fluid thoughts

I've just been watching Akira because it happened to be on cable. For those who don't know and don't want to do any homework, the short story on Akira is that it's a movie dealing with the possibility humans may someday manipulate the most basic forces of the universe. Think of it as trying to be the ultimate "super hero" the hard way - by evolving into one.

The "ultimate" is what has me thinking now. What we consider ultimate at any time in history is so connected to where we are. If I appeared with my laptop or even a flashlight at the right time in human history I would be the world's most powerful wizard. Today, for those who stay tuned into what science is capable of delving into, it would take the power to move mountains to get noticed. One thing about the ultimate that has always been the same, though, is that people always advance their idea about what it is. It always leaps out ahead of us. We always imagine more with everything we learn and master. And as we advance and achieve the ultimate of the past we find it is vastly different in nature than our ideas and hardly as impressive.

In high school physics, I was taught that matter had four states and that the most energetic was a plasma. Fire is the image most draw on here when it comes to a plasma. Turns out current thinking is far beyond that four state idea. There are many states for matter and the continuum goes right on through energy and its forms. The ultimate state is no longer a plasma. The states used to progress nicely from more dense and less energetic to less dense and more energetic - fire is easier to pass through that wood, but passing through wood will not burn you. It is interesting that now the pattern does not hold. The highest energy states appear to be more like liquids and can be immensely dense and energetic at the same time. The stuff of the early universe was like a pool of water. It had flow like water.

No surprise that the highest energy states should be liquid like. Liquids are as flexible as anything can be and still very strong. Water is the creator and destroyer here on our planet - carving the Grand Canyon and cradling the very essence of life. Not too dense and not too energetic, water is the middle path. The middle path is closer to ultimate. Or so it seems for now.

Having just returned from a trip through the APAC region (stops in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Sydney and Melbourne) I saw such a scale of ideas. People on the sides of the highway in Malaysia living on the little farms they have had for a very long time I imagine. A striking image of a teenage boy sitting in the mud next to a cow doing what appeared to be having a txt conversation on a little mobile phone that likely puts much of what we have in the US to shame. What would that boy think of as the ultimate? How different would it be from what I think? I wish I had had time to find out.