Wednesday, July 31, 2019

LIFE - Exploding Stars Create Life

-   2426  -  LIFE  -  Exploding stars create life , and destroy life. Our galaxy is big and mostly empty space, but it harbors millions of blackholes that are remnants of supernovas and collapsing stars.  When a giant star burns all it’s fuel, no heat remains to create the pressure withstanding the compression of gravity.  The force of gravity collapses the stars mass into a singularity at the center of a blackhole.   These creators of life are every where. 

-
-
--------------------------------- 2426  -  LIFE  -  Exploding Stars Create Life
-
Scientists estimate it takes 100,000,000 to 200,000,000 years for intelligent life to emerge and colonize a planet.  65,000,000 years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) period, 50% of life on Earth was extinguished.  The dinosaurs did not survive.  But, some half of marine invertebrates, plankton, marine reptiles did survive.  65,000,000 years later here you are reading about this stuff.
-
-  The iridium layer found at the K-T boundary around the globe is evidence of an asteroid impact on Earth that so changed the environment half of all life was extinguished.
-
-  Further back in our history is evidence of other mass extinctions:
-
-  210,000,000 years ago, the end of the Triassic period, 48% of marine invertebrates, mammal-like reptiles, and amphibians were killed.
-
-  250,000,000 years ago, at the end of the Permian period, 83% of all marine invertebrates and mammal-like reptiles were killed.
-
-  365,000,000 years ago, at the end of the Devonian period, 50% of marine invertebrates, plankton (trilobites) and primitive fish were killed.
-
-  440,000,000 years ago, at the end of the Ordovician period, 57% of all marine invertebrates were killed.
-
-  What were these weapons of mass destruction that caused these extinctions?
-
-  Archeologists learn of the extinctions by studying the bones and fossils in descending layers of the Earth’s crust.  Distinct lines in the ages show extinctions where certain fossils no longer exist beyond that point.  But, so far, archeologists have not found the evidence for what caused these other mass extinctions.
-
-  On December 27, 2004 the brightest flash of light ever seen in our Solar  System occurred.  This flash of electromagnetic energy (called a Gamma Ray Burst) occurred in 0.2 seconds and contained the amount of energy the Sun emits in 250,000 years.  Earth was hit with the blast, but fortunately it came from 50,000 lightyears away.  If it had been 10 lightyears away we would have had another mass extinction here on Earth.
-
-  The damage of these bursts of radiation only lasts a short time, about 15 years.  The primary effect is on the Earth’s atmosphere.  The Earth is surrounded by a blanket of oxygen (O2) and nitrogen (N2).  In the middle of this blanket, in the stratosphere, is a layer of ozone (O3).  The ozone layer blocks the penetration of ultraviolet light from the Sun.
-
-  During a 10 second Gamma Ray Burst the radiation would break up the O2 and N2 molecules.  The chemical reactions in the atmosphere would create nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2).  The nitric oxide would destroy the ozone (O3) layer and the NO2 would become a toxic brown gas in the atmosphere.
-
-   As the ozone (O3) layer is destroyed ultraviolet radiation penetrates the atmosphere and reaches the surface of the Earth.  This UV radiation would damage DNA in all living creatures.  After a few months the toxic brown gas (NO2) will cover the entire planet.  Over time, say 10 years later, the NO and NO2 falls onto the Earth’s surface and reacts with water to form nitric acid.  Acid rain and acid snow falls out of the sky.
-
-  After 15 years the atmosphere is pretty much back to normal.  But, on Earth much of the land life is extinguished, much of the near-surface marine life is killed, and the climate is tipped toward global cooling possibly causing another ice age.
-
-  From geological evidence this 15 year event is too small to be noticeable.  The ice age may leave some evidence but it is unlikely that scientists will be able to tie mass extinctions to supernova explosions or gamma ray bursts.
-
-   The other difficulty is that the Earth is rotating around the Milky Way every 250,000,000 years.  The Milky Way is not a solid disk.  The stars in the Milky Way are rotating at different radii and different speeds.  After a few rotations the stars are hopelessly scrambled making it impossible to identify a supernova that could be the smoking gun for mass extinctions.
-
-  At the same time exploding supernova may be extinguishing life they are creating life.  To begin with the exploding supernova create all the higher level elements in the periodic table above hydrogen, helium, lithium, and beryllium.  Oxygen, carbon, iron, magnesium and 90 other elements are all created in the explosion of stars.
-
-   Also, the radiation from the explosion that destroys life’s DNA, killing 50% of life, mutates life’s DNA that remains causing the diversity of life and the foundation for evolution to create higher life forms, us.
-
-  Our galaxy is big and mostly empty space, but it harbors millions of blackholes that are remnants of supernovas and collapsing stars.  When a giant star burns all it’s fuel, no heat remains to create the pressure withstanding the compression of gravity.  The force of gravity collapses the stars mass into a singularity at the center of a blackhole.
-
-   These creators of life are every where.  Our galaxy and other galaxies could be teeming with life and we would not know about it.
-
-  We are still learning.  To learn more here are other book reviews on the topic:
-
-  2361  -  How did life start on Earth?
-
-  2288  -  The diversity of life.
-
-  2165  -  The evolution of life.  -  609.
-
-  2122  -  Are we alone in the Universe?  -  716
-
-  2148  -  The origin of life in the Universe.
-
-  1942  -  What is the earliest life on Earth?
-
-  1874  -  Will we likely find life on exoplanets and exomoons?  Includes index of 17 more Reviews on this subject. 
-
-  476 - Gamma Rays and Cosmic Rays
-
-  508 - You Are Made of Star Dust 
-
-  504  -  Accelerating Universe from Unknown Force.
-
-  510 - Supernova You Can See
-
-  455 - Supernovae - A Cosmos, Everything but Quiet.  It is violent out there.
-
-  541 - Cosmic Rays
-
-  542 - Neutron Star Flare - Magnetar 1806-20
-
-  342  - The whole shebang.  The Universe is under no obligation to make sense. 
-
-  July 30, 2019                                                                                   579                                                                                                                                                             
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  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
 ---------------------               Wednesday, July 31, 2019          --------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, July 29, 2019

Our Political Calendar

-  1939  -  Our political calendar.  Beware the Ides of March and those politicians that meddle with our calendar, beyond just April 15.  This review tells you how our calendar got so messed up.  Like Trump says “it’s a mess“.  No one paid any attention to astronomy or things would be simpler.
-
-
-   22 years of our Sun
-
-----------------------------  1939   -  Our Political Calendar.
-
-   Our calendar is messed up.   The real reason is astronomical not biological.  Yep!  Here’s why.  Patterns of the Sun, Moon, and even Venus are the real time keepers in your brain.
-
-  The Sun reaches its high point at “noon”.  We knew this since medieval times.  The period from one noon to the next noon is a “day”.  This works like clockwork.  You can depend on it.  However, there are some subtle adjustments needed.
-
-  The Earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle.  It is an ellipse.  The Earth travels faster when the ellipse axis is shortest the month of January.  That is when we are closest to the Sun.  believe it or not, that’s true.  I know you thought it was in July.
-
-  Because the ellipse is closer to the Earth-Sun center of gravity the Earth is traveling 2,236 miles per hour faster in its orbit.  No wonder the days are shorter.  Well, that has more to do with our rotating axis being tilted.  That is a different Review. 
-
-  But, that does change the “astronomical” clocks.  The Earth most rotate 8 seconds longer than average in order to get back to noon the next day.
-
-  And, that adds up.  The month , February 2017, put our clocks at 14 minutes out of sync to getting to noon each day at the same time.  The highpoint is at 12:14 not 12:00 like you kitchen clock is telling you.
-
-  The Moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle either.  The month measured astronomically varies from 29.18 to 29.93 days.  The month measured politically varies from 28 to 31 days.
-
- The Mayans knew better. They were astronomers. They even had Venus, the Evening Star , being the most luminous , the closest, every 19 months.  That is why the Maya had a 19 month calendar. 
-
-  This stuff was not easy for the ancient astronomers to figure out.  After all Venus circles the Sun 13 times for the Earth circling 8 times.  And, at the same time Europeans still had the Sun and the stars circling the Earth, not the other way around.
-
-  In February every 3 days the Sun gets 2 Solar Diameters higher over the horizon.  The days get longer.  The Sun’s warmth is growing at its maximum “ rate”.  February 2 is the half way point between the solstice and the equinox. 
-
-  Solstice is December 22 when the Sun is lowest in the southern sky.  The equinox happens March 21 when the days and nights are equal length.  The Earth is crossing the plane of the equator.  So, is that what makes February the shortest month?  No!
-
-  Augustus Caesar wanted the month named after him to be just as long as the one named after Julius Caesar.  August and July and why we have two months with 31 days in a row.  Politics!
-
-The March equinox is on March 20.  The September equinox is on September 23.  So we have to be traveling 1,000 miles faster in orbit to get through these winter months.  We have fewer days in which to do it.  The winter half of the year is one week shorter than the summer half.  I should get an extra weeks vacation this summer, now that I know that.
-
-  Nobody notices these subtle differences the equinox gets put off for 3 days and February loses a few days.  We do all this so a couple Roman politicians can have a month named after themselves.
-
-   I wonder what Trump will do to screw up the calendar.  He probably never took a course in astronomy either.  He will be lucky to get through the Ides of March.  I have already ordered next years calendar.  I get a teacher’s calendar June 2019 to September 2020.  I get more for my money that way.
-
-  Request Review1488  -  The end of the world according to the Mayan Calendar.
-
-  July 29, 2019
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  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, July 29, 2019  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CALORIES - how to count them?

-   2425  -  -  CALORIES  -  how to count them?    A calorie is a measure of energy.  It ia the difference between the energy you consume and the energy you burn during exercise.  If you consume more than you burn the excess is stored in the body as fat, to be burned at some future date.

-

-
--------------------------------- 2425  -  CALORIES  -  how to count them?
-
-  Gaining weight is simple math.  You just have to count the calories, input minus output.  Then limit the number of calories input to only what is needed for your daily exercise.  Washing dishes is considered exercise.  So is vacuuming.
-
-  You can study weight gain and loss by adding and subtracting calories using simple math.  You eat calories in the food you swallow and you burn calories in the exercise you do.
-
-  A calorie is a measure of energy.  So, we are talking about the difference between the energy you consume and the energy you burn during exercise.  If you consume more than you burn the excess is stored in the body as fat, to be burned at some future date.  Of course, if the future date remains in the future the fat remains on your body.
-
-  We use a thermometer to measure energy that is in the form of heat.  When heat is at the temperature of frozen water we say it is zero degrees Centigrade ( or, 32 degrees Fahrenheit) and when the energy level is to the boiling point of water we say it is at 100 degrees Centigrade (or, 212 degrees Fahrenheit).  The temperature in each case may be regarded as the “intensity of heat”. 
-
-  Your body maintains a temperature of 37 degrees Centigrade (98.6 F)  You need food to burn in order to maintain this temperature.  If you body gets to room temperature you are most likely dead and you do not need any more food.
-
-  A calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree C.  A Calorie in a food package (notice the capital C in Calories) is actually a kilocalorie, or 1000 calories, the heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 “kilogram” of water 1 degree C.
-
-  If you weigh 150 pounds, 68 kilograms, to keep your temperature at 37 C you need to burn 2516 calories, assuming your body is mostly water, 68*37 = 2516 calories.  If you consume 4,516 calories today and you only need 2,526 to stay alive, you have to burn up the other 2,000 calories or they will be stored as fat.
-
-   You have to run a mile to burn 100 calories, so that is a 25 mile run you signed up for.  See yuh!  (Actually, it is amazing how many calories you can burn just walking up and down stairs, sweeping off the deck, or washing the windows.  It doesn’t always have to be a marathon.)
-
-  The Calorie on a food package is 1000 times larger than a calorie used in chemistry or physics.  Originally, food was placed in a sealed container surrounded by water.  This was called a “calorimeter“.  The food was burned and the resulting rise in water temperature was measured.  You knew the mass of the water, so the math is:
-
---------------------------  Quantity of Heat  =  mass ( Change in Temperature)
-
---------------------------  Q  =  m ( t2 - t1 )
-
-  You body radiates heat about an equivalent toa 100 watt light bulb, which is 100 joules per second or 24 calories per second.  There are 86,400 seconds in a day so that is 2,073,600 calories/day (chemistry type), or 2,074 Calories/day (food type).
-
-  Nutrition labeling does not burn food anymore.  Instead they commonly use “food tables“.  They identify the amount of each component in the food and add up the calories in each.
-
-    For example:    10 grams of protein at 4 kilocalories per gram = 40 kilocalories, plus 20 grams of carbohydrates at 4 kilocalories per gram = 40 kilocalories, plus 9 grams of fat at 9 kilocalories per gram = 81 kilocalories , plus 1 gram of alcohol at 7 kilocalories per gram  = 208 kilocalories, or Calories, in the food.
-
-  The study of heat is called “thermodynamics” and it has four laws:
-
----------  0.  No heat flows between bodies at the same temperature.
-
----------  1.  When heat is converted to work it is never totally efficient.  This is also known as the law that energy can not be created or destroyed.
-
----------  2.  Heat only flows from the hotter object to the cooler object.  Heat like time only flows in one direction.
-
----------  3.  The temperature of absolute zero, - 273 C, is the point where all molecular motion stops.  Perceived heat is molecular motion, or the kinetic energy of molecules.
 -
----------  4.  Entropy always increases. 
-
-  Entropy is the quantitative measure of “disorder” or “randomness“.  When you reach temperature equilibrium it is considered “orderly”, or a low entropy.  When temperature is high it is considered “disorderly”, or high entropy. 
-
-  Life needs a high entropy in order to exist.  Heat flows downhill and as molecules reach equilibrium they become more random or higher entropy.  If the law is correct in the extreme the whole Universe will eventually be in equilibrium, with maximum randomness and maximum entropy.
-
-   A “heat death” for the Universe.  No point in counting Calories when that happens.
-
-  July 29, 2019                                                                                   673                                                                                                                                                             
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  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
 ---------------------               Monday, July 29, 2019--------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Evolution of Life.

-  1806  -  Evolution of Life.  This review covers 3 ways life has evolved over 14 billion years starting with minimum Entropy that is constantly increasing.  Statistics and probabilities make life happen Naturally.  What are you going to believe.
-
-
-
----------------------  1806  -  Evolution of Life.
-
-  The evolution of Life in 3 different ways.  (1) The one still taught in schools.  (2)  The religious one taught in the Bible.  (3)  The new one using physics and Entropy to explain the evolution of life.
-
-  You can request Review 1807 which covers a genealogy over 4000 years.  12 pages (73 Kbytes) long, 139 generations averaging 29 years per generation. 
-.
-  You can request Review 1808 that covers the evolution of time from 10^-43 seconds to 15,000,000,000 years in 17 pages (77 Kbytes).
-
-  I will start this Review with the so called scientific explanation.  Back 3,000,000 years ago the Earth was covered in a warm ocean of primordial soup, a bolt of lightning struck and a stroke of good luck started life in a puddle.  The bacteria evolved into plants and animals and eventually us humans.  Follow Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection describing life at the level of genes and populations.
-
-  Then there is the religious explanation that God created Heaven and Earth in 7 days, He created Adam and used Adam’s rib to create Eve.  Adam and Eve begat Seth ( 4004 BC), …..  begat Noah …..  begat Constantine ( 864),  ….  begat  Henry II  (1113),  …….  begat Joseph Smith (1771) …..  begat Kathy Smith ( 1943,  … begat James Douglas Detrick V (2009).  Almost all of this historical record is men, so how did they get all the begets without women?   Request Review 520 to see 31 pages of these begats covering 139 generations.
-
-  The 31 pages is only 3 megabytes.  This a different evolution of zeros and ones begetting 8 bit words, begetting alphabets symbols, back and white images on the retina of the eyes, photons of 3 electron volts, begetting synapses and neurons in the brain, begetting knowledge of the evolution of life.
-
-  The brain is converting energy from plants and animals that beget energy from the Sun that begets energy from the beginning Big Bang.  An evolution of 14,300,000,000 years.
-
-  This latest theory involves the idea that there is no essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms.  It is just that the living carbon atoms are better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat.
-
-  The underlying physical principal driving the origin and evolution of life is simply a fundamental law of Nature  ( Nature = God ) 
-  -
-  This principle has a formula ( math and physics)  that indicates when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy ( Sun ) surrounded by a heat bath ( oceans and atmospheres)  restructures itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy.
-
-  You take a clump of atoms, shine a light on it for a long time and it becomes a plant through the evolution of plain ol’ physics.  Wow!
-
-  The underlying physical principle that is driving the evolution of life is the 2nd law of thermodynamics which requires Entropy to always increase.  Increasing Entropy  is increasing randomness, which is the arrow of time.  It is the reason time only goes in one direction.  Energy is spreading out or dispersing as time progresses.
-
-  The increasing Entropy is the diffusion of particles through out space which happens simply due to the probabilities, simply statistics.  There are more ways for energy to spread out than for it to become concentrated.
-
-  Particles in a system move around and interact and by sheer chance tend to adopt configurations in which the energy is spread out.  Eventually the system arrives at a state of maximum Entropy  ( Thermodynamic Equilibrium)  in which energy is uniformly distributed.
-
-  This is happening to the cup of coffee on my desk.  It cools off until it reaches equilibrium at room temperature.  This process is irreversible.  No matter how long the cup sits there it is never spontaneously heating up again.  The odds are overwhelmingly stacked against the room’s energy randomly concentrating its atoms to reverse this process.
-
-  The cooling of the cup of coffee is the result of a simple ratio:  the probability that the atoms will undergo the cooling process versus the probability of undergoing the reverse process spontaneously warming up.  Entropy increases as the ratio increases, irreversibility increases.  The same statistical physics can be applied to biology.
-
-  A  plant absorbs extremely energetic sunlight, uses it to build sugars, ejects infrared light which is a much less concentrated form of energy.  (E = h*f) .  Lower frequency lower energy.  The Entropy is increasing during photosynthesis as sunlight dissipates as the plant maintains an orderly internal structure.
-
-  Evolutionary outcomes absorb and dissipate more energy from the environment’s external drives on the way to get there.  Particles tend to dissipate more energy when they resonant with a driving force.  Clumps of atoms surrounded by a bath at some temperature (ocean or atmosphere) end over time to arrange themselves to resonate with the source of mechanical, electromagnetic, or chemical work occurring in their environment.
-
-  Self replication is a system the dissipates an increasing amount of energy over time.  Life is a phenomena in Nature of dissipation - driven adaptive organisms. 
-
-  Matter itself tends to spontaneously self-organize ( snow flakes , sand dunes)  systems of particles adapt the structures to become better at dissipating energy.  That is Entropy.  And, I have run out and my coffee is cold.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------  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
   ----------------------   Wednesday, July 24, 2019  -------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BRAIN - how the Brain Works?

-   2423  -  BRAIN  -  how the Brain Works?  Research on Huntington’s, Parkinson’s , Alzheimer’s and Epilepsy has shown that throughout life the brain does try to repair itself through the production of new brain cells.  If the brain cells stopped growing in adults,  you have what you got.  So truth be told the brain is trying to understand itself.  Here is a little more to learn about what your brain is doing.

-
-
--------------------------------- 2423  -  BRAIN  -  how the Brain Works?
-
-  We have learned that the brain is doing its activity with 100,000,000,000  nerve cells.  It is adding 1,000,000 neuronal connections ever second.  Say again, every second.  This translated to computer-eez is 100,000,000,000,000 instructions per second processing capacity. (10^14 , or 100 Terahertz, the average computer being 25 Gigahertz , 10^9, so the brain is 100,000 times faster in clock speed.)
-
-   However, it depends on the task, the computer can be faster at a particular task completion..  The adult brain contains 5*10^14 neuron connections, an electrical wiring highway with 500,000,000,000,000 intersections
-
-  These connections are transmitting electrical signals from higher levels to lower levels which represent the brain’s internal “predictions“.  The electrical signals traveling in the opposite direction represent the inputs from the senses.
-
-   The brain appears to be a probability machine.  With 500,000,000 years of evolution it has grown to constantly making predictions.  Then it updates these predictions based on what the senses send back.  In turn, the brain is constantly making decisions based on the uncertainties it encounters.
-
-   Knowledge is all in terms of probabilities.  But, the probabilities constantly change with relevant new information.  The brain is always inferring and optimizing with its experiences.
-
-  If you are listening to incoming information your brain is constantly predicting what it expects to hear.  It is constantly revising its predictions based on the next information it receives.  This process allows you to make sense out of distorted or partially obscured speech.  The same process occurs in what you see.
-
-  Everything the brain does is trying to minimize prediction error.  The brain alters its internal pathways and neural connections with experience.  It is changing its internal connections to reduce prediction error.
-
-   What is left is learning or memory of the results.  Another way to say this is the brain is always trying to minimize its “Free Energy”.  Free Energy originates from thermodynamics and the study of statistical machines.  Free Energy is defined as the total energy in a system minus the useless energy, or entropy, that is lost in the system.  Machine learning occurs by treating the prediction error as Free Energy and then minimizing it.
-
-  If you glimpse an object in your peripheral vision your prediction error is big.  To reduce the error your brain either changes its prediction, or, it calls on the senses to gather more data from the  environment.
-
-   Mathematically, Free Energy is always bigger than surprise.  Therefore, if you can minimize Free Energy you can avoid surprising encounters in your environment.  No surprises.
-
-  Everything that can change in the brain will change to suppress prediction errors.  Changes from the firing neurons, to wiring between them, to the movements of your eyes, to even the choices you make in daily life.
-
-  One adaptation effect is that neurons stop firing after prolonged exposure to a stimulus, like a rattling fan, or a talkative wife.
-
-  Sounds like we have learned a lot about the brain but we still understand the grand theory of the Universe and the Big Bang more deeply than we understand the grand theory of how the brain works. 
-
-   These are some of the amazing discoveries so far.  The brain is always playing the probabilities to keep error between predictions and feedback from the senses to a minimum. 
-
-  The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe and the Brain is that we are here trying to comprehend it.  The more I think about it I learn the less I know. 
-
-  See Review 2199 that lists 8 more reviews about the brain.
-
-  July 24, 2019                                                                                   1014                                                                                                                                                             
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  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
 ---------------------               Wednesday, July 24, 2019       --------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

TIME - the Beginning of Time?

-   2422 -  TIME  -  the Beginning of Time? -  We use the expression all the “ time”.        “ I’ve known that guy since the “ beginning of time.”  Of course, you probably mean since your beginning of your time, or since you were born.  However, time existed before you knew about it.  We think it has existed for over 13.7 billion years.  Before then we are not sure.  Going forward into the future we are not sure either.  Does time end, does it slow down?

-
-
--------------------------------- 2422 -  TIME  -  the Beginning of Time? 
-
-  The Universe has been expanding for 13,700,000,000 years.  So, if we run the clock backwards for today’s expansion to the beginning, we get the Universe at a point.  This assumes that time is symmetrical.  That is, it works the same going backwards as it does in the present and going into the future.  If time is not symmetrical than it may have had a random path backwards that we will never know about.  Seems unlikely though.  Let’s stick with time flying straight as an arrow in both directions.
-
-  That is to say time does travel backwards in a straight line, straight as an arrow and not in a zigzag path, then 13.7 billion years ago we have the entire Universe compressed into a single point.  Space and time disappear into this point, called a “singularity“.
-
-   All the Universe’s mass and energy would be inside the volume of zero space.  The density of the point would be infinity.  Math and Physics do not handle infinities.  All their formulas fail.  There must be different math involved?
-
-  The idea is analogous to using a magnifying glass to focus light rays on a piece of paper. The math says the focus to a single point would generate infinite energy.  A magnifying glass can set the paper on fire but no way is that infinite energy.  So the math must be wrong.
-
-   New math treats light as a wave, not as a ray, or a particle.  At the target on the piece of paper is not a point but a bulls-eye.  The target is a range of probabilities and statistics are the math needed to do the correct calculations.  The target center is surrounded by circles of amplifying and interfering wave fronts.  The bulls-eye is a common interference pattern for interfering waves.
-
-  The Universe concentrating at a point before the Big Bang is called a “singularity“.  A singularity is infinite density, inside zero volume, with time coming to a standstill.  Blackholes have the same singularities at their centers.
-
-  These as well must not be points but bulls-eyes of probabilities making the infinities in the math go away.  This is where the Theory of Relativity and the Theory of Quantum Mechanics come together.  The math for each do not reconcile, but a lot of science is trying to make it reconcile.
-
-  Blackholes are all around us.  A Blackhole is at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.  Has time stopped at all these places?  Is this a point of infinite density, or, are the galaxy centers just another range of probabilities?  The probabilities not only apply to time but also to energy, momentum, and position?
-
-  Is our entire Universe inside a giant Blackhole?  If time has stopped inside a Blackhole obviously it has started up again.  For us time only moves in one direction.  This arrow of time is tied to the law of physics called “entropy“.
-
-   Entropy always increases in a system.  Entropy is the tendency of everything to increase in the amount of disorder, or “randomness“.  It can not reverse itself.  When the egg breaks on the floor its disorder can not be restored to the original egg.  There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.  There is always some loss to heat, or friction.  An effect can never precede a cause.  Time only moves in one direction.
-
-  The Universe started with a primordial soup of fundamental particles.  As the Universe expanded and cooled particles formed atoms.  Atoms formed molecules, hydrogen and helium gas.  Gas molecules condensed into stars and planets.  Stars condensed into galaxies and Blackholes.
-
-   All this was created by the force of gravity in the early Universe.  Gravity is what holds galaxies together.  Most galaxies have a Blackhole in their center.  Dark Energy is the force that expands space and is pushing galaxies apart.  So, the Universe is being diluted with expansion separating everything like dots on an expanding balloon. 
-
-  Even Blackholes will evaporate into their fundamental particles given enough time.  Time ends when there is nothing left to measure it.  When the radiation dissipates the only thing left in the Universe is empty space hundreds of billions of years from now.
-
-  But, what if time just changes speed.  Velocity of receding galaxies is measured as distance per unit time.  But, what if time is slowing.  Velocity would appear to be increasing.  We would think the Universe is expanding but actually time is slowing.  We could not tell the difference.  We say the cause of space expansion is “ Dark Energy”.  But, we so not know what it is or how it works.  So, could it not be energy at all, just time slowing down?
-
-  The end of time would be the end of endings.  Falling objects are drawn to places where time passes more slowly.  This is according to the Theory of Relativity.  It is hard to imagine how time could slow down until it ends.
-
-   But, it is equally hard to imagine time in an expanding Universe not-ending.  This is called an “antinomy”, something you can argue both ways, leaving you not knowing what you think. 
-
-  The boundaries of time seem to be the boundaries of our reasoning as well.  We need to like time.  It gives structure to our world.  We would be lost without it.  It allows me to write this review.
-
-  Ok, I’m done.  My time is up.
-
-   Also see Review #1006  -  “Is Time Slowing Down?”
-
-  July 23, 2019                                                                                   1189                                                                                                                                                             
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  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
 ---------------------               Tuesday, July 23, 2019--------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, July 22, 2019

GRAVITY - how does it happen?

-  1978  -  GRAVITY  - how does it happen?  ?  Gravity was first defined in math in 1666. The definition was totally change with space-time in 1915.  New discoveries are extending the mystery with Dark Matter and modified math for gravity. 

-
-
--------------------------------- -  1978  -  GRAVITY  - how does it happen? 
-
-  Gravity is a mystery.  It is “free fall“.  The moon is free falling around the Earth as it just misses us on each orbit.  You are free falling right now.  It is just the ground is stopping you. 
-
-  In grade school we learned that gravity was always an attractive force between two masses.  Later we learned that gravity was infinite and that it pervades all of space.  It has infinite range that simply gets progressively weaker with distance.  The gravity force decreases at the inverse square of distance:
-.
----------------------------  F  =  m * M  /  d^2
-
--------------------------  Gravity Force  =  product of 2 masses  /  ( distance )^2
-
-   We have learned that gravity travels at the speed of  light.  Most recently we have discovered that gravity travels as waves.
-
-   Gravity was first defined by Isaac Newton in 1666.  He gave us the above formula for the universal force of gravity.
-
-  In 1915 that all changed.  Albert Einstein published the Theory of General Relativity stating that gravity was not a force at all.  Rather a distortion in space and time.
-
-  Today we still struggle with defining gravity in terms of Quantum Mechanics.  Gravity above is defined as a variable according to mass.  General Relativity defines gravity with the property of the curvature of space-time.  It is how mass reacts to the distorted space.  Mass is simply following the closest, and easiest path through the fabric of curved space-time.
-
-  The qualities of gravity do not have an independent existence.  If there is no mass there is no gravity. 
-
-  If somehow gravity was turned off space and time would disappear as well.
-
-  This concept for gravity is unlike the electromagnetic force.  It cannot be turned off by a neutral charges.  You cannot turn off gravity by neutralizing space or by neutralizing time.
-
-  The equations of 1915 are the most detailed mathematical theory of how gravity works.  In 90 years no error has been discovered in this math versus our observations.
-
-  The newest experiments being tested involve the concepts of gravitational waves and frame dragging.  These phenomena exist around rotating massive objects, like two rotating Blackholes.
-
-  The Theory of Relativity predicts gravitational waves as distortions in space - time caused by the acceleration of matter.  The electromagnetic force is also produced by the acceleration of charged articles.  Both are waves that carry energy. Both travel at the speed of light , 186,282 miles per second.
-
-  Gravitational waves were discovered in 2004.  Orbiting pulsars (neutron stars ) were found loosing energy because they were emitting gravity waves.  The math proved the observations to be accurate.  The pulsars provided accurate clocks to measure orbits.  The orbits shrinking exactly matched the energy that gravity was removing from the system.
-
-  In 2016 twin LIGO gravity wave detectors registered  simultaneous pulses of geometry distortions created by passing gravity waves.  These waves originated in colliding and rotating Blackholes billions of lightyears away .
-
-  In 1997 frame dragging was  detected in X-ray studies of distant Blackholes .  As a massive Blackhole rotates it drags  space-time around with it.
-
-  These phenomena implies that you can not have stable orbits around a rotating body. An experiment using Gravity Probe B satellite confirmed this in 2011.  The satellite experienced space-time precisely shifted in magnitude due to the rotating mass of the Earth.
-
-  Gravity seems to operate the same with anti-matter as with matter.  The Large Hadron Collider experiment is trying to confirm this phenomena.  At least we know that anti-matter does not fall “up’.
-
-  A new mystery of gravity has surfaced.  It has to do with Dark Matter.  Using mathematical laws of gravity 63% of the mass in the Universe is Dark Matter, but, we have not identified a particle, any verifiable substance, that can account for this unknown mass.
-
-  Normal matter comes together and interacts with light. It absorbs, emits, reflects, with electromagnetic  radiation.  However, normal matter cannot account for all the gravity we see in the universe.  For example:  The Coma Cluster of galaxies move far to quickly to account for mathematically the visible mass we can see.  The mass needed to keep the rotating galaxies from flying apart is 50 times greater than the mass that is visible.
-
-  Astronomers cannot reconcile these observations.  Either the math for gravity is wrong, or, there is 6 times more mass than what electromagnetic radiation can detect.

-  The math tells us there is an invisible halo of Dark Matter around stars, gas, and globular clusters.  Even our own Milky Way Galaxy.  If you measure the orbital velocity of stars rotating around the center of our galaxy they do not follow the math.  More distant stars from the center should be flying off  into space.  But, they are  not.  Some unseen mass is holding stars in galaxies together?
-
-  Is there a form of matter that interacts with gravity , but does not interact with electromagnetism?
-
-  What about galaxy’s behavior in the early universe?  Have these same behaviors existed throughout the history of the Universe?
-
-  Dwarf Galaxies appear to have a much higher percentage of Dark Matter present than the 5 to 1 ratio of normal galaxies.  Early studies , limited data, still confirms that more distant galaxies rotate  more slowly at their outskirts than at their centers.  Some data would suggest that Dark Matter was less dominate in the early universe.
-
-  Is there a consistent drop-off in rotational velocity as you move away from the center of all galaxies?
-
-  There seems to be  very good evidence for the existence of Dark Matter even at these different stages of galactic evolution.
-
-  So, is the theory of gravity incomplete?  Are there some undiscovered particles that explain these phenomena?   It took us 50 years to discover the Higgs Boson.  Let’s hope we don’t need another 50 years to discover the source of Dark Matter.
-
-  The jury is still out.  It is not conclusive.  Is there Dark Matter or, is there modified gravity?  We need more data!
-
-    There are 14 more Reviews about gravity , gravitational lensing,  Planck’s Constant, gravitons, space, time, gravity waves, acceleration,  #1875 and #1885 has the index, all available upon request.
-
-  July 22, 2019                                                                                    1978                                                                                                                                                             
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  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
 ---------------------               Monday, July 22, 2019             --------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday, July 21, 2019

INFORMATION - Too Much Information

-   2421  -  INFORMATION  -  Too Much Information.  The faster knowledge piles up the harder it is to find something new that is actually worth knowing.  That is the reason for my reviews.  I separate the wheat from chaff and shorten it into a concise few pages that you can read for knowledge, not entertainment.


-
------------------------- 2421  -   INFORMATION  -  Too Much Information
-
-  Today there is too much information and most of it is false.  You have to be a discerning listener, reader, and learner if you are able to navigate trough it all.  It is not just politics; it is science too.
-
-  In 1800 there were 1000 scientists in the World.  Today there are millions and by 2020 there will be one billion.  The facts and papers published in thousands of scientific journals just keep piling up.  Science is expanding into new fields.  For example cosmology or  nanotechnology did not exist as a science years ago.
-
-  The true challenge posed by the runaway growth in information is to unearth useful bits from the mountains of dross.  Dross is another word for refuse, waste matter. 
-
-   The vast majority of scientific ideas are wrong and useless.
-
-  99.8 % of the ideas put forth by scientists are wrong and will never be included in the body of scientific fact.  What makes science is the principle that any idea must be capable of being proven wrong and it must be verifiable by experiment, real world data.  Only 0.2% of ideas turn out to be correct.
-
-  When you enter a scientific field in which thousands of smart people have been toiling for decades, your chances of striking a new discovery are tiny.  The fraction of knowledge that is truly scientific has been decreasing for hundreds of years because the amount of nonscientific information has expanded far more rapidly. 
-
-  We have gone from being hunter-gathers of information to being filter feeders.  We are like the oyster in an information age.
-
-  The information processing revolution has afforded people an unprecedented opportunity to generate and disseminate information.  The blogosphere has expanded to dwarf all other forms of the written word. 
-
-  The one exception might be software, but who reads software programs anyway.  The number of blogs in the world is doubling every 6 months.  My blog is listed at the end of his  Review. 
-
-  Wikipedia has 6,000,000 pages of home brewed knowledge.  In this sea of noise.   How do you find really important information?

-  A cubic centimeter of water contains 100,000 billion, billion atoms.  Each atom can contain a bit of information.  But, the majority of bits is random.  And the Universe tends toward randomness.  The is called entropy.
-
-    This trend towards disorder is what heats up your car engine and requires your body to operate at 98.6 F.  DNA provides us with a small number of nonrandom bits.
-
-  There are ordered forms of energy contained in sunlight  and in the sugars of plants.  The primary function of life in the Universe is to glean those few bits of useful, nonrandom, information from the great quantity of disorder that is there, and tending to grow through entropy.
-
-  4,000,000,000 years ago organisms learned to cull useful bits out of the cosmic noise.  Early bacteria evolved mechanisms to protect the important information contained in their genetic code from the depredations of heat and noise and ,in reproducing, pass that information to their descendants.
-
- I hope my kids can survive on the few bits of nonrandom ness I gave them in my genetic code.
-
-  There is so much nonscientific information purporting to be science that politicians have no problem finding “scientific” support for what they want to do.  Before we drown in our informational effluent we need to learn how to pull the true gems from the garbage. 
-
-  There are bits like thou shall not kill that should not be lost.  We need to pay attention to science when science has something true to tell us.  To prevent the teaching of myths as scientific fact and to avoid potential ecological disasters, we need leaders who can tell gems from rubbish.
-
-    The fraction of information that is truly useful is small and getting smaller.  We need to get better at recognizing it.
-
-  All information in a computer and on the internet boils down to being either a 1 or a 0.  Ones and zeros travel through the internet in packets ranging from 10 to 1000 bytes in size.  A byte is a word in digital language.  A bit is one character, either a 1 or a 0.
-
-   Each packet carries an address that a router, another computer, uses to send the packet to the next computer.  Each packet gets stored in a computer’s memory for some period of time. 
-
-  It is the pattern of bits that contains the information being sent.  Just like it is the modulation on a radio wave that carries the information.  The photon’s travel at the speed of light, 186,282 miles per second, but, the modulation being carried by the photons may be a voice of only 3,000 cycles per second.
-
-  The thing that “remembers” if a bit is a one or a zero is a capacitor inside each computer memory.  It is a small chip capable of holding a small amount of electrical charge.  If it is charged up it is a one.  If it is uncharged it is a zero.  Each capacitor only requires about 40,000 individual electrons to charge up.
-
-  A typical e-mail like this Review contains about 50,000 bytes of information.  Each byte contains 8 bits.  So, a typical e-mail is 409,600 bits and about one-half of those bits will be ones and one-half will be zeros.
-
-   So, that is 204,800 ones that are stored on capacitors.  Each capacitor requires 4*10^4 electrons, times 2.048*10^5  =  8*10^9 electrons.  Each electron weighs 2*10^-30 pounds.  Therefore, each typical e-mail weighs 16*10^-21 pounds.
-
-  The total internet traffic is 4*10^16 bytes per hour.  Video files are 59% of the traffic, music files are 33%, and e-mails only 9%.
-
-  Electricity reached 25% of Americans in 46 years.  Telephones reached 25% in35 years.  Televisions reached 25% in 26 years.  The Internet has done it in 6 years.
-
-   YouTube  alone today consumes as much bandwidth as the entire internet did in the year 2000.
-
-   The total weight of the internet information is 4*10^16 bytes /5*10^4 bytes/e-mail*16*10^-21 pounds/e-mail  =  1.28*10^-8 pounds.
-
-  The weight of the total world-wide internet information is 1.28*10^-8 pounds, or, about equal to the tiniest grain of sand, one measuring .002 of an inch across.
-
-  Words and pictures are powerful but they are not heavy.  Of course, this does not include the weight of all the computers, fiber, radio links, and wires that are the highways for all these ones and zeros.  That would be a very heavy calculation.
-
-  If a book is 10,000 words and the internet traffic is 10*10^15 bytes then that is equivalent to 40,000,000,000 books on the internet at one time.  40 trillion books, Amazing. 
-
-  The Library of Congress has 29,000,000 books and 57,000,000 manuscripts.  The internet is 1000 times larger.
-
-   The Internet handles 1.074*10^18 bytes every hour, according to the Washington Post.  That is 1000 times more than the 4*10^16 bytes per hour that I was using. 
-
-  Hopefully this is enough information for you to digest?  Or, is it too much information?
-
-  July 21, 2019                                                                                                                                           ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  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
 ---------------------               Sunday, July 21, 2019             --------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday, July 20, 2019

TIME - thinking about time

-   2420 -  TIME -  thinking about time.  Was time and space there when the Big Bang occurred, or was it first created when the Big Bang occurred?  Was time and space there before it occurred?  Our Universe expanded with an arrow of time in one direction, but is there another Universe expanding in the opposite direction of time?
-

-
---------------------  2420 -  TIME -  thinking about time
-
-  At my age I do not have much time, so,  I better be thinking about time.  It is time to think, time to think about time.  Has time always been here, or did it have a beginning?  Was there a start for time?  Will time always be here, or will it have an end?  Is there a finish for time? 
-
-  Then, there is the arrow of time.  What causes time to flow in one direction only?  In a real sense time flows at the speed of light.  Everything you observe is younger by the distance light has traveled.  The distance in miles divided by 186,000 miles per second is the amount of time the object is younger than the instant you see it.
-
-  This phenomenon of the finite speed of light, and all observation, means that no two times are the same if they are separated in space.  If two people synchronize their watches they must accurately take into account the time delay for the information about time to travel between them.
-
-  We live in an expanding Universe.  There are lots of astronomical observations as evidence this is true.  The further the galaxy is away from us the younger we are seeing it and the faster it is receding from view.
-
-    When we look at the closest star, Proxima Centura, what we see is 4.5 years younger than it is today, or now.  That is because the nearest star is 4.5 lightyears away and it takes 41/2 years for the light to reach us.
-
-  If we look at a galaxy that has an active Black Hole at its center, a Quasar, that is enormously bright in luminosity, that of billions of stars, we can see something that is 13,000,000,000 years younger.
-
-    It is nearly back to the Big Bang which is 13.73 billion years ago.  If we see something 730,000,000 lightyears further away than that maybe we could see the origin of the Big Bang.  At that time we had the entire Universe squeezed down to the size of a single atom.
-
-    Maybe we could learn what caused the Big Bang to go bang?  Why did the Universe start to expand in the first place?  Once expansion did start gravity soon separated out from the four forces and tried to pull it back.  It was not strong enough.  Expansion continued and the Strong Nuclear force separated out from the remaining three forces. 
-
-  When the Strong Force separated so much energy was released that the expansion of the Universe accelerated, expanding 30 powers of 10 in less than a second.  This rapid expansion, faster than the speed of light, is what caused the Universe to look uniform and homogeneous to us today.  We can only see a small portion of the universe.  We can only see what light has had time to reach us. 
-
-  Was time and space there when the Big Bang occurred, or was it first created when the Big Bang occurred?  Was time and space there before it occurred?  Our Universe expanded with an arrow of time in one direction, but is there another Universe expanding in the opposite direction of time?
-
-   Is there a law of the Conservation of Time?  Physicists call the arrow of time, Entropy.  Entropy in a system always increases.  Entropy is disorder, or randomness, or equilibrium where everything is randomly the same.
-
-   Randomness is the lowest energy state and that is where the Universe is heading.  That is where time is heading.  The Universe expands, getting colder, every particle becomes separated into empty space.  Until the Universe is uniform and in equilibrium.  Time is the measure of change and nothing changes.  Time stops.
-
-  Therefore, if the Universe ends with maximum Entropy then it must have began with minimum Entropy.  The Big Bang was the point of maximum complexity.  It is what started things changing.  Time being the measure of change, time began.
-
-   Change was rapid at first, expanding by 10^30 times in 10^-32 seconds.  It was all energy.  Matter had not frozen out yet.   Photons with this much energy can create matter, anti-matter pairs.
-
-   Gamma Rays can produce electrons, positron pairs according to E=mc^2.  And, vice versa, when electrons, positron pairs collide they convert back to pure energy, Gamma Rays according to E=mc^2.  All matter and anti-matter was colliding and annihilating itself until the expansion got big enough and cool enough matter and anti-matter got separated.

-  Somehow, for every billion matter, anti-matter pairs that were created, one particle of matter was left over.  When all the annihilation was over some matter was left over.  That is the matter that is in the Universe today.  That is the matter we are made of.
-
-    Matter became too cool to convert back into energy again.  Since then the Universe has slowed its expansion and it has expanded by 1000 times to today.  At 300,000 years after the Big Bang the expansion had cooled to the point that protons and electrons could combine into atoms.
-
-   Photons were released at 3000 Kelvin.  Expanding 1000 times these photons are at a temperature of  3 Kelvin today.  They have been cooled and stretched out to microwave energy and are what we see as the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation today.

-  When atoms first formed they only formed into the simplest elements, hydrogen, helium and lithium.  It was not until 1,000,000,000 years later that galaxies and stars formed.
-
-   It was when the stars died, burning up all their nuclear fuel and exploding into supernovae, that the heavier elements were formed out of the ashes.  Time continues and all these elements are evolving as the expansion continues.  They somehow those same atoms evolved into us.
-
-  The expansion and cooling will continue until the Universe reaches maximum Entropy.  During this time, time is not constant.  It is different for each observer in the Universe.  What one observer experiences as pure time a second observer experiences a mixture of time and space.
-
-    Time evolves as transformations, changes, of correlations between things that can be observed in space.  Time is a outcome of statistical observation of the Universe.  Time emerges from the activity in the Universe the same way consciousness emerges from activity in the brain.  Both are real and not illusions.
-
-   But, everywhere in the Universe observers are experiencing different time.  If we could observe the Universe as a whole maybe it all cancels out and time does not exist at all.  Maybe the arrow of time folds back on itself?

-  Other Reviews available:
-
(1)  #854  Time, GPS, and Entropy
(2)  #814  Fast Speed and Short Time
(3)  #397  Deriving Time Dilation for the Pythagorean Theorem
(4)  #2381  Pressed for Time 
(5)  #2295  Time is what God Created,
(6)  #360  Time is Getting Short
(7)  #2201  The beginning of time , the end of time.  This Review lists many more reviews about “time”.
-
-  July 20, 2019.                                                                                   910                                                                           
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  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
 ---------------------   Saturday, July 20, 2019  -------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------






Tuesday, July 16, 2019

ASTRONOMY -Small steps in astronomy

-  1907  -  ASTRONOMY  -  Small steps in astronomy.  Each year small changes occur that are astronomical given time.  Here are a few small steps you may not have noticed.
-
-
-
-----------------------------  1907  -  Small steps in astronomy
-
-  There are a lot of things happening in the Universe that you may not be noticing.  These are slow changes and our human senses are just to crude to measure.
-
-  This past year the rotation of the Earth slowed down.  This slowing is caused by the friction of the tides and the constant tug of the orbiting Moon.  The time of a single rotation ( one day ) , has increased 14 nanoseconds this past year , 2016.  That might not sound like much ( 0.0000000014 seconds ), but in 4 million years from now we will loose our leap years.  By then the year will be exactly 365 days.
-
-    This slowing of the Earth’s rotation has another effect in the Earth-Moon system.  There is the law of “ the Conservation of Angular Momentum”.  The Earth and the Moon both spin on their axis as the Moon revolves around the Earth.  To make Angular Momentum constant as the Earth spin slows down the Earth-Moon distance is increasing.  The Moon is leaving us by about 2 centimeters per year ( one inch ).
-
-  Also, this past year the Sun got hotter.  This average temperature increase is not enough to cause ‘global warming’.  It amounts to an increased luminosity of 5 billionths of a percent each year ( 0.000,000,005% )  That doesn’t sound like  much either, but, that would mean the Sun has increased temperature and luminosity by 25% over the past 4 billion years.
-
-  What is causing this is that the Sun is fusing fuel faster as it gets hotter.  Today it is loosing 10^17 kilograms of mass per year ( 100,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms according to E=mc^2).  In another 2 billion years the Sun will be hot enough to boil off  the Earth’s oceans.
-
-  2 billion years after this happens the Sun will expand into a planetary nebula leaving a white dwarf cinder behind at the core.  Bigger stars will explode in to supernovae.  There is  1% to 2% chance that a supernova will go off in our Milky Way Galaxy this next year.  We can expect 2 to 7 supernova to be occurring in our Galaxy per century.  Most we can’t see, but, two have been seen with the naked eye,  Tycho’s Supernova in 1572  and Kepler’s Supernova in 1604.
-
-  This past year stars have not only exploded and died, some new stars have formed.  In our region of the Orion Nebula a new star slightly smaller than our Sun is born each year  Star formation in our Galaxy is estimated to be 0.68 Solar Mass per year.  But, that is an average per year.  It could vary from 100 Solar Mass per century to 5 very low-mass stars per year.  Star formation is a gradual process taking millions of years.
-
-  While all this is happening the overall Universe is expanding and cooling down.  Today the temperature is 2.725 Kelvin above absolute zero.  Absolute zero Kelvin is the coldest temperature possible where all molecular activity ceases.
-
-  This temperature is now measured in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation after 13.8 billion years of cooling.  This background radiation continues to cool with continuing expansion separating the galaxies.  This year it went 200 picoKelvin cooler (2*10^-10 Kelvin ).  (That is 0.000,000,000,2 Kelvin.)  You probably didn’t notice.
-
-  Another  thing happened with the expanding Universe.  We lost another 20,000 stars that expanded so far away their light will never reach us.  At that some 15 billion lightyears distance the galaxies are receding faster than the speed of light.  In fact, all the galaxies that are the Observable Universe today are only the remaining 3%.  The other 97% are so far distant their light will never get here.  Each year another 20,000 become unobservable in this way.
-
-  These are small steps each year that become astronomical.  Tiny steps repeated can make a big difference in the long run.  A quote to live by.
-
-  July 16, 2019
-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  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    ----------------   Tuesday, July 16, 2019  -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday, July 13, 2019

RELATIVITY - best I can explain it.

-   2417  -  RELATIVITY  -  best I can explain it.  -  Relativity starts with a very simple concept.  It starts with all motion being relative.  Space and Time require a reference frame in order to be measured.  There is no dimension in space or interval in time without it being in reference to something else.  All observers see things from different space-time perspectives.

-
-
---------------------------  2417  -  RELATIVITY  -  best I can explain it. 
-
-  All observers see things from different space-time perspectives.  Light is a physical symmetry for the entire universe.
-
-  The laws of physics are always the same regardless of where you are or what is in motion.  All states of uniform motion are equivalent.  Light always appears the same to all observers regardless of their motion.
-
-   Light is always traveling at a constant speed for everyone, 186,355 miles per second, or, 299,792,458 meters per second, exactly.
-
-  Any two events are separated in time and space by definition.  In order to measure the time we need to synchronize our watches.  We start at point A and Watches A and B are synchronized so they measure exactly the same time.  We travel a distance to point B and measure how much time it takes. 
-
-  If we know our velocity it is an easy calculation, Distance = velocity * time.  Now let’s say we are at point B and we want to synchronize our watch with the Watch at point A.  Maybe we use a flash of light, or a telegraph signal to set our watch at point B.  The watches can not easily be synchronized at a distance because there is a delay in the time it takes the light or the signal to reach the observer B at that distance.
-
----------------------  Distance actual  =  Distance measured - velocity * time
-
-  Where velocity is the velocity of the signal, which could be the speed of light.  The separate events can not occur simultaneously because the information that connects them only travels at the speed of light.
-
-  Newton made “time absolute“.  All observers, no matter how they move through space, must conclude that the time interval between any two events is the same.
-
--------------------------  Distance B  = Distance A - velocity * Time B
-
--------------------------  Time Observer B  =  Time Observer A
-
-  Einstein proved this concept of “absolute time” to be WRONG.  Newton’s formulas only work for low velocities.  As velocities approach the speed of light the new relativity formulas apply:
-
---------------------------  (1/(1-v^2/c^2)^2 = Time^2 - Distance^2/c^2
-
-  Where v is velocity and c is the speed of light.

-  Any two events are separated in time and space, but, the interval between the two events must remain the same regardless of which observer makes the measurements.  In order for that to happen time and space need to be relative.
-
----------------  Space-Time Interval  =  constant
-
-  Space-Time is a vector that has both magnitude and direction.  Any vector is a magnitude at some angle.  You can always construct a right triangle and solve the magnitude of the vector as the hypotenuse = the square root of the sum of the squares of the other two sides of the triangle.  The Pythagorean Theorem.
-
--------------------Space-Time interval^2 = Time^2  -  (Distance/c)^2
-
-  The two events in space-time are connected by a light signal.  Each observer, all observers , will conclude that the speed of light is the same, no matter what velocity or direction they are moving.  So, the above formula can be written twice, once for observer A and the other for observer B.
-
-------------- Time B^2  -  (Distance B/c)^2  =  Time A^2  -  (Distance A/c)^2
-
-  In order to make the two intervals the same regardless of their motion we must add the factor, 1/(1-v^2/c^2)^0.5   This Space-Time Interval factor guarantees that a light flash spreads out spherically into space the same way for all observers.

-  At low speeds relativity is an unobservable correction for moving objects.  But, at higher speeds distances are shortened by the factor:
-
------------------- Distance B  =  Distance A * (1-v^2/c^2)^0.5
-
-  If the velocity is 87% the speed of light, then the distance is shortened to 50% for Observer B.
-
-----  (1-v^2/c^2)^0.5  =  (1-.87^2)^0.5  =  (1-.76)^.5  =  (.24)^0.5 = .50
-
-  If the velocity is 87% the speed of light and the time is measured at one second, then the time is slowed down and the time interval for Observer B becomes 2 seconds:
-
------------  Time B  =  Time A / (1-v^2/c^2)^0.5
-
------------  Time B  =  Time A / .50nn  =  1/.5  =  2 seconds
-
-  Now that space and time are changing with the velocity of motion Einstein concluded that Force, Momentum, and Energy equations could also not remain the same under the 1/(1-v^2/c^2)^.5 transformations.  If this symmetry between space and time exists then this same symmetry between energy and momentum must exist.
-
-----------------------------  Time is related to Energy.
-
-----------------------------  Space is related to Momentum
-
-----------------------------  The constant Interval of Time =  Time^2 - Distance^2/ c^2
-
-------------------------  The constant Interval of Energy  =  Energy^2 - Momentum^2/c^2
-
-  For the speed of light to remain constant and the Energy Interval to remain constant then the Energy measured by Observer A must be different than the Energy measured by Observer B.
-
-  Einstein guessed that this formula must also be equal to the Inertial Mass, but he had to square it in order to get the units to cancel.  And,  Momentum = mass * velocity:
-
-----------------------------  Energy^2 - mass^2 * velocity^2 / c^2  = mass^2 * c^4
-
-----------------------------  If an object is “at rest”, velocity = 0
-
-----------------------------  Energy^2  = mass^2 * c^4
-
-----------------------------  Energy  = mass * c^2
-
-----------------------------  E = mc^2
-
-------------------------------------------  If the object is moving:
-
-----------------------------  Energy = mass * c^2 + mass * velocity^2/2
-
-----------------------------  The second term, ½ mv^2 is the formula for Kinetic Energy.
-
-----------------------------  Total Energy is equal to Rest Energy + Kinetic Energy.
-
-----------------------------  If an object is at rest it still has energy.  A profound conclusion.
-
-----------------------------  E = mc^2
-
-  In comparing objects in motion, Newton said:
-
-----------------------------  Energy = ½ m*v^2 
-
-----------------------------  Einstein said:-
-
---------------  Energy = m*c^2/(1-v^2/c^2)^.5  and Momentum  =  m*v /(1-v^2/c^2)^.5 
-
-  As velocity approaches the speed of light, v approaches c, then Momentum and Energy become infinite.  That is why nothing can exceed the speed of light.  It would take infinite energy to accelerate to that speed and the particle would have infinite momentum.
-
-  If an object is massless the formula becomes indeterminate, 0/0.  However, this indeterminate allows a massless particle to have finite energy and momentum.    Massless photons of light have no Inertial Mass yet photons can transmit energy and momentum through space. 
-
-  Photons travel forever at the speed of light.  They can not travel slower or be at rest because their energy would be zero.  If photons move it is at one speed only, 186,355 miles per second.
-
-  Einstein’s concepts are hard to explain, but it is just the way it has to be to make the equations work out.  Start with a simple assumption, the speed of light is constant.  Then, the rest is in the math.
-
-   Every experiment physicists have tried, so far, confirms that the math is correct.  Space does truly shrink, and time does truly slow down as velocity approaches the speed of light.  The laws of physics have got to remain the same for all observers regardless of their relative motion.
-
-  Length and distance are just another word for measurements of space.  Distance measured by an observer in motion =  distance - velocity * time
-
-  As an observer’s motion approaches the speed of light this correction factor is needed to shorten distances and slow time.
-
------------------  Distance =  1/(1-v^2/c^2)^.5  * (distance - velocity* time)
-
------------------  Time  = 1/(1-v^2/c^2)^.5  * ( Time - velocity * distance /c^2
-
-  Light is a physical symmetry for the entire Universe.  Albert Einstein came up with these concepts when he was 26 years old.  His discoveries were never experimental, he used “thought experiments“.  He exercised all the concepts in his mind and took them to their logical conclusions.
-
-   Of course, logic is in the mind of the beholder.  I hope me explanations make a little bit of sense.  Let me know?
-
-  July 13, 2019                                                                                    648                                                                                                                                                           
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  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
 ---------------------               Saturday, July 13, 2019--------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday, July 12, 2019

STARS - come in all shades and sizes

-   2416  -  -  In the next five years future satellites will circle in orbits beyond the Moon and measure distances of stars out to 30,000 lightyears.  Astronomers hope to catalog over 220,000,000 stars with this new capability.
-
-
-
--------------------------------- 2416  -   STARS -  come in all shades and sizes
-
-  Astronomers have measured the accurate distances of 20,000 stars and still counting.  Yet, it is estimated that in the Observable Universe there are over:
-
---------------   100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. (10^23). 
-
-  Of course, the maximum distance we can “accurately” measure today is 300 lightyears.  The Observable Universe in both directions has a diameter of 28,000,000,000 light years.  So, we have a ways to go in distance measurements.  And, the edge of the Universe is disappearing from our sight.  The light will never reach us.
-
-  Stars come in all shades and sizes.  However, the largest stars are all over 400 lightyears away, too far for today’s accurate distance measurements.  These most massive stars are Blue in color.
-
-  The closet Blue star is Zeta Ophiuchi, which is between 417 and 509 lightyears away.  Outside our accurate measurement reach.  It is a Blue Supergiant that will go supernova in a few million years and end up a Black Hole.
-
-  You can tell the temperature of a star by its color. Zeta Ophiuchi is Blue and its surface temperature is 35,000 degrees Kelvin.  Color is another word for frequency of radiation.  And, frequency is another word for the wavelength of the radiation.
-
 ------------------------  Wavelength  = constant velocity of light  /  frequency
-
-  You measure the brightness, or energy of radiation, at different wavelengths.  When you locate the wavelength of the maximum brightness, or maximum intensity of radiation, at that wavelength the temperature is equal to Peak Wavelength / .0029.
-
-  This is known as Wien’s law.  Our Sun looks yellow to our eyes but measuring its maximum radiation energy occurs at 500 nanometers wavelength, which is blue-green in color.  Using Wien’s law the surface temperature of the Sun is 5,800 Kelvin.
-
--------------------  Below is a table of the color of a star and the maximum temperature:
-
--------------------         Blue 49,000 Kelvin
--------------------  Blue-White 31,000
--------------------  White 10,000
--------------------  White-Yellow             7,400
--------------------  Yellow             6,000
--------------------  Orange             5,300
--------------------  Red            3,900
--------------------  Red-Infrared              2,200
--------------------  Infrared                   1,200
-
-  The largest Blue stars are known as Wolf-Rayet stars.  They are the class of stars that have burned all their fuel and are just about to go supernova.  They are so big and have so much gravity that after burning their hydrogen fusing into helium, helium fuses into carbon, carbon fuses into neon, neon fuses into oxygen, oxygen fuses into silicon, and silicon fuses into iron.
-
-    All of these fusion layers are like layers on an onion in a Wolf-Rayet star with iron at the center.  There is no fusion higher than iron because iron fusion absorbs energy rather than emitting energy.  Without emitting radiation the star collapses due to gravity.
-
-   The collapse at the core bounces sending the higher level elements out into a supernova explosion.  The closest Wolf-Rayet star is Gamma Velorum which is 740 to 975 lightyears away.  In the Constellation Vela, it is just outside our measurement range.
-
-  The problem here is that until we know the distance accurately we can not accurately determine the properties of a star.  We want to learn more of the properties of the massive stars because they were the first stars formed after the Big Bang, about 180,000,000 years after the Big Bang. 
-
-  Often massive stars appear as binary stars.  Two stars that are orbiting each other.  Understanding how these massive stars form will help us understand how stars formed in the early Universe.
-
-  The closet star is 4 lightyears away.  It is Alpha Centauri and it is actually a three star system.  To illustrate the distance of being 4 lightyears away, if you reduced the Sun to the size of a marble, Alpha Centauri would be 2 marbles and a ball bearing 250 miles away. (See Review #388)
-
-  The closest Blue-White star, Regulus in the Constellation Leo, is 78 lightyears away.  It is 331 times brighter than our Sun at 28,000 Kelvin.  Spica and Rigel are also Blue-White stars.  Spica in the Constellation Virgo is 262 lightyears away, 25,000 brighter than the Sun.  Rigel in the Constellation Orion is 773 lightyears away, 180 times brighter.
-
-  Less than 1% of the stars within 100 lightyears rank as massive stars, greater than 10 solar mass.  The biggest star we know is the Pistol Star.  The Pistol is 150 to 200 solar mass and more than 25,000 lightyears away.  It has more radiation in 6 seconds than our Sun has in one year.
-
-  The most distant supernova is pegged at 11,300,000,000 lightyears away.  It was 2,000,000,000 times brighter than our Sun in 1997.  Today it is no longer visible.
-
-  The closest supernova occurred in 1987, just 170,000 lightyears away.  It was 250 times brighter than our Sun.  The farthest supernova we could see with the naked eye in 1885 was M31 in Andromeda Galaxy 2,500,000 lightyears away.
-
-  The farthest star we can see with the naked eye is S - Carinae.  It is 12,000 lightyears away.  It is a variable star and currently at its brightest 5.6 Magnitude.
-
-   ( See #622 - Polaris for an explanation of a star’s brightness Magnitude.)
-
-  The hottest star has a temperature of 211,000 Kelvin and is 1,100 times brighter than our Sun.  It is 7,100 lightyears away.  The hottest star we can see with the naked eye is Zeta Puppis, a Blue Supergiant in the Constellation Puppis.  It is 1,400 lightyears away with a surface temperature of 42,000 Kelvin.  7 times hotter than our Sun, 20 times larger, 60 times more massive, and 800,000 times brighter.  Zeta Puppis is only 6,000,000 years old.
-
-  The coldest star is a White Dwarf just 145 lightyears away.  It is 4,300 Kelvin and has a luminosity of .00002 that of our Sun; it is the coldest because it has a very small surface area with a radius 1/100 that of our Sun.
-
-   The coldest and the largest star we can see with the naked eye is Cassiopeiae.  It is 350 lightyears away, orange red with a surface temperature of 2,000 K, 1/3 that of our Sun, but it is 1,800 times larger than our Sun.  A variable star at 4.8 Magnitude at its brightest.
-
-  The second closest star is Barnard’s star.  It is a Red Dwarf just 6 lightyears away and traveling at 87 miles per second (313,200 miles per hour). (See Review #362)
-
-  It is not the fastest star, Kapteyn’s Star is also a Red Dwarf at 12.8 lightyears away traveling at 175 miles per second ( 630,000 miles per hour).  (See Review #616)
-
-  Here is a table of the sizes of stars relative to our Sun and their color:
-
-
--------------------  Blue 25 solar mass       Luminous Supergiant
--------------------  Blue-White 15 Supergiant
--------------------  White 3 Bright Giant
--------------------  White-Yellow             1.5 Giant
--------------------  Yellow             1 Sun size
--------------------  Orange              .75 Dwarf
--------------------  Red            .5 Red Dwarf
--------------------  Red-Infrared               - White Dwarf
--------------------  Infrared              - Brown Dwarf
-
-  (See #617 and See #626 for more reviews about Brown Dwarfs)
-
-
-  Our Milky Way Galaxy is in constant rotation and some stars will be closer to us in the future.  In 1,360,000 years from now the star Gliese 710 which is now 63 light years away will come within 1 light year away. 
-
-  The gravity it brings will seriously dislodge comets from the Oort Cloud and rain comets on Earth much like occurred during Earth’s early formation.  You can see the evidence of that rain with a close look at the Moon.
-
-   In just 27,000 years Alpha Centauri will be within 3 lightyears away.  The Oort Cloud of comets extends out about 2 lightyears from us, but Alpha Centauri could still have some dislodging affects.
-
-   If a supergiant gets that close it would shine with the light of 20 full moons. Not only do stars come in all shades and sizes they are all changing as well.
-
-  Wish upon a star, you have many choices.
-
-  Other Reviews available upon request:
-
-  2272  -  Names of stars.
-
-  2273  -   The diversity of stars.
-
-  2238  -  The age of stars.
-
-  2038  -  Hyper - velocity stars. 
-
-  1822  -  The the largest stars and the oldest stars.   This review lists 12 more reviews about stars.
-
-  July 11, 2019                                                                                    623                                                                                                                                                             
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  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
 ---------------------               Friday, July 12, 2019--------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------