Dreaming about the Universe

Science!

So tonight was an exceptionally productive night of dreamthinking. Well the "thinking" part really comes in those moments in between sleep and awake - right when you start to come back to reality and lay in bed letting your mind drift down into the different alleys of your conscious mind. As far as I know dreaming is just a regenerative patterned firing of neurons that your mind struggles to interpret as sensory, thus producing the images and other perceptions that occur as dreams, therefore it would be impossible to really consciously "think" in your sleep. Well tonight, or rather this morning, I had a particular image come to mind after dreamthinking about the universe.

I was wondering about the expansion of the universe in combination with "phantom forces" associated with inertial frames when I had an idea - or rather an idea had me. What you're looking at, I suppose, is a 2-dimensional interpretation of the 3-dimensional universe being accelerated due to being wrapped around the "surface" of an expanding 4-dimensional "sphere".

It is known that the further away a galaxy is to our own the faster it seems to accelerate away from us. From my understanding this is interpreted using redshift, which is a measurement of the extent of light being either compressed or stretched (if you think of a spring) in the magnetic spectrum by the acceleration of the source of the light moving towards or away from us.

So I decided to do a little experiment to see what surface expansions actually looks like. So I took a balloon, inflated it just enough for it to stretch a little and have a round lateral circumference, and marked off three points on the surface of the balloon as shown (marked 1-3 from left to right).

It should be the case that after I inflate the balloon that all points should move away from one another. In fact the distances between points 1 and 2 (length=A) and points 1 and 3 (length = B) doubled. However f you were to imagine standing on the leftmost point of the balloon and watching points 2 and 3 from t=0 to t=1 you would notice that point 3 was moving relatively faster away from you than point 2 (it would be covering more distance in the same time). Therefore spherical expansion can at least adequately explain why galaxies further away from our own seem to be moving faster than closer galaxies as measured by redshift.

But of course there must be more to know about the universe! Just because a spherical expansion model satisfies only two of the experimentally observable criteria (and the only two I really know about) doesn't mean I've done anything particularly special. Scientists well before me have done similar models (you may know the raisin bread model) and yet are unable to explain some of the observable phenomenon of the universe.

At any rate I hope you enjoyed reading about my dreamthoughts and personal discoveries.

Cheers,

LORD RAVEN,
LORD OF THE SKIES

Apples and Organisms

Well here's something I've been thinking about for a few days now.

Think of an apple resting alone in front of you. It's a relatively medium size object. You begin to perceive it easily with your senses. It has little brown spots that are almost unseen due to the overwhelming redness of it. You recognize the shape, with broadened shoulders, a dimpled neck, and a narrowed waist with little lumps for legs supporting it upright. The stem leans outwards from the top at a predictable yet iconic angle.

Your mind begins to think beyond the skin and sees into the watery yellowed insides. You think of the firmness and crunchiness of the fleshy sweetness that is hidden behind the coat of red. Even deeper inside the color tints to green as the textures become thicker and structural. At the core you now perceive the seeds laid out around the core surrounded by the thick layer of delicious sugars and nutrients.

Apples present their treats and treasures to the wilds of nature at a great cost but for the ultimate reward. Those organisms that would consume the apple for nutrition uncover and disperse the hidden purpose of the apple - the seeds.

Why do apples exist? How can nature account for spending so much energy and resources creating a fruit? The answer is found in the true purpose of the apple - the seeds. Everything depends on the seeds.

I find myself thinking very much about apples.

It seems to me that all organisms are much like apples carrying the seeds of our genetic material. The complexity of all that life and all the intricacies and luxuries of our bodies are all just a vessel for our genetic material. We are just living vehicles piloted by the seeds from which we came. From a single celled organism to the complex assemblage of cells and organisms that account for human beings - all life is just fleshy packets of incentives for dispersing genetic material. More easily can seeds disperse if apples had flagella, eye spots, fins, legs, wings, sailboats, or jet planes.

Truly amazing are these seeds!

Why do apples exist? Seeds of course - the creators and cause of all apples!

Why do seeds exist? Why does DNA and RNA and genetic ancestors exist? Why did the origin of all life on Earth come to be? The answer to why comes from an elaborate, accurate, and exhaustive how.

Cheers,

LORD RAVEN
LORD OF THE SKIES

FCID - MAPPING OUT FRANKLIN COLLEGE

GREETINGS NOBODY

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HERE IS THE MAP I CREATED OF ALL THE DEPARTMENTS/MAJORS IN FRANKLIN COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES.

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Here is my outline from class on Thursday. I ordered them from fundamental to incidental such that mathematics is the language of the universe and physics is the realization of fundamental laws of the universe - together which form the foundation of knowledge. The tree then continues through the core sciences into three major branches. Science then yields the social sciences which depart into philosophy, the arts which end in religion, and then the humanities thus ending in history. Ultimately history and religion come together into philosophy as well which offers a language to describe the universe through the lens of the human perspective. Note that the philosophy department and philosophy major are not the same as true philosophy.

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IDEALLY THE MAP WOULD BE MUCH SIMPLER, AND SO THE CLASS WAS ASKED THIS QUESTION:

What is the ideal map of Franklin College of Arts and Sciences? What majors seem unnecessary or less important and/or what majors seem to be left out? How ought this college be divided?

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LORD RAVEN

LORD OF THE SKIES

FCID - DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Here are some of the major questions posed in todays class. Some are from the instructor, others from student discussion, and even some from my own introspection.

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1. Are social sciences 'true' science? What constitutes a 'true' science? Does a lack of a strict experimental methodology produce varied and imprecise results?

2. Is the mind either material or immaterial? Can evolution explain the development of man's immaterial mind?

3. Is mathematics the fundamental and irreducible language of the universe? Can all sciences be reduced to mathematical models? Can humanities/arts be reduced to mathematical models? Can humanities/arts be reduced to sciences?

4. What defines consciousness? How can we distinguish the consciousness of the human species from animal consciousness? Can the "uniqueness of consciousness" be explained?

5. What does the question "why" mean? Ought we search for a purpose or a process? Ought we look up (religion) or look down (physics) to find the answers?

6. Can the laws of physics be imagined differently to produce a conceptually varied pool of possible universes? Is the concept of such an omniverse a function of science or philosophy?

7. Under science what is the conceptual relation between theory, computation, and observation?

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Feel free to comment on any of these HUGE questions especially if you didn't get a chance to voice your opinion in class today.

Cheers,

LORD RAVEN

LORD OF THE SKIES