Raven, Lord of the Skies

Thursday, September 22, 2011

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

Thursday, September 1, 2011

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