12 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
The Consensus of Cyberspace
In the real world the empty page might scare the writer. as the blank screen might intimidate the programmer, but now individuals found themselves in the position of having to "boot up" an entire universe of meaning, without any easy reference to the constellation of familiar objects that tend to reinforce the tentative definitions obf newly ereated artifacts. Say, for example, one wished to create a chair in cyberspace, circa 1985. The most that can be said is that this "chair" won't look ve... 1 
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notes25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Paul Saffo: The Illusion of Scientific Progress
The breathtaking advance of scientific discovery has the unknown on the run. Not so long ago, the Creation was 8,000 years old and Heaven hovered a few thousand miles above our heads. Now Earth is 4.5 billion years old and the observable Universe spans 92 billion light years. Pick any scientific field and the story is the same, with new discoveries—and new life-touching wonders—arriving almost daily. Like Pope, we marvel at how hidden Nature is revealed in scientific light.
Our growing corpu...Folksonomies: scientific progress progress
Folksonomies: scientific progress progress
1 notes
notes08 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Explanation of the Higg's Boson
Protons are more massive than electrons, for example, and electrons are way more massive than neutrinos. Photons have no mass at all. For most us, that's no more than a fun fact (and not all that much fun, really). For physicists, though, it's a mystery that demands a solution. Why are the masses so different — and why do any particles have any mass at all?
The answer, suggested several scientists back in the 1960's, is that the entire universe is suffused with a sort of energy field — it's ...Folksonomies: physics
Folksonomies: physics
1 notes
notesA descent, down-to-earth explanation of the Higg's Particle and why it matters.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Garden of the Night Sky
This method of viewing the galaxies (‘to continue the simile I have borrowed from the vegetable kingdom’) presented the entire universe in a new kind of light, with the most radical implications. ‘The heavens are now seen to resemble a luxuriant garden which contains the greatest variety of productions, in different flourishing beds … and we can extend the range of our experience [of them] to an immense duration.’ In a garden we may live ‘successively to witness the germination, blooming, fol... 1 notes
notesA description of the variety found in the night sky through the newly invented telescope.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
M-Theory Describes a Universe That Creates Itself
If the total energy of the universe must always remain zero, and it costs energy to create a body, how can a whole universe be created from nothing. That is why there must be a law like gravity. Because gravity is attractive, gravitational energy is negative: One has to do work to separate a gravitationally bound system. such as the earth and moon. This negative energy can balance the positive energy needed to create matter, but it's not quite that simple. The negative gravitational energy of... 1 notes
notesHow it does this, I don't fully understand from this passage.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
The Strong Anthropic Principle
The weak anthropic principle is not very controversial. But there is a stronger form that we will argue for here, although it is regarded with disdain among some physicists. The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints not just on our environment but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves. The idea arose because it is not only the peculiar characteristics of our solar system that seem oddly conducive to the development of h... 1 notes
notesOur existence puts constraints on the very laws of nature.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Origins of the Big Bang Theory and Evidence For It
That the universe is expanding was news to Einstein. But the possibility that the galaxies are moving away from each other had been proposed a few years before Hubble's papers on theoretical grounds arising from Einstein's own equations. In 1922, Russian physicist and mathematician Alexander Friedmann investigated what would happen in a model universe based upon two assumptions that greatly simplified the mathematics: that the universe looks identical in every direction, and that it looks tha... 1 notes
notesThe logical conclusion drawn by a Catholic Priest and the Cosmic Background Radiation (CMBR) we see left over from the event.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Everything Comes from Stars
What gravity is and why it is, no one knows. Albert Einstein spent most of his life trying to figure it out, but the secret eluded him. it is simply a fact that everything in the universe with mass pulls on everything else. If it weren't for the initial outward impetus of the Big Bang, gravity would have caused the entire universe to collapse into a heap. (Indeed, someday the cosmic collapse may happen, if and when the initial impetus is expended, although the best evidence suggests that the ... 1 notes
notesThe Big Bang to the formation of stars, which formed the elements crucial to life. It takes 1,000 calories of sunlight to evaporate one thimbleful of water.
05 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Humans Don't Have Roots
In the very largest way of looking at planet Earth's socioeconomic-evolution events, we must observe
that humans are designed with legs and not roots. Yesterday, humanity developed temporary roots as it
cultivated its life-support food root-grown on the land. The metals made possible metal canning of food
and mobilization of machinery. Today, all of human existence depends on the swift, world-around
intercommunication system operating at 186,000 miles per second. We have transformed reality f... 1 notes
notesThrough science, we are evolving to become more free, free from biological roots and free from Capitalistic chains, where ownership of real estate holds us down.
29 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Program Yourself With the Truth
What memes should you program yourself with, now that you have the chance? The second-most-popular answer (after punting) is: With the truth. It's hard to see how there could be any problem with programming yourself with memes that are true. But remember Alfred North Whitehead: all truths are half-truths.
There are several problems with the strategy-meme Program myself with the truth. In the first place, you can't ever know the whole truth of the universe. Your brain doesn't have enough stor... 1 notes
notes...but it's not that easy.
