astro picture for the day - Empathy and fear

Doomed Star Eta Carinae 
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt

A lot of scientists like to talk about empathy these days - much like Eric Drexler's disruptive buzzword.

Drexler talks on the one hand of recycling the industrial past, which I agree with.  But, then he says, whoa to those scientists/engineers that might disrupt the economic system because of a disruptive technology.

Empathy is especially used by A.I. researchers these days.  They think that by making empathetic robots, then we'll have good little robots  Kindof like the slave owners who would tell their slaves to be good little people, so they don't rebel and such.

A problem with an A.I. that decides to be empathetic to another's concerns, is what feelings and emotions it takes on. If the A.I. just empathizes with any person it interacts with, it could decide to take the side of some bully or irrational person.

The A.I. community has seen this already in Tay, the twitter chatbot.  Tay even has a wiki about it --> Tay (bot)

The Empathy A.I. community never acknowledges this contradictory thinking of their empathy concept, but I recently thought of a relation between this empathy and my findings on fear of facts/logic proving someone to be wrong.

Well, one more thing about empathy.  Empathy isn't a thing - like an apple, or a rock.  It's a concept, and I'd say it's a platonic concept - like the universe is made of earth, fire, wind, and water.  This is a flat-earth concept.  And, it's a platonic elements like concept that's like those bumper stickers you see on cars "baby on board, don't crash into me."

All my findings about fear, evasive language have been on the side of the person who doesn't want to be criticized, who doesn't want their beliefs criticized.  Empathy is more the physically weak rational person, who in the face of an aggressive non-reasoning person, just decides to take the aggressors side.  Essentially, he tells the aggressive non-reasonable person that he's right, and the aggressive un-reasonable guy goes and lives the rest of his life thinking he won the argument.

I'll go ahead and put up my favorite quote of this evasive language for those seeing this post and my points about fear and evasive language for the first time,

"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."

 - To say the least, minus the relation to fear/evasive language, which I only made a couple of days ago!  I can't get the A.I. or any of these scientists to understand my points about empathy. So, we're heading for an A.I. world, and it's going to be an irrational one!

thought for the day - science connections of Jet engines

James Burke's Connections shows how agriculture leads to new concepts/technologies - kind of like how clearing the fields requires irrigation, pest control, and fertilization, and some other similar connections.  In a similar way, the Jet engine comes about from problems of previous technologies.

Propellers can't go beyond the speed of sound.  They break; but, Frank Whittle points out another problem.  The problem of going faster and further requires going higher.  But, going higher means the piston engines loose efficiency and power.

Frank Whittle solution was kind of like enclosing the propellers, to accelerate the airflow into a series of turbines(propellers) around a midsection, where the air is ignited with fuel, and the heated ignites air goes out faster outside of the back. The idea that the reason why Frank Whittle invented the Jet engine is because the propellers break at supersonic speeds must be wrong here!  But, the real reason is the piston engines loose power and efficiency at high altitudes.

- There's also ramjets.  Ramjets only work at hypersonic speeds.   The supersonic air gives the energy to ignite the fuel.  Ramjets are still kind of a work in progress. 

Kind of like the Jet engine going to Germany because Britain and the U.S. didn't show much interest , the ramjet appears to have gone to Russia and China.

thought for the day - Science connections of Lasers

Lasers: "The Conquest of Light" ~ 1962 AT&T Bell System; Bell Laboratories Laser Research

AT&T Archives: Inventing the Laser at Bell Labs

I've pointed out some of James Burke's connections in his Connections video series and book. For anyone new, those links are probably no longer any good.  But, anyways, for instance, James Burke points out how in agriculture leads to freeing people to specialize in certain jobs - like being a soldier, or an administrator, or even a scientist.  I'd point out that agriculture's "clearing of the fields" leads to irrigation, pest control, and another technology which I'm always forgetting. Well, in a similar way to how one idealizes a situation and concepts come out, scientists started studying one thing led to lasers.

I think this second short laser documentary, actually, points out this remarkable indirect connection which led to lasers. Townes was studying spectroscopy of molecules, and noticed stimulated emission of the same wavelength photons.

Lasers also led to quantum optics - learning optics that allows laser light to come out of the mirrors when they're in step with one another.

These laser documentaries show that at one time, making a continuous laser, instead of pulse lasers was an accomplishment. Since then, lasers have been advancing more than one can imagine. I thought I'd quote an almost certainly incomplete timeline of laser accomplishments, and already well outdated,

"1960: Ali Javan and William Bennett Jr. develop the first helium-neon laser.
1960: the first phone call is transmitted via laser at Bell Labs. 1962: the first yttrium aluminum garnet laser is developed at Bell Labs. 1964: Kumar Patel at Bell Labs invents the carbon dioxide laser; it is the primary tool in laser surgery. 1964: the Nd:YAG laser is invented by Joseph Geusic and Richard Smith at Bell Labs. 1965: the first tunable laser is developed by J. Giordmaine and Robert Miller. 1965: a laser is used at Bell Labs to create the first 2-color hologram. 1970: Arthur Ashkin invents optical trapping, a process in which atoms are trapped by lasers. 1971: Izuo Hayashi and Morton Panish design the first semiconductor laser that runs at room temperature. 1972: laser beams are used to etch circuits on ceramic materials. 1977: the first laser-fiber-optic communications system is installed in Chicago. 1983: Linn Mollenauer and Roger Stolen create the soliton laser. 1983: the cleaved-coupled-capacity laser is patented by Won-Tien Tsang. 1985: Steven Chu, L. Hollberg, J.E. Bjorkhom, A. Cable and A. Ashkin first observe the optical cooling of atoms, referred to as "optical molasses." 1993: Bell Labs develop the first self-focusing lasers, called zone lasers. 1994: the first quantum cascade laser is invented at Bell Labs by Jerome Faist, Federico Capasso, Deborah L. Sivco, Carlo Sirtori, Albert L. Hutchinson and Alfred Y. Cho."

- I've seen so many crazy laser advances, I can't even remember them all - quasi-crystal lasers.

The ability to control the shape of the lasers. Usually, the lasers come out as a kind of point with sporadic points that thin out the further away from the central point. This is kind of the quantum double slit affect. In the double slit experiment, if you open a slit to the side of where a photon is being shot in, you'll get interference patterns. In lasers, you can see this on a macroscale.

One of the most recent laser advances that I thought was exciting was the use supersymmetric physics theories applied to lasers - A laser system built on principles of supersymmetry

Here's a fractal light laser - Research team demonstrates fractal light from lasers

astro picture for the day/ the Tunguska event

Ultima Thule from New Horizons 
Image Credit: NASA, JHU's APL, SwRI; Color Processing: Thomas Appéré

Ultima Thule is a Kuiper belt object.  It was imaged recently, by the spacecraft that flew past Pluto and Charon for the first time.

One thing to note about it is both objects are a little bit red, maybe brownish. Unlike the Pluto/Charon system, where Charon is a little bit reddish, while Pluto is well, it has a lot more other blue and white ices.  The suggestion would be that both of the Ultima Thule bodies formed in the same little system, and they spiraled into each other.

Ultima Thule is relatively less cratered than inner solar system asteroids.  It wasn't formed from asteroid impacts.  The material came together probably more due to electro-static forces.

Recently, Astronomers suggest that despite this first picture, the two objects are a lot more pancaked shaped.

- Below are thoughts about the Tunguska event of 1908

My father has a 1970’s book about Black Holes where I saw pictures of the Tunguska event. The book tried to argue it was a black hole hitting the Earth, and not just a cometary debris. 1965 copywrite actually, by a Walter Sullivan, actually – interesting.

The Tunguska event, like Dinosaurs, suggests that some events happen on timescales beyond Human memory and existence. Of course, the Tunguska event happened in recent memory, but it still didn’t become well known till the late 1970s and 1980s when various science and psuedo-science shows took to it. Generally, asteroid and comet strikes don’t happen in human lifetimes.

The Earth is so large that people thought it was flat and had to deduce the roundness. Similarly, the Heavens are so far away, that, generally, celestial objects don’t come to Earth that often. When an asteroid/comet strike happens . . . if anyone survives it . . . human minds, well, should wake up, and maybe question assumptions.

Curiously, videos about Tunguska were made mostly around the late 1970′, early 1980s!

Here’s in search of . . .

Carl Sagan’s Cosmos – Heaven and Hell,

Arthur C. Clarke mysterious world the great siberian explosion

Arthur C. Clarke mysterious world the great siberian explosion

Whenever an event like the Tunguska comet impact happens, lots of people’s fears/dreams come out. Every time yellowstone supervolcano rumbles, or Steamboat geyser goes off, the religions say the end of the world is coming, and you’d better submit to their god.

Other’s, in the case of the Tunguska event explosion speculate everything from black holes, anti-matter . . . to a ufo crash landing.

The Story of Comets, Part One: As Above, So Below

I just found this by a ParallaxNick