Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Images of Super-Kamiokande events from tscan

The Navier-Stokes equations are also of great interest in a purely mathematical sense. Somewhat surprisingly, given their wide range of practical uses, mathematicians have yet to prove that in three dimensions solutions always exist (existence), or that if they do exist they do not contain any infinities, singularities or discontinuities (smoothness). These are called the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problems. The Clay Mathematics Institute has called this one of the seven most important open problems in mathematics, and offered a $1,000,000 prize for a solution or a counter-example.



SETH LLOYD — HOW FAST, HOW SMALL, AND HOW POWERFUL?: MOORE'S LAW AND THE ULTIMATE LAPTOP
His stunning conclusion?

"The amount of information that can be stored by the ultimate laptop, 10 to the 31st bits, is much higher than the 10 to the 10th bits stored on current laptops. This is because conventional laptops use many degrees of freedom to store a bit whereas the ultimate laptop uses just one. There are considerable advantages to using many degrees of freedom to store information, stability and controllability being perhaps the most important. Indeed, as the above calculation indicates, to take full advantage of the memory space available, the ultimate laptop must turn all its matter into energy. A typical state of the ultimate laptop's memory looks like a plasma at a billion degrees Kelvin — like a thermonuclear explosion or a little piece of the Big Bang! Clearly, packaging issues alone make it unlikely that this limit can be obtained, even setting aside the difficulties of stability and control."


Ask Lloyd why he is interested in building quantum computers and you will get a two part answer. The first, and obvious one, he says, is "because we can, and because it's a cool thing to do." The second concerns some interesting scientific implications. "First," he says, "there are implications in pure mathematics, which are really quite surprising, that is that you can use quantum mechanics to solve problems in pure math that are simply intractable on ordinary computers." The second scientific implication is a use for quantum computers was first suggested by Richard Feynman in 1982, that one quantum system could simulate another quantum system. Lloyd points out that "if you've ever tried to calculate Feynman diagrams and do quantum dynamics, simulating quantum systems is hard. It's hard for a good reason, which is that classical computers aren't good at simulating quantum systems."
Bold emphasis added by me.

The issue of computer language would have been to reveal the deeper implications of the cosmos, while we entertain the "phase changes the universe will go through." While we may think of the blackhole used as a weapon on April fools day, what use the Ipod in Mission Impossible III if it were to melt into a superfluid and bring forth all the ills of the past? It 's in the supefluid state that all of the information of the past makes it's way again into this universe, and supplies the dark energy for the current state of the Universe?

Plato said:

Hey I got one for you. You remember mission impossible. Well in this case, your only able to use the ipod once, then it turns into a super liquid.


While we consider newer technologies what use to "see the sun in a different way" now that we understand the range of "the window of the universe" now incorporates gamma ray detection, it forces upon us the end result of Tscan compiled data?

The Tip of the Pyramid and Quantum Gravity

Michio Kaku:
I like to compare it to wandering in the desert, and stumbling over a tiny pebble. When we push away the sand, we find that this "pebble" is actually the tip of a gargantuan pyramid. After years of excavation, we find wondrous hieroglyphics, strange tunnels and secret passageways. Every time we think we are at the bottom stage, we find a stage below it. Finally, we think we are at the very bottom, and can see the doorway.

One day, some bright, enterprising physicist, perhaps inspired by this article, will complete the theory, open the doorway, and use the power of pure thought to determine if string theory is a theory of everything, anything, or nothing.

Only time will tell if Einstein was correct when he said, "But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed."


Tscan

Tscan ("Trivial Scanner") is an event display, traditionally called a scanner, which I developed. It is a program that shows events graphically on the computer screen.

It was designed to be simple ("trivial") internally, and to have a simple user interface. A lot of importance was given to giving the user a large choice of options to display events in many different ways.

Tscan proved to be a very useful tool for the development of fitters. A particularly useful feature is the ability to show custom data for every photpmultiplier tube (PMT). Instead of the usual time and charge, it can show expected charge, scattered light, likelihood, chi-squared difference, patches, and any other data that can be prepared in a text format.
See:Trivial Scanner

Credit: Super-Kamiokande/Tomasz Barszczak Three (or more?) Cerenkov rings

Multiple rings of Cerenkov light brighten up this display of an event found in the Super-Kamiokande - neutrino detector in Japan. The pattern of rings - produced when electrically charged particles travel faster through the water in the detector than light does - is similar to the result if a proton had decayed into a positron and a neutral pion. The pion would decay immediately to two gamma-ray photons that would produce fuzzy rings, while the positron would shoot off in the opposite direction to produce a clearer ring. Such kinds of decay have been predicted by "grand unified theories" that link three of nature's fundamental forces - the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces. However, there is so far no evidence for such decays; this event, for example, did not stand up to closer scrutiny.
See:Picture of the Week

Monday, March 31, 2008

What is AMS?



General objectives:To collect precision cosmic ray data at high energies, including 10^10 protons; to discover or rule out certain particles as explanations for dark matter; to study cosmic ray propagation in the galaxy; to search for exotic particles or spectral features among cosmic rays
See:AMS experiment mission overview

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Experiment

AMS is a particle detector for the International Space Station. A group of high-energy physicists are taking their experimental expertise - acquired in thirty years of experience at particle accelerators - into orbit. Space is full of high-energy particles of many types (collectively called "cosmic rays"), many of them originating in supernova explosions in distant galaxies. AMS detects them using a huge superconducting magnet and six highly specialized, ultra-precise detectors. It will sit on the ISS main truss - far above the obscuring atmosphere, and making full use of the ISS's irreplaceable support systems - and gather data for three years.


Long-Awaited Cosmic-Ray Detector May Be ShelvedBy DENNIS OVERBYE Published: April 3, 2007 The New York Times- Spacer and Cosmos

Beyond the experiment itself, the standoff represents a clash between two of the more strong-willed and brilliant leaders of Big Science in America: Dr. Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is known for his autocratic management style and obsession with detail, and Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, who has shown himself willing to make tough calls in reshaping the space program away from the shuttle and toward the Moon and Mars.


Photographs by The AMS Collaboration

NASA agreed in 1995 to carry the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the space station. But now the agency says its remaining shuttle flights are booked.

I have a thought to be considered here, that might spark some ideas about what happened to AMS. The question to my mind was whether this was more then political or money issue?

Think of Dennis Overbye's article of 2007, in face of the current article presented of his.

I thought along the way that this issue was resolved in regards to strangelets, and would had been "the issue" that solved allowed this to languish. But maybe there is more?

Numerical Relativity and the Human Experience?

"I’m a Platonist — a follower of Plato — who believes that one didn’t invent these sorts of things, that one discovers them. In a sense, all these mathematical facts are right there waiting to be discovered."Donald (H. S. M.) Coxeter


I contrast the nature of Numerical Relativity to the computer and the way we would think human consciousness could have been linked in it's various ways. Who hasn't thought that the ingenuity of the thinking mind could not have been considered the Synapse and the Portal to the thinking Mind?:)

Also think about what can be thought here as Gerardus t" Hooft asked as to think about in the limitations of what can be thought in relation to computerizations.

There is something to be said here about what conscious is not limited too. It is by it's very nature "leading perspective" that we would like to have all these variables included in or assertions of what we can see while providing experimental data to the mind set of those same computerization techniques?

Numerical Relativity Mind Map

So we of course like to see the mind's ingenuity( computerized or otherwise) when it comes to how it shall interpret what is the road to understanding that gravity is seen in Relativities explanation.

Source:Numerical Relativity Code and Machine Timeline


It is a process by which the world of blackholes come into viewing in it's most "technical means providing the amount of speed and memory" that would allow us to interpret events in the way we have.

The information has to be mapped to computational methodology in order for us to know what scientific value scan be enshrined in the descriptions of the Blackhole. Imagine that with current technologies we can never go any further then what we can currently for see given the circumstances of this technology?


Source:Expo/Information Center/Directory-Spacetime Wrinkles Map

So on the one hand there is an "realistic version" being mapped according to how we develop the means to visualize of what nature has bestowed upon us in the according to understanding Blackhole's and their Singularities.

Numerical Relativity and Math Transferance

Part of the advantage of looking at computer animations is knowing that the basis of this vision that is being created, is based on computerized methods and codes, devised, to help us see what Einstein's equations imply.

Now that's part of the effort isn't it, when we see the structure of math, may have also embued a Dirac, to see in ways that ony a good imagination may have that is tied to the abstractions of the math, and allows us to enter into "their portal" of the mind.

NASA scientists have reached a breakthrough in computer modeling that allows them to simulate what gravitational waves from merging black holes look like. The three-dimensional simulations, the largest astrophysical calculations ever performed on a NASA supercomputer, provide the foundation to explore the universe in an entirely new way.

Scientists are watching two supermassive black holes spiral towards each other near the center of a galaxy cluster named Abell 400. Shown in this X-ray/radio composite image are the multi-million degree radio jets emanating from the black holes. Click on image to view large resolution. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/AIfA/D.Hudson & T.Reiprich et al.; Radio: NRAO/VLA/NRL

According to Einstein's math, when two massive black holes merge, all of space jiggles like a bowl of Jell-O as gravitational waves race out from the collision at light speed.

Previous simulations had been plagued by computer crashes. The necessary equations, based on Einstein's theory of general relativity, were far too complex. But scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have found a method to translate Einstein's math in a way that computers can understand.


Quantum Gravity

Now their is a strange set of circumstance here that would leave me to believe, that the area of quantum gravity has lead Numerical Relativity to it's conclusion? Has the technology made itself feasible enough to explore new experimental data that would allow us to further interpret nature in the way it shows itself? What about at the source of the singularity?

See: Dealing with a 5D World

I would not be fully honest if I did not give you part of the nature of abstract knowledge being imparted to us, if I did not include the "areas of abstractness" to include people who help us draw the dimensional significance to experience in these mathematical ways. It is always good to listen to what they have to say so that we can further developed the understanding of what becomes a deeper recognition of the way nature unfolds of itself.

There are two reasons that having mapped E8 is so important. The practical one is that E8 has major applications: mathematical analysis of the most recent versions of string theory and supergravity theories all keep revealing structure based on E8. E8 seems to be part of the structure of our universe.

The other reason is just that the complete mapping of E8 is the largest mathematical structure ever mapped out in full detail by human beings. It takes 60 gigabytes to store the map of E8. If you were to write it out on paper in 6-point print (that's really small print), you'd need a piece of paper bigger than the island of Manhattan. This thing is huge.
Emphasis and underlined, my addition.

Computer Language and Math Joined from Artistic Impressionism?

Most people think of "seeing" and "observing" directly with their senses. But for physicists, these words refer to much more indirect measurements involving a train of theoretical logic by which we can interpret what is "seen."- Lisa Randall



THOMAS BANCHOFF has been a professor of mathematics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, since 1967. He has written two books and fifty articles on geometric topics, frequently incorporating interactive computer graphics techniques in the study of phenomena in the fourth and higher dimensions


The marriage between computer and math language(Banchoff) I would say would be important from the prospective of displaying imaging, seen in the development of abstract language as used in numerical relativity? Accummalated data gained from LIGO operations. Time variable measures?

See:Computer Graphics In Mathematical Research

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Cosmic censorship hypothesis

The New Bet

Whereas Stephen W. Hawking (having lost a previous bet on this subject by not demanding genericity) still firmly believes that naked singularities are an anathema and should be prohibited by the laws of classical physics,

And whereas John Preskill and Kip Thorne (having won the previous bet) still regard naked singularities as quantum gravitational objects that might exist, unclothed by horizons, for all the Universe to see,

Therefore Hawking offers, and Preskill/Thorne accept, a wager that

When any form of classical matter or field that is incapable of becoming singular in flat spacetime is coupled to general relativity via the classical Einstein equations, then

A dynamical evolution from generic initial conditions (i.e., from an open
set of initial data) can never produce a naked singularity
(a past-incomplete null geodesic from scri-plus).

The loser will reward the winner with clothing to cover the winner's nakedness. The clothing is to be embroidered with a suitable, truly concessionary message.

Stephen W. Hawking, John P. Preskill, Kip S. Thorne
Pasadena, California, 5 February 1997



In general relativity, the cosmic censorship hypothesis (CCH) is a conjecture about the nature of singularities in spacetime.

Singularities that arise in the solutions of Einstein's equations are typically hidden within event horizons, and therefore cannot be seen from the rest of spacetime. Singularities which are not so hidden are called naked. The weak cosmic censorship hypothesis conjectures that no naked singularities other than the Big Bang singularity exist in the universe. The hypothesis was conceived by Roger Penrose in 1969.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Blackhole Information Paradox

What good is a universe without somebody around to look at it?
Robert Dicke


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



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.


It is important to me to understand some of the history of the Blackhole, and the students who went on to develop the very ideas around them. To see how they interconnect at one time or another, to provide for the very insights from such gatherings.




Stephen Hawking’s says:

“Roger Penrose and I worked together on the large scale structure of space and time, including singularities and black holes. We pretty much agree on the classical theory of theory of relativity but disagreements began to emerge when we got into quantum gravity. We now have different approaches to the world, physical and mental. Basically, he is a Platonist believing that’s there’s a unique world of ideas that describes a unique physical reality. I on the other hand, am a positivist who believes that physical theories are just mathematical models we construct, and it is meaningless to ask if they correspond to reality; just whether they predict observations.”
( Chapter Six-The Large, the Small and the Human Mind-Roger Penrose-Cambridge University Press-1997)
See: Phil Warnell's comment.

Black hole information paradox


Whereas Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne firmly believe that information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden from the outside universe, and can never be revealed even as the black hole evaporates and completely disappears,

And whereas John Preskill firmly believes that a mechanism for the information to be released by the evaporating black hole must and will be found in the correct theory of quantum gravity,

Therefore Preskill offers, and Hawking/Thorne accept, a wager that:

When an initial pure quantum state undergoes gravitational collapse to form a black hole, the final state at the end of black hole evaporation will always be a pure quantum state.

The loser(s) will reward the winner(s) with an encyclopedia of the winner's choice, from which information can be recovered at will.

Stephen W. Hawking, Kip S. Thorne, John P. Preskill
Pasadena, California, 6 February 1997


Drawing Credit: XMM-Newton, ESA, NASA-Image sourced from: Pictured above is an artist's illustration of a black hole surrounded by an accretion disk.

The black hole Information Paradox results from the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It suggests that physical information could "disappear" in a black hole. It is a contentious subject since it violates a commonly assumed tenet of science—that information cannot be destroyed. If it is true, then cause and effect become unrelated, and nothing science knows, not even our memories, can be trusted.




Before the Big Bang

Professor Sir Roger Penrose, OM, FRS (born 8 August 1931) Before the Big Bang

Three Different Views of Quantum Weirdness
(and What It Means)


A: According to the orthodox view of quantum mechanics, called the Copenhagen interpretation, a system (represented here by a child’s block) does not occupy a definite state or location until it is measured. Before then it is just a blur of overlapping possibilities.

B: The many worlds interpretation insists that the system occupies all its possible states but that every one of them exists in its own alternate universe. Each universe sees one state only, which is why we never observe the block in two states at once.

C: In Penrose’s interpretation, gravity holds our reality together. In each potential state, the block generates a separate gravitational field. Over time, the energy required to maintain these multiple fields causes the block to settle into one state only—the one that we observe.


See:If an Electron Can Be in Two Places at Once, Why Can't You-by Tim Folger, Photograph by David Berry, Illustrations by Don Foley?

"In Penrose’s interpretation, gravity holds our reality together. In each potential state, the block generates a separate gravitational field.....," rings with a certain importance when one talks about what happens with the very nature of the blackhole. What happens to that information.

Phil Warnell:However, if the second is taken as truth and all is remembering, then what can the force of gravity do to a memory that is not in any, yet of all?

I tried to implement a method by which one could "gauge the significance of the emotive experience" as it may pertain to that "primitive part" of our nature. That we could see "remembering" had been assigned a "quantum reductionist state" within the confines of that methodology?

See:Quantum State reduction as a real phenomenon by Roger Penrose (Oxford)2 Sep 1999

"The block," while holding different gravitational defined consciousness states, had to settle to a strong emotive consolidating force from that experience. You repeatedly relive the experience, while current information saids that the memory can change. See Ledoux.

See:

Dennis William Sciama
Tipping LightCones and Escape Velocity of the Photon
What is Happening at the Singularity?
Science and the Mind: Sir Roger Penrose
Big Bang:One Man's Change of Heart

Epistemology

Some people have difficulty with accepting Plato’s mathematical world as being in any sense ‘real’, and would gain no comfort from a view that physical reality itself is constructed from abstract notions. My own position on this matter is that we should take Plato’s world as providing a kind of ‘reality’ as mathematical notions (and as I’ve tried to argue for forcefully for in the case S1.3) but I might baulk at actually attempting to physically identify physical reality within the abstract reality of Plato’s world. I think that Fig. 34.1 best expresses my position on this question, where each of three worlds, Platonic-mathematical, physical and mental-has it’s own kind of reality, and where each is (deeply and mysteriously) found in one that precedes it ( the worlds take cyclicly). I like to think that, in a sense the Platonic world may be the most primitive of the three, since mathematics is a kind of necessity, virtually conjuring its very existence through logic alone. Be that as it may, there is a further mystery, or paradox, of the cyclic aspect of these worlds , where each seems to be able to encompass the succeeding one in its entirety, while itself seeming to depend only upon a small part of its predecessor.”
(Page 1028-The Road to Reality- Roger Penrose- Borzoi Book, Alfred A. Knoff- 2004)


It was important to me to understand the differences here, and how I derived the ability of information of entering the location of the Synapse. While I had called it the Thinking Mind in relation to what is at the "tip of the Pyramid," it had to of course, go through a methodology before it could have said that all elements of the intuitive information gathered, was from a "idea of probabilities" that existed, yet, it is from that same location that all memories are stored.

"It was a matter of putting things together and ‘seeing’ the answer!" Roger Penrose- Shadows of the mind


The "infinite regress," was an inductive/deductive stance to developmental possibilities without having a mentorship around for consideration, and by developing "adhoc methods" in my search for knowledge, it became apparent any intuitive deduction/induction would had to be in face of all the information available from our experience and senses, as well as, what could exist from that place of "memories stored."

While the limitations of a life could had amounted to what is learnt in that life, it did not encompass what was possible from the storing of information from all of our lives. It did not encompass all that is stored in the "collective unconscious."

"To answer ‘by intuition’, is hardly satisfactory."Paul Benacerraf and Hillary Putnam


This of course requires a deeper critical analysis for my own understanding and development.


According to Plato, knowledge is a subset of that which is both true and believed

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. The term was introduced into English by the Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864).[2]

Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims. In other words, epistemology primarily addresses the following questions: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?"


A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)

The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" are used in philosophy to distinguish between deductive and inductive reasoning, respectively. Attempts to define clearly or explain a priori and a posteriori knowledge are part of a central thread in epistemology, the study of knowledge. Since the definitions and usage of the terms have been corrupted over time and therefore vary between fields, it is difficult to provide universal definitions of them. One rough and oversimplified explanation is that a priori knowledge is independent of experience, while a posteriori knowledge is dependent on experience. In other words, statements that are a priori true are tautologies.


Innatism

Innatism is a philosophical doctrine that holds that the mind is born with ideas/knowledge, and that therefore the mind is not a 'blank slate' at birth, as early empiricists such as John Locke claimed. It asserts therefore that not all knowledge is obtained from experience and the senses.


See:

The Synapse is a Portal of the Thinking Mind

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Dennis William Sciama

Dennis William Siahou Sciama FRS (November 18, 1926–December 18, 1999) was a British physicist who, through his own work and that of his students, played a major role in developing British physics after the Second World War.

Sciama also strongly influenced Roger Penrose, who dedicated his The Road to Reality to Sciama's memory. The 1960s group he led in Cambridge (which included Ellis, Hawking, Rees, and Carter), has proved of lasting influence.

Sciama was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1982. He was also an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Academia Lincei of Rome. He served as president of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation, 1980-84.

In 1959 he married Lidia Dina, a social anthropologist, who survived him, along with their two daughters.


Alma mater
University of Cambridge

Doctoral advisor
Paul Dirac


Doctoral students

John D. Barrow
George Ellis
Gary Gibbons
Stephen Hawking
Martin Rees
David Deutsch
Brandon Carter


It was important that I understood the context of the entry by Phil Warnell.

Phil:
However, if the second is taken as truth and all is remembering, then what can the force of gravity do to a memory that is not in any, yet of all? So if all were to collapse would the memory not persist, since it is not of what vanished. Strangely, Hawking proved it so and yet he still denies his mentor who advised not only that it would be so, yet why

Acquiring Knowledge

True creativity often starts where language ends.Arthur Koestler



Probabilties
(The Fifth Dimension)
|
|
Idea of the pipe
/ \
/ \
/ \
Picture of the pipe
/ \
/ \
/ \
The real pipe and form


See: Betrayal of Images" by Rene Magritte

IN a sense having already lived a life, one can say indeed that with what you learnt, you are able to make an assessment of life, and "in retrospective" lived life according to what you had learnt. But it's not always that easy. How was I suppose to know that life would turn out this way?

Life's simple moment of question about a whole life can be reduced to say "that in every moment" what shall I have done better? So we had to look at how we had lived, and only then, do we know "now," what we shall do different in the future.




So this is the quest you could say about "acquiring knowledge." Left to our own means, we can look at our environment, and one would have to wonder about your interaction with it. Left to your own means, without having the college degree, or the avenues to proceed under mentored tutorship, how is it that you could move yourself to the very "stop off points" for consideration, while you had lived your life, and advanced the knowledge?

Arthur Koestler CBE (September 5, 1905, Budapest – March 3, 1983, London)

As one discovers certain aspects of "the character of our heroes," it is not for me to judge their character in this blog piece, for they will be left to their own demise without my participation of condemning them.

IN "weighing the heart and the feather," the horrors of our own lives will have been left for us to "project forward," what we wish to correct again in another life. This does not ever diminish the wrongs done, but provides for a chance to move ever closer to that source, by acceptance of the "fate" by our choice of a new certain future?

Hall of Ma'at

In art, the feather was shown in scenes of the Hall of Ma'at. This hall is where the deceased was judged for his worthiness to enter the afterlife. The seat of the deceased's soul, his heart, was weighed on a balance against the feather of Ma'at. If the heart was free from the impurities of sin, and therefore lighter than the feather, then the dead person could enter the eternal afterlife. Other gods in the judgement hall who were part of the tribunal overseeing the weighing of the heart were also pictured holding a feather.
See:Egyptian Myths

In all the wrongs of that character was there ever a "light that shined in a piece of knowledge" whilst the lives struggled toward a future?

Of Koestler’s many books, his powerfully anti-Communist novel Darkness at Noon (1941) is still the most famous, but he wrote one book that focused squarely on the paranormal – The Roots of Coincidence (1972). Here, he attempts to find a basis for paranormal events in coincidence, or more precisely synchronicity, so that there is only one phenomenon to explain rather than many. He proceeds to seek the roots of coincidence in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of quantum physics, the infinitesimally small subatomic realm where our everyday logic no longer holds sway, where particles can be waves and vice versa, where forces that only mathematical equations can glimpse swim in the dark, unfathomable ocean of probability before the manifestation of either matter or mind. Towards the end of the book, Koestler pleads that parapsychology be made “academically respectable and attractive to students”, otherwise the “limitations of our biological equipment may condemn us to the role of Peeping Toms at the keyhole of eternity”.


In the Mean Time

This is the thing that people do not understand and our youth especially. That while one may of liked to have lived like a Garrett Lisi, one would had to have known that life can be lived very simply. So, there is an answering to the needs of the lifestyle one is accustomed, to have allowed oneself to live "freely in your thoughts," to "make room," to advance your knowledge, while taking care of these necessities of life.

There's no way around it. There are no freebies that life can be made so easy, that you could surpass all that life holds for your viewing and participation. Too know, that there are many things we had to learn, not just the acquiring of the knowledge, but to had lived that life, and to have lived it to a much "higher standard." One we had entered this life to accomplish. Who is it, for us to say, what that plan was?

See:

Arthur Koestler and Creativity
The Soul=λόγος,θυμος,ἔρως

Monday, March 24, 2008

Dark Energy: Beyond Einstein Missions

Adept

Charles L. Bennett

"ADEPT will measure these supernovae, but its real advance lies in a new, more powerful technique. Patterns in temperature of the very young universe provide a 'standard ruler' that is imprinted on the pattern of galaxies across the sky. ADEPT aims to map these through space and time," according to Bennett

ADEPT promises to provide the galaxy positions needed to follow the historical development of the universe, so that astronomers can determine the role played by the dark energy. Bennett says that the ADEPT mission will help answer many questions about the role played by dark energy in both fundamental physics and cosmology. Jonathan Bagger, chair of the Johns Hopkins physics and astronomy department, agreed. "Twenty-first century physics is at a crossroads," he said. "Our fundamental theories of gravity and quantum mechanics are in conflict. Dark energy might point the way out."
See: for Concept Development-Lisa De Nike">NASA Selects Hopkins-led "ADEPT" Space Mission
for Concept Development


Destiny

Artist's rendition of the Destiny spacecraft-Image Credit: NASA/GSFC


Known as Destiny, the Dark Energy Space Telescope, the small spacecraft would detect and observe more than 3,000 supernovae over its two-year primary mission to measure the expansion history of the Universe, followed by a year-long survey of 1,000 square-degrees of the sky at near-infrared wavelengths to measure how the large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe has evolved since the Big Bang. Used together, the data from these two surveys will have 10 times the sensitivity of current ground-based projects to explore the properties of Dark Energy, and will provide data critical to understanding the origin of Dark Energy, which is poorly explained by existing physical theories.

“Destiny’s strength is that it is a simple, low-cost mission designed to attack the puzzling problem of Dark Energy directly with high statistical precision,” said Tod R. Lauer, the Principal Investigator for Destiny and an astronomer at NOAO. “We build upon grism technology used in the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to help us provide spectra of the supernovae as well as images. Spectra are critical to diagnosing the properties of the supernova, but are very difficult to obtain with more traditional cameras. Destiny’s grism camera, however, will take simultaneous spectra of all objects in its field. This is a major advantage of our approach, which greatly increases the ability to detect and characterize these distant stellar explosions.”
See:NASA Funds Development of Destiny: The Dark Energy Space Telescope

Snap

NASA will support the SNAP mission concept for probing dark energy by observing distant Type Ia supernova and studying weak gravitational lensing.

SNAP, the SuperNova/Acceleration Probe, is an experiment designed to learn the nature of dark energy by precisely measuring the expansion history of the universe. At present scientists cannot say whether dark energy has a constant value or has changed over time — or even whether dark energy is an illusion, with accelerating expansion being due to a gravitational anomaly instead.

"SNAP will investigate dark energy using two independent and powerful techniques," says Saul Perlmutter of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division, a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley who is principal investigator of SNAP and leader of the international Supernova Cosmology Project based at Berkeley Lab. "The best proven and most powerful current technique is to determine changes in the expansion rate by comparing the redshift and distance of Type Ia supernovae, but we are also targeting the most promising complementary technique, called 'weak gravitational lensing.'"
See: SNAP Wins NASA Support for Joint Dark Energy Mission

Sunday, March 23, 2008

WMAP Reveals Neutrinos, End of Dark Ages, First Second of Universe


WMAP cosmic microwave fluctuations over the full sky with 5-years of data. Colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations of the remnant glow from the infant universe: red regions are warmer and blue are cooler. Credit: WMAP Science Team

NASA released this week five years of data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) that refines our understanding of the universe and its development. It is a treasure trove of information, including at least three major findings:

WMAP cosmic microwave fluctuations over the full sky with 5 years of data. WMAP cosmic microwave fluctuations over the full sky with 5-years of data. Colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations of the remnant glow from the infant universe: red regions are warmer and blue are cooler.

* New evidence that a sea of cosmic neutrinos permeates the universe
* Clear evidence the first stars took more than a half-billion years to create a cosmic fog
* Tight new constraints on the burst of expansion in the universe's first trillionth of a second

"We are living in an extraordinary time," said Gary Hinshaw of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Ours is the first generation in human history to make such detailed and far-reaching measurements of our universe."



Relative constituents of the universe today, and for when the universe was 380,000 years old, 13.7 billion years ago. Neutrinos used to be a larger fraction of the energy of the universe than they are now. Credit: WMAP Science Team