How do liquid crystals illustrate the properties of cosmic strings?

[s3nn0c]

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0509091

A liquid crystal analogue of the cosmic string

"We consider the propagation of light in a anisotropic medium with a topological line defect in the realm of geometrical optics. It is shown that the effective geometry perceived by light propagating in such medium is that of a spatial section of the cosmic string spacetime."

Sorry for so many links lately, but this analogy is really amazing and in my opinion it's worth to discuss.

 

[Mike2]

I knew it! This is all just a crazy hologram. We're trapped in the Matrix.

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0509091

A liquid crystal analogue of the cosmic string

"We consider the propagation of light in a anisotropic medium with a topological line defect in the realm of geometrical optics. It is shown that the effective geometry perceived by light propagating in such medium is that of a spatial section of the cosmic string spacetime."

Sorry for so many links lately, but this analogy is really amazing and in my opinion it's worth to discuss.

 

[Crazy Moron]

Those images, a and b, look a lot like the images on any TV screen. Look at the screen you are viewing. The V in TV is made of flakes that look a lot like the flakes in the illustrations.

Those unusual looking flakes are caused by the fact that a screen is made of pixels, each separated by a distance. These would be "string points" in my terminology, which can only be arranged in a certain way. On my screen, the pixels are arranged in a square pattern, and they can only produce solid lines in two directions, vertical and sideways. The T has a solid line vertical and sideways on a liquid crystal screen, like this computer screen. But the V is made of flakes, just like the illustrations in the PDF article

It is easy to say this screen of pixels has only two directions that become two underlying dimensions. It is dumb to say I don't understand; but I couldn't make heads or tails of the article, although a lot of it seemed strangely familiar. Maybe it was talking about my own concept of string dimensions.

There are a lot of places in nature where string dimensions seem to become evident. We can talk about that.

I say that all space is made of individual points arranged in a certain way, and that some things in electromagnetic waves have to follow the arrangement of the points of space. This article seems to be saying something like that, too.

Seeing the physical evidence of string dimensions is the key to making the next big step.