Ruminations on Alchemy of Sir Isaac Newton

Newton's Translation of the Emerald Tablet

It is true without lying, certain and most true. That which is Below is like that which is Above and that which is Above is like that which is Below to do the miracles of the Only Thing. And as all things have been and arose from One by the mediation of One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father; the Moon its mother; the Wind hath carried it in its belly; the Earth is its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into Earth. Separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, sweetly with great industry. It ascends from the Earth to the Heavens and again it descends to the Earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations, whereof the process is here in this. Hence am I called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.

Don't you think it odd that given the times that while contribution from Sir Isaac Newton lead the way in terms of Optics and Gravitation that one could have been so mislead as to the study of an ancient enterprise.

The Alchemists attempted to perfect the One Thing of Hermes, what they called the First Matter, by using specific physical, psychological, and spiritual techniques that they describe in chemical terms and demonstrated in laboratory experiements. However, while the alchemists spoke in terms of chemcials, furaces , flasks, and beakers, they were really talking about the changes taking place within their own bodies, minds, and souls.2The Emerald Tablet, Dennis William Hauck, Chapter 10, Page 151

It is not to far a leap to see that intelligence could have been made up of other attributes that we might say Emotional Intelligence is worth a look. How would this compare to Silica Garden Illustrating Mineral "Vegetation" but to see it as growth in one form but analogically attributed to one owns neurological process inside? While this is matter constitution raised it has very fluid attributes to a intelligence system?

As a man I cannot say I can have ever overcome my emotions but I can be more aware of what is going on inside. How my views of the world can be circumspect, from a much higher realization.

How much more important my emotions play then in staying to the high road of decency and respect. How my emotions may be elevated to be inspired by others. How childish I can become by loosing my awareness of my responses.

The language of Alchemy is learning to see as if you are a POlymath about your life. It does not mean you do not suffer the emotional turmoils just that you realize it is okay to feel. To feel deeply.

What matter based realization can exist as we conjure up the mind to the responses we have experienced that we do not see the mixtures of the elements that go on inside? Shall all our responses be matter based in distinction, based on the lower realization of what can arise in human beings? The baser emotions of an ancient human being primal in nature while evolution shall see the rise of the machine?

So by definition and understanding of the Ruminations how is it a defeated man could have excelled so boldly as to have found "no hero" in front of him? No hero, but his determination to be  but "goal oriented." Not to have been overcome by this negative state, so as to loose his self in his understanding of life and his quest to be better?

People have had it wrong for a long time now, and hopefully this sheds a new light on one of our forefathers who gave us more then his science to consider. He was still a scientist in face of the problems he may of encountered psychologically.  He entered the cave and saw the shadows, but he knew there was so much more to his confinement of perspective that pushed himself to excel.

Rumination is usually defined as repetitively focusing on the symptoms of distress, and on its possible causes and consequences.^[1]. Extensive research on the effects of rumination, or the tendency to self-reflect, shows that the negative form of rumination interferes with people’s abilities to focus on problem-solving and results in dwelling on negative thoughts about past failures.^[2] Evidence from previous studies suggest that the negative implications of rumination are due to cognitive biases, such as memory and attentional biases, which predispose ruminators to selectively devote attention to negative stimuli ^[3] However, three forms of rumination were proposed by Mikulincer (1996): state rumination, action rumination, and task-irrelevant rumination. State Rumination involves dwelling on the consequences and feelings associated with the failure. Action rumination consists of task-oriented thought processes focused on goal-achievement and correction of mistakes. Task-irrelevant rumination utilizes events or people unassociated with the blocked goal to distract a person from the failure.^[4]

It is of great consequence that we can see the reasons why being in such a negative world does more harm by our engaging what may have been the realities of those who have seen  and experienced a Hell on Earth.  Soldiers who return home, Peace Officers who have no way to deal with the tragedies, or Fireman who saw the outcome of death by Fire?

What about you as an individual? How great the wall that can be set up that the view cannot let us see what is on the other side? It is of consequence that each of us will experience these things. The question is  will you accept that the emotions do exist within you that they have to be made aware of. That we cannot gloss over what is real inside to have have it accumulate?

So maybe in those times of Sir Isaac Newton they did not have psychology people to help you surmise the matter states of our convictions and realization as stepping off  points to the future?

The Flammarion woodcut. Flammarion's caption translates to "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet..." "We all are of the citizens of the Sky" Camille Flammarion

The Melting Pot?


On the question of our societies then what value can be seen when it is not seen as part of the individual  developmental graces in conjuring up the humanistic values of our decency and respect of others?

	"Plato made clear that merit and not heredity defined the gold man and that gold could be found in all parts of society."

Plato prove that justice does not depend upon a chance, convention or upon external force. It is the right condition of the human soul by the very nature of man when seen in the fullness of his environment. It is in this way that Plato condemned the position taken by Glaucon that justice is something which is external. According to Plato, it is internal as it resides in the human soul. "It is now regarded as an inward grace and its understanding is shown to involve a study of the inner man." It is, therefore, natural and no artificial. It is therefore, not born of fear of the weak but of the longing of the human soul to do a duty according to its nature.

A just society must be governed by men of reason.Inventing a new social myth to replace the old. Socrates calls those who rule for the benefit of the whole society and not to it's detriment golden men: in his myth they rightfully govern the men of silver and bronze. This is the myth of metals(415a ff.) the centrepiece of a second accusation that has dogged Plato through the centuries. Plato made clear that merit and not heredity defined the gold man and that gold could be found in all parts of society. Nonetheless, Plato has never escaped the charge that he imposes upon society an elitist and authoritarian rule. The charge is pressed even though in Book IV Plato makes justice in the individual the condition of justice in society.--Pg 16, Para 2 and 3, of Plato the Republic Introduction by Richard W. Sterling and William C. Scott.

“ Man is the most composite of all creatures.... Well, as in the old burning of the Temple at Corinth, by the melting and intermixture of silver and gold and other metals a new compound more precious than any, called Corinthian brass, was formed; so in this continent,--asylum of all nations,--the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Cossacks, and all the European tribes,--of the Africans, and of the Polynesians,--will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state, a new literature, which will be as vigorous as the new Europe which came out of the smelting-pot of the Dark Ages, or that which earlier emerged from the Pelasgic and Etruscan barbarism.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, describing American Culture as a melting pot in a journal entry, 1845

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable . We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature? See: Nature by Emerson

In response to the trivial statements of what you might have heard and repeat without looking.Here's some support for the limited view you may share of the subject that carry's some weight. Of course even given the perspective of a scientist he did not have a full understanding of the subject?

The Errors & Animadversions of Honest Isaac Newton by Sheldon Lee Glashow ABSTRACT: Isaac Newton was my childhood hero. Along with Albert Einstein, he one of the greatest scientists ever, but Newton was no saint. He used his position to defame his competitors and rarely credited his colleagues.His arguments were sometimes false and contrived, his data were often fudged, and he exaggerated the accuracy of his calculations. Furthermore, his many religious works (mostly unpublished) were nonsensical or mystical, revealing him to be a creationist at heart. My talk offers a sampling of Newton’s many transgressions, social, scientific and religious.

The new book I am reading Gravity by Brian Clegg currently sheds more light on Newton youth and the life he lead.

Silica Garden Illustrating Mineral "Vegetation"

In Newton's day, a silica garden was usually made by placing ferric chloride lumps in a solution of potassium silicate, as in the following demonstration. See: Multimedia Lab

Isaac Newton is known today as one of the most profound scientists to have ever lived. Newton's discoveries in physics, optics, and mathematics overturned a variety of fundamental beliefs about nature and reshaped science in ways that are still powerfully with us. But this is only part of Newton's fascinating story. Research over the last generation has revealed that the famous scientist spent over thirty years composing, transcribing, and expounding alchemical texts, resulting in a mass of papers totaling about a million manuscript words. In fact, Newton seems to have considered himself one of an elite alchemical brotherhood, even going so far as to coin private anagrams of his name in the secretive custom of the sons of art. Despite our growing knowledge of Newton's deep involvement in alchemy, one basic question remains to be answered Why did the founder of Newtonian physics believe in alchemy, a discipline long viewed as discredited in the modern scientific world? William R. Newman's lecture will attempt to arrive at an answer to that question by providing the evidence that led seventeenth-century thinkers to an acceptance of alchemical transmutation. Why did Isaac Newton Believe in Alchemy?

 You may be familiar with Isaac Newton from such inventions as calculus and the law of universal gravitation. What you may not know is that he was also an avid "chymist," or alchemist. In fact, Newton actually wrote roughly a million words about alchemy and his experiments with it — as Indiana University science historian William Newman has noted, Newton probably spent more time doing alchemy than he did on any of his other scientific pursuits. See: Incredible videos recreate Isaac Newton’s experiments with alchemy

About Knowledge

"As to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before." "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman

Justified true belief.....does it matter what knowledge could exist in or about knowing that all knowledge exists out there somewhere and that you only have to access it? How do you do that?

Our attempt to justify our beliefs logically by giving reasons results in the "regress of reasons." Since any reason can be further challenged, the regress of reasons threatens to be an infinite regress. However, since this is impossible, there must be reasons for which there do not need to be further reasons: reasons which do not need to be proven. By definition, these are "first principles." The "Problem of First Principles" arises when we ask Why such reasons would not need to be proven. Aristotle's answer was that first principles do not need to be proven because they are self-evident, i.e. they are known to be true simply by understanding them. See:The Arch of Aristotelian Logic

What is self evident for you at the time......your accumulating experiencing with an inductive/deductive relationship at the time and what arises at that moment. It is a conclusion about and is what connects you to the answer?

Betrayal of Images" by Rene Magritte

                    Probabilties
                 (The Fifth Dimension)
                         |
                         |
                  Idea of the pipe
                        / \
                       /   \
                      /     \
                 Picture of the pipe
                    /         \
                   /           \
                  /             \
               The real pipe and form  
 

It may not mean something to someone else but it is an opportune time for you then and now. You provide the "access point" when you ask the question. That's why you see the "?" mark.

Awareness of the development of the constitution as it applies to all human beings in a free and democratic society was thought to imply that the deduction of its principles should arise in what can be gained from it? What is arrived at and about what is being "self evident" too and for all people? So "the draft" in language was very important to one's constitution. Not just to a country, but in a person too. You see?

Knowledge then is about what you learn at this time.....could be the measure of the whole life...or could be a measure of the moment in time. This is of value to you. This is about that which is of measure when it is weighted against something of great meaning to you? How do you value that knowledge?

This is what will be remembered.

 Polymath

The diversity of one's knowledge can overlap many areas. Such trends in the sciences are seeing such benefits from cross pollination of the trades(aspect of the different areas of the sciences) as applied to those different sciences.

 For example it is known that condense matter physics is of importance to theoretical approaches as a sign of the process toward identifying first principles? One may use string theory to push back perspective to the beginning time?

 Can one use philosophy to better manufacture the question? Sean Carroll thought it might be of use to coordinate the developmental positions with regard to science and philosophy to produce a clarity in developing the question?

When you see in many ways you see where many things connect?

 Sir Isaac Newton was very proficient at doing this. You may not have liked his alchemy and thought it an ancient way, but he cared about the way he related to people.

 He wanted to improve his condition so he knew that with his diversity of knowledge with and about the structure of the planet,  that the structure of himself,  lead to something very philosophical about his being. "To combine things" to make himself a better person.

Vacationing On Vancouver Island

 Along the beach in Parksville there was a sand sculpture contest going on. Here is a video of the sculptures and how they were being made. They all  looked pretty neat. Here are some pictures I took of the finished product  below.

My wife and I are vacationing right now and are staying not to far from the event.

We meet here on Vancouver Island about 36 years ago and this is kind of a homecoming for us. The ferry ride over brought back a lot of good memories traveling from the mainland.

Process Fractal vs Geometry Fractals

Let proportion be found not only in numbers, but also in sounds, weights, times and positions, and whatever force there is.Leonardo Da Vinci

The Mandelbrot set, seen here in an image generated by NOVA, epitomizes the fractal. Photo credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation

 "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line." So writes acclaimed mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in his path-breaking book The Fractal Geometry of Nature. Instead, such natural forms, and many man-made creations as well, are "rough," he says. To study and learn from such roughness, for which he invented the term fractal, Mandelbrot devised a new kind of visual mathematics based on such irregular shapes. Fractal geometry, as he called this new math, is worlds apart from the Euclidean variety we all learn in school, and it has sparked discoveries in myriad fields, from finance to metallurgy, cosmology to medicine. In this interview, hear from the father of fractals about why he disdains rules, why he considers himself a philosopher, and why he abandons work on any given advance in fractals as soon as it becomes popular. A Radical Mind

As I watch the dialogue between Bruce Lipton and Tom Campbell here, there were many things that helped my perspective understand the virtual world in relation to how the biology subject was presented. It is obvious then why Bruce Lipton likes the analogies Tom Campbell has to offer. The epiphanies Bruce is having along the road to his developing biological work is very important. It is how each time a person makes the leap that one must understand how individuals change, how societies change.



Okay so for one,  the subject of fractals presents itself and the idea of process fractals and Geometry Fractals were presented in relation to each other. Now the talk moved onto the very thought of geometry presented in context sort of raised by ire even though I couldn't distinguish the differences. The virtual world analogy is still very unsettling to me.

So ya I have something to learn here.

I think my problem was with how such iteration may be schematically driven so as toidentify the pattern. Is to see this process reveal itself on a much larger scale. So when I looked at the Euclidean basis as a Newtonian expression the evolution toward relativity had to include the idea of Non Euclidean geometries. This was the natural evolution of the math that lies at the basis of graduating from a Euclidean world. It is the natural expression of understanding how this geometry can move into  a dynamical world.

So yes the developing perspective for me is that even though we are talking abut mathematical structures here we see some correspondence in nature . This has been my thing so as to discover the starting point?

A schematic of a transmembrane receptor

It the truest sense I had already these questions in my mind as  I was going through the talk. The starting point for Bruce is his biology and the cell. For Tom, he has not been explicit here other then to say that it is his studies with Monroe that he developed his thoughts around the virtual world as it relates to the idea of what he found working with Monroe.

So it is an exploration I feel of the work he encountered and has not so far as I seen made a public statement to that effect. It needs to be said and he needs to go back and look over how he had his epiphanies. For me this is about the process of discovery and creativity that I have found in my own life. Can one feel so full as to have found ones wealth in being that you can look everywhere and see the beginnings of many things?

This wealth is not monetary for me although I recognized we had to take care of or families and made sure they were ready to be off on their own. To be productive.

The Blind Men and the Elephant
John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

 So for me the quest for that starting point is to identify the pattern that exists in nature as much as many have tried various perspective in terms of quantum gravity. Yes, we are all sort of like blind men trying to explain the reality of the world in our own way and in the process we may come up with our epiphanies.

These epiphanies help us to the next level of understanding as if we moved outside of our skeletal frame to allow the membrane of the cell to allow receptivity of what exist in the world around as information. We are not limited then to the frame of the skeleton hardened too, that we cannot progress further. The surface area of the membrane then becomes a request to open the channels toward expansion of the limitations we had applied to ourselves maintaining a frame of reference.

Brian Clegg: Gravity

A history of gravity, and a study of its importance and relevance to our lives, as well as its influence on other areas of science. 

Physicists will tell you that four forces control the universe. Of these, gravity may the most obvious, but it is also the most mysterious. Newton managed to predict the force of gravity but couldn’t explain how it worked at a distance. Einstein picked up on the simple premise that gravity and acceleration are interchangeable to devise his mind-bending general relativity, showing how matter warps space and time. Not only did this explain how gravity worked – and how apparently simple gravitation has four separate components – but it predicted everything from black holes to gravity’s effect on time. Whether it’s the reality of anti-gravity or the unexpected discovery that a ball and a laser beam drop at the same rate, gravity is the force that fascinates. Gravity: How the Weakest Force in the Universe Shaped Our Lives

It is an interesting read so far. I have always had a fondness of the historical take information can  provide from that historical sense.  Each time an author can enlighten the world with our science forbears it makes for a deeper feel of what came out of these scientists as precursors to where we are today. I enjoy how Brian Clegg can fill in the gaps with what I had learn of Sir Isaac Newton. The historical progress from the ancient Greeks to what has transpire to today in terms of our definition of Gravity.

It allows one to look at around them and the way in which early ideas became foundations points from which development move on toward the world of the science we have today in terms of that gravity.

Where is Our Starting Point?

	"The end he (the artist) strives for is something else than a perfectly executed print. His aim is to depict dreams, ideas, or problems in such a way that other people can observe and consider them." - M.C. Escher

• The Nobel Prize in Physics 1914 Max von Laue

• Quasicrystal: Prof. Dan Shechtman

Can you trace the patterns in nature toward matter manifestations?

	To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. -Plato, The Republic (Book VII)

The idea here is about how one's observation and model perceptions arises from some ordered perspective. Some use a starting point as an assumption of position. Do recognize "the starting point" in the previous examples?

 Cycle of Birth, Life, and Death-Origin, Indentity, and Destiny by Gabriele Veneziano

In one form or another, the issue of the ultimate beginning has engaged philosophers and theologians in nearly every culture. It is entwined with a grand set of concerns, one famously encapsulated in an 1897 painting by Paul Gauguin: D'ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous? "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?"

The effective realization that particle constructs are somehow smaller windows of a much larger perspective fails to take in account this idea that I am expressing as a foundational approach to that starting point.

If you do not go all the way toward defining of that "point of equilibrium" how are you to understand how information is easily transferred to the individual from a much larger reality of existence? One would assume information is all around us? That there are multitudes of pathways that allow us to arrive at some some probability density configuration as some measure of an Pascalian ideal.

Of course there are problems with this in terms of our defining a heat death in individuals?

That's not possible so one is missing the understanding here about equilibrium. I might have said we are positional in terms of the past and the future with regard to memory and the anticipated future? How is that heat death correlated? It can't.

So you have to look for examples in relation to how one may arrive at that beginning point. Your theory may not be sufficiently dealing with the information as it is expressed in terms of your approach to the small window?

There are mathematical inspections here that have yet to be associated with more then discrete functions of reality as expressive building blocks of interpretation. The basic assumption of discrete function still exists in contrast to continuity of expression. This is the defining realization in assuming the model that MBT provides. I have meet the same logic in the differences of scientific approach toward the definition of what is becoming?

On the one hand, a configuration space as demonstrated by Tom that is vastly used in science. On the other, a recognition of how thick in measure viscosity is realized and what the physics is in this association. Not just the physical manifestation of, but of what happens when equilibrium is reached. Hot or very cold. Temperature, is not a problem then?

See my problem is that I can show you levitation of objects using superconductors but I cannot produce this in real life without that science. Yet, in face of that science I know that something can happen irregardless of what all the science said, so I am looking as well to combining the meta with the physical to realize that such a conditions may arise in how we as a total culture have accepted the parameters of our thinking.

So by dealing with those parameters I too hoped to see a cultural shift(paradigm and Kuhn) by adoption of the realization as we are with regard to the way in which we function in this reality. So if your thinking abut gravity how is this possible within the "frame work" to have it encroach upon our very own psychological makeup too?

Project Glass: I Can See Your Thoughts?

We believe technology should work for you — to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don't. A team within our Google[x] group started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. Follow along with us at http://g.co/projectglass as we share some of our ideas and stories. We'd love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?

An image of a cat that a neural network taught itself to recognize.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Inside Google’s secretive X laboratory, known for inventing self-driving cars and augmented reality glasses, a small group of researchers began working several years ago on a simulation of the human brain.

Andrew Y. Ng, a Stanford computer scientist, is cautiously optimistic about neural networks. 

There Google scientists created one of the largest neural networks for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors, which they turned loose on the Internet to learn on its own. 

Presented with 10 million digital images found in YouTube videos, what did Google’s brain do? What millions of humans do with YouTube: looked for cats. How Many Computers to Identify a Cat? 16,000

So the idea here is that given enough information about the neurological data recorded from the picture of the brain,  neuron ignitions,  then what said we could not have taken that data and used it to create a image of what the mind of the other person is thinking? Looking into the images of Dreams so as to analyze the deeper recordings of the soul's language and creativity.

Oh Google Brain  then is a larger perspective of the human brain?

What if on the screen of that eye glass my Avatar materializes to answer my questions?

Quantitative modeling of human brain activity

Quantitative modeling of human brain activity can provide crucial insights about cortical representations [1,2] and can form the basis for brain decoding devices [3,4,5]. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have modeled brain activity elicited by static visual patterns and have reconstructed these patterns from brain activity [6,7,8]. However, blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals measured via fMRI are very slow [9], so it has been difficult to model brain activity elicited by dynamic stimuli such as natural movies. Here we present a new motion-energy [10,11] encoding model that largely overcomes this limitation. The model describes fast visual information and slow hemodynamics by separate components. We recorded BOLD signals in occipitotemporal visual cortex of human subjects who watched natural movies and fit the model separately to individual voxels. Visualization of the fit models reveals how early visual areas represent the information in movies. To demonstrate the power of our approach, we also constructed a Bayesian decoder [8] by combining estimated encoding models with a sampled natural movie prior. The decoder provides remarkable reconstructions of the viewed movies. These results demonstrate that dynamic brain activity measured under naturalistic conditions can be decoded using current fMRI technology. See:Reconstructing Visual Experiences from Brain Activity Evoked by Natural Movies

See Also:

• Professor Jack Gallant's laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley Reconstructing Visual 

• Experiences from Brain Activity Evoked by Natural Movies

Thoughts On Dark Matter Search

  

A filament of dark matter has been directly detected between the galaxy clusters Abell 222 and Abell 223. The blue shading and yellow contour lines represent the density of matter. Image credit: Jörg Dietrich, U-M Department of Physics

In light of direction LHC is experiencing there is always the questions of Oversight in terms of the direction science needs to take. I have listed one aspect of the question of directions that may be of interest here? I have seen this procedure used over and over again. This is how I know to focus in on the experiments as they are listed and work backwards to gain full insight in these experimental procedures.

 This focus with regard to be "lead by science is part of the mantra" I hold and features part of my respect toward the science process that I have come to build in respect of where we are going and what is happening. In this spirit there has always been help by scientists who want to help the lay public with information to help exceed current levels of understanding with regard to where we are right now in that science.

 The challenge is not to be lost in the confrontations of opposing view points in science but to focus more on what is being offered in terms of advancing that science knowledge. One has to put aside these character attacks in order to focus on the science process itself and information. Character attacks on theoretical definitions.

 Following scientists you get to know who is respecting this foundational approach in order to push forward public knowledge. The vitriolic statements about character are like sandpaper or a screeching board, to respect for individuals in their pursuits

Over the years as a researcher of sorts digging deeply for the directions science projects are initiated are always with the idea that advisory boards put forward proposals for money toward experimental procedures.

 So in order to justified this money I have to believe the best approach to advancing that money is to consider it as a method to falsify on scientific grounds.

 I know people have their own theories but in order to advance falsifiable methods these have to be considered at the time the phenomenology of experimentation is proposed as part of the development of that method to do so.

 So the OP introduction toward a news article is hardly sufficient to think about the advancement of any theory on the grounds that it could encapsulate the entire process of advancing science as nothing more then news fodder. To be able to raise the question for those who believe that it is a opportunity to advance their own theories or to ask the question in the spirit of the OP?

 Liquid Xenon both scintillates and becomes ionized when hit by particles (i.e. photons, neutrons and potentially dark matter). The ratio of scintillation over ionization energy caused by the collision provides a way of identifying the interacting particle. The leading theoretical dark matter candidate, the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), could be identified in this way. LUX Dark Matter

See:

• Fermi Provides Insights?

Space Geodesy

 Project manager Stephen Merkowitz talks about his work with NASA's Space Geodesy Project, including a brief overview of the four fundamental techniques of space geodesy: GPS, VLBI, SLR, and DORIS.

Learn more about space geodesy at: http://space-geodesy.nasa.gov/

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11031

Space Geodesy provides positioning, navigation, and timing reference systems and Earth system observations

Geodesy is the science of the Earth’s shape, gravity and rotation, including their evolution in time. A number of different techniques are used to observe the geodetic properties of the Earth including the space-geodetic techniques of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) like the US Global Positioning System (GPS), and the French Doppler Orbitography and Radio-Positioning by Integrated Satellite (DORIS) system. These space-geodetic observations also provide the basis for the reference frame that is needed in order to assign coordinates to points and objects and thereby determine how those points and objects move over time. See:  SGP Science

See Also:

•  VLBI

• Global Geodetic Observing System

Merging Galaxy Cluster Abell 520

Merging Galaxy Cluster Abell 520

This composite image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters. 

The natural-color image of the galaxies was taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii. Superimposed on the image are "false-colored" maps showing the concentration of starlight, hot gas, and dark matter in the cluster. 

Starlight from galaxies, derived from observations by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, is colored orange. The green-tinted regions show hot gas, as detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The gas is evidence that a collision took place. The blue-colored areas pinpoint the location of most of the mass in the cluster, which is dominated by dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible substance that makes up most of the universe's mass. The dark-matter map was derived from the Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations by detecting how light from distant objects is distorted by the cluster of galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing. 

 The blend of blue and green in the center of the image reveals that a clump of dark matter resides near most of the hot gas, where very few galaxies are found. This finding confirms previous observations of a dark-matter core in the cluster. The result could present a challenge to basic theories of dark matter, which predict that galaxies should be anchored to dark matter, even during the shock of a collision. Abell 520 resides 2.4 billion light-years away. See: Dark Matter Core Defies Explanation in Hubble Image

See Also:

• Hubble Maps the Cosmic Web of "Clumpy" Dark Matter in 3-D

EO: Earth Observatory

Twelve years after the Earth was buffeted by one of the more potent Sun storms in modern history, our nearest star crackled with activity again. A solar flare erupted on July 12, 2012, followed closely by a companion coronal mass ejection (CME)—a cloud of magnetically charged particles and energy that can disturb Earth’s magnetic field, disrupt satellites and ground-based electronics, and provoke auroras.

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured these views of the flare in the Sun’s southern hemisphere on July 12, 2012. The top, global image shows the Sun as viewed at 131 Angstroms; the lower, close-up view is 171 Angstroms. Both ultraviolet wavelengths help solar physicists study the fine magnetic structures in the Sun’s super-heated atmosphere, or corona. The yellow and teal are false colors chosen by the science team to distinguish between the spectral bands. Download the movies linked beneath each image to see the active region develop and erupt. See:The Sun Erupts

 An X1.4 class flare erupted from the center of the sun, peaking on July 12, 2012 at 12:52 PM EDT. It erupted from Active Region 1520 which rotated into view on July 6.

This video uses SDO AIA footage in 131(teal), 171(gold) and 335 (blue) angstrom wavelengths. Each wavelength shows different temperature plasma in the sun's atmosphere. 171 shows 600,000 Kelvin plasma, 335 shows 2.5 million Kelvin plasma, and 131 shows 10 million Kelvin plasma.

 This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11043

See Also:

• Latest SDO IMage

ATLAS INCLUSIVE SEARCHES FOR SUSY AND DARK MATTER
Sascha Caron (Radboud University Nijmegen and NIKHEF)

See Also:Implications of LHC results for TeV-scale physics

-Information to Conference supplied by Theoretical Physicist Matt Strassler

Fermi Provides Insights?

 There's more to the cosmos than meets the eye. About 80 percent of the matter in the universe is invisible to telescopes, yet its gravitational influence is manifest in the orbital speeds of stars around galaxies and in the motions of clusters of galaxies. Yet, despite decades of effort, no one knows what this "dark matter" really is. Many scientists think it's likely that the mystery will be solved with the discovery of new kinds of subatomic particles, types necessarily different from those composing atoms of the ordinary matter all around us. The search to detect and identify these particles is underway in experiments both around the globe and above it.

Scientists working with data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have looked for signals from some of these hypothetical particles by zeroing in on 10 small, faint galaxies that orbit our own. Although no signals have been detected, a novel analysis technique applied to two years of data from the observatory's Large Area Telescope (LAT) has essentially eliminated these particle candidates for the first time. See: Fermi Observations of Dwarf Galaxies Provide New Insights on Dark Matter 04.02.12

NGC 147, a dwarf spheroidal galaxy of the Local Group

 

Dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) is a term in astronomy applied to low luminosity galaxies that are companions to the Milky Way and to the similar systems that are companions to the Andromeda Galaxy M31. While similar to dwarf elliptical galaxies in appearance and properties such as little to no gas or dust or recent star formation, they are approximately spheroidal in shape, generally lower luminosity, and are only recognized as satellite galaxies in the Local Group.^[1]

While there were nine "classical" dSph galaxies discovered up until 2005, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has resulted in the discovery of 11 more dSph galaxies—this has radically changed the understanding of these galaxies by providing a much larger sample to study.^[2]

Recently, as growing evidence has indicated that the vast majority of dwarf ellipticals have properties that are not at all similar to elliptical galaxies, but are closer to irregular and late-type spiral galaxies, this term has been used to refer to all of the galaxies that share the properties of those above. These sorts of galaxies may in fact be the most common type of galaxies in the universe, but are much harder to see than other types of galaxies because they are so faint.

Because of the faintness of the lowest luminosity dwarf spheroidals and the nature of the stars contained within them, some astronomers suggest that dwarf spheroidals and globular clusters may not be clearly separate and distinct types of objects.^[3] Other recent studies, however, have found a distinction in that the total amount of mass inferred from the motions of stars in dwarf spheroidals is many times that which can be accounted for by the mass of the stars themselves. In the current predominantly accepted Cold Dark Matter cosmology, this is seen as a sure sign of dark matter, and the presence of dark matter is often cited as a reason to classify dwarf spheroidals as a different class of object from globular clusters (which show little to no signs of dark matter). Because of the extremely large amounts of dark matter in these objects, they may deserve the title "most dark matter-dominated galaxies" ^[4]

See also

• Galaxy
• Dwarf galaxy
• Dwarf elliptical galaxy
• Galaxy morphological classification
• Galaxy formation and evolution
• Groups and clusters of galaxies
• Irregular galaxy
• Local group
• List of nearest galaxies
• Dark galaxy

 

External links

• A popular overview
• Universe Today, Some Galaxies Are Made Almost Entirely of Dark Matter

 

References

1. ^ Mashchenko, Sergey; Sills, Alison; Couchman, H. M. (March 2006), "Constraining Global Properties of the Draco Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy", The Astrophysical Journal 640 (1): 252–269, arXiv:astro-ph/0511567, Bibcode 2006ApJ...640..252M, DOI:10.1086/499940
2. ^ Simon, Josh; Geha, Marla (November 2007), "The Kinematics of the Ultra-faint Milky Way Satellites: Solving the Missing Satellite Problem", The Astrophysical Journal 670 (1): 313–331, Bibcode 2007ApJ...670..313S, DOI:10.1086/521816
3. ^ van den Bergh, Sidney (November 2007), "Globular Clusters and Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies", MNRAS (Letters), in press 385 (1): L20, arXiv:0711.4795, Bibcode 2008MNRAS.385L..20V, DOI:10.1111/j.1745-3933.2008.00424.x
4. ^ Strigari, Louie; Koushiappas, et al; Bullock, James S.; Kaplinghat, Manoj; Simon, Joshua D.; Geha, Marla; Willman, Beth (September 2007), "The Most Dark Matter Dominated Galaxies: Predicted Gamma-ray Signals from the Faintest Milky Way Dwarfs", The Astrophysical Journal 678 (2): 614, arXiv:0709.1510, Bibcode 2008ApJ...678..614S, DOI:10.1086/529488

See Also:

• Team detects clusters’ dark matter scaffold