18 March 2014

Notes - shared interests / define the 'blue' / Plato / WPL / Proof?

         Doug sent you an article. Post it here. We’ll talk about it after breakfast. – Amorella

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'Cosmic Inflation' Discovery Lends Key Support For Theory Of Expanding Early Universe

 AP | by  MALCOLM RITTER

NEW YORK (AP) — The universe was born almost 14 billion years ago, exploding into existence in an event called the Big Bang. Now researchers say they've spotted evidence that a split-second later, the expansion of the cosmos began with a powerful jump-start.
Experts called the discovery a major advance if confirmed by others. Although many scientists already believed that initial, extremely rapid growth spurt happened, finding this evidence has been a key goal in the study of the universe. Researchers reported Monday that they did it by peering into the faint light that remains from the Big Bang.
If verified, the discovery "gives us a window on the universe at the very beginning," when it was far less than one-trillionth of a second old, said theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University, who was not involved in the work.
"It's just amazing," he said. "You can see back to the beginning of time."
Another outside expert, physicist Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the finding already suggests that some ideas about the rapid expansion of the universe can be ruled out.
Right after the Big Bang, the universe was a hot soup of particles. It took about 380,000 years to cool enough that the particles could form atoms, then stars and galaxies. Billions of years later, planets formed from gas and dust that were orbiting stars. The universe has continued to spread out.
Krauss said he thinks the new finding could rank with the greatest discoveries about the universe over the last 25 years, such as the Nobel prize-winning discovery that the universe's expansion is accelerating.
The new results were announced by a collaboration that includes researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the University of Minnesota, Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The team plans to submit its results to a scientific journal this week, said its leader, John Kovac of Harvard.
For their research, astronomers scanned about 2 percent of the sky for three years with a telescope at the South Pole, chosen for its very dry air to aid in the observations.
They were looking for a specific pattern in light waves within the faint microwave glow left over from the Big Bang. The pattern has long been considered evidence of the rapid growth spurt, known as inflation. Kovac called it "the smoking gun signature of inflation."
The scientists say the light-wave pattern was caused by gravitational waves, which are ripples in the interweaving of space and time that sprawls through the universe. If confirmed, the new work would be the first detection of such waves from the birth of the universe, which have been called the first tremors of the Big Bang.
Arizona State's Krauss cautioned that it's possible that the light-wave pattern is not a sign of inflation, although he stressed that it's "extremely likely" that it is. It's "our best hope" for a direct test of whether the rapid growth spurt happened, he said.
Krauss and other experts said the results must be verified by other observations, a standard caveat in science.
Marc Kamionkowski, a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins University who didn't participate in the work, called the detection of the light-wave pattern "huge news" for the study of the cosmos.
"It's not every day you wake up and learn something completely new about the early universe," he said.

From – Huff Science- AP
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         You had breakfast and are ready to go to the doctor’s office in half an hour or so. On the article, proof is an interesting aspect of living. Some things people intuitively understand, the Big Bang is not one of them. It is difficult to think on the universe being at one instant the size of a fingertip and the next so far beyond that point as to be similar to the concept of here and now. Gravity waves are not fingerprints but more as a heartbeat, that leaves many other aspects to be discovered. That’s the way we are going to use this in the Merlyn books. – Amorella

         0916 hours. I was thinking of gravity waves as fingerprints when I first read the article in the paper this morning after I skimmed Doug’s article. Basically they are the same article. Fingerprint has a connotation of G---D in my mind I suppose, or an Angel. Why I think like this is unknown.

         You stop at a Beginning when that is where you should begin – before the Beginning. This is an old question so why not set it up in book two with a hint in book one? – Amorella

         0920 hours. Okay with me. I'm glad Doug sent the article. This is really interesting stuff!

        You two share some of the same interests, always have. Post. - Amorella


         You had your stitches removed, no more band-aids. You have another post op visit in about five weeks. You and Carol are going for a walk in the park shortly and to Smashburgers for lunch after. - Amorella

         1149 hours. I have chapters seven, eight and nine out in the car to work on. I am surprised at your focus on ‘before the beginning’. I know the books or at least the blog mentions this a time or two but I forget when and what exactly other than there are many universes and that some may even lap. Well, I don’t remember this last part on lapping. If my imagination is running it is in the unconscious or at least sub-conscious level because nothing is going on consciously. It is too far back. It is something about ‘as a tree branches so do the universes but they all stem from one root source (a kind of earth where the roots are, at least in analogy). Is this on track or am I out in never-never land. These books can suggest so much Amorella, which is fine, but what does it have to do with the story?

         Getting from Here to There is the point. Why not have Yermey search for the ‘source’ that connects multiple universes? The beacon can play a part in this. Just as there are ripples left from the big bang there should be other ‘specifics’ that can be measured to show to prove another universe also exists. The point is that if there is duplication in setting then you have twinning, but the twins aren’t necessarily the same even though the physics is similar. Light hits crystal in a particular way, but it reflects different directions. One sees a sparkle, then one doesn’t. The relativity is in the observer. – In a way this is analogous as to where new ideas come from “out of the blue”. The point, in here at least, is that they don’t. The ‘blue’ is definable. This can add to the definition of what thoughts are.  Post.  – Amorella

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         You did your walk to between the two lakes and return. Your legs are uncomfortable and you are not balancing right thus they try to compensate. You’ll just have to keep at it. The hands are better but you are distracted by the uneasy pain which it seems is affecting the balance. That’s my opinion. – Amorella

         1251 hours. I appreciate your opinion on all subjects Amorella. However, by all accounts they are debates between me and me legally and even medically I suppose.

         You have had no problem with this and neither have I. Your name is on the books and blog, you are a legal resident of the planet. I am nothing much. – Amorella

         1254 hours. You are to me. You give me perspective that I could not otherwise give words to. I don’t know which direction I like best for Yermey, to pursue the relativity of universes or to pursue the blue. I don’t see a connection between the two.

         This is not true. You do see a connection in that both have to do with the process of creation. – Amorella

         1257 hours. You have to have ‘something’ with which to process.

         Now, that is where Yermey is. - Amorella

         1305 hours. I have to begin with a base so I am going to Plato in Wikipedia Offline.

         I will edit what is worthwhile for our purposes. - Amorella

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Plato

Plato  424/423 BC – 348/347 BC) was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in then Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science. . . . Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric and mathematics.
Biography

Education

Apuleius informs us that Speusippus praised Plato's quickness of mind and modesty as a boy, and the "first fruits of his youth infused with hard work and love of study". Plato must have been instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics by the most distinguished teachers of his time. . . . Plato had also attended courses of philosophy; before meeting Socrates, he first became acquainted with Cratylus (a disciple of Heraclitus, a prominent pre-Socratic Greek philosopher) and the Heraclitean doctrines.
Plato and Socrates

The precise relationship between Plato and Socrates remains an area of contention among scholars. Plato makes it clear in his “Apology of Socrates”, that he was a devoted young follower. . . . In any case, Xenophon and Aristophanes seem to present a somewhat different portrait of Socrates than Plato paints. Some have called attention to the problem of taking Plato's Socrates to be his mouthpiece, given Socrates' reputation for irony and the dramatic nature of the dialogue form.
Aristotle attributes a different doctrine with respect to the ideas to Plato and Socrates (Metaphysics 987b1–11). Putting it in a nutshell, Aristotle merely suggests that his idea of forms can be discovered through investigation of the natural world, unlike Plato's Forms that exist beyond and outside the ordinary range of human understanding.
Philosophy
Recurrent themes
The Forms
In several dialogues, Socrates floats the idea that knowledge is a matter of recollection, and not of learning, observation, or study. He maintains this view somewhat at his own expense, because in many dialogues, Socrates complains of his forgetfulness. Socrates is often found arguing that knowledge is not empirical, and that it comes from divine insight. In many middle period dialogues, such as the Phaedo, Republic and Phaedrus Plato advocates a belief in the immortality of the soul, and several dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife. More than one dialogue contrasts knowledge and opinion, perception and reality, nature and custom, and body and soul.
Several dialogues tackle questions about art: Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, and is not rational. . . . Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer that [Plato] expresses in the Republic. The dialogue Ion suggests that Homer’s Illiad functioned in the ancient Greek world as the Bible does today in the modern Christian world: as divinely inspired literature that can provide moral guidance, if only it can be properly interpreted.
On politics and art, religion and science, justice and medicine, virtue and vice, crime and punishment, pleasure and pain, rhetoric and rhapsody, human nature and sexuality, love and wisdom, Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say.
Metaphysics

"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. . . . In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.
Socrates' idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. The allegory of the cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure.
Socrates says in the Republic that people who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance. Socrates admits that few climb out of the den, or cave of ignorance, and those who do, not only have a terrible struggle to attain the heights, but when they go back down for a visit or to help other people up, they find themselves objects of scorn and ridicule.
According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Just as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced by physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused by more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances. For example, Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists (although it is not clear where) and his own trial would be a cheap copy of it.
The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato's own epistemology and metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often said to also be Plato's own), that only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to rule. Socrates claims that the enlightened men of society must be forced from their divine contemplations and be compelled to run the city according to their lofty insights. Thus is born the idea of the "philosopher-king", the wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people who are wise enough to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic, that the most wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler.
The word metaphysics derives from the fact that Aristotle's musings about divine reality came after ("meta") his lecture notes on his treatise on nature ("physics"). The term is in fact applied to Aristotle's own teacher, and Plato's "metaphysics" is understood as Socrates' division of reality into the warring and irreconcilable domains of the material and the spiritual. The theory has been of incalculable influence in the history of Western philosophy and religion.
Theory of Forms

The Theory of Forms typically refers to the belief expressed by Socrates in some of Plato's dialogues, that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only an image or copy of the real world. Socrates spoke of forms in formulating a solution to the problem of universals. The forms, according to Socrates, are roughly speaking archetypes or abstract representations of the many types of things, and properties we feel and see around us, that can only be perceived by reason; (that is, they are universals). In other words, Socrates sometimes seems to recognise two worlds: the apparent world, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of forms, which may be a cause of what is apparent.

Selected and edited from: Wikipedia Offline - Plato
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         1315 hours. What wonder. I can select and edit to remind myself and any reader where I am in my head at the moment. Wikipedia is a wonderful aid and source that along with Google would not allow me to write these books in the manner which I do research. For this I am truly thankful to be living in such a time as the present.  – rho

         Afternoon. You are home from lunch and running an errand to Blue Ash (new tax material arrived today). After changing clothes and relaxing with Jadah the Cat while working the newly bought ‘stress ball’ recommended by Dr. Dan we finished the editing. It was also my idea for the bold in parts to keep to a focus for our use. Post. Later, my man. – Amorella

         1617 hours. Thank you, Amorella. You have given me something to think on. Speculation is fun, and in some ways this concept today, brings back an imagination from a little before junior high school when I was first attracted to the Greeks and Romans. I remember it was before the ‘new’ Westerville Public Library was built because we walked up and down the stairs at the old city government building. The jail was in the basement if I remember right and the fire department was attached behind the main offices and the library was on the second floor. Here is some of the history that I remember. I fell in love with books that old library.

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. . . On December 15, 1930, the library opened with Cora Bailey as Librarian, and within several weeks it contained 3,062 volumes and 885 registered borrowers. Within two years, increased books and patrons created the need to move to the second floor of the municipal building which is today a part of the municipal complex on State Street. The library's newly remodeled three rooms included four tables in the main reading room, a "junior" reading room, and a room for processing and repairing books. From the library's inception, educational programming was important. Programs celebrating National Book Week were held, a children's story hour was established and a tour of the library for first graders was initiated, which still happens today.
By 1946, lack of physical space again became a tremendous problem. Books were stacked on radiators and windowsills, a high school annex was added and the Masonic Temple was used for storage of over 6,000 volumes. Programs had to be canceled. It was evident, as Mrs. Bailey said, that the 16-year-old adolescent library needed "a room of her own." Cora Bailey retired after 19 years and was followed by Irene Burk, one of Mrs. Bailey's high school volunteers who had continued her education in library science.
In 1952, Jane Bradford became director and oversaw the planning and construction of a new building on the current site, completed in 1954. It boasted 41,000 volumes and 4,000 borrowers. The '50s, '60s and '70s were marked with expanded services, which included book delivery to outlying schools by a bookmobile, the availability of phonograph records and the establishment of the Ohio Room for research and information on our state.

Selected from the history at Westerville Library dot org.
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         1651 hours. After some searching I did find one outside picture of the ‘city building’. Behind the second floor library window above the near door on the left were the stacks of books. You entered off the street at the left door - not seen, the one seen is to the Police Department (at least that is the way I remember it presently). 


         What an awesome place this was for me as a kid from about three years old up to twelve. I remember the stacked books. I knew Mrs. Cory Bailey, Irene Burk and Ms Jane Bradford personally though I don't know they would have remembered me.

         This quick reliving your love of reading and books shows the passion still in you, boy. Post. - Amorella

         You had cereal and a piece of bread with peanut butter on it for supper. You watched NBC News and last night’s “Bones”, “Blacklist” and last week’s “Rebellion” after Carol went upstairs to read, satisfied with the first three shows. – Nothing is in your head presently, but you did enjoy “Bones” for the humor and “Blacklist” for the drama and suspense. – Amorella

         2230 hours. I do not know what I can do with a ‘light’ beacon on dark matter – that is I cannot think like Yermey might think. I am no Yermey who would be an Einstein/De Vinci combo or any two or five combo very gifted people you would like to pick. Besides science may prove multi-universe can exist, that is, the physics exists for such a conclusion. Would he want to ‘start’ another universe within our own? For what? Transportation?  I am reminded here of “spice in transportation” in one of my favorite books, Dune by Frank Herbert.

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Dune is a 1965 epic science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. It won the Hugo Award in 1966, and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel. Dune is the world's best-selling science fiction novel and is the start of the Dune saga..
Set in the distant future amidst a feudal interstellar society in which noble houses, in control of individual planets, owe allegiance to the Padishah Emperor, Dune tells the story of young Paul Atreides, whose noble family accepts the stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis. As this planet is the only source of the "spice" melange, the most important and valuable substance in the universe, control of Arrakis is a coveted — and dangerous — undertaking. The story explores the multi-layered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion, as the forces of the empire confront each other in a struggle for the control of Arrakis and its "spice".

Setting
More than 21,000 years in the future, humanity has settled on countless habitable planets, which are ruled by aristocratic Great Houses that owe allegiance to the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV. Though many forms of science and technology have evolved greatly since the twentieth century, artificial intelligence and computers are prohibited. Due to the absence of these technologies, humans have adapted their minds to become capable of extremely complex tasks, including mental computing, a task undertaken by trained Mentats. The powerful, matriarchal Bene Gesserit, which hopes to further the human race through controlled breeding, and the Spacing Guild, which holds a legal monopoly on interstellar travel, both rely on the "spice" melange to facilitate their advanced mental abilities. The use of melange also improves general health, extends life and can bestow limited prescience.
As melange can be found only on the desert planet Arrakis, it is extremely valuable and is often used as currency. The CHOAM corporation, which determines the income and financial leverage of each Great House, controls allocation of melange. The Spacing Guild's Navigators depend on the prescience melange provides to safely plot the travels of their ships, called heighliners, enormous freighters capable of transporting people, goods, and non-interstellar spacecraft at faster than light speeds. The Bene Gesserit sisterhood depends on mental and physical abilities provided by melange, powers that are found to be even more advanced in Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers, who have undergone a deadly ritual which unlocks their Other Memory, the ego and experiences of one's female ancestors. Due to Reverend Mothers' inability to access the memories of their male ancestors, the Bene Gesserit have a secret, millennia-old breeding program, with a goal of producing a male Bene Gesserit, called the Kwisatz Haderach. The Kwisatz Haderach would be capable of accessing all ancestral memories and could possess "organic mental powers" that can "bridge space and time". With this Kwisatz Haderach under their control, the Bene Gesserit hope to better guide humanity toward their goals, and at the time of the novel they believe that this plan is nearing fruition.
The planet Arrakis itself is completely covered in a hostile desert ecosystem. It, however, is also sparsely populated by a human population of seemingly-native Fremen, ferocious fighters who have adapted to the harsh climate and secretly can ride the planet's giant sandworms. The Fremen also have complex rituals and systems focusing on the value and conservation of water on their arid planet; they conserve the water distilled from their dead, consider spitting an honorable greeting, and value tears as the greatest gift one can give to the dead. The novel suggests that the Fremen have even adapted to the environment physiologically, with their blood able to clot almost instantly to prevent water loss. The Fremen culture also values melange, which is found in the desert and harvested with great risk from attacking sandworms, who are attracted to any rhythmic activity on the dunes. As they have done on other planets with populations considered to be superstitious, Bene Gesserit missionaries have implanted religions and prophecies on Arrakis that can be used to the advantage of any Bene Gesserit who may find herself on the planet. This manipulation has given the Fremen a belief in a male messiah, the Lisan al-Gaib, or "voice of the outer world." The Lisan al-Gaib is prophesied to one day come from off-world to transform Arrakis into a more hospitable world.

Two selected selections from Wikipedia article – Dune (Novel)
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         Too much, boy. Why would you add a story that the reader already knows. It’s been done. This is not about a transportation tunnel, it is about making direct scientific contact with the Dead, to prove ‘life’ exists beyond life. – Amorella

         2256 hours. That can’t be done Amorella.

         Yermey doesn’t know that. Neither does Ship, but remember Ship has a ‘sense’ of ‘spirit’ within Yermey. It has to come from somewhere just as the universe does. – Amorella

         2258 hours. I don’t think I have the wherewithal to add something like this. No one will believe it possible.

         People have tried to weigh the soul upon a person’s death. Why not? Same thing isn’t it? – Amorella

         This would take some audacity to try to pull off.

         Post. - Amorella

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