the Cobe background radiation image

For life and intelligence for that matter to arise requires that no much violence is going on.  It requires that nature gets dammed up somehow. 
The bigger the bang, the more rare such an event.  The biggest bang appears to be the so called 'big bang' cosmology which Astrophysicists today knows occured 13.7 billion years ago(due to the Hubble space telescope).  In this sense(bigger bangs happen less often), nature has been dammed up enough for life and intelligence to arise!
The picture above is of the cosmic background radiation.  This is as far back in time as astronomers can see(without Gravity meters -something astronomers are working on; in like 1987 or 89, they showed that the energy radiating from two rotating pulsars must be going into the form of gravity waves; since then, they've been working on gravity meters most intenselly; first results should be within ten years).  If there was a big bang, then it started out with a good amount of heat; and, as it expanded, it would have cooled down.  Astrophysicists calculated this out to be like three degrees above absolute zero(in the form of microwave photons).  In 1989 if I remember correctly, they got the first picture of this radiation pictured above.
There's lots more to say about this image, the satellite and the Big bang; but, I've said enough about it to warrant putting it up here on my blog!

quote for the day

"It has often been said that no subject loses more when divorced from its history than mathematics. This may be true, but there is a sort of converse which is equally true. The history of no subject loses more when divorced from its subject than does the history of mathematics." - E.T. Bell

Australian stromatolites

The first life was cellular, bacteria-like.  They soon organised themselves into higher structures.  Generally, the original life stayed in areas that were radiation free like the ocean.  I'm tempted to suggest that multi-cellular life at least couldn't have happened untill nature was dammed(as in hydro-electric power dam) up enough.  Only by there being a place in nature where nature was dammed up could life have arose- and likewise for multicellular life.

I don't know which was first, fish or these stromatelites found in Shark bay Australia; but, these domes are blue-green algae communities that are protected from the sun by means of minerals secreted by themselves. Here, they've dammed up nature in order to make conditions suitable for themselves.  James Lovelock came up with a Gaia theory that says life came up with the ozone layer, and keeps the temperature here on earth good and consistent for life itself to survive.  However true the extent of this theory, it seems that life has dammed up nature on it's own to make its survival possible.  I've often wondered whether intelligence comes by means of some process of damming up nature.  I've yet to figure out how.

quote for the day

"To discover something in mathematics is to overcome an
inhibition and a tradition. You cannot move forward if you are not
subversive." - Laurent Schwartz

Laetoli footprints

This is a picture of our ancestors footprints fossilized.  They were walking past an erupting volcano which covered up their footprints as they were walking past.  These footprints are like three million years old.

I'm not sure what else to say about them.  Maybe a comment about evolution . . . number one, it's kindof funny to me how supernatural religion people complain about evolution; i mean they're saying that dynamic living is anti-spiritual; i guess they're religion is a static one; and so, it is!

Something else I'd like to mention about evolution is that it is a more general concept than just 'natural selection.'  Anybody argueing against evolution becuase of natural selection is like anti-science people today argueing science is just mechanistic evil because of newtonian mechanics.  Newtonian mechanics was put in its place at least a hundred years ago with quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity theories(special and general).  Today, people would note chaos theory as well.

Today, evolution theory involves self-organisation theories like Ilya Prigogine's "stable non-equilibrium" theory; chaos theory, on the strictly life side, Stuart Kauffman's auto-catalytic chemistry.

In terms of mathematics, as mathematics develops, it redefines old concepts(hence evolves those concepts) in terms of new; and based on Godel's theorems, we know that mathematics is infinit; this process wil never stop; the adventure will never stop. 

Outside of the actual bone fossils of our ancestors, these footprints are the earliest record of our adventure to knowledge(that of exploring).   Evolution connects us to our biological origins; evolution is learning; learning is evolving.  With these footprints, we have a record of our first learning.

quote for the day

"In spite of all the allegations of self-love, the facts at first associated with the name of a particular man end by being anonymous, lost forever in the ocean of universal science. Thus the monograph imbued with individual human quality becomes incorporated, stripped of sentimentalisms, in the abstract doctrine of the general treatise. To the hot sun of actuality will succeed-if they do succeed-the cold beams of the history of learning." - Santiago Ramon y Cajal

quote for the day

"Indeed, the goal in mathematics frequently is unperceived until some explorer for fortunate than his rivals blunders onto it in spite of his human inclination to follow the crookedest path. Simplicity and directness are usually the last things to be attained." - E.T. Bell