Love and Cosmology, Work Failures, Book Reviews

[tcpip]

Last Sunday Rev. Dr. David Sammons, Visiting Professor of Unitarian Universalist Heritage & Ministry, Star King Ministry, gave his a presentation on "That Confusing Word Called 'Love'". He made an extension to what is commonly called "the Unitarian-Universalist trinity" of freedom, reason and tolerance - by extending it to 'honesty' and 'compassion' which he considered to the key features of the notion of love. After the service, I led the discussion for the Unitarian Philosophy Forum which had an excellent turnout for a discussion on Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and particularly its relationship to the scientific method. We made good use of the BBC programme Most of our Universe is Missing. I have since started writing a paper on the issue and discussion, but find myself sidetracked by holographic principle.

Life at VPAC hasn't been fun for our users of late with three hardware failures on one of our storage nodes in a two-week period. Having 14 drives fail due to a faulty LSI card in the space of six minutes can be sort of scary, especially when we have to restore over twenty million files and almost 8 terabytes of data. It has meant an extended outage on our supercomputers, however users have been most understanding. On a work related topic from some years ago, the proposal that Martin McGuire of ConnectIE and I put together to convert East Timor's ccTLD into a revenue-raising international telephone directory has been taken up; but for a commercial interest and not for East Timor.

When Ticonderoga Online restarted at the very end of last year a number of my book reviews were included; The Last Witchfinder (historical fiction, entertaining, well-written, informative), Hidden Empire and A Forest of Stars (plain-vanilla space opera, somewhat unimaginative) and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (typical Phillip K. Dick - which is good). Still have a small mountain of other books I've promised to review.

Comments

[ivansun.livejournal.com]

Oh i'm very interested in discussions of Dark Matter! Shame to have missed that!

From my mearge understanding, the current set of theories about dark matter is so astonishing it could be mistaken for Sci Fi

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

There's a lot about theoretical astrophysics that's a rich resource for SF. Dark matter is quite tame compared to the holographic principle (although it makes more sense if you reverse the epistemology and ontology).

If I get a chance (once it is returned back to me) I'll see if I can get a copy of that BBC doco to you. It really is quite informative.

Basically the rules of the universe's mass say that we don't have enough matter and energy to justify its existence. The gravitational behaviour and rotation of stars on the edge of galaxies also suggest that there is additional mass causing the effects that we observe.

Which leaves us looking for "particles" that have mass.. but aren't made of atoms.

Which makes them damn hard to find. But we know that they're there.

Does that make sense?

[ivansun.livejournal.com]

*giggles* that sounds like X- marks the spot. Or another algebraic variable.

Dark Matter then is just something we are yet to know, hence the mystery?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, we're pretty sure it is there. The alternative, that gravity is actually variable, is extremely remote, especially after modelling based on data from the WMAP satellite give an accurate simulation of the universes' life.

But yes, Dark Matter/Dark Energy is a big 'X'. It could very well be a blanket term for a whole new range of matter and energy that will be incredibly varied. It's a little like knowing that matter and energy exists without knowing about knowing about atoms and forms.

A future periodic table of Dark Matter? Sure it's quite possible. Heck, I'd even be prepared to posit likely.

[ivansun.livejournal.com]

Two years ago, I attended a physics lecture at the Uni of Melbourne where the head of school noted that there are at least nine dimensions of reality including the four that we know of. (That is astonishing to me in itself, at his mentioning it so casually) If this is the case, it is quite possible that a particular unknown dimension might impact gravitationally in the manner of dark matter...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*nods* String theory; currently debating somewhere between 10 and 26 :)

Extra dimensions seem pretty strange because we're used to a 3 spatial, 1 temporal universe.

Explaining an additional dimension is relatively simple. Think of a cube, with North, South, East and West 'walls' (N, S, E, W) and a floor and ceiling (F, C). Now imagine if you would a fourth spatial dimension which allows movement; like an edge between the F and C.

Check out the 3-d shadow of a similar object...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_dimension

... and elaborate from there!

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

I will probably watch all of that BBC program about Dark Matter. I've come across the idea of a Holographic Universe in New Scientist. The mind boggles when you combine it with the idea that we might all be part of an ancestor simulation.

Personally, I think it's a good thing that we don't know everything there is to know about the universe.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I've come across the idea of a Holographic Universe in New Scientist.

Yeah, I had fun reading that article but I think they've confused the issue.

Rather than looking at the real universe as a holographic projection (which the article implies, rather mischievously) it makes a lot more sense to see the edge of the universe as a holographic recording of what has happened.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would make a LOT more sense!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Doesn't it just! Especially after the example they gave of the black hole recording its history on the event horizon.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

As per the Doctor Faustus webcomic.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heheh..

A few years ago at the Melbourne Unitarian church we had a theist speaker (which I missed regrettably) who was also an physicist. He said one of the most frustrating things he found in many religious people was that the whilst he was trying to work out how many dimensions the universe really had they were trying to tell him that all truth could be found in one book for all eternity.

I guess when confronting by hard questions some prefer to escape to simple solutions.

You might find a current article to your liking along these lines..

re: it makes a lot more sense to see the universe as a holographic recording of what has happened.

[geoff.livejournal.com]

if you extend that even further, everything has already happened! what we are living/experiencing now is nothing other than holographic memory projections.

for further "enlightenment" Most Recommended Listening -- get the mp3'sof David Wilcock & Larry Seyer discussing "There's Only One of Us Here" (which primarily discusses/compares the law of one material with a course in miracles)from:

part1: http://divinecosmos.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=400&Itemid=115

part2: http://divinecosmos.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=401&Itemid=115

you'll need to page down several screen fulls to get to the mp3 download themselves; each are about an hour long. The Real Juice is in part2.

[direwolf23.livejournal.com]

I've always thought exploring the facts about space and physics gives us better insight into philosophical pursuits. ^.^ There's just so much left to learn and discover.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Once I cut down my PhD to the requisite word size (oh, only 10,000 words to go!) I'm thinking that I'll start a science degree.

Will probably follow one of my colleagues and do a double major in astronomy and computing.

(I have a long term plan of getting a PhD in social laws, one in the physical science and then one in the fine arts...)

[zey.livejournal.com]

Typical East Timor, unfortunately. Land of wasted opportunities. A bit like Australia that way, but, they have far fewer opportunities to waste.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't think the .tel TLD will really take off as a commercial entity. It would have worked for East Timor, back in 2003, because there was a lot of sympathy for the place then. Now I suspect a great deal of that is gone. "It's your country, you look after it".

[zey.livejournal.com]

Yep. I really think their decision to go with Portuguese was perhaps close to the worst foot-shot they could have done to themselves. Talk about isolating their country through language just at a time when they most need international skills, advice and assistance.

If they were ever expecting Portugal to respond to their language loyalty, I imagine their hopes are well and truly dashed by now.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A lot of younger Timorese were not happy with the decision.

Xanana made a defense of it, arguing that Portuguese was gave Timor-Leste an identity unique from the recent of Indonesia.

Portugal has been very generous, both financially and diplomatically.. Mind, they're not a particularly wealthy country either.

My not-so-tongue-in-cheek option was that they should join the Federation of Malaysia and adopt Bahasa as their second official language.

I still think that's the best choice.

But .. it's their country. They'll decide what path it'll take.

re: holographic principle

[geoff.livejournal.com]

i cannot more highly recommend reading

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot (1953-1992)
http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Universe-Michael-Talbot/dp/0060922583

Michael Talbot (1953-1992), was the author of a number of books
highlighting parallels between ancient mysticism and quantum
mechanics, and espousing a theoretical model of reality that suggests
the physical universe is akin to a giant hologram.

In The Holographic Universe, Talbot made many references to the work
of David Bohm -- an American-born quantum physicist who made
significant contributions in the fields of theoretical physics,
philosophy and neuropsychology, and to the Manhattan Project (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm ) -- and Karl Pribram -- a
professor at Georgetown University and George Mason University, and an
emeritus professor of psychology and psychiatry at Stanford University
and Radford University. He is also a Board-certified as a neurosurgeon
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_H._Pribram ). It is quite
apparent that the combined work of Bohm and Karl Pribram is largely
the cornerstone upon which Talbot built his ideas.

there's a good article with a synopsis on Talbot's book at
http://www.crystalinks.com/holographic.html