## Tuesday, May 28, 2013

### Think About Nature on Edge.Org

 Lee Smolin

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

### Slac-All Access

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

## Monday, May 27, 2013

### Geometric Patterns At the Basis of Reality

Western psychological interpretations According to the psychologist David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises."[26] The psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw the mandala as "a representation of the unconscious self,"[citation needed] and believed his paintings of mandalas enabled him to identify emotional disorders and work towards wholeness in personality.[27] See: Mandala

It would be hard for one to see the subjectivity of one's experiences so that they may say, that such a thing could be misleading. If you believe in a way with which consciousness may have some kind of structure then how would you describe that structure? All you see is a body with a brain, or, words that let you know that some kind of intelligence exists behind the tapping of the keys that represented words that materialize here.

Escher Drawing Hands, 1948.

But the idea here is more then that. I became convinced that such methodicalness from a visual representation could be more then the sum of it's part because in a way, it could encapsulate a lot of things. I grasp on to visual reasoning so as to imply that we can receive pictures that are complete unto themself( complete knowledge of), yet hold greater meaning as the symbol is seen in context of an examination of life.

...underwriting the form languages of ever more domains of mathematics is a set of deep patterns which not only offer access to a kind of ideality that Plato claimed to see the universe as created with in the Timaeus; more than this, the realm of Platonic forms is itself subsumed in this new set of design elements-- and their most general instances are not the regular solids, but crystallographic reflection groups. You know, those things the non-professionals call . . . kaleidoscopes! * (In the next exciting episode, we'll see how Derrida claims mathematics is the key to freeing us from 'logocentrism'-- then ask him why, then, he jettisoned the deepest structures of mathematical patterning just to make his name...)

* H. S. M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes (New York: Dover, 1973) is the great classic text by a great creative force in this beautiful area of geometry (A polytope is an n-dimensional analog of a polygon or polyhedron. Chapter V of this book is entitled 'The Kaleidoscope'....)"

So lets say "you are present" with a experience in your dream time that is totally off the wall. Who is it's manufacturer to have detailed such a scene so as to speak to something quite personal to you, and with it, help you to see the error of your ways? How is complete knowledge gained? You knew better already?:)

Felix Klein on intuition

It is my opinion that in teaching it is not only admissible, but absolutely necessary, to be less abstract at the start, to have constant regard to the applications, and to refer to the refinements only gradually as the student becomes able to understand them. This is, of course, nothing but a universal pedagogical principle to be observed in all mathematical instruction ....

I am led to these remarks by the consciousness of growing danger in Germany of a separation between abstract mathematical science and its scientific and technical applications. Such separation can only be deplored, for it would necessarily be followed by shallowness on the side of the applied sciences, and by isolation on the part of pure mathematics ....

Perhaps you can write a visual interpretation of an image that would likely pass as close to the image that is being described. Do you find familiarity with it or have you see it some where else?

Intuition and Logic in Mathematics by Henri Poincaré

On the other hand, look at Professor Klein: he is studying one of the most abstract questions of the theory of functions to determine whether on a given Riemann surface there always exists a function admitting of given singularities. What does the celebrated German geometer do? He replaces his Riemann surface by a metallic surface whose electric conductivity varies according to certain laws. He connects two of its points with the two poles of a battery. The current, says he, must pass, and the distribution of this current on the surface will define a function whose singularities will be precisely those called for by the enunciation.

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego consciousness extends.... All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral. Carl Jung

By 'dilating' and 'expanding' the scope of our attention we not only discover that 'form is emptiness' (the donut has a hole), but also that 'emptiness is form' (objects precipitate out of the larger 'space') - to use Buddhist terminology. The emptiness that we arrive at by narrowing our focus on the innermost is identical to the emptiness that we arrive at by expanding our focus to the outermost. The 'infinitely large' is identical to the 'infinitesimally small'. The Structure of Consciousness John Fudjack - September, 1999

Is there not some understanding here of what is gained by a deductive/inductive realizations with regard to our interactions with the world? Is there not some sense here of something topologically significant on a abstract level, that explains this aspect of consciousness? I call it a toposense?

If conceived as a series of ever-wider experiential contexts, nested one within the other like a set of Chinese boxes, consciousness can be thought of as wrapping back around on itself in such a way that the outermost 'context' is indistinguishable from the innermost 'content' - a structure for which we coined the term 'liminocentric'.

## Friday, May 24, 2013

### Who is the Clockmaker?

 Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) - oil painting by Salvador Dalí
I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?
• From Cosmic religion: with other opinions and aphorisms (1931), Albert Einstein, pub. Covici-Friede. Quoted in The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press; 2nd edition (May 30, 2000); Page 208, ISBN 0691070210
The phrase of course stuck in my mind. Who is the clockmaker. I was more at ease with what Einstein quote spoke about with regards to the fourth dimension and here, thoughts of Dali made their way into my head.

The watchmaker analogy, watchmaker fallacy, or watchmaker argument, is a teleological argument. By way of an analogy, the argument states that design implies a designer. The analogy has played a prominent role in natural theology and the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God and for the intelligent design of the universe.

The most famous statement of the teleological argument using the watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in his 1802 book. The 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection put forward an alternative explanation for complexity and adaptation, and so provided a counter-argument to the watchmaker analogy. Richard Dawkins referred to the analogy in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker giving his explanation of evolution.

In the United States, starting in the 1960s, creationists revived versions of the argument to dispute the concepts of evolution and natural selection, and there was renewed interest in the watchmaker argument.
I have always shied away from the argument based on the analogy, fallacy and argument, as I wanted to show my thoughts here regardless of what had been transmitted and exposed on an objective level argument. Can I do this without incurring the wrought of a perspective in society and share my own?

I mean even Dali covered the Tesseract by placing Jesus on the cross in a sense Dali was exposing something that such dimensional significance may have been implied as some degree of Einstein's quote above? Of course I speculate but it always being held to some idea of a dimensional constraint that no other words can speak of it other then it's science. Which brings me back to Einstein's quote.

 The construction of a hypercube can be imagined the following way: 1-dimensional: Two points A and B can be connected to a line, giving a new line segment AB. 2-dimensional: Two parallel line segments AB and CD can be connected to become a square, with the corners marked as ABCD. 3-dimensional: Two parallel squares ABCD and EFGH can be connected to become a cube, with the corners marked as ABCDEFGH. 4-dimensional: Two parallel cubes ABCDEFGH and IJKLMNOP can be connected to become a hypercube, with the corners marked as ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP.

So for me it is about what lays at the basis of reality as to question that all our experiences, in some way masks the inevitable design at a deeper level of perceptions so as to say that such a diagram is revealing.

I operate from this principal given the understanding that all experience is part of the diagram of the logic of a visual reasoning in which such examples are dispersed upon our assessments of the day. While Einstein spoke, he had a reason from which such quote espoused the picture he had in his head?

Also too if I were to deal with the subjectivity of our perceptions then how could I ever be clear as I muddy the waters of such straight lines and such with all the pictures of a dream by Pauli?  I ask that however you look at the plainness of the dream expanded by Jung, that one consider the pattern underneath it all.  I provide 2 links below for examination.

This page lists the regular polytopes in Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic spaces. Clicking on any picture will magnify it.

The Schläfli symbol notation describes every regular polytope, and is used widely below as a compact reference name for each.

The regular polytopes are grouped by dimension and subgrouped by convex, nonconvex and infinite forms. Nonconvex forms use the same vertices as the convex forms, but have intersecting facets. Infinite forms tessellate a one lower dimensional Euclidean space.

Infinite forms can be extended to tessellate a hyperbolic space. Hyperbolic space is like normal space at a small scale, but parallel lines diverge at a distance. This allows vertex figures to have negative angle defects, like making a vertex with 7 equilateral triangles and allowing it to lie flat. It cannot be done in a regular plane, but can be at the right scale of a hyperbolic plane.

• Pauli's World Clock

## Wednesday, May 22, 2013

### The Old Wise Man

This post is materializing because of a post written by a Don McLeod on a article written at NPR 13.7 Cosmos and Culture called, " Facing Cancer, With A Robot Surgeon By My Side, by  Barbara J. King.

Don McLeod writes,

I of course sympathize with Barbara J. King for the rode ahead and wish her all the best in the surgery. The purpose of this post is about how as individuals the use of power in symbols as relayed in Don's dream are effective at describing a process that was unfolding in him and the progression toward wellness being demonstrated when he saids, "As my ultimately successful treatment progressed the bear began to reduce in size from an adult to a cub."

This post is not about something you have to do in order to cure an illness, but more about what occurs on an everyday level that such events can travel deep inside you whether you are aware of the effect this has on you or not.

I saw correspondence in the type and illustration of the dream. It came from a earlier time in my life, that was very much similar in its subjectivity. This happen when I was quite young, and was already entertaining what it was I wanted to do with my life.

So the Old Wise Man becomes a symbol of sorts, and for those of you who have had similar experience, this is a profound imagery that is encapsulated in an old man with a white cloak and long white beard. How traditional then this figure that he is to reside in one's own head,  and that we are in a sense able to project the wisdom of self for our viewing.

So thus,  such imagery is to encapsulate something that is quite powerful as to convey knowledge that works to alleviate the concerns that runs deep in our souls. It is an answer to the question of what it is that is happening with our everyday life awareness. This is a consequence of daily living that somehow transcends the every day world we see  as a revelation that runs counter to that normal objective world.

The correspondence and power that was given was an understanding on such a deep level that it became a catalyst of sorts for the examination of such things in other people. Don's comment was a recognition for me of this powerful level of understanding that took place  as it was of a healing that occurred for him.

So also I added the labels of Socrates and Daemon at the bottom of this post. This was to exemplify facets of this understanding which grew from the experience I had at an age of about 12 years old. I also relay this information in a post given with regard to the Park.

The Park was written to show, that levels of perception that run deep inside are equal factors to which information may be drawn into oneself, given the framework of the reality that you had created. The Old Wise represents an aspect of your higher self which is to say that consciousness at that level does not find itself impeded from gaining true knowledge of those beyond ourselves to have then actually answer events in our every day lives.

So what you have done in essence is created a script that can become intelligible for the offering of information beyond the scope of inherent thinking suited to that daily process.

So it was important that I also examine efforts to help our minds be taken to levels of consciousness that may impart such opportunities for information to be given.  The basis for this thought process was to believe,  for me,  that all information will and has always existed.  It is that we only had to be reminded of such correspondences to say, such information even exists, but that such processes exist also in us all.

## Thursday, May 16, 2013

### Neutrino Events in IceCube Strings

 Neutrino Events-A compilation of some cool and unique neutrino events captured by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

## Tuesday, May 14, 2013

### Glowing Blackholes

 (Courtesy: NASA E/PO, Sonoma State University, Aurore Simonnet)
The birth of a black hole may be signalled by a characteristic cosmic flash, according to researchers in the US. It was previously thought that only the most massive of black holes would produce gamma-ray bursts – narrow beams of electromagnetic radiation that shoot out of the poles of the collapsing star – when they form. But other dying stars were thought to produce a black hole without any kind of flash – seemingly disappearing from the visible sky in an event known as an "unnova". The US researchers' work suggests that unnovae might also have their own characteristic flash, allowing astronomers to witness the birth of stellar- and intermediate-mass black holes. See:
Cosmic flashes could herald birth of black holes

The continuing difficulty of achieving a reliable explosion in simulations of core-collapse supernovae, especially for more massive stars, has led to speculation concerning the observable transients that might be produced if such a supernova fails. Even if a prompt outgoing shock fails to form in a collapsing presupernova star, one must still consider the hydrodynamic response of the star to the abrupt loss of mass via neutrinos as the core forms a protoneutron star. Following a suggestion by Nadezhin (1980), we calculate the hydrodynamical responses of typical supernova progenitor stars to the rapid loss of approximately 0.2 to 0.5 M_sun of gravitational mass from their centers. In a red supergiant star, a very weak supernova with total kinetic energy ~ 10^47 erg results. The binding energy of a large fraction of the hydrogen envelope before the explosion is of the same order and, depending upon assumptions regarding the neutrino loss rates, most of it is ejected. Ejection speeds are ~ 100 km/s and luminosities ~ 10^39 erg/s are maintained for about a year. A significant part of the energy comes from the recombination of hydrogen. The color of the explosion is extremely red and the events bear some similarity to "luminous red novae," but have much lower speeds. See: Very Low Energy Supernovae from Neutrino Mass Loss

### A Visual Correlation to Symmetry Breaking

 "Symmetry breaking illustrated": – At high energy levels (left) the ball settles in the center, and the result is symmetrical. At lower energy levels (right), the overall "rules" remain symmetrical, but the "Mexican hat" potential comes into effect: "local" symmetry inevitably becomes broken since eventually the ball must roll one way (at random) and not another.

The Standard Model hypothesizes a field which is responsible for this effect, called the Higgs field (symbol: $\phi$), which has the unusual property of a non-zero amplitude in its ground state; i.e., a non-zero vacuum expectation value. It can have this effect because of its unusual "Mexican hat" shaped potential whose lowest "point" is not at its "centre". Below a certain extremely high energy level the existence of this non-zero vacuum expectation spontaneously breaks electroweak gauge symmetry which in turn gives rise to the Higgs mechanism and triggers the acquisition of mass by those particles interacting with the field. This effect occurs because scalar field components of the Higgs field are "absorbed" by the massive bosons as degrees of freedom, and couple to the fermions via Yukawa coupling, thereby producing the expected mass terms. In effect when symmetry breaks under these conditions, the Goldstone bosons that arise interact with the Higgs field (and with other particles capable of interacting with the Higgs field) instead of becoming new massless particles, the intractable problems of both underlying theories "neutralise" each other, and the residual outcome is that elementary particles acquire a consistent mass based on how strongly they interact with the Higgs field. It is the simplest known process capable of giving mass to the gauge bosons while remaining compatible with gauge theories.[79] Its quantum would be a scalar boson, known as the Higgs boson.[80]

 The potential for the Higgs field, plotted as function of $\phi^0$ and $\phi^3$. It has a Mexican-hat or champagne-bottle profile at the ground.

## Monday, May 13, 2013

### What is the Soul?

 In Culture:The Ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ψυχή (psȳchē), which primarily means "soul", "mind"

This is quite a challenge in a way.
Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory", encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, that is, confuse models of reality with reality itself.Map–Territory Relation
What I was thinking here was symbols that represent the soul. Now I am not sure how well verse some people are in terms of the adventures they can take. So, lets say your a dreamer that remembers their dreams and you encounter "a book" and in that book you find a representation of who you are as a soul. What would this mean to you, since it symbolically now incorporates who you are as a soul and defines your territory?

By nature we like to map our progress and what this means, is what if one were to understand that each life is condensed, as if, into a symbol? That symbol may be like a time capsule awaiting to manifest into your reality now? It is part of your accomplishments. So at its basis each soul had this inclination and sought to simplify the totality of it's entire life so as to remember what was accomplished.
A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing. It is an image-centered diagram that represents semantic or other connections between portions of information. By presenting these connections in a radial, non-linear graphical manner, it encourages a brainstorming approach to any given organizational task, eliminating the hurdle of initially establishing an intrinsically appropriate or relevant conceptual framework to work within. A mind map is similar to a semantic network or cognitive map but there are no formal restrictions on the kinds of links used. The elements are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts and they are organized into groupings, branches, or areas. The uniform graphic formulation of the semantic structure of information on the method of gathering knowledge, may aid recall of existing memories.Mind map
You have no way of knowing what this symbol means and all you are given is this pictorial representation. How the heck are you to define such a symbol? That symbol, may be called a mandala.

The most important archetype of all is the self. The self is the ultimate unity of the personality and is symbolized by the circle, the cross, and the mandala figures that Jung was fond of painting. A mandala is a drawing that is used in meditation because it tends to draw your focus back to the center, and it can be as simple as a geometric figure or as complicated as a stained glass window. The personifications that best represent self are Christ and Buddha, two people who many believe achieved perfection. But Jung felt that perfection of the personality is only truly achieved in death Personality Theories
Here too, such abstractions help to pave the way for seeing the soul's ability to experience inner/outer and ways to describe inductive/deductive relations that we have with reality? While abstract, they give one the sense of interplay that goes on with an subjective/objective world.

This is a torus (like a doughnut) on which several circles are located. Unlike on a Euclidean plane, on this surface it is impossible to determine which circle is inside of which, since if you go from the black circle to the blue, to the red, and to the grey, you can continuously come back to the initial black, and likewise if you go from the black to the grey, to the red, and to the blue, you can also come back to the black.
Can you tell the difference? What does liminocentric mean?
If conceived as a series of ever-wider experiential contexts, nested one within the other like a set of Chinese boxes, consciousness can be thought of as wrapping back around on itself in such a way that the outermost 'context' is indistinguishable from the innermost 'content' - a structure for which we coined the term 'liminocentric'. A Conversation with Physicist Brian Greene
So lets examine out of context consciousness in relation too, the soul. For me continuity of thought is to form methods to our thinking and to construct models with which we adopt as part of our being in this life. So given the context of Mapping and territory this was interesting to me. This also spoke to the idea of mathematical models and how they are used in life to understand science processes, for example Riemann geometry that lies at the basis of relativity.
On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry. Bernhard Riemann Translated by William Kingdon Clifford
But before this, it was just plane Euclidean geometry with the understanding that you were in straight lines and such, as to be place before the the preponderance of the Parallel Postulate?
The value of non-Euclidean geometry lies in its ability to liberate us from preconceived ideas in preparation for the time when exploration of physical laws might demand some geometry other than the Euclidean. Bernhard Riemann
So by model development you become free from the constraints of your previous observations of the limitations Euclidean geometry forced upon you.
Almost all criticisms of Euclid up to the 19th century were centered on his fifth postulate, the so-called Parallel Postulate.The first half of the course dealt with various attempts by ancient, medieval, and (relatively) modern mathematicians to prove this postulate from Euclid's others.Seminar on the History of Hyperbolic Geometry, by Greg Schreiber
So that's the idea then is to recognize model development is more then the abstract connotation mathematical structure is given in face of what is real or not. This is important. You cannot ignore the reality in which you work, but for me ever the struggle to identify the substrate with which we not only embedded models into our thinking , but have their basis not only in this life, but are carried over.

 Betrayal of Images" by Rene Magritte

The Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte illustrated the concept of "perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves"[5] in a number of paintings including a famous work entitled The Treachery of Images, which consists of a drawing of a pipe with the caption, Ceci n'est pas une pipe ("This is not a pipe"). In The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan rehashed the argument— that all media are "extensions" of our human senses, bodies and minds. This concept occurs in the discussion of exoteric and esoteric religions. Exoteric concepts are concepts which can be fully conveyed using descriptors and language constructs, such as mathematics. Esoteric concepts are concepts which cannot be fully conveyed except by direct experience. For example, a person who has never tasted an apple will never fully understand through language what the taste of an apple is. Only through direct experience (eating an apple) can that experience be fully understood.Mapping and territory
Through my own explorations and understanding is the context of what manifests in "as an explosion into reality" of such model schematic formulations, is to understand the larger context of the beliefs we form, have their constitutions from such a forming apparatus embedded within us? You gleam this from life as the basis of how might have been raised by your parents to assume, the meme's with which you assume come from there. Yet you learn to see that as a individual, that as you grow, such beliefs come into question because of the difference in your experiences. So you begin to form your own thoughts.
Thomas Kuhn

However, the incommensurability thesis is not Kuhn's only positive philosophical thesis. Kuhn himself tells us that “The paradigm as shared example is the central element of what I now take to be the most novel and least understood aspect of [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]” (1970a, 187). Nonetheless, Kuhn failed to develop the paradigm concept in his later work beyond an early application of its semantic aspects to the explanation of incommensurability. The explanation of scientific development in terms of paradigms was not only novel but radical too, insofar as it gives a naturalistic explanation of belief-change. Naturalism was not in the early 1960s the familiar part of philosophical landscape that it has subsequently become. Kuhn's explanation contrasted with explanations in terms of rules of method (or confirmation, falsification etc.) that most philosophers of science took to be constitutive of rationality. Furthermore, the relevant disciplines (psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence) were either insufficiently progressed to support Kuhn's contentions concerning paradigms, or were antithetical to them (in the case of classical AI). Now that naturalism has become an accepted component of philosophy, there has recently been interest in reassessing Kuhn's work in the light of developments in the relevant sciences, many of which provide corroboration for Kuhn's claim that science is driven by relations of perceived similarity and analogy to existing problems and their solutions (Nickles 2003b, Nersessian 2003). It may yet be that a characteristically Kuhnian thesis will play a prominent part in our understanding of science.
As real is the understanding that objective reality exists, so does the subjective reality, in so far as we understand that "belief change can exist," our world view can change. That we can change our views of the world by "truly grokking and experiencing." Any accomplishment then is to recognize the platform from which you came, then is to advance one's growth? What use any model then, to not take into consideration the method by which you have made assumptions. These, had come from "models of perception" before?
Observations Pay Off

Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries Kuhn now moves past his initial topic of paradigm to scientific discovery saying that in order for there to be a discovery, an anomaly must be detected within the field of study. He discusses several different studies and points out the anomaly that invoked the scientific discovery. Later in the chapter he begins to discuss how the anomaly can be incorporated into the discovery to satisfy the scientific community.
There are three different characteristics of all discoveries from which new sorts of phenomena emerge. These three characteristics are proven through an experiment dealing with a deck of cards. The deck consisted of anomalous cards (e.g. the red six of spades shown on the previous page) mixed in with regular cards. These cards were held up in front of students who were asked to call out the card they saw, and in most cases the anomaly was not detected.(link now dead)

The example given is to understand the nuances in life are like nagging questions as to what is bothering one according to an assumption made or taken for granted. Reality for instance.

It is important to find such anomalies so as to record how belief change is possible. While we secure our beliefs in reality, such excursions to beyond the limitations of our belief, are essential to "grow more?"

## Sunday, May 05, 2013

### The Blackhole Hunt is On

Published on May 30, 2012

See: NuSTAR to Hunt for Black Holes

 NuSTAR

NASA contracted with Orbital Sciences Corporation to launch NuSTAR (mass 772 pounds (350 kg))[11] on a Pegasus XL rocket for 21 March 2012.[5] It had earlier been planned for 15 August 2011, 3 February 2012, 16 March 2012, and 14 March 2012.[12] After a launch meeting on 15 March 2012, the launch was pushed further back to allow time to review flight software used by the launch vehicle's flight computer.[13] The launch was conducted successfully at 16:00:37 UTC on 13 June 2012[1] about 117 nautical miles south of Kwajalein Atoll.[14] The Pegasus rocket was dropped from the L-1011 'Stargazer' aircraft.[11][15]
On 22 June 2012 it was confirmed that the 10 m mast was fully deployed.[16]

## Saturday, May 04, 2013

### The LIGO and Virgo Gravitational-Wave Detectors

 An artist's impression of two stars orbiting each other (left). The orbit shrinks as the system emits gravitational waves (middle). When the stars merge (right), there is a resulting powerful emission of gravitational waves. [Image: NASA]

The LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors have been hunting for signals from the collisions of neutron stars and black holes, which are dense objects formed from the remains of stars many times more massive than our Sun. When two of these objects orbit each other in a binary system, the emission of gravitational waves will gradually carry away some of their orbital energy, forcing them to get closer and closer together. This happens slowly at first, but as the orbit gets tighter the gravitational waves get stronger and the process accelerates until eventually the stars collide and merge, emitting in the last few seconds one of the most powerful outflows of energy in the Universe. See: What gravitational waves can tell us about colliding stars and black holes

 The LIGO Hanford Control Room
LIGO's mission is to directly observe gravitational waves of cosmic origin. These waves were first predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1916, when the technology necessary for their detection did not yet exist. Gravitational waves were indirectly suggested to exist when observations were made of the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16, for which the Nobel Prize was awarded to Hulse and Taylor in 1993.
 The Binary Pulsar PSR 1913+16:

## Friday, May 03, 2013

### GRB 130427A: Highest-energy Light Ever Detected

 The maps in this animation show how the sky looks at gamma-ray energies above 100 million electron volts (MeV) with a view centered on the north galactic pole. The first frame shows the sky during a three-hour interval prior to GRB 130427A. The second frame shows a three-hour interval starting 2.5 hours before the burst, and ending 30 minutes into the event. The Fermi team chose this interval to demonstrate how bright the burst was relative to the rest of the gamma-ray sky. This burst was bright enough that Fermi autonomously left its normal surveying mode to give the LAT instrument a better view, so the three-hour exposure following the burst does not cover the whole sky in the usual way. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration See: NASA's Fermi, Swift See 'Shockingly Bright' Burst

### Generalizations on, It from Bit

I know there is an essay question going on and I thought it might quite the challenge indeed to wonder and construct from a layman standpoint some of the ideas that are emerging from the challenge.

The past century in fundamental physics has shown a steady progression away from thinking about physics, at its deepest level, as a description of material objects and their interactions, and towards physics as a description of the evolution of information about and in the physical world. Moreover, recent years have shown an explosion of interest at the nexus of physics and information, driven by the "information age" in which we live, and more importantly by developments in quantum information theory and computer science.

We must ask the question, though, is information truly fundamental or not? Can we realize John Wheeler's dream, or is it unattainable? We ask: "It From Bit or Bit From It?"

Possible topics or sub-questions include, but are not limited to:

What IS information? What is its relation to "Reality"?

How does nature (the universe and the things therein) "store" and "process" information?

How does understanding information help us understand physics, and vice-versa?
See: It From Bit or Bit From It?

So maybe as I go along it will contrive into something tangible, worth considering. If I show it's production here and it eliminates any possibility of an entrance, then it"s nice that I will have learn something along the way.

Part 1

To my mind there must be, at the bottom of it all,
not an equation, but an utterly simple idea.
And to me that idea, when we finally discover it,
will be so compelling, so inevitable,
that we will say to one another,
“Oh, how beautiful !
How could it have been otherwise?”
From a personal notebook of Wheeler circa 1991

 This symbol was used to demonstrate in a global sense that everything is derived from bits. Taken from a speech given by John Archibald Wheeler in 1999.  Also from, J. A. Wheeler: Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (Scientific American Library, Freeman, New York, 1990),  pg. 220

So the idea here while starting from a vague representation of something that could exist at of deeper region of reality is ever the question of where our perspective can go. So as if telling a story and reaching for some climax to be reached I ponder a approach. If one goes through the story it is to bring fastidiously a place in the future so as to see where John Archibald Wheeler took us now, in the form of his perspective on Information, Physics and Quantum.

So indeed I have open on a simplistic level so as to move this story into the forum of how one can might approach a description of the wold so as to say it's foundation has been purposeful and leading. So I will move forward and present a phenomenological approach considered and go backward in time.

Quantum gravity theory is untested experimentally. Could it be tested with tabletop experiments? While the common feeling is pessimistic, a detailed inquiry shows it possible to sidestep the onerous requirement of localization of a probe on Planck length scale. I suggest a tabletop experiment which, given state of the art ultrahigh vacuum and cryogenic technology, could already be sensitive enough to detect Planck scale signals. The experiment combines a single photon's degree of freedom with one of a macroscopic probe to test Wheeler's conception of "quantum foam", the assertion that on length scales of the order Planck's, spacetime is no longer a smooth manifold. The scheme makes few assumptions beyond energy and momentum conservations, and is not based on a specific quantum gravity scheme See:Is a tabletop search for Planck scale signals feasible? by Jacob D. Bekenstein-(Submitted on 16 Nov 2012 (v1), last revised 13 Dec 2012 (this version, v2))

The question of any such emergence is then to consider that such examples held in context of the digital world of physics. This is to say it can be used to grossly examine levels to take us to the quest of examining what exists as a basis of reality. So too then,  as to what can be described as purposeful examination of the interior of the black hole.

 Jacob D. Bekenstein

Such examinations then ask whether such approaches will divide perspective views in science into relations that adopt some discrete or continuum view of the basis of reality. This then forces such division as to a category we devise with respect to the sciences as theoretical examinations and it's approach. So from this perspective we see where John Wheeler sought to seek such demonstration in which to raise the question of a basis of reality on such a discrete approach?

So such foundational methods are demonstrated then as to form from such developments in perspective. John Wheeler sought to seek a demonstration of the idea  of foundation as an end result by his students. To seek an explanation of the interior of the black hole as to demonstrate such a progeny in his students is to force this subject further along in history. So,  from this standpoint we go back in time.

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