29 NOV 2016 by ideonexus
Earthseed 21-30
21. What a living world will demand
There is no endTo what a living worldWill demand of you.
∞ = Δ
22. Earthlife
We are Earthseed. We are flesh—self aware,questing, problem-solving flesh. We are thataspect of Earthlife best able to shape Godknowingly. We are Earthlife maturing, Earthlifepreparing to fall away from the parent world.We are Earthlife preparing to take root innew ground, Earthlife fulfilling its purpose,its promise, its Destiny.
∞ = Δ
23. A Phoenix
In order to riseFrom i...Folksonomies: earthseed
Folksonomies: earthseed
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notes
notes17 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The Universe Doesn't Care About You
Banks may have displayed a lack of anger at his diagnosis, but that does not mean that his righteous ire is extinguished. As we chat, he frequently loops off into hilarious denunciations. "I can understand that people want to feel special and important and so on, but that self-obsession seems a bit pathetic somehow. Not being able to accept that you're just this collection of cells, intelligent to whatever degree, capable of feeling emotion to whatever degree, for a limited amount of time and... 1 notes
notesYou are insignificant, and Banks is irritated that religion tries to make use more than we are.
04 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The BRAIN Initiative
As humans, we can identify galaxies light years away, we can study particles smaller than an atom. But we still haven’t unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears. (Laughter.) But today, scientists possess the capability to study individual neurons and figure out the main functions of certain areas of the brain. But a human brain contains almost 100 billion neurons making trillions of connections. So Dr. Collins says it’s like listening to the strin...
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1 Text of Obama's comments on the initiative itself.
06 JUL 2012 by ideonexus
The Bootes Void
In the course of a redshift survey of galaxies brighter than R approximately equal to 16.3, 133 redshifts were measured in three fields, each separated by roughly 35 deg from the other two. If the galaxies in these fields were distributed uniformly, the combination of a galaxian luminosity function and the magnitude limits predicts that the distribution of redshifts should peak near 15,000 km/s. In fact, only one galaxy of the 133 was observed with a redshift in the 6000 km/s interval centere... 1 notes
notesAn inconceivably massive region of space extremely sparsely populated with galaxies, strangely spherical in shape.
23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Paradox of the Universe
I am afraid all we can do is to accept the paradox and try to accommodate ourselves to it, as we have done to so many paradoxes lately in modern physical theories. We shall have to get accustomed to the idea that the change of the quantity R, commonly called the 'radius of the universe', and the evolutionary changes of stars and stellar systems are two different processes, going on side by side without any apparent connection between them. After all the 'universe' is an hypothesis, like the a...It's radius VS the behavior of stars and stellar systems. Makes one think of the paradox of an expanding universe and one in which galaxies are drawn together through gravity.
07 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Losing the Human Perspective in the Vastness of the Cosmos
When I pause and reflect on our expanding universe, with its galaxies hurtling away from one another, embedded within the ever-stretching, four-dimensional fabric of space and time, sometimes I forget that uncounted people walk this Earth without food or shelter, and that children are disproportionately represented among them.
When I pore over the data that establish the mysterious presence of dark matter and dark energy throughout the universe, sometimes I forget that every day—every twe... 1 notes
notesTyson talks about how easy it is to forget human dilemmas when we consider the immense size of our Universe.
22 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
The Flat Universe Problem
The next obvious feature of the universe in which we live is that it is old, very old. It took intelligent life about 3.5 billion years to develop on Earth. Hence, our existence requires a universe that accommodated our arrival by lasting billions of years. The current best estimate for the age of our universe is between about 10 billion and 20 billion years, which is plenty long enough. It turns out, however, that it is not so easy a priori to design a universe that expands, as our universe ... 1 notes
notesOur Universe is remarkably well tuned, and appears to have laws in place to keep it that way.
06 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph
Here we go again, one of the epic documents of our time, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph, the deepest look into space ever. A random part of the sky, so small it could be covered by a pinhead held at arm's length. A part of the sky -- as NASA says -- that you'd see looking through an eight-foot-long soda straw. A photo exposed over 400 orbits of the Hubble, a total exposure of 11.3 days. The telescope pointing precisely to the same point in space even as it whizzes around the Ear...It would take 12.7 million such photos to cover our night sky, and there are 10,000 galaxies in this image.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Universal Intelligence Cannot Exist
We conclude that there cannot be a strongly cohesive network of
communicating, unifying intelligences through the whole universe if (1) such
galactic civilizations evolve upward from individual planetary societies and if (2)
the velocity of light is indeed a fixed limit on the speed of information
transmission, as special relativity requires (i.e., if we ignore such possibilities as
using black holes for fast transport: See Chapter 39). Such a universal intelligence
is a kind of god that cann... 1 notes
notesAt best, aliens advanced enough to be gods could only exist at a galactic level.
15 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Fractal Geometry Changes One's Perspective of the World
Fractal geometry will make you see everything differently. There is a danger in reading further. You risk the loss of your childhood vision of clouds, forests, flowers, galaxies, leaves, feathers, rocks, mountains, torrents of water, carpet, bricks, and much else besides. Never again will your interpretation of these things be quite the same. Folksonomies: perspective fractals
Folksonomies: perspective fractals
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notesYou see fractals in much of the natural world after learning of them.
