Wrapup

Well, we're near the end of another year. All good little geeks are snuggled up warm in their beds while visions of Intel unlocked cpu's dance in their heads. Thanks to the digital revolution, the week of Thanksgiving is now the new Christmas week. Presents will arrive by drone, instead of reindeer...

Let us give thanks for a wide world of Internet. It's become an entire virtual universe to many of us. It certainly has put the resources of many libraries of info in our hands and given us access to nearly every genius on the planet. That alone is worth the price. And there is a price. The Internet has magnified us. That includes the good and the bad.

Last of all, I am thankful for the ability to tell the difference. So many out there don't seem to have made that connection.

Another thing waning with the year is the meteor shower count. I can see why ancient 'wise' men hung out on mountain tops. If they had lived near me, they would still have been wondering what everyone was talking about.

I can't help wondering if Mankind will spread out from this rock in time. We will soon be one year closer to a serious mission to Mars, but it's still years away. Even then, it's years beyond that to any kind of large colony. The moon looks like a smart base, but nobody seems to care and I can't figure out why! I know that we no longer have billions to toss around, but if it makes it more likely that we will survive, well, what is the survival of the Human race worth? The moon is a week away even at the cruddy speeds we can manage. Let's start pushing for moon colonization before we all start pushing up daisies...

A Lesson in Humility

As some of you may have heard, we're about to be taught a lesson in humility. On Halloween next week a significant piece of rock will go sizzling past out planet at a distance that qualifies it as 'bullet parting yer hair' miss.

The object is 2015 TB145. It will pass outside our orbit at an approximte range of 300,000 miles. They say that this rock is the closest thing to come near us until the scary one of 2027.

Now, why is this any kind of lesson? Simply that NASA didn't know it existed until 10 days ago.

So pardon me if I regard any such statements with the skepticism they deserve. Any time I learn of a 400 meter wide bullet aimed at Earth, I get a teensy bit nervous. What else don't they know? The only sane answer is 'almost everything'. That is not meant as a criticism in any way of the state of their knowledge! Given how few resources are being directed at the issue, it's a wonder we found it at all. Instead, my scorn is aimed at pronouncements like that one about not seeing anything more until 2027. That claim makes me want to run and hide. Preferably on the moon or maybe Mars...

Here's a little guide for those at NASA and JPL: keep your eyes open and always ask yourself what else you don't know!

Enough for a shower?

Water on Mars.

Until a few weeks ago, it was the very stuff of sci-fi. Then they found liquid water on the surface of Mars. Of all the discoveries made in the last century, this is the equivalent of having your face shoved in 'it' and then rubbed vigorously. If the 'experts' don't realize that their holy writ of infallibility is null and void, then what more can the universe do? Sadly, it also punches small holes in the latest stranded astronaut movie, but movies are works of fiction anyway, right?

To make up for that, it may also make colonization easier. Yes, I am in favor of colonizing, even though the main direction of this blog is interstellar. We need a dress rehearsal. Something easy, but not too easy, where we can test even more theorems. The most critical thing I want to see is some drive better than a toy rocket, They are leaning towards an ion/plasma drive, which is efficient, but slow. This baby step will no doubt help, but we all know it won't make the interstellar cut. Let's hope we can eventually test out a fusion drive.

Speaking of propulsion, it turns out that there is a very effective launch vehicle for heavy lifting to orbit. IF we can stand the secondary effects! It consists of digging a deep cylindrical hole, placing a metal plate over it with the load on top. Then firing off a nuclear bomb at the bottom of the hole(!). It gives the payload a final velocity of 42 miles per SECOND. Somehow I doubt that it will be useful for lifting poor, squishy people, though it may be possible to engineer around that. And then there's the mess left behind... Well, we chip the stone into a circle and grind a hole in the middle...

But let's spend a moment thinking about Mars. There are still things about the planet (it still is a planet, right?) that we can't explain. Certainly it's been a solar system's punching bag, much like our moon. I assume that there are plans at a high level to terraform the place. I have no idea what we could do to liquefy a planetary core and spin it.

Now we get to some things that scientific experts don't want to deal with!

Mars rotates. Is this a leftover from times of a liquid core? Is there a liquid core, but one too cool to generate a liquid mantle? We'll want to know. A fire is a lot easier to start if some coals remain. And Mars' rotational axis is tilted!!! I haven't heard anyone mention that! Supposedly, there is life on Earth because our moon stabilized our axis at about 23 degrees. Where is the moon that did that for Mars? No-one in their right mind had better suggest that those two little captured asteroids that pass for moons did the job! Yes, there are a lot of things that needs facts and not theories.

Speaking of asteroids, let's just touch on that. What happened to Planet 6? We know by math that there sbould be a planet there. My favorite theorem is that Jupiter made things too dicey for planetary aggregation. It would like trying to build a concrete block wall with a 7.0 quake every day at noon. Every time Jupiter passes, progress resets to zero. The jury is still out on the idea of it being enough to disrupt an already formed planet. It will take a survey of the number and composition of the asteroid belt to tell. If we looked and found the different pieces of a planet, then the question will need further attention.  I mean that should we see that there are certain proportions of core material to mixed materials to silicon/iron/carbon and other light elements, then the idea of a planet ripped apart becomes a possibility. I do wonder how big a planet it would have been.

Let's see what happens next in Mars: the soap opera.

An afterthought

There is one little theorem that infuriates me the way that taxes infuriate lottery winners: Why do we accept 14.5 billion years as the age of our universe? Because that's all we can see? Apparently. That is just plain sad!

That's enough. Chew on it a while.

Randomness, or is it chaos?

I really don't know the answer to that. As so many have observed, sometimes it's the right questions and the answers will come along in time. And then there's other times when you're left with questions and answers and the whole mess makes no sense at all. I know that it's been a long while between posts. That's because whatever time is, there isn't enough to go around.

Now, back to things we know and things we don't. There seems to be some confusion between the two in the minds of a great big bunch of 'scientists'. Or that's the impression I was left with after watching months of tv programs about our universe, its history, present, and future. Considering that quite a few of those people appeared on camera with their current theorems, I would like to plead that they should consult a dictionary for the differences between theorem, theory, and fact.

The latest thing getting airtime is planetary formation and that part that works at explaining why planets are what they are. All driven by the discovery of the hundreds (so far) of other planets in this galaxy. It seems a bit presumptuous to worry about other solar systems when they can't figure out why our own is the way it is. Did you all know that there's ANOTHER planetoid(?) out there buzzing around outside of Pluto? I think that's something my teachers failed to mention simply because they didn't know. And precisely why was Pluto demoted? There are moons out there that are bigger than our Luna. Should we then demote our moon to a moonlet because of it? This must be some kind of planetary snobbery.

And the worst part is that they seem to be totally blind to other possibilities. As we have seen repeatedly in the past, the only source for fresh ideas is old science fiction. There are so many examples that I couldn't list them all. I kind of like the concept of wandering planets being captured by a star's gravity well. Even that idea is suspect. Gravity will bend light, but so will a chunk of common glass. That seems a little limp a reason to assume that it's a case of gravity bending space. And then you get into "well, if space is the absence of anything, then how can you bend it?".

It's a mess and it's not going away. We need to accept the things we don't know and try to imagine some way to prove what we do. But can we? Where do stand in order to discover what space is?

I leave you with a final thought: 'we' have decided that nothing can go faster than light. Why that is, I don't know. Yes, our God of Science Albert Einstein has proclaimed it to be true. So, let me be a heretic. I have never heard or seen any proof that this is a fact. So... Prove me wrong. Don't throw math at me. You can make math prove that apples are diamonds. Show me proof that the speed of light is a cast iron speed limit everywhere. Then I'll apologize and shut up.

Spring Forward

There are a lot of things to cover, so I may just deal with it in pieces.

As the science channels are fond of telling us, when it comes to things that can wipe out the human race, we aren't anywhere near running out of them. One of the most common mega-disasters is, of course, a celestial body impact.

What bothers me (along with the prospect of imminent death) is that we are in the precarious situation of being aware that there's a danger, but having no clue what to do about it.

Let me give a concrete example. A group of average people is walking along and sees a lion coming their way. It's just like a comet/asteroid threat: it's coming, you can see it, and you know that if something isn't done, you'll all die. Now, we can understand this. It's a direct threat and we would all know it's deadly. AND, we would all know there are things we could do with things we are familiar with that would stop it. Theoretically.
Say what? The group of people know that there is a list of things that may work, except that nobody has ever tried them. Yes, it's like seeing the lion (remember that lion?) coming over to check out the luncheon menu and... Your group starts to sweat!

There's a certain tension in this scenario. They think that a giant fly swatter might work. Or a pocket nuke. Or a big solar-powered trap. Or...  You see the issue, I hope. By the time the group decides what the best weapon is, develops a version suited to the threat, and goes through the engineering study to build the thing, the lion will be under a nearby tree wondering about dessert.

I don't think this is the way to deal with a cosmic impact threat. Or a lion. We know damn well that the things are out there. We know that given the number of unknowable variables, it is simply a matter of time before something takes a wrong turn and ends up in our laps. And as we discover the sheer number of players, it becomes a shorter and shorter time before we have the lion at our door.

The bottom line here is that we can't afford to wait for 2025 or so to fly the next space truck. We need to get it up, perfect it, and start engineering our lion-killer. If we whine about the budget and put it off, it will be us and not him on that menu!

More later...

The View From Left Field

I'm going to spitball a really wild theory just to see if it makes anyone else accept the possibility that someone knows.

Let me lay out the scenario and then we'll get into recorded belief of the local people involved. Their belief is that some et presence (or at least intervention) was involved, but we'll get to that later. Ready to go off road?

Good. The year is 1908. The place is, as you may have guessed, is Tunguska, Russia. The Earth experiences a fairly big bang. At the time, people notice the results of this blast, but it's so far from anything like civilization that it doesn't make any long term difference. There are bright skies at night that may point to the meteorite being a comet fragment rather than a rocky boulder. The gasses released by a comet fragment may well have been spread after the high altitude explosion, resulting in the materials being excited the same way they would have been in space.

Now, let's look at what we know, what we should be able to figure out, and then consider some strange 'why's.

We know approximately how high the thing was when it popped. We have a decent guess at how fast it was going. We have a really detailed survey of how big an area was flattened and what way the trees were pointing. This should let us find out the direction it was going and the angle of incidence, if we work at it. There have been studies done of the blast patterns of air burst explosions. This is really critical and we must have this nailed down in order to ask the right questions.

Now. There is a local myth(?) that calls the Tunguska area involved "the valley of death". The locals say there are seven 'upside down kettles' that they say were left there by the gods to keep things from coming down from outer space. There have been some weird happenings that may confirm this, but nothing that can be called proof has been found.

Here is the question: if the meteorite had been coming in at a shallow angle, where would it have impacted and what was there in 1908?

If anything was already at the impact site, what was it and was it something that was important to someone and if so, who? All in all, it makes for interesting conversation.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Let's get one thing straight right away- a "theory" = "it's my opinion". That's a piece of scientific language that never made it into your average dictionary. This fact has created an truly ginormous amount of fuzzy thinking and incipient chaos, simply because when people hear the term theory emitted by a scientific "authority", they assume that that person is telling them facts.

The word 'fact' is innocuous and well known. The trouble is that there are a lot fewer facts around than there are theories.

A well-known case of this is the issue of "dark matter" and "dark energy". The prevailing theory at the moment is that for galaxies and galactic-scale structures to exist, there must be dark matter to provide enough gravity to keep things from flying apart and following entropy down the nearest storm drain. Then they had to theorize dark energy in order to fit the observed fact that the universe is still expanding. GAH!

What a mountain they got out of that wormhole...I mean molehill. If you are willing to see how my theory (😄) of the universe-as-bubble fits the facts, you will note that it explains things pretty darn well without adding dark anything. The anti-matter universe is likely plugging along as it should on the negative side of space, just as devoid of "light matter" and energy. I don't have any idea how I can prove any of this. I speculate that you may have to exist outside the universe before you can begin to see what's going on. Disappointing, to say the least. Oh, yes, the anti side? On the inside of the balloon, of course. We have observed white and black holes. Points of equalizing matter inside and out. Or I should say energy. Matter being 'crystal' structures of energy.

This, then, is the ultimate roadblock. We don't have the tools to examine existence in big enough or small enough detail to find real facts. Next time you find yourself near a theoretical physicist, ask him if you can borrow a few ounces of dark matter.

No, we will have to scribble our pictures of the real world in fuzzy blobs of chalk dust on the walls of the cave we call Earth. Our entire civilization of 5 or 10 thousand years is such a ridiculously short time that it's a wonder we've gotten as far as the invention of the bicycle in that time, much less any understanding of the universe.

Good News!

No, I didn't win the lottery. It's simply that you can stop worrying: the universe isn't ending. In fact, I don't see any end. This would be a big disappointment to physicists who want to know if the universe is cyclic or steady-state. All I can tell them is No. If you insist on there being more than one universe (which I have to admit is one thing we currently have to take on faith), then consider an alternative.

One view we could take is that universes are constantly being born, like grapes on a vine. They come into being, grow, and (supposedly) die. As I've said, I theorize that our universe's load of galaxies exist on the skin of a balloon that is still inflating. Since the balloon is non-material, I don't see any need for a size limit. And would we know it if we hit the limit? Perhaps. I think the sign would be if the most distant galaxies suddenly stopped receding at faster than the speed of light. They might even stop receding at all. That hasn't happened yet. I know that some people have prophesized that our universe will eventually run out of matter to be converted to energy and there will be no more new stars. Since we currently have no handle on things like white holes, black holes, and dark matter, I just can't see any way to formulate an answer to that.

But...

I'm losing sleep again.

Darn tv keeps running programs that remind me of something I'd rather not deal with, because I don't have an answer yet. But I sure do have an unanswer!

What about gravity?

What about gravity???

Yes, it's doing all kinds of things, like sticking our butts to our chairs and holding the universe together. However, if you approach a physicist and ask him what gravity is, I'm betting you get a neatly formatted little talk about what it does and how it keeps everything together, blah... blah... blah... This is mostly because nobody has yet explained what gravity is. Hell, we can't even detect gravity! It's true and don't let them try to talk their way around it. They can't even show you a gravity detector of any kind. You can dare any one of them to show you one. You might win a free drink...

This bothers me. That's because I'm right in there with them. We can detect electricity, magnetism, and something we like to call electromagnetism. But not gravity.

So, we are really stuck. Things are as clear as the atmosphere of Jupiter. We can demonstrate electricity, I'm fairly sure. That fat spark between terminals of opposite polarities is pretty convincing. But what, then, is the big difference between electricity and magnetism? Magnetism has polarity. Oh, yes, nobody has yet shown magnetic sparks. Hmm. And the electromagnetic spectrum? Uh, does that mean we can 'tune in' different frequencies of magnetism?

I don't even want to get involved with gravity, at this point. I can certainly understand why physicists don't spend time worrying about gravity. Frankly it gives me a headache, and I've had enough of those as I dealt with the flu this winter. I will keep trying to figure out where gravity comes from and how we can get a better hold on it, but this is not going to be an overnight fix.

There is something hinky about the business where two objects of different masses are attracted at the same rate by gravity. I know that it has been demonstrated, but if their explanation of gravity is right, it shouldn't work that way. So somebody has been playing fast and loose and hoping we don't look too closely at where the coin goes when they wave the cloth.

Like I said, I'll keep working at it.

Next

Darn those tv shows. They tend to toss out those peculiarities whenever they feel like it. For instance, that NASA deep space probe that's not following the orbit that physics says it should. The telemetry says the launch went as perfectly as possible for such things. The hardware takes off for interstellar space with all the verve that its creators hoped. BUT, it's swerving off the planned path.

This engendered as close to a heart attack as staid science allows. How can this hunk of hardware, every milligram planned for and calculated, be not going where it should? And it's not a small deviation, either.

Well, let's look at this from simple situations, as Occam would have it. You launch an object into a "zero g" environment and give it a shove over thataway. Given how little gravity there should be out there, your shove should send it in a straight line. It didn't. So... Now we ask why.

Here is a theory that explains a few things. Let's suppose that there is a black hole in our solar system. I know that concept is not a blockbuster, but I'm not done. Suppose this is not a marble-sized object (can you call a black hole an "object"?), but something with the mass of, say, Earth. Let's place it somewhere around the orbit of the steroid belt, but not necessarily in the ecliptic. What could it do if it had been around long enough? Something like ruin the formation of a planet, perhaps? Leaving a ring of loose junk... Umm, fill in the blank spot in what Bode's law says about our solar system? Ruin the projected orbit of a probe?

Of course that's just a theory. The proof might lie in launching a number of probes in almost the same orbit. One of them might disappear! But that's not likely. Not in an era when we're turning our attention inward rather than outward.

Because, if it was true, it might open all kinds of doors. At the very least, we could well use such a thing to slingshot probes or ships further and faster than we have yet gone. And that, to my mind is worth a few hunks of hardware!

Time for Everything

Yes,  it has been a while.

Let's just say that this has been a truly chaotic winter.  We've been facing everything from a taste of frozen driveway (800 ft.  Long and uphill both ways) to finding out that my wife's dog has cancer.  Compared to this,  recent happenings lightyears away didn't make the impression it should have.  Then  the news hit that Leonard Nimoy had died of lung disease.  The news of the loss seems to have a fitting place in the cosmos I'm creating here.

And speaking cosmically,  I have begun to pull together a consensus from all the programs I've watched: We will have to colonize the stars,  if someone else hasn't done it already.  Duh!  In the meantime,  all they can seem to find to argue about is the Ark's drive system and whether the crew goes out awake or as a corpsicle.  When I think of all the pure science experiments that there are to run,  it takes all the fun out of a 30 year nap.  I will admit that sometimes I feel I could really use one.  But I would be far too busy to get far into it.

The drive question,  though,  has legs to it.  Well,  except that everyone would love to use anti-matter...  Even that,  though,  may not be the ideal prime mover.  As a power source,  it's fine.  I mean the mile-per-gallon rating can't get any better. 100% efficiency is hard to beat. It still doesn't get you from A to B. I  figure that applying all that energy scooped up solar wind makes the most sense.  Anything better is going to take a theoretical breakthrough, so we will have to give it a pass. We can't count on a major coup.

The point is that the people on the inside is still not getting the big picture. I'm going to take a risk here and say that I think we need a new approach.  I have this energy matrix concept and it is holding up to a scary extent.  No real matter,  just the equivalent energy in a more or less stable form. It even makes sense of chemistry, which I would have given long odds against back in college.  You end up with two forms of energy: fixed and radiant.  Fixed energy is in a stable matrix form that we 'macro people' perceive as matter. It inhabits its own bit of space.  To make any sense of this,  there has to be at least 6 dimensions.  The three we can see and 3 more to hold the space frame. Look at the way it simplifies something like refraction.  Radiant energy in the form of photons or whatever comes close,  gets changed by the energy of the (or charged) stable matrix and will take a different path.

I think that what will make a huge difference is if we can find out how to nail down the stable matter.  Next we engineer a drive that will grab hold of space and pull the ship along with it. Will it be limited to the speed of light? I have no idea.  I have a hard time dealing with limits ;')