02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
The Anthropic Principle
As an example of the power of the Anthropic Principle, consider the number of directions in space. It is a matter of common experience that we live in three-dimensional space. That is to say, we can represent the position of a point in space by three numbers. For example, latitude. longitude and height above sea level. But why is space three-dimensional? Why isn't it two, or four, or some other number of dimensions, hke in science fiction? In fact, in M-theory space has ten dimensions (as wel...Folksonomies: anthropic principle
Folksonomies: anthropic principle
1 
notes
notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Gamification Auction Mechanic
On a previous assessment, Mrs. Tabor asked her students three different questions to assess their science-centered critical thinking. Based on the answers, she gives each student a chip with a different color and value (much like the suns in Ra). Students who demonstrated an “average” level of critical-thinking skills get chips worth 3 or 4; students who demonstrated greater critical-thinking skills get chips worth slightly less (2 or 3); and students who struggled a bit get chips worth m...Folksonomies: education gamification
Folksonomies: education gamification
1 notes
notes24 FEB 2013 by ideonexus
Hypothesizing on a World Without Stars
'Well, then, supposing there were other suns in the universe.' He broke
off a little bashfully. 'I mean suns that are so far away that they're too
dim to see. It sounds as if I've been reading some of that fantastic
fiction, I suppose.'
'Not necessarily. Still, isn't that possibility eliminated by the fact
that, according to the Law of Gravitation, they would make themselves
evident by their attractive forces?'
'Not if they were far enough off,' rejoined Be...
2 Asimov's world with so many suns there is no night is a place where people hypothesize other configurations of worlds they cannot see and do not believe exist.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Birth of the Atomic Age
The Atomic Age began at exactly 5.30 Mountain War Time on the morning of July 15, 1945, on a stretch of semi-desert land about 50 airline miles from Alamogordo, New Mexico. And just at that instance there rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one. ... At first it was a giant column that soon took the shape of a supramundane mushroom. 1 notes
notesDown to the minute. A glorious, haunting description.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Humphery Davy: Poem About a Weeping Monument
My eye is wet with tears
For I see the white stones
That are covered with names
The stones of my forefathers’ graves.
No grass grows upon them
For deep in the earth
In darkness and silence the organs of life
To their primitive atoms return.
Through ages the air
Has been moist with their blood
The ages the seeds of the thistle has fed
On what was once motion and form...
Thoughts roll not beneath the dust
No feeling is in the cold grave
They have leaped to other worlds
They are far above t...
1 There are various versions of this early poem in the HD Archive: see Paris, vol 1, p29; Treneer, pp4-5; or Fullmer, p13
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Worship of Nature is Worship of Light
Davy’s two main essays were far the most ambitious contribution to the anthology, and announced his intellectual arrival in Bristol. He set out to champion chemistry, and speculate about its future, on the grandest metaphysical scale. In a Penzance notebook he had exclaimed: ‘What we mean by Nature is a series of visible images: but these are constituted by light. Hence the worshipper of Nature is a worshipper of light.’38 In his Essay 1, ‘On Heat, Light and the Combinations of Light...Folksonomies: naturalism laws of nature
Folksonomies: naturalism laws of nature
1 notes
notes...and other simple laws of nature.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Wonders of the Universe
There is a place with four suns in the sky – red, white, blue, and yellow; two of
them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them.
I know of a world with a million moons.
I know of a sun the size of the Earth – and made of diamond.
There are atomic nuclei a mile across that rotate thirty times a second.
There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition
of bacteria.
There are stars leaving the Milky Way. There are immense gas c...Carl Sagan describes some of the amazing things science and astronomy have discovered in our universe.
10 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Teddy Roosevelt Considers the Night Sky
After an evening of talk, perhaps about the
fringes of knowledge, or some new
possibility of climbing inside the minds and
senses of animals, we would go out on the
lawn, where we took turns at an amusing
little astronomical rite. We searched until we
found, with or without glasses, the faint,
heavenly spot of light-mist beyond the lower
left-hand comer of the Great Square of
Pegasus, when one or the other of us would
then recite:
That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda.
It is as large as our......each night to feel appropriately small.
12 APR 2011 by ideonexus
On the Nature of Things...
No single thing abides; but all things flow.
Fragment to fragment clings-the things thus grow
Until we know and name them. By degrees
They melt, and are no more the things we know.
Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift
I see the suns, I see the systems lift
Their forms; and even the systems and the suns
Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.
You too, oh earth-your empires, lands, and seas -
Least with your stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these you ...An ancient poem on the nature of reality and science as the guiding light.
