Dusk. You took two naps today and Carol took
one. Nothing has been on the agenda, which has been welcome. Kim called and
they will be down next Friday and go back on Sunday. The Christmas exchange
will be then. Linda had suggested that you come down for Christmas week. You
are thinking about it and so is Mary Lou. If so, you will leave Thursday (if
not Christmas) and come back on Saturday, 4 January. You told Carol, whatever;
as you are willing to travel most any day. So, presently, the trip is in limbo.
– Amorella
1718 hours. I don’t mind. The women will do what they want
when they want. I have my laptop with something to do. Travel is always an
adventure. I love driving and the car is fun to drive. When Kim and Sharon were
young the five of us drove to Carol’s parents at Sun City Center for Christmas
for years. We have a couple weeks to see if it works out. If it does, fine; if
it doesn’t, well it doesn’t. Maybe we’ll go down during Linda’s Spring Break
instead.
Carol is on the phone with Mary Lou at the
moment. The sisters like to have a plan cooking. Such is life with the Hammond
girls. Later, dude. – Amorella
2010 hours. We watched ABC News and “60 Minutes” then I
checked my Feed-spot service and found this:
** **
Alt-week 12.14.13: who cares if intelligent life is out there, when everything's just a hologram
22h by James Trew
Alt-week takes a look at the best science
and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.
There are big questions, and then there
are big questions. Pastrami or ham? That's a big question. Solid universe or
hologram? That's a big question. New research has made some headway toward one
of those. Spoiler alert, it's not the one about sandwich-meat. This is
alt-week.
Alt-week takes a look at the best science
and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.
There are big questions, and then there
are big questions. Pastrami or ham? That's a big question. Solid universe or
hologram? That's a big question. New research has made some headway toward one
of those. Spoiler alert, it's not the one about sandwich-meat. This is
alt-week.
This feature is no stranger to stories
that seek to answer the question of whether we're alone in this universe or
not. This week, however, has been unusually ripe with them. Firstly, there was
the report that suggests that the same asteroid believed to have called time on
the dinosaurs' reign, might also have sent life to Mars. The theory is, that
the impact of Chicxulub (said asteroid) might have been strong enough to send
life-sheltering chunks of Earth as far as Europa (one of Jupiter's moons,
getting its own water-based headlines this week), making Mars
well within the unwilling hitchhiker's reach. But what would it do when it got
there without any water?
Well, if new reports are to be believed,
theoretically this might not have been too much of an issue, either. As for
life beyond our solar system, there's fresh talk suggesting that complex life
could have been possible much earlier in the Universe's history than initially
thought, even as early as within the first billion years. The research suggests
Population III stars (a hypothetical star that had no surface metals), could
have produced supernovae capable of seeding the juvenile cosmos. The last news
on celestial matters is a bit more relevant to the present. The famous
goldilocks zone, that determines the likelihood of a planet bearing water (and
thus life), is now believed to be bigger than, again, first thought.
Unsurprisingly, this means there's suddenly a whole lot more astronomic real
estate that suddenly needs a second look.
Intelligent life "out there"
might still be something we're yet to confirm, but what if we're fundamentally
looking for the wrong thing? New support for an old idea might suggest that,
indeed, we've got bigger fish to fry. String theory has been around for some
time now, and loosely put, suggests that gravity comes from a universe made of
"strings" that span 10 dimensions. The theory chimes with the notion
that the universe, as we know it, is effectively a hologram. It also -- more
importantly -- allows quantum physics to sit better with Einstein's theory of
relativity. Two newly published papers have provided mathematical results that
support the concept. Led by Yoshifumi Hyakutake, a team at Japan's Ibaraki
University studied the internal energy of a black hole in relation to its event
horizon and its entropy, and found that simulations based on string theory
provided evidence to support the idea that the universe could well be a
projection. If true, this means the real action is taking place on a flatter
universe, where gravity no longer applies. A big idea indeed.
Selected from – Engadget RSS Feed
** **
Earlier
in the week I posted science articles on these subjects from Huff News Science
and BBC Science. True or false no final proof at this point maybe never as far
as the hologram universe is concerned. But thinking from the Dead’s perspective
perhaps (at least in these fictions) the Dead could perceive the act of once
existing in the universe (being consciously alive) as a once hologram-like
existence, a virtual reality. I did an hour or so presentation on this in one
of my post-graduate creative writing classes at Miami University back in the
1990’s. The focus was on virtual gaming and its use in developing
settings, characters, plots and themes in short stories and novels. I have long
been interested in alternate realities in terms of creative writing. In fact
some suggest that the writing I do is a process of alternate reality. This is
very funny. I find this to be a pleasant quite workable inside joke. I’m done.
(2030)
You are done because the words have stopped.
Looks like the Christmas trip might be postponed until February. Post. – Amorella
These
things happen from time to time. Spontaneity has its downside. It’s early but I am already thinking about bed.
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