A Scientific Look at the Term Spirit

The English word spirit (from Latin spiritus "breath") has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body. The word spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality. The notions of a person's spirit and soul often also overlap, as both contrast with body and both are understood as surviving the bodily death in religion and occultism,[1] and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person.

It is by definition that one can begin to examine the substance of and lead one to ask how such a thing can become of use and measured? I am not saying you give up on what you know to be your truth, but to examine how we might give particular meaning to the term, as in the way we look at our own composition.

The English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning "breath", but also "spirit, soul, courage, vigor", ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European *(s)peis. It is distinguished from Latin anima, "soul" (which nonetheless also derives from an Indo-European root meaning "to breathe", earliest form *h₂enh₁- ^[2]). In Greek, this distinction exists between pneuma (πνεῦμα), "breath, motile air, spirit," and psykhē (ψυχή), "soul"^[3] (even though the latter term, ψῡχή = psykhē/psūkhē, is also from an Indo-European root meaning "to breathe": *bhes-, zero grade *bhs- devoicing in proto-Greek to *phs-, resulting in historical-period Greek ps- in psūkhein, "to breathe", whence psūkhē, "spirit", "soul"^[4]).

The word "spirit" came into Middle English via Old French. The distinction between soul and spirit also developed in the Abrahamic religions: Arabic nafs (نفس) opposite rúħ (روح); Hebrew neshama (נְשָׁמָה nəšâmâh) or nephesh (in Hebrew neshama comes from the root NŠM or "breath") opposite ruach (רוּחַ rûaħ). (Note, however, that in Semitic just as in Indo-European, this dichotomy has not always been as neat historically as it has come to be taken over a long period of development: Both נֶ֫פֶשׁ (root נפשׁ) and רוּחַ (root רוח), as well as cognate words in various Semitic languages, including Arabic, also preserve meanings involving misc. air phenomena: "breath", "wind", and even "odou

How old and illustrious the thought that to begin here is very ancient part of our history,  that it could lead toward the subject unfolding as to something that defines the matter of, in spirit of, as relative to the body? In this sense then can we say that the spirit is a divisible feature of the body by way of applying the distinction right from the start?

 In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical,^[1] or that the mind and body are not identical.^[2] Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism, in the mind–body problem.^[1][2]

So by examination, they are two parts to the subject with which we began that I have separated the body into two? Spirit and Body. If we go toward selecting body so as to see it is not divisible, then one proceeds toward the fashion of what Archimedes demonstrates? What is to measure then?

 Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction.^[1] Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime.

Archimedes Thoughtful by Fetti (1620)

 
How do you measure "the space" in between the bodies materialistic expressions then? If I use a cup of water and deposit a teaspoon of sugar, does the level of the water change? So we say the sugar dissolves into the water.

Now I'm wondering here about that analogy. I know if we said dark matter or dark energy (Of course they are trying to measure), I might have given perspective by such an analogy that you might say that is not a good enough one, but you get the idea I think.  If you can explain this better, knowing what I mean then lets see what you come up with?

Displacement?

  How would you determine Gold?  Is there a better way to measure?

 The results show that the suspension technique is more accurate and precise than the traditional water displacement methods and is more accurate than measuring volume using Vernier calliper measurements. See: Archimedes revisited: a faster, better, cheaper method of accurately measuring the volume of small objects

What is the glue that binds matter would then become a statement for me about what has been the efforts of science that wishes to establish the element of such a gathering. It had been on my mind that such a grouping of birds,  that move in unison could have asked me to ponder about such particulate expressions.  Then to have my mind rest on the Higg's as a particle' of that expression. In that sense,  I have retain the body as a materialistic expression to this point.

When looking to spirit then,  in context of the meaning,  it becomes divisible in relation too, the body. In that sense the question about spirit then becomes a question with regard to what can measure it. And without such measure,  a scientist will have hard time accepting it in terms of discussion in terms of it's validation, but  may still retain it's validity as to the truth for them specifically.

So I wanted people to know that that regardless of such poofs, the world may hold this part of spirit in meaning, while such examinations are still critical for the scientist with regard to a measure.

See:

• Noam Chomsky - "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding"

LHC and Open Access

The CMS experiment at the LHC has released a portion of its data to the public for use in education and outreach. Explore this page to find out more about the data and how to analyse it yourself.

LHC data are exotic, they are complicated and they are big. At peak performance, about one billion proton collisions take place every second inside the CMS detector at the LHC. CMS has collected around 64 petabytes (or over 64,000 terabytes) of analysable data from these collisions so far.

Along with the many published papers, these data constitute the scientific legacy of the CMS Collaboration, and preserving the data for future generations is of paramount importance. “We want to be able to re-analyse our data, even decades from now,” says Kati Lassila-Perini, head of the CMS Data Preservation and Open Access project at the Helsinki Institute of Physics. “We must make sure that we preserve not only the data but also the information on how to use them. To achieve this, we intend to make available through open access our data that are no longer under active analysis. This helps record the basic ingredients needed to guarantee that these data remain usable even when we are no longer working on them.” See: LHC data to be made public via open access initiative

Entanglement and the Geometry of Spacetime

Theorists have forged a connection between wormholes in spacetime (above) and a quantum phenomenon called entanglement.

But how big an insight is this? It depends on whom you ask. Susskind and Maldacena note that in both papers, the original quantum particles reside in a space without gravity. In a simplified, gravity-free 3D model of our world, there can’t be any black holes or wormholes, Susskind adds, so the connection to a wormhole in a higher dimensional space is mere mathematical analogy. The wormhole and entanglement equivalence “only makes sense in a theory with gravity,” Susskind says. However, Karch and colleagues say that their calculations are an important first step toward verifying Maldacena and Susskind’s theory. Their toy model without gravity, Karch says, “gives a concrete realization of the idea that wormhole geometry and entanglement can be different manifestations of the same physical reality."A Link Between Wormholes and Quantum Entanglement

• Entanglement and Geometry of Spacetime
• Maldacena, Susskind: any entanglement is a wormhole of a sort

Note here about Issuu software in link above. I made a comment about this type of software with regard to document writing and appearance. For an open publishing format I am less then pleased that if you have a shared format and embedding program that allows you to embed articles and then does not do this, to me,  if you go a bit further into the program of Issuu then it's no more then a publishing ploy to get you to pay money for use of this type of publishing format. So while I started to use this program for document sharing I had to only provide the link to an interesting article to the ongoing saga of Maldacena and Susskind. I had to also substitute the main article by Maldacena,  with news story

See Also:

• A Black Hole Mystery Wrapped in a Firewall Paradox
• The black-hole information paradox, complementarity, and firewalls

The Neutrino Sky

A neutrino sky map based on data taken with 40 and 59 strings in the IceCube detector.
Image credit: Juan Aguilar/IceCube.

Astrophysical neutrinos are produced in the interactions of cosmic rays with an ambient medium of gas (protons) and photons of different energies. Once produced, these cosmic neutrinos can propagate cosmological distances and reach the Earth practically without interactions. They therefore carry unique information about the sources of cosmic rays, their acceleration and the composition of the most energetic phenomena in the universe. See:Looking at the neutrino sky

Those are the colorful names given to two events observed over the last couple of years by Ice Cube. What makes them remarkable is their very high energies; over 30 trillion electron volts (TeV). See: Neutrinos From the Sky

 

A 200 GeV iron shower, animated

 

Air shower formation in the atmosphere. First proton collides with an air molecule creating pions, protons and neutrons.

See Also:

• Neutrino Events in IceCube Strings
• A Blue Flash in Ice
• ICECUBE Neutrinos
• Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam

Weber Bars Ring True?

Gravitational Radiation

Gravitational waves have a polarization pattern that causes objects to expand in one direction, while contracting in the perpendicular direction. That is, they have spin two. This is because gravity waves are fluctuations in the tensorial metric of space-time.

How would you map this above?

WMAP image of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Here's the thing for those blog followers who are interested in the application of sound as a visual representation of an external world of senses.

 In this example I’m going to map speed to the pitch of the note, length/postion to the duration of the note and number of turns/legs/puffs to the loudness of the note.See: How to make sound out of anything.

I have my reasons for looking at the trail that began with Gravitational wave research and development. If we are accustom to seeing and concreting all that reality has for us,  can a question be raised in mind with how one has been shocked by an anomaly?

I am not asking for anyone  to abandon their views on the science of,  just respect that while not following the rules of  science here as to my motivational underpinnings, I have asked if science can see gravity in ways that have not be thought of before.  This is not to counter anything that has been done before.

The historic approach to Gravitational Research was important as well,  to trace it back to it's beginning.

Can we use such measures to exemplify an understanding of the world we live according  to a qualitative approach? This has occupied my thoughts back to when I first blogged about JosephWeber in 2005. Here is a 2000 article linked.

In the late 1950s, Weber became intrigued by the relationship between gravitational theory and laboratory experiments. His book, General Relativity and Gravitational Radiation, was published in 1961, and his paper describing how to build a gravitational wave detector first appeared in 1969. Weber's first detector consisted of a freely suspended aluminium cylinder weighing a few tonnes. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Weber announced that he had recorded simultaneous oscillations in detectors 1000 km apart, waves he believed originated from an astrophysical event. Many physicists were sceptical about the results, but these early experiments initiated research into gravitational waves that is still ongoing. Current gravitational wave experiments, such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), are descendants of Weber's original work. See:Joseph Weber 1919 - 2000

***

Space, we all know what it looks like. We've been surrounded by images of space our whole lives, from the speculative images of science fiction to the inspirational visions of artists to the increasingly beautiful pictures made possible by complex technologies. But whilst we have an overwhelmingly vivid visual understanding of space, we have no sense of what space sounds like.

  See previous entries on "Weber Bar" by typing in Search Feature on side bar. See also below.

• LIGO at http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/
• GEO at
  http://www.geo600.uni-hannover.de/
• ACIGA at
  http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/ACIGA/
• TIGA at
  

Gaia in Space

Soyuz VS06 with Gaia space observatory blasts off from Europe's Spaceport

ESA PR 44-2013: ESA’s Gaia mission blasted off this morning on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on its exciting mission to study a billion suns. 

Gaia is destined to create the most accurate map yet of the Milky Way. By making accurate measurements of the positions and motions of 1% of the total population of roughly 100 billion stars, it will answer questions about the origin and evolution of our home Galaxy. 

The Soyuz launcher, operated by Arianespace, lifted off at 09:12 GMT (10:12 CET). About ten minutes later, after separation of the first three stages, the Fregat upper stage ignited, delivering Gaia into a temporary parking orbit at an altitude of 175 km. See: LiftOff for ESA's billion-dollar star surveyor

Space is not flat.

Van Ellen Belt: Decade Age Old Mystery

Schematic illustration of local electron acceleration by chorus
The top panel shows electron fluxes before (left) and after (right) a geomagnetic storm. The injection of low-energy plasma sheet electrons into the inner magnetosphere (1) causes chorus wave excitation in the low-density region outside the cold plasmasphere (2). Local energy diffusion associated with wave scattering leads to the development of strongly enhanced phase space density just outside the plasmapause (3). Subsequently, radial diffusion can redistribute the accelerated electrons inwards or outwards from the developing peak (4).
Credit: Jacob Bortnik/UCLA

 

 

New research using data from NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission helps resolve decades of scientific uncertainty over the origin of ultra-relativistic electrons in the Earth’s near space environment, and is likely to influence our understanding of planetary magnetospheres throughout the universe. See: Scientists solve a decades-old mystery of Earth's Van Allen radiation belts

Jet Creation

Wavelength Views of the Sun

This movie, created by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., shows how features of the sun can appear dramatically different when viewed in different wavelengths. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Telescopes help distant objects appear bigger, but this is only one of their advantages. Telescopes can also collect light in ranges that our eyes alone cannot see, providing scientists ways of observing a whole host of material and processes that would otherwise be inaccessible. A new NASA movie of the sun based on data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, shows the wide range of wavelengths – invisible to the naked eye – that the telescope can view. SDO converts the wavelengths into an image humans can see, and the light is colorized into a rainbow of colors.NASA's SDO Shows the Sun's Rainbow of Wavelengths

Symmetry Breaking and the Crab Nebula

The connection between superfluidity and symmetry breaking has had a glorious history. It has left us a rich legacy of fertile ideas, that seems far from exhaustion. PG 60 Superfluidity and Symmetry Breaking

You know while there have been processes unfolding with regard to supersymmetry, for the life of it,  I am having a hard time ever denying to myself that the result of any beginning had to have some emergent feature that arose from the very nature of the big bang itself.

So to then, one may see some signs in a biological sense,  as to the nature of evolution? So,  that all things can be defined in this way. But the issue then for me is how "information can exist, " so as to say that such a direction for that evolution,  as an emergent product,  must have some location with which such presence makes itself know(far left of the picture above)? Sure,  because of my ignorance, I would be asking how such information could have ever come into being so as to say that this universe is the one with which such expressions came to be, so I accept the universe as it is.

Click on image above and you create a larger view of a microscopic world

So to then,  for such a gap to exist.  I was most certainly thinking about the LHC's use with which such reductionism were being taken.  I was looking for such signatures as to wonder that if such a location is found then(QGP),  so we could say indeed,  the beginning of the universe, and the correlation drawn,  as to the ever reducibility pursuit as some relation to nature?

The Crab Nebula, created by a supernova seen nearly a thousand years ago, is one of the sky's most famous "star wrecks." For decades, most astronomers have regarded it as the steadiest beacon at X-ray energies, but data from orbiting observatories show unexpected variations. Since 2008, it has faded by 7 percent, activity likely tied to the environment around its central neutron star. (Video Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

Cosmologically it had to make sense too. So I  looked at events in the cosmos to help me understand what it is that was created in the moments we align ourselves too,as  in the LHC. While I looked at the picture(jet development and expression) above as to the timing with which such a environment, it is now reduced too, the Crab Nebula in its design. Would you deny the Crab Nebula had a previous showing with which the jets them self began to emerge?

An example then exists for me as to how such contributions that could arise in any nebula could have ever contributed to the way the universe is,  and if all such contributions taken to the same question,  helps to define the universe in ways that were preceded . Where that nature of the information is to reside.

So while we had found our limits with regard to Planck scale,  it is thought to me that such a symmetry had exist,  that all forms of that symmetry expresses itself as a forming dualistic nature,  for a symmetry breaking to exist,  and for such a division to take place from such a perfect place.

How Does This Make You Feel?

Scientists played the song to 40 women and found it to be more effective at helping them relax than songs by Enya, Mozart and Coldplay.See:Warning over 'most relaxing song ever created

Particle Physics Discussion by Sean Carroll, Matt Strassler and Alan Boyle

New Science Internet Radio with Virtually Speaking Science on BlogTalkRadio

Alan Boyle, Matt Strassler & Sean Carroll • Why the Higgs Particle Matters

See:

• Wednesday: Sean Carroll & I Interviewed Again by Alan Boyle

• The Guardian’s Level-Headed Article on Fukushima

Fermi's Now Deeper Study of the High-Energy Cosmos

This compilation summarizes the wide range of science from the first five years of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi is a NASA observatory designed to reveal the high-energy universe in never-before-seen detail. Launched in 2008, Fermi continues to give astronomers a unique tool for exploring high-energy processes associated with solar flares, spinning neutron stars, outbursts from black holes, exploding stars, supernova remnants and energetic particles to gain insight into how the universe works.NASA | Fermi at Five Years

The Crab Nebula, created by a supernova seen nearly a thousand years ago, is one of the sky's most famous "star wrecks." For decades, most astronomers have regarded it as the steadiest beacon at X-ray energies, but data from orbiting observatories show unexpected variations. Since 2008, it has faded by 7 percent, activity likely tied to the environment around its central neutron star. (Video Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)