(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best literary letters

I thought astrophysics sounded cool when I was 13, too.

Get her The Last Three Minutes and Stephen Hawking's Black Holes and Other Baby Universes.

And take her to a planetarium.

The OP specifically mentioned the hardback edition, which is going for $400-$450 on Amazon.

I agree that $36.38 isn't bad for the two-volume paperback edition, but even that might be beyond some people's means.

You can find examples of this by reading the letters exchanged between Schrodinger, Fermi, etc back during the founding of Quantum Mechanics. There's a book titled "The Quantum Letters" that contains a good portion of the correspondence letters sent around that time. It's also an interesting read because it gives a more "human feel" to the people involved in the work and just how confused they were by the whole thing.

Edit: This might be part of the larger book I read a while back. Though I'm not completely sure.


https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Wave-Mechanics-Correspondence-Schrödinger/dp/1453204687



In a more recent example you can find in Daan Frenkel's book "Understanding Molecular Simulations 1st edition" where he makes this distinction. See the Monte Carlo section if you pick this up.

It tends to appear more in older literature than newer ones because the two words have sort of merged together over the years.

Stochastic was meant to be an antonym to deterministic while random is suppose to refer to the inability to reasonably predict an outcome. While they seem to be the same a "random process" can be deterministic in nature such as a coin flip, but unpredictable for humans because of the large number of variables involved and thus random.

But you'll also find other people making the same distinction.

https://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2006/07/06/randomness-versus-stochasticit

>Stochastic is often used as counterpart of the word "deterministic," which means that random phenomena are not involved. Therefore, stochastic models are based on random trials, while deterministic models always produce the same output for a given starting condition.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Stochastic.html



There's also a distinction between probabilistic and stocatstic when talking about time dependency.

There is a book filled with letters written to J.D. Salinger by all sorts of people from famous authors to teenagers.

In his book called Black Holes and Baby Universes. He depicted a universe swiss cheeses by black holes, the termini of which balloon into baby universes.

http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Progressive-Protesting-Understand/dp/1621570312

This is a review and partial excerpt from the essay/book.


https://www.amazon.com/Wahhabism-Critical-Essay-Hamid-Algar/dp/188999913X

They look identical to me. Here are the Moral Letters and here are the Letters from a Stoic (look inside at the table of contents).

I'm not an expert on black holes, but I do have a degree in astrophysics, and I think you're misunderstanding the way black holes work. When they take in a lot of matter, they don't "send a ton of it back out." The only things that escape black holes are particles that tunnel through the immense gravitational potential (see Hawking Radiation), and it happens very slowly. The "pillars" you're describing are not made of matter escaping from within the black hole, but rather matter being ejected from the accretion disk without ever having entered the black hole, and there are a few competing theories of how exactly this happens (see Polar Jet).

But with all of that said, you're not the first person to have thought that black holes and baby universes might be related (see Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays).

Edit: fixed a sentence that I realized wasn't clear at all.

I don't know if this works or you but when I'm suffering with anxiety and can reason through it I try to remember a short cut to reach the end conclusion I'll eventually reach. I.e. A is ok because of X,Y,Z, my goal is to remember A is ok each time I'm anxious about it and not have to visit the supporting reasons.

So the crazy part about death is that our perspective about it is highly influenced by our popular religions. It may be worth reading some ancient roman stoic philosophy - I know it sounds silly but they were strongly taught not to fear death since it was such a frequent occurrence prior to modern medicine and society.

The argument goes like this.

• You did not exist before you were born, so it is unlikely you will exist after you die, but if you do exist after you die, the best part you, your soul is what remains.
  
• Life is pretty challenging and if death is non-existence, then it is a release, a release from hunger, work, risk of disease, risk of imprisonment, risk of exile, etc....
  
• Don't seek death out, but if it comes it is best not to fear it, as it is inevitable.
  
• Nature has provided all the requisite things required to live, specifically a means to find food and a means to make shelter, why wouldn't nature also provide a way out, a way to end potential suffering?
  
  Instead focus on living in totality, being a good person, having friends, being a friend to yourself, and improving yourself, despising wealth, etc.
  
  Here is the book I recommend on it, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, it covers many topics but many on death in detail, you can find it online for free but the book version is much better:
  
  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005NC0MGW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  Here is an excerpt:
  
  > I may become a poor man; I shall then be one among many. I may be exiled; I shall then regard myself as
  >born in the place to which I shall be sent. They may put me in chains. What then? Am I free from bonds now?
  >Behold this clogging burden of a body, to which nature has fettered me! "I shall die," you say; you mean to
  >say "I shall cease to run the risk of sickness; I shall cease to run the risk of imprisonment; I shall cease to run
  >the risk of death." [....] Death either annihilates us or strips us bare. If we are then released, there remains
  >the better part, after the burden has been withdrawn; if we are annihilated, nothing remains; good and bad
  >are alike removed.
  
  But how they reason about death is what helpled me, with my own fears of death, after coming very close to death last year and consequently being told that I have a 20% higher chance of death then the average population, increasing by 1% a year, due to a rare disease.
  
  But I also think it is worth seeking out help in the form of therapy, you deserve to be happy.