18 July 2008 by admin.

October 13, 1998

I want to thank you for letting me post your article about gravity shielding that appeared in the March ‘98 WIRED magazine.  Your comments on my article about lightning sprites and the blue-green flash are also appreciated.  In light of our on-going exchange of ideas, I thought you might be interested in some articles I wrote for my WEB forum on “bleeding edge science” that I hosted awhile back.  Some of these ideas and articles date back to the mid-90’s, so some of the references are a little dated and some of the software that I use now is generally available as a major improvement over what I had then.

What I was involved with then can be characterized by the books and magazines I read, a combination of Skeptical Enquirer, Scientific American, Discovery and Nature.  I enjoyed the challenge of debunking some space cadet that had made yet another perpetual motion machine or yet another 250 mile-per-gallon carburetor - both claiming that the government or big business was trying to suppress their inventions.  Several of my articles were printed on the bulletin board that pre-dated the publication of the Skeptical Enquirer.

I particularly liked all the far-out inventions attributed to one of my heroes - Nikola Tesla.  To hear some of those fringe groups, you’d think he had to be an alien implant working on an intergalactic defense system.  I got more than one space cadet upset with me by citing real science to shoot down his gospel of zero-point energy forces and free energy.

Perhaps the most fun is taking some wing ding that has some crazy idea and bouncing that against what we know about in hard science.  Most often than not, they make use of fancy science terms and word that they do not really understand to try to add credibility to their ravings.  I have done this so often, in fact, that I thought I’d take on a challenge and try to play the other side for once.  I’ll be the wing nut and spin a yarn about some off the wall idea but I’ll do it in such a way that I’ll try to really convince you that it is true.  To that, I’m going to use every thing I know about science.  You be the judge if this sounds like a space cadet or not.

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Are They Really There?             Life is Easy to Make: 

 Since 1953, with the Stanley Miller experiment, we have, or should have discarded the theory that we are unique in the universe.  Production of organic life and even DNA and RNA have been shown to occur in simple mixtures of hydrogen, ammonia, methane and water when exposed to an electrical discharge (lightning).  The existence of most of these components has been frequently verified by spectral analysis in distant stars but, of course, until recently, we can’t see the star’s planets.  Based on the most accepted star and planet formation theories, most star systems would have a significant number of planets with these elements and conditions.

 Quantifying the SETI

 A radio astronomer, Frank Drake developed some equations that were the first serious attempt to quantify the number of technical civilizations in our galaxy.  Unfortunately, his factors were very ambiguous and various scientists have produced numbers ranging from 1 to 10 billion technical civilizations in just our galaxy.  This condition of a formula is referred to as unstable or ill‑conditioned systems.  There are mathematical techniques to reduce the instability of such equations.  I attempted to do so to quantify the probability of the existence of intelligent life.

 I approached the process a little different.  Rather than come up with a single number for the whole galaxy, I decided to relate the probability to distance from Earth.  Later I added directionality.

 Using the basic formulas Drake used to start, I added a finite stochastic process using conditional probability. This produces a tree of event outcomes for each computed conditional probability.  (The conditions being quantified were those in his basic formula: rate of star formation; number of planets in each system with conditions favorable to life; fraction of planets with on which life develops; fraction of planets that develop intelligent life; fraction of planets that develop intelligent life that evolve technical civilizations capable of interstellar communications and the lifetime of such a civilization).

 I then layered one more parameter onto this by increasing the probability of a particular tree path inversely to the relation of one over the square of the distance.  This added a conservative estimate for the increasing probability of intelligent life as the distance from Earth increases and more stars and planets are included in the sample size.

 I Love Simulation Models

 I used standard values used by Gamow and Hawking in their computations, however, I ignored Riemannian geometry and assumed a purely Euclidean universe.  Initially, I assumed the standard cosmological principles of homogeneity and isotropic distributions.  (I changed that later) Of course this produced 1000’s of probable outcomes but by using a Monte Carlo simulation of the probability distribution and the initial computation factors of Drake’s formula (within reasonable limits), I was able to derive a graph of probability of technical civilizations as a function of distance.

 But I Knew That

 As was predictable before I started, the graph is a rising, non‑linear curve, converging on  if you go out in distance far enough 100%.  Even though the outcome was intuitive, what I gained was a range of distances with a range of corresponding probabilities of technical civilizations.  Obviously, the graph converges to 100% at infinite distances but what was really surprising is that it is above 99% before leaving the Milky Way Galaxy.  We don’t even have to go to Andromeda to have a very good chance of there being intelligent life in space.  Of course, that is not so unusual since our galaxy may have about 200 billion stars and some unknown multiple of planets.

 Then I made It Directional

 I toyed with one other computation.  The homogeneous and isotropic universe used by Einstein and Hawking is a mathematical convenience to allow them to relate the structure of the universe to their theories of space‑time. These mathematical fudge‑factors are not consistent with observation in small orders of magnitude in distance from earth ‑ out to the limits of what we can observe ‑ about 15 billion light years.  We know that there is inhomogeneous or lumps in the stellar density at these relatively close distances.  The closest lump is called the Local Group with 22 galaxies but it is on the edge of a super cluster of 2500 galaxies.  There is an even larger group called the Great Attractor that may contain tens of thousands of galaxies. 

By altering my formula,  I took into account the equatorial system direction (ascension & declination) of the inhomogeneous clustering.  Predictably, this just gave me a probability of intelligent life based on a vector rather than a scalar measure.  It did however, move the distance for any given probability much closer ‑ in the direction of clusters and super clusters.  So much so that at about 351 million light years, the probability is virtually 100%.  At only about 3 million light years, the probability is over 99%. That is well within the Local Group of galaxies.

 When you consider that there are tens of billions of stars and galaxies within detection range by Earth and some unknown quantity beyond detection - it is estimated that there are galaxies numbering as many as a 1 followed by 21 zeros - that is more than all the grains of sand in all the oceans, beaches and deserts in the entire world.  And in each of those galaxies, there are billions of stars!  Now you can begin to see that the formula to quantify the number of technical civilizations in space results in virtually 100% no matter how conservative you make the input values.  It can do no less than prove that life is out there.

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18 July 2008 by admin.

These articles deal with the fringe in that I was addressing the “science” behind so called UFO’s.

I have done some analysis on life in our solar system other than Earth and the odds against it are very high.  At least, life as we know it.  Even Mars probably did not get past early life stages before the O2 was consumed.  Any biologist will tell you that in our planet evolution, there were any number of critical thresholds of presence or absence of a gas or heat or water (or magnetic field or magma flow) that, if crossed, would have returned the planet to a lifeless dust ball. 

Frank Drakes formulas are a testament to that.  The only reason that his formulas are used to “prove” life exists is because of the enormous quantities of tries that nature has to get it right in the observable universe and over so much time.

One potential perspective is that what may be visiting us, as “UFO’s” could be a race or several races of beings that are 500 to 25,000 years or more advanced than us.  Given the age of the universe and the fact that our sun is probably second or third generation, this is not difficult to understand.  Some planet somewhere was able to get life started before Earth and they are now where we will be in the far distant future.

  Stanley Miller proved that life, as we know it, could form out of organic and natural events during the normal evolution of a class M planet.  But Drake showed that the chances of that occurring twice in one solar system is very high against it.  If you work backwards from their formulas, given the event of earth as an input of some solution of the equations, you would need something like 100 million planets to get even a slight chance for another planet with high‑tech life on it.

  Taken this into consideration and then comparing it to the chances that the monuments on mars are natural formations or some other claim of extraterrestrial life within our solar system, you must conclude that there is virtually no chance for life in our solar system.  Despite this, there are many that point to “evidence” such as the appearance of a face and pyramids in Mars photographs.  It sounds a lot like an updated version of the “canals” that were first seen in the 19th century.  Now we can “measure” these observations with extreme accuracy - or so they would have you believe.

The so‑called perfect measurements and alignment that are supposedly seen on the pyramids and “faces” are very curious since even the best photos we have of these sites have a resolution that could never support such accuracy in measurements.  When you get down to “measuring” the alignment and sizes of the sides, you can pretty much lay the compass or ruler anywhere you want because of the fuzz and loss of detail caused by the relatively poor resolution.  Don’t let someone tell you that they measured down to the decimal value of degrees and to within inches when the photo has a resolution of meters per pixel!

   As for the multidimensional universe; I believe Stephen Hawkin when he said that there are more than 3 dimensions however, for some complex mathematical reasons, a fifth dimension would not necessarily have any relationship to the first four and objects that have a fifth dimension would have units of the first four (l,w,h & time) that are very small ‑ on the order of atomic units of scale.  This means that according to our present understanding of the math, the only way we could experience more than 4 dimensions is to be able to be reduced to angstrom sizes and to withstand very high excitation from an external energy source.   Lets exclude the size issue for a moment since that is an artifact of the math model that we have chosen in the theory and may not be correct.

  We generally accept that time is the 4th dimension after l, w, and h which seem to be related as being in the same units but in different directions.  If time is a vector (which we believe it is) and it is so very different than up, down, etc, then what would you imagine a 5th dimension unit to be?

  Most people think of “moving” into another dimension and it being just some variation of the first 4 but this is not the case.  The next dimension, is not capable of being understood by us because we have no frame of reference. 

Hawkin makes a much better explanation of this in one of his books but suffice it to say that we do not know how to explore this question because we cannot conceive of the context of more than 4 dimensions.  The only way we can explore it is with math ‑ we can’t even graph it because we haven’t got a 5-axis coordinate system.  I have seen a 10 dimensional formula graphed but they did only 3 dimensions at a time. 

Whatever the relationship of a unit called a “second” has with a unit called a “meter”, may or may not be the same relationship as the meter has with “???????” (Whatever the units of the 5th dimension are called).  What could it possibly be?  You describe it for me, but don’t use any reference to the first 4 dimensions.  For instance, I can describe time or length without reference to any of the other known dimensions.  The bottom line is that this is one area that even a computer cannot help because no one has been able to give a computer an imagination ……..yet.  However, it is an area that is so beyond out thinking that perhaps we should not speculate about them coming from another dimension. 

Let’s look at other possibilities.    To do that, take a look at the other article on this blog titled, “Intergalactic Space Travel”.

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18 July 2008 by admin.

Scientists have been telling us for some time that it is impossible to achieve the speed of light.  The formula says that mass goes to infinity as you approach C so the amount of power to go faster also rises to infinity.  The theory also says that time is displaced (slows) as we go faster.  We have “proven” this by tiny fractions of variations in the orbits of some of our satellites and in the orbit of Mercury.  For an issue within physics that is seen as such a barrier to further research, shouldn’t we see a more dramatic demonstration of this theory?  I think it should so I made up one.

Let us suppose we have a weight on the end of a string.  The string is 10 feet long and we hook it up to a motor that can spin at 20,000.  The end of the string will travel 62.8 feet per revolution or 1,256,637 feet per minute.  That is 3.97 miles per second or an incredible 14,280 miles per hour.  OK so that is only .0021% of C but for only ten feet of string and a motor that we can easily create, that is not bad.

There are motors that can easily get to 250,000 RPM and there are some turbines that can spin up to 500,000 RPM.  If we can explore the limits of this experimental design, we might find something interesting.   Now let’s get serious. 

Let’s move this experiment into space.  With no gravity and no air resistance, the apparatus can function very differently.  It could use string or wire or even thin metal tubes.  If we control the speed of the motor so that we do not exceed the limitations imposed by momentum, we should be able to spin something pretty fast.

Imagine a motor that can spin 50,000 RPM with a sting mechanism that can let out the string from the center as the speed slowly increases.  Now let’s, over time, let out 1 mile of string while increasing the speed of rotation to 50,000 RPM.  The end will not be traveling at nearly 19 thousand miles per hour or 2.82% of C.

If we boost the speed up to 100,000 RPM and can get the length out to 5 miles, the end of the string will be doing an incredible 188,495,520 miles per hour.  That is more that 28% the speed of light.

What will that look like?  If we have spun this up correctly, the string (wire, tubes, ?) will be pulled taunt by the centrifugal force of the spinning.  With no air for resistance and no gravity, the string should be a nearly perfect vector outward from the axis of rotation.  The only force that might distort this perfect line is momentum but if we have spun this setup slowly so that the weight at the end of the string is pulling the string out of the center hub, then it should be straight. 

I have not addressed the issue of the strength of the wire to withstand the centrifugal force of the spinning weight.  Not that it is trivial but for the purposes of this thought experiment, I am assuming that the string can handle whatever the weight size we use.

Let us further suppose that we have placed a camera exactly on the center of the spinning axis facing outward along the string.  What will it see?  If the theory is correct, then despite the string being pulled straight by the centrifugal force, I believe we will see the string curve backward and at some point it will disappear from view.  The reason is that as you move out on the string, its speed is going faster and faster and closer to the C.  This will cause the relative time at each increasing distance from the center to be slower and appear to lag behind.  When viewed from the center-mounted camera, the string will curve.

If we could use some method to make the string visible for its entire length, its spin would cause it to eventually fade from view when the time at the end of the string is so far behind the present time at the camera that it can no longer be seen.  It is possible that it might appear to spiral around the camera, even making concentric overlapping spiral rings. 

If synchronized clocks were places at the center and at the end of the string, and then we placed a camera at both ends but could view the two images side-by-side at the hub.  Each one would view a clock that started out synchronized and the only difference would be that one is now traveling at some percentage of C faster than the other.  I believe they would read different times as the spin rate increased. 

But now here is a thought puzzle.  Suppose there is an electronic clock at the end of the string as described by the above paragraph but now instead of sending its camera image back to the hub, we send its actual reading by wires embedded in the string back to the hub where it is read side-by-side with a clock that has been left at the hub.  What will it read now?  Will the time distortion alter the speed of the electrons so that they do NOT show a time distortion at the hub?  Or will the speed of the electricity be constant and thus show two different times?  I don’t know.

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18 July 2008 by admin.

January 10, 1987

As for longevity, there has been some very serious research going on in this area but it has recently been hidden behind the veil of aids research. There is a belief that the immune system and other recuperative and self‑correcting systems in the body wear‑out and slowly stop working.  This is what gives us old‑age skin and gray hair.  This was an area that was studied very deeply up until the early 1980’s.  Most notably were some studies at the U. of Nebraska that began to make some good progress in slowing the biological aging by a careful stimulation and supplementation of naturally produced chemicals.  When the AIDS problem surfaced a lot of money was shifted into AIDS research.  It was argued that the issues related to biological aging were related to the immune issues of AIDS.  This got the researchers AIDS money and they continued their research, however, they want to keep a very low profile because they are not REALLY doing AIDS research. That is why you have not heard anything about their work. 

Because of my somewhat devious links to some medical resources and a personal interest in the subject, I have kept myself informed and have a good idea of where they are and it is very impressive.  Essentially, in the inner circles of gerontology, there is general agreement that the symptomology of aging is due to metabolic malfunction and not cell damage.  This means that it is treatable.  It is the treatment that is being pursued now and as in other areas of medicine in which there is such a large multiplicity of factors affecting each individuals aging process, successes are made in finite areas, one area at a time.  For instance, senility is one area that has gotten attention because of the mapping to metabolic malfunction induced by the presence of metals along with factors related to emotional environment.  Vision and skin condition are also areas that have had successes in treatments.

  When I put my computer research capability to look at this about a year ago, what I determined was that by the year 2024, humans will have an average life span of about 95‑103 years.  It will go up by about 5% per decade after that for the next century, then it will level out due to the increase of other factors.

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