1533
hours. We are waiting on a call to pick up the car. First major repair that was
not normal. Two engine mounts were worn and had to be replaced. The hose to the
steering fluid had a leak and was also replaced at no charge. Performance Honda
is accepting a ten percent off coupon from Joe Morgan Honda for seventy dollars
off the bill. No complaints. The car has almost 135,000 miles and is still running
fine. After their also flushing and replacing the transmission fluid we feel
better taking it to Florida yet once again in a couple of weeks. I had to shore
up a gutter pipe at ground level and find a top to better cover its entrance to
the underground gutter water disposal system from the house out to the small
back woods.
2225
hours. Sometimes I feel parts of my mind disappear. That is the links
disappear. Well, something disappears like a disembodied spirit. If one were in
a wormhole; no, if one's thoughts were in a wormhole . . . this is somewhat
similar to the theoretical concept that our flattish universe is being
stretched in a black hole. I read three articles on black holes and dark matter
today as well as a comment or two. I feel that if we have consciousness and
self-identity after physical death we will think faster and with more clarity.
Here
is a selection of the first article I read:
** **
Quasars illustrate dark energy's roller coaster ride
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
BOSS data is acquired by the 2.5m Sloan telescope at Apache Point
Observatory in the US
Scientists have
used a novel technique to probe the nature of dark energy some 10 billion years
into the past.
They hope it
will bring them closer to an explanation for the strange force that appears to
be driving the Universe apart at an accelerating rate.
The method
relies on bright but distant objects known as quasars to map the spread of
hydrogen gas clouds in space.
The 3D
distribution of these clouds can be used as a tracer for the influence of dark energy through time.
A scholarly
paper describing the approach has been submitted to the journal Astronomy &
Astrophysics and posted on the arXiv.org preprint site.
It is authored
by the BOSS (Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey) team, which uses the 2.5m
Sloan Foundation Telescope in New Mexico, US, to make its observations of the
sky.
The
international group's new data is said to be a very neat fit with theory, confirming
ideas that dark energy did not have a dominant role in the nascent Universe.
Back then, gravity actually held sway, decelerating cosmic expansion. Only
later did dark energy come to the fore.
"We know
very little about dark energy but one of our ideas is that it is a property of
space itself - when you have more space, you have more energy," explained
Dr Matthew Pieri, a BOSS team-member.
"So, dark
energy is something that increases with time. As the Universe expands, it gives
us more space and therefore more energy, and at some point dark energy takes
over from gravity to end the deceleration and drive an acceleration," the
Portsmouth University, UK, researcher told BBC News.
The discovery that everything in the
cosmos is now moving apart at a faster and faster rate was one of the major
breakthroughs of the 20th Century. But scientists have found themselves
grasping for new physics to try to explain this extraordinary phenomenon. . . .
From BBC Science today
** **
As
this is our environment, are we, or can we be affected or modified by such vast
energy levels? Are we affected or modified (in our thinking, our reasoning, by
energies at the sub-atomic quantum levels? Perhaps we are not sensitive enough to
note these things except through thought and scientific investigation. Then,
how do these matters affect us? What do we gain or lose by detaching such facts
as if they do not matter because they appear not to affect us. To me these things are
not faery dust and mermaids, they are parts of our reality in the conditional being of existence in life as we know it. Science is interesting. Life is interesting.
Consciousness just makes me curiouser and curiouser. What wonders of reality do we not know right before our very eyes and hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment