a response

That milky way picture is really cool. I just seen you posted it, and i re-posted it because i think it is cool. I don't know you, but i'm friendly with absolutely everyone. Can i ask you a personal question? Here goes... Do you think that you could explain Life, Atmosphere and space, energy, and how all these things and others i have not mentioned, all interact or Tie into one-another To create the real universe that we live in. Not in full detail of course, just in a nut shell so i can gain a little better understanding of all the elements and how they work with eachother. This may sound like a weird or unusual request, but I'm really trying to figure some things out. If you have no clue what i'm talking about, then never mind this message and have a nice day. I'm just trying to figure out what you might have a good idea about, due to the feild of study you are in. Very impressive I must say, do you have any idea how this disaster in Japan is going to affect the world? Should we be doing anything to help it that the experts aren't already doing, or will things work out ok? Thank you for your time, and sorry to ask such a complicated question, but i would love to understand more about what i can do to make a small change, to help others that come after us all here now. Thank you! Jason

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as a physicist (i think i can say so) , we can explain alot, but only on surface. and many thing is not with in science domain, for example life, love, hate.... well, nevertheless, we try to formulate it with a lot mathematic models. OK, may be you mean life is in biological sense. in this sense, life is a system for me. we can create digital life, so that they follow simple rules but having complicated behavior. we all follow simple rules, we eat, sleep, have desire, motive, etc... and each other interact then create the society. similar thing happen in non-living things, water. water molecule follow simple rules, but water have complicated feature, it can be ice, be vapor, while single water molecule cannot be ice or water. my point is, if you look a big picture, we are just part of it. if you even look at a bigger picture, say a galaxy, we are nothing. however, if you look at a single household, everyone matter!

since your question is very general. and life is a very abstract concept, it can include many things. so, i dun know what to say. anyway, the underlaying structure of the universe is a very huge and harmonic, every part is related to each others. we can arrange them according to the complicity : mathematics -> physics -> chem -> biology -> psychology-> social science -> economy -> art ... or by size: nuclear -> atom -> molecule -> protein -> DNA -> man -> city -> planet -> solar system -> galaxy..... , or by energy, by time scale, etc... however, different veiwpoint is describing our universe.

so, as human capacity is limited, we so far dont have a simple theory. but just little pieces.

at the end, i think we can still trust nuclear power. since the japan nuclear incident is mainly a political problem, and if we spend more time and money on it, it only get better and better. think about car, if we so scary on car accident at the very beginning, do we have safe and fast car to drive? and nuclear power has so many advantage then the others. the only and only 1 problem is the nuclear waste. but compare to other waste by energy ( in fact, making solar panel use alot toxic material , large scale wind power will use up a lot of land, which mean, wild animal lost land, etc.). but the nuclear waste just need to store in very deep or just send back to the earth core ( although this technology not present yet ). in additional, people very concern on the accident of nuclear plant, i also worry on plane accident too! no one can live when a plane blow up in the mid-air! i think i make my point clear.