Friday, November 13, 2009

LCROSS Observes Water on Moon



Data from the ultraviolet/visible spectrometer taken shortly after impact showing emission lines (indicated by arrows). These emission lines are diagnostic of compounds in the vapor/debris cloud.
Credit: NASA


LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on Moon11.13.09


The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water.

Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike.

NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole.

The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater. The first part was a high angle plume of vapor and fine dust and the second a lower angle ejecta curtain of heavier material. This material has not seen sunlight in billions of years.

See more on link above.



LRO's First Moon Images

07.02.09

1994 Clementine image of moon with Mare Nubium labeled 1994 Clementine image of the moon with Mare Nubium labeled. LRO's first lunar images show an area near this region. Credit: NASA

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted its first images since reaching the moon on June 23. The spacecraft's two cameras, collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, were activated June 30. The cameras are working well and have returned images of a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).

As the moon rotates beneath LRO, LROC gradually will build up photographic maps of the lunar surface.

"Our first images were taken along the moon's terminator -- the dividing line between day and night -- making us initially unsure of how they would turn out," said LROC Principal Investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in Tempe. "Because of the deep shadowing, subtle topography is exaggerated, suggesting a craggy and inhospitable surface. In reality, the area is similar to the region where the Apollo 16 astronauts safely explored in 1972. While these are magnificent in their own right, the main message is that LROC is nearly ready to begin its mission."

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

On Memory

Today is my 1000th post. I began here in November of 2004. It has been a good time of learning and being propelled forward by other blog posters and blog commentators.  It has been a wonderful journey in terms of the education I have received.

Again too, within each of our conversations with who ever that might be,  have been the catalyst for writing and giving thought forward to my further gathering of information. So thanks to every one that took time to discuss or exchange ideas.


In a nutshell, what Karim showed was that each time a memory is used, it has to be restored as a new memory in order to be accessible later. The old memory is either not there or is inaccessible. In short, your memory about something is only as good as your last memory about it. Joseph LeDoux

I am not as old as those of sixty, but I have a similar problem that if I do not use it, I tend to loose it.


Psychological mindedness

Psychological Mindedness (PM) is a concept which refers to an individual's capacity for self-examination, self-observation, introspection and personal insight.[citation needed] It also includes an ability to recognize and see the links between current problems within self and with others, and the ability to insight one's past particularly for its impact on present attitudes and functioning. Psychologically minded people have average and above average intelligence and generally have some insight into their problems even before they enter therapy. Psychological mindedness is distinct from intellectualism and obsessional rumination about one's inner problems. The latter is of no help in psychotherapy, but it is a sign of resistance.

Since we can be creatures of habit, it seems to me that neurological pathways are highways so to speak, and not traveling these roads, names of towns can slip our mind. "Waking up by traveling similar journeys" do tend to re-ignited those same neurological pathways. Having a strokes and damaging areas of the brain means that in order to ignite processes in our body expressions means to try and ignited those same pathways that were used.

By correspondence, we see correlations to our own lives. Looking at something and orientating the mind to see angles of something, is to me much like looking deep within the functioning of society to see what lies at the "bedrock or infrastructure" of the supporting objects of perception.

This is where something vaguely familiar eggs the conscious mind to look harder into the reservoir of our own histories. Brings those memories back to the surface.





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The Spotless Mind

Psychology professor Karim Nader is helping sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder lessen debilitating symptoms—and in some cases, regain a normal life.Owen Egan See also: The Trauma Tamer
IC: Why is this research so important?

Karim Nader: There are a lot of implications. All psychopathological disorders, such as PTSD, epilepsy, obsessive compulsive disorders, or addiction—all these things have to do with your brain getting rewired in a way that is malfunctioning. Theoretically, we may be able to treat a lot of these psychopathologies. If you could block the re-storage of the circuit that causes the obsessive compulsion, then you might be able to reset a person to a level where they aren’t so obsessive. Or perhaps you can reset the circuit that has undergone epilepsy repeatedly so that you can increase the threshold for seizures. And there is some killer data showing that it’s possible to block the reconsolidation of drug cravings.

The other reason why I think it is so striking is that it is so contrary to what has been the accepted view of memory for so long in the mainstream. My research caused everybody in the field to stop, turn around and go, “Whoa, where’d that come from?” Nobody’s really working on this issue, and the only reason I came up with this is because I wasn’t trained in memory. [Nader was originally researching fear.] It really caused a fundamental reconceptualization of a very basic and dogmatic field in neuroscience, which is very exciting. It is the first time in 100 years that people are starting to come up with new models of memory at the physiological level.





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Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries Kuhn now moves past his initial topic of paradigm to scientific discovery saying that in order for there to be a discovery, an anomaly must be detected within the field of study. He discusses several different studies and points out the anomaly that invoked the scientific discovery. Later in the chapter he begins to discuss how the anomaly can be incorporated into the discovery to satisfy the scientific community.

There are three different characteristics of all discoveries from which new sorts of phenomena emerge. These three characteristics are proven through an experiment dealing with a deck of cards. The deck consisted of anomalous cards (e.g. the red six of spades shown on the previous page) mixed in with regular cards. These cards were held up in front of students who were asked to call out the card they saw, and in most cases the anomaly was not detected.

For certain when composing articles in blogging format your trying to build off of previous information. You gather information so providing links is a way,  much like connecting neurons to what was written before. Doing search functions for what is relevant to a topic in Google, or as a mean to use these search functions to help memory point to correlations.



Betrayal of Images" by Rene Magritte. 1929 painting on which is written "This is not a Pipe"
Looking at things from different angles is much like an artist who grabs onto an idea and furnishes us with a expose' into the idea of attention with further presentations visually. It is about seeing the idea manifest toward some kind of reality that is dare to say abstract in it's extrapolations,  much as math is used to describe an aspect of nature.

© Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation; used with permission of Philadelphia Museum of Art
Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989). Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubicus), 1953–54. Oil on canvas. 77 x 49 in. (195.6 x 124.5 cm). Gift of the Chester Dale Collection, 1955 (55.5). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
© Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

So in a way,  while we seem to see true representations "about the fundamental ideas" these manifest toward physical manifestation.  These ideas "are covered by abstractions."  Much like experience in our daily lives. Sorting through the memory is like sorting through the experience. Recall then becomes something of a challenge when we seek to better understand how we have become who are.

Waking up means to become aware at what resides at the basis of our experiences in society, and how these have manifested in our daily dealings within that society.

As simple as possible then in mathematical interpretation. You see?

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Spending a little time looking into science and art, Dali rose to the occasion in my view in terms of Geometry and the tesseract.


Quote:
In geometry, the tesseract, or hypercube, is a regular convex polychoron with eight cubical cells. It can be thought of as a 4-dimensional analogue of the cube. Roughly speaking, the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square.
Generalizations of the cube to dimensions greater than three are called hypercubes or measure polytopes. This article focuses on the 4D hypercube, the tesseract.

He had a "religious epiphany" moving toward dimensional perspective, and related it too, moving perception toward geometry, as if "other worldly." Many understand his private life not to be so blessed with such religiosity?:)


Quote:
Penrose's Influence on EscherDuring the later half of the 1950’s, Maurits Cornelius Escher received a letter from Lionel and Roger Penrose. This letter consisted of a report by the father and son team that focused on impossible figures. By this time, Escher had begun exploring impossible worlds. He had recently produced the lithograph Belvedere based on the “rib-cube,” an impossible cuboid named by Escher (Teuber 161). However, the letter by the Penroses, which would later appear in the British Journal of Psychology, enlightened Escher to two new impossible objects; the Penrose triangle and the Penrose stairs. With these figures, Escher went on to create further impossible worlds that break the laws of three-dimensional space, mystify one’s mind, and give a window to the artist heart.
See:Penroses Influence on Escher

IN this way, I felt there was a kinship toward artist expression moving minds in science toward an malleable experience in terms of "using the brain and twisting it" one might say. This is a perspective I formed around how we view projective geometry in terms of it leading perspective in that artistic sense.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Fermi Records Lighthouse Effect

John Keats talked of "unweaving the rainbow", suggesting that Newton destroyed the beauty of nature by analysing light with a prism and splitting it into different colours. Keats was being a prat. Physicists also smile when we see rainbows, but our emotional reaction is doubled by our understanding of the deep physics relating to the prismatic effects of raindrops. Similarly, physicists appreciate sunsets more than anybody else, because we can enjoy the myriad colours and at the same time grasp the nuclear physics that created the energy that created the photons that travelled for millions of years to the surface of the Sun, which then travelled eight minutes through space to Earth, which were then scattered by the atmosphere to create the colourful sunset. Understanding physics only enhances the beauty of nature.See:'Keats claimed physics destroyed beauty. Keats was being a prat'

In this illustration, one photon (purple) carries a million times the energy of another (yellow). Some theorists predict travel delays for higher-energy photons, which interact more strongly with the proposed frothy nature of space-time. Yet Fermi data on two photons from a gamma-ray burst fail to show this effect, eliminating some approaches to a new theory of gravity. The animation link below shows the delay scientists had expected to observe. Credit: NASA/Sonoma State University/Aurore Simonnet
See: Fermi Telescope Caps First Year With Glimpse of Space-Time

"This measurement eliminates any approach to a new theory of gravity that predicts a strong energy dependent change in the speed of light," Michelson said. "To one part in 100 million billion, these two photons travelled at the same speed. Einstein still rules."

What I want people to know now is that a question arises about "theoretical conclusions drawn" about joining, "Electromagnetism and Gravity." This basically what their saying?
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We see a pulsar, then, when one of its beams of radiation crosses our line-of-sight. In this way, a pulsar is like a lighthouse. The light from a lighthouse appears to be "pulsing" because it only crosses our line-of-sight once each time it spins. Similarly, a pulsar "pulses" because we see bright flashes every time the star spins. See: Pulsars
Link to tutorial site has been taken down, and belongs to Barb of  http://www.airynothing.com

For some it is not a hard thing to remember when the Sun, or a light has blinded one to seeing what is in front of you, it aligns to the realization, that if one shifts to the right or left, they can come out of the bright directional gaze of emissions from that other time.

M87's Energetic Jet., HST image. The blue light from the jet emerging from the bright AGN core, towards the lower right, is due to synchrotron radiation.

See Also: Light House Keeper as well as Label Lighthouse at bottom of Post entry.
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Simple Jet Model. A simple model for a jet is a relativistic sphere emitting synchrotron radiation. This simple model hides the complexity of a real jet but can still be used to illustrate the principles of relativistic beaming.

Electrons inside the blob(Crab Nebula) travel at speeds just a tiny fraction below the speed of light and are whipped around by the magnetic field. Each change in direction by an electron is accompanied by the release of energy in the form of a photon. With enough electrons and a powerful enough magnetic field the relativistic sphere can emit a huge number of photons, ranging from those at relatively weak radio frequencies to powerful X-ray photons.-(In brackets added by me)See: Relativistic beaming

So the spectrum at this end reveals Gamma ray perspective that when considered under this watchful eye, reveals views of our Sun and views of the Cosmos of very different ranges used in that spectrum, still, shows the Sun.

It is not so difficult to realize then how much energy is directed that one could say that what we had seen in the light effect can help spotters on ships realize the coastlines during those frightful storms at sea.

(click on image for larger viewing)
The bluish glow from the central region of the nebula is due to synchrotron radiation.

Synchrotron radiation is electromagnetic radiation, similar to cyclotron radiation, but generated by the acceleration of ultrarelativistic (i.e., moving near the speed of light) charged particles through magnetic fields. This may be achieved artificially in synchrotronsstorage rings, or naturally by fast electrons moving through magnetic fields in space. The radiation produced may range over the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio wavesinfrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays. It is distinguished by its characteristic polarization and spectrum.

Gravity is Talking, LISA will Listen

It seems by measure the Interferometer has come a long way. If one recognizes how gravitational waves are measured, you come to understand how they can have a affect on laser light.

Bee and Stefan of Backreaction have gone to visit the historical location of the beginnings of how we use interferometers.


(click on Image for larger viewing)

The Cosmos sings with many strong gravitational voices, causing ripples in the fabric of space and time that carry the message of tremendous astronomical events: the rapid dances of closely orbiting stellar remnants, the mergers of massive black holes millions of times heavier than the Sun, the aftermath of the Big Bang. These ripples are the gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein's 1915 general relativity; nearly one century later, it is now possible to detect them. Gravitational waves will give us an entirely new way to observe and understand the Universe, enhancing and complementing the insights of conventional astronomy.

LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, is a joint NASA–ESA mission to observe astrophysical and cosmological sources of gravitational waves of low frequencies (0.03 mHz to 0.1 Hz, corresponding to oscillation periods of about 10 hours to 10 seconds). This frequency band contains the emission from massive black-hole binaries that form after galactic mergers; the song of compact stellar remnants as they slowly spiral to their final fate in the black holes at the centers of galaxies; the chorus of millions of compact binariesshortly after the Big Bang.

LISA consists of three identical spacecraft flying in a triangular constellation, with equal arms of 5 million kilometers each. As gravitational waves from distant sources reach LISA, they warp space-time, stretching and compressing the triangle. Thus, by precisely monitoring the separation between the spacecraft, we can measure the waves; and by studying the shape and timing of the waves we can learn about the nature and evolution of the systems that emitted them.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

New Synesthete Character on Heroes

For example, in 1704 Sir Isaac Newton struggled to devise mathematical formulas to equate the vibrational frequency of sound waves with a corresponding wavelength of light. He failed to find his hoped-for translation algorithm, but the idea of correspondence took root, and the first practical application of it appears to be the clavecin oculaire, an instrument that played sound and light simultaneously. It was invented in 1725. Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus, achieved the same effect with a harpsichord and lanterns in 1790, although many others were built in the intervening years, on the same principle, where by a keyboard controlled mechanical shutters from behind which colored lights shine. By 1810 even Goethe was expounding correspondences between color and other senses in his book, Theory of Color. Pg 53, The Man Who Tasted Shapes, by Richard E. Cytowic, M.D.

I had been searching for the latest TV Show on Heroes.

I finally came across somebody who pretty well sees it the way Synesthesis  does?  A fictional TV show cut forYoutube which provided for reference below which was what I was looking for.


Now the followers of this blog must know by now, that I see the "Colour of Gravity" as a link between what can conceptually transpire when the photon is travelling through, or "showing itself" in a gravitational field.

Now, what is right scientifically on this, that what we can say of theoretics which has combined electromagnetism with gravity, is to reveal "a colourful gravitational history" in this way? It brought to mind a dream I had of Einstein stirring a glass container of juice with ice in it. In my cognisance of how sound would reveal and be indicative of gravity speaking, I look to see what Einstein meant by display.

This was triggered I believe by  Joseph Weber's research into the aluminum bars detectors for gravitational wave detection.

Gravitational Wave Detectors are Best Described as "Sounds."

 


Weber developed an experiment using a large suspended bar of aluminum, with a high resonant Q at a frequency of about 1 kH; the oscillation of the bar after it had been excited could be measured by a series of piezoelectric crystals mounted on it. The output of the system was put on a chart recorder like those used to record earthquakes. Weber studied the excursions of the pen to look for the occasional tone of a gravitational wave passing through the bar...

Some might not understand the history to which I had devoted to building and understanding the emotive qualities combined with the intellectual. Which lead to seeing dynamical movement between the inner and outer world with respect to the state of mind at any given time. There have always been attempts on my part to describe this motion, not just on the psychological level, but on what also transpires emotively while the emotive state is being expressed.

I cannot say I am a Synesthesis by the 61 definitions given by Sean Day. So in the truest sense, I am not by that definition one. But conceptually linking and intertwining sound and colour with the physiological and the psychological, it was important by that definition be given, what colourful state the mind can be in.

Albert Einstein's perception of time and beauty seemed relevant to me about the quality given in measure, but by this perspective I am sure that is not what Einstein wanted to give meaning too, while thinking of the curvature of space and time.

This then is based on a perspective I have formed around gravity. What attach itself to all of us, whether we see the colours or not by consequence. This is an evolutionary form in my mind of what the soul can gain and loose by recognizing the colourful state of mind at any given time, and how it harbours colour in the truest sense as an expression of that being.

To be left with "no physical form" a mode of being becomes a retention of the abstract thinking mind, sets a tone in my mind for what is to come home to roost.

That we exist then mentally in that very realm, means to learn to recognize the pain and the "duration of time" we associated with those given memories. Upon reflection, we learn something then about the way we relate to the world and people around us which allows us to project "forward future consequences" intellectually bound by creative advances in language construction advancements of "creating in the mental world."

IN the most purest sense then, all combined is the birthing to segregation of sensory abilities according to "cabinets of perspective" that are arranged according to the principals of how we will interact in this community. This by arrangement, on entering materiality.

See:Emotion and Reason Balanced: The Mind's Consequence?

See Also: Art and Science: Kandinsky

Leon Lederman and Starting Out

"The soul is awestruck and shudders at the sight of the beautiful." Plato


Leon Max Lederman (born July 15, 1922) is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work with neutrinos. He is Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Illinois in 1986, and has served in the capacity of Resident Scholar since 1998.


 The lessons of history are clear. The more exotic, the more abstract the knowledge, the more profound will be its consequences." Leon Lederman, from an address to the Franklin Institute, 1995 

I found the following clip from the article linked at bottom of Quote. Very funny indeed.

After the test (I felt only slightly better), I returned to the lab to find a janitor mopping the wire-strewn floor and singing an Italian operatic tune. As I entered, the guy shouted something in Italian and offered a handshake.
I said, "Okay, but be careful. The wires are carrying a high current and your wet mop may produce a short circuit." He stared cluelessly and, in total disgust, I walked out in the hall to wait for the guy to leave.
In the hall, there was the department chairman. "We have a new, dumb janitor, huh?" I said.
"New? No, wait! You mean the guy in your lab? "
"Yeah."
"That's no janitor, dummy, that's Professor Gilberto Bernardini, a world-famous Italian cosmic-ray expert whom I invited to spend a year here to help you in your research."
"Oh, my God!" I gasped and rushed in to repair my damage.
Over time, Bernardini and I learnt how to communicate and I began to watch Gilberto. There was his habit of entering a dark room, pushing the light switch: light. Pushing it again: off. On, off five or six times. Each time there would be a loud "fantastico!" Why? He seemed to have this remarkable sense of wonder about simple things.
Then the cloud chamber.
Gilberto: "Wat's dat wire in de middle?"
Leon: "That's carrying the radioactive source."
Gilberto: "Tayk id oud."
Leon: "It makes tracks."
Gilberto: "Tayk id oud."
After a few minutes, tracks appeared. My source had been far too radioactive for the chamber! Now we had a success. See:Life in physics and the crucial sense of wonder
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Blackhole Analogue Introduction


Hydraulic spray

The hydraulic spray nozzle utilizes the liquid kinetic energy as the energy source to break the liquid into droplets. This type of spray is less energy consuming than a gas atomized or twin-fluid spray nozzle. As the fluid pressure increases the flow increases and the drop size decreases. But this leads to problems in selecting a droplet size and to achieve a certain flow rate at a given pressure. To overcome this situation a special hydraulic nozzle (Lechler Spillback Nozzle) has been developed. This nozzle can vary the liquid flow rate at a particular droplet size and pressure. This nozzle creates a better and optimum control on the liquid spray and in certain applications can eliminate the need of expensive compressed air.
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Sometimes knowing the real world exists one has to take what is theoretical and apply some working model to help direct thinking toward being realist. Point toward to how one sees cosmic ray spallating enters a contact point and exits for distribution.  Yes of course one has to be careful on such assumptions, but isn't this part of removing incorrect ideas from the new terrain of burgeoning conceptions that are coming forth from young scientist bright young minds?

Fig. 2. Image showing how an 8 TeV black hole might look in the ATLAS detector (with the caveat that there are still uncertainties in the theoretical calculations).


So the idea here is that "information is never lost? " It includes all information around and within contact point in order for it to be disseminated according  an archetypal structure for examination of it's many parts to make up all that information. Dimensionally, all of it's "degrees of freedom."


(click on image for larger viewing)
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

"On the right (Where do we come from?), we see the baby, and three young women - those who are closest to that eternal mystery. In the center, Gauguin meditates on what we are. Here are two women, talking about destiny (or so he described them), a man looking puzzled and half-aggressive, and in the middle, a youth plucking the fruit of experience. This has nothing to do, I feel sure, with the Garden of Eden; it is humanity's innocent and natural desire to live and to search for more life. A child eats the fruit, overlooked by the remote presence of an idol - emblem of our need for the spiritual. There are women (one mysteriously curled up into a shell), and there are animals with whom we share the world: a goat, a cat, and kittens. In the final section (Where are we going?), a beautiful young woman broods, and an old woman prepares to die. Her pallor and gray hair tell us so, but the message is underscored by the presence of a strange white bird. I once described it as "a mutated puffin," and I do not think I can do better. It is Gauguin's symbol of the afterlife, of the unknown (just as the dog, on the far right, is his symbol of himself). 

Realistically "the backreaction" too,  how far we can go as to what constitutes the beginning of the universe is in question, as I reflect on the ideas of Veneziano and the painting he sought to reflect on the nature of constitutions of civilizations and gatherings of that information. Can we exceed the contact point of experiential design to reflect all commentary status of the examination of the output given under the conditions sited here in  Analogue relation? 

Again, no information is lost.

Monday, October 26, 2009

About 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.
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In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of network theory and network science. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are reflected in this article. Definitions are often tied to the concept of a ‘system’ – a set of parts or elements which have relationships among them differentiated from relationships with other elements outside the relational regime. Many definitions tend to postulate or assume that complexity expresses a condition of numerous elements in a system and numerous forms of relationships among the elements. At the same time, what is complex and what is simple is relative and changes with time.
Some definitions key on the question of the probability of encountering a given condition of a system once characteristics of the system are specified. Warren Weaver has posited that the complexity of a particular system is the degree of difficulty in predicting the properties of the system if the properties of the system’s parts are given. In Weaver's view, complexity comes in two forms: disorganized complexity, and organized complexity. [1] Weaver’s paper has influenced contemporary thinking about complexity. [2]
The approaches which embody concepts of systems, multiple elements, multiple relational regimes, and state spaces might be summarized as implying that complexity arises from the number of distinguishable relational regimes (and their associated state spaces) in a defined system.
Some definitions relate to the algorithmic basis for the expression of a complex phenomenon or model or mathematical expression, as is later set out herein.

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 (Click on image  to see larger version)

Was Given a link to this Complexity Map above that I find very interesting. It is a interactive Map so I suggest visiting the link provided.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Artifacts in the Exploration of Geometry



Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK

It should not be lost on individuals who have followed this blog, that there is a range of connection to Platonic Forms idealization, that such an artifact in Ashmolean Museum although modeled to represent a reality and constituent forming basis, it is by this choice,  that I exercised a" foundational attitude"  about what I can use to push my own perspective forward in science. What others were using.


"The Artist and his Museum"

The first public showing of the mastodon (also known as the "Mammoth", the American incognitum and the "animal de l'Ohio") took place next door to Independence Hall, the building in which both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were finalized. The venue, known variously as Peale's Museum, the American Museum or simply as The Museum, was the remarkable product of a resourceful, versatile and passionate artist and showman, Charles Wilson Peale.

Peale (1741-1827) was born and raised in Maryland. A vocal opponent of the Stamp Act, he was effectively driven from his first trade, saddle making, when loyalist merchants cut off his credit. He turned to a traveling life of a self-taught, itinerant portrait painter. After a short apprenticeship with Benjamin West in London, Peale returned to Maryland in 1769 to paint wealthy patrons throughout the Chesapeake region.
In 1776 he moved to the largest city of the colonies, Philadelphia, in the hopes of further developing his career. Through his contacts made while serving as a captain of the Continental Army, Peale painted a remarkable assemblage of Revolutionary War figures, including the most comprehensive portrait series ever painted of George Washington
. See:Charles Willson Peale's Museum

After doing quite a bit of reading over the years it is surprising what one can come across as they look at the historical perspective with artifacts which sat on shelves to curious onlookers as they examine these items.

Shown here are the models in the mathematical wunderkammer located in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. Like those in most modern mathematics departments, the collection is a combination of locally-made student and faculty projects together with a variety of commercially produced models. Sadly, a century since their Golden Age, many of the models are in disrepair and much of their documentation has been lost. However, some recent detective work, with the help of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, has helped the department identify models by the American educators W. W. Ross and R. P. Baker in the collection.

Also see here for further thoughts on this




So you have in fact "forerunners of museums today" revealed in pursuits by individuals to catalog items according to the range of professions and undertakings. In this case, I was interested on geometrical forms as it was some interest to me that we could move our minds around in abstract spaces . I followed the surfaces of "dynamic movement"  issued forth by theoretical application. These would be,  modular forms or Genus figures of string theory, that raised my interest about the space we are working in.


Sylvester's models lay hidden away for a long time, but recently the Mathematical Institute received a donation to rescue some of them. Four of these were carefully restored by Catherine Kimber of the Ashmolean Museum and now sit in an illuminated glass cabinet in the Institute Common Room.

Now you must know that I do not have the education of the universities but this did not stop me from trying to understand what these artifacts in geometry actually represented. Where they were placed by theoreticians to represent the figurative evolution of what actual begins in this universe, from beyond time and space and arrived to a direction of expressions unfolding in the arrow of time. This was a recognition of the times in microseconds that had been "used in minutes" of Steven Weinberg.


A giddy craze was sweeping across Europe at the turn of the 17th century. The wealthy and the well-connected were hoarding things—strange things—into obsessive personal collections. Starfish, forked carrots, monkey teeth, alligator skins, phosphorescent minerals, Indian canoes, and unicorn tails were acquired eagerly and indiscriminately. Associations among these objects, if they were made at all, often reflected a collector's personal vision of an underlying natural "order". Critical taxonomy was rarely in evidence.

So this historical perspective of the artifacts moved my perspective to today and what is going on in mathematical abstraction. What are these shapes actually representing in reality? Is there such a thing once perception has been granted of the close correlative function of the description of that microscopic reality?

It would be that the mind has become capable of moving into the realm of the microscopic, that by measure of energy used, details the plethora of particle and constituents of that energy, that each artifact is leading toward ever finer issues of what began in the formation of the matter, to allow us to see it's constitutions as they are revealed today macroscopically.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Philemon and the Liber Novus

Giving a dream to a Jungian analyst is a little bit like feeding a complex quadratic equation to someone who really enjoys math. It takes time. The process itself is to be savored. The solution is not always immediately evident.The Holy Grail of the Unconscious


The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.

As Socrates travel through the citizenry of the time the question of what was to issue forth from, was always held in the bated breath of Socrates, that he would hear the wisdom of the Over-soul?

How many "degrees of freedom" to see that the chance always exists that what will come forth, is the illumination of something that resides within one's own self and completely accessible.

 The upcoming publication of Carl Jung's Red Book — a record of his fantasies and hallucinations during a sort of breakdown — has excited Jungians the world over. But is Jung still relevant today?

According to a New York Times Magazine article by Sara Corbett, the psychoanalyst Jung "got lost in the soup of his own psyche" when he was 38. He said he was "menaced by a psychosis" and that visions were coming at him in an "incessant stream." "In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me ‘underground,'" he wrote, "I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them." His method of "plummeting" was to write these fantasies down in what is now called his Red Book, a volume full of cramped text and intricate paintings that his family has guarded closely until recently. Now it has been translated into English, and will be published in October. See: Does Carl Jung Matter


Some might find some faint relevance to Robert Pirsig's journey,  to find that such compulsion to materialize in figurative speech, something that arose within Pirsig himself, also arose in Carl Jung?


This is a photograph of author and philosopher Robert M. Pirsigtaken by Ian Glendinning on the eve of the Liverpool conference of 7th July 2005.
What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part 1 Chapter 1.(Bold added by me for emphasis)

While being presented Pirsig's book for reading,  and the subsequent work that arose from that time,  also pointed toward something  real and potential within any of us in my mind, that we might considered in one context as delusional, could be an aspect of our own self as we learn to see this aspect as the higher self "manifest within our own dreams,"  to know what can exist "both delusively and real, subjectively as an imagery of creative recognition is an access to that collective unconscious. The key here is a fishing line, hook and sinker to know that the fisherman has really got "an idea on his mind" as he castes his line.

If one is to understand the "wisdom of illumination," under this context,  then it will ring more true to those who have familiarity in seeking to understand the makeup of the person we are. Some might even recognize an aspect cognitively arising in familiarity with what they observe in the real world.  For them to know that subjectively the imagination is strong and very capable in merging with the areas of  continued research in discoveries in science at the microscopic level.

It seems that anomaly by it's discovery takes keen observation and not just luck. It's a kind of observation that connects many things and not having taken the time to look, will have past the time of as an aspect of probability, and life circumstance, that really holds no meaning? It was just a "moment in time," gone unnoticed until someone close to the path of realization came  along and discovered it for them self.

That's the realization,  that in this opportunity as always existing, it was just waiting for you.




The Red Book, also known as Liber Novus (The New Book), is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung between approximately 1914 and 1930, which was not published or shown to the public until 2009. Until 2001, his heirs denied scholars access to the book, which he began after a falling-out with Sigmund Freud in 1913. The book is written in calligraphic text and contains many illuminations.

I was excited when I heard news of this book.

As some will know I am a fan of Carl Jung because of what he represented to me in terms of self discovery and understanding of what one finds when one takes  a look at what they are capable of finding inside. You will pass this off very quickly as a subjective adventure, and relevant only to what can pass off as some supernatural event within the context of science's requirements.

But what I want people to know, regardless of their background in science, that such a pursuant to understand the greater complexity of what they can find inside does not relegate them to quackery and crack pottery. It's basically learning something about them self now having taken time.

The Red Book was a product of a technique developed by Jung which he termed active imagination. As Jung described it, he was visited by two figures, an old man and a young woman, who identified themselves as Elijah and Salome. They were accompanied by a large black snake. In time, the Elijah figure developed into a guiding spirit that Jung called Philemon (ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, as originally written with Greek letters). Salome was identified by Jung as an anima figure. The figures, according to Jung, "brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life."[3]

The Philemon figure represented superior insight, and communicated through mythic imagery. The images did not appear to come from Jung's own experience, and Jung interpreted them as products of the collective unconscious.