Friday, May 03, 2013

Generalizatons on:" It From Bit" Part 2

John Archibald Wheeler (born July 9, 1911) is an eminent American theoretical physicist. One of the later collaborators of Albert Einstein, he tried to achieve Einstein's vision of a unified field theory. He is also known as the coiner of the popular name of the well known space phenomenon, the black hole. 


There is always somebody who is the teacher and from them, their is a progeny. It would not be right not to mention John Archibald Wheeler. Or, not to mention some of his students.

Notable students

Demetrios Christodoulou
Richard Feynman
Jacob Bekenstein
Robert Geroch
Bei-Lok Hu
John R. Klauder
Charles Misner
Milton Plesset
Kip Thorne
Arthur Wightman
Hugh Everett
Bill Unruh

So it is with some respect that as we move back in time we see the names of those who have brought us forward ever closer to the understanding and ideal of some phenomenological approach so as to say such a course of events has indeed been fruitful. Also, to say that such branches that exist off of John Archibald Wheeler's work serve to remind us of the wide diversity of approaches to understanding and developing gravitational approaches to acceptance and development.

COSMIC SEARCH: How did you come up with the name "black hole"?

John Archibald Wheeler: It was an act of desperation, to force people to believe in it. It was in 1968, at the time of the discussion of whether pulsars were related to neutron stars or to these completely collapsed objects. I wanted a way of emphasizing that these objects were real. Thus, the name "black hole".

The Russians used the term frozen star—their point of attention was how it looked from the outside, where the material moves much more slowly until it comes to a horizon.* (*Or critical distance. From inside this distance there is no escape.) But, from the point of view of someone who's on the material itself, falling in, there's nothing special about the horizon. He keeps on going in. There's nothing frozen about what happens to him. So, I felt that that aspect of it needed more emphasis.

So as we go back in time we see where certain functions as a description and features of a reality has to suggest there was some beginning. It is also the realization that such a beginning sought to ask us to consider the function and reality of such new concepts so as to force us to deal with the fundamentals of that reality.

Dr. Kip Thorne, Caltech 13


So again, as we go back in time we see where such beginnings in sciences approach has to have it's beginning not only as a recognition of the black hole, but of where we have been lead toward today's approach to gravity in terms of what is discrete and what is considered, a continuum. These functions, as gravity, show a certain distinction then in terms of today's science as they exist from John Archibald Wheeler's approach so as to that question to his search for links to, Information, Physics and the Quantum began.

Thursday, May 02, 2013

NASA operates a system observatory of Heliophysics missions

The Heliophysics System Observatory (HSO) showing current operating missions, missions in development, and missions under study. Credit: NASA

NASA operates a system observatory of Heliophysics missions, utilizing the entire fleet of solar, heliospheric, and geospace spacecraft to discover the processes at work throughout the space environment. In addition to its science program, NASA’s Heliophysics Division routinely partners with other agencies to fulfill the space weather research or operational objectives of the nation. See: What are our current capabilities to predict space weather?



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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

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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

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

Sunday, April 28, 2013

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



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Friday, April 26, 2013

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



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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.




Thursday, April 25, 2013

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



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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...



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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Entanglement on the Space Station






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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