
Expansion of the universe
Rather than space extending itself, it is the distance between any two points within the universe that is growing. That idea emerged in the 1930s amid much controversy, but one of the best ways to visualize it is still a metaphor enunciated in 1931 by Cambridge University astronomer Arthur Eddington. Eddington visualized the universe as the surface of an expanding balloon, and all the galaxies as points on that surface.
Stephen Hawking, "The grand design", 2010, p. 101
Expansion
For example, if we circled a cluster of galaxies on the balloon, that circle would not expand as the balloon expanded. Rather, because the galaxies are bound by gravitational forces, the circle and the galaxies within it would keep their size and configuration as the balloon enlarged. This is important because we can detect expansion only if our measuring instruments have fixed sizes. If everything were free to expand, then we, our yardsticks, our laboratories, and so on would all expand proportionately and we would not notice any difference.
Stephen Hawking, "The grand design", 2010, p. 101, 102
Time Dilation
Another prediction of general relativity is that time should appear to be slower near a massive body like the earth. This is because there is a relation between the energy of light and its frequency (that is, the number of waves of light per second): the greater the energy, the higher frequency. As light travels upward in the earth's gravitational field, it loses energy, and so its frequency goes down. (This means that the length of time between one wave crest and the next goes up.) To someone high up, it would appear that everything down below was taking longer to happen.
Stephen Hawking, "A brief history of time", 1988, p. 20
