astro picture for the day

Copyright: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/N. Schneider, Ph. André, V. Könyves (CEA Saclay, France) for the 'Gould Belt survey' Key Programme

Quote for the day

"Science, is one of the few areas of human life in which the majority does not rule." - Samuel Ting

There's this famous Star Trek saying, "the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few."  Well, this is very anti-minority isn't it?!  Of course, one could turn this around and say we can't have the few controlling the masses.  But, the minority thing again throws some hot water on this general concept.  I'm tempted to argue that the problem here is what are the facts, and what is the logic?  I'll leave this train of thought as it stands. I'll say maybe this is a problem that society is still very blind to.  Let me bring up one more issue I keep trying to point out to various people only to be met with silence and refusal to think; the problem with the majority is incrowding and refusal to think of new ideas. This is where I come to the support of the minority and where Mr Ting's quote is quite correct and I'll stand by that much for now.

I'll leave with another great mathematics lecture I've been watching and rewatching recently.

John Milnor: Spheres

I couldn't get the video to show up for the embedding. There's so much to say about this.  I'm struck by the possibility that maybe Mr Milnor's work could lead to understanding the place of fractals in mathematics - as oppossed to merely being a curiosity. Milnor notes that one has to define Henri Poincare's definition of the problem.  This is of course just one example of how mathematics is about defining where things were vague at first.

astro picture for the day/ thought for the day

Credit: ESO/F. Comeron

thought for the day,

Particle physicists infered that protons decay in the 1970s.  Some were alarmed; others not so much. Most scientists of that time had learned psychologicaly, that the universe may have some disturbing consequences, like stars explode and the sun will burn out.  Or, that the Earth is not the center of the universe and that it is a sphere and not a plane.

In some sense, religion was created to avoid uncomfortable facts.  The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilbamesh is about immortality and so is Egyptian religion and the idea of Heaven in general. Mathematical science faces facts directly.  Religion sweeps facts under the rug. I'm wondering if the fact that humanity is a science and technologicaly dependent species is an uncomfortable fact? Google "scientific humanism" or "humans are the science and technologicaly dependent species" and you get next to nothing.  This is a fact that should be obvious.  The fact that mathematics is the unified view of things is perhaps harder.  One has to do some reading and thinking and rethinking.  This is kindof what this blog is for!

Quote for the day

"the most successfull programs of unification always came about when there was some urgent question to be answered. In most cases, the urgent question was that something seemed to be wrong in the present understanding, and the correct answer then turned out to be that the only way to get it right was to say that this effect and that effect cancel, and the only way to make them cancel was to put them into one big theory together and show that they were the same force." - Gerard't Hooft

astro picture for the day

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)

-------------------------------------crazy science/tech for the day!

electronic control of dna (un) zipping

One of the major criticisms of dna-nanotech is the use of temperature controls to get the dna to fold in the right way.  The major advances have been to conquer this thermodynamics over the last year or so; still, it would be nice to move beyond having to use thermodynamics.  It will be interesting to see if the above electronic control of dna (un) zipping will generalise to all the great dna-nanotech advances like dna origami and other great things they've made dna-nanotechnology. If anything, this electronic control can add mechanical control to all the dna-nanotechnologies we already have.

youtube for the day/ more Jesus Christ is a Sungod youtubes/ extra note: I've finally go myself to edit and polish my "Gospel of Truth" post; first post of the blog!

and part 2,

 

 

This Jesus Christ youtube shows some more details I havn't heard about - such as Herodotus substituting the myths of Dionysius for Osirus and not worrying about the fact that these are two analogous sungods.  Then, the author of this youtube shows some ruins showing connections between Osirus and Mithrus.  It's kind of hard to believe I hadn't checked this youtube out before; but o.k!

 

Quote for the day--------------------------------------------------------------

 

It is worth noting that a a dissatisfaction with established theory often begins with those studying the theory in their mature years. - Anatoly Vershik

 

crazy science/technology for the day ------------------------------------------------------------

 

There's been more improvements to make dna-nanomanufacturing viable.

 

Using Dna as a template to more robust nanostructures.

 

Dna Laser printing , this dna laser printing is another pathway towards making the dna strands to start with, and make them less expensivelly; bringing the costs of dna-nanomanufacturing overall down even more. There was a report of someone who had worked to bring down the costs of dna-nanomanufacturing down different from this just a few months ago. I'm pretty sure I pointed it out previously on this blog.  I havn't seen this report anywhere where I usually find my science/technology news; this just comes to show how much science/technology is happening today.  There's things like this that falls through the cracks!

 

astro picture extra!

 

ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image

 

 

 

 



astro picture for the day/ equivalent expressions generalisation of Jacob Bronowski's philosophy of mathematical knowledge

Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing - Donald Waid

Quote for the day

"Keep your work and your self-esteem separate." - Israel Moiseevich Gelfand

Israel Gelfand was a pretty major mathematician of the twentieth century.  Emil Artin made major generalisations to Galois theory in algebra and reciprocity theorems in number theory; he's the only solver of two of the Hilbert problems.  These are two of the major themes of mathematics.  Another would be invariant theory.  Invariant theory appeared to be solved by David Hilbert in the late 1800s.  But, Hermann Weyl found a way out by a representation theory generalisation.  Well, Gelfond's perhaps major contribution was taking this clue of Hermann's to the tilt.  The central theme of Gelfond's vast representation theory beyond Hermann Weyl's appears to be compact spaces. But, this mathematics of Gelfand's, vast as it was(almost impossible to describe here) is just one contribution.  He made contributions to functional analyses - taking clues from Laurant Schwartz's work.  His general sum total contribution here was like six volumes.  But, he did even more!  I just have to give some idea of the vast contribution of this guy!

Some more mathematical thought for the day.  While I may have established Jacob Bronowski's philosophy of knowledge, it is kind of trivial.  I found some other ideas to continue making more progress on these ideas about mathematical knowledge.  The relation between idealisation and generalisation continued to bug me.  Something came up about equivalent expressions when dealing with a rather aggresive intellectual who felt that Einstein's General theory of relativity must be wrong and so muct quantum theory! I mean and so does Jacob Bronowski that all theory is provisional even if proven right in the first place. Newton's mechanics was wrong the day he proved it right!  Einstein's work 'generalised' it.  Quantum theory generalised chemistry and Maxwell's electromagnetism.  The same affects happen in mathematics.  It's all 'equivalent expressions.'  And equivalant expressions are generalisations.  I pretty much had this answer in mind for the longest time; but, I never wrote them down till now.  I knew all this time(over a year now) that this was a clue to some generalisation of even my understandings of Jacob Bronowski's philosophy of knowledge. Recently, in reviewing how to do deductive proof, I noticed something relevant. Besides but perhaps including the equivalent expression of quantifyers(the words all and some variables in symbolic logic), the fact is that all logical proof has to do with making a cut in terms of the hypotheses and conclusion; you either work from hypothesis to conclusion or the other way around. Either way requires you to define the problem more clearly to find connections.  Equivalent expressions enters to find those connections. This is a good stopping point for now.

astro picture for the day/ from the enlightenment to the French Romance era

Image Credit: European Space Agency, Planck Collaboration

The above is the latest cosmic background radiation image.  The first image of the cbr was by Cobe back in the late 1980s.  It confirmed the inflationary generalisation of the big bang theory.  Wmap improved Cobe's and hinted at an asymmetry to the universe.  This Planck satellite has confirmed that the universe has a north/south pole thermodynamically. 

Quote for the day

"A different view indeed offers beauty." - Nisal Kevin Kotinkaduwa

Thought for the day,

I had made a sny remark about how whenever somebody does good(at least from certain perspectives), someone else always tries to go the other direction(to gain power).  I had further remarked that christianity was created to go in an anti-rationalist direction.  I gave proofs of this in terms of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and others which shows they were trying to make a philosophy different than the Platonic and hence this would be anti-mathematical.  Soon enough, the Christians murdered Hypatia and tried to bury mathematics by burning down the library of Alexandria.  The dark ages followed.  Anyways, I've found another remarkable going away from rationality after a period of enlightenment.

I've made a bit about how the French have had most consistent best intellectual tradition since the Renaissance.  One could go much further back to after the translations of Arab texts in Arab spain of 1000 A.d.  These texts turned out to be Arab translations of Greek mathematical works.  Anyways, I don't know if the Romantic era after the Enlightnement era in France has to do with people trying to gain power; all I know is that it was a backlash from rationism.  One thing is clear though, there's a constant back and forth throughout human history.  I would quickly argue that one of the major problems that the I'll go ahead and call them irrationalists are taking advantage of is ignorance.  They've constantly saying, oh, science has never solved 'all' our problems - hail God(according to tastes of those trying to make everybody believe in this god to solve 'all' problems that 'science' and mathematics clearly did not do)!

------------------------------------there's some more great crazy science/technology to report of course!

more Dna-nanotechnology will be able to bootstrap itself to a more robust nanomanufacturing ability!

Actually, there's other equally exciting dna-nanomanufacturing news; but, I'll keep it to myself in case I come up with some new 'thought for the day"!

------------------------------------note for the day!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012 blog post has been extensively updated.  I'll admit that it is still inadequate(partly due to not being able to put mathematical figures on a blog).  But, I hope that I excite people for mathematics!