Sunday, January 28, 2007

Man Looking into Outer Space

"We all are of the citizens of the Sky" Camille Flammarion


In 1858, by the set of its relations, it will allow Camille Flammarion, the 16 years age, to enter as raises astronomer at the Observatory of Paris under the orders of Urbain the Glassmaker, at the office of calculations.


I was over at Cosmic Variance for a visit, and commented on the "woodcut" which is title by the name of the post above given by Camile Flammarion? Below a caption is produced with a



While Daniel ask spyder what the source of this was, I am quietly doing my own research, because I have used this image myself. What did it mean?



This picture is a copy of a "16 century woodcut" copied by Camille Flammarion in 1888.


The Flammarion woodcut. Flammarion's caption translates to "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet..."
The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres, executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163) [38]. The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. In its original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claiming that the woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed. Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the woodcut himself. In any case, no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.
See here for larger version "with caption" that has been translated above.

Now the interesting thing about woodcuts and what was found in my research, had to do with how "alchemical texts" can embody the "psychological process" that lent itself to the display the evolution in humanities thoughts.


Splendor Solis ("The Splendour of the Sun") is a well-known colorful alchemical manuscript. The earliest version, written in Middle German, is dated 1532-1535 and is housed at the Prussian State Museum in Berlin. It is illuminated on vellum, with decorative borders like a book of hours, beautifully painted and heightened with gold. The later copies in London, Kassel, Paris and Nuremberg are equally fine. In all twenty copies exist worldwide.


I will give an examples that have been retained by me, for understanding that allow me to speak on this. While I referred to the "enlightenment" and gave this answer above, I used it in context of how we see the cosmos now, given the understanding of the physics we are engaged in science.

While relativity was applied to the cosmos at large, now, quantumly defining the nature of this cosmos, is part of this achievement that I refer too in terms of enlightenment.

What are Woodcuts

In Europe, Woodcut is the oldest technique used for old master prints, developing about 1400, by using on paper existing techniques for printing on cloth. The explosion of sales of cheap woodcuts in the middle of the century led to a fall in standards, and many popular prints were very crude. The development of hatching followed on rather later than in engraving. Michael Wolgemut was significant in making German woodcut more sophisticated from about 1475, and Erhard Reuwich was the first to use cross-hatching (far harder to do than in engraving or etching). Both of these produced mainly book-illustrations, as did various Italian artists who were also raising standards there at the same period. At the end of the century Albrecht Dürer brought the Western woodcut to a level that has never been surpassed, and greatly increased the status of the single-leaf (ie an image sold separately) woodcut.

As woodcut can be easily printed together with movable type, because both are relief-printed, it was the main medium for book illustrations until the late-sixteenth century. The first woodcut book illustration dates to about 1461, only a few years after the beginning of printing with movable type, printed by Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg. Woodcut was used less often for individual ("single-leaf") fine-art prints from about 1550 until the late nineteenth-century, when interest revived. It continued to be important for popular prints until the nineteenth century in most of Europe, and later in some places


I refer to the psychological basis of what these woodcuts can mean from an early historical perspective. By studing methods used I came to learn of what this could mean "not from producing gold from lead" but of what this could mean in terms of applying ourselves and conducting our selves, as a commitment to being better human beings.

This new compound of thought is difficult to understand and apply in our everyday affairs. The Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung went perhaps further than any other researcher to extract the psychological wisdom embedded in alchemy and make it available to the modern world. Through his work we learn how alchemy can be used as a powerful means of psychological transformation, personal empowerment and spiritual adventure. Individuation is the real gold sought by true alchemists. Yet, for all his genius, Jung's writings are complex and oftentimes as difficult to read as the alchemical literature. A thorough knowledge of analytic psychology, theology, symbolism and mythology is required to appreciate the depth of Jung's insights. Adding to this challenge is the rapid rate that science and technology have advanced since Jung's death. We live in a New World. Especially with the findings of quantum physics -many of which validate old philosophical truths- the time is ripe for a fresh interpretation of alchemy and how we can apply its powerful recipes to the challenges of contemporary life.

The Mathematikoi had Synesthesia?


Pythagoreanism is a term used for the esoteric and metaphysical beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans, who were much influenced by mathematics and probably a main inspirational source for Plato and platonism.

Later resurgence of ideas similar to those held by the early Pythagoreans are collected under the term Neopythagoreanism.

The Pythagoreans were called mathematikoi, which means "those that study all1"


To say it is easy in knowing where to begin, is a understatement of what has been an enormous struggle to define the world around me. Indicative of the complications of how one may have seen this world in regards to the "views of a Synesthesist," would have taxed most "science minds" if they had "this inkling" of the complexity this brings to science. Think about what is implied here when one refers to "studying it all?"

So as I lay in the twilight hours of the mind's rest period, there are these things that I am asking of myself, as to how I may point to what is comparative in the "geometric views of science" and what is comparative to the views of that science in relation to examples given of the Synesthesist who sees from a certain position.

Again, my mind falls back in the history of humanities evolution and while the distinctiveness of sectors of that past history, it would not be unkind to draw from that history and present the question of what a Synesthesist might have seen in relation to the numbers?


Create and play with the most beautiful, hypnotic light illusions you have ever seen.


I seen the above in relation to Lubos's post. It would be nice to offer the "equation correlations" to these "colour displays" in string theory?:)

Numbers

Are you quicker then I then to see that numbers may have had the colour attached to their very nature, that "all things" then my have had this basis of "music" and "colour association" thrown "into the mix/cross over points"" to call it the Pythagorean?

So imagine being strapped with the job to start from some place, and move any mind to consider the complexity of "departing euclidean views" to meld with the "non-euclidean reality" assigned our everyday species to "what is natural" from straight lines and such. Has now moved to a dynamical world of "Faraday lines" Gauss's role as "teacher of Gaussian Co-ordinates" to views of his student, "Riemann?"


This equation provides a simple relation among the three sides of a right triangle so that if the lengths of any two sides are known, the length of the third side can be found.


Should one be so crude as to see that straight lines can have a "greater implication of design" that one would not have seen, had they not understood Gauss's work? That if you moved yourself to natures's domain, how many lines are really that straight?

Ask your self then what is natural and what was man-made? That these straight lines are indeed an order to mankind's "ode to building and living," while there are these "other worldly visions" supplied in the "non euclidean realm" existed free from man's definition of nature.

8.6 On Gauss's Mountains
One of the most famous stories about Gauss depicts him measuring the angles of the great triangle formed by the mountain peaks of Hohenhagen, Inselberg, and Brocken for evidence that the geometry of space is non-Euclidean. It's certainly true that Gauss acquired geodetic survey data during his ten-year involvement in mapping the Kingdom of Hanover during the years from 1818 to 1832, and this data included some large "test triangles", notably the one connecting the those three mountain peaks, which could be used to check for accumulated errors in the smaller triangles. It's also true that Gauss understood how the intrinsic curvature of the Earth's surface would theoretically result in slight discrepancies when fitting the smaller triangles inside the larger triangles, although in practice this effect is negligible, because the Earth's curvature is so slight relative to even the largest triangles that can be visually measured on the surface. Still, Gauss computed the magnitude of this effect for the large test triangles because, as he wrote to Olbers, "the honor of science demands that one understand the nature of this inequality clearly". (The government officials who commissioned Gauss to perform the survey might have recalled Napoleon's remark that Laplace as head of the Department of the Interior had "brought the theory of the infinitely small to administration".) It is sometimes said that the "inequality" which Gauss had in mind was the possible curvature of space itself, but taken in context it seems he was referring to the curvature of the Earth's surface. 2


The Interior Probabilities Manifests as Colour

How foolish would I be then to tell you that "Heaven' Ephemeral Qualities," are coloured to the degrees that "gravity defines itself in time?" That "model building" had to take place, so that the understanding of where this gravity explains itself, could find correlations to humans experiencing "durations of time" within in the living of day to day.

Again I move one back to what this "egg of fluttering does" as of physiological consequent, as the correlations of those same colours manifest in the qualities of those same thought patterns. Those experiences mapped to MRI imaging are condensible features "in the physical" do not explain the "Ephemeral Quality" assigned to each of these regions. Had one knew how to switch around the "value of consciousness" to the condensible feature as brain matter, one would have known about the happenings taking place "outside" of our bodies.

It is here to then that I take from the "metaphysical realm" and bring it into the relations of what is happening in the physical brain. While history has shown groups who gathered to see what was happening, saw "human experiencing" as they went through these colour modes.

1 Hemmenway, Pryia – Divine Proportion pp66, Sterling Publishing, ISBN 1-4027-3522-7
2 Reflections on Relativity8.6 On Guass's Mountain

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Hippies, Rock Bands, and Woodstock

There is a reason for this article. Bee was kind to point to this article, ""Artist on LSD" for consideration.


2 hours 45 minutes after first dose.

Patient tries to climb into activity box, and is generally agitated - responds slowly to the suggestion he might like to draw some more. He has become largely none verbal.

'I am... everything is... changed... they're calling... your face... interwoven... who is...' Patient mumbles inaudibly to a tune (sounds like 'Thanks for the memory). He changes medium to Tempera.


Now I give "my impression of what happens" from the different pictures, while the artist is under that influence.

Every youth has their experiences in "growing up." Any youth is greatly influenced by the actions "back then/now" of "role models." Then it was like Timothy Leary below, who paved the way for some dramatic exposure to the underlying creative aspects of consciousness. "Freeing" of the focus of the mind. Influencing the "children of that time" as I look retrospect, as a mature father, husband and grandfather.

Then names of people like "Flower" or "Pink" come to mind.


Timothy Francis Leary, Ph.D. (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American writer, psychologist, and advocate of psychedelic drug research and use. As a 1960s counterculture icon, he is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."


The reason this link of Bee's is of some significance to me, is because of a time with my elder brother. He was 4 years my senior, back around that time. The thought came to me when he proposed something that he was doing. He was young at the time, and I more so.

You are Free to Explore Without

Now, I have to fast forward here to what I know now, that I didn't know then. Why this "example given under the influence" is of some significance and what it means. IN "reputable hands" this kind of "LSD treatment," and I would be foolish to say that I would know the process, would have to be done under a experienced doctor of the trade. One might add here the same scenario to all situations of DR.'s who have put in their time? :)


"All paths lead nowhere,so it is important to choose a path that has heart.-- Carlos Castenada"
I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. The desire to learn is not ambition. It is our lot as men to want to know.

The path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.


I do not sanction this kind of access to "learning the depth of consciousness" that LSD seems to open, without an "experienced guiding hand." Reading of "Carlos Castaneda" of that time, will help to make this clear.

Mental hospital wards were evident then of the "freaking out cases" that had occurred to those who could not handle the "dramatic change in perception."

Now ,back to what I saw in the pictures as they developed through time, are what I saw in the diary of my brother. His writing, as he was "under the influence."

You must know, "brothers can idolize brothers older then them self." I was no exception and under his influence, I would say great care was not taken of his younger. I suspected his intelligence as he enter university, and his "own wanderings" that provoked thoughts about many things.

It was after his death while flying through the Montana mountains, with our cousin, and his ordeal with another two people, that I came into the possession of his diary. Now, I recalled our talks, and of this experiment that he had proposed. As to where this diary is now, I am scared to say, that it is with the papers "some place."

As I gaze through "his experiment" I must say that you had to be there, and if you had this sanity about you, then you would ask, "what connection is there to the reality you are writing or speaking?" Perhaps he was looking for the "gold, held in the secret of life," that by chance, could be gained from "there?" Where? "There," under the influence.

No "great words" and if I had thought that there would have been this picture revealed of "6 or 7," then I would have to say, "the wording" did not reach this interesting style.

Stretching the Brain

Tone color is also often used as a synonym. People who experience synesthesia may see certain colors when they hear particular instruments. Helmholtz used the German Klangfarbe (tone color), and Tyndall proposed its English translation, clangtint. But both terms were disapproved of by Alexander Ellis who also discredits register and color for their pre-existing English meanings (Erickson 1975, p.7).


So what are we doing when we find the situation "experimentally conducive" to offering a "deeper perspective" about the reality we live in? Are we providing "for a change" in how we have always thought? How we see differently, versus, the everyday reality we have become accustomed too?

So by "stretching the brain" we are doing much more then talking about the theoretics and the metrics. We are talking about "freeing one self" from the constraints that we have applied to ourselves in terms of, what we understand, and what we "can" understand.

If I were to say to you, that of "natural consequence" that we have assigned a "tonal perspective about life," then what would this look like? What would this mean? Surrounded by this "egg of consequence" may we see a dynamical fluttering of colors assigned to physiological happenings?

If one were to understand the "shifting of the tonal" then one might say this would indeed mean that the perspective has been changed from where it always "focused" to where the eyes rest in "new" theoretical terrain?

"Setting up" for new experiences, is about "experiencing life." The more you add, the more in terms of probabilites you have to draw from in terms of "correlating" experience. What you once read of this blog/book has now "new" meaning.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Window Into the Mind

As we increase our knowledge of the genetic, neural and cognitive aspects of synaesthesia, we will find that we are beginning to understand the brain more completely. Researchers may wish that they possessed synaesthesia, but being able to explore a new and strange trait that may hold the answers to many fundamental questions is reward enough.



Yellow, Red, Blue
1925; Oil on canvas, 127x200cm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Kandinsky, himself an accomplished musician, once said Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. The concept that color and musical harmony are linked has a long history, intriguing scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton. Kandinsky used color in a highly theoretical way associating tone with timbre (the sound's character), hue with pitch, and saturation with the volume of sound. He even claimed that when he saw color he heard music.


Over the past 35 years I have spent a considerable time doing my own research. Learning to express myself, has been very difficult to say the least.

It is while doing this research that things seem to "overlap" as I ventured forward and finding examples, as if "analogies in nature" has been the "metaphorical struggle" that I use in "word use and comparison."

Creating the Language

It has accumulated from that research and integration within myself. So it is like creating and learning a "new language," while most of the time I come across as not being understood. That has been "my struggle" to get people "to see" what I am seeing? I don't get "images" in my head, but the accumulation of everything has been transposed into the way I express myself here in this blog.

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. Sir Isaac Newton


If I may by example give here "the idea of perfecting the self" in regards to Sir Isaac Newton. If he were to have been a alchemist, and persevered in his "psychological struggles," then what form would all his "struggles in self" have exemplified, if he "accomplished those parts of himself."

The "colour" of his being, and the alchemical relation to psychological changes? These alway existed and "as yet" had no name?

So from whence comes all "this energy of expression", to have been displayed as it has? In all the avenues of our "selves," that our experience has allowed that energy to manifest "this way" and "that way," and we have this "unique individual" before us, as you, or I, and "the many?" You "control the color or not" or, is it a "consequence" of this physiological process?


Smilack says her synesthesia helps her create art, such as this piece, "Squid Row." Photo by Marcia Smilack
Smilack belongs to the group of one to four percent of people worldwide with synesthesia, the neurological mixing of the senses. No two synesthetes have exactly the same perceptual experiences. Many perceive each number, letter of the alphabet, or day of the week as a different color. For others, sounds from the environment are always accompanied by moving geometric patterns in their "mind's eye."

Smilack has a rare form of synesthesia that involves all of her senses—the sound of one female voice looks like a thin, bending sheet of metal, and the sight of a certain fishing shack gives her a brief taste of Neapolitan ice cream—but her artistic leanings are shared by many other synesthetes. Scientists estimate that synesthesia is about seven times more common in poets, novelists, and artists than in the rest of the population. (Some of the most famous examples include artists David Hockney and Wassily Kandinsky and writer Vladimir Nabokov.)


Marcia Smilack:
When you take a photograph of a reflection, you must compose your image upside down -- an odd and difficult task. Eventually, it is simply easier to give in and rely on other parts of your mind to compose the image. So, in an oxymoronic way, seeing in reflection "forces" you to let go, to trust what you feel.

Second, these images opened a unique window into the mind of the researcher. Remember the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that states every object observed is changed by the experience? Well, I am the voice from the other side, the voice of the object that was watching them the whole time they were watching me. I have learned that we change each other through our interchanges. And while it is hard for me to quantify what I have learned from them, it is a great deal. Their questions and responses provide a framework onto which I can project what I intuitively know but do not usually speak.


She has many wonderful links that I had accumulated, and more. Also check out the extensive amount of links associated with the Synesthesia Resource Center on Patricia Lynne Duffy's book web page.

Calculus, or Feynman's Toy Models?

Some, who possess what researchers call "conceptual synesthesia," see abstract concepts, such as units of time or mathematical operations, as shapes projected either internally or in the space around them


So, is it out of necessity that we can "create the language" necessary to view the reality around us as it is, and how shall we do that? Sir Isaac Newton created "Calculus."

So with this "unique perspective of synesthesia," how shall you give to the world from what began in self, and we have this "multitude of choices" as to the "fabrications" we may use from our "artistic creative design?" No choice, synesthesia just is?

Sometimes I relate the experience of reading a book, to what is "consumed one day" was by design, our place in the scheme of understanding things. Where we have "this experience" that we can correlate. So "it" makes sense. If a person with synesthesia was to read my blog, how much more would they take from my writing, then one without?

It is no different then our understanding of the science of things. Life can seem "mythic in proportion,", until, we understood the deeper part of the "design of reality?"

Update:


Nature, so endlessly creative, has managed things so that each of us, hosts of synesthesia or not, perceives a slightly different world... a world colored by our one-of-a-kind pattern of neurons and experiences" -- Patricia Lynne Duffy

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Radiactive Decay

Unit Circle


Complex numbers can be identified with points in the Euclidean plane, namely the number a + bi is identified with the point (a, b). Under this identification, the unit circle is a group under multiplication, called the circle group. This group has important applications in mathematics and science. See here.

Just briefly showing containment of "collision process" and for later study. This is how I see this "relation of cosmic particle collisions" to incidents in "high energy collisions processes" and I wonder if this is wrong? Also pointing toward "Neutrino oscillation" as a probabilistic consequence of Quantum mechanics.

To the Substance of this Post

Q9 raised an issue that is of some significance to me because of the way I was "geometrically seeing these collision processes." While, I had not moved my thinking to the human factor in this process, it has in my study raised the question of what effect it has on the human populations on a personal note.

Quasar9:
The general effects of radon to the human body are due to its radioactivity and consequent risk of radiation-induced cancer. As an inert gas, "radon has a low solubility in body fluids which lead to a uniform distribution of the gas throughout the body" (Lindgren, 1989). Radon gas and its solid decay products are carcinogens. Some of the daughter products, especially polonium-218 and 214, from radioactive decay of radon present a radiologic hazard. Depending on the size of the particles, radon decay products can be inhaled into the lung where they undergo further radioactive decay releasing small bursts of energy in the form of alpha particles that can either cause double strand DNA breaks or create free radicals that can also damage the DNA. Also See: Radon





The ABCs - and Xs and Zs - of Radiation

Alpha and beta rays are particles. Gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation, like X-rays but at higher energies. Health physicists worry most about HZE cosmic rays, those with high mass (Z stands for atomic number, which also implies mass) and energy (E). They have two principal sources, the Sun and the galaxy.


Quasar9:
The energy of alpha particles varies, with higher energy alpha particles being emitted from larger nuclei, but most alpha particles have energies of between 3 and 7 MeV. This is a substantial amount of energy for a single particle, but their high mass means alpha particles have a lower speed (with a typical kinetic energy of 5 MeV the speed is 15,000 km/s) than any other common type of radiation (β particles, γ-rays, neutrons etc). Because of their charge and large mass, alpha particles are easily absorbed by materials and can travel only a few centimetres in air. They can be absorbed by tissue paper or the outer layers of human skin (about 40 micrometres, equivalent to a few cells deep) and so are not generally dangerous to life unless the source is ingested or inhaled. Because of this high mass and strong absorption, however, if alpha radiation does enter the body (most often because radioactive material has been inhaled or ingested), it is the most destructive form of ionizing radiation. It is the most strongly ionizing, and with large enough doses can cause any or all of the symptoms of radiation poisoning. It is estimated that chromosome damage from alpha particles is about 100 times greater than that caused by an equivalent amount of other radiation. The alpha emitter polonium-210 is suspected of playing a role in lung and bladder cancer related to tobacco smoking. Also See:Alpha Particles



Low energy alpha particles may be completely stopped by a sheet of paper, beta particles by aluminum shielding. Gamma rays, being very high energy in nature, can only be reduced by much more substantial obstacles, such as a very thick piece of lead.

As for types of radioactive radiation, it was found that an electric or magnetic field could split such emissions into three types of beams. For lack of better terms, the rays were given the alphabetic names alpha, beta, and gamma, names they still hold today. It was immediately obvious from the direction of electromagnetic forces that alpha rays carried a positive charge, beta rays carried a negative charge, and gamma rays were neutral. From the magnitude of deflection, it was also clear that alpha particles were much more massive than beta particles. Passing alpha rays through a thin glass membrane and trapping them in a discharge tube allowed researchers to study the emission spectrum of the resulting gas, and ultimately prove that alpha particles are in fact helium nuclei. Other experiments showed the similarity between beta radiation and cathode rays; they are both streams of electrons, and between gamma radiation and X-rays, which are both high energy electromagnetic radiation.

Although alpha, beta, and gamma are most common, other types of decay were eventually discovered. Shortly after discovery of the neutron in 1932, it was discovered by Enrico Fermi that certain rare decay reactions give rise to neutrons as a decay particle. Isolated proton emission was also eventually observed in some elements. Shortly after the discovery of the positron in cosmic ray products, it was realized that the same process that operates in classical beta decay can also produce positrons (positron emission), analogously to negative electrons. Each of the two types of beta decay acts to move a nucleus toward a ratio of neutrons and protons which has the least energy for the combination. Finally, in a phenomenon called cluster decay, specific combinations of neutrons and protons other than alpha particles were found to occasionally spontaneously be emitted from atoms.

Friday, January 19, 2007

No Extra Dimensions Yet?

Turning back to gravity, the extra-dimensions model stems from theoretical research into (mem)brane theories, the multidimensional successors to string theories (April 1999 p13). One remarkable property of these models is that they show that it is quite natural and consistent for electromagnetism, the weak force and the inter-quark force to be confined to a brane while gravity acts in a larger number of spatial dimensions.
The requirement of correctly reproducing Newton's constant, G, at long distances leads to the size of the extra dimensions in which gravity is free to act being related to the number of extra dimensions.



New physics experience might reveal more dimensions in the Universe than meets the eyeSee Here

Amazing isn't it that EOT-WASH GROUP would consider themselves as challenging the experimental basis of string theory thinking. If one did not see into the nature of that "dynamical world" what value would have ever been reached if there was no separation in the value of the "r distance?" No "varying energy valuation" in the strong force.


Fig. 1. In quantum chromodynamics, a confining flux tube forms between distant static charges. This leads to quark confinement - the potential energy between (in this case) a quark and an antiquark increases linearly with the distance between them.See Here.

If a "Q to Q" measure is considered and a "active consideration evident" in this exchange of a "r value," then why would they think the gravitational considerations would not have ever made sense in the distances of extra dimensions of 44 micrometres or larger?

By increasing this distance, the gravitational considerations are very important in terms of the energy valuation given as the "q to q" is moved apart. The energy is directly relate to the gravitational considerations?


Image: EOT-WASH GROUP, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Discovering extra dimensions with the relatively huge size of a few micrometers would offer spectacular confirmation for string theory, the still unproved body of equations that may unify gravity with the normally incompatible realm of quantum physics. "Even though we haven't seen anything, these results put boundaries on what people can legitimately propose," says experimental physicist and study author Eric Adelberger of the University of Washington. "Testing the inverse square law [meaning Newton's law of gravity] is the bombproof way to look for extra dimensions.
"


some physicists proposed that string theory might cause gravity to grow stronger at such distances if the universe came with relatively big extra dimensions of micrometers in width......Sundrum says that if extra dimensions failed to turn up at that distance, it would likely prune off that branch of string theory.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Collider Detector at Fermilab and Slac

Current evidence shows that neutrinos do oscillate, which indicates that neutrinos do have mass. The Los Alamos data revealed a muon anti-neutrino cross over to an electron neutrino. This type of oscillation is difficult to explain using only the three known types of neutrinos. Therefore, there might be a fourth neutrino, which is currently being called a "sterile" neutrino, which interacts more weakly than the other three neutrinos.


If for one moment you thought strings had some relation to the very nature as "building blocks of this universe," at what "energies" would we have said they had made their appearance? Microseconds perhaps after the universe came into expression?

The CDF Detector. Image from Fermilab

Three trillion times per second--that's how fast quarks in the B sub s (Bs) particle "oscillate," or switch between their matter and antimatter states, according to scientists from the Collider Detector at Fermilab collaboration. The CDF physicists measured this rapid oscillation with the help of the world's most powerful particle accelerator, Fermilab’s Tevatron, unprecedented computing power made available through the Open Science Grid and the LHC Computing Grid, and a healthy dose of ingenuity.

"Bs oscillation is a very subtle and rapid effect," says Jacobo Konigsberg from the University of Florida, co-spokesperson for the CDF collaboration. "It's astonishing that we can measure it at all."


When you look at these events, the cascading effect of this interaction with the earth's upper atmosphere, why did not one think of the constituent properties that would be exhibited at the beginning of that same universe?

Multi-Jet Hadronic Events


Event 12637_6353_600_z_3jet

In some hadronic events, the initial high-energy quark and or antiquark pair may radiate a high-energy gluon before the production of additional quarks and antiquarks in the strong force field is completed. These gluons also show up in the event picture, because they provide a different pattern. The momentum of each high-energy gluon appears as an additional jet of hadrons. This process results in three, four, or even five jet events. Sometimes though, as these pictures show, it is very clear to see.


I do not understand why people did not understand this relation to what was happening within the cosmos, would not be produced in our colliders? That what was happening at the beginning of our universe had some relation to what was being produced in those colliders?

Cosmic Rays


Cosmic rays are caused by protons from outer space. When a proton (shown in yellow) hits the air in the earth's upper atmosphere it produces many particles. Most of these decay or are absorbed in the atmosphere. One type of particle, called muons (shown in red), lives long enough that some reach the earth's surface.

SLAC's Cosmic Ray Detector: The Cosmic Ray Detector consists of three pairs of scintillator panels for muon detection. Sets A, B, and C (see below) are oriented with the flat surface of the panels horizontally, at 45°, and vertically, respectively. In each pair, the panels measure 4.875 inches (12.4 cm) wide by 8 inches (20.3 cm) long, and the distance between them is 18.5 inches (47.0 cm). The panels are shielded from light with aluminum foil, black plastic sheets, and black tape. When muons penetrate through these panels, chemicals within will scintillate (emit flashes of light).

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Newton's inverse-square (1/r2) law

The standard model of particle physics is a self-contained picture of fundamental particles and their interactions. Physicists, on a journey from solid matter to quarks and gluons, via atoms and nuclear matter, may have reached the foundation level of fields and particles. But have we reached bedrock, or is there something deeper? Savas Dimopoulos


While in the post previous to this I gave some indication of the gravity from the cosmological point of view, I then took it down to the particle collisions. I again reiterate this, in this post as well.


Source-detector configuration for the 1-m 1/r2 test
Newton's inverse-square (1/r2) law is a cornerstone of General Relativity. However, this law has been challenged by many modern theories of gravity and particle physics. The supergravity and unified field theories often run into a new short-range force, with an accompanying new particle, which should appear as a violation of the 1/r2 law. More recently, a possible violation of the 1/r2 law in the range below 1 mm was suggested by string theories with extra dimensions.



Gravity: Another Example of a 1/R2 Law
Two masses at a given distance place equal and opposite forces of attraction on one another. The magnitude of this force of attraction is given by:




where G is the universal gravitation constant (6.67 X 10-11 Nm2/kg2), m1 is the mass of the first object in kilograms, m2 is the mass of the second object in kilograms, and r is the distance between the centers of the two masses, in meters.


It is not without thinking here that what you thought of the "microstate blackhole," could have found it's relevance in the temperatures reached, when seen at this level?


Fig. 1. In quantum chromodynamics, a confining flux tube forms between distant static charges. This leads to quark confinement - the potential energy between (in this case) a quark and an antiquark increases linearly with the distance between them.
The ideal experimental test of this new feature of QCD would be to study the flux tube of figure 1 directly by anchoring a quark and antiquark several femtometres apart and examining the flux tube between them. In such ideal circumstances, one of the characteristics of the gluonic flux tube would be the model-independent spectrum shown in figure 2. The excitation energy is p/r because the flux tube's mass is entirely due to its stored energy. There are two initially excited longest wavelength vibrations with identical energies because the motion of the flux tube is in the two symmetrical dimensions perpendicular to its length.


You ever hear of the term, "you can't hit the broad side of a barn?" WEll lets think about this when it comes to the measures of femtometres and such. Classically old, it was not witout some direction in thinking that one could be taken down to certain measures for those same considerations. Barn Yard?

Origin of the (classified) barn

In the luminosity lexicon, a picobarn is one trillionth (10-12) of a barn, and a femtobarn is one quadrillionth (10-15) of a barn... but what's a barn? The distinctive and amusing term originated with two Purdue University physicists working on the Manhattan Project in 1942—and it was classified information by the US government until after World War II.

A History of Physics at Purdue (Gartenhaus, Tubis, Cassidy, and Bray) cites the July 1972 issue of Physics Today in which Marshall Halloway and Charles Baker write of tossing around ideas over dinner until arriving at "barn" to describe the typical nuclear cross section of 10-24 cm2, the effective target area that a nuclear particle represents in a collision. Dining in the Purdue Memorial Union, back in Lafayette, Indiana, Halloway and Baker dismissed "Oppenheimer" and "Bethe" as candidates, then considered John Manley, director of the Purdue group at Los Alamos. They decided "Manley" was too long, and then, as the authors put it in the Physics Today article to:


So here we are looking at what the EOT-WASH GROUP is doing? What is "compactification" in line with any thinking, that the world around us from a cosmological point of view is large(large circle), and that amidst it's reality, exists this finer world of particulars that "we'd only imagine" while the measures to it's finest(small circle) was produce and then energies assigned.

It would be as if you looked at the cosmos and never thought about it constituents "bits and pieces," which make up those cosmological processes. Yet, for me, "circles within circles" would have made me wonder which circle represented which part of the views at any one time, whilst we speak about these energies from one perspective to the next.

Savas Dimopoulos:At close encounter the particles can exchange gravitons via the two extra dimensions, which changes the force law at very short distances. Instead of the "Newtonian inverse square law" you’ll have an inverse fourth power law. This signature is being looked for in the ongoing experiments.


.....and more here for how perspectve can change once you give a direction in which to think about.

Savas Dimopoulos:At first we faced denial. We had deliberately used the word "sub-millimeter" in our first paper. Physicists were surprised, to say the least, that such a thing was not already excluded experimentally. I remember a stage in 1998 when colleagues wondered if we had not forgotten some crucial experiment. We were not discouraged. No! We gave talks on the ideas, and by July 1998 had analyzed the laboratory and cosmological constraints. That paper marked a sea-change in opinion: physicists began to think this was an interesting idea. By the fall of 1998 we were showing how to do real physics. Now several study groups are taking us very seriously: the high citation rates speak for themselves.
Personally I am not surprised by the reaction. Revolutionary ideas go through a cycle: denial, followed by "okay it is consistent but can you do anything with it?" and finally, once you show how to do real physics, you may get the third phase where many physicists become interested in the field. The same thing happened to me and Giorgi back in 1981 when we first proposed the supersymmetric extension of the standard model of particle physics. Initially there were the usual skeptics but now it is completely accepted.
Oddly, for me, the major competitor to these proposals for extra dimensions is the supersymmetry extension. But let's recall some of the disadvantages of the standard model. First, it shuts out gravity. Second, it has 18 free parameters, many of them very small. Third, the vacuum energy is 120 orders of magnitude larger than what you would naively guess from the standard model.
Proposing extra dimensions to space is a drastic step. But once you have the extra space you can attribute the smallness of some quantities to the statement that their origin is somewhere far away inside space, just as an astronomer might attribute the faintness of a galaxy to its large distance. For example, maybe the smallness of the electron mass arises because its origin is far away inside the extra dimensions.
My view is that both of the big ideas I have worked on are testable in the next decade by LHC. The two frameworks have complementary features. I'm greatly looking forward to the outcome


Make sure you look at the "compactification" label to the right index

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Gravity Free Environment on Earth

It's taken some time from a layman perspective to try and "place this experiment" in a setting that helps orientate views. Well, at least in my case. :)

So here is a "guide below" that may seem trivial to some, yet, directed to the "microperspective" on this experiment, speak to cosmology as well. While it may seem easy from a "cosmological standpoint" gravities "effect" is of some importance in "condense matter views."

A "Top/down approach" pointing you toward LHC and the "anomaly of relativity" in the perfect fluid, seems like going "full circle?"

See:"Cosmic Variance"

Anyway to the essence of what has been instigated by the post of Seans, and what came about from the "Aerogel and Stardust" Post.


Microgravity Science Glove Box-The MSG will enable astronauts on board the ISS to perform a wide variety of materials, combustion, fluids and biotechnology experiments as well as investigations in the microgravity environment. It can also accommodate minor repairs and servicing of hardware requiring a controlled working environment. The facility offers users a wide range of innovative, utilization alternatives from manual control by astronauts via laptop computers to fully automated and remote control from Earth (telescience). A permanent data exchange link with ground stations is also ensured.The MSG will be integrated and used in the US Destiny Laboratory for a projected operational period of ten years.ESA is planning to use the facility for European experiments. The first time MSG will be used by a European astronaut to perform European experiments will be during a Soyuz taxi flight mission in October 2002. ESA's Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne will perform four different experiments in the MSG in the field of protein crystallization, zeolites crystallization, combustion and fluid science.
Frank De Winne works with the Microgravity Science Glovebox(MSG)Credits: ESA


Why is it we cannot create this environment, other then, the method described in terms of the drop tower, or, out in space? What ways do you know that such simulation can be developed to move the ideas of product development "done there in space." To make it feasible to create the condense matter states that are purer free from the effect of gravity on earth.

“On Earth, buoyancy continuously deforms and moves fluids in complex manners, making it difficult to study how materials that solidify from the melt form semiconductors and other products,” said Dr. Aleksandar Ostrogorsky, the SUBSA principal investigator who also teaches and conducts research at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. “In microgravity, the fluids are almost stagnant, resembling solids. The absence of motion makes it easier to observe and mathematically describe what is occurring when the crystals are melted, and how the materials solidify to form a new crystal.”


The idea occurred to me today to find a way in which to "create the environment" that is conducive to perfecting the "purity of alignment of substances" in a gravity free environment. I mentioned the aerogel in the previous article and how developing that product in space gives the product superior qualities, that one might not have here on earth.


Aircraft: A two-engine turbofan aircraft similar to the McDonnell-Douglas DC-9
A typical mission is 2 to 3 hours long and consists of 40 to 50 parabolas. These parabolas can be flown in succession or with short breaks between maneuvers to reconfigure test equipment. The Reduced Gravity Office provides scheduling, test coordination, and in-flight direction for the test programs.


So, we create the conditions for it. Whether it be the Space Shuttle, the Airplane or the Miniature Drop Tower.

NASA's "Weightless Wonder" KC-135a Reduced Gravity Laboratory

By comparing the results from fuel vaporization in a reduced-gravity environment with those under normal conditions, the students aim to gain a better understanding of how fuel droplets behave under different conditions to optimize the fuel injection process. The findings may be used in helping promote changes in engine design while improving efficiency and reducing emissions.


By understanding the process from "space to earth" we see where ingenuity of mind applies the differences of "time clocks" and such.


As one of the fields which obey the general inverse square law, the gravity field can be put in the form shown above, showing that the acceleration of gravity, g, is an expression of the intensity of the gravity field.


In a manner that "it's effects" in relation to gravity may be considered from a cosmological and micro-gravity perspective, in relation to "Inverse Square law( I use sound in the example, but click on the image provided)" and "Inverse Fourth Power Law."


This miniature drop tower is used by Microgravity man and others to demonstrate the effects of reduced gravity on physical and chemical phenomena that are normally masked by Earth's gravity.


So here we are "to the experiment" in a microperspective that is currently being explored.

Eric Adelberger on Aug 12th, 2005 at 2:37 pm

Please don’t get too excited yet about rumors concerning the Eot-Wash test of the 1/r^2 law. We can exclude gravitational strength (|alpha|=1) Yukawa violations of the 1/r^2 law for lambda>80 microns at 95% confidence. It is true that we are seeing an anomaly at shorter length scales but we have to show first that the anomaly is not some experimental artifact. Then, if it holds up, we have to check if the anomaly is due to new fundamental physics or to some subtle electromagnetic effect that penetrates our conducting shield. We are now checking for experimental artifacts by making a small change to our apparatus that causes a big change in the Newtonian signal but should have essentially no effect on a short-range anomaly. Then we will replace our molybdenum detector ring with an aluminum one. This will reduce any signal from interactions coupled to mass, but will have little effect on subtle electromagnetic backgrounds. These experiments are tricky and measure very small forces. It takes time to get them right. We will not be able to say anything definite about the anomaly for several months at least.


Update:

Check out Backreaction's Water in Zero Gravity