Stephen's Personal Blog

Dr. Michio Kaku

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

Amazon Review of 3/22/2008
I think the biggest reason some people reject evolution is a lack of imagination. It’s difficult for humans to picture the vast amount of time it takes for organisms to evolve. To speculate on the many mysteries of science takes a vivid imagination. Fortunately, author Michio Kaku has one. He brings a bright-eyed, gee-whiz sense of wonder to his subject, and his writing makes it contagious.

I hesitated to use the phrase “physics primer” in that last paragraph, because it might scare off people who would actually find this book fascinating. The truth is, this is nothing like that dry science book you remember from school. It entertains, educates and inspires.

In a reminder that the experts are not always right..

German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA’s asteroid figures: paper
BERLIN (AFP) — A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.

If the asteroid strikes a satellite in 2029, that will change its trajectory making it hit earth on its next orbit in 2036.
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The Guardian has an article talking about the mysterious progress of the oldest human space probes, Pioneer 10 and 11. The question is, “Is there dark matter or is the the universal law of gravitation wrong?” I think dark matter is bullshit like the theory of ether. Though I’m sure there is matter that does not reflect light back to the Earth. The fallibility of the law of gravitation has a recurrent pattern like the law of gravitational acceleration before relativity was accepted.

It is issues like these that should push us to throw probes as far out as possible to give us a sort of stereoscopic view of the universe. Perhaps, observatories or simple measurement devices designed to have an operational lifespan of 30 years. These simple devices may be able to answer physics questions by direct evidence instead of Earth based observation and complex analysis. No matter how detailed the analysis, a cyclops has only one eye and no depth perception.

Futures in Biotech was interesting last week, because it talked about why people’s bodies age. and the person being interviewed started as a Computer Scientist and switch to studying aging. The topic of aging and it’s reversal comes up in the metaphysical material. Most often statements like we will be able to stop it, soon.

Host: Marc Pelletier
Guest: Aubrey de Grey; Chairman and Chief Science Officer, the Methuselah Foundation.

Benjamin Franklin said: “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes”. But in these times of technological revolution, does this statement still hold true? And if so, for how long? Genes have been identified that upon activation can extend lifespan in most organisms. The great labs of Leonard Guarente at MIT (featured in FiB episode 2), Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF, as well Linda Buck, Nobel Laureate in 2004, are all working arduously to elucidate the molecular details to both slow down the aging process and extend lifespan. Well, Aubrey de Grey is a fairly controversial figure because he proposes doing away with death all together – leaving us with only taxes, I guess?

De Grey argues that the fundamental knowledge needed to develop effective anti-aging medicine mostly already exists, and that the science is ahead of the funding. He works to identify and promote specific technological approaches to the reversal of various aspects of aging, or as de Grey puts it, “the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us,”[5] and for the more proactive and urgent approaches to extending the healthy human lifespan. Regarding this issue, de Grey is a supporter of life extension.
from Wikipedia

Presentation video at a conference given 7/2005

I love geeky humor. How many songs include high level mathematical formulas?

Mandelbrot Set by Jonathan Coulton

Pathological monsters! cried the terrified mathematician
Every one of them is a splinter in my eye
I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve
I fear the Cantor Ternary Set And the Sierpinski Gasket makes me want to cry
And a million miles away a butterfly flapped its wings
On a cold November day a man named Benoit Mandelbrot was born

Just take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z’s should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set
Mandelbrot Set you’re a Rorschach Test on fire
You’re a day-glo pterodactyl
You’re a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You’re one badass fucking fractal
And you’re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
And you’re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
Go on change the world in a tiny way
Come on change the world in a tiny way
[Mandelbrot Set Lyrics on

For internal reasons, I was recently reminded of this. Thought others might find it interesting.

Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
The hypothesis postulates that a particular language’s nature influences the habitual thought of its speakers: that different language patterns yield different patterns of thought. This idea challenges the possibility of perfectly representing the world with language, because it implies that the mechanisms of any language condition the thoughts of its speaker community. The hypothesis emerges in strong and weak formulations.

In other words, if a word that represents a concept does not exist in your language, you are unlikely to think of that concept. Language is a constraint to the thoughts of the speaker.

from Whorf:
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language [...] all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated

from Sapir:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir, 1958 [1929], p. 69)

Is it right that the father of Intelligent Design is a lawyer and not a biologist? Would you accept laws written by a garbage collector or biology theory from your priest. To do so is to rescind 500 years of enlightenment. I choose 2008 and not 1508.

I believe, this person is more interested in setting other people’s belief to his own choosing than finding truthful answers to honest questions. A choice is here; shall our science by based on propaganda or observation.

Anyone can choose to believe anything they want. My issue is with spending money to convincing others of a belief by choosing only to use ideas that support one point of view. Make your own decision, but don’t assume that because a scientists’ work is quoted that you are viewing all of the person’s research just because it’s a scientists’ work.

In Defense of Intelligent Design
Phillip Johnson is known as the father of intelligent design. The idea in its current form appeared in the 1980s, and Johnson adopted and developed it after Darwinian evolution came up short, in his view, in explaining how all organisms, including humans, came into being. Johnson taught law for over 30 years at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of the book Darwin on Trial, in which he argues that empirical evidence in support of Darwin’s theory is lacking. In this interview, hear why he feels that such evidence is “somewhere between weak and nonexistent,” why he feels intelligent design is a testable science, and why he thought the Dover trial was a train wreck waiting to happen.
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The British National Space Centre (BNSC), Britain’s equivalent of NASA, notes in a new report (UK Civil Space Strategy: 2008-2012 and beyond) that “In 1986, the UK chose not to participate in human space missions.” This decision is still in place in 2008. There were no British manned space programs before 1986 either, so it could be stated that the British government has avoided human spaceflight for the entire duration of the half-century-old Space Age.
Opponents of human spaceflight have maintained the status quo for decades. Even a small, internationally cooperative spaceflight program will meet entrenched political opposition.

This is remarkable because all the other major powers in the world are involved with human spaceflight to some degree. Among the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, Russia, and China have the independent capability of launching manned spacecraft, and France is a major partner in the European Space Agency’s manned flight program. In the Group of Eight (G8), again the United Kingdom is the only nation that opposes humans in space and prohibits governmental participation of any kind.
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British space policy on life, the universe, and everything

Kryon book 2 mentioned several hints on gravity manipulation. Saying that the density (mass per volume) of an object is not static as we usually see it. Normally, to change density we change volume. It is an assumption that the mass of an object can not be manipulated. However, if we could change the mass and leave the volume we would have “anti gravity”.

Anyway, he/it also mentioned that there are several points around the world where gravity is not constant and can wreak havoc on propulsions systems designed to manipulate it. I came across one such area in Canada and it’s listed on Wikipedia. No one knows why gravity is lower there than elsewhere.

When Earth’s gravitational field was mapped starting in the 1960s a large region of below-average gravity was detected in the Hudson Bay region. This was initially thought to be a result of the crust still being depressed from the weight of the Laurentide ice sheet during the most recent Ice Age, but more detailed observations taken by the GRACE satellite suggest that this effect cannot account for the entirety of the gravitational anomaly. It is thought that convection in the underlying mantle may be contributing.[3]

Supposedly there are large deposits of iron ore under the bay which affect magnetic fields and compasses.[citation needed]
Hudson Bay Area

This was near the end of Kryon Book 2. I went looking. Apparently, there are bacteria that will eat anything. They may be our first line of defense when these 40 yr old nuke power plants are 200 yr old and just as “glow in the dark” then as today.

NSF: Radiation Eaters
But in the 1960s, scientists began discovering exotic organisms that play by astonishingly different rules, such as microbes living in near-boiling water or high-acidity environments. Now, a team searching deep in a South African gold mine has found one that redefines the very limits of life: Bacteria that subsist in rock at huge pressure for thousands of years by ’eating‘ by-products of radioactivity, completely isolated from any organic matter or effects of photosynthesis.

Scientists Seek Indestructible Bugs To Eat Nuclear Waste
Eight years ago, scientists using a metal rod here to probe the radioactive depths of a nuclear-waste tank saw something that shocked them: a slimy, transparent substance growing on the end of the rod.

They took the specimen into a concrete-lined vault where technicians peered through a 3-foot-thick window and, using robot arms, smeared a bit of the specimen into a petri dish. Inside the dish they later found a colony of strange orange bacteria swimming around. The bacteria had adapted to 15 times the dose of radiation that it takes to kill a human being. They lived in what one scientific paper calls a “witches’ brew” of toxic chemicals.
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Scientists know of at least a dozen extremophiles. The first was discovered in 1956 in Corvallis, Ore. Scientists were zapping cans of horse meat with high radiation, trying to establish the preservative value of food irradiation. One can developed an ominous bulge. Inside, the scientists isolated pink bacteria they had never seen before.

National Geographic: Fungi Gobble Radiation to Grow, Study Says
The team performed a series of experiments to test whether the fungi could be harvesting radiation to fuel their growth, much like plants do when they capture solar energy through photosynthesis.

“We have associated the faster growth caused by radiation with melanin—a phenomenon suggesting that the pigment is somehow involved in harvesting high-energy ionizing radiation” and promoting growth, study co-author Arturo Casadevall of Yeshiva University said.