Quantum Biology and the Hidden of Nature

Can the spooky world of quantum physics explain bird navigation, photosynthesis and even our delicate sense of smell? Clues are mounting that the rules governing the subatomic realm may play an unexpectedly pivotal role in the visible world. Join leading thinkers in the emerging field of quantum biology as they explore the hidden hand of quantum physics in everyday life and discuss how these insights may one day revolutionize thinking on everything from the energy crisis to quantum computers.See:Quantum Biology and the Hidden Nature of Nature World Science Festival

Multiverse: One Universe or Many

The inflationary theory of cosmology, an enduring theory about our universe and how it was formed, explains that just after the Big Bang, the universe went through a period of rapid expansion. This theory has been critical to understanding what’s going on in the cosmos today. But now, this long-held notion—which seems to suggest as-yet-unproven and perhaps unprovable features such as the multiverse—is under increasing attack. Through informed debate among architects of the inflationary theory and its prime competitors, this program will explore our best attempts to understand where we came from. See: Multiverse: One Universe or Many

The Genetics of Spacetime

It is interesting to discover a thought process that one can tap into which allows us to think in the way that we do?;) I'll explain a bit more after you read the quote and link supplied.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/4291413264/

If our experience of time and space share similar neural correlates, it begets a fundamental question: are space and time truly distinct in the mind, or are they the product of a generalized neurocognitive system that allows us to understand the world? See:Decoding Space and Time in the Brain

So the question here of genetics as a foundational basis for which the world takes on new meaning and content, is also  to suggest that such an evolution is mind/brain changing. Right?

 

 All-sky map of the CMB, created from 9 years of WMAP data

I have to wait until something appears that is missing so as to show that the current developments in our technologies(WMAP) are based on the spectrum of possibilities in the way we dive deeper into the reality.

  

Comparison of CMB results from COBE, WMAP and Planck – March 21, 2013.

  Cosmologically, it is appealing that we seek to describe the universe optically in so many ways. This allows us to look deeper into the cosmos then we did before. This is a established trade route then with which to accept a sensory derivation of the cosmos. This would have intermingled with the process genetically disposed so as to imbue our sight of. It becomes neurologically appealing as insight is generated?

 B-modes retain their special nature as manifest in the fact that they can possess a handedness that distinguishes left from right. For example here are two polarization fields with the same structure but in the E-mode on the left and the B-mode on the right:

See: Anomalous Alignments in the Cosmic Microwave Background

So I am suggesting that such an evolution and development of consciousness would be to accept that the depth of our seeing is to go much further if we penetrate the cosmos in ways that we have not considered before. Examples already in progress are inherent in how we look at our Sun in terms of the Heliophysics that has been established so as to see expected cosmos rays plummeting to earth and spraying our planet. This view already insights a neurological function of space?

If you sprinkle fine sand uniformly over a drumhead and then make it vibrate, the grains of sand will collect in characteristic spots and figures, called Chladni patterns. These patterns reveal much information about the size and the shape of the drum and the elasticity of its membrane. In particular, the distribution of spots depends not only on the way the drum vibrated initially but also on the global shape of the drum, because the waves will be reflected differently according to whether the edge of the drumhead is a circle, an ellipse, a square, or some other shape.

In cosmology, the early Universe was crossed by real acoustic waves generated soon after Big Bang. Such vibrations left their imprints 300 000 years later as tiny density fluctuations in the primordial plasma. Hot and cold spots in the present-day 2.7 K CMB radiation reveal those density fluctuations. Thus the CMB temperature fluctuations look like Chaldni patterns resulting from a complicated three-dimensional drumhead that.

The Shape of Space after WMAP data

See Also:

• Why do Science?
• All-sky map 
• Hearing Shape of the Drum

Two Paul Steinhardt Projects: "Cyclic Universe" and "Quasicrystals"

Two Paul Steinhardt Projects: "Cyclic Universe" and "Quasicrystals"

Paul Steinhardt

Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Departments of Physics and Astrophysical...

Quasi-elegance....As a young student first reading Weyl's book, crystallography seemed like the "ideal" of what one should be aiming for in science: elegant mathematics that provides a complete understanding of all physical possibilities. Ironically, many years later, I played a role in showing that my "ideal" was seriously flawed. In 1984, Dan Shechtman, Ilan Blech, Denis Gratias and John Cahn reported the discovery of a puzzling manmade alloy of aluminumand manganese with icosahedral symmetry. Icosahedral symmetry, with its six five-fold symmetry axes, is the most famous forbidden crystal symmetry. As luck would have it, Dov Levine (Technion) and I had been developing a hypothetical idea of a new form of solid that we dubbed quasicrystals, short for quasiperiodic crystals. (A quasiperiodic atomic arrangement means the atomic positions can be described by a sum of oscillatory functions whose frequencies have an irrational ratio.) We were inspired by a two-dimensional tiling invented by Sir Roger Penrose known as the Penrose tiling, comprised of two tiles arranged in a five-fold symmetric pattern. We showed that quasicrystals could exist in three dimensions and were not subject to the rules of crystallography. In fact, they could have any of the symmetries forbidden to crystals. Furthermore, we showed that the diffraction patterns predicted for icosahedral quasicrystals matched the Shechtman et al. observations. Since 1984, quasicrystals with other forbidden symmetries have been synthesized in the laboratory. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Dan Shechtman for his experimental breakthrough that changed our thinking about possible forms of matter. More recently, colleagues and I have found evidence that quasicrystals may have been among the first minerals to have formed in the solar system.

The crystallography I first encountered in Weyl's book, thought to be complete and immutable, turned out to be woefully incomplete, missing literally an uncountable number of possible symmetries for matter. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned: While elegance and simplicity are often useful criteria for judging theories, they can sometimes mislead us into thinking we are right, when we are actually infinitely wrong. See:
2012 : WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?

See Also:

• Quasicrystal: Prof. Dan Shechtman
• what is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful - Dialogos of Eide
• Cyclic model
• Cycle of Birth, Life, and Death-Origin, Identity, and Destiny by Gabriele Veneziano
• Conformal Cyclic Cosmology....

All-sky map

All-sky map of the CMB, created from 9 years of WMAP data

Comparison of CMB results from COBE, WMAP and Planck – March 21, 2013.

Working out what happened in the moments after the Big Bang is difficult. Scientists can come up with theories, but in the end they are useful only if they can be tested. Nobel prizewinner Robert Laughlin is passionate about experiments. He challenges the students in this film, and laureate David Gross, to come up with ways to test our big ideas about the Universe. The two laureates make a bet. Watch the film to find out more and to decide who wins.See:Betting on the cosmos - with David Gross and Robert Laughlin

See Also:

• http://www.eskesthai.com/2013/03/our-baby-universe-with-ed-copeland.html
• http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/research/gr/public/cs_top.html
• http://www.eskesthai.com/2013/04/hearing-shape-of-drum.html

Hmmmm...Pringles Potato Chip Still?

Solving quantum field theories via curved spacetimes by Igor R. Klebanov and Juan M. Maldacena

IN their figure 2. Hyperbolic space, and their comparative relation to the M.C.Escher's Circle Limit woodcut, Klebanov and Maldacena write, " but we have replaced Escher's interlocking fish with cows to remind readers of the physics joke about the spherical cow as an idealization of a real one. In anti-de Sitter/conformal theory correspondence, theorists have really found a hyperbolic cow."

Does Planck 2013 Data hurt the continuance of geometrical underpinnings?

The recent Planck satellite combined with earlier results eliminate a wide spectrum of more complex inflationary models and favor models with a single scalar field, as reported in the analysis of the collaboration. More important, though, is that all the simplest inflaton models are disfavored by the data while the surviving models -- namely, those with plateau-like potentials -- are problematic. We discuss how the restriction to plateau-like models leads to three independent problems: it exacerbates both the initial conditions problem and the multiverse-unpredictability problem and it creates a new difficulty which we call the inflationary "unlikeliness problem." Finally, we comment on problems reconciling inflation with a standard model Higgs, as suggested by recent LHC results. In sum, we find that recent experimental data disfavors all the best-motivated inflationary scenarios and introduces new, serious difficulties that cut to the core of the inflationary paradigm. Forthcoming searches for B-modes, non-Gaussianity and new particles should be decisive.See: Inflationary paradigm in trouble after Planck2013

 

X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNAM/Ioffe/D.Page,P.Shternin et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

See:

• The Pringles Potato Chip
• Spherical Cows and their X-ray Sources
• Chandra Images by Category: Supernovas & Supernova Remnants

Preposterous Universe Episode 1: Thought-Reading in 5 Years?

Preposterous Universe Episode 1: Thought-Reading in 5 Years?
 
Sean's Post: New Video Project

Obama Proposes Brain Mapping Project 

See Also:

• Sensor Developments for Human Condition
• Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves
• Self-organization

Think About Nature on Edge.Org

Lee Smolin

The main question I'm asking myself, the question that puts everything together, is how to do cosmology; how to make a theory of the universe as a whole system. This is said to be the golden age of cosmology and it is from an observational point of view, but from a theoretical point of view it's almost a disaster. It's crazy the kind of ideas that we find ourselves thinking about. And I find myself wanting to go back to basics—to basic ideas and basic principles—and understand how we describe the world in a physical theory. See:Think About Nature

See Also:

• Getting Perspective on Time

• Time, Born Again

John Legend: "True Colors"

http://www.ted.com/talks/john_legend_true_colors.html

See Also:

• Color of Gravity 4

Slac-All Access

Three hundred and fifty miles overhead, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope silently glides through space. From this serene vantage point, the satellite's instruments watch the fiercest processes in the universe unfold. Pulsars spin up to 700 times a second, sweeping powerful beams of gamma-ray light through the cosmos. The hyperactive cores of distant galaxies spew bright jets of plasma. Far beyond, something mysterious explodes with unfathomable power, sending energy waves crashing through the universe. Stanford professor and KIPAC member Roger W. Romani talks about this orbiting telescope, the most advanced ever to view the sky in gamma rays, a form of light at the highest end of the energy spectrum that's created in the hottest regions of the universe.

See: http://fgst.slac.stanford.edu/

See Also:

• Fermi Gamma-Ray Sky