Spherical Cows

Cartoon Model of a SNR(Supernova Remnants)

When scientists refer to a spherical cow, we are poking fun at ourselves. We are admitting that some of our models or descriptions of things are far more simple than the actual object, like to say that a cow has a spherical shape. The phenomena we study are often complex, and including too many details can hinder, rather than help our understanding. Often it is useful to study a simplified model which contains only the most important general characteristics. Such a model can be more easily studied using numerical or analytical methods and then compared to observations.

As an example of this kind of thinking, say we were aliens trying to understand "humans", a strange race of beings recently discovered on a small planet orbiting a medium-sized star. We might divide them into two groups, one which grows facial hair (men), one which does not (women). Within each group there is a lot of variety - each human in the first group group can have facial hair in a wide range of colors and textures, for example. However, we think that there is some underlying reason for the gross characteristic of having or not having facial hair. We might then make more observations to try and understand why this is so. These further observations might uncover more similarities (humans in the first group have both an X and a Y chromosome while humans in the second group have two X shaped chromosomes) that are more fundamental. In astronomy we try to do the same thing.

See:Spherical Cows There is a older version here.

Now of course you must know the reason for this article and the subsequent explanation for it. I do expand this article to show some of the current understanding I have as I do my own research, and find how scientific measure is being attributed to our new views of the cosmos as observers. The measure now being reduced to computerizations.

The researchers studied cows visible on Google Earth Photo: GETTYCows automatically point to the north-Telegraph

Now I came across this article at Cosmic Variance by reading a blog posting written by Mark.

Now from my perspective as I see often at Cosmic Variance "this method used" not only by Mark, but Sean Carroll as well. It is a sort of poking fun at the news article that was written. Ones I am starting to become familiar with, as I read my local paper. The information from a science perspective is being generated to the public.

Should I become a cynic? Should I blur the lines on scientific method? Hold the scientific method against someone with a religious background, other then a humanistic one, and a sceptic to boot? Naw! I shall not be that way, and the way some others in science deal with each other. I shall respect who they are ,for who they are.:)Not my place to judge them.

Now, is the technique used by these researches in the New Scientist article sound in it's evaluation? I leave that up to you to decide and continue from the perspective I wish to share on my blog.


Credit: Weiqun Zhang and Stan Woosley

This image is from a computer simulation of the beginning of a gamma-ray burst. Here we see the jet 9 seconds after its creation at the center of a Wolf Rayet star by the newly formed, accreting black hole within. The jet is now just erupting through the surface of the Wolf Rayet star, which has a radius comparable to that of the sun. Blue represents regions of low mass concentration, red is denser, and yellow denser still. Note the blue and red striations behind the head of the jet. These are bounded by internal shocks.

See:The Geometrics Behind the Supernova and it's History

It captures my attention for this reason, and another, which is a trait I myself seemed to fall under. This is in terms of geometrical recognition, as the bubble, circle, whatever your fancy, to illustrate the supernova's action and it's remnants distributed into space. I have such examples to illustrate as one tries to marry the theorists to the science in a phenomenological way.

See:Central Theme is the Sun as a related posting and subsequent comment for further elucidation of how we now see in space.


Note: This comment below was remove from that comment section.
Plato on Aug 27th, 2008 at 10:12 am

Resistance is futile:)

Generally the SNR looks different "in each of these different wavelengths", just like you and I look different to another human being (who looks at the visible light) then we do to a bee or a snake (who are able to detect ultraviolet and infrared light, respectively).

I am not sure if this is the same with regard to the Glast perspective that is opening up our "new window of the Universe?"

JoAnne sometime ago showed this in relation to the computerize methods used to chart measures on how we may now see the sun for example, in Gamma ray. The "Tscan method" was used in regard to Neutrino research.

Just so you know at what scale most certain.

It is important that the chosen highlighted paragraph written in that comment section and repeated here, be seen in this light, and compared to computerize models attained from our methods of measure.

While the idea here,I am moving away from the spherical cow, by recognizing the way in which observers now see the cosmos as we implement our methods of measure using computerized techniques.

Tscan

Tscan ("Trivial Scanner") is an event display, traditionally called a scanner, which I developed. It is a program that shows events graphically on the computer screen.

It was designed to be simple ("trivial") internally, and to have a simple user interface. A lot of importance was given to giving the user a large choice of options to display events in many different ways.

Tscan proved to be a very useful tool for the development of fitters. A particularly useful feature is the ability to show custom data for every photpmultiplier tube (PMT). Instead of the usual time and charge, it can show expected charge, scattered light, likelihood, chi-squared difference, patches, and any other data that can be prepared in a text format.

See:Trivial Scanner

Credit: Super-Kamiokande/Tomasz Barszczak Three (or more?) Cerenkov rings

Multiple rings of Cerenkov light brighten up this display of an event found in the Super-Kamiokande - neutrino detector in Japan. The pattern of rings - produced when electrically charged particles travel faster through the water in the detector than light does - is similar to the result if a proton had decayed into a positron and a neutral pion. The pion would decay immediately to two gamma-ray photons that would produce fuzzy rings, while the positron would shoot off in the opposite direction to produce a clearer ring. Such kinds of decay have been predicted by "grand unified theories" that link three of nature's fundamental forces - the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces. However, there is so far no evidence for such decays; this event, for example, did not stand up to closer scrutiny.

See:Picture of the Week

Geometrical expression as I have come to understand is my own unique way in which geometrical expression is thought of, and I gave examples here of a discredited person and their research in regards to sonoluminescence, as an example of this feature to map the SNR explosive values. It is only by analogy which I give this relation to help one see this expression in the vacuum of space, as well as leading evolutions in regard to an example of M87 in it's is unfolding.

The Lighthouse example can be seen here as well, and in this relation Glast measures would help to serve us to see this "new window of the universe" in the way it measures and compartmenting the computerized charting as we observe from this new perspective.

Update:The value of a spherical cow

The Perfect Sphere

Before I begin I had to mention the following two entries below that I wanted to do but was short on time.

This recording was produced by converting into audible sounds some of the radar echoes received by Huygens during the last few kilometres of its descent onto Titan. As the probe approaches the ground, both the pitch and intensity increase. Scientists will use intensity of the echoes to speculate about the nature of the surface.

I am following behind on the different posts that I wanted to write. One of them in relation to the descent of a "measure gatherer" (sounds primitive doesn't it?) and the sound values produced from that "descent on Titan." Can make it "sound ancient" while current research is of value.

Almost, as if one is a cave dweller blowing dried paint over their hands, could possibly be thinking of fire and rays cast while their own shadows made them think of a sun that can enter the cave, and chains that need to be broken from thinking so circumspect..:)



The second one I wanted to talk about was in relation to Themis and the Aurora Borealis. The labels will hopefully help with my previous research that I had done as well as other perspectives that allowed me to see this sun earth relationship. Quasar has currently dealing with that topic further in "Coronal Mass Ejection" as well and Backreaction entitled, "NASA launch of THEMIS Satellite."

Anyway on to the essence of this post and why it is troubling to me. Many would not know what goes on in my head as I am currently looking at the relationship of the Bose Nova to the jet productions that issue from such spiralled tendency. Accretion disc and the idea of such spiralling, to a pipe that follows to making anti-matter productions?

See Water in Zero Gravity, by Backreaction
How did this all arise? So you see such an idea of the sphere in a vacuum is a point from which to begin the search for things that were not there before, so we now know that such collisions can indeed produce "new" information?

The action taken, although seems related to what Arivero is saying, and of course I already have much on this in terms of Han Jenny, and the taking of the Chaldni plate to spherical relations. As an experiment with a "balloons and dyes using sound" similar to "sand on that same chaldni plate."

The Perfect Sphere and Sonoluminence.

Taleyarkhan.A second internal inquiry has found no evidence of misconduct.Credit: Purdue News Service

Purdue University officials today announced that a second and final internal inquiry has cleared bubble-fusion researcher Rusi Taleyarkhan of all allegations of research misconduct. "I feel vindicated and exonerated," Taleyarkhan says. "It's been a pressure cooker for about a year." But controversy surrounding Taleyarkhan's work isn't likely to die down any time soon.

Taleyarkhan is the chief proponent of the controversial notion of sonofusion, which suggests that sound energy can collapse bubbles in a way that yields more energy than was initially put in (ScienceNOW, 4 March 2002). Last year, an article in Nature reported that several of Taleyarkhan's colleagues at Purdue were upset by their encounters with him, suggesting that he allegedly obstructed their work and tried to stop them from publishing results that contradicted his own.

There has been some contention about the results, but this is far from what I wanted to show in terms of the geometrics involved. Patience as to the energy produced from this interaction of "sound on the surface transferred inside" to cause a spherical collapse.


Experimental apparatus used by the team at the University of Stuttgart. PMT = photomultiplier tube, PZT = piezoelectric transducer. Picture credit: Physical Review Letters

German researchers have measured the duration and shape of a sonoluminescence pulse for the first time. Sonoluminescence - the emission of light by bubbles of gas trapped in a liquid and excited by sound waves - is one of the most puzzling phenomena in physics. Although first discovered in 1934, physicists have yet to discover the underlying light emitting process.

Seeing the tensorial action on the bubble moving sound inside, I had wondered about how such a collapse could increase the temperatures involved to produce this "super higgs fluid." Lubos Motl never gave this much thought and I of course am impressionable when it comes to the science mind. I could not shake it.

Ultrasound can produce temperatures as high as those on the surface of the Sun and pressures as great as those at the bottom of the ocean. In some cases, it can also increase chemical reactivities by nearly a millionfold.

So we "assign fluids" as one might the "vacuum in space" to illustrate what we have as our way with these bubbles? These claims have not been fantastical other then what the science had been designed for, yet I am drawn to the schematics and geometrics.

So yes the ways in which the size of the blackhole could all of sudden collapse is critical here, to producing further results in what is required of the new physics? So looking for "such experimental processes" is always part of my resolve to understand the geometrics involved.

Please be patient while I am learning.


Axisymmetry is also broken in the fluid bells, which assume the form of polyhedra

See further information in regards to Broken Symmetry.

So the idea here that was troubling was the way in which the symmetry was broken in terms of the fluid flows demonstrated by the Broken Symmetry examples.

My perception is much different here in that the dynamical relation of "the super fluid", may have it's correlation in the Navier stokes equations. This is by "insinuation on my part." How preposterous such a thing to think that the conditions had to be "spelt out first" in order for us to understand the "new physics" beyond the standard model?

Navier-Stokes Equations

The Navier-Stokes equations, named after Claude-Louis Navier and George Gabriel Stokes, are a set of equations that describe the motion of fluid substances such as liquids and gases. These equations establish that changes in momentum in infinitesimal volumes of fluid are simply the product of changes in pressure and dissipative viscous forces (similar to friction) acting inside the fluid. These viscous forces originate in molecular interactions and dictate how viscous a fluid is. Thus, the Navier-Stokes equations are a dynamical statement of the balance of forces acting at any given region of the fluid.

Using the geometrical basis of my thought pattern established as a point in a circle, or a point with "no boundary", it seems it is very difficult to talk about the universe if one does not include the way in which such dynamicals can perpetuate the energy within this system.

In fact, in the reciprocal language, these tiny circles are getting ever smaller as time goes by, since as R grows, 1/R shrinks. Now we seem to have really gone off the deep end. How can this possibly be true? How can a six-foot tall human being 'fit' inside such an unbelievably microscopic universe? How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?

(Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe, pages 248-249)

Thus too, the understanding, that if you turn Einstein's equation E=mc² inside/out then what had you done? All "matter states" have then been assigned a energy value? Qui! Non?

Plato:

Layman scratching head while faceless expression of Boltzmann puzzlement takes hold?

How is one suppose to find "a equilibrium" in such a "low entropic state?"

If we were to experimentally challenging any thinking with "relativistic processes" how could they have ever emerged out of the BB? Maybe, it was a "highly symmetric event" for any asymmetry to show itself as "discrete measures" defined in relation to the "energy of probable outcomes?"

Where did such reductionism begin for us to ask about the "cross over?"

We needed high energy perspective to realize that we were still talking about the universe. Are there any other processes within the cosmos that can be taken down to such rejuvenated qualities to new universes being born that while the arrow of time is pointed one way, that the universe itself allowed such expression to continue in the expansion rate, and the speed up?

A Higg's fluid? Something had to be "happening now" that would dictate?

Forgive me here for my ignorance in face of those better equipped.

So you are looking for "this point" where things cross over? It is highly supersymmetric, yet, we know that such matter states have been detailed and defined as "discrete" asymmetric matter states.

I made a comment above that needed to be looked at again so I am placing it here while it suffers it's fate in another location. The basis of the argument is an ole one indeed that has long been exchanged by Smolin and Susskind.

Now it is again one of those things that I am trying to make sense of while one could go off in a philosophical direction. While the "facts of the matter" and experimental results dictate my thinking here.

It's the fault of that ole' Platonic thinking, and the Pythagorean basis of the universe in expression thingy. The universe is very dynamical geometrically while one debates the essence of inflation and disregards what allows such an expression to bring "other ideas" into the fold. How this "eternal idea" can bring other factors in terms of the speed up into consideration, while one ponders why such a thing is happening?

Neutrino Oscillations? Hmmmm.......

Oscillating flavors The three neutrino mass eigenstates are presumed to be different coherent superpositions of the three flavor eigenstates (ne, nm, and nt) associated with the three charged leptons: the electron, the muon, and the tau. There is good evidence that only two of the three mass eigenstates contribute significantly to ne. In that approximation, one can write

Just another fancy way of looking at CNO and the law of Octaves? :) While some thought space was empty, there were aspects of that space "which was alive" regardless of the asymmetrical realization of the discrete matters?

I'm trying here. You needed a background for it?

The triple alpha process is highly dependent on carbon-12 having a resonance with the same energy as helium-4 and beryllium-8 and before 1952 no such energy level was known. It was astrophysicist Fred Hoyle who used the fact that carbon-12 is so abundant in the universe (and that our existence depends upon it - the Anthropic Principle), as evidence for the existence of the carbon-12 resonance. Fred suggested the idea to nuclear physicist Willy Fowler, who conceded that it was possible that this energy level had been missed in previous work on carbon-12. After a brief undertaking by his research group, they discovered a resonance near to 7.65 Mev.

Now I am not pro or against anything, just trying to make sense of the disparity of such anthropic reasonings. So what processes in Cern reveals such an idea? Muons?

What's that saying? The devil is in the details :)

So we want to define our relationship with the world in some computerized method? It has always been something of a struggle to explain how one may see the world as they lose the focus of distinctive sight and hearing and soon realize that if they are all amalgamated, you might get this idea of the gravitationally inclined atomized in some computerized process? Feelings?:)

You finally learnt something about yourself?

A thought crossed my mind. A fictional story?

It’s interesting what calorimetric measure can do when you are looking at cosmological events. So, the photon becomes descriptive in itself?

Of course speaking of Glast here. Building alliances?


Perhaps Quantum Gravity can be Handled by thoroughly reconsidering Quantum Mechanics itself?

You are working “to set” the course of events? So we have this description then of the universe and it’s “phase transitions.” It’s behind the “value of the photon in it’s description and escape velocity” and it’s value also “gravitationally linked?”

So technology now stops the photon in flight? We can then “colour our views with the gravitationally inclined?”:) A “philosophical take” on new computerized development with feeling?

The leading computer technologies here is not to diverge from what I moved too in terms of understanding the human condition. This is very important to me, and includes not only our biological functioning, but our resulting affect from the physiological one as well.

So while "you think" I hope to chart the colours spectrally induced oscillatory universe from the "photon stop over" and subsequent information held in that abeyance. Sure it's a story of fiction right now, but in time I would like to see this connection to reality.

It may only rest at this time in conceptual framework that was constructed from what was available in the physics and science at our disposal, while I had to move forward slowly.

It was important to understand why there would be such divergences in perspective and how these would be lined up? Some of course did not want to take the time, but it was important to me to understand the "philosophical position" taken.



One could just as well venture to the condense matter theorist and said, what building blocks shall we use? One should not think the "history of Platonism" without some "other influences" to consider. Least you assign it to a "another particular subject" in it's present incarnation? An Oscillatory String Universe?

So the evolution here is much more then the "circumspect of the biological function," but may possible include other things that have not been considered?

Physiologically, the "biological function" had some other relation? So abstract that I assigned the photon? So I said "feelings," while Einstein might assigned them to a "short or long time" considering his state of mind? :)

More thought of course here on the "fictional presentation" submitted previous. As a layman I have a problem in that regard. :)

So no one knows how to combine thermodynamics and general relativity? Hmmm....Boltzmann puzzle..hmmmmm...and I slowly drift off in thought.

Our work is about comparing the data we collect in the STAR detector with modern calculations, so that we can write down equations on paper that exactly describe how the quark-gluon plasma behaves," says Jerome Lauret from Brookhaven National Laboratory. "One of the most important assumptions we've made is that, for very intense collisions, the quark-gluon plasma behaves according to hydrodynamic calculations in which the matter is like a liquid that flows with no viscosity whatsoever."

How does relativity ever arise out of such a situation? If "tunnelling was to occur" where would it occur, and where would "this equilibrium" find comparative Lagrangian relations in the universe? These perspectives are leading to what we see in the WMAP polarization patterns?

Are there not "comparative features" that allows for the low entropic states, within the existing universe? Allows us to return to those same entropic states in their respective regions, while "feeding" the universe?

You had to look for the conditions that would be similar would you not? And "supporting evidence" to explain the current universe speeding up. These conditions would have to support that contention.

I am holding off producing any new posts until I can bring the discussion to a suitable ending where Lee Smolin admits the ideas are not yet completed in terms of of our understanding of the landscape?

Clifford has a good humour post about real estate in the extra dimensions. Of course you had to follow other discourses here to understand how one may view what is "current in the thinking?"

This "balance in perspective" is not just one or the other but on how such perspective is formed around it. So on the one hand you have this Anthropic approach in string theory, and then you have the "philosophical differences on the other?"

Your trying to explain it and in so doing revealing the train of thought that was established. One does not disavow the road leading to the physics established of course, and no where is this intentional on differing perspectives

Lee Smolin: "Here is a metaphor due to Eric Weinstein that I would have put in the book had I heard it before. Let us take a different twist on the landscape of theories and consider the landscape of possible ideas about post standard model or quantum gravity physics that have been proposed. Height is proportional to the number of things the theory gets right. Since we don’t have a convincing case for the right theory yet, that is a high peak somewhere off in the distance. The existing approaches are hills of various heights that may or may not be connected, across some ridges and high valleys to the real peak. We assume the landscape is covered by fog so we can’t see where the real peak is, we can only feel around and detect slopes and local maxima.

Central Theme is the Sun

A lot of times people do not understand the effects something can have and after we see these effects, we wonder how did we ever miss the importance of what layed underneath this process in Physics.


Richard Feynman-Dancing With Neutrinos-Nova


Much as we looked at the stars above, the views became much clearer with hubble and such, that we see the depth is necessary as we quantum dynamically learn to see with a greater comprehension.

481 MeV muon neutrino (MC) produces 394 MeV muon which later decays at rest into 52 MeV electron. The ring fit to the muon is outlined. Fuzzy electron ring is seen in yellow-green in lower right corner. This is perspective projection with 110 degrees opening angle, looking from a corner of the Super-Kamiokande detector (not from the event vertex). Option -show_non_hit was used to show all PMTs. Color corresponds to time PMT was hit by Cerenkov photon from the ring. Color scale is time from 830 to 1816 ns with 15.9 ns step. The time window was widened from default to clearly show the muon decay electron in different color. In the charge weighted time histogram to the right two peaks are clearly seen, one from the muon, and second one from the delayed electron from the muon decay. Size of PMT corresponds to amount of light seen by the PMT. PMTs are drawn as a flat squares even though in reality they look more like huge flattened golden light bulbs.

Now it is important to me that when I seen the relationships of physics extolling itself in nature, I wanted to understand how this evidence came to be. But, before I lay what nature has shown me, I wanted to explain a little further what I am starting put together in my head, about what has become common in our understanding, was not easily so from a theoretical/concept/idea standpoint. That it was indeed "progressive/reductionistic" as our views became ever more progressive as we see the same picture of the cosmo(astrophysics) in an ever widening view of understanding.

The neutrino detector for the Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan contains ultrapure water surrounded by an array of thousands of photo-tubes, arranged to catch the flashes of light from neutrino interactions in the water. In 1998, researchers at "Super-K" found evidence for a small mass for neutrinos coming to earth from particle interactions in cosmic rays. If neutrinos, until recently thought to be massless, actually do have a mass, the implications will be profound, not only for particle physics but for astronomy and cosmology. At right is the MINOS collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab, before a slice of the 10,000-ton detector they will build to capture neutrino interactions. The MINOS experiment will use beams of accelerator-produced neutrinos by Fermilab's Tevatron to investigate neutrino mass.

Now the lesson above is quite simplistic in the sense that what was once held in theoretical views could/would have made it's way into the depths of how we see things now in nature. So in having understood that process, I wanted to show two more that you might be interested in?


Astronaut's view of the Aurora Australis, or southern lights, from aboard Space Shuttle Discovery 1991 (Courtesy: NASA)

The picture below here is what I see from my backyard when mist and rain has fallen.



So here you have it. A couple of views of nature that have been exemplifed in our search for understanding. What does this all reveal to you? Well, that's the continung saga of what the depth of perception has endowed all us human beings, as we look ever deeper into the nature of the cosmo, and the beginning of this universe.

While we had been given the Sun to look at in one of it's diverse ways, I wanted and did show that meeting the views of how we look at things. That it had been extended, by understanding the "valuation of the energy" as it has ensued from the very heart of what that burning sun is. How we gain immediate results, not ony in the particle showers, but of what evidence we have lain before us, as the physical outcome, as we look from space, and how, we look from earth.

See:

SOLAR B and Van Ellen Belts

SOLAR B and Van Ellen Belts

SCIENCE GOALS OF SOLAR-B

To determine the mechanisms responsible for heating the corona in active regions and the quiet Sun.

There are of course reasons why you want to keep these perspectives together.

While I have been extolling the virtues of Grace satelitte systems and climate it has been noticed that the developing framework of science here is also important and has been recognized in regards to what we don't see, and what happens in the Sun/Earth relation.

Univ. of Iowa
Space physicist James Van Allen, shown here in a University of Iowa photo, was best-known for discovering the radiation belts that now bear his name.

For me, my "philosphical views" take me to the "basis of all life", and the valuation I have see in how we related things, emotively, mentally, and spiritually with the planet and the lifeforms on it.

I couldn't help be amazed at the direction of my research over time, and the value the Van Ellen Belts serve as a model, to the human structure as a schema of what goes on in relation to earth's spherical body interactions.

Shall I dare point out this thought?

Shall I carry it over to the human being, or the computer screen, that is affected by....? Communciations, that are interrrupt by the value of what the Sun casts off in it's corona?

Helioseismology

The science studying wave oscillations in the Sun is called helioseismology. One can view the physical processes involved, in the same way that seismologists learn about the Earth's interior by monitoring waves caused by earthquakes. Temperature, composition, and motions deep in the Sun influence the oscillation periods and yield insights into conditions in the solar interior.

I keep the "image" in the right index for such a reason.

The Coming Season of the Aurora Borealis.



Helioseismology became of interest to me, and the way in which we can percieve this relation. To be able topercieve when the events were to be most illuminating. So yes, I was always enthrall by what I could myself see in space, as I watched going into the fall months as the "aurora borealis danced" in the color displays. To know what was going on in that Sun/Earth relation.

Last night, under the stars, we looked through my "construction technique of the roof" of the Gazebo, as it divided the night sky of stars into eight sections. We relaxed in the hotub, under a beautiful display of the cosmo.

Themis

THEMIS's ground network of all sky imagers will have the density and time resolution to detect auroral onset within 10s and 0.5 degrees of longitude. The University of Calgary will deploy 16 imagers across Canada, combined with imagers in Alaska the THEMIS array will consist of 20 ground-based observatories (GBOs). Each GBO will consist of a white light all sky camera and a host of support equipment such as a computer, GPS antenna, and a satellite dish (in the event that an internet connection is not available at the site). [more information on GBOs]

It is always important to move the mind to encompass greater potentials, even within the confines of the physics we understand, and move this, to the natural world we see, while we witness it's glory.

Astronaut's view of the Aurora Australis, or southern lights, from aboard Space Shuttle Discovery 1991 (Courtesy: NASA)

Those more adventourous, and with better visonistic qualities , and those having consumed models of apprehension, might be able to talk about these things in ways that we are not accustomed too?

Like learning a new language, and conceptual framework, that loosens those things we hold so tight, that no room is granted for the neurons to fire new pathways?