The Flyby Anomaly

Galileo flying by Earth Galileo, launched in 1989, flew by Earth twice for gravity assists on its 6-year journey to Jupiter. Credit: Michael Carroll


Researchers Investigate New Cosmic Mystery: The Flyby Anomaly by By Amir Alexander

A new study by researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows that spacecrafts that swing by the Earth are subject to a small but unexplained increase in their velocity. Is an unknown physical force at work, or something far more mundane? As of now, scientists don't know, but they have already given this mysterious phenomenon a name: "the flyby anomaly."

Asch conformity experiments

One of the pairs of cards used in the experiment. The card on the left has the reference line and the one on the right shows the three comparison lines.

The Asch conformity experiments

which were published in 1953, were a series of studies that starkly demonstrated the power of conformity in groups. These are also known as the "Asch Paradigm".

One of the pairs of cards used in the experiment. The card on the left has the reference line and the one on the right shows the three comparison lines.
One of the pairs of cards used in the experiment. The card on the left has the reference line and the one on the right shows the three comparison lines.

Experiments led by Solomon Asch asked groups of students to participate in a "vision test." In reality, all but one of the participants were confederates of the experimenter, and the study was really about how the remaining student would react to the confederates' behavior.

The participants — the real subject and the confederates — were all seated in a classroom where they were told to announce out loud their judgment of the length of several lines drawn on a series of displays. They were asked which line was longer than the other, which were the same length, etc. The confederates had been prearranged to all give an incorrect answer to the tests.

While most subjects answered correctly, many showed extreme discomfort, and a high proportion (32%) conformed to the erroneous majority view of the others in the room when there were at least three confederates present, even when the majority said that two lines different in length by several inches were the same length. When the confederates were not unanimous in their judgment, subjects were much more likely to defect than when the confederates all agreed. Control subjects with no exposure to a majority view had no trouble giving the correct answer.

Of course people can make mistakes. While one reads and participates what value would you give someone who was critical? Offer their perspective freely, so that we can judge for our self.( Help the patient help themself) Whether or not, something is fruitful in regard to research and moving a subject to a new plateau for new perspectives to be developed?

Conformity can have it's affects, just as some can "belong to something" by saying what may like to be heard. Build accordingly to the order of things, while being lead while sleeping, have faintly agreed to complacency. Challenge them, and yourself to understand.

A New Cosmological View?

Mathematics is not the rigid and rigidity-producing schema that the layman thinks it is; rather, in it we find ourselves at that meeting point of constraint and freedom that is the very essence of human nature.

- Hermann Weyl

Perspective has been push back in a reductionistic sense and understanding in a cosmological sense. The limit to which this process could incorporate a relativistic explanation would have been a glorious one indeed?

Navier-Stokes equations

The Navier-Stokes equations, named after Claude-Louis Navier and George Gabriel Stokes, 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 sum of dissipative viscous forces (similar to friction), changes in pressure, gravity, and other forces acting inside the fluid: an application of Newton's second law to fluid.

They are one of the most useful sets of equations because they describe the physics of a large number of phenomena of academic and economic interest. They may be used to model weather, ocean currents, water flow in a pipe, flow around an airfoil (wing), and motion of stars inside a galaxy. As such, these equations in both full and simplified forms, are used in the design of aircraft and cars, the study of blood flow, the design of power stations, the analysis of the effects of pollution, etc. Coupled with Maxwell's equations they can be used to model and study magnetohydrodynamics.

The Navier-Stokes equations are also of great interest in a purely mathematical sense. Somewhat surprisingly, given their wide range of practical uses, mathematicians have yet to prove that in three dimensions solutions always exist (existence), or that if they do exist they do not contain any infinities, singularities or discontinuities (smoothness). These are called the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problems. The Clay Mathematics Institute has called this one of the seven most important open problems in mathematics, and offered a $1,000,000 prize for a solution or a counter-example.

So where is that? Where is the "perfect fluid" and what has this to do with the current state of the universe? The "effect of collisions" which produce a Cerenkov effect. Is this a "faster then the speed of light" from such a process being encapsulating in that early universe condition?

As perplexing as this sounds, it sets up the understanding that Super Cosmologists have to think outside the box. If no information is lost, then where did the information come from? There is a topological unfolding here that speak to mathematical designs all the while it integrates the Navier-Stokes equations in terms of it's relativistic explanation, derived from the very moments of that creation?

"Helium-3 experiment replicates colliding-brane theory of cosmology."

So as silly as some would have you believe that new models do not have any chance from a mathematical perspective of having lost touch with reality, is the need to explain the process in terms of natural occurrences that are going on around us, which we were not previously aware of.

Information Scrambled, Yet Reassembled

Brian Greene-

My area of research is superstring theory, a theory that purports to give us a quantum theory of gravity as well as a unified theory of all forces and all matter. As such, superstring theory has the potential to realize Einstein's long sought dream of a single, all encompassing, theory of the universe. One of the strangest features of superstring theory is that it requires the universe to have more than three spatial dimensions. Much of my research has focused on the physical implications and mathematical properties of these extra dimensions --- studies that collectively go under the heading "quantum geometry".

Quantum geometry differs in substantial ways from the classical geometry underlying general relativity. For instance, topology change (the "tearing" of space) is a sensible feature of quantum geometry even though, from a classical perspective, it involves singularities. As another example, two different classical spacetime geometries can give rise to identical physical implications, again at odds with conclusions based on classical general relativity.

Superstring theory is most relevant under extreme physical conditions such as those that existed at the time of the big bang. Recently, we have formed a new institute at Columbia called ISCAP (Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics) dedicated to understanding the interface of superstring theory and cosmology. One primary focus of ISCAP is the search for subtle signatures of string theory that may be imprinted in the precision cosmological data that will be collected through a variety of experiments over the next decade.

In levitation post I try to explain how using Susskind's thought experiment we may derive information about the geometrical conditions being developed from "Bob" entering the blackhole on the back of a elephant.

First let me remind you of where you had been taken in terms of your view of the universe. Had you realized that you are now given a micro perspective on the very nature of this universe? That given the circumstance, the elephant takes on a whole new meaning in terms of searching to understand quantum gravity at a level not considered before.

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!"


The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he:
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

So what does Susskind do? You see the very question about interpreting events in this way, ask that we push our perceptive toward topological inferences of continuity? There are no current geometrics that can be explained from inside the blackhole. Pushing perspective needed a method to help us orientate what is happening at that geometrical level.

Quantum Gravity: A physical theory describing the gravitational interactions of matter and energy in which matter and energy are described by quantum theory. In most, but not all, theories of quantum gravity, gravity is also quantized. Since the contemporary theory of gravity, general relativity, describes gravitation as the curvature of spacetime by matter and energy, a quantization of gravity implies some sort of quantization of spacetime itself. Insofar as all extant physical theories rely on a classical spacetime background, this presents profound methodological and ontological challenges for the philosopher and the physicist.

Unfortunately I lost the link to a introduction of a book below yet showed this, to help one define the context of the work that has to be done.

Quantum gravity is perhaps the most important open problem in fundamental physics. It is the problem of merging quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two great conceptual revolutions in the physics of the twentieth century. The loop and spinfoam approach, presented in this book, is one of the leading research programs in the field. The first part of the book discusses the reformulation of the basis of classical and quantum Hamiltonian physics required by general relativity. The second part covers the basic technical research directions. Appendices include a detailed history of the subject of quantum gravity, hard-to-find mathematical material, and a discussion of some philosophical issues raised by the subject. This fascinating text is ideal for graduate students entering the field, as well as researchers already working in quantum gravity. It will also appeal to philosophers and other scholars interested in the nature of space and time.

ABOUT THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE

The Encyclopedia of Life is a collaborative scientific effort led by the Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory, Missouri Botanical Garden, Smithsonian Institution, and Biodiversity Heritage Library, a consortium including the core institutions and also the American Museum of Natural History (New York), Natural History Museum (London), New York Botanical Garden, and Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew). Ultimately, the Encyclopedia of Life will provide an online database for all 1.8 million species now known to live on Earth. When completed, http://www.eol.org will serve as a global biodiversity tool, providing scientists, policymakers, students, and citizens information they need to discover and protect the planet and encourage learning and conservation.

The Soul=λόγος,θυμος,ἔρως

21 Grams

The title of the movie comes from the work of Dr. Duncan MacDougall, who in the early 1900s sought to measure the weight purportedly lost by a human body when the soul departed the body upon death. MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material, tangible and thus measurable. These experiments are widely considered to have little, if any scientific merit, and MacDougall's results varied considerably from 21 grams, but for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's mass [1].

When garnered to thinking about the soul, it's value in weight, always seems to occupy my mind. Even though the topic has been deemed foolish, by historical debate. It is the cornerstone of my relating "emotive colourations" to a value of our mind, tied to the current state of being.

Hall of Ma'at

In art, the feather was shown in scenes of the Hall of Ma'at. This hall is where the deceased was judged for his worthiness to enter the afterlife. The seat of the deceased's soul, his heart, was weighed on a balance against the feather of Ma'at. If the heart was free from the impurities of sin, and therefore lighter than the feather, then the dead person could enter the eternal afterlife. Other gods in the judgement hall who were part of the tribunal overseeing the weighing of the heart were also pictured holding a feather.

See:Egyptian Myths

You had to know of course what this picture above means from my own soul interpretation to understand what this blog is about. While of course speaking to everything science is and does, it never did answer the deeper questions I had about the soul. You had to know that given the set of circumstances in my youth that such motivation can be like Einstein's own, that this degree and direction of life, can have it's motivational factor determined. See "Einstein's compass"


God's Equation, by Amir D. Aczel, Pg 14

From a early age, young Albert showed great interest in the world around him. When he was five years old, his father gave him a compass, and the child was enchanted by the device and intrigued by the fact the needle followed a invisible field to point always in the direction of the north pole.Reminicing in old age, Einstein mentioned this incident as one of the factors that perhaps motivated him years later to study the gravitational field.

So you see such factors in our youth can determine something about our future. Is this quest "motivational and soulful enough" for such time to be taken. Sought as the soul's quest in this lifetime?

The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sapience, rather than the brain or any other material or natural part of the biological organism. Some religions and philosophies on the other hand believe in the soul having a material component, and some have even tried to establish the weight of the soul. Souls are usually considered to be immortal and to exist prior to incarnation.

The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly, even within a given religion, as to what may happen to the soul after the death of the body. It also shares as a PIE root of spirit.

Socrates and Plato

Plato, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, considered the soul as the essence of a person, being, that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies. The Platonic soul comprises three parts:

1. the logos (mind, nous, or reason)
2. the thymos (emotion, or spiritedness)
3. the eros (appetitive, or desire)

Each of these has a function in a balanced and peaceful soul.

The logos equates to the mind. It corresponds to the charioteer, directing the balanced horses of appetite and spirit. It allows for logic to prevail, and for the optimisation of balance.

The thymos comprises our emotional motive, that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it leads to hubris -- the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view.

The eros equates to the appetite that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. When the passion controls us, it drives us to hedonism in all forms. In the Ancient Greek view, this is the basal and most feral state.

So in a sense we have a historical construction of the valuation being, that while developed from a philosophical view, I had found some relation to the way I'd awaken, my own Mind map. So by developing this model I wanted to be reminded of the integration of what lies outside of us physically(what is this field of endeavour?)

Logos (Greek λόγος) is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion. It derives from the verb λέγω legō: to count, tell, say, or speak.[1] The primary meaning of logos is: something said; by implication a subject, topic of discourse or reasoning. Secondary meanings such as logic, reasoning, etc. derive from the fact that if one is capable of λέγειν (infinitive) i.e. speech, then intelligence and reason are assumed.

Thumos

(also commonly spelled "thymos") (Greek: θυμος) is an Ancient Greek word expressing the concept of spiritedness. The word indicates a physical association with breath or blood. The word is also used to express the human desire for recognition.

In Homer's works, thumos was used to denote emotions, desire, or an internal urge. Thumos was a permanent possession of living man, to which his thinking and feeling belonged. When a Homeric hero is under emotional stress he may externalize his thumos, conversing with it or scolding it.[1]

Plato's dialogue Phaedrus and longer work The Republic discuss thumos as one of the three constituent parts of the human psyche, along with logos and eros. In the Phaedrus, Plato depicts logos as a charioteer driving the two horses of eros and thumos (i.e. desire and will were to be guided by rationality). In the Republic's Book IV, the soul is divided into nous ("intellect"), thumos ("passion"), and epithumia ("appetite"). Thumos is the emotional element in virtue of which anger and fear are felt.[2]

Eros

(ἔρως érōs) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Modern Greek word "erotas" means "(romantic) love". The term erotic is derived from eros.

See: Thematic Resolutions

Levitation Energy: What is it?

You must know, that contrary to what is understood of levitation, I have a view on this that cannot be said less then in complete wonderment, knowing full well the aspects of what science is stating. "I know" with all of sciences tools, there "is" something we do not understand. It would then be assigned to a Metaphysical description here falls short of the scientific definition.

I preserver still, given the circumstance of my youth, and the direction it pushed my life in terms of scientific study and philosophical determinations. What are one's motivation underpinnings with self and we find the course of life can be set to a degree?

ASSESSING POTENTIAL PROPULSION BREAKTHROUGHS
Marc G. Millis
NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field
21000 Brookpark Rd., MS 86-2
Cleveland, OH 44135-3191

Levitation is an excellent challenge to illustrate how contemplating breakthrough propulsion is different from contemplating rocketry. Rockets can hover, but not for very long before they run out of propellant. For an ideal breakthrough, some form of indefinite levitation is desirable, but there is no clear way how to represent the energy or power to perform this feat. Since physics defines work (energy) as the product of force acting over distance, no work is performed if there is no change in distance. Levitation means hovering with no change in height. Regardless, there are a variety of ways to toy with the notion of energy and power for indefinite levitation. A few of these approaches are listed in the next session. For now, only one approach is illustrated, specifically the nullification of gravitational potential.

An object in a gravitational field has the following defined value for its gravitational potential energy:



Equation 11

(11)

Usually this definition is used to compare energy differences between two relatively short differences in height ( r) but in our situation we are considering this potential energy in the more absolute sense. This same equation for potential energy can also be derived by calculating how much energy it would take to completely remove the object from the gravitational field, as if moving it to infinity. This is more in line with the analogy to nullify the effect of gravitational energy. This is also the same amount of energy that is required to stop an object at the levitation height ( r) if it were falling in from infinity with an initial velocity of zero.

Using this equation, it could conceivably require 62 mega-Joules to levitate 1-kg near the Earth's surface. This is roughly twice as much as putting 1-kg into low Earth orbit. Again, these assessments are strictly for illustrative purposes rather than suggesting that such breakthroughs are achievable or if they would even take this form if achievable. Some starting point for comparisons is needed, and this is just one version.

See: Breakthrough Propulsion Physics?

The elephant and the event horizon by Amanda Gefter

Hawking radiation owes its existence to the weirdness of the quantum world, in which pairs of virtual particles pop up out of empty space, annihilate each other and disappear. Around a black hole, virtual particles and anti-particles can be separated by the event horizon. Unable to annihilate, they become real. The properties of each pair are linked, or entangled. What happens to one affects the other, even if one is inside the black hole.

See here for article.



Given "thought experiments" sometimes it is necessary to understand the close relation with which entanglement issue, an elephant that falls into a blackhole, and a elephant that resides on the horizon, we look to explain what "measurement may mean" as we look at the entanglement.

All of physics as we know it is conditioned on the fact that information is conserved, even if it's badly scrambled," Susskind says.

So I ask, is there a way to see "mirror symmetry" as a viable aspect of the entanglement, while we look ever deeper into the blackhole for what can be expected/measured? Information, never lost?

How can one not look at space with such regard and understand that the geometrical tendencies while presenting them in coordinated space, can give a dynamical quality to what was never apparent before. Spacetime, takes on a whole new meaning. Moves the Gaussian coordinates to the realm of "abstract thinking in non euclidean , and presents new aspects for consideration that was previously dismissed and thought arrogant in relation to string theory.

Now, I am no way saying that what is being written here is to be compared, on the basis of the many mathematical insights portrayed in the development of string theory. I have hoped to touch this aspect of "dynamical thinking" at the microscopic level and at the same time, spoken to a macroscopic understandings well.

The Future of the Quantum Mechanical View


Gerard 't Hooft-Professor Theoretical Physics

Quantum gravity and black holes. Whenever particles are separated further than 10-^33cm, the gravitational force between them is very adequately described by Einstein's theory of general relativity. But when they come closer, the gravitational force becomes strong, whereas gravity is more complicated than gauge theories. Finding a logically coherent theory telling us how particles behave at such small distance scales is a fundamental problem. The most dazzling problem is the question whether these particles will make microscopic black holes. Predicting the behavior of such tiny black holes is a deep theoretical challenge. Or maybe they can't form black holes? Formulating laws of physics that avoid black hole formation is even more difficult.

How fit and comparative the mind to think that it's journey in the imaginations could travel space as we know it on so many levels? Microscopic tendencies to see reality in it's makeup could have been compared to the "powers of ten."

Gravitational Mass for a Photon

The relativistic energy expression attributes a mass to any energetic particle, and for the photon



The gravitational potential energy is then



When the photon escapes the gravity field, it will have a different frequency




Since it is reduced in frequency, this is called the gravitational red shift or the Einstein red shift.

Escape Energy for Photon

If the gravitational potential energy of the photon is exactly equal to the photon energy then



Note that this condition is independent of the frequency, and for a given mass M establishes a critical radius. Actually, Schwarzchilds's calculated gravitational radius differs from this result by a factor of 2 and is coincidently equal to the non-relativistic escape velocity expression

A black hole is an object so massive that even light cannot escape from it. This requires the idea of a gravitational mass for a photon, which then allows the calculation of an escape energy for an object of that mass. When the escape energy is equal to the photon energy, the implication is that the object is a "black hole."

For more see "Time as a measure.


Special Lagrangian geometry

Dr. Mark Haskins

Special Lagrangian geometry in particular was seen to be related to another String Theory inspired phenomenon, "Mirror Symmetry". Strominger, Yau and Zaslow conjectured that mirror symmetry could be explained by studying moduli spaces arising from special Lagrangian geometry.

How many of the good scientists can say this themself, that no matter what, with all the avenues of propulsion systems talked about, all the aspects of satellite deployment, where are there such places, that we set our sight on with the habitation of space(L5)? Does it hold to the thinking mind, that we would talk about such comparisons for consideration first? How is it then we should look at space?



So we understand not only the travels of satellites, but the place and tunnels through which they travel through in that space.

See:

Entanglement and the New Physics

The Effect of Cosmic Particle Collisions

How many with holding views of Climate Change have ever considered Earth's place in the cosmos and it's affects created from cosmic particle collisions from space?

So this post is to help illuminate the subject a bit with past information so you get the understanding and where they are todays in terms of science's research. Also I wanted to include my own observation I made that were readily evident as we watch a forest get disseminated by beetle infestation.

So that is part of it, that climate may produce pictures on Glacier withdrawals in relation to previous year's pictures. What other contributions should be considered then?


Finding a heavenly key to climate change

Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva are looking at how radiation from outer space could be affecting our environment.

A new cutting edge experiment aims to discover how exactly cosmic rays and the Sun may influence the formation of low level clouds, and possibly climate change.

More than two centuries ago, the British Astronomer Royal William Herschel noted a correlation between sunspots an indicator of solar activity and the price of wheat in England. He suggested that when there were few sunspots, prices rose.

However, up until recently, there was little to back up this hypothesis. Today, inside an unassuming some would say decrepit:looking building at Cern, the Cloud (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) experiment might help explain how the Sun affects the climate.

See: Finding a heavenly key to climate change

Variation of Cosmic ray flux and Global cloud coverage by Henri Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen, 26 NOvember 1996

Chaos and Complexity

Robert Betts Laughlin (born November 1, 1950) is a professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University who, together with Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui, was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for his explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect.

Laughlin was born in Visalia, California. He earned a B.A. in Physics from UC Berkeley in 1972, and his Ph.D. in physics in 1979 at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. In the period of 2004-2006 he served as the president of KAIST in Daejeon, South Korea.

Laughlin shares similar views to George Chapline on the existence of black holes. See: Robert B. Laughlin

The Emergent Age, by Robert Laughlin

The natural world is regulated both by fundamental laws and by powerful principles of organization that flow out of them which are also transcendent, in that they would continue to hold even if the fundamentals were changed slightly. This is, of course, an ancient idea, but one that has now been experimentally demonstrated by the stupendously accurate reproducibility of certain measurements - in extreme cases parts in a trillion. This accuracy, which cannot be deduced from underlying microscopics, proves that matter acting collectively can generate physical law spontaneously.

Physicists have always argued about which kind of law is more important - fundamental or emergent - but they should stop. The evidence is mounting that ALL physical law is emergent, notably and especially behavior associated with the quantum mechanics of the vacuum. This observation has profound implications for those of us concerned about the future of science. We live not at the end of discovery but at the end of Reductionism, a time in which the false ideology of the human mastery of all things through microscopics is being swept away by events and reason. This is not to say that microscopic law is wrong or has no purpose, but only that it is rendered irrelevant in many circumstances by its children and its children's children, the higher organizational laws of the world.

Understanding the occurrence of natural things happening within earth's environments has a resulting affect to one's children's children here within the very make up of reality. How would know what is happening and the resulting affect moving toward societies if you did not dig deeper and understand that a reductionist effect is very evident.

Predictability was moved toward "Mercuries orbit" while the oscillatory nature of events resonant deeper into society. WE had learnt to propel satellites through space using minimum booster propellants by understanding these relations.

The Roots of Chaos Theory

The roots of chaos theory date back to about 1900, in the studies of Henri Poincaré on the problem of the motion of three objects in mutual gravitational attraction, the so-called three-body problem. Poincaré found that there can be orbits which are nonperiodic, and yet not forever increasing nor approaching a fixed point. Later studies, also on the topic of nonlinear differential equations, were carried out by G.D. Birkhoff, A.N. Kolmogorov, M.L. Cartwright, J.E. Littlewood, and Stephen Smale. Except for Smale, who was perhaps the first pure mathematician to study nonlinear dynamics, these studies were all directly inspired by physics: the three-body problem in the case of Birkhoff, turbulence and astronomical problems in the case of Kolmogorov, and radio engineering in the case of Cartwright and Littlewood. Although chaotic planetary motion had not been observed, experimentalists had encountered turbulence in fluid motion and nonperiodic oscillation in radio circuits without the benefit of a theory to explain what they were seeing.

13:30 Lecture
Edward Norton Lorenz
Laureate in Basic Sciences
“How Good Can Weather Forecasting Become ? – The Star of a Theory”

So on the one hand if we are giving new perspective to the events of climate change and we look at what is happening not only with wheat fields in relation to sun spot activities, we need to understand it's effect, by the presence of natural events occurring as well.

Pine Beetle Infestation


Adult mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae

The Suzuki Foundation has published some of the most recent and most exhaustive research on mountain pine beetle epidemics in BC, but it appears the provincial government is only interested in receiving information from an industry perspective, he added.

“We actually were asked by the Premier’s office to attend tomorrow’s symposium, but when we received the agenda early this week we saw we weren’t on it. When I called to inquire, I was told we could observe from the audience but not present our report called Salvaging Solutions.

“I am absolutely flabbergasted and in fact insulted. In 25 years of attending such forums, as a Member of Parliament and for 10 years at the Suzuki Foundation, I have never been invited by a senior government official to travel 400 kilometres so that I can be window dressing. You have to wonder who on Earth is running Premier Campbell’s office and if they are really interested in gathering all of the best information on this issue.”

Photo by Lorraine Maclauchlan, Ministry of Forests, Southern Interior Forest Region
See:Mountain Pine Beetle Photos

Could Climate change play a role in this? If this is so, and is there some evidence that suggests, that our cold winters are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, this spread could go unabated?

The process of an event happening from space in terms of collision processes, and seeing this relation in terms of Cerenkov radiation, one gets a valuable sense of the process not only at the time of collision, but of what is disseminated, after the event itself happens.

Now while one may of focused on Cerenkov radiation, the effect of this process can be taken down not only to mean "cloud formation," but also, the environment suitable for new manifestations that are "conducive too" bug infestation.

Rankin's Eyescapes

See here

Rankin's Eyescapes photographsby David Pescovitz
Of the Week By Bee of Backreaction

Iris recognition:An algorithm of a person's universe?

Breakthrough work to create the iris recognition algorithms required for image acquisition and one-to-many matching was pioneered by John G. Daugman, Ph.D, OBE (University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory), who holds key patents on the method. These were utilized to effectively debut commercialization of the technology in conjunction with an early version of the IrisAccess system designed and manufactured by Korea's LG Electronics. Daugman's algorithms are the basis of almost all currently (as of 2006) commercially deployed iris-recognition systems. It has a so far unmatched practical false-accept rate of zero; that there is no known pair of images of two different irises that the Daugman algorithm in its deployed configuration mistakenly identifies as the same. (In tests where the matching thresholds are – for better comparability – changed from their default settings to allow a false-accept rate in the region of 10−3 to 10−4 [1], the IrisCode false-reject rates are comparable to the most accurate single-finger fingerprint matchers

The Light in the Cave

Newton's Translation of the Emerald Tablet

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

Plato's story of the cave is an interesting one to me.

The most beautiful experiment:The critical point by Robert P Crease

Beauty, Plato wrote, is not easy to define, but something that "slips through and evades us". For this reason, many logic-oriented philosophical approaches tend to divorce and even oppose truth and beauty. "The question of truth", wrote logician Gottlob Frege in one of his most influential works, "would cause us to abandon aesthetic delight for an attitude of scientific investigation."

Plato- Book VII of The Republic-The Allegory of the Cave

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

See here as well.


This above was taken from an earlier post so one understands that what is being expounded in shadow dancing, is derived from a better understanding of the analogy of the cave. And again below it is not without the understanding of the depth of of what is implicate din Plato's cave that we struggle to define aspects of the reality .

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

Of course, to Plato this story was just meant to symbolize mankind's struggle to reach enlightenment and understanding through reasoning and open-mindedness. We are all initially prisoners and the tangible world is our cave. Just as some prisoners may escape out into the sun, so may some people amass knowledge and ascend into the light of true reality.

What is equally interesting is the literal interpretation of Plato's tale: The idea that reality could be represented completely as `shadows' on the walls

In today's Media, Has the Soul taken a Hiatus

“Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous. There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) that the people in the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a millennium. Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's snobbishness.”

"On Classic Literature" from Ideas and Opinions – Crown Publishing (1954)-Albert Einstein (page 64) originally published in the Jungkaufmann, a monthly publication of the “Schweizerischer Kaufmaennischer Verein, Jugendbund" (Feb, 29, 1952)(Thanks Phil)

Some ideas are being past around that have got me thinking. Media had always been a concern to me, because of what one could assume without taking a clear stand on what is proposed or presented.

Statistical valuations on the trends of reading habits amongst countries and their population. Internet accessibility and information overload.

The question to my mind has to do with how we are numbing ourselves by adopting a unresponsiveness to information and acceptance as a value toward truth. If one did not have this introspection how is it that one could endeavour to realize the state in which they themself have been placed. It requires "no thinking and acquiescences" to powers beyond us. We are then in essence, sleeping?

To Remember: Eskesthai

Trinity College Library, Dublin. (Photo: Candida Höfer.)

It is sometimes with reverence that we can walk through the old buildings whose architecture breathes. We are transported somehow. All that knowledge, and here it resides. As written word read, can resonate deeply, so too an affinity with places can bring some deeper connection not really understood.

So you go into the library with a purpose in mind. You are looking for something in particular. All these books. It's as if, that what ever you hold in mind becomes the link between what awaits to be remembered, waits, until it was asked.

So you are setting the stage then and you may not have realized it.

Quote from Scienceblogs,"Shifting Literature by Jennifer L. Jacquet?

Ursula Le Guin

In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can't lull you with surging music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks or fire gunshots in your living room; you have to listen to it in your head. A book won't move your eyes for you the way images on a screen do. It won't move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it. It won't do the work for you. To read a story well is to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it--everything short of writing it, in fact. Reading is not "interactive" with a set of rules or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the writer's mind. No wonder not everybody is up to it.

So you are most likely setting the stage yourself whether you like to think so or not. Sometimes books will come into view that might never had, had you not gone for one in particular.