String Theory, Dimensions and our Universe

Black holes, white holes, strings and strands..

To this day, the “Big Bang” has been coined as the origin of our universe.  All matter originally sourced from a single point of singularity some 13 to 14 billion years ago.  A foundation to this theory is Edwin Hubble’s discovery that all cosmic bodies are in fact receding from our location.  He deduced this fact through the use of the “Doppler Effect” and the “red-shift” of these bodies relative to Earth.  As objects recede from a point of observation, their reflected/generate light actually shifts to the red side of the color spectrum.  Depending on their rate of recession, the “red-shift” will increase with faster speeds of an object’s recession.  His discovery brought about the proclamation that our universe is in still expanding, disrupting the previous accepted notion that it was  static or even contracting.

Since then, a relatively new term has surfaced in the world of astrophysics to describe what  scientists feel may have been the source and/or cause of the “Big Bang”.  The term is “white hole” – as in black hole, but…well… white.  The best way to describe this in simple terms is to think of the nature of a black hole and simply reverse the process.  As black holes generate massive gravitation pulls on all surrounding matter, sucking it all in towards its event horizon – where not even light can escape it’s grasp – a white hole is simply the polar opposite in that they generate matter and particles in bursts of energy.  Could this be the best way to describe what caused the “Big Bang?”  If so, couldn’t this actually be a repeating, self-perpetuating process?

Let’s see this in a new light.  Lets say “Bob” works on the third floor of a downtown office building.  He needs to send his mail down to the mail room in the basement level and does so by putting an envelope into an enclosed cylinder and dropping it into the vacuum chute.  It is then propelled down three stories and to the mail room receptacle where it is then picked up and mailed out.  A similar process could be occurring in our universe.  Black holes could be likened to the vacuum on “Bob’s” third level office, where items (matter/particels) are placed into the vacuum.

The expansion of each universe within it's own dimension.

From Bob’s viewpoint, it disappears into mail room “never-never land”.  A black hole has been said to pull in all proximate matter with it’s massive gravitational pull to within it’s event horizon.  Once it has disappeared behind this visual barrier, we have no real idea as to what happens next.  Scientists speculate that matter is stretched to oblivion and somehow destroyed.  Now, what if the matter sucked into the black hole simply generates a worm-hole like passage into a new dimension in which a white hole occurs in congruence with the black hole in the first dimension.  Essentially exploding outwards into dimension #2 the “sucked-in” matter from dimension #1.   So, the receiver in the mail room only sees the mail coming to him, but really is not sure of its source or sender (if we throw out common knowledge for the sake of this example).  Now, with that said, think of how many possible black holes we might currently have in “our” dimensional universe and consider how many new dimensions this process could generate.  Millions could be spawned from our dimension alone.  Then think of the new black holes created within these new dimensions and how many more black and white hole dimensions would occur within them.  We’re now talking about massive numbers!

Stephen Hawkin once stipulated (Hitchcock lecture, given at the University of California, Berkeley, April 1988) that black holes may very well generate “baby universes.” Their size being predicted and completely dependent on the amount of matter pulled into the black hole as directly proportional to the eventual size of the “baby universe.” He claims that these small new universes eventually bleed back into ours in some fashion. His theory is partly based on his findings that black holes not only attract particles/matter but also emit some. The inherent issue with this is that in order for this to happen, particles will have to travel faster then the speed of light to escape a black hole’s event horizon, but Einstein’s General Relativity states that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. So, if light itself cannot escape a black hole, how is it particles can? Confusing isn’t it!

Anyway…

Strings or no strings, this would allow for the multi-dimensional universe that is needed to solve the conflicts between Einstein’s General Relativity (large scale mass laws) and the infinitely small quantum mechanics.  Could the key to the “Theory of Everything” be that our reality may have millions of dimensions of which we cannot see?

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Asteroid DD45 streaks overhead…

40,000 miles is all that stood between us (on Earth) and a 100-150ft wide asteroid on Monday, March 2nd, 2009.  So called DD45 passed so close it squeezed between the Earth and the Moon and could be seen with a decent backyard telescope from the South Pacific.  To put it in persepctive, DD45 passed overhead at only about double the height of most telecommunications satellites in orbit.  

The most perturbing part of this is not how close it came by Earth, but the very fact that it was only discovered two days before hand.  Yes, an Australian astonomer discovered it on Febriary 28th while scanning the night sky.  Why do you ask is that scary?  Well, I’ll tell you!  The very fact that such a large object headed for Earth was only found two days before passing us by says a lot about the fact that we are defensless against such behemoths.  Had DD45 struck the earth, the impact would have been equivalent to a large nuclear explosion – one that could wipe out the likes of Rhode Island, Manhattan or the entire Cape Cod peninsula.  To put this all in perspective, the Arizona meteor crater (image to right) was created by a similar size meteor.  The impact was about 150 times the yield of the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

The second scary fact is this link.  Take a gander at the sheer umber of close calls we’ve had and frankly not even been aware of.  Folks, one of these days some alfanumeric lump of cosmic iron will stike us.  It’s not a matter of “if” but rather “when”.  Don’t be confused… it will eventually happen.

The third scary notion associated with these tumbling rocks is that for each pass-over or close call with Earth, the very gravitational force rendered upon them as they pass by redirects and disturbs their current paths to the point that their future paths could be altered enough to align it for a direct impact the next time around.

Asteroids like these come from the “asteroid belt” located roughly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.  As the masses of asteroids circle the sun, ones on collision paths bump others out of their normal orbit and into abnormal ones that often can and do either create these close calls or even impacts with planets within the solar system.

Government funding for NEO (Near Earth Objects) has significantly declined within the last decade and it shows!  Again, DD45 was only found two days before it grazed by us!  Maybe there’s some merit to funding this project a little better.

Isn’t it funny how we walk about with no idea of the threats and intricacies that meander just above our very heads!  Makes those work deadlines seem irrelevant.

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Another Doomsday Device

Folks, the “Green Movement” is upon us.  Those that have been preaching it for years – the so-called “tree huggers”, the naturalists – are now sitting back, staring upon the rest of us with crossed arms and wearing subtle frowns, surely desperate to belch the words, “I told you so!”  

We now find ourselves immersed in a global movement of feel-good greenery among our fellow earthbound habitants.  It’s become evidently clear that limited fossil fuels and careless carbon footprints have finally run hard enough over our tails to finally cause us to react in sheer agony.  There are times when it is difficult to decipher between trendy corporate marketing and an honest, concerted effort to reduce the masses methods of fuel and energy consumption.  Trend or not, at least we can no longer avoid the topic.

Some have argued that this is simply the earth rounding its course through its natural warming periods and ice ages.  

Others have claimed that as we have run through a significant amount of our available oil only since the coming of the industrial revolution and will burn through what’s left within the next 100 years we simply won’t be burning fossil fuels long enough to have a meaningful effect on global climate.  Think of about it.  What effect can 200 years possibly have have on the billions of years our earth has and will experience throughout its lifespan.  

A further explanation of our recent warming trends has been attributed the potential of galactic stardust acting as a solar radiation shield as the earth passes through the spiraling arms of the Milky Way galaxy and has shown trends of warming when it reappears between these arms as it finds itself more exposed to direct solar gamma rays.  Far-fetched?  Maybe, maybe not.

There’s even been some discussion in reference to something called the SAA or South Atlantic Anomaly.  Heard of it?  Most have not.  If you’d like the fancy-dancy explanation, click here.  If your of the sort who prefers a more lamen-esque definition, well here it is;  SAA refers to a recently measured anomaly over the South American land mass and southwest portions of the Atlantic.  The anomaly is defined by the weakening electromagnetic field that protects our world from intense solar radiation by deflecting most away from the earth’s surface and back out into space.  The word “anomaly” is used due to the fact that the particular area mentioned is currently weakening and has significantly lowered the altitude from our surface in which this radiation is deflected and is even allowing more of this direct radiation down to the surfaces in this region of the globe.  

The suspicion is that the earth inner core, made up of solid nickel and iron, is no longer spinning as quickly against the outer core.  This reduction in friction between these cores has been said to cause this reduction in generation of electro-magnetic fields which currently shield us from the imminent radiation bearing down on us.  The assumed reason for the slowing of this friction is essentially the fact that our core is cooling and thus, reducing the immense pressures conducive to generating these protective fields from within.

This has brought about some discussion as to whether this new SAA region could be contributing to increasing global temperatures as it allows stronger levels of radiation into the earth’s atmosphere where ordinarily it wouldn’t – thus permitting a very powerful heating source to enter into an atmosphere that has never permitted the likes before. 

Not biting??… let’s have good ‘ol Wiki help us out here.  If you find it interesting enough, find some of that well hidden resourcefulness of your own and do some research into what lasting effects this could bring about.

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Universal big bang or local anomaly?

Spectral analysis of distant galaxies within the limited reaches of our local universe suggest that many, if not most distant galaxies emit light waves from within their immense cores in varying spectral hues, hinting to their relative directional travel and distance. At least this has been the commonly accepted method of measuring within the popular astronomic community.

But alternate theories have emerged offering new and very interesting explainations as to why.  Regardless of what direction in our sky the observer takes a sampling from, something now coined the “Doppler Effect” tells us that the red-shift in spectral light waves is indicating that most of the observed galaxies are in fact in a state of cosmic recession relative to our current location. This theory strongly supports the now commonly assumed theory of the “Big Bang” in that it demonstrates that all cosmic matter is travelling away from a common point in space-time and is now receeding in a reasonably uniform fasion in our night sky away from a central point of origin.

The red shift in spectral light – meaning the nature of different colors of the light spectrum emitted by huge clustering of star masses within each galaxy to essentially be filtered out by galactic interferences as the light ejects itself from their respective galactic cores leaveing only certain red light wavelengths to continue on their path to great distances, ones we on earth can measure to some degree of accuracy. Basing assumptions on the fact that in virtually any direction we look, galactic cores seem to only be emitting red shifted wavelengths, many astronomers claim that this is constructive evidence of the Big Bang in that it denstrates a “ballooning” effect as most matter seems to be moving away from a central point of origin. But is this assumption acurate?

Some have ventured to say that the supposed “even” distribution of the red shift is not so even after all. Some astronomers new discoveries have now suggested that the red shift actually varies more significantly that originally supposed.  This suggests that the apparent doppler effect may have some inherent fallacies in the fact that “clumping” and “gapping” may actually be occurring based on the area of observation.

Another factor that is simply too significant to assume non-related to this phenomenon is the similarly recent discovery of the existence of dark matter as a very real entity in our universe.  This dark matter may very well generate radiation and light  in unknown methods and could essentially be the culprit of this measured uniformity in red shift light that seem to surround us.  Unfortunately, scientist know very little about the characteristics and makeup of this dark matter and thus this leaves us in a state of unknowns.

An additional explanation for this “ambient” radiation and radio “noise” might be something quite the opposite of prior assumptions of the Big Bang.  As we all know, many of the stars we can see from earth on the average night are, in fact double stars.  What are the chances that our star – billions of years ago – had an accompanying star of which may have burst in a supernova explosion and now dissipated its remnant energies in a ballooning sphere of radiation and radio activity that is still measurable today.  Our sun has been proven to have a subtle wobble.  Is this the effect of the planetary masses pulling on it in a gravitational tug-a-war on its rotation or could it be partly due to the general nature of the remaining qualities of the burst may be solely represented by this ballooning might be fairly equal in all directions, but as it spreads out in all directions and weakens, eventual gapping and clustering of radio interference and light shifts may occur, but are simply doing so in the opposite direction.   Could the red shift be receding from us as apposed to the assumption that we are “receiving” light waves emitted from distant galaxies?

If not a passed supernova-like sister star to our very own, maybe the single sun we currently have may have effects on our view of distant light emitting sources.  Giant flares and coronal mass ejections could somehow alter our assumed accurate measurements of what we think is a fairly direct light source from a distant galaxy.  We simply don’t know.  

Personally, the most exciting part of astrophysics and astronomy is when I look 200 years into the future and imagine those in that time and whether or not they look back on us today and chuckle at what we proclaimed to be general laws of physics and our universe.  Are we destined to be the equivalents of the Galileos and Platos of our very own past.  Will our current assumptions be as far off the mark as the long held belief that the world was flat hundreds of years ago?  I have to believe they will be to some degree.

Read my other post “Keyhole Universes” to see further discussion of this “dual star” concept.

For another informative weblog on our cosmos, check out… http://jzholloway.wordpress.com/

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Spiral jumping and global warming…

Curious minds have explored the compositional make-ups of galaxies such our own Milly Way and made some interesting speculations regarding the path our sun’s solar system has taken over millions of years and possible effects on our planets climate.

Researchers painstakingly observed and assessed the very nature of what makes up the so-called arms of a spiral galaxy, noting that the arms themselves are not made up of heavier concentrations of stars and planets, but rather are composed of inter-stellar debris. This “debris” has been described as interstellar gas clouds, meteoric materials, comets and other free-floating cosmic residue with enough relative density that it can actually be detected via different measuring tools we currently have at our disposal, including the all-important human eye. The visible spiral arm/band of the Milly Way that can be seen from any dark sky location is an evident example of this galactic band of higher density objects.

Astronomers and physicist alike have come to understand that our sun and immediate solar system are not, at the present time, located within any of the Milky Ways spiral arms but are actually currently to be found suspended between two of it’s extending tenticles. Based on historical timelines, much speculation has arisen from the fact that the Earths ice ages seem to coincide with the periods in which our planet, sun and entire solar system would have found themselves passing through this so-called debris field within each spiraling arm of the Milky Way, possibly suggesting that this stellar debris may in fact “shade” our system from gamma ray and other warming factors of proximate stars, supernova bursts, radiation exposure and other stifling forces of cosmic warming.

If our Earths cyclical periods of warming and cooling coincide with our periodic passage through the spiral arms of the Milky Way, one might deduce that this very coincidence may have more merit than originally assumed. As we are currently between galactic arms, could that really suggest that global warming may be a root effect of this?  Does this theory suggest that our global warming and cooling cycles might be an effect of our passages in and out of our galaxy’s arms? 

Thought this was worth sharing as I find it quite an interesting twist to our ever-growing global warming concepts and interpretations.

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Keyhole universes…

Amazing tools of science have furthered the reaches of human eyes to distant reaches of our universe via massive mirrors of reflected light, gama ray detection, infrared sensors and so much more.  We’re bearing witness to historical occurrences from years past in our night sky that we’ve only just begun to understand. Never-the-less, we’ve only explored a mere fraction of what lies beyond our atmospheric veil.  We are essentially peering through a keyhole trying to envision a hundred acre garden and presume to make assumptions of what grows and thrives just outside the locked door.

Astronomers are building even larger orbital telescopes to peer further into the depths of our universe and gain new groundbreaking insights into it’s physical make-up, but we have yet to truly define what is found within our “keyhole.”  Educated guestimates and theoretical assumptions have us presuming to know how our solar system was formed but really they have yet to clearly define the elements of its actual origins.  How can we possible venture into the unknown distances when we don’t fully understand our immediate neighborhood?

Astronomers and physicists have identified elements on Earth called heavy atoms (atoms with abnormally large nucleic mass due to intense pressure, heat and atomic mutation) that suggest that there was a supernova explosion just before the formation of our solar system.  As we have now learned through observation, stars very commonly have a companion star.  The two proximate stars orbit one another in very closely and pull on one-another under intense shared gravities.  Could this possible supernova have spewed the same vents of debris, gas and heat as others have and thus created an environment ripe for planet formation?  The extreme heat and energy expelled during this supernova’s explosion may have rendered an environment we have all seen when astronauts show us what happens to liquids when released into a zero gravity environment.  The liquids collect into spherical balls.  Could the immense heat generated by the explosion have virtually liquified matter so that it would eventually collect into spherical masses which began the origins of our planetary system?  Once formed and beginning to cool, the planets gained solid mass which began generating the gravitational forces we see dictating our system today.  Moons may have been miniature planets until they approached the larger masses of todays planets and became trapped in their respective orbits around their host planets.

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As a matter of darkness…

Astronomers and cosmologists alike have made great strides in the general understanding of the physical structure of the universe, galaxies (including our Milky Way) and stellar neighborhoods of possible orbiting planetary systems much like that of our own solar system.  Innovations in how we peer into the endless darkness we call our night sky have deepened our understanding of our cosmic neighborhood, and some may even argue, beyond.  Peering eyes like the Hubble telescope, the WMAP space probe, Mars rovers, Voyager and Cassini have pushed boundaries men like Galileo, Newton and even Einstein might have only dreamed about.

Since the 1990’s we’ve witnessed a metaphorical explosion of new discoveries and ground-breaking insights into the modern universe. Many of these discoveries have taken what we thought were previously known facts and turned those theories upside-down.  

At one point, the world was believed to be flat.  At another point, we believed the world was at the center of the universe and the sun and planets revolved around us.  Even later, we speculated that our universe was actually contracting towards its origin, but have now proven quite the opposite.  Within the next few billion years, our night sky will reduce to a fraction of stellar objects compared to today as all matter moves away from us at break-neck speeds measured at over 13 million miles an hour.  Black holes were simply a figment of our imaginations until the Hubble measured dark objects orbiting bright stars and discovered a lightless, massive object pulling the star into a heightened orbit.  

Our very own Milky Way galaxy has long been assumed to be a spiral as many others, but has recently been found to be shaped more like a whirling baton with tassel-like arms tailing off either end.   Has it recently (relative to the age of the universe) collided with another galaxy to form this bar-shaped form we call our home?  Could this massive “bar” of stellar congestion be the remnants of a merging of two seperate galactic cores?  

Massive “gaps” in our universe have flipped previously developed theories on their backs while the “Great Attractor” has scientist pondering why some areas of our universe are void of matter while others are pulling massive amounts of galaxies and stellar matter into their respective regions.  Again, I say the theory of uniform distribution holds no ground considering these new discoveries.  One theory after another are being chipped away from what we thought was a solid foundation of scientific thought with respect to our universe.

Scientists now find themselves studying the dark areas and not the bright ones aloft in space.  ”Dark matter” and “dark energy” have been coined as the top discoveries in the last thirty five years.  Yet, no one can truly explain what they are and what effect they may have on our stellar environment.  Is dark energy the real reason why our universe is expanding?  Are there more massive voids in our universe as the one recently found?  

These are the current questions bouncing around the science community, and where they’ll land – nobody knows.  But it does beg the question of what new findings 20, 50 or 100 years from now will refute the newest of our modern-day theories.  New telescopes in production will eventually take over when the Hubble retires within the next decade that will dwarf  the Hubble in size, scope and field of view both optically and in different aspects of infra-red and gamma ray capabilities.  What will they find that until now, we’ve not been able to see?  How will their eyes widen our horizons?

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Universal gapping…

I have spoken to this in a prior post, but feel compelled to touch on the subject once more considering the new discovery by the University of Minnesota’s astronomer Lawrence Rudnick.  In this months Science Illustrated magazine, he introduces us to his “Hole in the Universe.”  Apparently, after some very comprehensive analysis with both the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite which measures heat signatures left from residual cosmic microwave background radiation from the big bang and New Mexico’s “Very Large Array” of radio telescopes, he came across an apparent void, or cavity if you will, in the a distant location of the universe.  It can be found in the constellation Eridanus and is roughly a billion light years in diameter.  It’s big, very big.  Rudnick and a team of scientists claim it is an area void of any heat signatures, stars, galaxies and virtually any other significant, if any, matter.  This finding strongly conflicts with earlier establishments that our universe is, in essence, the same in any/every direction we view it from.  It does not mean to say that our immediate universe is identical in all directions, but rather, makes the claim that on a large scale view, the millions of stars, galaxies and other matter are roughly equal in all directions.

As I discussed in an earlier post, Friedmann’s theory of “universal distribution” has just been contradicted by direct observation.  Uniform distribution seems to have been proven inaccurate.  The physics and astronomy communities can no longer rely on the uniform distribution as a foundation to base further theoretical views on our universe. The magazine article goes on to mention the new scenarios proposed by some of these scientists, including a theory that the dark spot is actually another universe “pushing in” against the boundaries of ours.  Another says that it now could possibly disprove the big bang theory.  Other scientists in the field are simply saying that the massive void doesn’t really exist and that it is a direct result of false measurements or bad data.

Frankly, I find it all very interesting.  When I first read about Friedmann’s theory, I found it to be counter-intuitive as an underlying universal principle.  Clearly the universe is not equal in all directions, and this article seems to agree with my basic assumptions (see the post and arguement below under… Our Universe and Uniform Distribution.  

The only true uniform aspect of our universe is it’s ability to be random at any given time.  This is possibly just the first of many cosmic voids that we may come to discover.  Throughout scientific history principles have been established, then later refuted by substantial new data.  Some principles and theories have survived so far, but uniform distribution may not survive.  Even theories on the big bang itself may fragment as more of the apparent voids come into view.

Observation is still king, and “randomness”is his co-pilot.

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Planetary heating and cooling….

Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” was a far-fetching tale of good guys versus bad guys engulfed in conflicting angles on the issue of global warming.  He makes claims based on the extensive research done for this book that areas of our globe are actually cooling – not warming as we’ve all come to understand. He forces the issue of whether or not this apparent warming trend we are experiencing might be part of the natural cycles of the earth as shown by repetitious ice ages and warming periods throughout our planets history.  He wrote this novel in 2004 (4 years ago).

Amazingly, Carl Sagan wrote about similar topics in 1980 (yes, 28 years ago – think of the differences we could have made by now had we listened back then!).  He tells us that like Venus, our earth’s atmosphere is also made up of 90% of carbon dioxide.  What makes us unique from Venus – aside from extreme temperature differences, sulfuric acid rains and more – is that this wealth in carbon dioxide we have on Earth is primarily found within the its crust, not in the atmosphere.  If the earth’s orbit  were moved closer to the sun, like that of Venus, our atmospheric temperatures would rise rapidly and significantly.  As the Earth’s surface warms it would begin to release more and more of the carbon dioxide into the air.  This would result in a dramatic increase in surface temperatures as the carbon dioxide would then amplify the “greenhouse effect.”  Our unique orbital location from the Sun is what has allowed life to flourish.

Based on our fortunate orbital location from the Sun, we should be surrounded by a landscape of frozen ice crystals.  Without our specific atmospheric composition (oxygen, carbon dioxide, helium, nitrogen, etc.), we’d live on a frozen planet.  Our specific distance from the Sun would not sustain a warm enough environment for life to thrive as it has without “global warming” per say.  The very composition of our atmosphere has allowed a warmer surface environment by protecting us from the suns harmful UV rays and by capturing a portion of the suns heat and recycling it for re-use.  In this heat-recycled bubble bacterial life has progressed into what we see around us today.    So, in a manner of speaking, global warming is a crucial feature offered to us through our atmosphere.  But the level at which it is maintained is where we must be wary.  

Fossil fuels and energy demands are stressing our uniquely fragile environment to its limits.  Folks, this is not politics.  The only politics involved here is the dollars and power of our oil industry and how they’ve managed to establish such a stronghold on the worlds economies.  We are the consumers and have chosen to follow the “status quo” when it comes to our lifestyles.  Industry will not change it for us, we must force the industry to change based on our demands for new more efficient products and renewable energy resources.   The carbon emissions we’re all emitting into our atmosphere have spike dramatically since the beginning of the industrial revolution and we need to rethink our future energy and fuel strategies if we wish to remain on this planet we call our home.  Let’s not be so short-sighted and feel that if it is beyond our lifetimes, that it is not of concern.  If everyone could simply wrap their minds around the fact that our planet is so utterly unique, so utterly precious, we might actually save it from its current course for literal destruction.

I have started re-looking at what I drive, the bulbs and energy I use and how to reduce it, and anything else I can do to reduce my carbon footprint.  What can you do?

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Comet calamity…

Astronomy.com is reporting that scientist Francis Nemmo has now analyzed specific data pertaining to a simulation model that demonstrates a potential comet impact on Mars and how this impact could explain the hemispheric dichotomys that are evident between Mars’s northern and southern polar regions. 

This presents an interesting theory, especially when consideration is taken with respect to previous theories of comets being the universe’s figurative “sperm.”  The theories state that when an asteroid impacts with a planets, the water, minerals and gases released in the impact can be the very building blocks for establishing a biologically-friendly atmosphere and can plant the “seeds” for life by providing the essential elements needed for biological generation.  Read the article here.

Another article of interest on their website is this one, pertaining to the recent ability to look deeper into the universe and the mysterious entity we’ve come to know, thanks to Einstein, as “dark matter.”  I will be very interested in what comes of this new camera and any new discoveries in this field.  As the article says, this could potentially change the way we all look at the universe and its physical construction.

Pretty soon, we’ll all be looking at both the dark and light objects through our eyepieces!

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Magnificent Jupiter…

After spending a few minutes on Astronomy.com’s night-sky maps, I ventured into the outside last night with my new telescopic Plossl eyepiece.  I am amazed how this one eyepiece has simplified my stargazing life.  No more switching eyepieces and having to re-find my target each time.  I can now find my object at 23mm and zoom into 7mm while maintaining it centered while refocusing.  It’s a beautiful thing!

My target last night was galaxy M51, located just below the last star along Ursa Majors (Big Dipper) handle. The sky was hazy and kept it hidden behind its cloaking shroud, so I turned my attentions to the rising planet of Pluto.  A sharp blue/white tiny sphere gleamed brightly against the dark sky.  Mars and Saturn had already dropped below the haze resting upon the near opposite horizon, making them too difficult to see.  

I took a brief break for a pre-bed snack and glanced one last look back into the NE skyline.  Between two maple trees was a new mass in the sky.  So bright in fact that I was first convinced it was a distant plane with its floodlights ablaze.  I quickly realized it was the king of planets himself, Mr. Jupiter.  It is said that a thousand Earths can fit within the massive Jupiter and judging by its reflectivity in the night sky, there was no doubt this was true.  Once I got it under focus in the scope it astounded me – being a Jupiter virgin and all.  It sat aloft in the darkness, seeming too large, too massive to remain in it’s apparent buoyant state.  Its evident stripes of opposing gasses encircling its spheric mass in a torment of spiraling eddys.  Jupiter the tightrope walker, with its two moons pinpointed on either side in near uniform proximity, turning their four points of light into a virtual balance beam of orbiting lunar satellites.

I took my sons to a “X games” equivalent show last weekend (stay with me, there’s a point to this) and we watched as the moto-cross guys practiced their high-flying stunts but never got a true sense of the sheer heights they really reached until I stood there watching.  I had seen these guys countless time on TV with my sons, but the adage is true, until you really witness something, it remains marginalized in muddled media.  

Jupiter is simply an amazing first sight.  Like I said earlier… observation is still king.

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Quantum leaps of faith…

In a feudal attempt to dig into the particular depths of       quantum mechanics, I found my head spinning with terms like bosons, quarks, leptons, waves, strings, nuclei, neutrons, (getting the picture yet?) protons, electrons,  and a few others I can’t even pronounce.  The world of quantum mechanics lives in such small environs that not even the most powerful of microscopes that science can offer can even lay witness to the majority of intricate interactions between these tiny particles.

Before I venture into the ill-defined depths of quantum mechanics, visit this link and familiarize yourself with the porous path I am about to tread upon.  This is an article I read recently while trying to get a better grasp on the complexities of the four elemental forces in physics, (1) the strong force - a nucleic force, (2) the weak force - neutrino interaction, (3) electro-magnetic - force of opposing electrical charges and (4) gravity – relating more to large bodies (planets, stars, etc.).  I won’t take the time to define each one as they are explained in the linked article, but if you have the same experience as I when reading it, you will most likely come out with either more questions or severe rash-causing frustrations.

I am going to allow you to draw your own conclusions from the Feynmann diagrams, but I would like to pull some direct quotes from within the text that specifically relate to the “rash-causing” effects – or maybe it’s just me.  

Here are a few:

“The weak interaction changes from one flavor of quark to another…”

Now remember, these are words coming from what I have come to call the guys in the biz, our leading physicists.  My issues are not so much with the use of the odd term of “flavor” per say, but with the context it is presented in.  The examples of forces causing neutrons to turn into protons or a “down” quark changing into an “up” quark at least defined from measured occurrences where the changing of a “flavor” would seem to imply that they have yet to even understand the natural characteristics of a quark, what causes them to behave in measurable ways and how to quantify them into general classifications or general categories of characteristics.

“This interactions not likely to be observed because of the difficulty of observing the scattering of neutrinos, but it suggests that…”

and…

“As drawn, this interaction cannot be observed because it implies the isolation of an up quark.”

This would certainly seem to be another example of a “Tychonian” approach to physics.  They clearly define this interaction as unobservable, yet they continue to say that based on their Feynmann diagram that it must hold some level of truth/fact.  I used the term “Tychonian” simply because that was a similar approach that Tycho Brahe took with his new acquisition, Johannes Kepler under Rudolf II.   Tycho was supposedly the one with a depth of observational data and yet refused to share it with the stronger constructionist in Kepler.  Tycho was sticking with modified theories of the five “perfect solids” first introduced by Pythagoras and Plato.  Kepler later proved him wrong, as has happened countless times throughout history, with respect to our universe and the accepted laws of the surrounding cosmos.  Let’s not presume to preach on suppositions.  Lets stand on our proven foundations.

Another article under the search “Force Particle” on wikipedia makes loose definitions of a supposed particle that accompanies an actual mass/particle that gives it its energy/motion.  Click here for the link.  Here’s a few quotes:

“The status of this particle is still tentative, because the theory is incomplete and there has been no good experimental evidence that they exist.” – Wow!  So, the elaborate mathematical diagrams they’ve conjured have managed to prove… absolutely nothing.

“Interactions of virtual bosons with real fermions are called fundamental interactions.”  How can something real reacting with something virtual be fundamental?

They even have force elements, named after scientists, that have yet to be discovered! (Ex: Higgs boson)

Since speculation is in order here, why can we not re-look at the electro-magnetic force and see properties of it that seem to be able to characteristically carry into those of the other three forces?  The forces and interactions between positively charged particles and negatively charged ones (yes, both planetary and on a quantum level) appear and repeat themselves on multiple levels. Why can this not be an acceptable theory for all things in our universe?  Think about it… gravity(+) and “anti” or zero-gravity(-), positive and negative charged particle in atomic structures and beta decay with “opposing”  (+ vs. -) forces which I have yet to fully understand.  The binding glue for this could be motion (either in rotation or oscillation).  Even string theory claims that incessantly vibration rings of energy are the building block of everything.  

We have always looked at inanimate objects and wondered what gives them motion.  Why not look at motion as the foundation and ask what effect “inanimates” have on the natural order?

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Cosmic Junkyard

Until May 29, 1953, Mt. Everest was one place on Earth that man had never set foot upon.  Sir. Edmund Hillary and sherpa Tenzig Norgay took it upon themselves on this date to climb to it’s summit and change this fact forever.  Since then, scores of climbers each year test their limits and make their own attempts on its forbidding 29,029ft summit.  In fact, the term “traffic jam” has now become a common climbing expression when referring to the literal lines of climbers on any given day that can  can crowd the routes to the top, literally bottlenecking under places like the “Hillary Step” and the South Summit while each team competes for their right to jump ahead of the rest in order to reach their so-called “destiny” of reaching the top of the world.  

The sad result of this increased demand to climb Everest, or “Chomolungma” as it’s known by the local Tibetans, has resulted in heavily littered slopes and cols riddled with everything from oxygen tanks, ropes and climbing gear left behind and even bodies of those who’s dreams were cut abruptly short.  In the last few years, a couple of expeditions have ventured to climb the mountain in an attempt to clean up some of the massive amounts of “debris” scattered along its ridges, but their success has been tapered by the effects of hauling such weights at extreme altitudes, storms and illness.  So to this day, the majestic Everest still lays covered in trash of all kinds with no immediate plan to cleanse her of her filth.  

Several articles as of recent have now begun to discuss the ramifications of a similar development above each of our heads in the day or night sky.  Near-space and Earth’s orbital highways are now becoming utterly riddled with space debris of all kinds, criss-crossing the night sky from any field of view.  

 It is said that right now, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,500  objects left behind by previous space missions or  abandoned satellites orbiting our planet with absolutely no defined  intentions to retrieve or dispose of them. There are a few thousand other  fragments of paint, debris and other materials smaller than a baseball also  aloft in orbit which are too small to track by our ground based radars which  are tasked with monitoring space debris.  Considering the sheer number of  objects in orbit and their rate of speed (17,500mph), a new level of concern  has arisen  within the space community, and for good reason.  The two  most concerning issues of this mesh of free-floating debris are, (1)  potential collisions or impacts with operating space craft in orbit, and (2) the simple fact that earth’s orbit is quickly becoming a forgotten junkyard for NASA and international space communities. 

NASA mission controllers are now forced to plan their routes through orbit as the debris now dictates which paths they can take.  Spacecrafts like the shuttle must plot a careful course so that it may reach the International Space Station without colliding with any of this debris.  Even the smallest of the free-floating objects can slam into the side of the shuttle (see article here about damage suffered by shuttle in 2007), causing dents, damage and possibly even penetrating it’s outer shell and causing potentially irreparable or even fatal damage.  It is said that the majority of the larger orbiting debris will eventually succumb to the earth’s gravity and fall back to earth, in which they usually burn up upon re-entry.  But this does not prove true for the smaller objects.

Of course, there is also the ever growing issue of conservation both within and without of our atmospheric bubble.  How can the space community carelessly leave such objects out in orbit and not plan properly to dispose of all this waste?  How can they not be concerned with this growing problem of our “orbital junkyard?”

One of the scenes that struck me on last night’s rebroadcast of “In the Shadow of the Moon” was the footage of the lunar lander boosting away from the moon’s surface and clearly visible in the back drop was a wave of scattering bits of trash left behind in the wash of the thrusters by the astronauts themselves.  As the lander gained in altitude, it also became clear that the base of the lander itself was also left behind. One, if not several of the astronauts made comments like, “It’s so pristine and beautiful, like the Arizona deserts but grayish-white,” or “the contrast of the black sky and the gray colored hills is amazing.”  How could they be so aware of the tranquil beauty of the lunar landscape, yet have such disregard for it at the same time?

There needs to be some level of responsibility when it comes to space travel and what we leave behind upon our return.  Heck, trail hiker and backpackers live by the slogan, “Pack-in, Pack-out.”  People are fined and ticketed by police when trash is thrown in anything but a trash receptacle.  So how is it we, as a global community, can find the littering of our space environment as even remotely acceptable?  NASA and other space programs of the world must adapt a more pro-active approach to how they handle and discard of their respective “space trash.”

 

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Not just little green men…

Consider for a moment the immense vastness of our universe.  I mean really consider it!  Try to fathom something so large that we simply can’t pinpoint its origins or its boundaries.  What’s really out there?  We have explored only a fraction of the universe, equivalent to a handfull of sand lifted from the vastness of the Sahara desert’s floor.  The handful representing the efforts of our exploration of our solar system and the Hubble’s massive “eye” into the near cosmos.  Even with its incredible optics (after being repaired) we have still only explored a fraction of our universe.  Not to mention that everything we see through our ground-based and orbiting telescopes is a vision of the past, not the present state of what we observe as it has taken the light we see in our telescopes hundred or thousands of “light years” to reach us on here on earth.

So given that astronomers are just starting to find proof of pseudo-equivalent “solar systems” and stellar communities in which a habitable planets may very well exist, just imagine how many similar places in our universe may potentially be discovered in time.

The quintessential little green men with abnormally large eyes have crept in and out of the popular culture, media, television and more throughout the last several decades, but nothing has ever materialized of it all besides Hollywood dollars.

We speak of possible time travel to the past and future but if such travel is possible, then why have we not encountered travelers from the future and their tales of what’s to come on a regular basis?  If this technology were to come to fruition, then I would have to imagine those that had it would use it.  So why have they not appeared amongst us?

Time travel, per say, would be the one way we, as an exploring civilization, could ever venture the massive distances needed to discover potential new life in any kind of reasonable time frame.  But, the true question is whether a far advanced civilization has managed to break the speed of light barrier and venture to new worlds, like ours, and explore new life.

Mathematically speaking, there  is simply no chance that life does not exist on other planets.  Whether or not the numbers mentioned in “The Knowing” are exactly accurate or not, the logic and assumption is not just reasonable, but realistic.  With billions of stars, galaxies and cosmic bodies within our universe, we simply cannot be so narrow minded to think otherwise.  Take this opportunity to think back to Magellan and Columbus.  These men were also considered foolish in their times as they ventured into the unknown.  What if they had accepted the general public’s opinion and never ventured out and discovered new land?  Consider that 100-200-500 years from now, people will be looking back at our generations and marvel at our narrow-mindedness and wonder what it must have been like to not know of our cosmic neighbors.

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Nature of a galaxy…

I often look at galaxies (with some degree of difficulty and frustration) and find myself striving to understand what creates the multitude of shapes and formations we all see through our respective eyepieces. According to researchers, there are four distinct classes commonly associated with the shapes of the galaxies in our night sky. They are as follows:

(1) spiral – as our very own Milky Way demonstrates with seemingly spiraling arms,

(2) lenticular – considered spiral galaxies without the “arms” or “bands,”

(3) elliptical – which are said to take on a football-like shape and have no apparent rotation,

(4) irregular – galaxies that appear to be in somewhat of a random formation (possibly due to surrounding gravitational forces from neighboring objects).

Both the elliptical and irregular galaxy formations could also be described as having a star cluster like appearance. Young stars within each galaxy are classified as population II by physicists where the older stars make up the bulge form near the center and are classified as population I stars.

So, what causes galaxies to take on such different compositional shapes? One of the now understood causes of galaxy formation is attributed to the fact that many of them have a black hole at their centers (including our Milky Way). Their massive gravitational forces pull in nearby established stellar systems and newly formed stars until they become trapped. But it is said that not all galaxies have a powerful black hole at their centers. If not, then what force has pulled such massive gatherings of cosmic entities into a respectively close proximity and what makes them appear in the shapes that they do?

Let’s think of centripetal forces as they act on Earth. If one were to semi-submerge a textured sphere (for the sake of having some friction) or ball (as a sphere is a more accurate representation of a black hole) into a pool of water and spin it on a fixed 90 degree vertical axis, we might begin to see swirls in the water surface “waking” out from the sphere itself. This could be said to mimic the actions of a spiral galaxy with a black hole at its center that may have a “hightened” rotation and a significant gravitational force based on it’s sheer size and density of mass.

Now take this same semi-submerged ball and create a somewhat severe off-angle oscillating rotational axis while spinning it. Given the “wobble” effect that should present itself when being spun, the patterns on the surface of the water would lose their wave-like wake patterns and become more erratic as it wobbles. Could it be feasible to think that similar behaviors could occur within our galaxies?

Could the variations of a black hole’s massive gravitation pull, angle of axis to it’s rotation and the centripetal forces created by their respectively powerful rotation establish a galaxy’s form? If so, it would indicate that the greater the axial wobble (degrees off 90) from a galaxy’s black hole in its rotation, the greater the possibility that the galaxy’s spiral or disc-like structure will crumble and will develop a more spherical of irregular order. This would render a spread of the combined forces (gravity, centripetal) and the encircling stellar masses across a more spherical pattern rather than an expected organized disc. So the higher the angle off of center of a black hole’s axial rotation, the more it will spread it’s forces from it’s equatorial plane and result in a more random or spherical shape to it’s surrounding galaxy. The “truer” a black hole’s axial rotation is, the more disc-like or spiral-like it it will appear. So what gives one galaxy spiraling arms (spiral galaxy) and another simply a smoother disc-like appearance (lenticular galaxy)? Could the speed of the black hole’s rotation on it’s axis determine this? Does one simply spin faster than the other and thus result in a different disc structure?

I realize this example does not include the galaxies without a central black hole. It would only seem logical that these galaxies begin to form in a random manner and develop and grow based on the multiplication of gravity from the growing number of stars in respective close proximity. As they slowly gather, their gravitational forces begin to work like one. Irregular galaxy’s may be the best representation of a formation without a black hole at it’s center. But this is only a brief assumption considering the fact that it has yet to be proven that there isn’t a black hole hidden within every galaxy.

The tools at our current disposal simply cannot accurately asses this yet. Yet one aspect of galaxy formation I have not covered, the conservation of angular momentum, is simply because it delves into mathematical equations beyond my abilities to follow. If anyone cares to define it in lamens terms for me, I would certainly appreciate it.

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Observation is still king…

One of the most valuable tools available to both astronomers and physicists both throughout history and in the modern day is observation.  

This fact was made evidently clear to me when I lived in Wichita, KS.  I noticed that my next door neighbor had a yard shed in his back yard that strangely had two panels of latticing erected to either side of the door.  I thought this was a strange place to put latticing and ventured to ask him for an explanation for doing this.  He asked that I wait for nightfall and he would be happy to show me.  

Later that evening, he came to my door and asked if I was still curious about his shed.  He took me into his back yard and asked me to wait just outside the shed as he unlocked the door and reached in around the back of the door.  He pressed the button of a specially rigged garage door opener on the side wall and stood back with me as we watched the roof of the shed begin to slide off the shed’s walls and over our heads, coming to rest on the rails atop the latticing.  I quickly realized he had constructed a personal observatory as he stepped inside and swiveled a massive telescope from a fixed stand in the center of the floor.  I don’t recall the size of the scope now, but it was a biggy!  Covering each of the four walls of the inner shed were charts, maps, photos and more of the cosmos above us.  He switched on his red light atop the small tabletop to one side and began to show me objects in the night sky I thought I would only ever see in magazines.  The colors, the planets, double stars, globular cluster and bright nebulas came jumping out at me as if I was at the helm of the Hubble itself.  

We became good friends and spent many hours in his shed over the next couple of years.  He has been writing for Astronomy magazine for several years now and is probably the most passionate person I know about astronomy and the laws of the universe.  His passion is what ultimately drew me into it all.  

One day I stopped by to chat and he introduced me to a gentleman on his hands and knees in his front foyer laying down new hardwood flooring. The man stood up and introduced himself as Tom Bopp.  Yes, the Bopp of comet Hale/Bopp.  Tom Bopp is by trade, a carpenter.  Hale was the professional astronomer and Bopp the amateur who both found the comet in the night sky and almost simultaneously reported it to CBAT and thus the comet was named after them both.  That evening, he and my neighbor came over for a few drinks and Tom brought along his laptop.  For the next four to five hours we all sat back while Tom showed us slide upon slide of from his make-shift career as an amateur astronomer.  It was amazing to see all of his slides.  What an amazing night is was.

By way of my neighbor and Tom, it has become plainly clear to me that a passion for observation is one of the most powerful scientific tools when it comes to understanding the cosmos.

 

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Astronomy•cal claims…

Carl Sagan once wrote;

“I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.  Those explorations required skepticism and imagination both.  Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were.  But without it, we go nowhere.  Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations.”

Clearly imagination must be the source from which astronomy•cal theories are developed about the cosmos that surround us.  But according to Sagan, skepticism is the very tool to keep things in check, helping to filter out the fantasy from reality.

We live in a world that can at times feel overwhelming and simply larger than life.  But what is worth keeping in perspective is the thought that we as a human race could be compared to something like a “Mote of dust.”  I prefer, for example purposes, a gnat standing upon a grain of sand.  A grain which lies on miles of surrounding desert.  As this gnat, we have only ventured to jump to a few of the surrounding granules and have somehow developed this sense of knowledge of the entire desert around us.  Sure, our small group of sand granules have demonstrated certain characteristics from which we can feel comfortable proclaiming certain principles and theories about, but we simply cannot make viable assumptions about the desert from a few granules in our proximity.

Massive land-based mirrors, the Hubble telescope, lunar landings and interstellar travel by roving robots have given an unbelievable amount of information and observations about our immediate “granules” but characteristics of our local cosmic neighborhood cannot be assumed throughout the massive universe as a whole.  There may be a dust storm or raging winds on the other side of our desert and based on our location, we simply would not be aware of this fact based purely on measurable scale.  

If the desert metaphor doesn’t work for you, think of our exploration (to this point) as a bustling metropolis. Our solar system is our neighborhood and the city around us could represent the distances we’ve traveled, both physically and by way of telescopes, rovers and scientific tools we currently have at our disposal. Remember the first time you traveled to another country and how drastically different things were on foreign soil?  Things we thought we understood and accepted as constants quickly became obsolete.  Wouldn’t this happen to us even on a scientific level if we ventured beyond our metaphorical city?

In a universe in which we cannot determine an exact moment of beginning (singularity) and have no reasonable grounds to claim we know of an exact moment or measure of ending (boundaries of our universe), how are we to speculate that the laws and principles we find true to our surroundings should apply to unknown distances both in the past (origins of our universe) and the bounds of our future and the surrounding universe?  One key, and third, factor that must be incorporated into Sagan’s two underlying elements of exploration must be scaled perspective.

To read more about the intrigues of our universe, click the top blog header to read other posts.  If not, this one may interest you… Click Here.

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Bouncing balls and other objects in motion…

So we’re now back to objects in motion.  Below is a response I received recently from someone who reluctantly decided to respond to one of my posts.  His issue was with my statements about Newton’s theories related to the basic principle that, “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” (see post near bottom of this blog titled, Universal Thoughts of a nomadic mind).  

Although I am quite sure his knowledge of physics is clearly more advanced than mine, I find his statements a bit puzzling…

 “… you are still in the ‘discovery’ mode and need to get a firmer grasp of physics in order to judge what is right or wrong. The bouncing balls are an example. It is understood that for elementary physics a perfectly elastic collision is assumed. As soon as you talk about acoustic energy lost, you are violating the premise on which the example was built, as a simple tutorial.  Everyone knows that a perfectly elastic collision does not exist.” 

Specifically the part in which he says that, “for elementary physics a perfectly elastic collision is assumed”… then continues to say, “Everyone knows that a perfectly elastic collision does not exist.”  If I am understanding him correctly, then it would seem that as a physicist’s (or someone who has a deeper understanding than I) examples or theories in their science are often made “simpler” or more “feasibly possible” for the sake of understanding an explanation.  So much so, it would seem, that they could essentially de-qualify their very own scientific foundations as they become mainstream. In this case, he directly states that a perfectly elastic collision does not exist!  Does this not essentially back up my original claim that Newton’s theory (mentioned above) is not entirely accurate?  If a perfectly elastic collision doesn’t exist in the universe as we know it, then how can every action have an equal and opposite reaction?  It would seem his statement supports the idea that, every action has a potentially unequal and possibly opposite (based on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle) reaction.  So, I appreciate his comments, but not sure how they have helped define or clarify the very principles involved here.

Moving on…  I wanted to briefly discuss the theories behind motion and how it’s is “relative.”  In the common example of a person on a train looking out upon the passing forest, the onlooker will notice that the trees closest to them will appear to be moving by faster then the trees further in the distance.  This examples is used to support the idea that motion is relative to the observer involved.

My question is this… is the speed relative to the observation, or is the observation relative to speed?  Meaning, is speed/motion constant or measurable, in it’s context and to some level of accuracy, and the observer/observation is actually the variable? Wouldn’t this have to be true in order to say that light travels exactly at 983,571,056.4 feet per second.  Can light have a fixed value if speed/motion itself is relative?  So, if speed is the fixed or measurable value, what does that mean about the very nature of observation itself.  Can we ever “observe” with any degree of consistency or accuracy to make clear assessments of the certain fixed values around us or in our universe?

Food for thought.

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Wormholes but no worms!

Let me premise this post with the following thoughts: Heisenberg founded something called the uncertainty principle (a principle which claims that it is impossible to know the exact velocity and position of a particle at any point in time – relatively speaking) which is well complimented by Kurt Godel’s theory that when speaking mathematically, it is impossible to prove all true statements.  Considering the combination of these two principles, it’s a wonder how physics can be studied with any validity at all.

With that said, let’s continue to the curious notion of wormholes. Those of more knowledge than myself state that the elements of space and time combine to create a “fabric” called space-time.  They  continue to say that this “fabric” is not flat, but curved and entirely relative to the observer and the shortest distance between two points is actually along a great circle (think of the path an airliner takes from New York to Paris – it actually arcs northward over Newfoundland and the British Isles, not in a straight line across the Atlantic).  

Let’s take for example an apple.  It’s skin could be peeled and laid flat on a table, but it’s natural state is curved around the inner fruit.  Any worm could eat its way from one side to the other.  In doing so, the worm essentially travels through a wormhole or great circle – shortest path between two points.  

Now, if the apple’s skin were peeled and laid flat on a table after the worm moved on, the entry and exit holes left on the skin would be at a significant distance apart compared to the distance traveled originally by the worm.  Now think of space-time as flat. The distance between points A to B is significantly greater then when space-time is curved and a wormhole is traveled through.   This, according to experts, only works if the two openings remain open and do not close into a point of singularity at any point.  With this wormhole open for passage, it significantly shortens the required travel distance and time for moving from point A to point B.

The next dilemma we now encounter is that if one were to travel through the wormhole, they would travel in time – seeing that space and time are a unified fabric.  So in order to travel through space, one must also travel in time.  Clearly, the time it would take to travel from point A to point B in the top half of the above diagram is significantly longer than in the bottom diagram.  

Now, in order to travel back or forward in time – depending on which direction the wormhole guides you -than the traveler must travel faster than the speed of light.  To put this in perspective, our fastest current spacecrafts travel upwards of 15-17,000 feet per second, where light travels at a slightly higher 983,571,056.4 feet per second.  To top this off, it is claimed by Einstein and friends, that no matter how fast a spacecraft travels, a beam of light will never slow relative to the speed of the spacecraft.  Meaning that even if the rocket travels at 99% of the speed of light, light itself will still appear to pass by the spacecraft at 983,571,056.4 feet per second.  Regardless of speed, a travelers can, in theory, never reduce the relative speed of light when measured against their rate of acceleration.

So, in order to shorten the distance between stellar system for interstellar travel (through time), one must do a few things first.  (1) They must find,create and sustain a wormhole, (2) find a fuel that can sustain ridiculous speeds, and (3) travel faster than light – which apparently has been defined by physicists as impossible based on the fact that light will simply never let you catch up to it.

Again, the bewilderments of the complexities of physics astound me…

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Great resource… Astrophysics – Harvard-Smithsonian website

Our universe and uniform distribution…

Friedmann’s claims that the universe, as we can see it, is the same in any direction is another concept that physicists seem to accept, but why?  Measured uniform background “noise” registered from the distant corners of the universe by Penzias and Wilson at Bell Telephone Laboratories may be the reason.  But does it hold water?  

Looking deep into something so vast as our universe, they seem to be taking a law of averages approach to a science which has prided itself in repeated precise measurements.  Anyone can clearly look up at the night sky and see differences in every direction.  Take constellations for example.  They demonstrate an immediate difference in what we see in specified directions.  If we look deeper, the density of objects increases, but does it really become identical?  Not exactly.  Astronomers pride themselves on the uniqueness of each stellar object they observe even if it is a view into the past.  

This principle, for arguements sake, is virtually equivalent to claiming that a stadium filled with roaring football fans is identical in whatever direction a player on the field would look – not to mention that the background noise would sound uniform under the general roar of the masses.  Yet, clearly, a closer look into any cross section of the crowd would reveal different ratios in categories of men, women, children, some blond, some brunetts, some tall, some short, some with red jerseys, some with white jerseys, some with random colors of shirts, etc.  Each section would not contain equal ratios. 

So, why do physicists embrace Friedmann, Penzias and Wilson concepts of a uniform universe even when it has now been coupled with the Einstein’s theory of the cosmological constant which states claim that our universe and space-time have an inbuilt tendency to expand.  Take the same crowd at the stadium and spread (expand) them out into a large parking lot and have them uniformly distance themselves from others around them.  Wouldn’t this eventually result in clearly distinctively different cross section of the original crowd.  A blond would stand out more in a thinned out crowd, versus the exceptionally tall man in the other cross section next to it.  These characteristics in the crowd within the stadium would have been more difficult to pick out.  Wouldn’t the same observations apply when referring to the universe as it expands?

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