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Collection of papers on ghosts, UFO's, psychics, e
John David Rohner, Milwaukee, WI June 1990
Comments:
The purpose of this paper: to eliminate primitive
beliefs, to offer solutions to unanswered questions, and
to investigate or at least mention interesting
discoveries and technologies.
The scientific method for solving problems uses
deduction. You observe data and then create theories to
account for that data. Your theory is proven when you
can correctly anticipate future data. The competing form
of logic is that of induction. With induction you start
with a theory and try to prove it. This method is out
of favor because it usually introduces bias.
Deductive methods attempt to form the universe into
a pattern that can be easily predicted and understood.
I feel that this prevents awareness of data. By working
from the inductive method you can use more creativity and
imagination to examine all possibilities. Then you can
see what data is available, fill where you can, and
investigate where you suspect.
There are real problems in knowing the truth of what
our senses and instruments tell us. The field of
philosophy that deals with knowing and finding things
that are true has found only one truth: that whenever
you say "I think, therefore I am," then you can be sure
that you, at least, exist.
We attempt to order the universe in our own minds.
Unfortunately there is much misunderstanding. Too many
people are still "hoping" or "thinking" that the universe
and its events are a certain way. I have written this
continually on-going project in hopes that the whole
human race can feel the same confidence I have concerning
our future. All I ask is an open mind.
You will find this to be hard reading, disjoint, and
disorganized. Remember that this is a compilation of
many notes I have taken throughout my life. Only through
many revisions will this be complete and understandable.
Generally, two opposing theories are both right and
wrong. The end result/method/truth is usually a
combination of both theories. The same is true of
inductive logic. The more diverse the views, the more
likely all the angles will be found. The Voyager
spacecraft is one example of the limits of the scientific
method. We sent it out to explore and investigate. Its
goal to fill some missing data of our solar system and
its origins. What we got were some answers and many more
questions. If we had simply put down into a list
everything we imagined we may see, we would have been
less surprised. We could have, perhaps, better prepared
the spacecraft for answers instead of a "go see what is
there" approach. What we saw was the infamous, "Why did
I not think of that?".
I believe that to be truly successful with something
like inductive logic you need to have many opinions
viewed. Much like the ideas of a global village or
distributed democracy. This will reduce the bias of the
single person (into a bias of the group--still better
than one view though). "None of that majority rules
stuff." Computers allow us to merge views from many
sources than was previously possible. As an example, I
feel that I have read so many science fiction storylines
that I can form what I think the Universe is really like.
Another good example are Lotteries. We do not know what
the final numbers will be, but finding the correct
numbers are inevitable with so many people guessing.
This is stretching it a bit since other factors such as
the definitions of the number system also come into
account. The more diverse the opinions and views, the
higher the probability that the answer is among them.
These views can be formed together to create the
final picture. My views, I hope, are not totally your
views. Where we differ I would like to hear from you.
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Table of contents
Comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Terms and concepts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Traditional mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Mind Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Ghosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Witches/Warlocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
UFO'S. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Psychic Voyages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
New mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Existence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Imagination. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
The Universe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Physics of the Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Universe notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Space travel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
On Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Force shields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Teleportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Teleportation via dimensions . . . . . . . . . 51
Moon water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
The brain and the body. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Robots and Artificial Beings. . . . . . . . . . . . 66
The human soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Misc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
I Predict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
What you can see . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Final comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Ok, who am I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Additional references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Terms and concepts:
A MOMENT OF TIME
State of the Universe, or of some local area, that
once/had/could exist. "...the present moment is
eternity and contains all the mystery of the
universe."
CRYONICS
The freezing of meat for later use...ah, ...well,
the truth. The freezing of organic matter with the
expectation of being able to restore or duplicate
the tissue into living organic matter in the
future.
CYBERSPACE
William Gibson's creation, in Neuromancer, of an
interactive communications protocol. Using full
graphics, direct brain sensors, and symbols for
computers. If you're into computers you should
have read it. If you're young and into computers
you're required to read it.
DETERMINISTIC
Determinism and Free Will are interrelated. If you
have determinism then you do not have Free Will.
Words such as "fate" and "destiny" are
deterministic. It is the belief that the future is
planned and unchangeable. Environmental
Determinism, the idea that the environment you grew
up in will affect your future actions, is a common
use of the term.
FREE WILL
The freedom to think what you want, without any
external influences. Not having someone implant
your next thoughts into your brain. Self-
determinism of thought. Do not confuse the term
with freedom or liberty. If you kill somebody,
Free Will requires that you take the punishment
since you did it. Whereas if things were
deterministic you could say it was your destiny to
kill them. That the future was unalterable.
Therefore you lacked choice, no way not to do it,
and should not have to take the punishment. If one
allows only moments of free thought in your life,
you do not have Free Will.
INFINITY
Infinity is essentially a level above the Real
number system (0, 1, 2, 3, ...). It is more of a
theoretical tool than something of practical value.
After all, if you have a zillion apples you are not
going to say you have an infinite number of apples.
Infinity marks the point of "unknown many," when
you have so many that you do not know how many. If
the number can be estimated, than that number is
not infinite. Example, we have an infinite number
of atoms in the Universe. You also could say there
are an infinite number of atoms in the solar
system, except that we know the size of solar
system and the number of atoms in a given unit of
area. So while we may break the mathematical
system trying to calculate the number we would
eventually get a number, whereas the Universe lacks
a size limit.
INFINITY^
Infinity raised to infinity raised to infinity,
etc., etc., till infinity (forever). Infinity
multiplied by any Real number will still equal
infinity (for example, 10*Infinity=infinity, or
1,000,000,000*infinity=infinity,) since any number
smaller than infinity is insignificant.
Multiplying infinity by itself (infinity*infinity)
yields values that are so large that they are only
theoretical toys. Since all things in the universe
together would only equal infinity, it can be said
that Infinity^ represents nothing.
INFINITESIMAL
Does not represent anything. Even the smallest bit
of matter is not infinitesimal, since it can be
measured. The main use of the infinitesimal is to
describe immeasurably small distances or times for
theoretical purposes. Just as 5/1=5 and 1/5=.2,
infinity/1=infinity, and 1/infinity=infinitesimal.
The larger the number under the one, the smaller
the resulting value. Example, if the distance
between two points had an infinite number of points
between them, then Zeno's argument would be true
(that motion is impossible because it requires an
object to pass through an infinite number of points
in a finite amount of time).
INFINITESIMAL^
Infinitely^ small.
LOCAL
Structure of the local area at a current moment of
time. The size of this local area can be anything
from less than a single atom to whole clusters of
galaxies--it depends on the total area considered.
PROBABILITY OF THE UNIVERSE ITSELF
As the Universe is infinite, the term "infinite"
evokes a potential for duplication. Specifically,
duplication of ourselves. Events are what the
Universe is made of. At each moment of time there
are an infinite^ number of potential states the
Universe can change into. For example, if each
atom in the universe could move in only one of four
directions at each moment of time then; 1 atom
could go in one of four directions (4 probable
outcomes), 2 atoms - each able to go in one of four
directions - gives 4 probable outcomes for each,
but together there would be 16 probable outcomes
(4*4). An infinite number of atoms produces an
unimaginable number with a limit of only two
choices of directions for each atom. Toss in
interactions and an infinite number of potential
directions for each little bit of matter for the
three-dimensional space it lives in (a sphere of
potential movement directions) and even infinite^
may be small. This extremely high number of
potential states cumulatively eliminates any
serious duplication problems. The more complex the
required duplication, the less its possibility.
What I have not really decided yet is whether the
probability is cumulative or not. The universe is
so vast that it simply may not matter.
SCIENCE FICTION
Parapsychology is not a part of Science Fiction.
Most science fiction today is a Character Role
Playing Game (CRPG) adventure.
STATE
Structure of the Universe at a current moment of
time.
UNIVERSE
I had considered using something like "Multiverse"
to describe the Universe but decided against it.
Just think of the Universe as made up of an
infinite number of what we now consider to be in
the universe (not "Big Bang bubbles"). The term
universe can be most anything (for example, the
ecology of forest could be thought of a "local
universe"). Each dimension should be called a
universe. Each of our imaginations are a universe.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Traditional mysteries:
Mind Reading
No. While we are developing technology to read the
electronic activity of brains through receivers attached
to the skull, the current/voltage is extremely difficult
to detect. The brain being 3-dimensional and very fast
moving just exacerbates the challenge. Humans cannot
read each others minds. There are no "links" between
humans either to allow mind reading. In perhaps 30
years we will have the technology to put thoughts into
pictures onto a screen - generated by computer using the
same algorithms as we do to process the information.
Ghosts
No. By ghosts I mean ethereal former organic
beings. We have no invisible souls, we are what we are.
Incorporeal matter can hardly have very much
intelligence (unless it has access to some form of
database to provide the intelligence - but this may
eliminate the very "being"/existence of the
intelligence). A person is better off considering our
spirit to be just that. The feeling of happiness, self
confidence, etc. that you feel at times, in the long
term this helps to reduce stress and by that give you a
longer life.
Bob Shaw wrote of life: "A personality is a
structure of mental entities, existing in mental space,
and it survives destruction of the brain though it
required the brain's complex physical organization to
develop." I suspect this is what many people currently
think. Note the flaw, no growth after death. Static
life-after-death, that is not life, merely existence.
Notice the differences between an advanced race at
the energy level and ghosts. Both exist in the same
medium; energy. Except the race evolved into it, the
ghosts became it when we died. The race would use a
real form of energy, the ghosts use undetectable energy.
Ghosts and spirits are things those who cannot accept
death believe. My efforts will always be constructive
and real, not imaginary and false.
Witches/Warlocks
People with some tricks up their sleeves. With an
antigravity belt and a few other tricks I could easily
be a warlock even in these times. This cult is now
concentrating on worshipping nature.
UFO'S
Sure, maybe one or two in all history. Since any
more would have serious implications: maybe there are
many alien races nearby watching us, or that they simply
do not share their data. A race that can fly through
space can surely stop our primitive detection equipment,
so there really is no reason for us to have noticed them
at all.
Psychic Voyages
Definitely yes. Dreams and drugs now. Databases
and interfaces tomorrow. Just read William Gibson's
works.
New mysteries:
Existence
Many things that humans typically think may happen,
such as; instantaneous travel, ghosts, true visions of
the future, a single being who can do anything. These
are all possible, if one accepts that we may be a great
beings' memory - that we had existed, but no longer
exist. Thus our essence and the world around us is
subject to the beings thinking, as is anyone who can
access/manipulate the storage area. By having lived we
had Free Will, but as a memory we think we have Free
Will because the events did occur with Free Will. The
key to determining the truth involves time, and the
"ticks of time." This is not thinking of time in the
traditional sense, but as the state method. Since by
its very nature each tick of time lasts both an
infinitesimal amount of time and that this amount is
always varying. Maybe some type of atomic-based system
which only works during these ticks - thus if a jump in
time occurs we would notice it. On the other hand, a
jump might be caused by something else, or we might be
forced to "see" it falsely.
Imagination
It seems to me that there is some significance in
the following, although I am not really sure what: The
universe in its purely natural state is raw energy, from
this we get clumps of matter into inanimate objects.
This inorganic matter can create organic matter under
the right conditions, the organic matter then becomes
plants and animals. From these animals, sentient beings
evolve. These sentient beings then develop an
imagination. The deal is: we start with infinity, we
shrink it down to get humans, but we have an infinity
within ourselves because our imaginations can imagine
anything. What is this link with the universe? The
Universe cannot imagine or create things beyond what are
"natural," but our brains can do both. We cannot bring
those objects we think up into this universe--though
they do exist in this Universe in an encoded form
(memory). We then use our bodies to construct the
object into the Universe. There seems some logic here,
but I cannot pinpoint it. Perhaps its just me making
more of nothing. [The Universe is a platform on which
life forms. Life is a platform on which intelligence
forms. It took a variety of tiny modifications and
reactions to produce an infinite potential.]
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Evolution:
God by definition does not exist. Omniscience; the
knowing of everything in the universe in the past,
present and future, and omnipotence; the ability to do
anything and everything, rule them out, especially if
you want Free Will. Higher evolved beings do exist (for
example, us). What type of race those higher than us
are will decide how they treat us (benevolence, slavery,
leave alone, etc.). Humans mistakenly pray to gods in
hope that one of these higher evolved beings will hear
their call, impressed by such reverence will constantly
store their current body data so that they may be
recreated should they die here on Earth. (See section
on transportation beams for problem information.) A
distinct lack of self confidence in one's own race is
necessary to believe this stuff. Without the right
technology, unknowns scare a species, death being the
biggest unknown - add to this a desire to both obtain
and legitimize power and these things catch on. We have
the technology to change and evolve ourselves, we must
do so. In the future evolution will prove to be too
slow to advance the human race. Some thought should be
given to what to change into and what other races have
chosen to evolve into. Once we know what to expect, we
can locate other races. Once a race evolves beyond the
need for organic matter it will appear that the race has
died out, it will look like it was only a flash-in-the-
pan and that there are fewer races in the universe than
there really are.
Space can apparently form complex molecules - some of
which lead to life. These building blocks of life land
on planets, trying to form life under the conditions
given.
We are animals. Animals are life. Life is the ability
to think for yourself (plants are biological machines).
We started out as little rat-like creatures during the
dinosaur age. We then grew to be chimpanzee-like. Then
finally to our present form.
I am convinced that ants, at least, are biological
machines. Working from instinct with no
self-determination/self-thought.
DNA structure matching will eventually show the whole
tree of life on earth. For now, a chimp's DNA matches
to 98.4% of that of the human (a gorilla matches 97.9%
to a human).
It looks like evolution of major lines such as humans
occur in spurts (punctuated equilibrium) and minor
changes slowly (gradualism).
We, for the most part, evolved in eastern Africa.
Starting sometime between 6 and 10 million years ago we
see the appearance of two groups who evolved from
chimps: apes and upright hominid's--little more than
monkeys who regularly walked upright. Around 3 million
years ago, the lineage splits into Australopithecus
robustus and Australopithecus africanus. A. robustus
died off about 1.2 million years ago. Around 2 million
years ago A. africanus became Homo habilis, the first
real humans. Around 1.7 million years ago H. habilis
became H. erectus, who, around 1 million years ago, left
Africa and spread through most of the Old World (Europe,
Asia, Africa), as did their descendants. Those
descendants appeared around 500,000 years ago with the
arrival of Homo sapiens. These last (H. habilis to H.
sapiens) was straight evolution of a single species.
Around 130,000 years ago modern Homo sapiens appears and
so did Neanderthal. Neanderthal died out about 32,000
years ago. This is too bad, as they were interesting
people. In many ways more advanced than the Homo
sapiens of the time, they used fire regularly and took
care of their old and infirm. It is suspected they did
not evolve technologically like Homo sapiens had. No
innovation, for their entire period they always used the
same type of stone tools everywhere. They also did not
live to be very old (not beyond 45). Homo sapiens
evolved better weapons and boats during this period.
Also about 35,000 years modern humans appear (Cro-
Magnon/Homo sapiens sapiens). It is further suspected
that Neanderthal had been impaired by a form of
muteness--they could not articulate their sounds enough
to distinguish them to form/learn a language (vocal
tract problem, for instance chimps are thought to be
unable to form most of the commonest vowels).
Neanderthal was not stupid though, they had a brain case
10% larger than ours.
Domestication of animals probably occurred with the old
among primitive peoples. After all old people aren't
likely to have wandered far from food as well as have
lots of boring time on their hands.
We are developing technologically at the rate on the
high slope of an exponential curve - super fast.
What would have happened if we did not have all those
setbacks: the downfall of the Greek and Turkish
empires, or the decline of China? All who had knowledge
only again learned in the Renaissance. The church too,
responsible for the backward growth during that time,
and the constant drain on resources (money to operate
the churches and thoughts desirable toward returning us
to the past - a simpler time, when they controlled
things). Ethnocentrism also, not considering all humans
equal.
What if we had lived in a more active sector of space -
where we would never think of space as merely a rotating
sphere set up by a god? What if the people of the
planet were all one race, and was of generally one mind
(for example, a military like government). What if it
is necessary to develop at an exponential rate to avoid
some larger (well established) space empires?
Perhaps a thousand years one way or the other does not
matter. There are many Science Fiction scenarios in
which a planet is invaded and conquered because it was
unaware of true nature of the universe. On the other
hand all could be harmony.
"In science, truth is a moving target. The knowledge of
one generation is merely the jumping-off spot for the
next generation's inquiries."
Death. It forms a basis for much of my thinking.
Extinction of one self. If the money going to
defense/war were going into medicine two things would
happen: (1) the full knowledge of medicine would prove
that there are no "souls" that gods can collect, etc.
Essentially reducing the power of religion. (2) We
could be living longer (hundreds of years at least).
Just do CAT scans of brains of dying people/animals to
see which part dies last to find the point to begin the
necessary research toward longer life. This type of
knowledge will not be around for about 20 years
(computers need to advance). What of a race who is
peoples did not die so quickly? What would physics be
like today if all the great physics people (Einstein,
Newton, etc.) were still alive today - playing their
mind games on the universe? A race who lives a long
time also develops at an increasingly faster rate
(unless it is some race where the old power people get
to stay in office for life - not allowing new ways to
develop). Also, long life would allow the imaginative
thinkers to develop the skills necessary to bring their
dreams to fruition.
I had to be reminded about mummification. Preserving
the body without freezing. Apparently what is done in
freezing is that the body is frozen just before death so
that the brain doesn't suffer damage from lack of
oxygen. Using a simple storage method, you preserve the
body but you must take into account the period of oxygen
deprivation. Still, this is the way to go. Correct me
if I'm wrong, but isn't Lenin still sitting in a vacuum
air-tight coffin in Russia, perfectly preserved.
"The Summum Corporation of Salt Lake City, the
world's only commercial mummification company. . . .
[One] gets dipped in secret sauce, covered with
polyurethane, wound with linen, encased in resin,
hermetically sealed for eternity in a mummiform of
bronze or stainless steel. . .Mummification can easily
cost $35,000 and up. . . .In all the tests. . .nothing
has decomposed. [Still perfect after years.] You can
still move the skin. . .and. . .eyes look real good.
[In normal funerals, just because the body is embalmed
does not mean it is preserved - it still decomposes.]
. . .[they] began studying body-preservation techniques
of the ancient Egyptians, whose afterlifestyle depended
on an undecayed body in which the soul could dwell.
Since 1979 [they've] done exhaustive laboratory and
field tests, experimenting with how different types of
salts reacted to cellular structures. The Egyptians
dehydrated and thus preserved the body with natron, a
naturally occurring mineral salt, but [they] use a wet
method. If [they] dehydrated the body, it wouldn't be
viewable at the traditional funeral. They body will be
embalmed so there can be a funeral service, then shipped
to [them], where [they'll] place it in a stainless steel
vat of fluid that's a combination of salts, oils,
alcohol, and other chemicals, as well as natural
substances, similar to the aloe plant, that inactivate
the tissues. The body breaks down through two
processes--its own chemistry, powered by oxygen, and
bacteria. By saturating and inactivating every cell,
driving out the oxygen and replacing it with our
formula, we've eliminated both processes. The Summum
method preserves the internal organs in situ, except for
the brain, which is removed through an opening in the
skull, embalmed, and then replaced." [There's more, but
already I think this process is just as destructive as
decomposition.] "[They] evacuate all the air, replace
it with inert gas, and weld the mummiform shut. As long
as no one opens it nothing can corrupt the body." [I
think this is all that really needs to be done!]
Most probably suspended animation will be a form of
death, preservation, and then being brought back to
life.
Since going from bio->electronics is tricky. I
recommend the brain be integrated then slowly convert
all the functions to electronics (memory, speech, etc.)
Must emphasize humanity over robots - feeling, touch,
etc. until artificial biological bodies/robots can
replace them. We should perhaps concentrate on
improving humanity biologically and adding electronics.
AI robots: problems of self realization and questioning.
Creating a robot with the intention of it growing like
a human requires that it have a good heuristic system.
What are the status of these empires now? Few empires
last, since there is so much room to expand that control
eventually takes it toll and the large empire crumbles
into smaller empires. Eventually dying out when they no
longer grow (technologically, emotionally, power, etc.).
Any good empire probably would only watch over us. We
are approaching a time though when we will no longer be
considered barbaric (after we put our own house/troubles
in order). At this time races who are only at the level
of technology where they travel through space learning
and making contacts with other races (about the level of
Star Trek). This type of empire will want to contact
us. Of course, there probably are bad empires out there
also, empires who need slave labor. We have some good
options: (1) They may not know about us. Despite our
transmissions we are still in a somewhat isolated corner
of this galaxy. (2) We have no central government -
nobody to take over, no control here. When a government
falls apart or goes out of favor here - we are ready to
become an anarchy (for example, Lebanon, many other
recent situations when government loses legitimacy,
causing riots and looting by every-day people). (3) We
are militaristic. We will fight for this planet,
leaving the enemy with many casualties. Our huge supply
(which we must mostly eliminate to resolve our own
troubles) could do serious damage to any attacker (we
could even wipe out ourselves making all their work a
waste). For what we could be up against read
Battlefield Earth.
As medical technology advances farther we start seeing
(and using) drugs that will keep our brains active.
This might allow us to have the same brain power as we
did when we were in our prime (15-25 or so)(for example,
Nimodipine.) This also might lead to an evolution
expanded head/brain.
A race can advance to no longer need mechanical devices
to do various things. Doing things with their mind.
This can be done via: genetic restructuring, device
implant, etc. To do: find these "keys" and tap them.
One key is, I suspect, a matter --> energy and
vice-versa ability (small and powerful, where powerful
= amount advanced).
While we are not an extremely advanced race we can still
consider ourselves far evolved from the rest of the life
on this planet. That gives us the same responsibilities
an advanced race would have. It is these
responsibilities that keep human kind children for now.
Some questions of an advanced race:
1) Do you make lower life forms comfortable, safe,
secure, and happy (control their world), or do you
just give them their natural habitat and leave them
alone? I take the position that once you have
domesticated them you should give them a happy
comfortable life, but animals in the wild should
stay wild since applying your will to them will
only make them feel trapped, they are happy now.
2) Do you try to advance lower life forms? For
example, give a monkey the knowledge of a human
(with any necessary biological enhancement). If
so, at what point do you stop. With what species
do you draw the line (bugs?). If we gave cats
human brains, how would they feel - they have the
knowledge but cannot do much with their limited
body, and to change the body is to change the
species. I take the position of leave the species
alone, let them develop on their own, and when they
have invented genetics they can evolve themselves.
3) Do you give them a "good death." Provide a place
to die happy. Would not this interfere with their
rights to challenge death?
Mixing of ideas reduces the value of individual society
distinctions, therefore should observe unless think
alike and some technologically. Although duplication of
research could be assisted. The mixing of ideas can
lead to new ideas and solutions also. But it probably
isn't a good idea to have races who are biologically
incompatible (one breaths air, the other nitrogen, etc.)
try to live together - as the natural tensions of
survival may become dominate.
I imagine most races go through three stages:
1) Those who think they're alone.
2) Those who help, or get help from, other races.
3) Those who are smart enough to know not to help.
While all three can occur in sequence, they may also
occur individually. Space is so big that others may not
be found, etc. by a particular race.
Perhaps the problems of death can be solved as so: when
a species dies in it is natural habitat, a ready-scanned
duplicate is created in a safe place of existence
(electronic). Then, maybe, give it brains, and an
environment where only the brain controls things. Thus
the species has its own personality (its "self") and has
equality with the other species (the environment is some
place, somewhere). Perhaps. It could be self
contained/self running. I do not immediately see the
growth potential, and there are still ethical questions
concerning whether it would be proper to interfere.
Then again, should not all life be preserved. Perhaps
a "reincarnation" in which the controllers bring you
back as creature slightly higher on the evolutionary
scale. A less advanced race would start at the most
sentient beings (going from top to bottom you might say)
and as their abilities grew stronger they would go to
the next level. An intelligence incubator. Why is not
the universe more obviously populated with all sorts of
life if this has been going on for infinity?
I have been assuming very powerful beings. Less
powerful should at least encode the life-info until they
decide what is correct and how to implement it. We
should not be murdering our own people by allowing their
brains to decay--since once the brain is destroyed it is
very unlikely they exist. We must assume non-existence
after brain destruction, since the cost of being wrong
is everyone in the past. When we have the technology to
create artificial human shells (that is, make skin,
bones, muscles, etc. in mass production and put them
together to form humans) there is going to be much blame
about why we could not have preserved the important
parts of those people. Einstein's brain is preserved
(for study purposes). On this: "Some . . . slices were
encased in celloidin, a plastic; then all the pieces
were preserved in formaldehyde. Brains are still
pickled in formaldehyde, but few truly revealing
investigations can be done on them after a certain
period because the chemical nature of the brain
changes." Note that brain damage occurs usually upon
death just as it would if the brain suffered a lack of
oxygen while alive. So besides total knowledge of the
brain, we also will need to develop techniques for
repairing them.
At what point do you interfere and let a race know you
are there (no matter your level of advancement)?
Definitely when they are beyond their childhood. Do you
help them? Probably. How? Depends on level of
advancement - only way I can think of is
"insights/revelations" we have - but this is iffy since
it is very hard to do.
We are parallel processing beings. While the cognitive
part of our brain is worrying about something, another
part of our brain is concentrating on walking. There is
yet a third part - the subconscious brain; I suspect
that this is the part that gives entertainment while we
sleep. This part of the brain has the same access to
everything just as the cognitive part does. It thinks,
solving problems/etc., while our consciousness works on
another thought. As evidence it often makes itself
known by a sudden rejection. For example, once while
watching tv, a guy on tv says something about something,
instantly I KNOW he is wrong. A gut feeling of major
order, the information about why he is wrong is not yet
in the cognitive part of my brain. In these situations
I have trouble calling up the proof of why the remark
was wrong (so perhaps data is not parallel accessible).
The feeling is both strong that I am correct in my
response and that the reasoning behind it is also sound
- that there simply is not any doubt. With realization
I also can analyze the periphery of the argument (that
is, it would be true, if this and that conditions were
met). Usually I do not care to review why its wrong
(rechecking whether anything conflicts with it), the
feeling is strong and usually pointing in the direction
(for example, philosophy) to which both his argument
applies and solution found. A little complex, a closer
example. When told that a governor can rewrite laws
sent to him into anything he wants. Instantly I realize
that he can become a dictator. I then realize that he
can become a dangerous dictator if he is evil. Then the
brain kicks in with the logic: no matter what the
present governor is like, a future governor will
undoubtedly be evil, therefore he must be stopped now,
his new-found powers must be eliminated.
A race (including this one) evolves to the point where
it totally understands itself (biologically) - once
done, it can defeat death through better repair (or
replacement) of worn body parts.
When the race has advanced technology to the point where
the computing machines can model a simulated brain as
well as a brain of the race (accuracy/fuzzy logic, etc.)
that race has taken the next step. Once a brain is
modeled - each beings' brain can be modeled, so that
when the being dies he lives on in the computer. As
the computers increase in speed so does the
computer-beings.
The next step is when the go through the energy
spectrum; electronic, light, whatever. Eventually
existing without their mechanisms (free energy) (perhaps
"multi-dimensional"/interfaced w/space itself).
Purpose of life; to experience: feeling, touch, smell.
These cannot be obtained after death (if you go
electric).
I can see no step after this, except expansion. Note
that as a being expands in all areas it may eventually
be possible to memorize every aspect of a section of the
universe. If evolved so far, that can perfectly
memorize the section of space - then things really can
happen. A race in this section can be
"recalled"/remembered repeatedly - each time the being
"remembers" this section of space the ancient dwellers
in this section will not realize it - thus thinking they
have Free Will, when actually they HAD Free Will. Other
things are also possible: time travel (since all events
will be recalled as they had occurred nothing can be
changed), instantaneous travel (since your (a dweller)
time can be stop/started by the thinking being (or
anyone who can resurrect these thoughts). Essentially
all things are possible. When discussing such advanced
beings it is useful to remember: infinite time -->
infinite power, but only in certain areas. We need to
think of these limitations, what they are not infinite
in, also their ethics.
On imaginative existence: [the brain's dreams] what
happens when our brains are so finely tuned that we can
produce an EXACT duplicate of ourselves in our
imagination? [Or does probability/motion of atoms rule
this out?]
William Gibson's books are important reading. While he
ignores the potential of preserving the brain, he does
push both medical and technological developments. To
achieve his visions requires two things: full knowledge
of our biology, and a method of integrating
electronics/etc. with our bodies without rejection.
There seems two paths available: internal growth and
external growth. Internal growth is creating our own
evolution - designing improved bodies. External growth
is expansion into space. For us to survive requires
both. Expansion into space will allow us to find other
races and advance our own technology. Which in turn
will allow us to advance ourselves. The real threat:
ourselves - what I call "human entropy." When one
thinks of living simpler times, one is thinking of
death. When one is thinking of utopia, one is thinking
of death. When one thinks of gods, one is thinking of
death. The hope of a relaxed life, in which peace is
everywhere, is nice. When that leads to no technology
development ("we have it all why find more") then one is
thinking of death. This can affect whole races.
Without challenge, only death exists. The challenge:
ourselves. The universe is so massive we cannot hope to
explore it all. It makes one think of empires,
thousands of planets big, that collapse in time (all
do). For its individual challenge supported by the
whole that will allow survival. One need not control
the whole universe to obtain the abilities and eternal
existence of a truly advanced race. The size of the
universe provides infinite diversion for those without
death.
I suspect that higher evolved beings cannot change the
fundamental structure of the universe.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
The Universe
The Universe is infinite. A lot is automatically
assumed when you mention infinite. Since the very word
implies anything is possible. It says, for example,
that there may be two identical people in this Universe
and therefore we have no Free Will (which would lead to
a potentially known future - which is impossible). One
must remember what a Universe creates: events. At every
infinitesimal point of time an infinite number of
choices are available. As the amount of time increases
the probability of events matching exactly goes so far
beyond infinity itself (infinity^) that the size of the
Universe is small in comparison with the Universe of
events.
The Universe is made up of universe's. The big bang
theory is a joke as it casually does not count what the
matter expands into as also being space, it also has a
chicken and egg problem with its initial particle.
Imagine the expanding universal bubble as white (space
would be mainly white if light was not being blocked by
dust particles), imagine this on a black canvas (space).
Reduce it to just a spot of light. What I see is a spot
of light (like a star) on a black canvas - a very tiny
spot on a very large black area. No matter how much the
universe expands, one can always imagine it as just an
infinitesimal spot of light in an infinity of darkness.
The picture looks a lot better when there are lots of
spots of light.
The theory of creation (a super-advanced being/race
creating/developing our Universe) probably would require
too much energy, and would only be useful for studying
how life evolves. There just are not any good arguments
for this theory.
The Universe is probably steady-state, with changes
occurring on what we consider the Universal level still
being called local.
Within the solar system other planets may exist if
conditions are right. If other planets do exist, then
one may be in an orbit allowing for life to come into
existence and thrive. Probably there is a black hole in
each galaxy (logically - since old big stars can become
black holes). Black holes are of course not holes,
merely matter so dense that the light cannot escape the
force of gravity, massive bodies, such as suns, can warp
light rays with their gravity. As you approach the
center, the atoms become more densely packed. I suspect
that there are other forces there besides
pressure/heat/etc. that somehow ignite the whole thing
causing it to explode into a giant cloud of gas. This
exploded star would then form into either
huge/medium/small stars depending upon how much
available gas there is - perhaps the gas is attracted by
a dead neutron star, or something (like many of them)
causing a "rebirth."
The universe is at 3 degrees kelvin. Kelvin is when
molecular action ceases? Does this imply that 0 degrees
kelvin the universe would stop? Is the 3 degrees kelvin
temperature or radiation and is there a difference?
Perhaps the uniform microwave background
temperature/radiation is the base-level of natural
matter in the universe (much like the speed of light
being the highest speed of any natural thing in the
universe). Perhaps there is something special in the
extra cold 3 degree area that could be useful.
The theory that everything we see exists only for us,
and that it does not exist when we do not see it, is
garbage. Merely an extension of the question "how do we
know we are not dreaming everything." Which is
essentially an extension of the omniscient god. Point:
someone or something is projecting the vision, I exist,
if everything I do not see does not exist then that
person/machine also does not exist, since I see the
visions and I do not see the person/machine when I wish
it, I conclude there is no person/machine and what I am
seeing is not put into existence for me. This type of
theory is merely an attempt to legitimatize a god.
I am not espousing a steady state theory of the
Universe. All I am saying is that it is a lot bigger
than we think and that what we imagine as grandiose
workings of the universe through big bangs/etc. is
really just a local effect. A steady state universe may
exist, as may many other types of universes (since
changing only a few universal variables can have
drastically different effects on the outcome).
Physics of the Universe
When an atom decays (beta decay) the atomic number of
the nucleus (the number of protons it contains)
increases by one. Also the electron will fly off at
different speeds sometimes fast, sometimes slow. The
neutrino is responsible for the speed. A neutrino and
an electron is emitted off a neutron when beta decay
occurs, and the amount of energy each gets (the more
energy the faster the speed of departure) is random.
Neutrinos are particles that have no charge, and little
or no mass. The nucleus of the atom recoils against the
departing neutrino's motion. Neutrinos travel and
rarely hit other particles (they easily pass through all
matter). This neutrino is known as the electron
neutrino. There are two other forms of neutrinos: the
muon neutrino and the tau neutrino. Only the muon
neutrino has been produced and detected in the
laboratory. When a neutrino strikes an atom of chlorine
it turns it into argon 37 (radioactive), when it strikes
a gallium atom it turns it into a form of radioactive
germanium.
Inverse beta decay is when a neutrino strikes a proton
yielding a neutron and an antimatter electron (a
positron). The positron flies off and should strike an
electron quickly and annihilate each other.
Antimatter: ". . .it's just matter with its electric
charge reversed--an anti-proton, for example, is merely
a proton with a negative charge--it's unknown in the
natural universe. And when created in a laboratory it
has a tendency to vanish in a blaze of elementary
particles as soon as it comes in contact with matter
[its positive form, not some other type of matter]."
Conceivably an anti-matter universe could develop. When
this universe hits a matter universe what happens?
Maybe matter and antimatter destroy each other - perhaps
leaving a tiny repelling force or merely a lot of energy
that can become a repelling force (through volume area
filled?), building up, until large enough that both
galaxies move away (not necessarily directly opposite
courses?). This could go on forever until the universe
shrink to nothing? - so what would be a universal
building/expansion part of this?
Perhaps black holes (or more appropriately, black stars)
act like galactic signposts/nodes in a galactic map/net
for traveling via some trans-light method. In which
normal matter doesn't matter.
Does a universe, by being anti-deterministic, allow
things like tachyons to exist?
Edwin P. Hubble found in 1929 that the more distant a
galaxy the faster it recedes (from us). On space
expanding causing all objects to fly apart from all
other objects: Garbage. There would be all sorts of
distortions on the quantum level, experiencing
distortions of our own matter--which sensors would
notice. The galaxies are probably moving, but by the
laws of gravity. The galaxies are falling through
curved space like all matter does. We should be looking
for forces that distort space. If for some reason empty
space expands while space with matter does not, this
creates some intriguing ideas; including: crumpled
space where empty space meets space dominated by matter,
empty space pushing matter space, empty space containing
all sorts of distortions providing quicker or slower
matter travel (light apparently is not affected, but
maybe matter is).
In two billion years, the Milky Way galaxy will collide
with the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighbor.
Recent reports have it that the Milky Way galaxy is
actually a bar-spiral galaxy (versus a full, more pure
spiral, spiral galaxy). That is, it has a prominent
axis.
Note, breaking the speed barrier by changing the form of
matter itself. For example, changing electrons to
tachyons.
Q: does anything ever disappear from existence totally?
Or do they just become increasingly infinitesimal
(energy/speed/mass/etc.)?
Keep watch for information on Supernova 1987A. It has
become a very fast and interesting pulsar in the last
two years.
Space curves around everything (for example, planets,
us) (space is curved by everything). While planets can
move and tables stay still, only life can move where it
wants. This ability also gives us minuscule control of
space around us--as we warp space wherever we are. Q:
can this be enhanced? The minute warping of space is
enough to cause a slight pull on objects--but is vastly
pulled toward earth so it is unnoticeable. What is
space? How is it curving around me? Or through me?
Does space curve around an object, or does the body
absorb the space that is right on target, reflecting it
back out like a barrier to deflect things? Note, non
gravity space attracting gravity may lead to a collapsed
universe, until encountering another universe's gravity
zone?
Momentum, it's the force of a moving object that was
imparted to that object externally. When you hit a
baseball with a bat, for instance, the bat imparted
energy onto the ball (the bat lost the energy) and the
ball was able to take off. Without forces of resistance
the ball would go forever at the same speed. However,
the ball acts as though it was constantly being pushed
by the bat at a constant rate of speed. Each second the
object (the ball) thinks it's being pushed, when in fact
nothing is being pushed, it's just moving forward due to
its momentum. The ball doesn't have this energy that is
momentum. The energy was released with a bang at the
moment it was imparted to the ball. It gave the ball
direction and speed using itself up. The ball just
continues due to lack of sufficient resistance (until
gravity and air resistance takes over).
Momentum doesn't warp space. It rely's on the object
(eg. planet) to do that job. It's the actual warping of
space that slows down speed (the effect of momentum) -
since you're literally pushing away space to move
through. This warping alters the two factors of
momentum: speed and direction. If gravity curves and
warps space then it must be short range because if a
planet had curved-space to flow in for it's orbit,
momentum wouldn't be able to keep it straight - if
gravity came off the warping would be gone too - and
momentum would take it straight as it is warping. That
is, each object in space warps space around it. The
warping isn't like ripples in a pool, but a smooth
pattern more like a crater. Space nearest the object is
curved toward the object most, as you move farther away
from the object space becomes less curved (diminishing
returns). A planet rotating the sun. Each has space
curved toward itself, each is drawing the other closer.
What keeps them apart? Momentum. The planet's momentum
wants it move straight (tangent to the sun), the sun
want's the planet to collide, what you end up with is an
orbit.
Q: shouldn't this mean that space in solar systems and
especially close to the sun and first few planets is
actually thinner than "normal" (empty) space because the
area is so constantly used? Wouldn't this then mean
that speeds of travel would be slower, take longer, in
normal space? If they did, then objects would appear
farther away, proportional to their distance, than they
do now. On the other hand, most used space (eg. that
occupied by things like: planets, tables, chairs, us)
have highest rate of active use, but are "thicker"
space. More compressed, more compact. Relation:
compact space = active space. Relation: spacial density
: spacial activity. Empty space = no activity. Full
space = lots of atomic activity. As a light (ray, beam)
atom goes through space: 1) space where that atom is at
contracts, 2) then atom is forced onward into empty
space, 3) repeat 1. At a point of max compression (for
this particular atom) the atom's center is just past the
point of maximum influence (or perhaps atom is
warped/squashed) so that it is forced thru the next
infinitesimal point on and on - movement thru space.
Movement thru momentum. Logically the process of
warping space should either draw energy from the planet
or draw energy from speed (momentum). This may reduce
speed and suggest a denser space. Perhaps:
imagine/picture visualize: a round atom in empty space,
with a decreasing halo of light around it. The light
represents the density of space near this atom, as space
was drawn to and warped by the atom. Remember space
itself had to move to allow this atom to be put there.
Space isn't like water where you add objects and watch
the level rise. It's like an enclosed box of sand, pump
air into a balloon that is in the sand, and the sand
immediately around the balloon compresses. This is an
object at rest. Add in motion and the effect looks more
like that of a comet. The increased compression of
space in front of a moving adds more compression
potential to the object. This makes the space farther
in front of the object the direction of choice because
while the influence of the object is the same in all
directions the influence of the warped space is mostly
toward the front (the direction of travel). Perhaps the
initial extra frontal spatial warping is what is
imparted to the ball when the bat hits it. This would
give it both speed and direction at the same time, by
simply adding to it's normal warping of space a "cornea"
which warps space in a specific direction with a "cornea
size/effect" to cause the speed.
If an atom exists in empty space, and another exists in
crowded space than each of these have a different
effect. The lone atom's effects won't be felt. But the
atom that is part of a group will interact with other
atoms until the group as a whole has an effect that all
the atoms, if isolated, couldn't produce. More of a
universal truth than anything else.
"...and modern physicists are accustomed to seeing new
particles materialize out of energy in particle
accelerators. Near a black hole a similar process
should happen; gas falling toward a black hole should
heat up to such a high temperature that particles
colliding with each other would create other particles.
In fact, so great is the gravity around a black hole and
so high the density of light that two light rays could
behave the same way: photons could collide with each
other just as gas particles do, each collision producing
an electron and its antiparticle, the positron.
Eventually the electron and positron would annihilate
each other, releasing a burst of energy that could, in
theory, be detected from Earth. An interesting
consequence might follow from this exotic reaction: the
creation of new matter could deflate the envelope of hot
gas surrounding the black hole. If the intensity of
light were to exceed a critical level, the photon
collisions would run rampant and the creation of new
electrons and positrons would ultimately drain all
available energy reserves. The gas, having spent all
its heat and pressure, would collapse. Once collapsed
into a thin disk, the gas closest to the black hole
could receive new gravitational energy from other, more
remote gas being drawn in. This infusion of new energy
could cause the disk to reinflate and start the process
anew. The accompanying changes in radiation from the
gas as it deflates and inflates would help astronomers
locate the black hole and measure its mass. Predicted
only in the past couple of years, this "matter-creation
catastrophe" has not yet been observed. Astronomers are
searching for evidence of such events mostly in the high
end of the spectrum--X-rays and gamma rays--since only
these rays have enough energy to create particles."
This may support a steady-state universe. As the black
holes wouldn't be getting ever-larger. They reach a
certain point, and then matter approaching gets
converted into energy and sent back out into space, to
re-coalesce into solar-systems/etc.
Universe notes:
These are quoted from articles. They have some
bearing but I have not had time to incorporate their
substance into the document yet. They are not
necessarily my opinion.
"This is radiation left over from the
primordial fireball, which was ten billion degrees
Kelvin at one second after the Big Bang. Today,
after ten billion years of expansion and cooling,
it's only 2.7?. Astronomers can't actually measure
the age of the universe directly, but they can
measure a quantity called the Hubble constant
(denoted by H), which is the current expansion rate
of the universe. In the Big Bang theory, the age
of the universe is approximately the inverse of the
Hubble constant (1/H), so H isn't really constant
but is always getting smaller. . . .numbers happen
to be dimensionless--this is, they lack units of
measurement. (Plane 5 is dimensionless; 5 m.p.h.
is not.) . . .Why is our universe so isotropic and
why is it so flay? (A flat universe is one that
lies just at the borderline between "closed" and
"open," the former indicating a universe that will
eventually stop expanding and recollapse, the
latter a universe that will expand forever.) The
standard Big Bang model doesn't answer these
questions other than to assume the universe started
that way--isotropic and flat--which strikes many
cosmologists as highly improbable." [Note:
isotropic=ordered, non-isotropic = chaotic]
"To drive chemical reactions you need some
form of energy, usually heat, and in interstellar
space there's not much heat: the temperature there
is typically around -440 to -425 degrees
Fahrenheit, or 20 to 35 degrees above absolute
zero. One possible source of energy, though, is
cosmic rays. If a cosmic ray were to knock an
electron off, say, a carbon atom (thereby
converting it into a positively charged ion), the
carbon would be much more prone to react with, say,
a hydrogen molecule. Such ion-molecule reactions
are thought to explain much of the chemistry in
interstellar clouds." [Note: as may ultraviolet
light.]
"Every astronomer know how stars form: from
collapsing clouds of interstellar gas and dust. .
. .they've found what appears to be a ring of
massive young stars, surrounded by gas rushing into
the ring at a speed of roughly 45,000 miles per
hour. The cloud, called W49a, lies 45,000
light-years away, on the far side of the galaxy.
. . .the ring of a dozen or so stars at the center
of W49A was extraordinary: it was large (about six
light-years across), massive (including the gas
inside it, about 50,000 times as massive as the
sun), and spinning madly (at about 30,000 miles per
hour). The sheer size and brilliance of the ring
enabled Welch and his colleagues to observe gas
motions in W49A by means of the familiar Doppler
effect. As a tracer the researchers used the
molecule HCO+, which emits and absorbs radio waves
at a frequency of precisely 89.1 gigahertz. In the
bright radiation coming from the ring, the
absorption by HCO+ gas in front of the ring was
plain to see--but not at 89.1 gigahertz. Instead
the absorption was Doppler-shifted to a slightly
lower frequency, indicating that the gas is falling
away from Earth and into the ring. Conversely, the
radiation emitted by excited molecules behind the
ring was shifted to a higher frequency, because the
gas there is flowing toward the Earth and, again,
into the ring. Since gas seems to be flowing into
the central ring from all sides, Welch and his
colleagues conclude, W49A must be collapsing under
its own gravity. Actually, gravity may not be the
only force at work in W49A; the cloud's magnetic
field may also have played a crucial role. The
collapse, say the researchers, is proceeding from
the inside out and has been going on for only about
half a million years--not nearly enough time for
gravity to suck 50,000 suns' worth of material into
the center of an unmagnetized cloud. But if the
cloud were stiffened and supported by a magnetic
field, a lot of gas could have collected at the
center before the gravitational collapse even
began. Furthermore, within the cloud, the "news"
of the collapse would travel at the speed of sound,
and it would be transmitted faster through a
magnetically stiffened cloud (just as sound moves
faster through water than through air, because
water is stiffer). That would allow gas to be
drawn into the center faster. Yet even with a
magnetic field, says Dreher, the outside of W49A
probably still doesn't know that the inside has
caved in underneath it;. . . ."
"Three astronomers at the University of
Arizona say they have found a couple of galaxies
that are at least 17 billion light-years away--well
beyond the farthest quasar. Because their light
has been en route for 17 billion years, we are
seeing them during the era when all galaxies were
born, shortly after the Big Bang. The only things
that existed before galaxies formed--and thus the
only things that might be farther away--are dim and
probably unobservable clouds of gas. The newly
detected "primeval" galaxies may therefore mark the
edge of the observable universe. The reason
primeval galaxies have not been found is simple.
As the universe expands, the most distant objects
move away from Earth at nearly the speed of
light--a motion that stretches out and therefore
reddens their light, shifting most of it into the
infrared range. The sophisticated infrared
detector chips needed to observe such faint
radiation were originally developed for the
military, and have only recently become available
to astronomers. "We had an array of 4,096 such
detectors," said Elston, "which meant we could
gather in one night what would have taken 4,096
nights as recently as 1985, when single-chip
detectors were state of the art. Elston and his
colleagues started using their array last spring,
before anyone else. They found the two
primeval-galaxy candidates almost immediately, in
the same swath of southern sky. Unless they were
incredibly lucky, that means the heavens must be
peppered with similar objects--just on would
expect, if they really are primeval galaxies. The
size and apparent brightness of the objects are
also in line with what theorists have predicted."
"He was particularly interested in the
conditions 10^-35 second after the Big Bang, when
temperatures in the embryonic cosmos were dropping
below 1,000 trillion trillion degrees. That was
the moment when grand unification came to an end;
when forces and particles, formerly
indistinguishable, assumed their separate
identities. New observations have shattered the
old doctrine that the universe is homogeneous, with
galaxies and clusters of galaxies scattered
uniformly through space like a mist. Today's
astronomers are discovering that galaxies are
distributed in a curious pattern: they seem to sit
on the surface of huge, nested bubbles. Inside the
bubbles are enormous voids, as much as 250 million
light-years across, where few if any galaxies are
found." [note: what we really should be studying
is why those few stars/galaxies left in the
darkness are still there - perhaps an advanced
race?]
". . .the [big bang] model is based on general
relativity, Einstein's tremendously successful
theory of gravity. Relativity positively requires
an expanding universe to have started off with a
pointlike bang--provide certain assumptions are
true. One crucial assumption is that gravity is the
dominant force in shaping the cosmos. Another is
that the universe today is smooth; that is, that
the distribution of matter of the large scale is
everywhere the same. That second assumption has
always been problematic. At most levels the
universe is clearly not smooth; it is clumpy.
Matter is clumped in stars, stars in galaxies,
galaxies in superclusters as much as 100 million
light-years long. Even though such clumps have
long been troublesome for the Big Bang theory--it
cannot yet fully explain how they formed--they are
not a fatal flaw. The theory requires only that
the universe be smooth at the largest scale, over
distances of billions rather than millions of
light-years. Now, however, it appears that even
that assumption may be wrong. In the past few years
astronomers have discovered still larger clumps:
huge aggregates of matter that span a billion
light-years or more, stretching across a
substantial fraction of the observable universe.
. . .if such clumps exist, Einstein's equations do
not require the universe to have once been confined
to the head of a pin. But there is an alternative
to the Big Bang, one that isn't well known. It is
an entirely different view of the nature and
evolution of the universe. It is not based on
general relativity because, unlike conventional
astrophysics, it does not see gravity as the
dominant force in the cosmos. Starting from the
observed fact that the universe, stars and all, is
99 percent plasma-- ionized gas that can conduct
electricity--the alternative cosmology holds that
the universe is criss-crossed and sculpted by
titanic electric currents and vast magnetic fields.
In this electrically engineered plasma universe,
the Big Bang never happened; instead the universe
has existed for infinite time, without a beginning
and with no end in sight. The plasma universe is
a vision created not by cosmologists or
astrophysicists but by plasma physicists. Its
intellectual progenitor is Hannes Alfv?n, an
80-year-old Swedish Nobel laureate. Trained as an
experimenter in electrical phenomena, Alfv?n began
in the 1930s to apply his work to astronomy--in
particular, to the problem of why the universe is
clumpy. In photographs of the Veil and Orion
nebulas he noticed that glowing astronomical clumps
often take the form of delicate, lacy filaments.
He saw similar filaments in the sky over his
Swedish home: in the aurora borealis, or northern
lights. Most important of all, Alfv?n saw the same
luminous threads in laboratory plasmas. 'Whenever
a piece of vacuum equipment started to misbehave,'
he recalls, 'these filaments would be there.' Many
investigators had analyzed the laboratory filaments
before, and so Alfv?n knew what they were: tiny
electromagnetic vortices (Alfv?n calls them ropes)
that snake through a plasma, carrying electric
currents. The vortices are produced by a
phenomenon known as the pinch effect. A straight
thread of electric current flowing through a plasma
surrounds itself with a cylindrical magnetic field.
This field attracts other currents flowing the same
direction. Thus the tiny current threads tend to
'pinch' together, drawing the plasma with them.
The converging threads are twined into a plasma
rope, much as water converging toward a drain
generates a swirling vortex. The plasma rope, or
filament, then gets pinched further by its own
magnetic field. [Alfv?n] proposed that gravity
alone was not responsible for the clumpiness of the
cosmos. Instead, vast magnetic vortices, operating
through the pinch effect, drew plasma together in
space--forming planets, stars, galaxies, and galaxy
clusters--just as small vortices do in the lab.
Indeed, according to Alfv?n, magnetic pinching,
working with gravity, is much better at
concentrating matter than gravity alone. Unlike
gravity, the magnetic force on a plasma thread
increases with the velocity of the plasma. That
leads to a positive feedback: as threads get drawn
into a vortex, the plasma moves faster, which
increases the force on the threads and pinches them
even tighter. In addition, a contracting mass
tends to spin faster and faster, and the spin
generates a centrifugal force that resists the
contraction. Magnetic filaments can carry away
this excess spin, or angular momentum. Thus they
allow a much greater contraction. For a long time
Alfv?n didn't get far with these ideas: astronomers
just didn't believe the tenuous plasma of space
could carry giant electric currents. But things
began to change in the late 1960's, as space probes
explored the solar system. The probes showed that
Alfv?n was right: electric currents and magnetic
filaments are present in space. They were first
detected near Earth, where currents flow along the
lines of the geomagnetic field. (The aurora is
light given off by atmospheric atoms that have been
struck by particles in these currents.) Later the
Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft detected currents
and filaments around Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus.
The space probes "completely changed the
preexisting theories about the magnetic fields and
surroundings of all three planets," says Alex
Desler, a Rice University space physicist who was
the first person to recognize the currents near
Earth. Currents and filaments are now known to
exist throughout the solar system--a point that
even vocal critics of plasma cosmology don't
dispute. "No on today denies the importance of
magnetic fields and currents in the solar systems
and in its formation," says Peebles. "This is now
completely accepted." For example, everyone agrees
that Alfv?n's filaments explain why the sun is a
slowly rotating sphere, rather than a rapidly
rotating disk (as it would be if gravity alone had
shaped it). Filaments connected to the young sun
slowed it down by transferring spin to the planets
and thereby allowed it to contract into a sphere.
For Alfv?n the acceptance of his ideas about the
solar system is only the first step. "If we can
extrapolate from the laboratory to the solar
system, which is a hundred trillion times larger in
extent," he asks, "then why shouldn't plasma still
behave the same way for the entire observable
universe--another hundred trillion times larger?
Why should gravity alone dominate the largest
scale?" Indeed, there is already good reason to
believe that electromagnetic filaments are
important at the next scale up from the solar
system: the scale of a galaxy."
"When Albert Einstein completed his general
theory of relativity 65 years ago, he made an
intriguing prediction: experimenters would discover
that time passes more slowly on earth than in outer
space, where gravity is weaker. The stronger a
gravitational field, Einstein said, the slower a
clock would run. This aspect of relativity has
since been proved many times in the lab. Now
researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics in Massachusetts and NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Alabama have tested
Einstein's prediction by timing a clock in space.
They did it by lofting a 90-pound atomic clock
6,200 miles above the earth aboard a Scout rocket.
After lengthy analysis of the data radioed back to
earth, they report in Physical Review Letters, they
were able to measure the relativistic effect to
within .007 per cent, almost 200 times as accurate
as any previous measurement. Their conclusion:
operating in a weaker gravitational field, the
clock speeded up. Had it stayed in space, it would
have gained one second every 73 years, just as
Einstein's theory predicts."
"Released during the fusion process are fast
neutrons that can induce radioactivity in the walls
of the plant by a process known as neutron
activation. After a relatively short exposure to
energetic neutrons, many materials weaken and
fracture. But a Fusion Materials Test Facility is
being Built at Hanford, Washington, to find
materials that will stand up to neutron
onslaught."
"A magnetic field does not pass through a
superconductor, but instead flows around it."
"[The microwave beams, called masers, that are
emitted start] with the birth of massive blue stars
that are 100,000 times as bright as the sun and
dozens of times as big. As the star fires up its
thermonuclear furnace for the first time and its
surface temperature reaches 50,000 degrees
Fahrenheit, atomic particles are driven off the
star into space, becoming an intense stellar "wind"
that drives away the surrounding dust and gas left
over from the star's birth. This placental cloud
speeds outward at hundreds of miles a second, but
not smoothly. some of the gaseous molecules in
that violent flow begin to form clumps. It is
those clumps, each of them bigger than the earth's
orbit around the sun, that absorb the star's energy
and re-radiate it as intense microwave beams. At
any one time, a hundred of these giant masers can
surround the newly born star, like fireworks
heralding its birth. Because it takes up to a
million years for the dust to blow completely away
and reveal the stellar glow itself, a cosmic maser
is often the first announcement of a newborn star."
The masers themselves last for just a couple of
years or at most tens of thousands of years, as
they gas slows down respectively. Useful for
determining distances to stars. Masers have also
been found in the twilight (death) of red giants.
"Within a volume about the size of the solar
system, a typical quasar produces the energy of
1000 galaxies, or 10 trillion stars. . . .some are
more than 10 billion light-years away . . . many of
them have tiny bright cores from which long jets of
matter stream in opposite directions--a feature
characteristic of radio galaxies (so called because
they emit prodigious amounts of energy at
frequencies that radio telescopes can detect).
Radio galaxies are less energetic than quasars, but
most of them are not nearly so distant . . . theory
that quasars are actually galaxies in their violent
infancy. Says [Jeffrey Puschell of U. of CA at San
Diego] 'My own feeling is that the largest galaxies
star up quietly, go through a quasar stage, and
then die off.' Astronomers think that the quasar's
radio jets could be produced by hot gas squeezed
out of the top and bottom of a thick doughnut of
material that is swirling around a supermassive
black hole at the center of a young galaxy. As
this material is swallowed into the black hole, the
galaxy's energy output gradually declines from
quasar levels to that of a more ordinary radio
galaxy, or shuts off entirely. Still, the centers
of many galaxies, including the Milky Way, are
believed to retain bizarre traces of their quasar
ancestry--black holes."
"At [U. of CA at] Irvine, where [Gregory]
Benford has been a faculty member since 1971, his
research involves such intense radiation that he
conducts it in a lab buried in the basement of the
engineering building, where the surrounding earth
serves as a shield. He conducts experiments that
take only one ten-millionth of a second to run: he
fires electron beams into high-energy plasmas and
studies the radiation that emerges. Plasmas are
gases in which the electrons have been liberated
from the atoms; the type Benford works with are so
hot that the freed electrons zing through the gas
at nearly the speed of light. 'Plasmas make up
about ninety-nine per cent of the matter in the
universe,' says Benford. 'The work helps
astrophysicists understand how plasmas function in
nature, as in pulsars and quasars. For applied
physics, we have to find ways of producing high-
power electromagnetic waves in the high-frequency
ranges of the spectrum [one use would be for better
radars]."
"The recipe for [life] is simple: Take a flask
of methane gas, add water vapor, nitrogen, ammonia,
carbon dioxide, perhaps a pinch of sulfur, a hunk
of clay, liquid water--all thought to have been
abundant on the primitive earth--and stir with
lightning, or ultraviolet light. The result is a
brownish sludge, full of organic compounds often
including amino acids--the building blocks of
proteins. Nature has spread organic molecules
through comets, the clouds of Titan, Jupiter, and
Saturn, the frosty dust clouds of space, and earth
itself. Life began on earth, biologists think,
when the first self-replicating strand of DNA
formed out of those materials in the primordial
soup. [When] the earth was a billion years old,
blue-green algae were already flourishing, and
scientists believe that it and all the forms of
life that followed descended from that first DNA
molecule."
"Shrouded by clouds of dust, the center of the
Milky Way has long been a mystery. Now the veil is
lifting. Using the world's largest radio astronomy
facility, scientists have discovered a huge plume
of ionized hot gas escaping from the heart of the
galaxy. The fiery arc is unlike anything observed
before in the Milky Way. It rises from the
galactic plane and curls around for perhaps 600
light-years, or 3,500 trillion miles. Each of its
filaments of gas is a few light-years wide. The
whiplike shape of the filaments suggests that they
may be formed by an incredibly intense magnetic
field at the galactic core. The question now is:
What giant dynamo lies hidden there?"
Measuring the Doppler shifts of light from
different parts of the galaxy determines the
velocities of stars. "If a rotating galaxy is
edge-on to our line of sight, for example, stars on
one side will be coming toward us and their light
will be shifted to shorter, bluer wavelengths; on
the other side, stars going away will be red-
shifted. Most galaxies are found in groups, large
or small, called clusters. The clusters in turn
seem to form associations with each other called
superclusters. On the large scale, these form a
distinct pattern. The galaxies, that is, the
luminous objects in the universe, are ganged up, it
seems, in clumps and chains, with dark deserts of
night--voids--in between." Largest clump found by
1983 went on for 700 million light-years. The
Milky Way galaxy seems to be about 15 billion years
old.
Globular galaxy M-87 (spherical). ". .
.emissions extend over many frequencies--from radio
to x-ray--and most of them derive from a compact
source embedded in the core of the galaxy. . .
.one of the best candidates for a galaxy with a
supermassive black hole in its nucleus (or if not
a black hole, some other prodigious engine worth
decoding). Moreover, its location at the center of
a nearby rich cluster of galaxies makes it an
excellent study for astronomers trying to fathom
the dynamics of galaxy formation and interaction.
. . .significant amount of M-87's radio emission
comes from the jet. . . .the jet's optical
emission was strongly polarized. This polarization
was thought to be caused by 'synchrotron
radiation,' in which high-energy electrons spiral
along magnetic field lines in the jet at
relativistic velocities. As the electrons are
accelerated, they emit radiation. The wavelengths
at which this radiation occurs depends on the
energies of the spiraling particles. . . .the jet
is emerging from the 'north' polar axis. In
contrast to the amber glow of M-87, the jet shines
with the bluish-white light of synchrotron
radiation: its total luminosity is that of 10
million suns. . . .lumpy filament approximately 20
arcseconds in apparent length. At an estimated
distance 17 megaparsecs the apparent length of the
jet corresponds to a projected length of about 2
kiloparsecs (6,500 light-years) from the outer tip
to the nucleus of M-87. Astronomers estimate that
the jet is only about 15,000 years old, and yet it
has already reached a length of 2 kiloparsecs. It
must be moving at near relativistic velocities, but
because the dynamics of the jet are not yet fully
understood, astronomers cannot be certain what
that velocity is. Many of the estimates of the
jet's velocity stem from models, which place the
velocity somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000
kilometers per second (although given the length
and age of the jet, at a distance of 17 megaparsecs
the velocity works out to about 129,000 kilometers
per second--43 percent the velocity of light).
However, even this may be too slow. Some
astronomers point out that many radio galaxies
exhibit 'lobes' of strong radio emission on both
sides of visible object. . . . They suggest that
M-87's jet is visible to us because it is moving
more or less in our direction at speeds close to
that of light. Relativistic effects cause the
emissions from the jet to be preferentially beamed
toward us. If there is a jet on the opposite side,
it would be invisible to us because it is beaming
its emission away from us in the same manner.
Almost without exception astronomers agree
synchrotron radiation produces the jet's light and
radio emissions. Unlike thermal radiation, in
which electrons in interstellar gas are energized
by hot incident radiation, the synchrotron process
energizes electrons by accelerating them through a
magnetic field. Because synchrotron emission is
not dependent on the temperature of the gas medium
but on the energy of the particles and the strength
of the magnetic field, synchrotron radiation is
said to be nonthermal. In M-87 the synchrotron
process begins when electrons are captured in the
powerful magnetic field created in the core of the
galaxy. The magnetic field accelerates these
electrons to relativistic velocities in a spiral
path around the magnetic field lines parallel to
the polar axis of M-87. As the electrons are
accelerated, they emit electromagnetic energy.
Because the electrons are moving in a direction
perpendicular to the field lines, the radiation is
polarized. Through [synchrotron radiation] answers
our questions about the kind of radiation we are
detecting, it presents us with another problem: How
can electrons continue emitting energy as they
travel the length of the jet? As energetic
electrons emit radiation, they lose energy, and the
more energetic they are, the quicker they lose that
energy. Typical lifetimes of electrons producing
radio energy are a few hundred years, while those
generating optical radiation may last twenty or
thirty years. Electrons so energetic they emit x-
rays last only a few days. The lifetimes of these
electrons are far too short for the electrons to
survive the journey out from the nucleus to the end
of the jet, even if they travel near the speed of
light. What, then, is re-energizing the electrons?
Suggestions range from shock waves generated when
newer plasma collides with older, slower-moving
plasma to turbulence forming between the plasma and
the interstellar medium surrounding it.
Astronomers are fairly certain, however, that the
same regenerating process probably occurs
throughout the jet because structures evident in
radio maps made of M-87 coincide with those in
optical and x-ray emissions. Photographs of the
jet made with large optical telescopes reveal a
lumpy protuberance that resembles a bowling pin.
These are only areas that are brighter and fainter,
observations suggest the jet emissions may be
coming from the surface of the jet rather than from
inside. The jet may be a flow of hot gas out from
the nucleus, but the part that is lit up may be a
thin layer on the boundary of the jet between the
hot gas and the external interstellar medium. And
one hypothesis is that the zone of interaction
[that is, the boundary between the jet and external
medium] is what's actually producing the particles
that are lighting up the flow. Most jets in active
galaxies, astronomers agree, lead to their sources,
and the source at M-87's core is bright, too bright
to be a typical nucleus. In any telescope the
galaxy's starlike nucleus appears to burn right
through the haze of the surrounding disk. In that
locus of light resides the secret of M-87's
incredible power. Astronomers want to know what
that secret is. The brightest x-ray emitting
region corresponds to a diameter of about 200
kiloparsecs, it gets fainter and fainter, and the
edge has never been seen. It smoothly falls off.
Spectra of the cluster's gas consists of excessive
amounts of heavy metals like iron, neon, and oxygen
(besides helium and hydrogen). And what about the
center of the center of the galaxy cluster--M-87's
mysterious core? Something is relentlessly drawing
the gas into the very middle of M-87. It is
believed that in the inner 10 kiloparsecs of M-87,
the gas is cooling. If the center is cooling and
it has less pressure and a lot of gas on top of it,
that means gas is flowing inward. But it is
flowing in very slowly, over billions of years.
The estimated rate is between 1 and 100 solar
masses a year. It's conceivable that a small
amount of it might power and feed a black hole in
the middle. But one shouldn't give the idea that
all of the gas goes in the black hole [speculative]
because there's no way to get so much mass into
such a small area. As you look farther and farther
in toward the core of M-87 along the jet, it's like
looking at a thin cone. It ends up being opaque
out to some distance along the jet at any given
frequency. At higher frequencies you can see
farther into the core."
"Tachyons' most obvious transgression is that
they go faster than the speed of light. On the
face of it, that would seem to disqualify them from
existing. But even tachyon-hating physicists know
there is a loophole in the theory of relativity.
Einstein showed that no material object can reach
the speed of light. Nothing in his equations says
that the object can't go faster. But since no
object can get to the speed of light in the first
place, it certainly cannot exceed it. But what if
an object were already moving faster than light
from the moment of its creation? Then it would
never have to cross the forbidden barrier at all.
And that is just the idea behind tachyons. Of
course, since tachyons have to follow the same
rules as everything else, they could never reach
the speed of light, either. It's just that for
them light speed would be impossibly slow. The
second problem with tachyons is that they have what
physicists call imaginary mass. That means that
when the number representing the mass of a tachyon
is squared, the result is a negative number.
That's an acceptable state of being in higher
mathematics, but it isn't supposed to turn up in
real life. Worst of all, tachyons can violate time
order, so that two observers might disagree on
which of two tachyonic events came first. That can
lead to so-called causality problems. If, for
example, one observer sees a tachyon fired from a
hand-held tachyon gun at point A and disintegrate
at a target at point B, another might see it leave
in reverse, with the tachyon leaving point B and
entering the gun at point A. How, ask physicists,
could the observer explain such a nonsensical chain
of events. No one has ever found any evidence of
a tachyon's existence. In the late 1920s the
British physicist Paul Dirac created the Dirac
equation, which predicted with uncanny accuracy how
electrons should behave. Unfortunately, it also
pointed to the existence of particles with negative
energy. Then, in 1932, Carl Anderson discovered
the positron--identical to the electron in every
way, except that it carries an opposite electric
charge. Tachyons keep popping up in the
mathematics that are at the heart of the theories
that physicists do take very seriously. When that
happens, theorists tend to roll up their sleeves
and hack away at the equations until the last of
the tachyons is banished, at whatever cost to the
theory. On theory holds that all the elementary
particles we know of in our three-dimensional
universe become tachyons when they are examined
from a four-dimensional point of view. He proposes
that even the slowest of elementary particles whip
through this extra spatial dimension at faster-
than-light speeds. Unlike classical tachyon
theory, Davidson's ideas don't require a tremendous
leap of faith into forbidden territory; rather, the
equations that describe these higher-dimensional
tachyons fall out neatly from the much-loved theory
of general relativity. Even better, Davidson has
found that higher-dimensional tachyons provide a
sway of deducing certain properties of the fourth
dimension that physicists are normally forced to
just assume. Einstein's theory of general
relativity predicted an expanding universe, and he,
horrified at the thought, reworked the equations
until that prediction had been expunged--an
exercise he later referred to as the greatest
mistake of his life. Part of the causality problem
is how could observers tell whether a tachyon gun
was hooting or swallowing tachyons."
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Space travel:
Faster than light is possible. How I do not know. Such
a big universe makes the mere light speed seem extremely
slow - it is not pretty, so I suspect there is a way.
Possibly though, this does not occur naturally.
Possibilities: cracks in the structure of space (the
curving of space is what causes the appearance of gravity
- we ourselves curve space, but it is so small few things
attract to us (maybe just a little on their way to the
ground). The key seems "what is space itself?" I suspect
it is some form of radiation layers (like magnetism). Or
perhaps it is considered multilayered like including
gamma rays, magnetism, gravity, etc. "What was the
material that the universe expanded into?" is not a
question since the big bang theory has been eliminated.
A possibility is that what appears to us as space and
distance may be changed dramatically if can change our
dimensionality.
If you had a space ship of the type:
-----------------------
| |/|
|-] <-=| | engine
| |\|
-----------------------
^detector ^emitter
|----- X ------|
If the ship wasn't moving, and you sent a beam of light
from the emitter to the detector, the distance traveled
by the beam would be X, and the speed would be 300,000
kilometers per second (the speed of light). If the ship
was moving forward, the speed of the beam remains the
same. However the distance traveled by the beam has
increased. It increased by the distance the whole ship
moved in the time it took the beam to get from the
emitter to the detector. The real space the beam covered
was greater than X, but the actual space the traveled was
the same, after all, it had only to go from the emitter
to the detector. If the ship was going the speed of
light it would move ahead X, the light beam went X
distance in the ship. But in reference to the ship's
space the beam of light traveled 1.5X. If the ship was
going in reverse at the speed of light, the beam would
get to the half-way point (in ship space) when the
detector arrived. This assumes the inside of the ship
isn't affected by the speed of the ship. If the beam if
affected you need to take into account such things like
the fact that light leaving the emitter at light speed
won't go anywhere with a ship moving forward at light
speed.
On Time:
Time is merely a reference tool. A yardstick by which
we measure other things.
Einstein understood this also:
In a famous letter after the death of his oldest
friend, Michele Besso, Einstein wrote to Besso's
sister: "Michele has left this strange world just
before me, This is of no importance. For us
convinced physicists the distinction between past,
present, and future is an illusion, although a
persistent one."
Time is measured in infinitesimal^ states. An
infinitesimal^ state is when something changes somewhere
in the Universe (say an electron on an atom somewhere in
the Universe moved slightly). When the Universe has moved
from one state to another time has changed. By
definition, if nothing changes time has stopped -
presumably for only an infinitesimal^ second. Therefore,
one can say that time has stopped, but it carries no
meaning as it is just the same as the present
[time/state]. Also nothing can be done in this period
as any change would lead to the next state [of time].
The present is the current state.
The past was a previous state and no longer exists, there
is no past-time (as it had existed but no longer exists).
In sum, there is no past because the past no longer
exists.
The future is the next state the Universe is about to
enter. Once the Universe enters that state, it is in the
present. Since the future is not yet in existence, it
does not exist. In sum, there is no future because the
future is not yet in existence.
Therefore, there is no past or future, only NOW, the
present [state].
The Universe can never repeat a cycle of states without
leading to a known future and to no Free Will. To
prevent cycles one must call upon the probability of the
Universe itself. A cycle of states are possible on an
extremely local level (like having your computer scan the
keyboard until you type a character). Much higher/larger
things (such as a single human) become harder and as the
size/complexity increases the probability of determining
the future reduces quickly. Lets say a highly evolved
being/race stored a cycle of states of some Universe.
If they could recreate the initial state, and prevent
outside interference, they could run these events/states
repeatedly. Anything within that universe has lost all
existence of self - it is not free, since it cannot
change anything about its future. If a being cannot
change its own future it is not free (lacks Free Will),
and is merely a slave or machine - an object in the
universe, not a self. This is, of course, on the
arguments against any omniscient God.
Time is usually measured using some oscillating event-
-such as a pendulum did. It was confirmed that the
farther from gravity you are, the faster time is.
Probably because atoms and other atomic interactions
happen faster with less gravity, or maybe the wave just
propagates faster (speeds up in weaker gravity--the
signal changes, but not the Universe).
Force shields:
Magnetic shields, or barriers, probably can be made by
using multiple electromagnets aligned along the same way
as an electromagnetic-gun. (nsnsnsnsns etc.) Rapidly
reversing the polarity should produce a strong magnetic
repelling field along the magnet line. More power = more
field --> more shield. Perhaps done with some sort of
rotating/spinning nsnsns system, or just computer
controlled electromagnets. Q: can magnetic fields repel
anything? Even non magnetic objects? Also examine other
forces (electroweak, etc.) to see if can enhance it. You
also could put such a system inside metal, providing
protection for such things as shocks (from bumps,
weapons, etc.) without loosing advantages of skin (for
example, armor). Maybe levitating fields for air cars.
It is based on speed changes, outward magnetic field is
getting n/s layers changing faster than the previous n/s
layer has a chance to expand too far out. Note that it
seems this will need extremely fast RPM's.
Force screens:
Mag = primitive
Spacewarp (ship size) = middle
Spacewarp (implanted or just hand held) = advanced
Spacewarp (bio) = highly advanced
Teleportation:
I consider this possible using the concept of
transportation beams. Transportation beams are
teleportation--except teleportation carries with it the
connotation of instantaneous transportation. To teleport
you need to encode the object, transmit the object, and
decode the object. Exactly what we do with data
communications today.
Encoding: a x-ray laser should be able analyze each atom
(?) and tell what it is. Problem: moving things (like
blood) [all things can be considered to be moving at the
atomic level]. If done fast enough, the encoding process
need not be concerned with moving things. So expect to
be transmitting only unmoving objects long before can
transmit moving objects. Use a laser mixed with x-ray
to encode three-dimensional space occupied by object.
Use laser beams to define locations of particles (like
with holography now).
Transmitting: easy, just send the encoding along an
energy beam.
Decoding: based on the transmitted data, reconstruct the
object (using e=mc^2). Problem: life, life at encoding
stage could still exist. Problem: energy, massive
amounts to create an object. Solution: create object and
destroy the atom as created, so transmit encoding and
energy from conversion simultaneously, rebuilding the
object particle by particle.
Now, should energy be abundant, you can use a recorder
and start creating duplicates of the people you send.
Is this philosophically possible?
Note: Battlefield Earth used teleportation devices to
drop bombs suddenly into other peoples laps. Since this
does not seem to happen very much I suspect there is a
natural solution:
1) For long distances, knowledge is so complex race
becomes so intelligent that such a thing would be
beneath them and they would never do it.
2) Such distance that only normal radiation (such as
light beams) can be used. Making long distance
"High there!" bombs impractical. This would suggest
a non-energy method to travel faster than light.
3) A receiving station is needed.
Teleportation via dimensions:
Note: a hologram is three-dimensional in two-dimensional
in three-dimensional (our world), can a hologram be
broken into smaller and smaller pieces until it is
infinitesimal and therefore 1 dimension (and retains its
three-dimensional thus having three-dimensional in one-
dimensional in three-dimensional)? Can one-dimensional
exist in three-dimensional? Since you cannot move in
one-dimensional space (it is a point only.) Once you
enter the point you must come out the same way, right.
Wrong. By entering at an angle you can figure out where
you will come out. Note that 1 dimension must be
interconnected to all space--thus allowing transport via
dimensions. Also note that if can create a way to
convert matter into energy you can beam the energy
smaller and smaller thus reaching infinitesimal (picture
an oscillating string that gets longer and longer cycles
until it is a straight line). Also note, the space/frame
of reference created by imagination, could this be used?
What dimension is imagination--in what space do we
create. What is infinite dimensions? If we imagine a
n-dimension space, is it created? (Since everything we
imagine comes into existence.) Yes, perhaps black holes
and their very core are one-dimensional points--this
would allow the matter/energy to be transported. The
immense gravity strings the energy out so it can go
through the one-dimensional "door."
Instead of bringing space toward you--compress space in
front of you (and do it along a very thin line--lest you
disrupt space too much). Then you stop, move a bit, and
let space (along that line) snap back to where it was.
Better on energy than pulling space toward you, and
letting it snap to get to your destination.
What is the one-dimension? Seems an ideal method of
travel. I know it cannot be represented in three or two-
dimensional space (sphere, circle) but as we approach
infinitesimal sizes do we cross a barrier to the one-d?
Perhaps a black hole at its core can breach this barrier
and send through some energy?
To get from one place to another w/o speed limitations
one must "tear" three-dimensional space. This cannot be
done (and move you), therefore, "space" is actually the
form of a different dimension. I assume infinite
dimensions. Is it possible infinite dimensions is the
same as zero dimensions? Maybe math 0=infinity?
Infinite dimensions: therefore, from any point you can
instantly (or near enough) get to any other point (it
can be done at a constant rate not matter the three-
dimensional structured distances). What about movement
of the points? Is a case of squeeze the moved ones into
the new location, or some form of space-swapping? Maybe
one has to convert to infinite dimension from three-
dimensional (fractal like). Einstein: space (in three-
dimensional) bends around everything. Therefore: you must
"tear" into space to take advantages. Space is like a
fabric. Center of black hole = point singularity = 1
point of space? What happens when you create a solid
box? Is the inner space cut off from the outer space,
or does three-dimensional not matter to space?
We live in three-dimensional space. If we could convert
our spatial molecules to four-dimensional, we would be
living in four-dimensional space (with its advantages of
shrunken distances?) Take this out onto near infinity
- being able to move to any other point in the universe.
There probably is a smaller dimensionality that will do
the job.
Can this be used to make the case of an infinite
universe? What are the implications?
An object can only consider to be in a n-dimension within
a frame of reference (for example, a line on a two-
dimensional surface).
A point in three-dimensional space will always be a
sphere. So points do not exist in three-dimensional.
A line in three-dimensional space will appear as a point
from its ends--from this perspective it is no longer a
line. So lines cannot exist in three-dimensional space
but they can exist on a two-dimensional photo (frame of
reference) that is in three-dimensional space.
Since anything we imagine will come into existence (in
our imagination) it should then be possible to imagine
the necessary frames of reference, perhaps as higher
numbered dimensions are created something will happen?
"The field around the ship would be like an object
in a transporter room, converted to transmissible energy.
It would slide away from the pattern of the ordinary
universe, and only dimensionless hyperspace would be
left. And the ship would go with it."
As light approaches an object with gravity; it
speeds up in proportion to the amount of gravity
influenced on the light. In proper terms; the mass of
the planet warped space in such a way that light was able
to cross distances at higher speeds. This implies that
if we were to define a set distance (x) and say this is
uninfluenced (no energy/no mass affectations). We then
create a universal grid made using this coordinate
system. We would see the nodes compress towards gravitic
sources. But if we set x to be the minimum distance
possible (don't know what, but we know there is one - see
note on Zeno's theory). Since x is finite (not
infinitesimal), would we still see compression around
masses? I think yes, after all, there is an infinity of
space between any two points, but limits probably exist
due to maximum mass of the source. This would suggest
that masses are energy stores - as energy is awaiting as
the compressed x lengths are waiting to expand. It
probably takes an equal amount of energy to hold the
structure together, although it also could be that when
surrounded by a similar shell of compressed space no
additional energy is required to maintain the store
within (which seems likely).
"The spark that drives the system is a single, powerful
laser pulse. The flash of light originates in a
projector at the front of the room as a pair of different
laser frequencies combined into a single beam. At first,
the beam is a weak one, about as big as a pinpoint and
barely strong enough to scorch a piece of paper. Mirrors
then bounce the beam through an array of amplifiers that
boost it to 10,000 times its original power. At this
stage the laser packs a considerable energy wallop, but
it is dispersed energy, spread across a beam with the
circumference of a volleyball. The laser gets down to
scientific business only after it is bounced through a
maze of six mirrors and focused back down to one-fiftieth
of an inch. Now, intense and dangerous, the beam is
fired through two centimeters of hydrogen gas confined
in a sealed chamber. Plowing through the gas, the laser
pulse rips the hydrogen's electrons right off its atoms,
creating what is known as a plasma-gaseous nuclei with
no orbiting electrons. Because the two laser frequencies
alternately magnify and cancel each other, they create
a repeating wavelike pattern of very high and very low
light intensity. These areas, which can be thought of
as a passing series of peaks and valleys, segregate the
oppositely charged particles: As the high-intensity peak
passes through the gas, it pushes away some of the
lightweight, negatively charged electrons. Left behind
in the low-intensity valleys is a higher concentration
of heavier, positively charged nuclei. As the peak
passes, the electrons start rushing back toward the
positively charged nuclei. Because they are moving so
fast, they actually overshoot the nuclei, but they are
soon met by the next high-intensity peak and given
another shove. With each successive peak the electrons
are, in effect, set vibrating back and forth like a
plucked guitar string. Thus the laser begins to create
band after band of electrons and nuclei, alternating down
the entire length of the pulse. As the thousands of
peaks and valleys in a single laser pulse [billionth's
of a second] pass through any given region in the plasma,
more and more electrons in that region are recruited into
this back-and-forth movement, and the more completely the
electrons and nuclei are separated. Thus, the farther
back the band is from the leading edge of the laser
pulse, the greater the overall magnitude of the
vibration, and the greater the charge of the band--the
effect is that of a steadily increasing wave of charge,
moving through the plasma along with the laser. At
nearly the same instant the beam enters the gas, an
injection gun fires a cluster of high-speed electrons
into the wake of charged bands that follows. The
electrons are aimed to land directly behind a band of
protons and directly in front of a band of electrons.
Attracted by the protons and repelled by the other
electrons, they ride along on the wave, following the
laser at near-light speed, picking up energy." [useful
picture: pg. 80]
"A dielectric is simply an insulating material like glass
or plastic or ceramic. What makes dielectrics useful to
particle physicists is that in the presence of a rapidly
moving charged particle, the material will radiate
electromagnetic energy. [Jim] Simpson and his colleagues
use dielectric materials in the shape of a long, thin
tube. When they fire a short pulse of electrons--known
as the drive beam--down the tube at near-light speed, the
particles cause the atoms in the tube walls to become
polarized and radiate electromagnetic energy. The energy
converges in the center of the tube as an electric field,
which follows along after the drive beam, matching its
velocity. The physicists then inject a smaller bunch of
electrons--called the witness beam--into the moving
field; these particles ride along with the field, also
following the drive beam and also attaining near-light
speed. As they go they pick up energy from the drive
beam and from the dielectric material and convert it into
mass."
Moon water:
Just heat up moon rocks and one can probably make water
(you can get a pint of hydrogen from each pound of moon
dirt). Since the moon has much oxygen already, you get
water.
The brain and the body:
"Why do animals grow old and die? Molecular biologists
have an answer: they say that gradual deterioration and
death is an intrinsic (although still mysterious)
property of cells."
Possible theory on how memory works: when an action
occurs--the brain has a "wave" of stimulation. Our memory
does not remember the event, but the points that are
stimulated. Recall probably just SIMULATES stimulation
of these points. This would allow our memory to save
stuff with just on/off signals.
Data in the brain may be stored in chunks and clusters
(with boundaries and borders the same as those read
initially into the brain). Output can be pulled off the
brain in the same way as you pull printed pages off a
tractor-feed printer. It feels like a rubber-type of
paper that had been laid down. Moving and then pulling
it (and everything that makes you up) goes - you feel
yourself moving as if both part of the material, and
seeing the material pass you by - as if a confirmation
process about what is being processed - note that you
see this "close up" as well as the whole image (the
"rubber paper" being pulled from the distance [toward
me? When I shifted angle I then saw the close up? Yes
I think so. - saw nothing of where I going, but It just
looks gray and brown of where myself and my memories were
coming from. This was part of a dream in which a being
could suck "yourself" out of you and make you once of his
zombies, I had just been caught by his zombies, I figure
I tried to simulate the transference process. I really
did see borders, such as a word heading like "science"
bracketed by black lines across the top of the page to
mark the subject (for example, "...======== science
=======..."). I really did see black lines of the same
width around small blocks of text also, for example:
____
|text|
|text|
____|text|
|texttextt|
|texttextt|
-----------
The text did not originally have these blocks when I read
it in, I suspect that this is a form of emphasis the
brain assigns text - perhaps the border represents an
increased resistance to erasure.
After a little more thinking, which probably less
resembles memory than analysis of the few images I have
left of the experience: I have decided that the borders
were like road bumps--in which you could go over, but
you would have literally to climb over (road slow-down
bumps seen from ground level), whereas you could rover
around the enclosed area examining the information in
the area for whatever you had been looking for.
It is interesting that plenty of science fiction
novels and other literature suggest that we (or aliens)
would want to colonize other planets. That we must
colonize for population purposes. Obviously the
declining populations of the developed western countries
shows that this need not be so. It is possible a race
would still produce like rabbits and need to expand--
this would most likely be a warring species.
Q: Why is there more positive matter than negative matter
(which is immediately annihilated with a positive
brethren)? Is it just our number system, that our
positive matter may really be negative matter, but that
we just cannot tell? Presumably somewhere there is much
negative matter, where is it and what is protecting it?
The nervous system. Myelin, a fatty substance that
insulates (sheaths) healthy nerve fibers. When a virus
attacks this sheath and replaced with scar tissue, that
nerve fiber can often cause spurious problems, such as
numbness, weakness, prickling, paralysis, or uncontrolled
movements. HLA antigens, protein molecules on the
surface of a cell that identify it to the immune system
as friend or foe.
More thanks to Battlefield Earth: thinking about
repairing ageing skin I thought of how it is just an
overlay and under was just blood/etc. and bone. If you
could hold it in place--then you could do wholesale
operations. Merely pressurize the area around the body
at the same pressure as in the body and one can remove
skin and do surgery (etc.) without loss of blood. See
Battlefield Earth's section on repairing auto consoles.
Death is when the brain is no more. Not when your body
dies. If you duplicate your brain into a machine, and
destroy the body, you are still alive, in the machine.
Note: thanks to William Gibson (his books):
do not create humans via "clones w/o brains"--too slow,
too many problems. Instead build the bodies from parts
grown and created. Build a body and put the brain in
it.
Asimov's race of long-lived humans for some reason only
lived 400 years or so. He goes into great detail about
some problems of long life; boredom, extended feuds,
overpopulation, old power guard, lack of communication
within fields of study, slow progress, emphasis on
enjoyment, etc.
These are probably likely to occur when we ourselves
extend our life-spans. Being aware of the dangers is
probably not enough, we will need a system in which
progress continues. A constant goal of making a life-
span both longer and with fewer accidents is a good
general goal. It should help avoid some traps (the
danger of death gives fear and drives to the living).
To keep progress truly progressing can only come by
exploring space.
On Dianetics:
Usually I've avoided the actual functions of the
human brain, choosing to concentrate on it's chemical
makeup figuring that I'd need a drug or few when I reach
old age to keep me active. Hubbard seems to have
concentrated on the brain. Both in psychology and in
the other mysteries such as meditation, hypnotism and
other attributes relating to the mind. He has travelled
around the world in his quest. I have faith that his
observations were objective, and that his data is valid.
Whether his scientific studies are valid I can't say.
I do know that his writing is biased and dated.
Things like abortion using knitting needles and women's
rights are evidence of this. It was written, and not
updated since, in 1950.
At this point let's review my own belief's in the
mind's functioning: I believe in the subconscious (it
solve's problems that I have and "pop's" the answer at
me when it comes to a conclusion). Neural connector's
are made "thicker"/"stronger" with use. That is, the
more you use a neural link the faster and more durable
it is. Such as skills, athletics, etc. After all,
muscles get finer tuned by doing an action repetitively,
but still requires the increasingly better coordination
the brain gives with practice.
Hubbard came up with an interesting idea; he felt
that the brain equated everything with everything else.
That is, he felt that A=B=C=D=E=F... in the memory, that
all memory's were equal. [actually he thought this
related to his BS about a reactive mind and engrams, but
we'll just ignore the fact.] After reading this, I
recognized something important; that this was how the
immune system's attacking cells worked to identify
counter measures for its enemy. It checks for an
identical pattern, then attacks. That's why AID's is
such a problem, it changes.
A little more thought: The brain gets inputs:
sensory system (eyes, ears, feel, taste, etc.) and neural
(self generated, autonomous). These can be thought of
as data lines. What does the brain do with the data
received? It stores it molecularly. How does it store
it? How about one molecule on top of another? Yes, A
STACK. And maybe to search the stacks you must first
create a facsimile of what you wish, then the search
system compares the facsimile's structure with what's
along the stacks, if a match is found then it sends the
data to the intelligence. Or maybe: IF match THEN
operate muscles as stored instructions say to. Also,
short term memory acts like a cache.
But, the short term memory is a cache/filter. After
all the human brain does not have an infinite capacity
for expansion. And most of its "learning" is done using
a variety of neurotransmitters and new connections. If
anything the access channels are more like that of a bus.
Since you access using a combination of the various
neurotransmitters. Perhaps the amount of determination
you have about getting at a certain memory enhances the
effects of the search order by spreading it further
throughout the brain and using a higher dosage of
whichever combination of transmitters is needed (the
coded facsimile?).
Brings up question of when memory is analyzed by
the brain (to "learn"). does the data first go through
a filter (as seems probably) - but doesn't this distort
memory. Or is it read after it is stored. Or does it
get sent down two (both) paths?
The main thing I'm searching for by reading this
book is the promise of full perfect memory recall. When
you think about it, maybe you need to just "tune up" the
search system to not avoid a certain level "neural
thickness". That is, now the search skips over the less
used neurons to speed the search. A threshold level.
[It's incredible how my computer, electronic, and
cartography knowledge is helping me with understanding
all this.]
If something great happens, I'll release a March
version to mention it.
Notes of interest from Dianetics:
What did Hubbard die of?
"stoic: a member of a Greek school of philosophy,
founded by Zeno about 308 B.C., holding that human beings
should be free from passion and calmly accept all
occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will."[p.
44]
"The analytical mind is that portion of the mind
which perceives and retains experience data to compose
and resolve problems and direct the organism along the
four dynamics. It thinks in differences and
similarities."[p. 55]
"The reactive mind is that portion of the mind which
files and retains physical pain and painful emotion and
seeks to direct the organism solely on a stimulus-
response basis. It thinks only in identities."[p. 56]
"The somatic mind is that mind which, directed by
the analytical or reactive mind, places solutions into
effect on the physical level."[p. 56]
"...interesting part of the standard memory banks
is that they apparently file the original and hand
forward exact copies to the analyzer. They will hand
out as many exact copies as are demanded without
diminishing the actual file original."[p. 65]
"The amount of material which is retained in the
average standard memory banks would fill several
libraries. But the method of retention is invariable.
And the potentiality of recall is perfect."[p. 65]
"inductive: of or using induction, logical reasoning
that a general law exists because particular cases that
seem to be examples of it exist."[p. 70]
"Only things which are poorly known become more
complex the longer one works upon them."[p. 4]
"thalamus: the interior region of the brain where
sensory nerves originate."[p. 20]
"present time: the time which is now and becomes
the past as rapidly as it is observed."[p. 21]
"Man is to be regarded as a sentient being. His
sentience depends upon his ability to resolve problems
by perceiving or creating and understanding situations.
This rationality is the primary, high-echelon function
of that part of the mind which makes him a man, not just
another animal. Remembering, perceiving, imagining, he
has the signal ability of resolving conclusions and of
using conclusions resolved to resolve further
conclusions. This is rational man."[p. 24]
"self-determinism: is the state wherein the
individual can or cannot be controlled by his environment
according to his own choice."[p. 26]
After reading Dianetics I must disagree with most of his
ideas and conclusions. But some of the thinks I've
realized can be crossed with his ideas. For instance,
for memory recall he says to go back along a time track.
What I've found is that the human mind generally thinks
in two forms, I've labeled these 2D and 3D. 2D is
analytical thinking; when you worry, when you analyze,
general day to day thinking. 3D is a dream type
thinking; it takes place in dreams, its so spatial you
can feel like you're there, etc. The difference is
spatial, 2D is like a piece of paper, 3D is like a room.
Example, if you don't listen to music for a couple of
months (or just don't pay attention/enjoy it) you find
that you lose the feel for music when you try to recall
it. You can get the words and the beat but not the full
stereo sound. But if you put on a walkman for a few
hours (submersion) you find that you can recall music in
stereo/3D again - not just the songs you just heard but
most. This suggests a recognition based memory recall
system. Which is logical considering most if not all
basic memory is built upon stimulus/response patterns
which is recognition. Recognition is being able to
recall a fact only after given a related fact, the other
type of memory is simple recall - you recall it without
needing the relational "reminder". Besides music the
same seems true for general memory. That it is usually
recalled in 2D until some stimulus sets it into 3D. So
best memory recall is probably done by physically
returning to the place of the memory rather than simply
going back through the mind's time track. There may be
potential here though. Such as instead of actually
returning to the house of your childhood you could form
the house in your mind and then, perhaps, that would
stimulate the more intensive 3D memory of that time.
For instance, I've found that thinking spatially will
put me to sleep faster at night. I doubt whether
mentally returning will ever be better than physically
returning.
After all, this is how skills work, you forget something
after a long period of not doing it, then you return and
the skill returns - because you've immersed yourself
again bringing back the old memories.
I've also noticed that "reheard" music (in the mind) is
from the same source as dreams are. Both "distant" -
not in the fore-conscious of thought, deeper.
I remember a report where some tests were done on
college(?) basketball players. They were broken into
three groups. One group told to practice free throws,
a second group to imagine practicing free throws over and
over, the third group told not to practice. The results:
the first group improved it's accuracy, the second group
improved it's accuracy almost as much, the third group
didn't improve. Proving to me the significance of
spatial understanding when learning or improving
something.
I've also noticed that I can improve seeing of visual
detail by paying attention to colors. When driving
constantly notice the colors ("the sign is green with
white letters, that car is blue, etc. (to yourself)")
and you'll see things sharper.
Hubbard's idea's of the brain reducing its analytical
potential is interesting. In my words: the brains
thought processes are reduced when you worry or avoid
something (it eventually becomes subconscious thought).
Like if you worry about whether you are dressed like a
fool. Those extra multitasking ticks that the brain
could be using for thinking are wasted. I imagine that
throughout life many of these may build up. He talks
about something similar but different. This
interpretation cuts to the facts.
The brain's internal clock:
It ticks. But it's a lot like a dog's stimuli/response.
system. Events that are random, the brain is constantly
expecting (so as not to be shocked). This includes such
things as the phone ringing, or an alarm clock going off.
Thus, when a brain "tick" or "clock cycle" is executed,
part of the brain power is dedicated to preparing for
these "expected unexpected's". These known, and to be
reacted to, events. This may also include such things
as avoiding tripping or bumping into objects.
Hubbard also suggests that your memory works better when
someone does the asking of questions. This is both
interesting and frightening. I don't know whether it's
true or not, unfortunately I think it is. After all, it
explains peer pressure. There are control and abuse
possibilities if this is true. External speech
influence.
"...flu victims succumb, at least in part, to their own
overreacting immune systems. Normally certain immune
cells engulf and destroy invaders. Among their weapons
is a negatively charged molecule of oxygen known as
superoxide, one of a class of highly reactive substances
called free radicals. In fluids, free oxygen radicals
break down and oxidize proteins. This process, which
can be though of as the biological equivalent of burning,
is a good means of combat in close quarters.
"When the body is attacked by flu, immune cells start to
mass-produce superoxide. Soon other sources kick in as
well, bringing on a flood of the lethal substance. These
immune responses are concentrated in the lungs, the seat
of infection from airborne droplets. The general
conflagration destroys the virus, but in delicate
tissues, such as mucous membranes, oxygen radicals can
cause bleeding, excessive swelling, and lesions that open
the way to bacterial infection--all events that get
described under the collective label pneumonia.
"...researchers...have come up with an antidote using
superoxide dismutase, an enzyme that sops up and destroys
superoxide. Mammals routinely produce this enzyme, but
it breaks down rapidly in living tissue; it seems
designed for spot-cleaning rather than massive spills.
So the researchers shackled their enzyme to a sturdier
organic polymer. In tests on mice they found that the
synthetic combination remained active in the circulatory
system for more than five hours; without its polymer
protector the enzyme disappeared within 30 minutes.
"The new therapy did not help the mice get rid of the
actual [flu] virus and was in fact not designed to attack
the bug. What it did...was restore normal body chemistry
after the victim's own immune system threw it off
balance.
"...free radicals are thought to play a harmful role in
many other diseases, including cancer."
"...in response to stress the body produces high levels
of natural opiates call endorphins. ...A closely related
opiate, morphine, might act on a certain region of the
brain to temper the immune response. The researchers
found that when they injected morphine into this region
of the brain in rats, the drug triggered a dramatic drop
in the activity of natural killer cells, the immune-
system agents that kill cancer cells and cells infected
by viruses. In fact, the killer cells' power against
cancer cells was reduced by more than half. [Injecting
morphine in other parts of the brain did not cause the
dramatic drop in protection.][Shit, the damn article goes
to lengths to avoid saying what region of the brain got
the morphine.] Now that they've located a brain region
where opiates act to depress the immune system, the
researchers hope to begin tracing the lines of
communication between the two. [A link between brain and
the immune system.] [They're] trying to see what nerve
circuits and chemical messengers do the talking."
"Experiments by [Diana] Deutsch demonstrate that the
brain sorts out the noises it hears by grouping together
sounds that appear to come from the same direction, and
that it accomplishes this by listening for high-pitched
notes. Because high notes don't travel as far as low
ones--which is why the bass drum of an oncoming marching
band can be heard long before the piccolos--the brain
assumes that the ear hearing the highest notes is closest
to the musical source. Yet studies of music from around
the world suggest that despite the ear's ability to make
minute discriminations of sounds, most cultures divide
the vast range of audible sounds into musical scales of
only about five to seven notes. As with many mental
processes involved in music, the brain's willingness to
trade precision for generalization may help people adapt
in other arenas: It explains, for example, why people
can understand a person's speech even though it is
heavily accented or recognize the aged face of a
long-lost acquaintance. The brain's willingness to
choose generalizations over precision is largely
responsible for its uncanny ability to remember melodies.
While few can rival Mozart, who is said to have been able
to remember an entire symphony after hearing it only
once, most everyone carries around dozens of tunes
that have been learned effortlessly. Studies by Jay
Dowling of the University of Texas at Dallas show that
one key to remembering a melody is that instead of
learning the exact sounds that make up a tune, the brain
remembers only the relationship between the notes. The
brain's quest to find overall patterns in the seemingly
random world is evident in experiments by Deutsch that
show that the mind will rearrange a jumble of notes it
hears into familiar patterns. The brain's effort to
tease out general patterns often takes place without a
person even being aware of it. Psychologists have long
known that as children develop they gradually construct
a 'great chain of being' by which they divide objects in
the world into such categories as inanimate and alive,
mythic and real. Similarly, people learn their native
tongue without explicitly learning the rules that govern
that language..."
"In rats it's been shown that even if 85 percent of the
liver is removed, the remainder can completely replenish
itself. Humans have an equal potential."
"...smell is the most evocative of the senses, because
it's so intricately connected to the brain's limbic
system, the area associated with emotion. Experiments
in Japan with 13 keypunch operators, monitored eight
hours a day for 30 days, showed that the average number
of errors per hour dropped by 21 percent when office air
was scented with lavender (it reduces stress) and by 33
percent when laced with jasmine (it induces relaxation);
a stimulating lemon scent reduced errors by 54 percent.
Even when the scent was below conscious levels, they
reported feeling better than they did without it. ...You
don't have to deliver fragrance all the time. ...Further
research has shown chamomile, Japanese cypress, orange,
peppermint, and eucalyptus to be soothing, while scarlet
sage and rosemary are stimulating. ...the trigeminal
nerve, one of two nerves in the nose that receive signals
from smells. The olfactory nerve is the one that allows
you to tell the difference between oranges and roses.
The trigeminal nerve detects irritations, like smelling
salts, or temperature, like the cooling effect of
menthol. There's a tendency for aromas with a low
trigeminal component to calm people and odors with a high
trigeminal component to serve as pick-me-ups. That's
because trigeminal stimulants...increase blood levels of
adrenaline. Odor is...mediated by the area of the brain
that also mediates sexual behavior, survival, and
appetite."
Eating foods/drugs with Serotonin (ck. sp.) in them
reduce compulsions. This study done for people with
compulsive disorders. It may have potential for reducing
peoples will as well however. Since the drug (a product
of the brain) naturally reduces the brains desire to
repeat (do) an act.
Neurologists have been able to grow a form of the brain's
nerve cells. "[brain] nerve cells cannot divide or
regenerate. After about six months of gestation in the
womb, the brain's 10 billion neurons, or nerve cells,
cease growing. ...it was...finicky, slow-growing cells
that [they were] able to cultivate. Eventually, the new
cell line will be made widely available, allowing
investigators to answer a host of biochemical questions
about the brain. The neurons appear normal except for
the growth abnormality that allows them to proliferate
in the lab. [Neurologists] can coax them into developing
the elongated, branched shape of mature nerves."
Jack Womack has an interesting book out, Terraplane, he
uses a writing style that could be a good basis for what
"thought-speech" must sound like.
"[Umbilical] cord blood, which is usually discarded after
a baby is delivered, is a rich source of blood cells.
It was long suspected to contain stem cells, the immature
cells that after birth reside only in bone marrow and
give rise to all blood cells. ...Finally the blood from
his sister's cord was slowly dripped into his veins. Her
stem cells did the rest; they found their way to the
marrow cavities inside his bones and gradually multiplied
into a new blood-cell population. A year later [the
patient] had a new, functioning blood system."
The all crucial blood-brain barrier seems about to open
up to drugs. The potentials are outrageous, as we've
been able to get few chemicals into the brain. It's a
necessary development and it looks to be progressing.
The barrier is made up of endothelial cells, whose job
it is to sort out blood and prevent unwanted materials
from getting through. However, many drugs already breach
this barrier: narcotics, nicotine, alcohol, etc.
"At a few spots in the brain the barrier does loosen up
a bit, allowing the nerve fibers in those places to
sample the bloodstream directly. Robert Katzman, a
neurologist at the University of California at San Diego,
points out that capillaries are permeable right atop the
brain stem region called the area postrema--right where
the vomiting center is located. 'The nerve cells there
must be able to monitor the blood for the presence of
deadly poisons,' he explains, 'in which case it would
induce the body to start vomiting.' Still, as
researchers now know, even an intact barrier can be
penetrated. Because endothelial cells have membranes
made of lipids, or fat molecules, there is one class of
compounds--fat-soluble ones--that will skate through the
endothelium every time. That's why nicotine, alcohol,
cocaine, and the like get into the brain so quickly:
these fat-soluble substances just dissolve through the
endothelium's fatty membranes. Drugs that have turned
out to be useful for mental illness, such as tricyclic
antidepressants and the sedatives Thorazine and Valium,
are also lipid-soluble. [The brain] demands a steady
infusion of glucose--the brain's sole source of
energy--and will lapse into unconsciousness if completely
deprived of the sugar for more than a few seconds. It
also needs amino acids to build proteins within neurons,
and small, carefully controlled amounts of iron to aid
cell metabolism."
Robots and Artificial Beings:
Robots are devices such as factory arms and the Voyager
series. Artificial beings are made also, but are more
sentient and can be made of either metals, silicates, or
synthetic organic-like structures.
The questions are: When is a robot a human? Should we
put controls on human-like robots?
Since artificial beings probably will have a longer life
span, its possible races abandon their organic form for
their newly created one.
Robot evolution is simple to predict. The basic robot
design will continue to improve in smarts and ability.
At some point we will want them to look like humans. At
some further point we will give them emotion-like
responses, since a robot without a face is, as a Doctor
Who episode put it, "you never know what they are
thinking behind that face." Robots probably should not
be given control of their own facial expressions when it
comes to reactions. They should exhibit surprise,
curiosity, fear, etc. After a time we will start to ask
about their rights. Then those rights will be granted.
A problem in this is that we would never tolerate a
superior race (let alone one created by us). We would
want to be at least equal.
So, at what point should we stop and say no to robots?
As I stated though, an artificial body is greatly
desirable if yours is failing. This alone may promote
the growth of robots.
The direction to the robot race may not be as such
though. It is possible that we
"cyberneticize"/"cyborgnetize" ourselves until we are
essentially like robots would be.
The best solution I can see is the obvious one, we limit
robot technology to the level of the
biological/electronic limits of the time. If we develop
a super smart phase-tronic brain (or something), then
that brain must have no self-awareness and no imagination
until we can enhance our own brains to the same
computational level. In an increasing communication and
computer operated society, super smart electronic beings
that can undermine it all cannot be allowed.
Remember RoboCop.
Isaac Asimov came up with these four laws that robots
were to obey:
0: A robot may not injure humanity or, through
inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
1: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through
inaction, allow a human being to come to harm,
except where that would conflict with the Zeroth
Law.
2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human
beings except where such orders would conflict with
the Zeroth or First Law.
3: A robot must protect its own existence, as long as
such protection does not conflict with the Zeroth,
First or Second Law.
I have my doubts about these laws. You would really need
a being with intelligence to interpret these laws. They
may provide a basic symbolic pattern to begin what will
surely be the difficult task of creating an intelligent
being.
I can never think of intelligent robots as anything other
than another being (much like animals . . .). Either we
make "things" with computers to make them smart or we
make human-like robots with smarts. To make an
intelligent robot for nothing more than servitude is
essentially slavery. [And what about a TV set with an
incredible AI? Similar to problem of human brain in
dog?]
Asimov's books go into great depth concerning robots,
unfortunately he puts these robots in ideal situations.
They are an excellent place to start when considering
what a life of an intelligent robot could/should be like.
AI's not in robot form, but in portable form, are
explained quite well in The War Machine In the book,
AIDs (Artificial Intelligence Devices), contain a
personality and are mainly used as a portable telephone
to access information - but also as recorders, etc. They
are programmed to inform the police when the user
attempts something illegal. However they also have
programming concerning their own survival. Since each
unit contains a 'scram' button that 'kills' the AID when
pressed, the AID must also take this into account when
deciding whether to be a blabbermouth. The cheap ones
complained to the police all the time (much to the
disgust of the overworked police). The more expensive
ones realized the police tended to ignore the AID
squealing and decided survival was more important.
Does the no-two-clones at once rule apply for these AI
devices or intelligent robots? They will no doubt have
questions about themselves, but since they can't do
anything without us maybe we shouldn't consider them an
intelligence. Of course, on the other hand, people will
become attached to them like they do their pets.
[Technological parasites.]
The human soul:
We have a soul. You cannot make a complete absolutely
perfect in structure robot body and then transfer your
mind, kill your body, and call the robot you in a new
form. Since you both were alive. This goes all the way.
You can create an artificial body with memory, autonomous
system, language/math/skill sections, etc. But you will
always need one crucial part from the original body. I
don't know what that part is, but some part of the brain
is absolutely necessary. Furthermore this part can't be
subdivided to create multiple robots. Cloning should be
avoided. You don't want a duplicate, you want a true new
body. Just because you've created another you, doesn't
mean you'll exist after the true body is dead. You're
still just as dead.
If cloned, you may ask, what does it matter if the
original body died? After all, your personality, goals,
beliefs, feelings, etc. survive in the new body. In
which you still think you're you. So, cloning will
continue "you" in others eyes. But the original "you"
died. Example: If you draw a line on a paper, you have
a line. You erase the line, and re-draw the line so it
is identical. If a viewer doesn't know that the original
line was erased, he would think the new line was the
original line. However, in fact it isn't. It's a new
line.
It's a point of imperfection. It is almost impossible
to make a truly exact duplicate. If you die, or are
completely destroyed, and some hyper-advanced being comes
along and reproduces you to exact perfection. You are
again. But if some hack comes along and clones you, you
might just as well accept the new life, but realize that
you aren't the person you were before.
[Note, need to cross this with teleportation.]
Yes, brain matter must first be installed in robots to
extend life this way. But what about when we can so
thoroughly understand the underlying structure that we
duplicate it perfectly? Then it becomes a philosophical
matter and the rule still applies. The main part of the
brain must be kept with a new structure, therefore there
is a soul.
What about transference of robotic intelligences? On
one hand it could be considered an upgrade or the
transference of a file. On the other, there may be a
form of rejection. I guess it's just a matter of how
they're programmed, and whether their brains actually
evolve physically or "software-ally".
Death should be thought of as the extinction of a unique
being.
Problem with this soul: If a person is frozen when they
die, and their original brain cannot be restored (via
micromachines or biological machines), but their brain
can be cloned to produce a living, perfect, replica.
Misc.:
It seems Optoelectronics will be the next stage of
electronics. They are circuits and chips that use light
instead of wires to transmit information. Much like the
fiber optic telephone connections that are replacing the
old copper wire. IBM has come up with 8,000 transistor-
like opto-based devices on a Gallium-arsenide based chip.
The chips have miniature lasers, photodetectors, and
optical pathways.
New advanced materials? "Marvin L. Cohen, a physics
professor at the University of California at Berkely,
has developed a computer program that predicts the
properties of proposed designer molecules before they
are created. After testing the program with known
materials, Cohen and his graduate students are searching
for materials with valuable new properties. Two that
are particularly interesting": A new superconductor made
from hydrogen, and a carbon-nitrogen material that may
be harder than a diamond. "Manufacturing the hydrogen
superconductor would require pressures beyond what is now
practical, but they may be possible in a few years.
Superdiamonds, though, could theoretically be made now
with so-called diamond anvils--squeezing the raw
materials between two diamonds while a laser is fired
through them. The program also predicts that it should
be possible to harden diamonds. Next, Cohen hopes to
prove his theory by making the superhard material, and
three research laboratories, including Berkeley's, are
interested in pursuing the project."?
Kodak has a 14 inch optical disk that can hold 6.8 Gb.
". . .has discovered that laser beams can . . . be
'photon glue' to hold tiny objects together. The
scientists speculate that the process may be used to
create materials with new properties for optical
communications devices and even drugs. . . .Harvard
University physicist Jene Golovchenko and researches
Michael Burns and Jean-Marc Fournier of the Rowland
Institute exposed tiny plastic beads to an intense laser
beam. To their surprise, they saw that the light energy
caused the spheres to suddenly reorganize and stick
together in a layer a scat 1.5 microns thick. 'I don't
think anyone suspected that you could organize random
matter into material structures using only light,' says
Golovchenko. The strength of the bonds between the atoms
is controlled by the intensity and wavelength of the
laser light. Even though the assembled material falls
apart once the light is turned off, the scientists
speculate that the technique might be developed to align
molecules in novel ways, then apply chemistry to bind
the molecules permanently."
There is a device under development to study comets. It
is called the Comet Penetrator. It both looks and is
the first space missile. It is launched from a
spacecraft. Once the Penetrator does its job the defense
department can just retrieve the plans and specs and
declare that it has the first space missile.
The authors of the Robotech books have some interesting
ideas concerning a "machine mind". At first I thought
this was a cyberspace copy but it is both original and
interesting. It has to do with linking brains with
computers which intern enter "electronic space" - not
just the simulated cyberspace. You travel the paths of
electronics/communications/energy. What you are in is
essentially a real alternate universe. In which you're
conscious energy/electricity/etc. Sort of like a
"machine space". It's also interesting because it's one
of those things we couldn't have imagined without
progressing this far technological-wise. After all,
being surrounded by electronics could one day make us
wonder if we hadn't fallen into a machine space.
Laser boring system - like idea on how atoms travel thru
space. But laser bore makes ship act like atom. Uses
space itself to pull you along, therefore no need to
buildup energy to infinity. Perhaps a laser (bore)
diffuses through space and causes something behind the
atoms of space it just went thru - causing an attraction.
Thus clearing space for a ship (or with a tight laser
beam, a atom).
If non-space was all vacuum then you would have Big Bangs
all over the place - since space itself causes matter to
be pulled apart in vacuum.
Mass and volume displaces space, whereas only volume
displaces water.
Could an FTL ship drop out of FTL, release a bomb going
99% of light, then go back into FTL? It seems that there
must be some natural barrier against this kind of
destruction. Probably anything falling below the speed
of light drops down to a "normal" speed extremely
quickly. How I don't know, perhaps near light warps
space really bad.
FK-506 (anti-rejection drug), cuts rejection rates by
90%, fewer complications, works better than the others.
"All NASA armor designs are based on something known as
a Whipple shield, after astronomer Fred Whipple, who
pioneered studies of high-speed collisions. At present
the [satellite(s)] shield is a two-layer swathe of
aluminum that completely covers a spacecraft. Between
the outer and inner layers is a space ranging from four
to 12 inches. When a piece of debris strikes the bumper,
the impact causes the projectile to shatter. The
shrapnel generally retains enough oomph to break through
the outer layer, but when it enters the space beyond, it
disperses, then bounces off the inner layer. [Jeanne
Lee] Crews's studies suggest that future Whipple shields
may be improved by using as many as five thin layers
rather than two thicker ones. Experiments show that if
a projectile is made to blast through four separate
layers, the repeated shocks often cause it not only to
shatter but to liquefy."
We're starting to see a lot of "body input devices".
Such as Nintendo's glove. Gloves and body suits that
detect movements. Various devices for projecting 3D or
"in-space" computer images. What will see in the future
is people spending lots of time in these things. It'll
be an addiction, just like a drug. We get addicted to
games now, when we become part of the game we'll be even
more "into it". To the world we'll look like vegetables;
hidden in a body suit, perhaps moving around a room, more
likely jerking on a chair. It'll be an ugly sight. We
should prepare, they'll suffer the same malady's drug
addicts do (emaciation/etc.). This, of course, was
"simstim" in Neuromancer. Another name being bantered
around is "virtual reality".
Can something be random if it contains a path to it, any
path? Eg. I want to kill a person. but that person
escaped to another city via the airport. He chose his
destination (city) randomly. But because he had a finite
choice I could check out each city (path) and eventually
locate him without randomness.
What's wrong with the word Hacker? It seems to be
changing. You pick; Cyberpunks, Cybernauts, Comic-
crazed Compjockeys.
Battle:
I've come across some interesting battle techniques and
would just like to note them here.
To fight a computer: swarm it. The more objects
attacking a computer, computer based defense, or AI, the
slower these systems work. Basic ideas of multitasking.
Nuclear dampers: Idea from Hammer's Slammer's series by
David Drake. Emit some pulse that either damages the
triggering mechanism or the process of a nuclear bomb.
To fight logic (eg. computers) use confusion. Non-
logical acts ruin calculated plans and force
unpredicablity to be considered (which isn't logical).
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I Predict
Trends:
The 1990's will be the decade of the loss of the
traditional office. Thanks to scanners, optical drives,
faster computers, most everything stored in file cabinets
will be scanned and stored. The key: store the data in
two forms; a complete image of a paper, and a note-file
containing the text on that paper. Those who have set
up systems already are using terms like "can do more
things with the data than before" (American(?) Airlines),
and "I don't know how we did without it" (a talent
agency). That's the exact thing they said about
spreadsheets.
Voice computer interfaces will become popular. It
will save on keyboard wrist injures and allow the hiring
of people who can't type for Data Entry jobs.
Ultrasonic testing of machines (aircraft) will
become popular.
I saw the team Battletech simulator story on Beyond
Tomorrow. For 6$/30 min. you and others (4 total?) get
to play against another team. Each person has their sit-
down working arcade-like simulator. It looks great and
if they decide to allow us to access it over the phone
it could really become something. The simulator is
somewhere in Chicago. It really would solve a problem
of computer games--we can't usually play against humans,
since the really good games take too long. Current BBS
games just don't have good enough graphics.
"Derms" will be greatly used. Especially by the
drug addicts.
TV walls will become popular.
Around 2000 we'll see credit card optical drives.
In which a little optical disk is contained in a plastic
credit card like package.
Future w/digital TV: end of news: "we now take a
minute to 'download' the newscast at high speed so you
may record it to optical disk (versus analog now)."
The twenty-first century will be the century of
medicine. Gibson got it right when he said body parts
will be grown in vats. The only thing keeping us from
doing this is that we do not know how a baby develops
given only the genetic code. Once we break this code,
and understand the biomechanics's of the process, it will
be simple to duplicate. It is, after all, just a
biological device.
Fetal tissue will also be greatly used.
Evolution for the human race is dead. Genetic
engineering and biomedicine will create/modify us.
Evolution is just too slow now. Mutation may still occur
(evolution on a single person). Only in a regressed
society from where we are now will it occur.
Holographic will become a way of life. Want a
meeting: send your holograph to the theater then receive
the holograph of what your holograph would see. 3D real
life gaming. All sorts of problems with handling
reality. Although wall TV's could cause similar
problems.
Potentials:
If somehow either a higher baud could be handled by
the phone lines, or a better compression technique is
found, then Gibson's Cyberspace will become a reality.
Although it can be imitated now.
If a color scanner can be created and sold at a low
price than images to will follow the path of regular
office files. We can already print out onto film with
the computer, we just cannot read it in right now.
If we ever do develop faster than light travel,
there will be a short(?) period in which everyone will
be greedy wanting their own world - to create their own
utopia's.
What you can see:
Movies often touch on a part of the future, while
getting other parts wrong. They are still an excellent
source for visualization, some of the best are:
Max Headroom Story. The hypermedia, computer
hackers, cartographic displays, and scanned brain -
-> AI is correct. The nuclear war part is false.
Runaway. Life with little robots running around.
THX 1138. Life in institutions will be similar to
the life in general seen here.
Aliens. All but the terraforming is possible. The
terraforming takes too much time for their level of
technology and would not be worth it.
Dark Star. The day-to-day life of people stuck with
each other in space is accurate (without
discipline).
2010. Again, the day-to-day life, and the work
environment in space.
A Boy and His Dog. A robots life.
Terminator. Through the eyes of a robot.
Blade Runner. Mostly true. Only the regular people
and the appalling living conditions were probably
false.
Predator. The defense system of the alien is nearly
perfect. The visual distorter, the eye-following
blaster, the suit itself. Only the idea of a
miniature nuclear reactor was way off (too advanced
for that level of technology).
Total Recall. The good and the bad of implanted
memories. As well as the technolgical
implementation of the process.
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Questions:
(1) To any doctors reading this: What is the policy
regarding highly dangerous drugs and dying people?
If a person is on his deathbed and a drug comes
along that will cure him. This drug will then give
him intense pain, paralysis, and probable death in
six months. Is this drug given?
(2) Can CD-ROM data be transferred off the ROM disk?
Erasable CD's will have an impact on us perhaps
greater than that of the microcomputer. Since it
will quickly become the media storage standard of
all forms of data. We know it will supplant the
current magnetic storage systems, what seems to be
getting ignored is the effect on the traditional
filing systems. It takes about 1MB to store a
perfect color duplicate of a sheet of paper. Even
the current erasable drives can do 600MB--a file
drawer's worth of storage. What I'm curious about
is the current storage methods. Do they use a DOS
standard method or some unique proprietary system?
(3) Intel is in an admirable position with its super
risc and the image compression technology. Do any
other companies, such as Sony, have plans to develop
similar image compression electronics for erasable
optical drives?
(4) When chess computers finally destroy all human
opponents should we modify/expand the game or
abandon it as obsolete? Personally I prefer to
abandon it and have the chess masters create a
similar but much larger and harder game. It should
involve spatial strategy, combatants, and generally
be hard for computers to play using only brute
force. Or maybe three-dimensional chess? I have
never tried it. Fist tic-tac-toe, then othello,
and now. . .
(5) Asimov had an interesting weapon in one of his
books: a microwave gun. It spewed microwaves at a
living object and would literally cook it to death.
If I took apart and modified my microwave oven could
it be so dangerous?
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Conclusion
What I really want the reader to get out of this
paper is the following:
1) Gravity does not exist.
2) Time does not exist.
3) Math does not exist.
4) One God does not exist. All gods should not
exist.
5) One's own life is the most important.
6) Convergent evolution among advanced races is
probably the norm.
7) While not strongly pointed out here. Both
science fiction and computer games provide
vivid truths about the rise and fall of life.
All life (like empires and governments) go
through a long struggle to survive, and then
at some future point go into a state of decay.
Too many things are created by us and then thought
to exist. Our perceptions become tainted by our
expectations. Little thought has been directed to the
fact that we control our own destiny's. It is the denial
of this single thought that causes the fear of death,
leading to hope that something must save us from death.
We all choose to live or die, each moment opportunities
exist for us to kill ourselves should we really want to.
Many people are members of the living dead, longing for
the past, or some better life--too scared to kill
themselves, but still thinking that they are alive. If
you are not going to change and help change then when you
die you will have had X years of no change, once dead you
cannot change anything, therefore you had died X years
earlier. On the other hand, while you are alive the hope
that you will experience change and growth is always a
possibility.
Final comments
My immediate plans are to release a new version of
this document every two-months or so.
I also would like to see William Gibson's ideas of
Cyberspace begun. It can start with a simple autodialer
that looks like a three-dimensional grid with boxes on
it--in which each box represents some BBS (the grid
should be overlaid on a state and LATA map). Then you
just "fly" to the box you want--hit it, and the
autodialer dials it. Eventually we can extend this to
some BBS and a communication programs.
I also would be interested in finding about
companies that are preserving organic matter.
This document was not meant to challenge your
reading skills, but to challenge your imagination. I
want you to find flaws in my arguments and tell me.
Constructive comments, any "I liked it" or "I hated it"
will just get thrown out.
I can be reached via:
IMMORTALITY, modem: 414-643-1576, 4p-9a cdt
-my BBS, one of the best.
Exec-PC, modem: 414-789-4210
-national archive, the best.
Mail: PO Box 15152, Milw., WI 53215
John Rohner
". . .how do you establish a possibility? By finding it
impossible to eliminate a possibility, a beginning is
made at establishing one."
Ok, who am I.
25 years old. Attended Walker Junior High and
Washington High here in Milwaukee. I am currently living
in Milwaukee.
I'll be getting a BS from the UW-Madison before the
year is out. My major is Cartography. I consider myself
a Cartographer/Programmer.
I'm taking a year off of school to concentrate on
this paper. [I would never have had the time to start
this and the BBS if I graduated and started a career.]
I am a hacker. I own five computers: a 12.5 AT
w/SVGA, three turbo XT's, and a TRS-80 Model I. I've
been programming since 1979. A dozen languages and a
dozen systems and I'm quite bored by it all.
I am a collector. An elite as well. I find
"conquer the universe" strategy games to be most
interesting, including CRPG's.
I believe in direct action. Earth First!,
Greenpeace, animal rights, the anti-fur people, freedom
of all forms of information, full space
exploration/development, etc. If it's good I support
it.
I loath religion and those who believe anything is
more important than themselves. My goal is immortality.
I have complete faith in my own conclusions, but I
am not so concrete that I wouldn't change them given
sufficient counter-arguments.
This document started out, and continues to be, an
external memory source for me.
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Index:
Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
AI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18, 67, 68, 73, 75
Alfv?n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36, 37
alien . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12, 76
anarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
antigravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
antimatter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Artificial Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
Asia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Asimov. . . . . . . . . . .7, 9, 52, 57, 67, 77, 79, 82
astronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36, 41, 44
astrophysics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35, 38
atmospheric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Australopithecus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Battletech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74
baud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
BBS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74, 78-80
bias. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3, 4
bio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18, 50
biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
biomechanics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74
biomedicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74
carbon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32, 40, 70
CAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
CD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
chimpanzee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
cloning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68, 69
cognitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57, 62, 67, 78
computer. . . . . . . 11, 22, 49, 59, 67, 70, 72-75, 78
cosmology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35, 37
Cyberspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
database. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
deduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
determinism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 60
deterministic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 27
dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10, 45, 51, 52
DNA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15, 40
DOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
E=mc^2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
Earth . .14, 15, 19, 28, 31, 33, 34, 37-40, 50, 56, 57,
80, 82
Einstein. . . . . . . . .17, 21, 35, 38, 44, 46, 48, 52
electromagnetic . . . . . . . . .36, 37, 40, 43, 49, 54
electron. . . . . . . . . . .26, 27, 31, 32, 40, 45, 48
electronic. . . . . . . . . . . .11, 20, 22, 59, 67, 71
electroweak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
empire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15, 18, 68, 82
Europe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
evolution . . . . . .14, 15, 19, 23, 35, 66, 74, 75, 78
force . . . . . . . . 25, 27, 29, 33, 35-37, 49, 73, 77
fractal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52
free will . . . . . . . . .7, 8, 12, 14, 22, 25, 48, 49
galaxy. . . . . . 18, 25, 28, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41-44
Gibson. . . . . . . . . . 7, 12, 23, 57, 74, 75, 78, 82
god . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14, 16, 26, 49, 78
Greek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16, 59
hackers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
holography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
hominid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Hubble. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28, 32
hypermedia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
imagination . . . . . . . . . 3, 12, 23, 51, 52, 67, 79
incorporeal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
induction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 59
inductive logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3, 4
infinite. . . . . . . .8-10, 13, 23, 25, 36, 51, 52, 58
infinite^ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
infinitesimal^. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 48
information . . . . . . .11, 14, 21, 28, 56, 68, 69, 80
laser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50, 53, 54, 70, 71
logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3, 4, 13, 22, 73
magnetism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
medicine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16, 74
microcomputer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
microwave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26, 38, 39, 77
Milky Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28, 40, 41
monkey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Multiverse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Myelin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
NASA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38, 72
Neanderthal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15, 16
neutrino. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
neutron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26, 27, 38
Nimodipine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
nuclear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73, 75, 76
omnipotence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
omniscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
optoelectronics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 22, 59
photon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31, 70
physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17, 26, 40, 54, 70
planet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16, 19, 29, 30, 53
positron. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27, 31, 45
proton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
psychic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
punctuated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
quasar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34, 39, 40
radioactivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
relativity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 38, 44-46
Renaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
robots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 66-69, 75, 79, 82
ROM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
Saturn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37, 40
scanners. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74
science fiction . . . . . . . . . . . .4, 9, 16, 56, 78
simulate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
space . . 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 28-32,
34, 36-40, 47, 50-53, 57, 71, 72, 75, 80, 82
spacecraft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 37, 71, 72
spacewarp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49, 50
species . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14, 15, 19, 20, 56
spectrum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22, 31, 40
star. . . . . . . . . . . . .18, 25, 26, 38, 39, 75, 82
stimulated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
storylines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
superclusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35, 41
superconductor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38, 70
superdiamonds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
supernova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
synchrotron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42, 43
tachyon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44-46
technology. . . . . . .11, 14, 18-20, 22, 23, 67, 75-77
teleportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50, 51, 69
terraforming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
theory.3, 25, 26, 31, 32, 35, 38, 39, 44-47, 53, 55, 70
Titan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
transportation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14, 50
UFO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
ultraviolet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32, 40
Universe. .1, 3, 4, 7-10, 12-14, 16, 17, 20, 22-27, 29,
31, 32, 34-37, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47-49, 52,
71, 80
Uranus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
utopia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23, 75
Voyager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 37, 66
W49A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
warlock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
warp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25, 28, 29
wavelength. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Additional references:
William Gibson, Burning Chrome, (Ace Books/The
Berkley Publishing Group/Charter Communications:
New York, 1986).
William Gibson, Neuromancer, (Ace Books/The Berkley
Publishing Group/Charter Communications: New York,
1984).
William Gibson, Count Zero, (Ace Books/The Berkley
Publishing Group/Charter Communications: New York,
1986).
William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive, (Bantam
Doubleday Dell Publishing Group: New York, 1988)
L. Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth, (St. Martin's
Press: New York, 1982).
Isaac Asimov, The Robots of Dawn, Robots and
Empire, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second
Foundation, Foundation's Edge, Foundation and
Earth, (in the order I think they should be read)
Doctor Who, Star Trek, Space: 1999, Battlestar
Galactica, Blakes 7, etc. television series and
movies.
Marvel comics.
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