Space Weather

Circular Coronal Mass Ejection A coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted from just around the edge of the sun on May 1, 2013, in a gigantic rolling wave. CMEs can shoot over a billion tons of particles into space at over a million miles per hour. This CME occurred on the sun’s limb and is not headed toward Earth. The video, taken in extreme ultraviolet light by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), covers about two and a half hours. Credit: NASA/SDO

Current Space Weather Conditions

Prepared jointly by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA,
Space Weather Prediction Center and the U.S. Air Force.
Updated 2013 May 01 2200 UTC

Joint USAF/NOAA Solar Geophysical Activity Report and Forecast
SDF Number 121 Issued at 2200Z on 01 May 2013

Auroral Activity Extrapolated from NOAA POES

See Also:

• Tips on Viewing the Aurora

Answers to Question-Interesting

It seems the opportune time when thinking about positions people adopt, that one realizes that one is not in a class of their own, but do definitely belong to a group of people in regard to a response from a survey. While not a part of that culture, can one say, this is a representative example of what appears in society, as a reflection?

Relax if you are a theoretical scientist or a physicist, because the issue of acceptance of any philosophical view comes into question for you?

So with a science thinking back ground, layman style, my bias definitely shows through, and I feel good about it. Not that I ever felt bad when learning from others and being respective of their idealizations as leaders in science.

Academics of all stripes enjoy conducting informal polls of their peers to gauge the popularity of different stances on controversial issues. But the philosophers — and in particular, David Bourget & David Chalmers — have decided to be more systematic about it. (Maybe they have more controversial issues to discuss?) See: What Do Philosophers Believe?

 Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?

Lean toward: nominalism	210 / 931 (22.6%)
Accept: Platonism	184 / 931 (19.8%)
Lean toward: Platonism	182 / 931 (19.5%)
Accept: nominalism	141 / 931 (15.1%)
Agnostic/undecided	47 / 931 (5.0%)
Accept another alternative	46 / 931 (4.9%)
Reject both	34 / 931 (3.7%)
Insufficiently familiar with the issue	26 / 931 (2.8%)
Accept an intermediate view	21 / 931 (2.3%)
The question is too unclear to answer	19 / 931 (2.0%)
Skip	9 / 931 (1.0%)
There is no fact of the matter	8 / 931 (0.9%)
Other	2 / 931 (0.2%)
Accept both	2 / 931 (0.2%)

"

James Robert Brown - Plato's Heaven: a User's Guide

Getting Perspective on Time

Time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it. — Albert Einstein

Currently with the new book written by Lee Smolin about Time, to me, it is a fundamental question about what arises, and,  on how we use time to measure. Also for me,  to ask what relevance time means,  as an emergent product for any beginning.

LEE SMOLIN- Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics

Thinking In Time Versus Thinking Outside Of Time

One very old and pervasive habit of thought is to imagine that the true answer to whatever question we are wondering about lies out there in some eternal domain of "timeless truths." The aim of re-search is then to "discover" the answer or solution in that already existing timeless domain. For example, physicists often speak as if the final theory of everything already exists in a vast timeless Platonic space of mathematical objects. This is thinking outside of time. See: WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?

 A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world.

What ignited this question for me goes to a comment I wrote as to what I saw as a precursor to this question for Lee Smolin and others. Further to this, the lessons and explanation Sean Carroll gave toward how we look at time.

Darwinian evolutionary biology is the prototype for thinking in time because at its heart is the realization that natural processes developing in time can lead to the creation of genuinely novel structures. Even novel laws can emerge when the structures to which they apply come to exist. Evolutionary dynamics has no need of abstract and vast spaces like all the possible viable animals, DNA sequences, sets of proteins, or biological laws. Exaptations are too unpredictable and too dependent on the whole suite of living creatures to be analyzed and coded into properties of DNA sequences. Better, as Stuart Kauffman proposes, to think of evolutionary dynamics as the exploration, in time, by the biosphere, of the adjacent possible. See: Thinking In Time Versus Thinking Outside Of Time

While we then become cognoscente of the rules around which parameters have meaning in relation to Time, it was also important to understand that the idea of cross pollination of the sciences recognizes what is brought to the table.

"It is very good that Stu Kauffman and Lee are making this serious attempt to save a notion of time, since I think the issue of timelessness is central to the unification of general relativity with quantum mechanics. The notion of time capsules is still certainly only a conjecture. However, as Lee admits, it has proven very hard to show that the idea is definitely wrong. Moreover, the history of physics has shown that it is often worth taking disconcerting ideas seriously, and I think timelessness is such a one. At the moment, I do not find Lee and Stu's arguments for time threaten my position too strongly."- Julian Barbour

In regard to The Adjacent Possible I was well aware of the implication and parameters  around such thinking to realize that even while applying the trade,  Stuart, was traveling new ground. His thinking is encouraging the flexibility that I am talking about with regard the restrictions one places on them self. I encourage this kind of thinking so as to bolster the lull in scientific advancement to stimulate and foster the idealization of creativity that I think has become stagnate while  moving from one point in the measure to the next. Why Murray Gell-Mann's  move and his expertise is understood in context of new approaches. Simplicity and complexity.

Setting Time Aright

See Also:

• Closer to Truth
• Lee Smolin: Time Reborn
• Book review: “Time Reborn” by Lee Smolin
• Book Review: Time Reborn by Lee;Smolin
• Is Time Real? 
• Time, Born Again
• Time Regained!
• Pedro Ferreira: Clockwork Cosmos PDF
• Incompatible Arrows
• Setting Time Aright

Origins of Life Question?

Is it more astonishing that a God created all that exists in six days, or that the natural processes of the creative universe have yielded galaxies, chemistry, life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness, culture without a Creator. In my mind and heart, the overwhelming answer is that the truth as best we know it, that all arose with no Creator agent, all on its wondrous own, is so awesome and stunning that it is God enough for me and I hope much of humankind.

BEYOND REDUCTIONISM: REINVENTING THE SACRED

The COOL EDGE Workshop was the brainchild of American theoretical biologist and expert in the complexity of biological systems and organisms, Stuart Kauffman. “If we do not organize our field we are in danger of drifting into scattered, uncoordinated groups that make little progress,” said Kauffman in an interview with the CERN Bulletin after the first meeting in 2011. “By coordinating our efforts, we believe we can make more rapid strides.”

“We are happy to share our experience with large-scale collaborations with the life scientists participating in the COOL EDGE Workshop 2013,” says Sergio Bertolucci, director for research and computing who opened the meeting on Tuesday. “The CERN model is an example (and a successful one!) of how large international collaborations can actually work. We are happy if we can also be of help to other communities.” See:
CERN, life science and the origins of life

See Also:

The workshop at the CERN meeting focused attention on the metabolism first approach. Both it and the RNA world need exploration. The meeting ended with a proposal to get the research community organized behind a common effort, hopefully benefiting from the experience of CERN in fostering international collaboration.

• Chasing The Seeds Of Life - How did life originate?

The Least Resistance as Possible?

It is always of interest that communications over longer distances is made most capable and following an ole effect we see that where such tunneling allows such a process?

 Kapusta points out that the condensation temperature would be well below the cosmic background temperature, so it would be quite a feat to make this superfluid. However, Kapusta also notes that a sufficiently advanced civilization might use pulses of neutrino superfluid for long-distance communications.

On an abstract level how is one able to envision such a process unless such a hole provides for information to move through a center,  and information to move very fast.

Magnetism is a fundamental interaction shaping our physical world, at the basis of technologies such as magnetic recording or energy generation. Unlike electromagnetic waves, which can be routed and transmitted with waveguides to long distances, magnetic fields rapidly decay with distance. Here we present the concept, design, and properties of a magnetic hose which enables to transfer the static magnetic field generated by a source to an arbitrary distance, and along any given trajectory. We experimentally demonstrate the field transmission through the simplest hose realization using a superconducting shell with a magnetic core. We discuss possible application of magnetic hoses to harness quantum systems by addressable magnetic fields, in the context of quantum information processing.Magnetic hose: Routing and Long-distance Transportation of Magnetic Fields

See Also:

• Physicists Build World’s First “Magnetic Hose” For Transmitting Magnetic Fields
• SuperFluids
• The Right Spin for a Neutrino Superfluid

CERN NEWS : LHCb announces new results in matter-antimatter asymmetry

Matter and antimatter are thought to have existed in equal amounts at the beginning of the universe, but today the universe appears to be composed essentially of matter. By studying subtle differences in the behaviour of particle and antiparticles, experiments at the LHC are seeking to cast light on this dominance of matter over antimatter. Now the LHCb experiment has observed a preference for matter over antimatter known as CP-violation in the decay of neutral B0s particles, read more: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates...

See Also:

• CP Violation and the Information/Anti-Information Asymmetry

Entanglement on the Space Station

See Also :

• Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT
• Who's Afraid Of The Quantum Ghost?
• Bell violation with entangled photons, free of the fair-sampling assumption
• Space Station May Test 'Spooky' Entanglement Over Largest Distance Yet

DarkSide-50

Pictorial image showing, superimposed to an optical image, the spatial distributions of ordinary matter (pink) and the one assigned to dark matter (blue) estimated studying the merging of two clusters of galaxies (Bullet Cluster)

The DarkSide collaboration is an international affiliation of universities and labs seeking to directly detect dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is building a series of noble liquid time projection chambers (TPCs) that are designed to be employed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Assergi, Italy. The technique is based on liquid argon depleted in radioactive isotope ³⁹Ar which is common for the atmospheric argon.

Dark-matter seekers get help from the DarkSide

Darkside

As part of the DarkSide program of direct dark matter searches using liquid argon TPCs, a prototype detector with an active volume containing 10 kg of liquid argon, DarkSide-10, was built and operated underground in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. A critically important parameter for such devices is the scintillation light yield, as photon statistics limits the rejection of electron-recoil backgrounds by pulse shape discrimination. We have measured the light yield of DarkSide-10 using the readily-identifiable full-absorption peaks from gamma ray sources combined with single-photoelectron calibrations using low-occupancy laser pulses. For gamma lines of energies in the range 122-1275 keV, we get consistent light yields averaging 8.887\pm0.003(stat)\pm0.444(sys) p.e./keV_ee. With additional purification, the light yield measured at 511 keV increased to 9.142\pm0.006(stat) p.e./keV_ee. See:
Light Yield in DarkSide-10: a Prototype Two-phase Liquid Argon TPC for Dark Matter Searches

The DarkSide of Gran Sasso

Hearing Shape of the Drum

Mathematically ideal drums with membranes of these two different shapes (but otherwise identical) would sound the same, because the eigenfrequencies are all equal, so the timbral spectra would contain the same overtones. This example was constructed by Gordon, Webb and Wolpert. Notice that both polygons have the same area and perimeter.

To hear the shape of a drum is to infer information about the shape of the drumhead from the sound it makes, i.e., from the list of overtones, via the use of mathematical theory. "Can One Hear the Shape of a Drum?" was the title of an article by Mark Kac in the American Mathematical Monthly in 1966,^[1] but the phrasing of the title is due to Lipman Bers,^[2] and these questions can be traced back all the way to Hermann Weyl.

The frequencies at which a drumhead can vibrate depend on its shape. The Helmholtz equation tells us the frequencies if we know the shape. These frequencies are the eigenvalues of the Laplacian in the region. A central question is: can they tell us the shape if we know the frequencies? No other shape than a square vibrates at the same frequencies as a square. Is it possible for two different shapes to yield the same set of frequencies? Kac did not know the answer to that question.

One of the possible modes of vibration of an idealized circular drum head (mode with the notation below). Other modes are shown at the bottom of the article.

Spectral geometry is a field in mathematics which concerns relationships between geometric structures of manifolds and spectra of canonically defined differential operators. The case of the Laplace–Beltrami operator on a closed Riemannian manifold has been most intensively studied, although other Laplace operators in differential geometry have also been examined. The field concerns itself with two kinds of questions: direct problems and inverse problems.

Inverse problems seek to identify features of the geometry from information about the eigenvalues of the Laplacian. One of the earliest results of this kind was due to Hermann Weyl who used David Hilbert's theory of integral equation in 1911 to show that the volume of a bounded domain in Euclidean space can be determined from the asymptotic behavior of the eigenvalues for the Dirichlet boundary value problem of the Laplace operator. This question is usually expressed as ``Can one hear the shape of a drum?", the popular phrase due to Mark Kac. A refinement of Weyl's asymptotic formula obtained by Pleijel and Minakshisundaram produces a series of local spectral invariants involving covariant differentiations of the curvature tensor, which can be used to establish spectral rigidity for a special class of manifolds. However as the example given by John Milnor tells us, the information of eigenvalues is not enough to determine the isometry class of a manifold (see isospectral). A general and systematic method due to Toshikazu Sunada gave rise to a veritable cottage industry of such examples which clarifies the phenomenon of isospectral manifolds.

Direct problems attempt to infer the behavior of the eigenvalues of a Riemannian manifold from knowledge of the geometry. The solutions to direct problems are typified by the Cheeger inequality which gives a relation between the first positive eigenvalue and an isoperimetric constant (the Cheeger constant). Many versions of the inequality have been established since Cheeger's work (by R. Brooks and P. Buser for instance).

See Also:

•  Listen to Spacetime
•  Quantum Gravity on a Quantum Computer?
•  Shape from sound: toward new tools for quantum gravity

Applying Color to the Real World

Spectra are complex because each spectrum holds a wide variety of information. For instance, there are many different mechanisms by which an object, like a star, can produce light - or using the technical term for light, electromagnetic radiation. Each of these mechanisms has a characteristic spectrum. Let's look at a spectrum and examine each part of it. Introduction to Spectroscopy 

•  -Ultraviolet/Visible Spectroscopy 

•  -Infrared Spectroscopy 

• -Mass Spectrometry 

• -Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO

This stunning false-color picture shows off the many sides of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, which is made up of images taken by three of NASA's Great Observatories, using three different wavebands of light. Infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red; visible data from the Hubble Space Telescope are yellow; and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are green and blue. See: Image of the Day

Why might one suggest spectroscopy and it's ramifications?

 While studying the question of how any of us may exist as emergent beings how might one find them self expressed as matter participants of this reality? What would have began first as to suggest that we used more then the typed neurons(stem cell) to shift the constructive nature of our constitutions as revealed in our DNA structure, as the forms in which we take? So there is already a pattern established in nature that we must look for?

What began as the motivation for expression as to insight that such energy is more then, is described as, is a continue change and expression of the evolutionary distribution of what we have become?

The crystalline state is the simplest known example of a quantum , a stable state of matter whose generic low-energy properties are determined by a higher organizing principle and nothing else. Robert Laughlin

What was that motivation then?

This image depicts the interaction of nine plane waves—expanding sets of ripples, like the waves you would see if you simultaneously dropped nine stones into a still pond. The pattern is called a quasicrystal because it has an ordered structure, but the structure never repeats exactly. The waves produced by dropping four or more stones into a pond always form a quasicrystal.

Because of the wavelike properties of matter at subatomic scales, this pattern could also be seen in the waveform that describes the location of an electron. Harvard physicist Eric Heller created this computer rendering and added color to make the pattern’s structure easier to see. See: What Is This? A Psychedelic Place Mat?

See: 59. Medieval Mosque Shows Amazing Math Discovery

See Also:

• Colour and Sound