Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI / AURA) / Hubble-Europe Collaboration Acknowledgment: D. Padgett (GSFC), T. Megeath (University of Toledo), B. Reipurth (University of Hawaii)
"Though the difference between man and the other animals is enormous, yet one might say reasonably that it is little less than the difference among men themselves . . . Such differences depend upon diverse mental abilities, and I reduce them to the difference between being or not being a philosopher; for philosophy, as the proper nutrient of those who can feed upon it, does in fact distinguish that single man from the common herd in a greater or less degree of merit according as his diet varies." - Galileo
- Blue Origins and now SpaceX have successfully landed their rockets back on earth. This makes for increased reusability and to dramatically lower the cost of spaceflight. One could imagine space elevators to reduce space access even more, but that's maybe ten or more years down the road(yes, times goes by fast!). Here's some youtubes that show these historic events.
Blue Origins was first,
SpaceX just landed their's . . . after like two or three failures. It'll be exciting to see how fast a turnaround time these companies relaunch these space rockets. There's also other exciting space companies to make space colonization/exploration more possible and free of governments who are politically tied down. There's Bigalow inflatable space stations, there's asteroid mining companies. Anyways, the SpaceX video,
"the fundamental axiom of modern science... In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration" - Thomas Henry Huxley
- some exciting science/tech news for the day,
Germany has created a Stellerator that looks to be the first working nuclear fusion reactor.
They're putting in Helium to fuse for this month, then hydrogen in January. It's passed all running tests so far. It would be a surprise if it didn't work.
Image credit, NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute
I'm going to go ahead and put a wild west documentary here in a Pluto astro pictures, because, Wyatt Earp lived a life of boomtowns, and the practical effects of the Astronomer's exploration of comets, asteroids, and even Pluto here will be to map out where future space colonists will go for materials and energy to survive. A little more about science/technological development . . .
Alvin Toffler started out with "Future Shock" in the 1970s. It was famous back then. He mentions in the beginnings how mankind is technologically dependent, and how science/technology development accelerates. The rest of that book gets into technological details that barely matter today. But, Alvin went on to write "The Third Wave", and "PowerShift". These two explore the science/technological development of mankind a lot more. The Third Wave talks about agricultural civilization to industrialism, to some undreamt of future science/technological culture that is still being hammered out(space colonization, maybe nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence; the last two Alvin didn't really consider, making these later two works seem kind of out of date in the 1980s and 1990s; now, Alvin Toffler is hardly talked about anywhere, despite Al Gore, and even Newt Gingrich handing out copies to all U.S. Capital hill politicians; remarkably, they both had very different interpretations of Alvin Toffler's works!) Third Wave and PowerShift both have their relations to the Wyatt Earp documentary below. Basically, Alvin Toffler mentions, almost in passing, that the U.S. civil war wasn't fought over slavery, it was fought over the industrial north, and the agricultural south. Wyatt Earp was a product of that, and lived his life on the wild west, when it was becoming industrialised, after the civil war. The Third Wave describes how mankind has gone through two waves of science/technological, and those cultural differences - first agriculturalism(well, first hunter gatheror; but, Alvin defines the first wave disturbance as agriculturalism), then the second wave is industrialism. And of course, the Third Wave is some kind of civilization being fought over right now, and for the next hundred plus years I'd suspect.
- related to Alvin Toffler's PowerShift, is this latest event of the information age, - Tim Fargo's tweet jukebox,
Alvin Toffler's "PowerShift" focuses on the information age as the third wave(of Alvin Toffler's "Third Wave book"). He points out that in agricultural culture, violence is more or less 'the' power lever(also hunter/gatheror). There was money power levers in agricultural society, but that power lever took on center stage mostly in the industrial era. Alvin Toffler hopes that knowledge becomes the power lever of the new info/third wave. In his Powershift, Alvin points out much else of the information age; of how it reduces costs. Everyone knows that there's been fights on capital hill about taxing and making money over the internet(making the government in control of the internet). Well, Tim Fargo started a tweet jukebox innovation a few years ago. I've been taking advantage of it; but, now Tim Fargo wants to make money with it(he's already a millionare),
"Here comes the new and improved version!
We’re cleaning up the last bits of dust from adding many of your suggestions for the new version of Tweet Jukebox.
We didn’t get to all of them, mainly because you had a ton of great suggestions! Thanks for that.
On November 1st, we will open our payment system to allow you to sign up for the new, multi-account, versions of Tweet Jukebox.
We’ll be keeping a basic free version for those who don’t want this new awesomeness. :-)
Since you were here first, you’re going to get a deal that’ll happen precisely once.
From November 1st to the 7th, we’re going to substantially discount all annual plans.
To preview our plans ==========> " - Tim Fargo"
Not only is this disturbing from the perspective of an Alvin Toffler understanding of things, but listen to the manipulative language, "New and Improved version . . . new pay version of Tweet Jukebox!" He first limits the Tweet jukebox, then, he says, in an improvement, if you pay, you can more or less get back to full Tweet Jukebox powers!
The article does a pretty good job explaining the significance of this scientific work. The Big Bang theory was confirmed by the detection of a cosmic background radiation; you can think of it like detecting the heat after a bomb went off. But, even scientists like to constrain theory and try to find more. One idea cosmologists came up with a long time ago(as far as things go in the scientific world these days), is to find the neutrino background.
The Neutrino background would push things past the recombination event. Matter and electromagnetic radiation(light/photons) were coupled together for hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang. Detecting the cosmic background radiation was a detection of when this light/matter coupling de-coupled, and the universe could be seen for the first time. Detecting the Cosmic Neutrino background would allow us to see things at a lot closer to when the Big Bang happened(although, there's still a lot that happened before the Neutrinoes decouples from the matter of the universe).
Gravity meters are also advancing. They should detect gravity waves which can push cosmology even deeper into the big bang. But anyways,
The Plank satellite scientists seem to be able to derive through mathematics here, the Cosmic Neutrino background radiation!
- Ope, I should say more about those Neutrinoes. Neutrinoes come out of the week nuclear force. Quantum physicists have found four fundamental forces - gravitation, strong and week nuclear forces, and the electromagnetic force. The neutrino comes from the weak nuclear force which actually comes from some w particles. Neutrinoes generally don't interact with anything. They are one evidence that 'dark matter' can exist. Cosmologists have mathematically shown that Neutrinoes cannot account for all the 'dark matter.' So, to derive the cosmic neutrino background is a great accomplishment! As exciting as the CERN/LHC detection of the Higgs particle just a few years ago!
And someone recently unearthed this great video documentary on "Quantum Spookiness."
General/Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics brought up questions about the nature of science - causality and whether we can predict everything. Before then, Mathematics had raised questions about knowledge in the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, and then abstract algebras, quaternions and so on. In 1931, Kurt Gödel published his inconsistency/incompleteness theorems. Jacob Bronowski's "Origins of Knowledge and Imagination" in my opinion perhaps, unifies and explains all these problems. See my Origins of and Nature of Mathematical Knowledge post, third post of this blog for an introduction to these ideas.
"This terror then and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of light, but by the aspect and law of nature." - Lucretius
Lucretius lived in B.C. times . . . forty years before the supposed life of Jesus Christ, which I show in my "Gospel of Truth" is just a sungod, the one sungod to rule them all(kind of like in "Lord of the Rings", one ring to rule them all!); but, it's kind of interesting that Lucretius says darkness of mind should be dispelled by reason and not by poetic references to the sun.
Someone photographed the Andromeda galaxy as you'd see it . . . if you could see it with your naked eye. Which, most people can't make out the Andromeda galaxy quite like that. I can't. I've taken a eight inch reflector telescope to it, and all I can make out in the central coma.
"Since then reason is divine in comparison with man's whole nature, the life according to reason must be divine in comparison with usual human life." - Aristotle
"We have, over again, the fact that criticism of the mathematicians procedure, if it wishes to be relevant, must be based on thorough sympathy and understanding." - Phillip E.B. Jourdain
"In other words: It's possible that that there are dozens — hundreds, thousands even — of these convex pentagon shapes waiting to be discovered. Up until last month, only 14 had been found, and for all anyone knew, that list could have been final."
"But last month, a cluster of computers that Von Derau was using to run though different shapes spit out an intriguing possibility."
Image credit: Casey Mann
They spent two years searching for this with an algorithm they made.
Reverend Ray Hagins great speech on Serapis; he shows that the Council of Nicea was started for the most part to stop a Arius of Libya, here's a wiki on it, --> Arius of Libya
Lets be clear about the Hadrian quote that the Serapis Christ worshippers were called Christians; if there was a Jesus Christ, the Christians wouldn't be worshipping Serapis, but Jesus Christ! But, they are not. Why? Because Jesus Christ had not been made up yet.
Here's another speech from him, where he shows quotes from later Christian councils to the effect of "believe in us, or elese", and "don't dare change what we say or come up with anything else." - 09Oct2015 edit - Council of Chalcedon says, "since we have formulated these things with all possible accuracy and attention, the sacred and universal synod decrees that no one is permitted to produce, or even to write down or compose, any other creed or to think or teach otherwise" Recall Duet chapter 5, where they have their god saying, "believe in no other gods but me", "do not pattern gods after the sun, moon, stars, and nature". Well, any further is a little off topic for this post/thread. But, maybe I'll make another post, taking this in other directions.
Ray Higgin's find's a most remarkable passage of Christians converting Africans to Christianity! Edwin W. Smith, page 173(according to Ray Higgin's video above) "the Golden Stool", "To win a people for Christ, it is necessary to Europeanize them. Behind all systems of administration lies the fundamental question of "what we intend to make of the African." . . . further, "One possible and largely practiced policy is that of repression, which means "keeping the native African in a subjected and inferior position, as a mere serf(slave) of the dominant race." . . . and further(paraphrasing), the most effective tool to do this is the Christian religion.
So good to see a ray of light!
. . . and another Jesus Christ is a SunGod video,
This one also does a good job relating Essenes, Samaritans; B.C. communities to Christian Sects of A.D. and explains evidence of Christian fathers showing how the canonical gospels were derived from previous Gospels.
- found some more of the African awakening to Sungods!
Yet another picture I'm sure is similar to one I already have up. I just kind of liked it for the starfield in the background of the nebula and a Globular cluster to the right of the nebulae.
Quote for the day,
"God is over all things, under all things, outside all; inside all; within but not enclosed; without but not extended; above but not raised up; below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling." - Archbishop Hildebert
- Science news for the day is in the comments section . . .
Yet another Pleiades picture, I know. I know I've had a couple of them already, and the succeeding ones were more or less better than the last. This one is just another new photograph of them. I guess I just liked it!
Quote for the day,
"In a day when science is being discredited by messianic ignoramuses with enormous followings, it is well occasionally to recall the cliché, trite though it may be, that without this union of experiment and mathematics our civilization would not exist. Less trite is the more recent observation that because of this very union our civilization may cease to exist. And, while we are facing facts, we note the opinion of many observers that ever since the days of Aquinas science has been feared or secretly hated by nine human beings out of every ten who have sufficient animation to hate or fear anything. Science has been grudgingly tolerated since the days of Galileo and Newton only because I s has increased material wealth. If science dies, mathematics dies with it." - E.T. Bell
Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. The Moon: Gari Arrillaga. Other data: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/SwRI/UCLA/MPS/IDA. Processing by Ted Stryk, Gordan Ugarkovic, Emily Lakdawalla, and Jason Perry.
Researchers develop basic computing elements for bacteria <-- link. Synthetic biologists have been building bio computing elements for years now. Now, they've taken complete control of life's most basic lifeform - a bacterium. This 'solf' nanotechnology can solve two problems nanotechnologists have thought they can solve - energy and medical. If not the more important problems!
This is not the nanotechnology that can make anything atom by atom. Can it bootstrap to that nanomanufacturing? Well, it's been shown that dna-nanotechnology works better in a cellular environment. That's as far as I want to speculate in that direction.
The known is finite, the unknown infinit; Intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land." - T. H. Huxley"
Here's a close up picture of a double body comet. Somehow, these two bodies combined gently enough not to completely annihilate one another. A thought I have about that is that the further out of the solar system, the slower the speeds bodies have to orbit around the sun. There, colliding can be a lot more gentle. Could this double bodies comet indicate it originated in the outer solar system?
- James Burke's KWeb2k
All I want to say about this for now is that I've never owned a smart phone, or a cell phone, or these tablets. Maybe if James Burke and his team make some application(as they indicate in this video), I might finally get onto these new technologies!
Björn Jónsson says about this image: "The dark feature very near or at Pluto's pole continues to be visible and I continue to suspect it to be a small, dark polar cap. The bright terrain continues to look mottled (which it didn't a few days ago in lower-res images) and these features are probably at least partially real. The dark spot near the right limb at ~(203,354) is definitely a real feature and the brighter spot next to it is probably real as well. Charon is now showing lots of interesting details. In particular the small, 'bright' spot near the center of Charon's disc is a real feature but its brightness relative to the darker terrain is exaggerated here."
- 9 July 2015 picture of Pluto(days before New Horizons gets really close/blasts past the Pluto system),
Image Credits: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI
Charon still not showing how interesting it can be! Ope, we finally have Charon,
Image Credit: NASA/ New Horizons space probe
- and Pluto black and white again . . . just a day away(and a few hours),
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
I posted this at amazon; for some strange reason, it's hidden on there. This review kind of reexpresses my "Origins of Mathematical knowledge post" in terms context as described by Susanne K Langer.
"Connections and "The Day the Universe Changed"(there's also "After the Warming" which tries to connect everything in terms of global warming; for instance, that maybe the Minoans and Myceneans civilizations collapsed because of shift of climate, and that maybe science and technology started when things got cold . . . that early Homo Sapiens and even Neanderthals that drew pictures in caves used fire to survive for instance) are fun things to think about. They are worth thinking about in terms of thinking about a mystery. What causes change in human society?
One of my favorite examples of what I'm seeing in James Burke's ideas here is David Goodstein, in his mechanical universe, points out how the British made their lightning rods with a spherical top because the King(I think it's the same King George found in the 'Declaration of Independence"), and not just pointed tip. There's scientific connections and there's these cultural connections like the lightning rod example above. James Burke seems to want to show all these cultural affects to, mostly technological developments. Every now and then, he requires some science connections.
The cultural connecitons, as I'm calling them, is all fine and good. To me, the model for scientific discovery is the discovery of the solar system. That we couldn't just send off some spacecraft to a polar orbit, look straight down, and say, "Hey, look at that! The planets go around the sun, and not the other way around." We had notice oddities, like the retrograde motion of the planets, the changing phases of the moon, to decode from our current perspective(our cultural biased conceptions/cultural connections), the facts/logic of the solar system.
Aristotle had all kinds of these vague notions of physics that didn't help much - bodies tend to stay put because that's their natural place to be. And, things need a force to keep them moving. It took Galileo to see the underlying structural relations of friction to tease out the amazing fact that different masses fall at the same rate in a vacuum. He also had some logic that drove him; if two masses are connected, then two contradictory things must happen - 1) they must fall slower, because the lighter mass is pulling up from the heavier mass, and 2) they must go faster because they are a combined heavier mass now.
Susanne K Langer in her "an introduction of Symbolic Logic" points out, chapter 3 - Essentials of logical structure, there's personal conceptions with different contexts of the same concept. If you say one word, you have all kinds of personal contextual ideas of what relates to that idea. In a sentence, the word run generally makes sense only with me telling you to run. You don't generally say, houses run the race. You might say house runs the world, depending on the meaning of 'house.' An example in the book is "these should be rubbed together in a smooth paste." Here, you know this refers to flour, sugar, and so on. But, this could also refer to a mechanic putting together some sealant. The conception can take on multiple contexts. There's often a cultural flavor to most people's conceptions. James Burke, in his Connections seems to want to find the technological origins in these cultural flavors.
To see people who have to overcome their cultural biases, for whatever reasons. A people goes to war with another, the climate changes, and those gods must not have been the real gods. That style of dress doesn't work out in the woods like it does in the ballroom, or something like that! As my David Goldstein example of the lightning rod shows, there are these types of connections, but the real connections, as I like to call them, are these underlying structural relations, that we end up calling mathematics and logic. These things come about in much the same way we discovered the solar system.
James Burke's Connections here, and his other works really, kind of mix these cultural connections and real connections in a fun way. But, some of these connections are not always quite correct. For instance, he says the longbow led to the cannon - not quite in my opinion perhaps. But, in showing the history of the longbow, we see some great cultural connections of the medieval society of the Knight on horseback.
When I looked at some of the real connections, I noticed some remarkable connections between them and what Jacob Bronowski points out about the nature and origin of mathematical knowledge, in his "Origins of Knowledge and Imagination." I'll leave a link to my right up about that in the comments section."
I can't help noting that I've never heard or/seen a great mathematician/scientists who was born from a previous great mathematician/scientist. In the case of Richard, his father wished to be great, but wasn't able to get into science; but, he was able to inspire his son, here, Richard Feynman.
I note for instance Albert Einstein and David Hilbert's sons. They went crazy. Albert's went into a psych ward. Hilbert's thought god was talking to him and so on. Carl Feynman grew up fine; but, never became great in any way. Leonard Euler had a bunch of kids; none of them did anything of note.
Seems that the environment a person grows up in, affects them differently than most others, and these influences don't seem to be the same for their children.
- Who's Richard Feynman? Richard Feynman is considered one of the greatest scientists ever and of the 20th century. I've often felt that his personality is what makes him so famous, more than his accomplishments. What did he solve?
He solved, compared to what was there before, the renormalization problem. There was quantum mechanics before Richard. Quantum Mechanics had in fact gone through several evolutions already by the time Richard Feynman could make any contribution. Bohr had combined Planck's quantum to solve the atom for the first time. He had essentially derived the spectroscopic evidence of the atom. The quantum mechanics was then generalized by Heisenburg's "Uncertainty principle", and then Schroedinger combined De Broglie's ideas wavelengths and really Einstein's famous E=MC^2 equation.
Then came Paul Dirac. Paul combined special relativity with quantum mechanics. He predicted anti-matter. But, the theory predicted infinities. This is where Richard Feynman came in. There was also Schwinger, but physicists took to Richard's diagrammatic methods.
After Richard Feynman's diagrams, he didn't do much new science. Richard's claim to fame seems more to me about thinking of quantum computers and nanotechnology. Around 1959, just two years after Sputnik went up, he gave a speech, more for fun than anything else, about being able to manufacture anything atom by atom.
I've found almost all these geniuses are smart in some ways, but have bad attitudes in other ways. In Richard Feynman's case, he had a bad attitude about history. I've seen for instance John Stillwell, who has tried to right technical history of mathematics has bad attitudes about talking about the nature/philosophy of mathematics. I'm finding nanotechnologists have bad attitudes about, none other than rational philosophy! God-Religious of course, usually, have bad attitudes about scientific knowledge, or not knowing - therefore, god must exist for them!
And what's the connection between mathematics and technology? Science - experiment and real world data! Dah!
- Sophie confronts Silas. She asks Silas if he murdered who she thinks is her Grandfather. Silas responds with "I am a messenger from god." I find people think in these kinds of ways all the time. It's like they don't want to get close to the truth; they don't want some inner them being exposed.
Even a 400 A.D. Bishop of Constantinople Gregorius of Nyssa noticed this type of thinking and complained,
"People swarm everywhere, talking of incomprehensible matters, in hovels, streets and square, marketplaces, and crossroads. When I ask how many oboloi I have to pay, they answer with hairsplitting arguments about the born and the unborn. If I inquire the price of bread, I am told that the father is greater than the son. I call a servant to tell me whether my bath is ready; he rejoins that the son was created out of nothing."
There an earlier scene of character Sophie with Robert Langdon. They're in a truck and talking about little things. She asks Mr Langdon, "are you a god-fearing man professor." Langdon replies, "I was raised a catholic." For which she correctly replies, "that's not really an answer."
- Some extra about Silas. Silas is a Herodian who had at least one successful fight against the Romans. This victory led the Jews to think they could fight againgst the Romans. The Romans wiped out the Essenes on Masada,
Josephus was with the Romans trying to convince the Essenes to just surrender. They commited mass suicide instead.
- I made a post about what I like to call "the dark side of the force" before. Well, I've made several. I posted movie scene from "The Day the Earth Stood Still", and I've wrote some stuff(that very well written) linking these irrationalists techniques to gangs and violence, and then gangs to cults, and cults to religion. I almost certainly should try a new writeup combining all these thought . . . someday!
Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Ke Wang et al. 2015
interstellar clouds are known to be light years in length, but I can't help sharing some of this interstellar gas clouds stats - contains 80,000 solar mass worth of material, 280 light years in length . . . it's diameter is only five light years! This particular gas cloud is 18,000 light years away.
Image Credit: ESO
Credit:
ESA/Hubble & NASA
Image Credit: Nasa/ Dawn spacecraft of Ceres
- May 28 latest of Ceres,
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
- some thought for the day extra,
How did the Cartesian plane come about? Not until the end of section 1 of Descartes "The Geometry"(which is actually an appendix to Descartes "Discourse on the Method", hence it's the only reason to by Descartes 'Discourse'!) does he hint at a Cartesian plane. The majority of what he presents just uses two lines. When he considers possibly doing his algebraic geometry(not to be confused with modern mathematicians meaning of 'algebraic geometry') to three dimensions, he points out making normals at every dimensional extention from a point of a curve. A normal is a perpendicular line. He uses normals often to set up his equations, which are quite a bit more than what even today's 'college algebra' students or even Calculus 1 and maybe even two ever see!
It's just interesting how the full general idea didn't come into view till he considered the three dimensional case!
Image credit: New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) photos, taken May 8-12, 2015
Epistle of James(James the Just?), says 5:7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord." and " 5:8 Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. "
If Jesus Christ had already existed, then why is James the Just here saying to be patient for Jesus Christ to come? Because Jesus Christ never did come; in fact, he never existed! This is proof that Jesus Christ never existed.
And remember, at the end of Revelation, it is said that if a person adds to or takes away from what's written in this bible, he will be destroyed! "
22:18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
22:19And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life,"
Note for the day edit . . . I have updated my 5/14/11 post about Greek mathematics; just the Thales mathematics posted in the replies section . . . and 'Tuesday, August 7, 2012' post about the ancient mathematics of the circle. The post originally linked to a mechanical universe episode about circles. Unfortunately, the mechanical universe series has been taken down from youtube . . . again! You'll have to pay 500 dollars to watch it on your own(yes, I have it . . .). Hopefully, I can figure out my side and diagonal numbers to those mysterious Archimedes numbers!
- more note for the day, I posted even more mathematical connections in Wednesday, May 11, 2011, my post about Babylonians. I once again choose to leave the original post as is, and post the new material in the replies section.
- Mythology and Riddles section -
In Clash of the Titans, the Greek gods deform a prince(Callabus) for hunting down unicorns to where there's only one left. This prince casts a spell on a princess he loves. He makes a puzzle for any other would be suitor of this princess. And, if they don't solve it, they get burned at the stake(in the movie is a scene where a previous suitor gets burned at the stake).
Jacob Bronowski talks about how mathematics and poetry for one share a common property - analogy. In poetry, that's called similie/metaphor. In mathematics, it's called abstraction. When I learned of astrotheology, I saw that mythology is poetry, and I hoped to find some connection/evolution from mythology to numbers. But, I've never found any.
The mythological description of the universe certainly preceded the mathematical(or did it? archaeologists have found tally sticks dating to tens of thousands of years). Well, I've found the human conscouse of science/mathematics in mythology in another way now!
Basically, I've found a certain amount of mythological puzzle testing. The Clash of the Titans example above is of course a contemporary dramatization.
In 1Kings10, a Queen Sheba comes from Kingdome of Saba(contemporary Yemen which is the news lately). She comes to test King Soloman with puzzles/questions. Unfortunately, the bible doesn't specify what those questions are. It just says Queen Sheba was enthralled and thouroughly satisfied with King Soloman's answers, and gives him tons of gold, jewels and so on.
Another place mythology poses questions is Greek Sphinxes. They ask their questions, and if the poor Greek doesn't answer it correctly, the sphinx inevitably kills 'him.' Appears someone else has beaten me to this idea, so i'll just link to this article I found, which shows that this testing appears awkwardly in a Greek drama! link --> The Riddle of the Sphinx
I like this one picture, because it's of a Sphinx and its riddle on a Greek vase(one of the great cultural hallmarks of that culture back then),
Jesus Christ is also made to pose lots of riddles. His use of riddles is no better; they're use to hide the truth.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
Comet surface at 1.7 meter/pixel resolution (Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0)
(Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0)
Back to Pluto Charon system!
Nasa/New Horizons spacecraft image credit
Some remarkable things that should prove very interesting as the resolution gets better is that Pluto can have nitrogen ice. Uranus and Neptune have methane ices which makes them different.
Some Pluto researchers are already excited about the possibility of a Pluto ice-cap.
Pluto can have some exotic ices, as above; but, Pluto's remarkably large moon, Charon, seems to be more regular water ice!
