Today we celebrate the Leap Year. Why?

-  1838  -  February 29 a leap day in a leap year, Why?   What causes us to change clocks around the world by leap days and even by leap seconds?  The Earth’s rotation is slowing down.
-

-
-------------  1838  -    Today is a Leap Day, February 29, 2016.
-
-  February 29 is an extra day this year because 2016 is divisible by 4.  Whoever came up with that?  Why do we need a Leap Year to keep our calendar in sync?  In sync with what?
-
-  If we had a calendar with 364 days and exactly 52 weeks a year then each date would be on the same day of the week each year.  Holidays would always fall on the same day of the week.  How much simpler can you get?
-
-  The Earth’s orbit around the Sun does not quite cooperate.  In order to do this system of calendar management we would have to add a whole week the end of December.
-
-  The Earth’s orbit ( years ) measured in the Earth’s rotation ( days ) do not ratio cleanly.  A day is 23 hours and 56 minutes.  A year is 365 days and 6 hours.
-
-  For centuries we have been trying to sync up days with years.  The year is actually 365.2422 days long.  There is no clean way to clean up these dangling fractions.
-
-  After many attempts since the Egyptians started it The Gregorian Calendar is the one we are using, sorta.  Every year divisible by 4 we call a Leap Year and throw in an extra day, 365 to 366 days in 2016.
-
-  Even that does not work exactly.  If a year can be divided by 400 evenly we also add a day.  If not we don’t.  Year 2000 yes, year 2100 no.
-
-  This string of math corrections will work for the next 3,300 years.  Then we are going to be another day off.  We want the calendar to match the seasons of the Year.  The Easter Bunny won’t come in July and Santa Clause could not ride his sleigh in April.
-
-  So, to keep the seasons and the calendar we have been changing things since 1582.  Pope Gregory XIII changed the calendar Julius Caesar started in 46 B.C.  Caesar’s was a week off.  So, Pope Gregory’s calendar is closer but we still have to keep tweaking it.
-
-  Actually, that does not bother me as much as day-light-savings changing our clocks back and forth.  That government edict does not match my body clock.  It is ironic is the most accurate thing we can measure.  See the Reviews on atomic clocks.
-
-  In addition to the “Leap Day” we are going to get at ‘Leap Second” this year.
-
-  We won’t notice it , but, the National Standards Labs will click their Cesium beam atomic clocks ahead one second in order to keep “atomic time” in step with “ astronomical time”.  You won’t notice it unless computers around the world take whole systems down.  That won’t happen, right?
-
-  The leap second was first used in 1972.  In fact, they jumped a whole 10 seconds in order to catch up.
-
-  It is challenging for the world’s computers to keep up with this stuff correctly.  An International Standards Committee makes the decision.  Then, the engineers need to react with new software.  In 2012 the change brought down several major systems in the U.S.
-
-  Earth’s rotation is not consistent.  Right now the Earth’s rotation is slowing down requiring more leap seconds, more often.  Apple and Google made the leap second changes in their software.  Windows just ignores it.  Then, catches up at a later revision update.
-
-  The NY Stock Exchange closes for a half hour early to make certain system changes are all working ok.
-
-  The GPS is off by 19 seconds because recalculating would change position calculations inaccurately.  Better to have the clocks different then for you to miss your turn.  To go from GPS time to Universal Time just add 19 seconds.
-
-  Why not just forget trying to keep clocks in sync.  Run two clocks like GPS does?  If we let then drift apart they would only be off a few minutes in 100 years. So, you would be late to work.  So, what?  Is it worth the price of perfection?
-
-  California is even considering going off Daylight Savings Time.  It is all about governments trying to keep up with science.  People trying to keep up with changes.
-
-  An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1725  -  We are running out of time.  It is only strange if you think about it.
-  This above Review lists 12 other reviews about “time”.
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------   Monday, February 29, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How the Sun gets all that energy

-  1834  -  That Lucky Ol’ Sun got nothing to do?   This review tells how the Sun gets its energy and how it compares with other stars in the Universe.   And, how long will the Sun live?
-
-

-
-----------------  -  1832  -  That Lucky Ol’ Sun got nothing to do?
-
-    That lucky ol’ Sun got nothing to do but to roam around heaven all day?  It looks peaceful but that sunshine is coming from nothing but.  The Sun’s surface is twisting, towering loops and swirling cyclones that reach millions of degrees temperature.  Called the “ Corona” it sports radiation far beyond the visible light that we can see.
-
-  Studies have found the Sun to be a giant magnetic star, obeying the laws of electromagnetism.  Astronomers are still trying to learn what is causing this behavior.  What is driving the magnetic system?
-
-  The Sun’s magnetic storms and explosions ,or flares, create the “ space weather” we experience on Earth.  The most familiar being the “ Auroras” at the north magnetic pole.
-
-  The Sun is also creating the interplanetary magnetic field that astronauts  must travel through safely.
-
-  The Sun is made of “ plasma” which is a gas-like state of matter in which electrons and positive ions (hydrogen nuclei) in to a hot mix of charged particles.  When charges move they create a magnetic field encircling their direction of motion.  Just like electricity moving though a wire creates an electromagnetic.
-
-  The Sun’s enormous heat churns up massive currents of rising and falling plasma above the nuclear furnace at the center. The results is the Sun’s surface is dynamic chaos of loops and towers of material radiating EUV images, Extreme Ultraviolet.  The surface photosphere is marked with sunspots which are the cooler tails of these magnetic loops.
-
-  The solar dynamo is still a mystery that is known to drive the 11- year activity cycle known as sunspots.  The cycle is referred to as the Solar Maximum and Solar Minimum.  At Solar Minimum the magnetic field is concentrated at the poles.  At Soar Maximum the magnetic field becomes tangled and disordered creating flares and corona mass ejections.
-
-  Our Sun will eventually burn all its hydrogen fuel and expand into a Red Dwarf and then compress into a White Dwarf star.  If it were larger it would instead explode into a Supernova.
-
-  These exploding stars produce the Universe’s most energetic and powerful gamma rays,  the highest frequency, shortest wavelength electromagnetic radiation.
-
-  The best observer we have today for these powerful Gamma Rays is the Fermi Space Telescope.  Most of he Gamma Rays are generated by “Blazers”.  These are generated by compact elliptical galaxies anchored by active super massive Blackholes.
-
-  “Pulsars”  are also responsible for some Gamma Ray radiation.  Even our Sun can produce these powerful rays.  The Gamma Ray frequencies range between 50  billion and 2,000 billion electron-volts.  The visible light your eyes respond to is 2 to 3 electron-volts, for comparison.
-
-  The Fermi satellite telescope is busy cataloguing these Gamma Ray sources in a large patch of sky.  We want to learn what generates this enormous power and the mechanism that accelerates the sub-atomic particles producing gamma-ray emissions.
-
-  Our Sun is certainly a gentle giant among these stars.  We may get a sunburn from ultraviolet radiation or a solar flare may knot out satellites and power grids, but, nothing like what could be happening living too close to a larger star.  Thank your lucky stars for that.
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-  Footnote (1):  How does the Sun produce its energy and how long will it last?
-
-  4 protons are fused to produce one helium nucleus.
-
-  Some energy is released per proton  =   6.7  MeV  /  proton.     ( million electron volts)
-
-  The total mass of the Sun is 2*10^30 kilograms.
-
-  The mass of a proton is 1.67*10^-27  kilograms
-
-  Therefore the Sun contains  1.2*10^57 protons.
-
-  The total power emitted by the Sun is 3.9*10^26 joules / second.    A joule is a unit of energy = a watt per second.  Each electron-volt is 1.6022810^-19 joules.  Or, in other words 1.6022*10^-13  joules / MeV.
-
-  So, the number of protons burned each second is:
-
------------------  6.7 MeV  /  proton  *  ( 1.6022*10^-13 joules /  MeV)  =  10.73*10^-13 joules / proton
-
-----------------3.9*10^26  joules / second   /   10.73*10^-13  joules / proton  =  0.36 *10^39  protons / second.
-
-  That is a lot of protons / second.  How long will the Sun last at that rate?
-
-----------------  1.2*10^57  protons  /  0.36*10^39 protons / second  =  3.33*10^18 seconds.
-
--------------------  3.33*10^18  seconds  /  3.16*10^7 seconds / year  =  1 *10^11 years.
-
-  So, if the Sun burned all of its protons it would last for 100 billion years.  However, the Sun only fuses protons at its center where the core is hot enough and has enough pressure.  The inner most 10% is where fusion happens.  This 10% would allow the Sun to last only 10 billion years.  Since the Sun is about 5 billion years old it is mid-life in its evolution as our favorite star.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1720  -  How do we know the age of the Sun? Some math and lists 10 other reviews on the subject.
-
-  #1674  -  What causes a star to evolve into a Red Giant star , like our Sun will do in another 5 billion years.
-
-  #1220  -  Does the Sun contain the Periodic Table
-
-  #1168  -  How many pounds of hydrogen are used in fusion energy to heat up my backyard?
-
-  #918  -  What happens to the Sun when it runs out of hydrogen for fusion energy?
-
-  #858  -  How hot is the Sun?
-
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  RSVP, Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----------------
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Sunday, February 28, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can MRI's be lie detectors?

-  1835  -  Can MRI’s be lie detectors?  Magnetic resonance details tissues and blood flow inside the body.  That can reveal medical problems, can it reveal truth telling?
-
-

-
-----------------------------  -  1835  -  Can MRI’s be lie detectors?
-
-     Yes, MRI’s can be used as lie detectors.  To learn the physics of how the MRI works see Review # 820.  It is a brain scan or a body scan that looks inside the body at bones and tissues.  Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a very common technology that most hospitals are using.  The machine costs $3 million so the use is not widespread.
-
-  I developed knee and back problems that persisted for years. Finally, my doctor sent me for X-rays.  The X-rays are digital these days, no film to develop.  The doctor sets down with you immediately afterwards.  He said my knees were bone on bone on the inside edge.  The cartilage was “V” shaped, bulging out the outside edge the knee.  But, he said the real pain may be from your lower back.  He sent me to get an MRI.
-
-  This was terrifying.  A few weeks ago they put me in a hospital gown and slid me into a narrow MRI tube with barely 3 inches clearance around my head.  I have developed coffin claustrophobia .  I kept my eyes closed the entire time.  The machine made noises as the beam circled my body and ratcheted  down my back.  The beeps and dings persisted for 25 minutes.  The doctor gave me a panic button, but, no way would I push it.  I will not go through this twice.  But, he turned me around and put me back through the tube for another 25 minutes.  That 50 minutes took 5 years off my life!
-
-  With that experience I will never tell a lie.  Why?  Because MRI’s will soon be used as lie detectors.
-
-  The premise being that lying requires more cognitive effort and , therefore, more oxygenated blood flows in particular parts of the brain.  The MRI brain scan shows the flow of oxygenated blood.  The brain needs oxygen for mental activity.  So, the rise of oxygenated blood in one part of the brain indicates cognitive activity there.
-
-  Blood has different magnetic properties when it is oxygenated.  That is how the MRI can detect it.  During the brain scan the patient wears a copper head band coil in order to enhance the magnetic field around the skull.  No other metal can be on the body because it could invalidate the results.
-
-  If the MRI lie detector really works it may create a cottage industry of metal implants for criminals to avoid such scanning’s.
-
-  Human beings by themselves are terrible lie detectors.  We are easily duped.  By definition, the most convincing lies go undetected.  People routinely lie about sex, power, and money.  Therefore, an MRI lie detector would be useful in risk reduction while dating, in trust issues in inter personal relationships, in issues concerning money.
-
-  The federal government performs tens of thousands of polygraph tests a year.  Polygraph advocates cite accuracy estimates of 90%.  That sounds impressive but think of people’s lives ruined by a medicine they take that fails one out of ten times.  So the question becomes can an MRI brain scan be more accurate that today’s polygraphs?  Can it be used as evidence as solid as DNA evidence?
-
-  DNA evidence has freed more that 100 wrongly accused people since the 1980’s.  What about the federal government wanting evidence inside your encrypted smart phone?  Would that act free anybody?  Or, throw them in jail?
-
-  One of the reasons for success with polygraphs is the intimidation.  Criminals believe they are in the presence of an infallible machine. and they simply confess.  There is a case where the police used a Xerox copying machine.  The interrogated was asked to put his had on the glass.  The photocopy emerged with the suspects hand print and the word “LIE” written across it.  The suspect confessed.
-
-  Lie detectors have a long history.  The 1730 criminologist used the suspect’s pulse rate.  In the late 1800’s suspects were to hold their hand in at tank of water.  The subject’s pulse would cause the level of water to rise and fall slightly.  The greater the fluctuations the more dishonest the subject was judged to be.
-
-  In 1917 systolic blood pressure was monitored to detect deception.  It was seen as a better alternative than the brutal interrogations then known as the 3rd degree.
-
-  In 1923 polygraph tests were judged too risky to be used in the courtroom.  However, half the states allow the tests on the understanding that charges will be dropped before trial if he passes and the results could be introduced as evidence if he fails.
-
-  Physiognomy  in the 1800’s held that a person’s character was manifest in this facial features.
-
-  Phrenology held that the truth could be determined in the bumps on one’s skull.
-
-  More recently “brain fingerprinting” used EEG sensors to detect the brains electrical signals when processing memory.  Analysis later learned that it was impossible to distinguish between brain signals produced by actual memory and those produced by an imagined alibi.
-
-  Then after 9-11-2001 there was the thermal imaging used to detect terrorists based on the area around the eyes heating up when people lie.  However, increased blood flow that raises the temperature around the eyes is just another mark of stress.
-
-  The whole premise of these detection schemes assumes that telling a falsehood creates a conflict within the liar.  The liar feels guilty or anxious and these feelings produce a measurable physiological response.  The MRI assumption is that the conflict is cognitive, the liar’s brain has to work a little harder to make up a story.  But, are these assumptions true for the sociopath who feels no conflict when lying.  Or, maybe the autistic that may me tested?  Or, maybe a politician?
-
-  However, in today’s world there is an understandable hunger for effective ways to expose evil doers.  “Brain scans indicate”  become a powerful phrase in our desire for security and certainty.  We desperately want to believe that the objective measure of truth and deception will help protect the innocent and convict the guilty.  Well, will it really?  Where the reverse side of the truth has a hundred thousands shades and no defined limits.
What will the government think of next?
-
-  God only knows.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #820  -  Extreme magnetism.
-
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  Comments appreciated and Pass this on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------   Wednesday, February 24, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Blackholes to Empty Space?

-  1831  -  From Blackholes to Empty Space?  The center of a Blackhole is expected to be infinite density.  The space between Blackholes is supposed to be an empty vacuum.  Both offer mysteries yet to be discovered.
-
-

-
-----------------  -  1831   -  From Blackholes to Empty Space?
-
-   Blackholes are concentrated regions of space where matter and energy are squashed so densely that the gravitational escape velocity exceeds the speed of light.  Nothing can exceed the speed of light so not even light can escape.  In contrast there is empty space where there is no mass there is no gravity.  There is nothing in space to impede the speed of light.
-
-  The idea is that the Big Bang itself could have started out as an enormous Blackhole 13.8 billion years ago.  The dense point is called a “singularity” that somehow it reversed itself, bounced outwards,  and began expanding creating space and time as it recreated the Universe from “nothing” it just left.  Today we are still expanding.
-
-  Could there really have been a Blackhole so big it contained the whole Universe inside it?  Studying Blackholes and Big Bang currently have different theories of explanation.
-
-  The difficulty in studying the Big Bang and Blackholes is that as variables approach the infinities in the math they blow up the equations.  Math no longer works.  We just do not have the theories to deal with it.
-
-  For lack of better term, when the math breaks down we just call it a “ singularity”, a point of infinite density.
-
-  The only difference in describing the Blackhole and the Big Bang is that the math for the Big Bang has the changing time dimension.  With the Blackhole the math assumes a static condition.  With the Big Bang over time the gravity is trying to compress the Universe but it is overpowered by the Dark Energy trying to expand it.  This happened about 4 billion years ago when Dark Energy began accelerating the expansion of the Universe.  Today the Universe is expanding at a faster and faster accelerating rate.  We do not know what is causing it.
-
-  In the early Universe everything was perfectly smooth and uniform.  The only variations were the Uncertainty Principle governing sub-atomic particles.  The chaos of particles had no point of concentrated density that would be needed to begin forming a Blackhole.  Only after the Universe expanded and small regions increased in density to where gravity could start to gather mass to form stars and galaxies.
-
-  When all the mass is uniform you can feel no gravity.  There is the same density of mass in every direction.  It all cancels out.  Blackholes came back on the scene millions of years after the Big Bang when densities could become concentrated enough for gravity to take over.
-
-  On the other end of the scale, between concentrations of mass we have empty space.  The space is not truly empty.  It still contains a few particles.  Our attempts to recreate this “ empty space” , a “ vacuum”, fall miserably short.  The  best example is the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator in Switzerland.  The 17 mile long vacuum tube is colliding two proton beams that are racing around the circle.  The protons make over a million loops before colliding head on.
-
-  Ideally the beams would travel in tubes containing a prefect vacuum.  Unfortunately, there is no such thing.  The LHC’s best they can do vacuum still contains 3 million molecules per cubic centimeter.  This is about the same density as the “ vacuum” of outer space 620 miles above the Earth.
-
-  Space between galaxies contains only a few hydrogen atoms per one cubic meter, 1,000,000 cubic centimeters.
-
-  These are particles we can measure.  Theory has it that space contains particles that we can not measure because they pop in and out of existence too quickly.  They are called “virtual particles”.  They exist and disappear so quickly there is no way to detect them.  Virtual Particles appear to be matter-anti-matter pairs that annihilate each other almost instantaneously.
-
-  In addition to this , space also contains radiation photons.  The most ubiquitous is the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation that was released as soon as the Big Bang expanded and cooled enough for neutral atoms to allow the release of photons.  So, you agree there is no part of space that is truly empty.
-
-  The densities of the Universe span from the vacuum of space to the singularity of a Blackhole and all the stuff in between.  We appear to exist somewhere in the middle with a density of 1,000 kilograms / cubic meter.
-
-------------------  Gold  --------------------  19,290       kg/m^3
-
-------------------  Coal  --------------------  1,350
-
------------------  Water  --------------------  1,000
-
-------------------Air ( 17C)  ---------------     128
-
------------------  Ice  -----------------------      913
-
-------------------  Teeth  -----------------      2,900
-
-------------------  Sun’s center  -----------  160,000
-
------------------  Dwarf Stars  --------------  10^10
-
-----------------  Uranium Nucleus  --------  10^18
-
----------------  Blackhole  ------------------  10^19  or maybe the center is a Singularity at infinite density.  We do not really know.
-
-  Stay tuned, an announcement will be made shortly.
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1790  -  Explains why space and time must change in order to adhere to the Theory of Relativity.
-
-  #1773  -  The size of space depends on you fast you are moving.
-
-  #1407  -  Space is in constant motion.
-
-  #1241  -  at the smallest levels things remain connected even though they are separated in space.
-
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  RSVP, Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----------------
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Sunday, February 21, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pluto, Dwarf Planets and Asteroids. Evolution on Earth.

-  1829  -  Dwarf Planets and Asteroids.  Not the 8 planets in our Solar System ,but, the Dwarf Planets , asteroids, and comets that have had the most impact on the evolution of life on Earth.
-
-

-
-----------------  -  1829  -  Dwarf Planets and Asteroids.
-
-  July 14, 2015 New Horizons spacecraft in its closest encounter to Pluto found a very thin atmosphere, 1/100,000th the surface pressure of Earth’s.  The image was of an atmosphere laced with haze divided into a dozen layers.  The theory is that nitrogen, methane, and possibly carbon monoxide circulates from the surface into the air and back again.
-
-    There were nitrogen glaciers sliding down craggy mountains like water ice would do.  The sea of ices also appear to be a mix of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide.  The temperature is so cold that ice, liquid, and gas can coexist.  The temperature point is called the “triple point” where temperature / pressure allow all three states to exist at the same time.  The result is that the ices have the consistency of tooth paste.
-
-  No wonder there are so few craters.  The dynamic ices are flowing, churning, evaporating over decade time scales.
-
-  Craters are covered by squishy, sluggish, oceans of frozen gases.  These oceans are evaporating from the surface in a process called sublimation.  Evaporation at -390 F, Amazing!
-
-  Pluto has greatly exceeded expectations with its diversity of land forms and environmental processes.
-
-  The solid nitrogen ice layer may be up to a few miles thick.  Evaporation of this nitrogen ice and condensation on higher surrounding terrain leads to glacial flow-back toward the basins.
-
-  The solar wind is still traveling 900,000 miles per hour when it reaches Pluto.  Pluto’s out-flowing atmosphere provides a source of neutral atoms that can exchange electrons with the Solar Wind’s charged oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen atoms.
-
-  New Horizon spacecraft has imaged the surface of Pluto with a resolution down to 1,050 feet.  The average temperature is -240C and  our Sun appears as a bright star in the dark sky.  The flyby occurred at 31,000 miles per hour.  The flyby witnessed mountains that went 13,000 feet high and canyons that were 6 miles deep.
-
-  Pluto does not have a water-rain cycle, it has a nitrogen ice-liquid cycle.  Nitrogen gas frozen to a liquid is heated and cooled as the plant rotates on its axis.
-
-  Pluto is not cold and dead as  expected.  On the contrary it is geologically active.  There is possibly heat coming from an underground ocean of radioactive elements.
-
-  Pluto is 18% the diameter of Earth.  It is 0.22% the mass of Earth.  Average density is 2.05 g/cm^3 compared to Earth‘s 5.52 g/cm.    Pluto‘s orbit takes 248 years.-
-  Charon is a moon of Pluto that is 40% its size  
-
-  Charon has a surface of frozen ammonia, (NH3).  It has reddish colored ices along the north pole region.   Charon is 754 miles in diameter, compared to Pluto’s 1,442 miles diameter.  Charon is orbiting  12,179 miles from Pluto.  Our Moon is at 239,000 miles.  Charon orbits every 6.39 days. Density is 1.6 g/cm^3.
-
-  When the Rosetta spacecraft visited the Comet 67P , August 2014, it found a surface of permanent water ice.  The comet is 2.4 miles diameter covered in a dark dust.  It reflects only a few percent of the sunlight.
-
-  There is no doubt that these smaller bodies in our Solar System of 8 planets had a lot to do with he evolution on Earth.  The Moon was formed after a giant collision with a Dwarf Planet 4.3 billion years ago.  The asteroid that hit the Yucatan 65 million years ago wiped out 30 to 50% of the species on Earth, including 100% of the dinosaurs.
-
-  Today we can still worry about possible cosmic bombardment coming from the asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, or, the Oort Cloud of comets orbiting beyond Neptune.
-
-  Most of the cratering on the Moon is dated 3.5 billion years at the oldest to  1.2 billion years at the youngest.
-
-  The Oort Cloud host millions of bodies of ice and rock in tenuous orbits.  Any gravitational disturbance could hurl these comets towards us.  This gravitational disturbance is most likely to occur when our Solar System passes through the disk of the Galaxy.  This cycle repeats itself ever 28 to 32 million years.
-
-  Our Solar System is much more that a Sun and 8 planets.  In fact , it is the smaller Dwarf Planets, asteroids, and comets that have had the most impact on the evolution of life on Earth.  Stay tuned, an announcement will be made shortly.
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1769  -  When is the next asteroid going to hit Earth?
-
-  #1580  -  Asteroids the bricks that built the Solar System.  In 2013 there were 551,621  registered asteroids.  Ceres is the biggest at 620 miles in diameter.
-
-  #1554  -  Asteroids and meteorites are fossils with stories.
-
-  #1429  -  There is an asteroid heading right towards us.
-
-  #1375  -  There is an asteroid following us.  Earth and the asteroid share the same orbit around the Sun.
-
-  #1309  -  Vesta and Ceres get a visitor, the Dawn spacecraft.
-
-  #1296  -  When an asteroid hit Manson, Iowa.
-
-  #1265  -  This asteroid missed us, but , what if?  June 27, 2011.
-
-  #1315  -  How do asteroids and planets evolve?
-
-  #1193  -  Asteroid to hit mother Earth.
-
-  #1825  -  Asteroids responsible for evolution on Earth?
-
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  RSVP, Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----------------
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Thursday, February 18, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quantum systems and entanglement? What is space?

-  1828  -  Quantum systems and Entanglement.  How to connect the smallest particles in the Quantum World to the macro-world math that uses General Relativity?  Is the entire Universe a space-time fabric interconnected in this way?
-
-
-

-----------------  -  1828  -  Quantum systems and Entanglement.
-
-  At the quantum level , when you deal with the size of atoms and smaller particles they do not behave as the sum of the parts.  Instead quantum particles take on a collective behavior.
-
-  Science is reduced to rough approximations when dealing with these quantum particles. Atoms do not have predetermined positions.  They are located at all possible positions at the same time.  They take fixed positions only the instant they are measured ( called the Uncertainty Principle).  The result is completely random at the same time at the quantum level they are somehow physically connected.
-
-  To deal with this, science is reduced to “ probabilities”  To specify a position there is a probability highest at the center of a “ cloud” and gradually diminishes towards the outer fringes of the cloud.
-
-  Then “ quantum entanglement” makes the math extremely complicated.  First calculate the probability of the first particle being measured on a certain position.  The position of the second particle depends on the position of the first particle .  The third particle depends on the positions of the first two.  And, so on……..  The correlations depend on the position of all the previous particle positions.
-
-  The result for many, many particles become  “ quantum waves”.
-
-  The creation of these states of entanglement normally requires temperatures close to absolute zero and the application of enormously powerful magnetic fields.  ( called Bose-Einstein Condensations).  The temperatures are -270 C and the magnetic fields 1,000 times greater than everyday permanent magnets.
-
-  However, recent science has achieved entangled states on a semiconductor chip at room temperatures and using small magnetic fields.
-
-  When  photons are entangled they interact physically,  then forced to separate with the spin direction of one opposite to the spin direction of the other.  No matter how far the entangled particles are separated switching the spin of one immediately and instantaneously reverses the spin of the other.  The communication between the two entangled particles occurs faster than the speed of light.
-
-  Normally room temperatures mean thermodynamic entropy and chaos at the atomic levels.  It should be difficult to get entanglement in this completely disordered state at the atomic level.
-
-  Normally, to get an ordered state very high energy photons from a laser are passed through a non-linear crystal.  The result at the output is a single high-energy photon that can be split into two entangled lower energy photons.  The two photons have entangled opposing spin polarizations because there were spawned from a single particle.
-
-  To achieve this same entangled state at room temperature a whole new approach is needed.  An infrared laser is used to align the magnetic states of many electrons and positive charged nuclei.  Then, entanglement is achieved applying short electromagnetic pulses,  (like magnetic resonance imaging, MRI).  The process occurs on a silicon carbide semiconductor.  The volume of entangled particles is about the size of a red blood cell.
-
-  This achievement in attaining entangled states repeatedly and economically has enormous potential in an endless number of applications.  Including:  biomedical, secure encrypted communications, information processing, high capacity data transfer, GPS satellites, and still more to be thought of………………
-
-  It all is to come from understanding “ entanglement”.   Entanglement concerns tiny particles that contribute insignificantly to gravity.  But, could there be a link to space-time that is governed by gravity and linked to the Universe as a whole?  If space has some underlying physics it may include entangled particles inherently.
-
-  Science is even going to Blackholes to study this possibility.  Inside and outside the Blackhole entangled particles might be connected by “ wormholes”.  Wormholes could be the bridge linking distant points in space.  They are hypothetical tunnels through hyperspace connecting distant separations in space.
-
-  This idea has been expanded to view the entire Universe as a quantum computer encoding space-time as a web of entanglement.
-
-  This idea is rooted in the math for holograms - the boundary enclosing a volume of space that contains all the same information contained in the inside of that space.   The 2-dimensional boundary has all the information contained in the 3-dimensional space inside.
-
-  Add to this 3-dimensional space a 4th dimension of time with space expanding at an ever increasing rate.  Quantum Mechanics math describes the boundary at the micro-scale.  Gravity and General Relativity describe the space inside.  The 2 entities share no obvious relationship yet they may be connected with entanglement.
-
-  Does entanglement tie space - time together?
-
-  Is space really entangled particles that flash in and out of existence too quickly to ever be measured?
-
-  Stephen Hawking’s idea is that Blackholes evaporate with entangled particles getting separated at the Event Horizon.  Then, all the information evaporating is the same as all the information contained inside the Blackhole.  Information is never lost.  The Conservation of Energy and Information can never be destroyed.
-
-  Is the Event Horizon of a Blackhole actually a holographic boundary?
-
-  Do all the entangled particles that escape the Blackhole remain connected to their counterpart inside the Blackhole via wormholes, tunnels in space-time.?
-
-  Is the entire Universe a space-time fabric interconnected in this way?
-
-  Could the ideas mold into one theory for Quantum mechanics and General Relativity?
-
-  If we merge the enormous big and the infinitesimal small does that take us back to the Big Bang and the birth of the Universe.  God only knows.
-
-  Stay tuned, an announcement will be made shortly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1801  -  Entanglement - space-time and wormholes
-
-  #1231  -  How entanglement crosses the Universe.  Calculations are made for the size of the Universe.
-
-  #1229  -  Is the Universe entangled in property pairs that defy reason?
-
-  #1039  -  Entanglement in Quantum Mechanics.  People in relative motion disagree about time and space.
-
- #1548  -  Quantum gravity.  From the biggest to the smallest.  When you can not demonstrate something with experiment any theory will work.
-
-  #688  -  The Universe is a computer.  Space itself may just be a web of information.
-
-  #1817  -  Quantum Mechanics  and Gravity.  Are we all entangled to one another.  Or, do quantum properties disappear when things get larger?
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  RSVP, Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----------------
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Tuesday, February 16, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gravity waves discovered after 100 years.

-  1827  -  Gravity Waves Discovered!  2015 discovery, first predicted in 1915.  Gravity Waves are observed 100years later.  General Relativity predicted much more, including the expanding Universe, Blackholes, bending light waves, slower clocks, and even stopping time altogether.
-
-

-
-----------------  -  1827  -  Gravity Waves discovered using the LIGO telescopes.
-
-   The ripples in space-time were gravitational waves generated 1.3 billion lightyears away by two orbiting Blackholes.  The Blackholes were 29 and 36 Solar Mass each
6 miles in diameter spiraling into each other and merging into a single Blackhole.  That massive collision generated gravity waves felt a billion lightyears away.
-
-  As the Blackholes spiral into each other they are loosing energy by generating gravitational waves like a star looses energy emitting light waves.  These waves left the Blackholes when the Earth had only multi-cellar life 1,300,000,000 years ago.  The Blackholes merger lasted only a few milliseconds but the collision released 50 times more energy than all the power output of all the stars put together.
-
-  The gravity waves were detected by two identical interferometers.  One in Louisiana and the other in Washington state.  Two separate detections at the same time in these separate locations were needed to confirm results.
-
-  At each location a laser beam is split so it travels down a pair of perpendicular arms each a 2 ½ mile vacuum tube.  The beam bounces off a mirror and returns to the origin.  When the interferometer is set up the distances are identical and the light waves cancel each other.  ( See Review on LIGO for more details).
-
-  A passing gravity wave will stretch space-time in one direction and compress it in the other perpendicular direction.  When the arms are no longer identical an interference signal is generated at the origin.  This interference is so sensitive it can detect a change of 1/10,000th the width of a proton.
-
-  In addition to confirming gravity waves truly exist the results are proof binary Blackholes also exist.  Future detections are expected to locate orbiting Neutron stars, and Blackholes devouring a Neutron star, and even relic gravity waves produced by the Big Bang.
-
-  We now have a new way looking at the Universe  Our vision started with visible light.  Technology has expanded it to radio waves, microwaves, Gamma Rays, Neutrinos and now to Gravity Waves.  New ways of seeing.
-
-  Even more amazing to me was that Albert Einstein predicted these Gravity Waves existed 100 years ago, all just using his brain.  His discovery was not from technologies latest telescopes but through his imagination scratched out on paper.  He envisioned the physical process governing matter-energy and space-time while formulating abstract mathematical expressions corresponding  to this new reality.  He died in 1955, I was a freshman in high school, I still remember the news and impact it had on the school.
-
-  It all started in 1915.  Before then space was featureless and changeless with the math defined by Isaac Newton.  Einstein’s 4 papers merged matter and energy with E=mc^2.  Then he merged matter and space-time with gravity acting along curved paths of space-time.  Mass was seen to curve space-time while space-time was seen telling mass how to move.
-
-  General Relativity was a new mathematical vision for the entire fabric of the Cosmos.  It required that the laws of nature to appear the same to all observers regardless of their relative motion.  The speed of light was everywhere constant at 186,282 miles per second for all observers.
-
-  In 1919 his theory that gravity curves space was confirmed by a solar eclipse.  The light beam from a distant star behind the Sun changed  positions as the beam passed closest to the massive Sun.
-
-  Anything moving through a gravitational field follows a curved path in space-time.  To visualize this imagine two observers leaving the equator on Earth walking the shortest path to the North Pole.  The paths would correspond to the meridians.  The two would start out separated by some distance following different curved meridians.  As they approach the Pole they would grow closer together.  Their travel northward would appear to the observers as gravity pulling them together while simply following the shortest paths on the meridians.
-
-  Today astronomers are using Gravitational Lensing to detect unseen mass.  To discover Dark Matter that envelops every galaxy.  Einstein proposed this phenomenon in 1912.  It was first observed in 1979.
-
-  In 1915 Einstein calculated the orbit of the planet Mercury.  Using Newton’s math astronomers could not explain why the perihelion of Mercury’s orbit shifted forward by a slight amount ( less that 2 degrees of arc per 100 years.)  43 arc seconds could not be explained being due to gravity effects exerted by other planets.  Using Einstein’s math in General Relativity the math exactly corrected for the 43 arc-seconds.
-
-  General Relativity also explained the expanding Universe and space-time’s bottomless pits, Blackholes.  General Relativity is even used to correct GPS measurements.  The Global Positioning Satellites calculated positions on Earth by simple triangulation .  But, the answers have to also be corrected for satellite motion while being in less gravity.  Without GR corrections locations would be off by miles.  With corrections GPS can be within a few feet.
-
-  Einstein’s imagination showed that acceleration and gravity had to be two sides of the same coin.  In an accelerating rocket ship with no windows astronauts could not detect the difference.  Inertia and gravitational mass are equivalent.  For these proposals to be true the math required space and time to be different for different observers.  Every event had a location due to be specified in both time and space to yield a mathematical description that two observers could agree on.
-
-  To derive the math Einstein needed to us “ new “ math.  He had to abandon Euclidean Geometry.  Gravity distorted straight lines and angles.  Mass and energy distort the shape of space-time.  The new math instead used “tensors” to describe space and time.  Tensors are a type of vector that could describe a gravitational field.  Like velocity is a vector described by both speed and direction, example:  60 miles per hour due north.
-
-  General Relativity tensors describe geometry of space-time.  The equations show matter and energy density as the source of the gravitational field.  But, the equation is unstable.  It says the Universe must by expanding or collapsing.  It would be like a pencil balanced on its point.  The slightest disturbance and the pencil would fall in one direction.  To stabilize the equation Einstein added the Cosmological Constant term.
-
-  Decades later the Cosmological Constant is interpreted as the Dark Energy responsible for the Universe’s accelerating expansion.
-
-  Karl Schwarzschild used Einstein’s equations to define a “ critical radius” , a limit in which mass could be compressed to where the gravity ( space-time) would fold back on itself.  Even light would not have the escape velocity needed to get out of the gravity of the Blackhole.
-
-  Headlines, February 12, 2016,  “  Einstein’s was right about gravity ripples”  Scientists capture audio proof of gravitational waves, ripples in space-time , created by massive disturbance of mass-energy in the Universe.
-
-  LIGO detected gravity waves generated by the collision of two Blackholes 1.3 billion lightyears away.  The waves were detected in two locations simultaneously.  The chirp of sound waves were incredibly tiny, equivalent to a thumb width wavelength compared to the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy.
-
-  General Relativity has brought us these concepts by shortening space and slowing time as velocity increases approach the speed of light.  Then, time slows down for clocks in GPS satellites.  Traveling at light speed, time stops all together.
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1754  -  How gravity affects the Earth and the Moon, the galaxies and Blackholes.
-
-  #1751  -  All bodies accelerate the same in a gravitational field regardless of mass or composition.
-
-  #1456  -  Our Moon is 1/4th the size of the Earth but only weighs 1% as much.
-
-  #43  -  Studying gravity waves will allow us to peer far back into the beginning of space-time, to the birth of the Universe.
-
-  #1534  -  Gravity lensing.  The math involved.
-
-  #1470  -  Loop quantum gravity.  Are there atoms of space-time?
-
-  #588   -   Gravity Probe B.  The experiment to prove the frame dragging effect of a rotating mass, like the Earth.
-
-  #1728  -  Gravity waves.  Measuring the size of the Universe.
-
-  #1686  -  Using Baryon Oscillations to measure Cosmic distances.
-
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  RSVP, Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----------------
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Monday, February 15, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How big is our Solar System? Why doesn't the math work?

-  1826  -  How big is our Solar System?  New discoveries are making it bigger.  Why does the math work on our Solar System but not work on the Galaxy?  Dark Matter is the explanation.
-
-

-
-----------------  -  1826  -  How big is our Solar System?
-
-  The Solar System is the Sun and 8 planets in a flat rotating disk.  The Earth-Sun distance is called an Astronomical Unit (AU).  The 4 giant planets are the farthest out from the Sun:
-
------------------------  Jupiter  -------------------  5.2  AU
-
------------------------  Saturn  -------------------  9.5
-
------------------------  Uranus  -------------------  19.2
-
------------------------  Neptune -------------------  30.1
-
-  Beyond Neptune, at 30 times as far from the Sun as the Earth, is Pluto the first Dwarf Planet.  The Solar System does not stop at 8 planets.  Farther out we call them “Dwarf Planets” for lack of a better term.  Pluto shares the space, 30 to 100 AU, with millions of rotating bodies called the Kuiper Belt of comets and asteroids, and Dwarf Planets
-
-  The most distant large Solar System object , found so far , is called Sedna.  It was discovered in 2003 at a distance of 930 AU.  It takes 11,400 years to orbit the Sun.  Sedna is an icy rock about 1,400 miles in diameter.  Sedna’s orbit extends 31 times as far as Neptune at its most distant.
-
-  Along with Sedna astronomers have identified 10 other large bodies orbiting beyond the Kuiper Belt.  They all average a distance of 150 AU.
-
-  Unlike the closer planets that have nearly perfect circular orbits these distant objects have very elongated orbits.
-
------Elongated  Orbits  -----------  closest  --------------  farthest  ---------  orbit period
-
---------------------  Sedna  ----------  76 AU  ---------  930 AU  -----------  11,400 years
-
--------------------  2012VP113 -----  80  --------------  446  -----------------  4,300
-
-  Sedna orbits like a long-period comet.  Sedna’s orbit appears unanchored to the gravity of the 4 giant planets.  The same is true of a 2014 discovery ,  2012VP113 , had a similar elliptical orbit.
-
-  The suggestion to explain these perturbed elliptical orbits is that a “ super Earth” orbiting 250 AU could gravitationally explain things. ( computer modeling).  The super-Earth would be 2 to 15 times the mass of the Earth.
-
-  We need more data.  November 2015 another object V774104 has an orbit extending beyond Sedna’s.
-
-  Again, we need more data.  In 2018 a Large Synoptic Surveyor Telescope  ( LSST) will see first light on top of a mountain in Chile.  The large telescope should bring us many new discoveries enlarging our understanding of our Solar System,  with more data.
-
-  The hope is that if Planet “X” truly exists in our outer Solar System,  LSST will find it.  Maybe astronomers have already seen Planet X and don’t recognize it.  People tend to see what they are looking for.  Stay tuned , an announcement will be made shortly.
-
- If we have more data we learn the distance and the period of orbit.  Now we can calculate the mass that the object it is orbiting.
-
-  For example:  The mass of the Sun can be calculated knowing the period of Earth’s orbit.  This is Kepler’s 3rd law.  The period of orbit squared is directly proportional to the radius of orbit cubed
-
----------------------  p^2    =   4*pi^2 * a^3  /  G * M
-
----------------------  Mass  =  ( 4*pi^2/G)  *  a^3 / p^2
-
----------------------  p  =   period of orbit  =  1 year  =  3.15*10^7 seconds
-
---------------------  a  =  the average distance of orbit  =  150 million kilometers  =  1.5*10^11 meters
-
---------------------  a  =  93  million miles.
-
--------------------  Mass  =  5.9*10^11  a^3  /  p^2
-
--------------------  The mass is directly proportional to the cube of the distance of orbit and inversely proportional to the square of the period of orbit.
-
-------------------  Mass  =  5.9*10^11  *  (  1.5*10^11)^3   /  ( 3.15*10^7)^2
-
-------------------  Mass  =  2.0  *10^30 kilograms
-
-  The mass of the Sun  =  200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000  kilograms
-
-
-  The orbital velocity (v) for each of the planets decreases with distance ( r ):
-
----------------------  v^2  =  M * G  / r
-
-----------------------  Mercury   -----------------  107,082  miles per hour
-----------------------  Venus  -------------------  78,337
-----------------------  Earth   -------------------  66,615
-----------------------  Mars   -------------------  53,858
-----------------------  Jupiter   -----------------  29,236
-----------------------  Saturn   -----------------  21,675
-----------------------  Uranus   ----------------  15,233
-----------------------  Neptune   ---------------  12,146
-
-  The orbital velocity is the balance between the pull of gravity and the push of centripetal force.  The weaker the gravity the lower the orbital velocity needed to maintain this balance.
-
--------------------  Gravity   Force    G * m * M  /  r^2
-
---------------------  Force  =  mass  * acceleration
-
----------------------  F  = m*a
-
-------------------- acceleration  =  a  =  v^2  /  r
-
------------------     Centripetal Force  =  m * v^2 /r
-
--------------  An orbiting object balances the centripetal force trying to throw it out into space and the gravity force trying to pull it back to the center of gravity.
-
--------------------m*v^2  / r  =  G M m / r^2
-
-------------------  v^2  =  G * M  / r
-
-  Here are the escape velocities of the 8 Solar System planets.  This is the velocity of a rocket ship that can escape the velocity of the planet.. The more massive the planet the harder it is to escape its pull of gravity.
-
---------------------  (Velocity)^2   =   2 * G * M  /  R
-
---------------------  M is the mass
-
---------------------  R  is the radius
-
-----------------------  Mercury   -----------------  9,900  miles per hour
-----------------------  Venus  -------------------  23,300
-----------------------  Earth   -------------------  25,000
-----------------------  Mars   -------------------  11,250
-----------------------  Jupiter   -----------------  133,000
-----------------------  Saturn   -----------------  79,400
-----------------------  Uranus   ----------------  48,000
-----------------------  Neptune   ---------------  53,000
-
-  For example:  The escape velocity for the Moon:  The Potential Energy due to position ( r = distance to center of gravity ) is balanced with the Kinetic Energy of the velocity of the rocket ( v ).
-
------------------------  K.E.  =  P.E.
-
------------------------  K.E.  =  ½  m * v^2
-
------------------------  P.E.  =  G * M * m / r
-
------------------------  M  =  7.4*10^22 kilograms
-
------------------------  r   =  1.7*10^6  meters
-
-------------------------  ½  m * v^2   =  G * M * m / r
-
-----------------------  (Velocity)^2   =   2 * G * M  /  r
-
-  ---------------------  (Velocity)^2   =   2 * (6.67+10^-11   m^3/kg*s^2)  *   (7.4*10^22   kg)    /    ( 1.7*10^6   m)
-
------------------------  Velocity  =  2.4  km / sec
-
------------------------  Velocity =  5,368  miles per hour.
-
-  The rocket has to have an escape velocity of 5,368 miles per hour to escape the gravity of the Moon.  It has to have a velocity of 25,000 mph to escape the gravity of Earth.  This math has our confidence in data gathering for our Solar System.
-
-  But, it is not working for the Galaxy.  The more distant solar systems from the center of the Galaxy are orbiting at the about the same velocity.  The more distance the less gravity the centripetal force needed is less and they should be orbiting at a slower speed.  Not so.  They are all orbiting the Galaxy center at the same speed.  The math for escape velocity and orbital velocity does not work.  What’s wrong?
-
-  In order to explain this observation astronomers have created Dark Matter.  A halo of mass that is outside the Galaxy disk with 10 times the mass of what is inside in the disk.  The mass interacts with gravity but does not interact with electromagnetic radiation, therefore, it is “ Dark”
-
-  There is other evidence for Dark Matter but those are other reviews listed below.  We are searching to discover Planet X and for identifying the massive particles that make up Dark Matter.  Who says there is not more to learn.  Can we learn fast enough to survive?
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1157  -  The mysteries of our Solar System.  Uranus is the only planet that has its rotating axis on its side.
-
-  #1150  -  What is new and extreme in our Solar System?  Neptune has winds that reach 1,500 miles per hour.  Earth is the only planet, so far, that has an atmosphere with free oxygen.  We can breath easier.
-
-  #1524  -  Discovering new solar systems.
-
-  #1507  -  Geological history of the Solar System.
-
-  #15  -  The Sun and the planets in Six easy Pieces.  Lots of math.
-
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  RSVP, Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----------------
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    --------------------   Thursday, February 11, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1825 - Asteroids responsible for evolution on Earth?

-  1825  -  Asteroids responsible for evolution on Earth?  How many times has Earth been hit by a large asteroid?  What is the likelihood of another hit?  What is Congress and NASA doing about this potential danger?  The math to calculate the energy of an impact.
-
-

-
-----------------  1825  -  Asteroids responsible for evolution on Earth?
-
-  School kids study dinosaurs with wide-eyed fascination.  They really did live here.  Theme parks and museums show off the bones of the extinct giants.  Kids learn that the dinosaurs were killed off by an asteroid impact.  The 6-mile wide asteroid impact created the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago in the evolution of life on our planet.  See footnote (1) for the energy calculation.
-
-  There was another period, the Permian-Triassic Period, 250 million years ago that may have suffered the same asteroid fate.
-
-  Life on Earth began 3,500 million years ago.  There must have been many more asteroid impacts during our evolution.  There is evidence that 15 enormous asteroid strikes have occurred between 1,700 and 3,500 million years ago.  4 have occurred at the end of the Achaean Period, 2,500 million years ago.
-
-  The first living microbes appeared on Earth 3,500 million years ago.  Coincident with that period was a buildup of oxygen in the atmosphere and the beginning of multi-cellular organisms.
-
-  Most of Earth was covered with ocean during the Achaean Period.  Asteroid scars would reside on the ocean floor which would have been recycled into the Earth’s interior.
-
-  The oldest rock we can find are the Barbeton Greenstones in South Africa from the Achaean crust and the Pilbara Region in Western Australia.
-
-  Giant impacts melt rocks and create distinctive glass spherules ( little beads that look like caviar).  Finding the element Iridium along side of the spherules allows radioactive dating.
-
-  Compiled evidence suggests the Earth was pelted by asteroids 30 miles wide.  The impacts would have boiled the oceans, cooked the little dry land, and created a dust cloud locking the Sun for years.  Some of these impacts would have fractured the Earth’s crust and changed the plate tectonics.
-
-  Now the real mystery:
-
-  Did these ancient extinctions create the rise of photosynthesis?
-
-   Did they result in the emergence of eukaryotic cells, or predatory microbes?
-
-  See Review #1823  for a possible explanation of why Earth gets pelted wit asteroids every 33 million years, as we pass through the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy.
-
-  In 2010 NASA got the congressional order to identify 90% of the Near Earth Orbiting  NEO asteroids with a diameter of 1 kilometer ( 0.62miles)  or larger.
-
-  In 2013 an 8 meter ( 59 feet) rock exploded in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia injuring 1,600 people , mostly those looking out glass windows when they first saw the flash.  The shock wave that followed the flash caused over $30 million  in damage.
-
-  See Footnote (1) to learn the damage level of the asteroid Chicxulub that struck the Yucatan creating a crater 62 miles in diameter.
-
-  There are 1 million asteroids larger than 1 kilometer (0.62 miles), mostly orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.  8,000 are cataloged.  Asteroids only reflect light.  Using a spectrometer astronomers can determine the composition of the asteroid from this reflected light.
-
---------------------  There are 3 classifications:
-
--------------------  (1)  carbonaceous
-
--------------------  (2)  silicate  ( olivine)
-
--------------------  (3)  metallic
-
-  Comets are icy because they formed in the outer Solar System.
-
-  Asteroids are rocky because they formed in the inner Solar System, or are comets that migrated into the inner Solar System and the Sun evaporated their ice.
-
-  There are 500 Earth-Crossing Asteroids (NEOs).  All will impact over the next 25,000,000 years.  On average this calculates to an impact every 50,000 years.
-
-  The Congress ordered NEO search is currently using 3 telescopes , all ground based,   and a single satellite with wide-field infrared survey explorer.  This satellite detects the thermal glow as objects get heated by the Sun.  NASA’s funding to do this
NEO search is $40 million this year.
-
-  That would be a cheap price tag if NASA could predict an asteroid impact in time for space jockeys to go out there and do something about it.  ( This idea would make a great movie).
-
-  A 2017 launch of $500 million would send NEOCAM spacecraft on the mission to characterize the orbits, shapes, composition and spin rates of NEO’s.  This new data would help science trace out the history of the Solar System as well as select targets for robotic deep-space missions to intercept asteroids and redirect them.
-
-  Lets hope such a mission to redirect an asteroid is not too late or under funded to miss our chance.  The dinosaurs had no astronauts.
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-  (1)  The Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, Mexico is 100 kilometers across ( 62 miles0.  The asteroid impact was 17,500 miles across.
-
-  The density of the asteroid rock was 2,700 kilograms / meter^3.  (The density of water is 1,000 kg/m^3).
-
-  The volume of the asteroid is 2.81*10^12 m^3.
-
------------------------  Mass  =  Density  *  Volume
-
------------------------  m  =  2.81*10^12   *  2.7*10^3 kg
-
------------------------  m  =  7.6*10^15  kg
-
----------------------  Kinetic Energy  =  ½  Mass *  ( velocity)^2
-
----------------------  velocity  =  45,000 miles / hour,  (  20,000 meters / second)
-
----------------------  K E  =  ½  * 7.6*10^15  *  4*10^8  m^2/sec^2
-
----------------------  K E  =  15.2 *10^23  kg m^2 /sec^2
-
---------------------  One ton of TNT  =  4.2 *10^9  Joules of energy
-
---------------------  Impact  =  36,000,000,000,000  tons of TNT
-
---------------------  Magnitude 7 Earthquake  =  10^15 joules
-
---------------------  Impact  =  1,520,000,000 Earthquakes at one time.
-
----------------------Hiroshima atomic bomb  =  8.4 *10^13
-
----------------------Russia’s1961 atomic bomb  =  1.8 * 10*10
-
--------------------  Impact  =  1,500,000 atomic bombs all at once.

-  (2)  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1769  -  The mass of all known asteroids is less than the mass of the Moon.  Nearly 500 NEO asteroids have been discovered.
-
-  #1580  -  Asteroids - the bricks that build Solar Systems.  Most asteroids are not spherical because they are not massive enough for the necessary gravity.
-
-  #1554  -  Asteroids and meteorites are fossils with stories.
-
-  #1429  -  There is an asteroid heading right towards us.
-
-  #1375  -  There is an asteroid following us around the Sun.
-
-  #1309  -  Vesta and Ceres asteroids get a spacecraft visitor.
-
-  #1296  -  When as asteroid hit Manson, Iowa.
-
-  and more……….
-
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  RSVP, Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----------------
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Saturday, February 6, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cosmic Inflation explains a lot except what it is?

-  1824 -  Cosmic Inflation explains a lot about what astronomers observe.  But, astronomers can not yet explain how or why Inflation happened.  New telescopes are searching for Gravity Waves as new evidence to support this theory.  
-
-

-
-----------------  1824  -  Cosmic Inflation
-
-  The Universe is almost 14 billion years old.  So light has been expanding for 14 years and has expanded 14 billion lightyears distance in all directions.  We can see 13 billion lightyears in one direction with our best telescopes.  Then, rotate the telescope 180 degrees and we can see 13 billion lightyears in the opposite direction.
-
-  What we see in both directions looks exactly the same structure and composition.  But, those two locations are 26 billion lightyears apart.  There is no way light could have reached across the great distance of space that is between them.
-
-  To explain this Alan Guth came up with “ Cosmic Inflation”  For a brief time after the Big Bang the Universe, space, expanded faster than the speed of light.  Therefore, those two regions in opposite directions were at one time side by side.  They can look the same if they were one Cosmic cloud in the very beginning.
-
-  Cosmic Inflation explains this in theory, however, astronomers can find no observational evidence to how or why the theory could be true.
-
-  The theory required subatomic variations, fluctuations, to expand to several centimeters in diameter in one-trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, (10^-36 seconds).
-
-  Cosmic Inflation is miraculously faster that light.  It is the growth of space.  Over 14 billion years of evolution has taken us from Quarks in atoms to stars and planets.  Truly miraculous!
-
-  How do you explain this miracle?
-
-  Alan Guth says that space-time had a negative pressure, a repulsive force, that counter-acts gravity.  This force burped outward for a fraction of a second driving exponential growth faster than the speed of light.  Space can do this, it does not violate the law that not matter can travel  faster than light.  If matter tries this as it approaches light speed  lengths get shorter and time gets slower.  Matter can never get there, else time would stop.
-
-  Today Inflation is used to explain why space is “ flat” and why the entire Universe is connected as one.  “ Flat” means the Universe has the critical density to just balance gravity attractive pull and Dark Energy repulsive push.  This is a “ flat critical geometry” in contrast to a closed spherical geometry or an open saddle- shaped geometry.
-
-  To find evidence of Cosmic Inflation astronomers are looking for Gravity Waves.  Such a tremendous expansion must have created giant waves in space-time.
-
-  One hope is to find clues in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation ( CMB).  This radiation fills the sky and travels in all directions over the life of the Universe.  The Universe started out as charged particles, Quarks (positive charge) and electrons (negative charge).  Photons just bounced between the charges, never getting free for the first 380,000 years of expansion.  After 380,000 years of expansion and cooling the plasma reached 3,000K.  Protons and electrons could then combine to become neutral hydrogen.  Photons escaped into expanding space as the first light.
-
-  After expanding 13.8 billion years the Gamma Ray photons have lost energy with widening bandwidths to now be in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.  The temperatures in space have cooled to just under 3K.
-
-  Astronomers are searching this microwave radiation for signs of inflation, for gravity waves, for waves in light polarization, for density variations, for any evidence that proves Gravity Waves exist and Cosmic Inflation happened.
-
-  Quantum fluctuations , varying 1 part in 100,000 do appear  as slight temperature variations across the CMB.  These fluctuations could cause enough density concentrations to allow gravity to form the first stars.
-
-  If waves can be detected and if they are all traveling in the same direction they are said to be polarized.  Electromagnetic radiation is an electric wave and a magnetic wave traveling at right angles to each other with the forward velocity of 186,282 miles per second.  If light is polarized these perpendicular waves are lined up in the same direction.
-
-  (That is the way Polaroid dark glasses work  They are a crystal filter that just passes light polarized in one direction.  The glasses reflect the light lined up in any other direction.)
-
-  The hope is that telescopes will become sensitive enough to detect this polarization in the CMB.  This could lead us to the discovery of Gravity Waves, maybe?
-
-  The instruments being used are studying frequency of 95 gigahertz where it is believed to have the most sensitivity to the CMB variations.
-
-  Here is a summary of what we have learned so far:
-
-------------------- (1)  The overall geometry is flat, implying the mass-energy is close to the critical density.
-
-------------------  (2)  The density of ordinary matter is 4.4% of the critical density.
-
------------------  (3)  The total density of matter is 27% of the critical density, concluding that Dark Matter is 23%.
-
-------------------  (4)  Flat geometry and matter density lower than critical implies the existence of 73% that is Dark Energy.  Repulsive energy that is accelerating the expansion of space.
-
---------------(5)  The Universe’s age should be abut 13.7 billion years to have cooled to 2.73 K.  This agrees with Hubble’s constant of expansion of 49,000 miles per hour per million lightyears distance.
-
-  Stay tuned an announcement will be made shortly
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1680  -  BICEP2 telescope detector cooled to 4.0 K with a beam size of 0.22 degrees to measure the temperature variations of 0.000,000,85 degrees Kelvin.
-
-  #1586  -  Measuring the Cosmic Microwave Background.  Our Milky Way Galaxy is 114,000 lightyears across.  The critical density variations of the CMB are 113,000 lightyears across.
-
-  #1305  -  What do Cosmic Harmonics tell us.  CMB radiation started 115,000 years after the Big Bang and ended 487,000 years after the Big Bang.  The 380,000 years was the peak of the Recombination.
-
-  #836  -  The Cosmic Ladder.  If the HUBBLE Constant is truly constant at 49,000 mph / million lightyears then the Universe is 13.6 billion years old.  If not a constant then it is a good average.
-
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  RSVP, Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----------------
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Thursday, February 4, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dark Matter and the extinction of the Dinosaurs?

-  1823  -  Dark Matter and the extinction of the Dinosaurs.   Earth passes through the disk of our Galaxy every 32 million years.  How might this event be involved in the evolution of life on Earth?
-
-

-
-----------------  1823  -  Dark Matter and the extinction of the Dinosaurs.  
-
-  Abell 2744 is a cluster of 4 galaxies 4 billion lightyears away.  The mass of this cluster is 2 quadrillion Solar Mass ( 2*10^15 times the mass of the Sun).  Its immense gravity bends the light coming from unseen background galaxies, acting as a Cosmic magnifying glass.
-
-  This Gravitational Lens effect was not demonstrated until 1979 when astronomers discovered a “double “ image of a Quasar.  Since then one astronomical experiment has recorded over 2,000 lensing images annually.
-
-  Recently the Hubble Space Telescope focused on lensing due to Abell 2744 and has imaged a galaxy existing just 500,000,000 years after the Big Bang.  It is only a faint red smudge, actually 3 smudges since the image arrived traveling multiple paths.  The ancient galaxy is 40 million Solar Mass and several hundred lightyears across.  Our galaxy is 1 million lightyears across ( 10^10^21 m   /    9.46 *10^15 m / LY  =  1*10^6)
-
-  Another phenomena experienced in Gravitational Lensing is how astronomers imaged the same supernova explosion 4 different times, days and weeks apart.  Again, as light took different paths trough space-time to reach us.  The supernova was 9.4 billon lightyears away.
-
-  Astronomers hope to study these distant supernovae to understand the accelerating expansion of the Universe, now know as Dark Energy.  Einstein knew it as the Cosmological Constant.  But, it is not  “constant” it is accelerating.
-
-  How does Dark Energy inflate the Universe?  How can expanding space keep accelerating?  Where does the energy to do this come from?
-
-  Is Dark Energy a constant expansion and since more space is constantly expanding the distance between gravity centers is always increasing at an accelerating rate because there is more space to expand.  Dark Energy is stronger than gravity.  Gravity force decreases with the square of distance (R^2):
-
---------------------------------   F  =  G * M * m  /  R^2
-
-  Is Dark Matter trying to pull things together and Dark Energy trying to pry things apart?  If they are equal will they should all cancel out?  The Universe started from nothing and maybe will return to nothing?
-
-  Another tool for astronomers should be Gravitational Waves.  Any accelerating mass should send out gravitational waves, ripples  that stretch and squeeze the fabric of space-time.
-
-  Gravity waves are so weak that extreme mass accelerations are required for astronomers to be able to detect them.  Events such as colliding Blackholes, merging neutron stars, even the Big Bang itself are required.  ( See review about  LIGO).
-
-  In 1974 astronomers observed a binary neutron star , “ a pulsar”, over several years the pulsar orbited another body and the order shrank closer to the companion by 3.5 meters per year.  This orbital decay exactly matched the math in General Relativity assuming for radiating energy due to gravitational waves.
-
-  The measurements could be made due to the extreme accuracy of the timed pulses from Pulsar.  The technology is astronomically difficult but we are getting better and closer every day.  To measure the change in distance between Earth and the Pulsar as Earth bobs up and down on a gravity wave is like measuring 1 kilometer change over 100 light years (  one part in 10^15).  The Earth is like the “ boat” and we are trying to detect the waves on the “ Ocean”.
-
-  Lisa Randall has a book out about “ Dark Matter and Dinosaurs”. and “ Warped Passages: Unraveling the mysteries of the Universe”.
-
-  It explains the theory that Earth’s path around the Galaxy is riding on a wave ( actually the whole solar system).  The whole trip around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy takes 225.3 million years.  The Earth has circled it 20 times ( 4,600  /  225.3  =  20  ).
-
-  The Galaxy is seen as a flat disk.  The complete orbit  wobbles above and below this disk passing through every 32 million years.  So the wobbling wave has past through the plane of the disk 7 times each orbit.  ( 225.3  / 32  =  7).  And our Solar System has passed through the disk 144 times over its entire history.  (4,600 / 32  =  144).  The last time about 32 million years ago.
-
-  The Earth Sun distance is 1 Astronomical Unit, (1 AU  =  93 million miles).  The Oort cloud lies 1,000 to 100,000 AU containing billions of icy objects, potential comets.  If one of these got knocked out of orbit and hit Earth it could explain what happened to the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
-
----------------------  What does all this mean?
-
----------------------  The disk is 85% Dark Matter.  Paleontologists tell us that 66 million years ago a giant, 9-mile diameter, comet impacted Earth at Chicxulub in the Yucatan.  That impact wiped out 75% of all the species across the planet.  The dinosaurs all went extinct.  Survivors evolved into birds and apes.  We are related with the similar DNA as these primates.
-
-  Could it be that this impact was caused by our path through the disk of the galactic Dark Matter?
-
-  Dark Matter has yet to be explained or detected directly.  It is detected indirectly with its interaction with gravity.  Dark Matter does not interact with electromagnetic radiation.  But, 85% Dark Matter would have an immense gravitational influence on our Solar System as we passed through.
-
-  Astronomers think that Dark Matter tends to be concentrated in large halos around the galaxies like giant bubbles.   This author’s proposal is that Dark Matter also exists amid the stars, between the planets and within gas clouds all through our Galaxy disk.
-
-  Our Solar System revolves around the center of the Galaxy oscillating above and below the concentrated disk of Dark Matter.  We pass trough the disk every 32 million years .  Mass extinctions on Earth have occurred ever 25 to 35 million years.
-
------------------------  Could this just be coincidence?
-
-  There are 100 billion stars in our Galaxy.  We are searching among these stars to detect this Dark Matter.  We must learn a lot more to support this hypothesis.
-
-  We are all descendents of the Chicxulub Comet impact.  Could Dark matter play a part in our evolution on the planet?  Stay tuned an announcement will be made shortly.
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
-
-  #1820  -  Dark Matter  -  what do we know about it matters.
-
-  This review also lists 15 other reviews on the subject.  Have at it.
-
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  RSVP, Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----------------
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Monday, February 1, 2016  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------