Category Archives: Physics
Mind over matter
As I walked early this morning on the peaceful tree lined streets of my 1960’s neighborhood, I thought about the difficulty in knowing anything about our reality with certainty. Looking around, I tried to find some anchor that would help me reconcile my paranormal experiences to the everyday physical world.
I look at the rust on a sign pole. I know the steel of the pole to be strong without needing to test it, in spite of the minor decay. I understand the oxidization that creates the rust. It is a regular and predictable process. The rust is is a simple material component of the tangible world. A mundane counterpoint to my esoteric thoughts, with no real bearing on my life or my musings. Or is it?
Are the literal nuts and bolts of this sign the only basis of reality, or is the material world an illusion? Does the rust really exist or only my perception of it? If my reality is determined by my perceptions or observations, why would I bother to perceive the rust when I would prefer a more uniform finish? What meaning or purpose could this little patch of decay have for me, a living and presumably conscious being?
Letting this muddle stew a while in the back of my mind, I decided to learn a little more about the rust that so rudely defaces this once proud symbol of civilization and progress. I needed to brush up since my last science class was a few decades ago.
- Iron is a relatively abundant element in the universe. The sun and many types of stars contain iron in quantity.
- The Earth’s molten core is thought to be composed mainly of iron. This core is believed to be the source of Earth’s magnetic field, which protects our atmosphere from radiation that would destroy it, and incidentally us.
- The red of Mars is ferric oxide, showing that the atmosphere once contained oxygen, the oxygen that is only liberated by life.
- The iron group are the only metals that fall from the sky. Iron is found native in about 6% of meteorites.
- Iron is a shiny, bright white metal that is soft, malleable, ductile and strong.
- Iron is the most abundant metal on Earth, but in its pure form rapidly decays. It is only found naturally in it’s metallic form in meteors. So how did the first iron metals come to be smelted by humans?
- Like other metals, iron forms a crystalline ionic compound when bound by ‘resonance’ to carbon. The resulting forms can have special electrical properties when molten or dissolved in solution.
- There are multiple forms of iron. One form is magnetic, but when iron is transformed into another form, the magnetism disappears, although the lattice remains unchanged.
- Iron is vital to plant and animal life. In humans, it appears in the hemoglobin molecule in our blood.
- Ferrous sulphide can form crystalline FeS2, known as the mineral pyrite. Pyrite can be struck with iron to produce sparks for making fire.
- The ferrous ion is greenish in solution, while the ferric ion is a light violet. The distinct colors of iron compounds are due to the d-electrons, which can interact with light in many interesting ways. Various ferrous compounds have been used to color dies, paint, inks and glass.
- The ability to smelt and work iron into usable forms was instrumental in the development of human civilization.
- Iron is also found in minerals such as magnetite, which is commonly seen as black sands along beaches and stream banks. A layer of magnetite can be an indicator of the presence of gold dust.
- For manufacturing the versatility of iron-carbon alloys, such as steel, cannot be matched in any other material.
- Iron can be induced to provide a strong magnetic field with only small excitation by an electric current.
- Potassium ferrous ferricyanide is Prussian blue, which can be used as a medicine to counter some forms of radiation poison.
- The magnetism of the iron group of metals is a rare and remarkable property. It is not due to any inherent magnetic propensities of the atoms, but to the structure of the metal.
- The six ton Iron Ashoka Pillar of Delhi is about 1600 years old, 98% pure iron and has not corroded. This artifact is believe to demonstrate the technological sophistication of past civilizations.
For more fascinating info on iron see http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/iron.htm.
Upon reflection, the rust I pass every day and take for granted is in fact a demonstration of the unmatched power of elemental iron to shape and reshape our body chemistry, our technology, our art, our civilization, our planet, our atmosphere, our stars and our future. The power of this element comes not from its stability, but from its instability and its readiness to react with carbon and oxygen which are literally the core components of life. True alchemy is not to turn lead into gold, but to turn star dust into life and clearly iron is the catalyst that enables that to happen.
My new respect for rust causes me to reflect on the illusion that material reality is fixed and static. It only appears so due to the limited range of our basic senses, infrequent insight and short lifespans. A never ending flow of wave-particles, fields and forces compose everything around us. They just happen to produce an artifact that we call the material world. All of the things around us are constantly changing, while we exert our greatest effort to bend even a tiny portion of matter to our will.
Clearly the universe felt I needed a lesson in humility today. Point taken.
Igniting a star
The dream of igniting a self-sustained fusion reaction with high yields of energy, a feat likened to creating a miniature star on Earth, is getting closer to becoming reality, according the authors of a new review article in the journal Physics of Plasmas.
In the early morning hours of Aug.13, Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) focused all 192 of its ultra-powerful laser beams on a tiny deuterium-tritium filled capsule. In the nanoseconds that followed, the capsule imploded and released a neutron yield of nearly 3×1015, or approximately 8,000 joules of neutron energy—approximately three times NIF’s previous neutron yield record for cryogenic implosions. http://phys.org/news/2013-09-fusion-weve.html
Clearly, we are living in the end of the fossil fuel age. One estimate is that fusion fuel could be made for as little as 25 cents per use and yield 50 to 100 times more energy than is needed to initiate the fusion reaction.
Will this brave, new world lead to energy abundance for all or a monopoly for a few? I would like to believe that this technology will be used to drive a new economy that is more sustainable and less exploitative than the oil economy of today. But I suspect that the level of technology needed to produce this power would enable a higher consolidation of wealth. Once such a power source becomes available, the market for fossil fuels will shrink to the point that developing economies that are entirely dependent on them may collapse and further destabilize regions already in turmoil.
For a detailed explanation of how the two main types of experimental fusion reactors work, go to http://science.howstuffworks.com/fusion-reactor2.htm.
I also wonder about the potential to weaponize fusion reactions. A quick search turned up this disturbing info below.
A pure fusion weapon .. would require no fissile material and would therefore be much easier to build in secret than existing weapons. The necessity of separating high-quality fissile material requires a substantial industrial investment, and blocking the sale and transfer of the needed machinery has been the primary mechanism to control nuclear proliferation to date.
Pure fusion weapons offer the possibility of generating very small nuclear yields and the advantage of reduced collateral damage stemming from fallout because these weapons would not create the highly radioactive byproducts associated with fission-type weapons…. The neutrons may cause substantially more casualties than the explosive blast, as in a neutron bomb.
If I understand this idea, a pure fusion weapon would destroy living things without destroying the infrastructure or leaving radiation. How tempting for a new wave of colonization in areas of great instability world wide, instant vacancy – ready for new owner. Science fiction author Isaac Asimov said that “Such a neutron bomb or N bomb seems desirable to those who worry about property and hold life cheap.” in The New Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. Basic Books, New York, 1965. Page 410.
In a 2001 DOE Declassification document titled RESTRICTED DATA DECLASSIFICATION DECISIONS 1946 TO THE PRESENT a power threshold is set for classification.
Research and development on lasers will be classified if power level exceeds 100 gigawatt, or pulse energy exceed 1 kilojoule. Any laser application (for any power whether or not classified) that achieves DT ignition will be classified Restricted Data. DT ignition is defined to be a 1% rise in temperature or mean charged-particle kinetic energy at any point in the gas [target]. (64-7) http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/rdd-7.html#I59
Does this mean that if the lab succeeds in gaining ignition, the technology becomes unavailable for commercial development? Do the results reported today, exceed this level now? Or does it not count yet, because they did not achieve ignition. So are we one step closer to Utopia or one step closer to Armageddon?
Entangled Myth
I recently read the book Entangled Minds by Dean Radin. I have read a number of other books that also review the large body of rigorous, repeatable lab studies that have demonstrated a measurable effect of PSI interaction over the last hundred years. What most impressed me about Dean Radin is that he goes beyond the now thoroughly established, if not well publicized, conclusion that PSI is real. Radin’s multi-disciplinary background as well as personal experience may have given him a bit more insight to begin proposing a mechanism behind the magic.
Basic physical concepts like time, space, energy, and matter were imagined to be fixed, absolute, and fundamentally different substances. It was taken for granted that reality existed in an absolute sense, independent of observers, and it was an additional token of faith that action at a distance was impossible. The concept of mind, then viewed through the fledgling discipline of psychology , and especially its rising fad of behaviorism, was regarded as an illusion created by the clockwork mechanisms of the brain. Because mind was an illusion and action at a distance was impossible, genuine psi phenomena were also impossible.
Radin, Dean (2009-11-19). Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality (pp. 241-242). Pocket Books. Kindle Edition.
Our cultural framework is still heavily embedded in a mechanistic world/cosmological view. Even practitioners of other scientific disciplines seem to have little awareness of the potential upheaval that could result from the application of the principles of quantum entanglement to the molecular scale. The social sciences, which include my own academic background, are even further out of touch with the frontiers of the physical, chemical and biological sciences. The foundation needed to understand and apply a new understanding of the fundamental nature of matter and energy rarely exists outside of the practitioners’ discipline.While the public is still unaware of the successful research of PSI events, surveys show that most people do accept the reality of PSI. The remaining mystery is how it might work based on our current scientific knowledge. Radin begins to tie the emerging understanding of entangled particles and quantum physics with the patterns of PSI events. Unfortunately, the public is generally unaware of role of the observer in establishing reality and the measurement of quantum particles’ ‘spooky action at a distance’ as famously labeled by Einstein. So tying one mis-understood event to another probably does not go far to break the stalemate that keeps PSI research on the fringe of science and society.
Psychologists still practice as if the brain and the mind were the same thing. Yet, there are documented cases where the mind is operating without the brain functioning. Any out of place thought is a delusion, rather than a stray idea from a passer by.
Bio-chemists and medical researchers are still focusing on the role of specific disease agents and chemical compounds in restoring health. Yet, their population based research has only partial predictive value in managing illness. The role of the mind in establishing and maintaining health is rarely acknowledge, other than as a placebo effect.
It seems we are stuck at the beginning of a scientific revolution, not because the research is unavailable or inconclusive, but because the general academic community and the public can’t absorb the results. The scope of cosmological and theoretical physics have moved so far out of alignment with the general world view that they have become akin to magical arcane practitioners of dark arts.
Visionary Explorer 