A Priori Intuition of Space?

The Munduruku (Mundurucu or Wuy Jugu) are an indigenous people of Brazil living in the Amazon River basin

Kant argued that Euclidean geometry is synthesized on the basis of an a priori intuition of space. This proposal inspired much behavioral research probing whether spatial navigation in humans and animals conforms to the predictions of Euclidean geometry. However, Euclidean geometry also includes concepts that transcend the perceptible, such as objects that are infinitely small or infinitely large, or statements of necessity and impossibility. We tested the hypothesis that certain aspects of nonperceptible Euclidian geometry map onto intuitions of space that are present in all humans, even in the absence of formal mathematical education. Our tests probed intuitions of points, lines, and surfaces in participants from an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucu, as well as adults and age-matched children controls from the United States and France and younger US children without education in geometry. The responses of Mundurucu adults and children converged with that of mathematically educated adults and children and revealed an intuitive understanding of essential properties of Euclidean geometry. For instance, on a surface described to them as perfectly planar, the Mundurucu's estimations of the internal angles of triangles added up to ∼180 degrees, and when asked explicitly, they stated that there exists one single parallel line to any given line through a given point. These intuitions were also partially in place in the group of younger US participants. We conclude that, during childhood, humans develop geometrical intuitions that spontaneously accord with the principles of Euclidean geometry, even in the absence of training in mathematics. See: Flexible intuitions of Euclidean geometry in an Amazonian indigene group

"Lost" Amazon Complex Found; Shapes Seen by Satellite

  Hundreds of circles, squares, and other geometric shapes once hidden by forest hint at a previously unknown ancient society that flourished in the Amazon, a new study says.

Satellite images of the upper Amazon Basin taken since 1999 have revealed more than 200 geometric earthworks spanning a distance greater than 155 miles (250 kilometers).

Gravimetry

Gravity map of the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic continent
This gravity field was computed from sea-surface height measurements collected by the US Navy GEOSAT altimeter between March, 1985, and January, 1990. The high density GEOSAT Geodetic Mission data that lie south of 30 deg. S were declassified by the Navy in May of 1992 and contribute most of the fine-scale gravity information.
The Antarctic continent itself is shaded in blue depending on the thickness of the ice sheet (blue shades in steps of 1000 m); light blue is shelf ice; gray lines are the major ice devides; pink spots are parts of the continent which are not covered by ice; gray areas have no data.

Gravimetry is the measurement of the strength of a gravitational field. Gravimetry may be used when either the magnitude of gravitational field or the properties of matter responsible for its creation are of interest. The term gravimetry or gravimetric is also used in chemistry to define a class of analytical procedures, called gravimetric analysis relying upon weighing a sample of material.

 See Also:

• Holger Müller from Berkeley

Atom interferometry: In light-pulse atom interferometers, atomic matter waves are split and recombined using pulses of laser light. The splitting occurs because when an atom interacts with the photons of a laser beam, it exchanges the momentum of a number of photons. The atom may thus continue on either of two spatially separate paths, the interferometer arms. When the paths are recombined, the probability that the atom is found depends upon the phase difference between them, which determines whether the matter waves will add or cancel. This phase is shifted by the atom’s coupling to electromagnetic fields, gravity, inertial forces, and other influences. By selecting the geometry of the interferometer, the atomic species, and its quantum state, one can maximize the wanted influence and minimize others. Advances in the control of the quantum state of atoms and photons have led to an extraordinary sensitivity and accuracy.

See:

• Gravimetry

A Materialist's Approach?

God Helmet

The "God Helmet" refers to an experimental apparatus originally called the "Koren helmet" after its inventor Stanley Koren

Mechanical Induction-
Magnetic stimulation of the brain, as with the God helmet developed by Michael Persinger.[30]

Dr. Persinger's work is primarily published in peer-reviewed academic journals devoted to neuroscience and cognitive studies. Persinger does not reject the validity of spiritual and psychic experiences. His many papers and experiments offer specific mechanisms for how the brain can create them subjectively. Proof that God is in the brain means that the power of prayer lies in the human mind. Meditation works by making changes in the brain. The kingdom of heaven lies within the complexities of the brain, the most complex object known to science. This field of inquiry has been called neurotheology by several authors and journalists, though it's members usually have other names for themselves.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a technique for noninvasive stimulation of the adult brain. Stimulation is produced by generating a brief, high-intensity magnetic field by passing a brief electric current through a magnetic coil. Compared with the growing number of clinical trial with rTMS, there are surprisingly few animal studies on its basic mechanisms of action, constraining the ability to perform hypothesis-driven clinical studies.

Okay one knows that we live in a material world so one has to apply scientific view to what can be induced toward consciousness,  has a different perspective value here on the assumption about "what matters and what arises as consciousness from it?"

Is there then not room to look at the effect on the brain matter as the value of how consciousness may be perceived "as outside the body?"

Quote:

Assisted by specialists in psychology, medicine, biochemistry, psychiatry, electrical engineering, physics, and education, Robert Monroe developed Hemi-Sync, a patented audio technology that is claimed to facilitate enhanced performance.[2][3][4][5][6]

Using this point then of observation about what in going on in the brain. Why do we not consider the effect of stimulation in terms of the brain, as having other methods already established that affect consciousness indicated above. Affecting various stages of consciousness as gradations as to imply "focus levels" that we are engaged in. In this regard, correlated to our daily lives.

To be able to stimulate the brain so as to consider consciousness interaction with nature on various levels. This would ask how far consciousness may travel in that we do not consider this focus as travelling further from the confines of the body then just above it as measured by the stimulation?

So one might be affected by the innovation of idea as a manifested and work in progress to say this invention does not really deal with reality? Consciousness is such a fickle thing that no one truly has the method in the bag?

Brain Mechanisms of Consciousness

Quote:

Consciousness is at once the most familiar and the most mysterious feature of our existence. A new science of consciousness is now revealing its biological basis.

Once considered beyond the reach of science, the neural mechanisms of human consciousness are now being unravelled at a startling pace by neuroscientists and their colleagues. I've always been fascinated by the possibility of understanding consciousness, so it is tremendously exciting to witness – and take part in – this grand challenge for 21st century science. SEE:Consciousness: Eight questions science must answer

See:

• Point Being...It's a Material World?
• Science Deals with the Intangible
• The Photon and Emergence

Professor Graham Ross: Quarks and gluons

Professor Graham Ross from the University of Oxford, winner of the 2012 Dirac Medal awarded by the Institute of Physics for his work in developing the standard model of particles and forces that has led to many new insights into the origins and nature of the universe.  See: Gold Metal Winners

View From The Top

Using natural-color images from the Visible/Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the recently launched Suomi-NPP satellite, a NASA scientist has compiled a new view showing the Arctic and high latitudes. See: Earth's Observatory

Point Being...It's a Material World?

This provides for a beginning point of discussion about the parameters of our thinking in terms of the resolution to our experiences. Do they run further then the constraints we apply to them? In science your boxed in, and you replay all components in the hopes that you can extend or explain the problem and arrive at a conclusion which provides for a stepping off point for furthering the limitations of those constraints.

Intuition and Logic in Mathematics by Henri Poincaré

On the other hand, look at Professor Klein: he is studying one of the most abstract questions of the theory of functions to determine whether on a given Riemann surface there always exists a function admitting of given singularities. What does the celebrated German geometer do? He replaces his Riemann surface by a metallic surface whose electric conductivity varies according to certain laws. He connects two of its points with the two poles of a battery. The current, says he, must pass, and the distribution of this current on the surface will define a function whose singularities will be precisely those called for by the enunciation.

For me the extension here was to see that billiard balls that collide are somehow extended to believe that the greater opportunity here has been to carry the relevance to the sound that is generated at those moments. This carries in a sense as a geometrical expression defined in in Euclidean beginning about a point and then geometrically "all things follow."  This is a schematically drawing if you like about beginnings, yet it is about the dynamical progression of how the non-euclidean moves even more into projective geometries. All of this is a framework for views about the world in which we live and part of the reality. So you apply this to the cosmos.

So given here a parameter with which one wants to talk about and how we can see in the materialist world,  the constraint is found in the expression of correlation and meaning about the geometry we live with. This was defined by the beginning of a Newtonian experience, and in a sense I am showing the diversity of this explanation about reality as Euclid's determination and postulates which were extended.

Gauss and Riemann gave a freedom that a Euclidean could never appreciate,  had not the quest of others helped Riemann to make the leap.

You have define the issue about spirit as related to  "a Heaven,"  yet we are here talking about the mundane? Moving from the issue of the constraints we have applied to our selves in terms of the archaic forms.  We do not want to induce religion as to define our experience but to talk about what science has to say about the entanglement we have with nature? Would you not agree?

While of course the opening is about Heaven is it defined in terms of the experience portrayed.  I am suggesting that there is a contact with nature that is indeed subtle with regard to consciousness defined "as focus."  So in a sense experience suggests a deep impact and meaning to its person that can be correlated with others of similar experiences?

Google Data Center

See inside one of Google's data centers in this guided tour. See what powers our products, and then explore on your own in Street View: http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/streetview

In the early seventies my own Father was a accountant who made use of this system of data storage and while having the equipment for card production and sorting to list his clients, he made use of the rooms in larger office tower that were in hermetically sealed rooms to prevent corruption.

Above left: The row of tape drives for the UNIVAC I computer. Above right: The IBM 3410 Magnetic Tape Subsystem, introduced in 1971.

The progressive feature of computation  data development is always an interesting one to me. The age of its users may be of interest in judging how far back certain features of the development mechanical type set is used helps to portray the age of its users. It's evolutionary history.

The history of computer data storage, in pictures

I mean using Magnetic tapes in terms of data storage although used in type set cards punches as 1's and O's was the precursor to what we see today in the google data centre. Can you imagine how large the data room would be needed in order to compress what you see today in our historical development of the seventies?

How science data storage is effected by what would constrain the amount of information given from experimental procedures? We could not do much with efficiency given that constraint.

Science Deals with the Intangible

 

Alexander discusses his experience on the Science channel's 'Through the Wormhole.' 

 I have been reading different perspectives about an experience Dr. Eben Alexander had and is written in Newsweek called."Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife." I gained access to written material through The Daily Beast written on Oct 8th 2012. Also additional information from the Sam Harris Blog, and entitled article,"This Must Be Heaven," on October 12, 2012.

 A review of this article also by PZMeyers, called,"Newsweek panders to the deluded again."

Okay, so you know,  I assume most scientists take the position of PZMeyers in terms of the proof that is required in terms of the validation of experience that is easily reproducible. We want other people to be able to objectively tell their point of view when it comes to the issues regarding the near death experience. Not to regard their training in terms of their education so as to be thwarted or derailed by experiencing reality in a new and profound way.

So if you are a scientist,  what procedures would you ask that such adventure be placed before such subjective investigation that one would say they have dealt responsibly with the research and development of a method to a "compilable experiencer of truth finding and factual evidence?"

So of course for me,  to see consciousness induced and being able to provide for the similarity of experience would be evidence for the reproducibility of at least explaining the basis of the experience.Would it not for you?

In, "The Photon and Emergence," I begin to deal with a perspective and question about how we all perceive reality. Is this not an acceptable point of view about what emergence implies as one talks about  the masslessness of being,  while being a materialist in a material world?

I ventured to say that while I may see in terms of Lagrangian in as a classical description of our universe, it is almost if,  I had taken to verse and felt moved,  seeing the self as a massless being,  as moving through the Cosmo. The easiest and fastest route traveled,  without becoming attached to the environs of the materialist worlds.

Does it not seem that the environs of such worlds are as luring in thought as the question of what our attachments are in how meaning becomes our friend toward such expressions? So while Myers sees the original experience of Dr Eben Alexander as an conflated adaption of the original by virtue of the written after math, such is the reality of forming perspective raised by the definition. This attempt at finding and explaining the originality of the experience. Should we be asking,  have you experienced same?

So then indeed what is the equative formulation of such experience that one may follow not only the logic of  but of the science as well.

The Park

In the park there is something quite luring and settling in my own mind about what we experience in the material world and how we find meaning.  I mean this is what we  find  in uniqueness of our own characterizations of being that one could tell each other apart from another.

It would be far removed then from conduct becoming of being,  that such a person would defile another based on their telling experience. Sure,  one may not have recognized the value of the psychological in terms of what meaning plays in a person's life. Why,  one can be seen  as being quite insensitive to the quest for defining and explaining the originality of that experience. The detractor, as a stance of scientific investigation I may say as another,  "be kind and truthful to yourself, " while being absent of the same originality of experience you see.
 
As a layman I find this of particular importance when we send our vision out amongst the stars, all the while looking at the substance of these events "within the larger context of the universe."




Dr. Kip Thorne, Caltech 01-Relativity-The First 20th Century Revolution

Working from the same periphery of dialogue that  an experiencier adds to the artifact of originality, may be displayed in analogy as some Spherical Cow of the reasoning of the sort as to finding the originality in expression?  Yet,  we use all the ways and means to define the experience of that moment by what elements lead to the discretion of the original? What was it's original form? What motivations defined in the expression of the cosmos of being?

So we use the backdrop of measure to define the decay product of the original as to say that the original existed at some point defined in 10 ^-43seconds as an act,  do we say,  that such existence is not part and parcel now of the elements of the whole universe?

Einstein Crossing the Room

this increases his resistance to movement, in other words, he acquires mass, just like a particle moving through the Higgs field

Okay maybe I took the image to seriously?:) I am no doubt focusing on the foundational attributes of our reality when it comes to how far one can sees, so of course I hope that such thoughts generated about the forms raise the issue of what was first or what was derived from first principles.

I mean of course it is necessary  to gain a position in logic approach to which advancement of truths may be encountered.  Dealing with not only with the responsibility to self,  but to what is espoused publicly. So while I am after the scientific attitude of relevance and experimental attitude to support such reasoning, I do want factual statements in light of the theory that is proposed,  and  advances of such thoughts as to what is reality forming?

The idea of time and its duration was a functional thing when proposed as a thought experiment with regard to A Hot stove and a pretty girl(On the Effects of External Sensory Input on Time Dilation." A. Einstein, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.) one may have drawn a conclusion as Einstein did, that the,"  state of mind of the observer plays a crucial role in the perception of time."

Can I be faulted then in my continued quest to find meaning at such levels?

 Since there exist in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence. Einstein

The schematic reasoning of point, line, and plane,  is somehow a gesture to a functional framework of geometrical identification and proportions as to expressions in reality. An escape from the realization of using straight lines and such to move too, a Non Euclidean geometry for perspectives about the nature and implication of curvature in space/time.

 Brian Greene:

it turns out that within string theory ... there is actually an identification, we believe, between the very tiny and the very huge. So it turns out that if you, for instance, take a dimension - imagine its in a circle, imagine its really huge - and then you make it smaller and smaller and smaller, the equations tell us that if you make it smaller than a certain length (its about 10-33 centimeters, the so called 'Planck Length') ... its exactly identical, from the point of view of physical properties, as making the circle larger. So you're trying to squeeze it smaller, but actually in reality your efforts are being turned around by the theory and you're actually making the dimension larger. So in some sense, if you try to squeeze it all the way down to zero size, it would be the same as making it infinitely big. ...

But alas one might say I have been turned inside\out,  as an idea about the topological nature of a point in time,  in a mind about a spot and about a place called nothing.

See:

No matter how you view it, the Higgs field is not the universal giver of mass to things in the universe: not to ordinary atomic matter, not to dark matter, not to black holes. To most known fundamental particles, yes — and it is crucial in ensuring that atoms exist at all. But there would be just as much interesting gravitational physics going on in the universe if there were no Higgs field. There just wouldn’t be any atoms, or any people to study them. Why the Higgs and Gravity are Unrelated

The only things you need in order to know that gravity will exhibit (not “be-explained-in-terms-of”, for this explains nothing) spin-two gravitons is

1) the world is quantum mechanical

2) gravitational waves in Einstein’s theory are those of a spin-two classical field

As long as these two things are true, it’s guaranteed; for in a quantum mechanical world, all waves are made from quanta (which is what particles are — ripples of minimal height), quanta all must have integer or half-integer spin, and the properties of the waves follow from the spin of their quanta. So you can infer the quantum numbers of quanta from the properties of the corresponding waves, without knowing anything else. You can infer from Maxwell’s equations for electric and magnetic fields that if there is quantum mechanics in the world, electromagnetic waves will be made from spin-one quanta (namely photons.)

To make a full theory of quantum gravity, however, you need a vastly more complete understanding of how all the fields of nature interact with each other. This is where all the mathematical challenges arise. It is the same for understanding what photons do when they interact with matter; you need much more than Maxwell’s equations for that! Quantum electrodynamics (QED) was quite challenging to develop, long after people knew about photons. And quantum gravity will be that much more difficult — but spin-two gravitons will be a part of it, unless quantum mechanics has to be completely revised even for ordinary gravitational waves.

Occultation

An Earth orbiting detector sensitive to gamma ray photons will see step-like occultation features in its counting rate when a gamma ray point source crosses the Earth's limb.

This is due to the change in atmospheric attenuation of the gamma rays along the line of sight. In an uncollimated detector, these occultation features can be used to locate and monitor astrophysical sources provided their signals can be individually separated from the detector background. We show that the Earth occultation technique applied to the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) is a viable and flexible all-sky monitor in the low energy gamma ray and hard X-ray energy range (20 keV - 1 MeV). The method is an alternative to more sophisticated photon imaging devices for astronomy, and can serve well as a cost-effective science capability for monitoring the high energy sky.

Here we describe the Earth occultation technique for locating new sources and for measuring source intensity and spectra without the use of complex background models. Examples of transform imaging, step searches, spectra, and light curves are presented. Systematic uncertainties due to source confusion, detector response, and contamination from rapid background fluctuations are discussed and analyzed for their effect on intensity measurements. A sky location-dependent average systematic error is derived as a function of galactic coordinates. The sensitivity of the technique is derived as a function of incident photon energy and also as a function of angle between the source and the normal to the detector entrance window. Occultations of the Crab Nebula by the Moon are used to calibrate Earth occultation flux measurements independent of possible atmospheric scattering effects. See: The Burst and Transient Source Experiment Earth Occultation Technique