astro picture for the day/ plus Mechanical Universe youtube

Credit & Copyright: Jim Misti and Steve Mazlin, (acquisition), Robert Gendler (processing)

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The Mechanical Universe is still the best physics videos.  I've recently found some good technical history of mathematics videos. I should probably start with them; but, I won't.   I will eventualy.

About all that can be said about this first introductory episode of the Mechanical Universe is that the pattern of Greeks going towards a promising rational understanding of the universe and humanity, to the dark ages, to Kepler, Galileo, Newton and so on.  Of course, things are a little more complex than that; but, for the most part, this is about accurate of humanities going from ignorance to constructive knowledge.  We know the names of these people(we don't know the names of most of the Egyptian and Babylonian mathematicians before the Greek golden age, not to mention the cave painters; we wonder if the guy who first created and used fire to find off cavebears and cook food even had a name).  We are lucky to have the majority of their literature. 

I like the remark that it's kind of naive to think the scientists are always rational people; but, the scientific environment is almost always is!  William James said "Space is the moral equivalent of war."  Of course, going out to space doesn't guarantee anybody anything from irrationality; but, out in space, there will be so much pressure to do science, mathematics, and engineering, rational thinking will be forced upon all those who go out to space.  Out in space, there is almost always room and materials to just go somewhere else if a rational solution cannot be found. 

astro picture for the day

Image Credit: Digitized Sky Survey, ESA/ESO/NASA FITS Liberator
Color Composite: Davide De Martin (Skyfactory)

-Note,

Anybody pinch themselves that we're living in the Higgs particle era?

astro picture for the day

Credit & Copyright: Johannes Schedler

astro picture for the day

Image Credit & Copyright: Wally Pacholka

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There was a recent article about the inflationary period of the Big bang.  I have for a long time suggeted that the dark energy is an inflationary aftershock; this article seemed suggestive to me that I should continue to champion it; unfortunately, I've lost the article and can't find it!  So, I'm going to mention something a little more down to earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus

I was reading Thomas Heath's "History of Greek Mathematics" and Mr Heath mentioned that Heraclitus said that Pythagoras was unwise.  When, I looked up Heroclitus wiki, I saw all sorts of interesting things like he came up with the logos before Plato(hence Plato was influenced by Heraclitus), tried to categorize everything in opposites.   James Burke in his "The Day the Universe Changed" mentioned the Greeks thought everything came in opposite pairs and suggested that the Greek deduction started out from this idea(it did not; it goes back to Thales at least; although, Heraclitus's ideas certainly helped initially).  These are all very interesting, but, then, I noticed something peculiar, the mentioning of a Clement of Alexandria really taking a liking to Heraclitus!

Yes, the wiki mentions the Heraclitan logos influence on Philo.  Philo was 'midrashing' the old testament to combine jewish religion with greek philosophy around the time of the supposed life of Jesus Christ.  Philo lived in Alexandria.  Philo also just happened to be extraordinarily rich; he controlled the trade root from the indies straight into Alexandria; that's pretty rich!  His nephew was subsequently rather rich(Tiberius Alexander).  Tiberius Alexander was so rich, he bought Vespasian's way into the Roman emperor throne.  Vespasian and his son Titus along with Tiberius Alexander who was part jewish went and destroyed the the second jerusalem temple.  Tiberius Alexander did not like James the Just to well oh by the way.  Robert Eisenman has recently(about 1997) written a book called "James brother of Jesus" where he linguistically shows that Jesus Christ is just a midrashed hellenistic sungod overwright for james the just(who's james the less in the gospel of Mark chapter 15 I do believe).   Philo who not only did a lot of philosophizing(midrashing), also wrote lots of history of the times; he does not mention a Jesus Christ.

Back to Clement, going to today's wiki,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_of_Alexandria

Here, we see that Clement at least considered the Greek gods at least were personifications of the stars, sun, moon, and planets( in his Protrepticus).  For Clement(and Philo before him and all those other church fathers before and after Clement of Alexandria), Jesus Christ is the true religion because they could midrash him out of the old testament; they thought this midrashing was like mathematics; that it meant something real.

It's long known that the Gospel of Mark(and consequently the other gospels including that of Thomas) have two sources, a stoic source of sayings and a biographical(by means of midrashing); here, we see that Clement of Alexandria was much into stoic quotes like you see Jesus Christ doing in the Gospel of Mark(and the other gospels).

We see here how mankind has struggled and failed to shed its pre science mythological(science at one time when mathematics wasn't there).  Clement of Alexandria for one turned to vague black magic of midrashing and mythology because he saw all the corruption of the world around him and blamed it on mathematical science.  He was way over-generalized(and the pagan philosophers were corrupted by vague corrupt practices). 

Because of the escape from hard to learn mathematics to easy mythology and religion(believe and your in), christian fathers soon learned this trick(see my quotes of Eusebius at the end of my gospel of truth; the first post of this blog; it essentially says, "if people want to be decieved, then why not?"); because christianity made it easy to be accepted, they had more people, more money, and hence more power.  This is a sick evil social power; the dark side of the force. 

astro picture for the day

Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler & Martin Pugh

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http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7409/full/nature11297.html

Negative refraction has been one of the big breakthroughs of the last ten plus years;  electron microscopes have already integrated these technologies to image  atoms thermodynamically moving around(something they could not do before, and scientists would have told you are theoretically impossible before).  Here, metamaterials have blown the roof off of all previous negative refraction ability.  It might require terrahertz technology use as well; terrahertz wavelengths have been another great breakthrough of the last ten years.  This is pretty exciting. 

Nanotechnologists have been excited about optical tweezers; but, their enthusiasm has been tempered somewhere as optical tweezers have only been able to manipulate cell size particles.  Cells themselves are farely large on the molecular scale; with this new drastic improvement in negative refraction, optical tweezers could get a lot closer to the atomic manipulation level; and science and technology just continues to get rediculously exciting!

astro picture for the day

Credit: Digitized Sky Survey, ESA/ESO/NASA FITS Liberator
Color Composite: Davide De Martin (Skyfactory)

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/21/chemputer-that-prints-out-drugs

As Chris Phoenix once said, just when one pathway to nanomanufacturing seems to be 'the' way, the other makes advances which puts it in the lead.  I've pointed out some great 3d-printing advances before; this one suggests that maybe soon, we could just print out a nanomanufacturing system.

astro picture for the day

Image Credit & Copyright: Sigurður Stefnisson

Astro picture for the day?  well, it is a surface phenomenon of a planet!  One of the great intellectual things of the twentieth century was that geology turned into planetology.

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An actually working casimir affect micro-machine(can be extended to nano realm with all the latest nano-engineering advances of the past two or three decades since Casimir forces were confirmed experimentally I do believe around 1981). 

Smalley once severelly criticized the nano-community that nano-machines were impossible because of 'sticky fingers.'  He was meaning just ordinary chemical attractions.  Soon, people pointed out that the casimir force also might present a bit of problem.  Well, now, that problem looks to be solved to some degree. 

As always it should be exciting to see if there's rapid progress; the same manufacturing technologies that made this can integrate the patterns of this casimir force machine into various micro and nano machines that they've been making since the 1980s.

Note; when/if they start making micro/nano machines out of this breakthrough(the article sounded more than optimistic), they will be true quantum machines exploiting the casimir force; the casimir force has to do with simply putting two plates together in a 'vacuum.'  Only, according to quantum electrodynamics(Paul Dirac's generalization of the quantum mechanics created by Niels Bohr, Heisenberg and Shroedinger; it combines special relativity and not general and Shroedinger's quantum mechanics generalization of Niels Boh's quantum mechanics; yep, generalizations of generalizations; how far we've come!  We've now bagged a most remarkable quantum partilce- the Higgs!  Remember that!?LoL!), the vacuum is a sea of partilces coming in and out of existence within Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.  So, if you put to plates in a vacuum, you should limit the possible wavelengths in between them compared to the possibilities to the farthest reaches of the universe!  So, the plates should feel an inward force; they do!