Category: cosmos
The O’Neill cylinder (also called an O’Neill colony) is a space settlement design proposed by American physicist Gerard K. O’Neill in his 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. O’Neill proposed the colonization of space for the 21st century, using materials extracted from the Moon and later from asteroids.
An O’Neill cylinder would consist of two counter-rotating cylinders. The cylinders would rotate in opposite directions in order to cancel out any gyroscopic effects that would otherwise make it difficult to keep them aimed toward the Sun. Each would be 5 miles (8.0 km) in diameter and 20 miles (32 km) long, connected at each end by a rod via a bearing system. They would rotate so as to provide artificial gravity via centrifugal force on their inner surfaces.
While teaching undergraduate physics at Princeton University, O’Neill set his students the task of designing large structures in outer space, with the intent of showing that living in space could be desirable. Several of the designs were able to provide volumes large enough to be suitable for human habitation. This cooperative result inspired the idea of the cylinder, and was first published by O’Neill in a September 1974 article of Physics Today.
O’Neill’s project was not completely without precedent. In 1954, the German scientist Hermann Oberth described the use of gigantic habitable cylinders for space travel in his book Menschen im Weltraum â Neue Projekte für Raketen- und Raumfahrt (“People in space â New projects for rockets and space travel”). (read more)
- Labels: cosmos, mystery, perspective, physics, quantum physics, science, Space, star trek, time, universe
Near-true-color image of Pluto taken by New Horizons spacecraft on 13 July 2015. On 14 July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft became the first spacecraft to flyby Pluto. During its brief flyby, New Horizons made detailed measurements and observations of Pluto and its moons.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, and was originally considered the ninth planet from the Sun. After 1992, its status as a planet fell into question following the discovery of several objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt. In 2005, Eris, which is 27% more massive than Pluto, was discovered, which led the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term “planet” formally for the first time the following year. This definition excluded Pluto and reclassified it as a member of the new “dwarf planet” category (and specifically as a plutoid). Some astronomers believe Pluto should still be considered a planet. (read more)
In space, the powers of creation and destruction work differently than they do here on earth. Matter appears, dissolves and reappears just like here but in a much s l o w e r m a n n e r. Matter that makes up you and me. On earth weâre refreshed at such high rates of speed that the particles of matter disappear and reappear in essentially the same place ..making our position more or less predictable from one instant to the next. In space, however, itâs so cold that things take a little longer ..when measured in nano-seconds. So, instead of the high-speed collisions that we see on earth .. particles are refreshed by way of quantum tunneling in space [link]. This means we could wink out of one place one moment and reappear in another place the next ..kind of like looking at someone through a strobe light. And not only that .. this kind of delay lowers the probability of particles sticking together ..meaning thereâs a good chance that we could dissolve in the process.
- Labels: bill, cosmos, physics, quantum physics
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.
Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The craft was successfully launched toward the Moon, but the landing had to be aborted after an oxygen tank ruptured, severely damaging the spacecraft’s electrical system. The flight was commanded by James A. Lovell with John L. “Jack” Swigert as Command Module pilot and Fred W. Haise as Lunar Module pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for the original CM pilot Ken Mattingly, who was grounded by the flight surgeon after exposure to German measles.
The mission was launched on April 11, 1970 at 13:13 CST. Two days later an explosion crippled the service module upon which the Command Module depended. To conserve its batteries and the oxygen needed for the last hours of flight, the crew instead used the Lunar Module’s resources as a “lifeboat” during the return trip to Earth. Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water and the critical need to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17. NASA called the mission a “successful failure”. (read more)
you are here
Dawn is breaking on the continent of Capella. Overhead, the star of Davriel is still visible in a purplish blue sky. A meteorite trail flashes by. Sallareä bows her head in homage to all she does not know. Sheâs unaware that, momentarily, what she does not know will be paying homage back. Flickering particles of crystal enter a sector of Sallareäâs narrative-space. Passing through the prisms of her senses, they arrive and get merged in the centers of perception. A message appears in the form of three-dimensional letters stretching from the ground to the heavens ..too high for her to make out what they say. In addition, they vanish and reappear each instant. This kind of apparition calls on her centers of continuity. Then, like constructing a Klimt from grains of sand ..an interpretation begins to form that is such a departure from conventional classification, she has to temporarily step outside herself. An entity that looks like a changing constellation of linked images begins to emerge ..unraveling faster than it can stay together as a singularity. Sallareä is surprised to learn that, whoever or whatever this presence may be, it seems OK with the circumstances of their existence and wants to know if they can join her narrative-space and play.
- Labels: aliens, bill, cosmos, psychology
A BoseâEinstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter of a dilute gas of weakly interacting bosons confined in an external potential and cooled to temperatures very near absolute zero (0 K or â273.16 °C). Under such conditions, a large fraction of the bosons occupy the lowest quantum state of the external potential, at which point quantum effects become apparent on a macroscopic scale.
This state of matter was first predicted by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein in 1924â25. Bose first sent a paper to Einstein on the quantum statistics of light quanta (now called photons). Einstein was impressed, translated the paper himself from English to German and submitted it for Bose to the Zeitschrift für Physik which published it. Einstein then extended Bose’s ideas to material particles (or matter) in two other papers.
Seventy years later, the first gaseous condensate was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in 1995 at the University of Colorado at Boulder NIST-JILA lab, using a gas of rubidium atoms cooled to 170 nanokelvin (nK) (1.7Ã10â7 K). For their achievements Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle at MIT received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics. In November 2010 the first photon BEC was observed. (read more) (see more)
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You think that light is fast? Well, think again. Sometimes it is slower than a crawl. All schoolchildren know that light is the fastest thing there is. It zips along through empty space at 297,000 km per second (186,000 miles a second).
But now a Danish physicist and her team of collaborators have found a way to slow light down to less than 1.6 km per hour (one mile an hour) – slower than a slow walk.
The way Dr Hau and her team have slowed down light by a factor of 600 million or so is to use a group of atoms called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). These atoms are cooled to a temperature of only a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature, at which all motion stops.
In a Bose-Einstein condensate, atoms are hardly moving at all. This means that according to the uncertainty principle that rules atoms, they are spread out and overlap. This results in a group identity for the collection of supercold atoms. And when light passes through such an environment, it will slow down.
By firing co-ordinated beams of laser light through the BEC, Hau and colleagues have slowed light down to a crawl. Inside the BEC, the so-called refractive index (which measures the slowing of light) becomes enormous: as high as 100 trillion times greater than that of glass. (news.bbc.co.uk)
Proceedings from the Symposium on Extraterrestrial Psychology
Dr. Latimer: Language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that signify nothing until we recognize something we might have either seen or heard before, and look up it’s meaning in our mental dictionary. In a plurality of worlds, without a common store of experience that comes from shared culture, efforts at communication may be an exercise in incomprehensible gestures. Verbal communication is the manipulation of symbols to which meaning is assigned by culture. An important point to keep in mind my friends is that the events experienced by members of a culture over time are what make up the narrative thread of that culture.
Dr. Zhavern: When we look into space, we donât see things as they are. What we see is a single narrative thread winding itâs way through the cosmos ..a cosmos that may be shared by narratives other than our own. However, to itâs participants ..each narrative looks like the only cosmic game in town. Like language, we skew space to resemble something weâve either seen, or heard before. Itâs the only way we can come to grips with it.
Dr. Orloff: I think human consciousness is a fragmented and unstable process. It creates rapid models of counterfactual worlds inside the brain for things it cannot observe ..but only infer. The brain keeps track of these different versions until only those that contribute to narrative coherence receive sufficient signal strength to survive while those leading nowhere dissolve into noise ..and disappear into non-narrative space .. in an instant.
Dr. Pangloss: I think consciousness is made up of searchlights, projected from different mental versions of the world we create. They eventually converge to form concentric circles in the brain that illuminate the focal points that contribute most to narrative events, and fade rapidly at the periphery with fewer contributing points until things go black somewhere around the edges of non-narrative space.
My feeble brain ( hasnât got a clue ): Are you saying that the narrative threads of extraterrestrials arenât likely to uncoil very closely to ours ..(?)
- Labels: bill, cosmos, neuro, psychology
” Twinkle, twinkle, little star…
we just found out what you are…”
If you have a very good 8″ telescope
you can see for yourself that we are not alone
- Labels: above top secret, aliens, cosmos, disclosure, truth
“Darmok on the ocean.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
The beast at Tanagra.
Kadir beneath Mo Moteh.
Kiteo, his eyes closed.
Temba, his arms wide/open.
Temba, at rest.
Mirab, with sails unfurled.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Sokath, his eyes uncovered/opened.
The river Temarc in winter.
Zinda, his face black, his eyes red.
Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani.
Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Ubaya.
Ubaya of crossroads, at Lungha.
Lungha, her sky gray.
Uzani, his army with fists open.
Uzani, his army with fists closed.”
Benoît B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 â 14 October 2010) was a Franco-American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child. Mandelbrot spent much of his life living and working in the United States, acquiring dual French and American citizenship.
Mandelbrot worked on a wide range of mathematical problems, including mathematical physics and quantitative finance, but is best known as the father of fractal geometry. He coined the term fractal and described the Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot extensively popularized his work, writing books and giving lectures aimed at the general public.
Mandelbrot spent most of his career at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and was appointed as an IBM Fellow. He later became Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University. Mandelbrot also held positions at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Université Lille Nord de France, Institute for Advanced Study and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
“In 1972 I went to Berkeley and studied mathematics and physics and, later, operations research. Later I earned a Ph.D. in statistics. I spent my career teaching mathematics and statistics, and traveled widely. In 1996 I wrote my bestselling book, Fermatâs Last Theorem, which has been translated into 22 languages and was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Award that year. In 2004, I was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. From 2005 to 2007, I was a visiting scholar in the history of science at Harvard University. I am currently a research fellow in the history of science at Boston University. I often write articles about science, and some have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Jerusalem Post, The London Times, and other papers. I also authored a dozen research articles on mathematics, and two textbooks. But my primary occupation is writing popular books on scienceâit is my passion to bring science to everyone”.
Any time now…
you will meet Death
Any time now…
your life will end
Any time now…
On November 15, 1966, two young, married couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette, were traveling late at night in the Scarberrys’ car. They were passing the West Virginia Ordnance Works, an abandoned World War II TNT factory, about seven miles north of Point Pleasant, in the 2,500 acre (10 km²) McClintic Wildlife Management Area, when they noticed two red lights in the shadows by an old generator plant near the factory gate. They stopped the car, and reportedly discovered that the lights were the glowing red eyes of a large animal, “shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or seven feet tall, with big wings folded against its back,” according to Roger Scarberry. Terrified, they drove toward Route 62, where the creature supposedly chased them at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour.
They drove to the Mason County courthouse to alert Deputy Millard Halstead, who later said, “I’ve known these kids all their lives. They’d never been in any trouble and they were really scared that night. I took them seriously.” He then followed Roger Scarberry’s car back to the secret ex-U.S. Federal bomb and missile factory, but found no trace of the strange creature. According to the book Alien Animals, by Janet and Colin Bord, a poltergeist attack on the Scarberry home occurred later that night, during which the creature was seen several times.
The following night, on November 16, several armed townspeople combed the area around the TNT plant for signs of Mothman. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Wamsley, and Mrs. Marcella Bennett, with her infant daughter Teena, were in a car en-route to visit their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Thomas, who lived in a small house near the TNT plant. They were heading back to their car when a figure appeared behind their parked vehicle. Mrs. Bennett said that it seemed like it had been lying down, slowly rising up from the ground, large and gray, with glowing red eyes. While Wamsley phoned the police, the creature walked onto the porch and peered in at them through the window.
On November 24, four people allegedly saw the creature flying over the TNT area.
On the morning of November 25, Thomas Ury, who was driving along Route 62 just north of the TNT, claimed to have seen the creature standing in a field, and then it spread its wings and flew away, and Thomas sped toward the Point Pleasant sheriff’s office.
A Mothman sighting was again reported on January 11, 1967 hovering over the town’s bridge, and several other times that same year. Fewer sightings of the Mothman were reported after the collapse of the town’s bridge, the Silver Bridge, when 46 people died. The Silver Bridge, so named for its aluminium paint, was an eyebar chain suspension bridge that connected the cities of Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Gallipolis, Ohio over the Ohio River. The bridge was built in 1928, and it collapsed on December 15, 1967. Investigation of the bridge wreckage pointed to the failure of a single eye-bar in a suspension chain due to a small manufacturing flaw. There are rumors that the Mothman appears before upcoming disasters and seems to try to warn people of them. After that, mothman was never again seen in Point Pleasant. (read more)
