Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Building the 'Big Bang machine': LHC Startup on Monday (10sep08)

ronjon — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:11:11 -0700

The Large Hadron Collider is not just an extraordinary science experiment, it is also a remarkable engineering undertaking. Just getting it built is an astonishing story in itself...

The LHC took 10,000 scientists a total of 14 years to assemble. ...

Here's the story of the biggest science experiment in human history ...

John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term ‘Black Hole,’ Dead at 96

ronjon — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:37:13 -0700

John A. Wheeler, a visionary physicist and teacher who helped invent the theory of nuclear fission, gave black holes their name and argued about the nature of reality with Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, died Sunday morning at his home in Hightstown, N.J. He was 96...

As a professor at Princeton and then at the University of Texas in Austin, Dr. Wheeler set the agenda for generations of theoretical physicists, using metaphor as effectively as calculus to capture the imaginations of his students and colleagues and to pose questions that would send them, minds blazing, to the barricades to confront nature. ...

'Going beyond God,' Karen Armstrong's transformed views of religion

ronjon — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:29:03 -0700

Imho, this is an important article about the pluses and minuses of religion, an interview with a former nun who has had many deep experiences of what she writes. Highly recommended. ~ ronjon

Karen Armstrong is a one-woman publishing industry, the author of nearly 20 books on religion. When her breakthrough book "A History of God" appeared in 1993, this British writer quickly became known as one of the world's leading historians of spiritual matters. Her work displays a wide-ranging knowledge of religious traditions -- from the monotheistic religions to Buddhism. What's most remarkable is how she carved out this career for herself after rejecting a life in the church.

At 17, Armstrong became a Catholic nun. She left the convent after seven years of torment. "I had failed to make a gift of myself to God," she wrote in her recent memoir, "The Spiral Staircase." While she despaired over never managing to feel the presence of God, Armstrong also bristled at the restrictive life imposed by the convent, which she described in her first book, "Through the Narrow Gate." When she left in 1969, she had never heard of the Beatles or the Vietnam War, and she'd lost her faith in God. ...

Higgs Boson: A Ghost in the Machine

ronjon — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:41:49 -0700

...In 1964, Peter Higgs, a shy scientist in Edinburgh, added his name to that list by coming up with an ingenious theory that gave scientists the tools to explain how two classes of particles, which now appear to be different, were once one and the same. His theory proposes the existence of a single particle responsible for imparting mass to all things — a speck so precious it has come to be known as the "God particle." The scientific term for it is the Higgs boson, and to find it physicists are counting on the most powerful particle accelerator ever constructed: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, a 17-mile underground circuit that took 25 years to plan and $6 billion to build.

The LHC won't begin operation until this summer, but when Higgs, 78, made his first visit there on April 5, it was, in the nomenclature of particle physics, "an event." ...

4) The Anthropic Principle: Final Letters, Susskind's #3 & Smolin's #3

ronjon — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:33:01 -0700

4) Here are the final letters by Leonard Susskind' and Lee Smolin in their email debate re the Anthropic Principle.

Smolin: ... My main point is that string theory will have much more explanatory power if the dominant mode of reproduction is through black holes, as is the case in the original version of CNS. This is the key point I would hope to convince Susskind and his colleagues about, because I am sure that the case they want to make is very much weakened if they rely on the Anthropic Principle (AP) and eternal inflation. ...

Susskind: ... Finally let me quote a remark of Smolin's that I find revealing. He says "It was worry about the possibility that string theory would lead to the present situation, which Susskind has so ably described in his recent papers, that led me to invent the Cosmological Natural Selection (CNS) idea and to write my first book. My motive, then as now, is to prevent a split in the community of theoretical physicists in which different groups of smart people believe different things, with no recourse to come to consensus by rational argument from the evidence." First of all, preventing a "split in the community of theoretical physicists" is an absurdly ridiculous reason for putting forward a scientific hypothesis.

But what I find especially mystifying is Smolin's tendency to set himself up as an arbiter of good and bad science. Among the people who feel that the anthropic principle deserves to be taken seriously, are some very famous physicists and cosmologists with extraordinary histories of scientific accomplishment. They include Steven Weinberg [2], Joseph Polchinski [3], Andrei Linde [4], and Sir Martin Rees [5]. These people are not fools, nor do they need to be told what constitutes good science. ...

First extra-solar organic molecule discovered

ronjon — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:04:42 -0700

The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the first organic molecule on a planet that's not in our solar system. According to NASA, this breakthrough could be a major step toward discovering life on other planets. Scientists believe that the organic compound detected, methane, can be an integral part in the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it. ...

3) The Anthropic Principle: Leonard Susskind's #2 to Lee Smolin #2

ronjon — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:21:29 -0700

3) Here's Leonard Susskind's #2 to Lee Smolin #2:

...The issue here is not whether the usual phenomenological inflation was of the eternal kind although that is relevant. Eternal inflation taking place in any false vacuum minimum on the landscape would favor [in Smolin's sense] the maximum cosmological constant. But for the sake of argument I will agree to ignore eternal inflation as a reproduction mechanism.

The question of how many black holes are formed is somewhat ambiguous. What if two black holes coalesce to form a single one. Does that count as one black hole or two? Strictly speaking, given that black holes are defined by the global geometry, it is only one black hole. What happens if all the stars in the galaxy eventually fall into the central black hole? That severely diminishes the counting. So we better assume that the bigger the black hole, the more babies it will have. Perhaps one huge black hole spawns more offspring than 10^22 stellar black holes.

That raises the question of what exactly is a black hole? One of the deepest lessons that we have learned over the past decade is that there is no fundamental difference between elementary particles and black holes. As repeatedly emphasized by 't Hooft [10][11][12], black holes are the natural extension of the elementary particle spectrum. This is especially clear in string theory where black holes are simply highly excited string states. Does that mean that we should count every particle as a black hole? ...

The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter (Book Review)

ronjon — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:00:00 -0700

...if antimatter is, from a physics standpoint, the mirror image of matter, why is there so little antimatter in the universe? What happened early in the universe’s history to favor—if by only a small amount—the creation of matter instead of antimatter?

Particle physics has, like other scientific fields, its own lexicon that can be baffling to outsiders, and while reading 'The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter' one runs the risk of getting lost among terms like CP violation, J/psi particles, and leptogenesis. The authors do their best, though, to explain non-intuitive physics with plain language and analogies... For those curious about why the universe is the way it is, this book is a reminder of how much we have learned about physics at its smallest and largest scales, but also how much more we have yet to understand. ...

WMAP gives thumbs-up to cosmological model

ronjon — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:27:13 -0700

It’s easy to forget that until recently cosmology was largely a theoretical science. Thanks in particular to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which was launched by NASA in 2001 to study the cosmic microwave background, researchers are now able to talk about the first instants of the universe with the kind of certainty normally associated with a bench-top experiment.

With the analysis of two further years of WMAP data announced last week, that view of the early universe has just got even more detailed. As well as placing tighter constraints on parameters such as the age and content of the universe, the five-year WMAP data provide new, independent evidence for a cosmic neutrino background. The detection of such low-energy neutrinos, wrote Steven Weinberg in 1977 in his famous book The First Three Minutes, “would provide the most dramatic possible confirmation of the standard model of the early universe” — yet at the time no-one knew how to detect such a signal.

Artificial black hole created in lab

ronjon — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 01:00:00 -0800

Faced with the difficulty of observing Hawking radiation from astrophysical black holes, some physicists have attempted to make artificial ones in the lab that have a higher characteristic temperature. Clearly, generating huge amounts of gravity is both dangerous and next to impossible. But artificial black holes could be based on an analogous system in which the curved space–time of a gravitational field is enacted by another varying parameter that affects the propagation of a wave. “We cannot change the laws of gravity at our will,” Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews in the UK tells physicsworld.com. “But we can change analogous parameters in a condensed-matter system.” Leonhardt’s group at St Andrews is the first to create an artificial black-hole system in which Hawking radiation could be detected (Science 319 1367). ...

NASA Baffled by Unexplained Force Acting on Space Probes

ronjon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:00:00 -0800

Mysteriously, four spacecraft that flew past the Earth have each displayed unexpected anomalies in their motions. -- These newfound enigmas join the so-called "Pioneer anomaly" as hints that unexplained forces may appear to act on spacecraft.

A decade ago, after rigorous analyses, anomalies were seen with the identical Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft as they hurtled out of the solar system. Both seemed to experience a tiny but unexplained constant acceleration toward the sun. -- A host of explanations have been bandied about for the Pioneer anomaly. At times these are rooted in conventional science — perhaps leaks from the spacecraft have affected their trajectories. At times these are rooted in more speculative physics — maybe the law of gravity itself needs to be modified.

Now Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer John Anderson and his colleagues — who originally helped uncover the Pioneer anomaly — have discovered that four spacecraft each raced either a tiny bit faster or slower than expected when they flew past the Earth en route to other parts of the solar system. ...

2) The Anthropic Principle: Lee Smolin's #2 to Leonard Susskind #1

ronjon — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:26:16 -0800

2) And here's Lee Smolin's #2 to Leonard Susskind #1:

I am grateful to Lenny for taking the time to respond to my paper. I will be as brief as I can in replying, especially as the key points are already presented in detail in my paper hep-th/0407213 ["Scientific alternatives to the anthropic principle"] or in my book, Life of the Cosmos or previous papers on the subject. -- For clarity I had in section 5.1.6 identified two arguments in Weinberg's papers. The first is the one I criticized in the summary. Susskind reponds, reasonably, by agreeing, and then raising the second argument. This argument is also criticized in detail in my paper, and it was perhaps a mistake not to include this in the summary I sent to Susskind.

This second argument is based on a version of the AP called the "Principle of Mediocrity" by Garriga and Vilenkin, who have done the most to develop it. Their version states that, "...our civilization is typical in the ensemble of all civilizations in the universe." -- This argument is discussed in full in sections 5.1.5 and 5.1.6. There I argue that the mediocrity principle cannot yield falsifiable predictions because it depends on the definition of the ensemble within which our civilization is taken to be typical as well as on assumptions about the probability distribution. I establish this by general argument as well as by reference to specific examples including Weinberg's use of it.

Can this be right if, as Susskind claims, Weinberg's prediction was found to hold? In fact, Weinberg's prediction did not work all that well. In the form that he made it, it led to an expectation of a cosmological constant larger than the observed value. Depending on the ensemble chosen and the assumptions made about the probability distribution, the probability that Lambda be as small as observed ranges between about 10 % and a few parts in ten thousand. In fact, the less probable values are the more reasonable, as they come from an ensemble where Q, the scale of the density fluctuations, is allowed to vary. While I am not an expert here, it appears from a reading of the literature [references in the paper] that to make the probability for the present value as large as 10% one has to assume that Q is frozen and fixed by fundamental theory. It is hard to imagine a theory where the parameters vary but Q does not, as it depends on parameters in the inflation potential. ...

1) The Anthropic Principle: Leonard Susskind's Reply #1 to Lee Smolin #1

ronjon — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:23:59 -0800

1) Here's Leonard Susskind's answer to Lee Smolin's first email:

Yesterday I received an email message from Lee Smolin asking for my comments about a paper he had posted the previous day [1]. Having not had a chance to read the paper I asked if he would summarize the arguments. He was kind enough to do so in an admirably concise and clear summary. (See above). -- I took a quick look at the paper just to make sure that there was not more that I might have missed in the summary. -- I noticed that in the paper Smolin quotes the philosopher, Karl Popper. Personally I don't think these are deep philosophical issues requiring a heavyweight like Popper. Weinberg was just using good old fashioned common sense.

Weinberg's argument, which is clearly stated in his general audience book Dreams of a Final Theory is not that the cosmological constant has to be smaller than the limit from galaxy formation. If it were, then Smolin would be correct: the Anthropic Principle doesn't add much to the observed fact that galaxies exist. What Weinberg argued was that if the Anthropic Principle is correct, then the cosmological constant will probably not be much smaller than the galaxy formation limit. Weinberg was just expressing the common sense opinion that if anthropics is the only reason the cosmological constant is small, then it is unlikely that it will be orders of magnitude smaller than the anthropic limit. -- Was it a prediction that could be proved wrong? Most people thought so. Just about everyone I know was certain that the cosmological constant was exactly zero.

Smolin's next argument involves what he calls a scientific alternative to the Anthropic Principle. He argues for a Darwinian natural selection principle. Smolin believes, as I do, that universes can reproduce and give rise to mutated offspring that differ in the values of the constants of nature. He believes the mechanism involves black holes while I believe it involves eternal inflation and Coleman de Luccia bubble nucleation. But either will do. ...

0) Smolin vs. Susskind: The Anthropic Principle. Lee Smolin's first letter to Leonard Susskind

ronjon — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 02:11:50 -0800

Introduction

Recently, I received a copy of an email sent by Leonard Susskind to a group of physicists which included an attached file entitled "Answer to Smolin". This was the opening salvo of an intense email exchange between Susskind and Smolin concerning Smolin's argument that "the Anthropic Principle (AP) cannot yield any falsifiable predictions, and therefore cannot be a part of science".

After reading several postings by each of the physicists, I asked each if (a) they would consider posting the comments on Edge, and (b) if they would write a new, and final "letter". -- Both agreed, but only after a negotiation: (1) No more than 1 letter each; (2) Neither sees the other's letter in advance; (3) No changes after the fact. A physics shoot-out.
While this is a conversation written by physicists for physicists, it should nonetheless be of interest for Edge readers as it's in the context of previous Edge features with the authors, it's instructive as to how science is done, and it's a debate that clarifies, not detracts. And finally it's a good example of what Edge is all about, where contributors share the boundaries of their knowledge and experience with each other and respond to challenges, comments, criticisms, and insights. The constant shifting of metaphors, the intensity with which we advance our ideas to each other — this is what intellectuals do. Edge draws attention to the larger context of intellectual life. ...

Nobel Laureate Queries Point To Postmodern Dark Matter Theory, Big Bang

ronjon — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:00:00 -0800

"How inflation happened a split second after the Big Bang." "Identify the exact sources of these cosmic rays and how they accelerate particles." Two different Nobel Laureates raised these two unrelated queries in cosmology publicly in November and December 2007. The timing of these queries is close to the fourth anniversary of a postmodern Big Bang cosmology theory published Dec. 15, 2003, in a cosmology book, "How Dark Matter Created Dark Energy and the Sun," authored by Jerome Drexler.

There is the possibility that plausible answers or helpful responses to both of these queries can be derived from a recent cosmology paper utilizing Drexler's dark matter theory and Big Bang cosmology... The paper argues that the Big Bang, which occurred at the beginning of time, must have satisfied the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Thus, immediately after the Big Bang the entropy of the universe would be at the lowest level it would reach throughout all time. Therefore, the Big Bang should not be characterized, as it has been for over 40 years, as a chaotic fireball explosion associated with a high level of disorder and high entropy.

The very low entropy could be achieved by the Big Bang firing out, in all directions, high-velocity ultra-high-energy (UHE) relativistic protons and helium nuclei in the well-known ratio of 12 to 1. A very high percentage of their energies would be available to do work since their entropy, a measure of the percentage of their energy unavailable to do work, would be very low. Such a Big Bang, characterized by a dispersion of UHE relativistic nuclei, would be highly efficient and could create very high usable energy and very low entropy, and might be designated a Relativistic Big Bang. This concept is fundamental to Drexler's dark matter theory and his postmodern Big Bang cosmology. ...

Potentially Habitable Planets Are Common, Study Says

ronjon — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:49:21 -0800

More than half of the sunlike stars in the galaxy could have terrestrial planets with the potential to harbor life, a new study suggests.

The research, announced yesterday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Massachusetts, is just one of a set of recent findings that suggest the roster of potential life-harboring worlds is huge—even in our own solar system.

"Our observations suggest that between 20 percent and 60 percent of sunlike stars form rocky planets like our solar system's," said Michael Meyer, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, at a press briefing Sunday.

Meyer and his team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to study heat from the dust around sunlike stars of various ages, much like looking at "the smoke you see rising from chimneys in Boston on a cold day." ...

Superfluids could create a 'universe in a bucket'

ronjon — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:00:00 -0800

IT'S an ambitious task, recreating the universe in a bucket. But if it is successful, the experiment could help solve the twin puzzles of why we're made of matter rather than antimatter and where the huge magnetic fields that span galaxies come from.

At last month's Cosmology Meets Condensed Matter conference in London, it emerged that space-time could be simulated in the lab using weird substances known as "superfluids", which flow without resistance and can even climb up the walls of jars. Intriguingly, the equations governing the particles inside superfluids are similar to those that represent the early universe, says Ray Rivers at Imperial College London. "We hope that we can use these to check things in the lab that frankly we don't have any hope of seeing through astrophysical observations." ...

Laser Light Creates [first?] Black Holes In The Lab

ronjon — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:57:39 -0800

Imagine being able to peek inside a black hole and even perform experiments there. It may not be as far-fetched as it sounds, thanks to a team which claims to have simulated a black hole’s event horizon in the lab. -- Ulf Leonhardt at the University of St Andrews, UK, and his colleagues accomplished the feat by firing lasers down an optical fiber, exploiting the fact that different wavelengths of light move at different speeds within an optical fiber.

They first shot a relatively slowmoving laser pulse through the fibre, and then sent a faster “probe wave” chasing after it. The first pulse distorts the optical properties of the fibre simply by travelling through it. This distortion forces the speedy probe wave to slow down dramatically when it catches up with the slower pulse and tries to move through it. In fact, the probe wave becomes trapped and can never overtake the pulse’s leading edge, which effectively becomes a black hole event horizon, beyond which light cannot escape.

This “laser black hole” could allow physicists to examine what happens to light on both sides of a event horizon – “a feat that is utterly impossible in astrophysics”, the authors note in their paper. ...

"We Should Take the 'Posthuman' Era Seriously," by Martin Rees (Pres. of the Royal Society)

ronjon — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:03:02 -0800

Public discourse on very long-term planning is riddled with inconsistencies. Mostly we discount the future very heavily — investment decisions are expected to pay off within a decade or two. But when we do look further ahead — in discussions of energy policy, global warming and so forth — we underestimate the possible pace of transformational change. In particular, we need to keep our minds open — or at least ajar — to the possibility that humans themselves could change drastically within a few centuries.

Our medieval forebears in Europe had a cosmic perspective that was a million-fold more constricted than ours. Their entire cosmology — from creation to apocalypse — spanned only a few thousand years. Today, the stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are part of common culture — except among some creationists and fundamentalists. Moreover, we are mindful of immense future potential. It seems absurd to regard humans as the culmination of the evolutionary tree. Any creatures witnessing the Sun's demise 6 billion years hence won't be human — they could be as different from us as we are from slime mould...

Human-induced changes are occurring with runaway speed. It's hard to predict a mere century from now, because what will happen depends on us — this is the first century where humans can collectively transform, or even ravage, the entire biosphere. Humanity will soon itself be malleable, to an extent that's qualitatively new in the history of our species. New drugs (and perhaps even implants into our brains) could change human character; the cyberworld has potential that is both exhilarating and frightening. We can't confidently guess lifestyles, attitudes, social structures, or population sizes a century hence. Indeed, it's not even clear for how long our descendants would remain distinctively 'human'. Darwin himself noted that "not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity". Our own species will surely change and diversify faster than any predecessor —— via human-induced modifications (whether intelligently-controlled or unintended), not by natural selection alone...

Galaxy without dark matter puzzles astronomers

ronjon — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:23:34 -0800

...In the outer regions of most galaxies, stars orbit around the centre so fast that they should fly away. The combined mass of all the observable inner stars and gas does not exert strong enough gravity to hold onto these speeding outliers, suggesting some mass is missing. -- Most astronomers believe that the missing mass is made up of some exotic invisible substance, labelled dark matter, which forms vast spherical halos around each galaxy. Another possibility is that the force of gravity behaves in an unexpected way, a theory known as modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND.

In the spiral galaxy NGC 4736, however, the rotation slows down as you move farther out from the crowded inner reaches of the galaxy. At first glance, that declining rotation curve is just what you would expect if there is no extended halo of dark matter, and no modification to gravity. As you move far away from the swarming stars of the inner galaxy, gravity becomes weaker, and so motions become more sedate.

...one exceptional dark-matter-less galaxy would be a great puzzle. "The current picture is that galaxies form inside of dark matter halos," Diemand told New Scientist. The dark matter's gravity attracts ordinary gas, which can then coagulate into stars. -- It is unclear how one would form a galaxy without a dark halo, or how one could remove the halo without destroying the galaxy," says Diemand. "A galaxy without dark matter really does not fit into our current understanding of cosmology and galaxy formation." ...

NASA to beam Beatles' song 'Across the Universe' to deep space on Feb.4,2008

ronjon — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 02:00:00 -0800

...at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, Feb. 4...NASA will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first space mission — the launch of the Explorer 1 satellite — by using the system of huge antennas that usually listen for inbound signals from space to send one outbound instead: the Beatles’ song “Across the Universe,” which as it happens was mostly recorded exactly 40 years earlier, on Feb. 4, 1968.

Reception will be best in the general direction of Polaris, 431 lightyears away, which is where NASA is aiming the signal. (That would be the North Star to us laymen.) But it ought to be audible in plenty of places on Earth as well, at least by imitation: NASA is encouraging space fans and Beatle fans alike to play the song themselves at the same time.

NASA’s press release includes some perfectly in-character comments from Sir Paul McCartney (”Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul.”) and from Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, the song’s main author (”I see that this is the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe.”). ...

Are supermassive black holes the source of cosmic rays?

ronjon — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:00:00 -0800

...Active Galactic Nuclei - thought to be powered by supermassive black holes that devour large amounts of matter - are the most likely candidate for the source of the highest-energy cosmic rays that hit Earth.

Using the Pierre Auger Observatory, the team of scientists found that the sources of the highest-energy particles are not distributed uniformly across the sky. Instead, the Auger results link the origins of these mysterious particles to the locations of nearby galaxies that have active nuclei in their centres.

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) have long been considered sites where high-energy particle production might take place. They swallow gas, dust and other matter from their host galaxies and spew out particles and energy.

While most galaxies have black holes at their centre, only a fraction of all galaxies have an AGN. The exact mechanism of how AGNs can accelerate particles to energies 100 million times higher than the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth is still a mystery. ...

Universe may be 4 billion years older -- possible solution to dark energy enigma

ronjon — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:13:54 -0800

“Dark energy is the largest contribution — 76 per cent — to the content of the universe in our present standard cosmology. It is postulated as a smooth energy in the vacuum of space, which makes the expansion of the universe want to accelerate,” Dr. Wiltshire said. “But why such stuff should exist, with a particular tiny density, is a complete mystery."

Galaxies do appear to be moving away from each other and at an ever-increasing rate. But Dr Wiltshire claims such “acceleration” is an illusion, due to us misinterpreting observations based in galaxies, where space is not expanding. Clusters of galaxies are spread in filaments and bubbles around huge voids. Most of the volume of the universe, where space is expanding, is in empty voids. Once variations within this uneven distribution are taken into account, he says, we don't need exotic dark energy.

Dr Wiltshire’s latest research, published in New Journal of Physics, Physical Review Letters, and Astrophysical Journal Letters, focuses on solving for an average of the lumpy distribution of matter in the universe as it evolved, rather than a smooth distribution assumed 80-90 years ago by Einstein, Friedman and Lemaître, whose models are still the standard cosmological models today. ...

Mathematics, Purpose, and Truth: An Interview with Astrophysicist Janna Levin

ronjon — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:48:14 -0800

Thanks to RY Deshpande for recommending this article. ~ rj

As a theoretical physicist, Janna Levin probes whether the universe is finite or infinite. As a novelist, she explored the separate but parallel lives of two influential 20th-century scientists: Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. Their work laid the foundations for computer intelligence while challenging fundamental notions about how we can know what is true. ...

Chandra data reveal black holes spinning near speed of light may effect new star formation

ronjon — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:07:17 -0800

...According to Einstein's theory, a rapidly spinning black hole makes space itself rotate. This effect, coupled with gas spiraling toward the black hole, can produce a rotating, tightly wound vertical tower of magnetic field that flings a large fraction of the inflowing gas away from the vicinity of the black hole in an energetic, high-speed jet...

One significant consequence of powerful, black hole jets in galaxies in the centers of galaxy clusters is that they can pump enormous amounts of energy into their environments, and heat the gas around them. This heating prevents the gas from cooling, and affects the rate at which new stars form, thereby limiting the size of the central galaxy. Understanding the details of this fundamental feedback loop between supermassive black holes and the formation of the most massive galaxies remains an important goal in astrophysics. ...

4 Year-Old Postmodern Cosmology Challenges 20-Year Mainstream Cosmology

ronjon — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:19:10 -0800

Postmodern cosmology is celebrating its fourth anniversary with the publishing of its Big Bang cosmology theory in a book entitled "How Dark Matter Created Dark Energy and the Sun". The original form of the cosmology theory is described in Part X under the title, "Cosmic-Ray Cosmology: Drexler's Unified Theory of Dark Matter, Accelerating Expansion, and Star Formation."

The postmodern Big Bang cosmology theory is based upon utilizing the tangible Relativistic-Proton dark matter, which is related to cosmic-ray protons. Postmodern cosmology is able to use many observations that are more astronomical and relies on considerably fewer hypotheses than does today's mainstream Big Bang cosmology, which is based upon intangible Cold Dark Matter.

...the problem with current Big Bang cosmology is not a shortage of available relevant astronomical observations, but that the Cold Dark Matter hypotheses cannot generally show compatibility with an added independent astronomical observation without adding another new hypothesis. On the other hand, increasing the number of astronomical observations will increase the net significance for the postmodern Big Bang cosmology, which utilizes Relativistic-Proton dark matter. ...

'The Holographic Universe', by Michael Talbot

ronjon — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 12:29:21 -0800

As part of my preparation for an intensive training I'm starting in January on the Big Island of Hawaii with the innovative physicist Nassim Haramein, I'm now reading the book The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot. I recommend this book.

...The idea that consciousness and life (and indeed all things) are ensembles enfolded throughout the universe has an equally dazzling flip side. Just as every portion of a hologram contains the image of the whole, every portion of the universe enfolds the whole. This means that if we knew how to access it we could find the Andromeda galaxy in the thumbnail of our left Hand. we could also find Cleopatra meeting Caesar for the first time, for in principle the whole past and implications for the whole future are also enfolded in each small region of space and time. ...

"Code Name God" – Science Could Support Spiritual Beliefs

ronjon — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:33:07 -0800

Dr. Mani Bhaumik is the co-inventor of the laser technology that made Lasik eye surgery possible. His contributions to science merited the rare dual election as a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, while his successes won him a spot on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Eventually he discovered that :happiness is an inside job," and immersed himself in study of the hidden relationship between science and spirituality and the integration of mind and matter. He has published over fifty papers in professional journals and maintains a lively correspondence with other physicists around the world. His alma mater, Indian Institute of Technology, bestowed him with an honorary D.Sc. degree for lifetime academic achievements. Dr. Bhaumik is the founder of the Mani Bhaumik Educational Foundation, which currently provides full scholarships to sixty seven extremely bright but underprivileged Indian young men and women to enable them to earn a university degree in science, engineering or medicine. His US Foundation, Cosmogenics, is set up to foster research in consciousness and healing as well as mind/body integration. ...

Jet From Supermassive Black Hole Seen Blasting Neighboring Galaxy

ronjon — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:55:40 -0800

A jet of highly charged radiation from a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy is blasting another galaxy nearby -- an act of galactic violence that astronomers said yesterday they have never seen before.

Using images from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other sources, scientists said the extremely intense jet from the larger galaxy can be seen shooting across 20,000 light-years of space and plowing into the outer gas and dust of the smaller one. ...

"What we've identified is an act of violence by a black hole, with an unfortunate nearby galaxy in the line of fire," said Dan Evans, the study leader at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. He said any planets orbiting the stars of the smaller galaxy would be dramatically affected, and any life forms would likely die as the jet's radiation transformed the planets' atmosphere. ...

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

ronjon — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:31:14 -0800

I think this may be an important development. My intuition tells me that Lisi is really on to something here, that we'll be hearing lots more about this, and if his predictions are verified when Large Hadron Collider comes online next year, physics will never be the same. ~ rj

An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists. - Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt)...

Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan. ...

Nobel Laureate George Smoot puts prize winnings into new cosmology center at UC Berkeley

ronjon — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:44:02 -0800

Berkeley -- When University of California, Berkeley, astrophysicist George Smoot received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics a year ago, his dreams for spending his $700,000 share of the prize ran far beyond purchasing a sporty car or a new home.

Instead, he wanted to create a lasting center where he and other scientists - in particular, young postdoctoral researchers - could tackle cosmic questions whose solutions would be worthy of future Nobel Prizes.

That dream, the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics (http://bccp.lbl.gov/), has now become reality, with a $500,000 endowment gift from Smoot and additional gifts totaling $8.1 million. These gifts include $1.5 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and $5.5 million in private gifts and other support for endowed chairs at the center and for postdoctoral and graduate student support. UC Berkeley physics professor Saul Perlmutter, who, like Smoot, is also a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has also contributed to the center, using a portion of his 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize to seed a fund for future research that, with the addition of other funds, will total approximately $600,000. ...

Smoot, the center's director, and UC Berkeley plan to raise at least $4 or 5 million in endowment on top of this $8.1 million to ensure an ongoing center with resident postdoctoral fellows and scholars at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, an active visitors program, educational outreach to K-12 science teachers and several collaborative international workshops on cosmology each year. ...

Taking Science on Faith, by Paul Davies (NYT)

ronjon — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:14:52 -0800

Thanks to RY Deshpande for referring this article.

SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term "doubting Thomas" well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The problem with this neat separation into "non-overlapping magisteria," as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do? ...

Peter Lynds' Cyclic Model of the Universe

ronjon — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:31:02 -0800

Though I find Lynds' arguments unconvincing, his ideas are getting sufficient exposure that I think It's appropriate to post them here on SCIY. ~ ronjon
_____________________
...physicist Peter Lynds ... says that his model not only solves Kant's infinite versus finite universe paradox, but also resolves the mystery of the origin of the universe itself. Lynds' model predicts that the universe will contract toward a big crunch, but instead of a singularity ever being reached, events will reverse and the universe will again expand from a subsequent big bang. Unlike previous cyclic models, Lynds' does not breach any physical laws, as his model has entropy continuing to increase as a result of events being reversed.

If he's correct, then we live in a universe where there is no past or present, and one that is deterministic, even if it is impossible for us to recognize it as such. But there are a number of pressing questions in regard to Lynds' model. How does it fit in with current research that claims that the universe will expand forever? Does Lynds' model imply that the universe somehow "knows" to play events over and over? And will we all have to relive our lives backward? ...

They came from outer space: A 40-year-old mystery is solved

ronjon — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 23:11:11 -0800

SMALLER than an atom, they arrive with the energy of a tennis ball served by a champion. When they hit the atmosphere they create showers of daughter particles that zap mountaineers and people in aeroplanes. And no one knows where they come from—nor how, in apparent defiance of the laws of physics, they get to this planet in the first place.

Actually, that last sentence is no longer true. The super-particles in question are a particular type of high-energy cosmic ray and fittingly, given their extreme properties, their origin has now been worked out by a team of 444 researchers from 17 countries, using the biggest piece of scientific apparatus on Earth—the Pierre Auger observatory, which occupies 3,000 square kilometres of western Argentina.

Ordinary cosmic rays are puny things. Indeed, they are not really “cosmic” at all. They originate from various events (supernovae and so on) within the Milky Way galaxy that is home to the Earth. A few, however, are real whoppers—the products of events far more powerful than occur in the Milky Way. These are the tennis-ball equivalents and their existence is a puzzle. ...

Are we entitled to be happy? - by Andrew Cohen

ronjon — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:45:23 -0700

...After more than two decades of working intensively with men and women who claim to want to transform and develop spiritually, I've come to the conclusion that one of the reasons it is so challenging for us to attain and sustain higher levels of spiritual development is that we expect so much and are willing to give so little in order to get what we think we want. The truth is, it's hard to be happy. These days, it's become almost a truism that simply fulfilling our narcissistic and materialistic desires will not necessarily make us truly happy. But how many of us have really dug deeply enough to reconfigure our won ideas of what happiness means in light of a higher set of values than those held by our crazy culture? For our values to change in a way that is nothing less than dramatic, we have to be willing to make a hell of a lot of effort. More and more of us are turning to the spiritual dimension of life. But it is telling that many of the most popular expressions of postmodern spirituality are based on a philosophical perspective that encourages us to pursue the promise of effortless peace, happiness, and release rather than an engagement with the life process that would always require more from us.

Why, for the luckiest people who have ever been born, should happiness be a birthright? Why should our spiritual aspirations be focused on the pursuit of inner peace alone? Did God create the universe so that you and I, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, could be happy? Is that really all there is to this fourteen-billion-year process? And why is it that so many of us presume that we deserve to be happy in the first place? What is it that we have actually done to give us such an innate privilege? ...

Bursting dark energy's bubble

ronjon — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:11:11 -0700

It has been called one of the greatest discoveries in modern cosmology, and most astronomers believe that it makes up more than two-thirds of the stuff in the Universe. Now one theorist is suggesting that dark energy might be little more than a mirage.

Subir Sarkar, a theoretical physicist at Oxford University, UK, has written a treatise that suggests that dark energy, a mysterious force that seems to be pushing the Universe apart, might actually be the result of an enormous bubble of empty space around our galaxy.

Sarkar says that the astronomical community has been too quick to accept dark energy, which has continued to defy astronomer's attempts to characterize it. As an alternative hypothesis, he suggests that our Galaxy might lie in a huge bubble of comparatively empty space. The denser area of space outside this bubble would then pull material towards it. To an observer inside the bubble, it would seem as though a dark-energy-like force was pulling the Universe apart. ...

The Universe in a Single Atom, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

ronjon — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:56:17 -0700

I'm reading this book now and am quite impressed by it. Highly recommended!

~ ronjon

I have often wondered about the interface of key Buddhist concepts and major scientific ideas. This book is the result of that long period of thinking and of the intellectual journey of a Buddhist monk from Tibet into the world of bubble chambers, particle accelerators, and fMRI. ...

Which Came First: The Chicken or the Big Bang?

ronjon — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:16:48 -0700

"...some of the currently fashionable theories... are those involving multiple universes or multiple dimensions. ... Exceedingly popular among quantum physicists and string theorists, these "multiverse" ideas attempt to account for our universe's life-friendliness by proposing that it just happens to be one of billions of other universes that didn't turn out so well. After all, in a "multiversal" ocean of zillions of infinitely varied soap bubbles, they reason, there would have to be at least one with the precise qualities necessary to give rise to living beings like ourselves, and of course, that's the one we're in.

Still other scientists, arguing on behalf of what's known as the anthropic principle—the general idea that our universe's life-friendliness is not a random accident—find this kind of speculation absurd. "To be blunt, in my view, it's just giving up," cosmologist James N. Gardner, author of "Biocosm," told WIE. "It represents a failure to recognize that just as the appearance of a seemingly well-tuned natural world constituted a vital set of clues for Darwin to follow, so, too, does the appearance of a seemingly well-tuned cosmos constitute a vital set of clues that should be pursued." Arizona State University physicist Paul Davis agrees. In his latest book, "Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life," he argues that most theories about a multiverse simply represent a failure of the imagination. He much prefers two alternatives: 1) the idea that there is some kind of implicit life force or evolutionary impulse guiding the emergence of life and consciousness in our universe, or 2) what's been described as Davies' "self-creating universe in a teleological backward causation" theory.

He proposes that the natural laws forged so precisely fourteen billion years ago in the big bang happened to favor the eventual emergence of life because our existence as living beings, here and now, actually fine-tuned them to be that way—retroactively. "Crazy though the idea may seem at first," Davies explains, "there is in fact no fundamental impediment to a mechanism that allows later events to influence earlier events." Invoking arcane mysteries of quantum physics such as entanglement, nonlocality, and the idea that conscious observation plays an essential role in "collapsing" quantum potentials into concrete reality, Davies contends that the presence of conscious observers today is no accident. Our existence, he says, is due to the ability of conscious observations to ripple forward and backward in time, influencing even the quantum fluctuations that took place in the initial nanoseconds of the big bang itself—a time when the laws of physics were still susceptible to subtle tweaking. "If the conditions necessary for life are somehow written into the universe at the big bang," Davies told "New Scientist" last fall, "there must be some sort of two-way link." In other words, the universe may be continually pulling itself up by its own bootstraps—from the future to the past—as a self-correcting, self-contained, and very living system. ...

Modern Cosmology: Science or Folk Tale?

ronjon — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:43:17 -0700

...The September-October 2007 issue, Volume 95, of the American Scientist magazine, published a remarkable article by Michael J. Disney, an emeritus professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University in the UK. The article fully lives up to its title, "Modern Cosmology: Science or Folk Tale?"

Professor Disney uses Big Bang cosmology as the basis for his thesis and shows that the accepted mainstream Big Bang cosmology relies on too few astronomical observations and too many hypotheses to be considered "science". In the article he sometimes uses the term "free parameters" as a synonym for the word "hypotheses."

"The currently fashionable concordance model of cosmology (also known to the cognoscenti as 'Lambda-Cold Dark Matter,' or 'LambdaCDM') has 18 parameters, 17 of which are independent. Thirteen of these parameters are well fitted to the observational data; the other four remain floating. This situation is very far from healthy. Any theory with more free parameters [hypotheses] than relevant [astronomical] observations has little to recommend it. Cosmology has always had such a negative significance, in the sense that it has always had fewer [astronomical] observations than free parameters [hypotheses] (as is illustrated on page TK), though cosmologists are strangely reluctant to admit it. While it is true that we presently have no alternative to the Big Bang in sight, that is no reason to accept it. Thus it was that witchcraft took hold." ...

Old Galaxy Finds Fountain of Youth

ronjon — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:13:41 -0700

...A massive galaxy is stealing a billion suns worth of gas from a smaller galactic neighbor. In space, gas is a hot commodity. Really hot. In this case, about 1,340 degrees Fahrenheit (730 degrees Celsius). And it's great for making new stars. -- "We may be viewing the larger galaxy in a rare, brief stage of its reincarnation from an old galaxy to a youthful one studded with brilliant stars," said Patrick Ogle of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology.

The robber, called 3C 326 North, is about the mass of our Milky Way galaxy, and its victim, 3C 326 South, is about half its mass. They are close enough to perturb each other gravitationally and might eventually collide. Such galaxy mergers are common in the universe: Gas and stars in two nearby galaxies become tangled until they become one larger galaxy. The case of 3C 326 is the clearest example yet of large quantities of gas being heated and siphoned from one galaxy to another. ...

Monks and Scientists to Conduct Research on Mind-Body Links

ronjon — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:11:21 -0700

The Dalai Lama has always taught enlightenment — but what few people know is he says that path includes lessons in modern science. -- And Emory [University, USA] will now assist Tibetans to realize His Holiness’s vision.

“It has been His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s lifelong vision to find a way to converge spirituality and science,” said Geshe Lobsan Tenzin Negi, chair of the Emory-Tibet partnership.

Next summer, faculty including religion professor John Dunne and biology professor Alexander Escobar will journey to the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India, to educate Buddhist monks and nuns about modern science. ...

Inauguration Day for Alien Signal-Hunting Telescope

ronjon — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:48:38 -0700

Today, in the remote northeast corner of California, technology innovator and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will hit the big red button... The famous technologist will be inaugurating the initial 42 antennas of his namesake, the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) – the first major radio telescope designed from the pedestal up to efficiently (which is to say, rapidly) chew its way through long lists of stars in a search for alien signals. Within two decades, it will increase the number of stellar systems examined for artificial emissions by a thousand-fold. The ATA will shift SETI into third gear...

But the true excitement is yet to come. It's hard to imagine that such a modest collection of small metal contrivances, pinned to the earth, and each no bigger than a delivery truck, could somehow reveal the activities of unknown, unseen beings on a planet a thousand trillion miles away... And perhaps someday soon, that discovery will be made. ...

'Black-hole universe' might explain dark energy

ronjon — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 01:00:00 -0700

Imagine that we live inside a black hole. That could be the key to understanding the origin of dark energy, the mysterious force widely thought to be causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

Some physicists have previously suggested that dark energy could arise from the quantum bubbling of virtual particles in empty space, but it wasn't clear how. Now Jae-Weon Lee at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul and his colleagues are proposing that dark energy is created as pairs of these virtual particles are ripped apart from each other by the expanding edge of our universe. ...

The team calculated the energy generated when entangled particles are wrenched apart by this "event horizon", and found that it matches the amount needed to explain the acceleration of the universe. "Dark energy is energy observed inside the spherical cosmological horizon," says Lee...

Parallel universes make quantum sense

ronjon — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 22:59:21 -0700

If you think of yourself as unique, think again. The days when physicists could ignore the concept of parallel universes may have come to an end. If that doesn't send a shudder down your spine, think of it this way: our world is just one of many. You are just one version of many.

David Deutsch at the University of Oxford and colleagues have shown that key equations of quantum mechanics arise from the mathematics of parallel universes. "This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science," says Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis. ...

Dilaton Could Affect Abundance Of Dark Matter Particles

ronjon — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:08:20 -0700

The amount of dark matter left over from the early universe may be less than previously believed. New research shows that the "relic abundance" of stable dark matter particles such as the neutralino may be reduced as compared to standard cosmology theories due to the effects of the "dilaton", a particle with zero spin in the gravitational sector of strings.

Nikolaos Mavromatos of King's College London and colleagues in Athens and Texas obtained their result by studying a special "off-shell" time-dependent term (due to the dilaton) in the Boltzmann equation that describes the evolution of hot matter density as the Universe cooled down. "The formalism that this work used was developed in partial collaboration with John Ellis of CERN and Vasiliki Mitsou of IFIC, Valencia, and is a version of 'non-critical string theory'", said Mavromatos. ...

Huge Hole Found in the Universe

ronjon — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:19:13 -0700

The universe has a huge hole in it that dwarfs anything else of its kind. The discovery caught astronomers by surprise. -- The hole is nearly a billion light-years across. It is not a black hole, which is a small sphere of densely packed matter. Rather, this one is mostly devoid of stars, gas and other normal matter, and it's also strangely empty of the mysterious "dark matter" that permeates the cosmos. Other space voids have been found before, but nothing on this scale.

Astronomers don't know why the hole is there. -- "Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said researcher Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. ...

What's Weirder Than a Black Hole? Maybe a Naked One

ronjon — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:00:00 -0700

Black holes are weird enough. Breaking down known laws of physics to the point of unimaginable conditions qualifies as genuinely strange.

But a team of Duke University and Cambridge researchers has now outlined a new twist on the theory, in which a fast-spanning black hole might shed some of the natural shields that keep scientists from observing it directly, becoming what they call a “naked” singularity.

The traditional model of black holes posits an object, such as a collapsed star, for which gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. The radius at which this effect begins – the point beyond which the mass of the object twists space so completely that ordinary laws of physics break down – is called the event horizon. ...

Warm Dark Matter Discovery Supports Warm-Hot Relativistic-Proton Dark Matter

ronjon — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:12:49 -0700

A paper in the September 14, 2007 issue of Science Magazine, "Lighting the Universe with Filaments," claims that computer simulations disclose that Warm Dark Matter (WDM) would create enormous dark matter filaments that in turn would create sun-like long-life stars that could exist until now.

These simulations also show that Cold Dark Matter (CDM) would only create short-life high-mass stars, typically with a few hundred times the mass of the Sun that would have exploded billions of years ago.

Therefore, a future astronomical discovery of ancient first-generation sun-like stars would support the Warm Dark Matter theory over the Cold Dark Matter theory. This type of research represents a new approach to uncovering the nature of the dark matter of the Universe.

The Speeding Star Mira: A Johnny Appleseed of the Cosmos?

ronjon — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:23:57 -0700

A new ultraviolet mosaic from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star that is leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. The star, named Mira (pronounced my-rah) after the latin word for "wonderful," is shedding material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life as it hurls through our galaxy.

Mira appears as a small white dot in the bulb-shaped structure at right, and is moving from left to right in this view. The shed material can be seen in light blue. The dots in the picture are stars and distant galaxies. The large blue dot at left is a star that is closer to us than Mira.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered Mira's strange comet-like tail during part of its routine survey of the entire sky at ultraviolet wavelengths. When astronomers first saw the picture, they were shocked because Mira has been studied for over 400 years yet nothing like this has ever been documented before. ...

Modern Cosmology: Science or Folktale?

ronjon — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:21:41 -0700

It appears that everybody is interested in cosmology. In one anthropological study, every one of the more than 60 separate cultures examined was found to have several common characteristics, including "faith healing, luck superstitions, propitiation of supernatural beings, … and a cosmology." Apparently, to be human is to care how the physical world came to be, whether it has boundaries and what is to become of it. Modern cosmology is a highly sophisticated subject funded by governments with hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It is unquestionably interesting, but is it, even in its modern guise, convincing? ...

Scientists revive life frozen in Antarctic for millions of years

ronjon — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 10:00:23 -0700

Scientists have recovered microorganisms from ancient Antarctic ice and coaxed it back to life in the lab, according to a study published today. -- The glacial ice acted as a "gene Popsicle," preserving DNA that hasn't circulated in the gene pool for up to 8 million years.

If warming melts the glaciers, the DNA could fuel a new wave of bacterial evolution, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings also challenge the long-held notion that life couldn't possibly exist in Antarctic glaciers. ...

Spiritual thought is crammed in Matter’s forms

ronjon — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:22:02 -0700

In appreciation to RY Deshpande, I'm reposting here a portion of one of his recent comments with which I deeply resonated. - ron

...True, devious has been the path of man’s progress and uncertain is the outcome, true also the huge obstacles of mortal space block the hastening lane, and retrograde are the steps of hostile and menacing time; true, indeed, the sages came and the prophets came and the Avatars came, and the gods and goddesses toil for a better cosmic order with the possibility of a greater light dawning in the spiritual sky. But what is the efficacy of the divine working, if it cannot arrest the downward slide, if the divine Power cannot subdue the dreadful terrifying agents that are ever busy creating havoc? Is there a way out? Is there? Can the logjam of the curving and chaotic way be dissolved? And yet something worthwhile must happen. Futile and abortive can never be the heavenly will. Life arose out of engendering grief and pain, and even what is great Negation is only the Real’s face prohibiting the vain process of Time. All might look illusory, ephemeral, contentless, but (Savitri , pp. 600-01):

…Maya is a veil of the Absolute;
A Truth occult has made this mighty world:
The Eternal’s wisdom and self-knowledge act
In ignorant Mind and in the body’s steps.
The Inconscient is the Superconscient’s sleep.
An unintelligible Intelligence
Invents creation’s paradox profound;
Spiritual thought is crammed in Matter’s forms,
Unseen it throws out a dumb energy
And works a miracle by a machine. ...