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One question that fascinated me in the last two years is, can we ever use data to control systems? Could we go as far as, not only describe and quantify and mathematically formulate and perhaps predict the behavior of a system, but could you use this knowledge to be able to control a complex system, to control a social system, to control an economic system?

We always lived in a connected world, except we were not so much aware of it. We were aware of it down the line, that we’re not independent from our environment, that we’re not independent of the people around us. We are not independent of the many economic and other forces. But for decades we never perceived connectedness as being quantifiable, as being something that we can describe, that we can measure, that we have ways of quantifying the process. That has changed drastically in the last decade, at many, many different levels.

Continue reading “Thinking in Network Terms” and watch the hour long video interview

Earth is a hostile place — and that’s even before one starts attending school. Even when life first sparked into being, it had to evolve defenses to deal with a number of toxins, such as damaging ultraviolet light, then there were toxic elements ranging from iron to oxygen to overcome, later, there was DDT and other toxic chemicals and of course, there are all those dreaded cancers.

In Evolution In A Toxic World: How Life Responds To Chemical Threats [Island Press; 2012: Guardian Bookshop; Amazon UK;Amazon US], environmental toxicologist Emily Monosson outlines three billion years of evolution designed to withstand the hardships of living on this deadly planet, giving rise to processes ranging from excretion, transformation or stowing harmful substances. The subtitle erroneously suggests these toxins are only chemical in nature, but the author actually discusses more than this one subclass of toxins.

The method that arose to deal with these toxins is a plethora of specialised, targeted proteins — enzymes that capture toxins and repair their damages. By following the origin and progression of these shared enzymes that evolved to deal with specific toxins, the author traces their history from the first bacteria-like organisms to modern humans. Comparing the new field evolutionary toxicology to biomedical research, Dr Monosson notes: “In light of evolution, biomedical researchers are now asking questions that might seem antithetical to medicine”.

Continue reading “Evolution in a Toxic World”

The Ontological Einstein – One to Four

Otto E. Rossler and Dieter Fröhlich, Faculty of Science, University of Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

One: Ontological clock slow-down downstairs in gravity

Two: Ontological rest-mass decrease downstairs in gravity

Three: Ontological size increase downstairs in gravity

Four: Ontological charge decrease downstairs in gravity

(1): Assume an upstairs and a downstairs floor to be equally strongly accelerating in gravity for simplicity. Then the situation can be transposed to a constant-acceleration rocketship of equal height in outer space that by definition is governed by the rules of special relativity alone. Here one finds that whenever a light ray from the rear end arrives upstairs at the tip, the point of arrival has, during the flight time of the photon, picked up additional speed. Hence the emitted light arrives upstairs redshifted. The normal-ticking CLOCKS and atoms present downstairs therefore appear slowed down from the point of view of upstairs owing to a receding motion of constant speed (without falling back) performed by them. This 1907 result can be called “ontological” because an upper-level clock that is brought down and then back up again predictably presents an ontological (undeniably present) deficit in the number of ticks performed in the meantime, on its being re-united with its waiting twin. Einstein always called the “equivalence principle” between gravity and ordinary acceleration (that allowed him to solve everything from within the fold of special relativity and hence intuitively) “the happiest thought of my life.” It is indeed miraculous because it derives an asymmetry from the symmetry of special relativity. (So many perspective changes were never made before in a single mind according to anthropologist George Herbert Mead.) Three corollaries are implicit: points 2–4.

(2): Since the red-shifted photons arriving from below are non-redshifted on emission, they are inter-transformable into material particles and vice versa (as in positronium creation and annihilation) down there. Hence all locally-at-rest MASSES downstairs are ontologically reduced by the redshift factor relative to upstairs.

(3): Since the wavelengths of all locally emitted photons are increased downstairs by point (1), and simultaneously all masses locally at rest downstairs are reduced by point (2), it follows logically as well as independently from quantum mechanics that all the locally normal-appearing LENGTHS downstairs are ontologically increased by the redshift factor compared to upstairs.

(4): Since all masses that are locally at rest are reduced downstairs via (2), and the charge/mass ratio is locally conserved via Einstein’s principle of general covariance, the CHARGES of all local electrons and positrons (etc.) are ontologically reduced downstairs by the redshift factor compared to upstairs. (Q.e.d.)

Remark: Ulysses’ son Telemach helps one to remember all 4 ontological changes (Time, Length, Mass and Charge). Let us add that the “Einstein dilation” (3) does not show up in the transverse direction from above in spite the locally maintained isotropy – just as the Lorentz contraction does not show up in the transverse direction despite the likewise locally maintained isotropy.

Historical note: Points number 2 and 3 have been found many times individually (and several times in combination) by specialists and aficionados. Number 4 first appeared in a conference paper in mid-2008 (and under the name “Telemach theorem” on the Internet in early 2011 and in a refereed journal in early 2012, see http://www.academicjournals.org/ajmcsr/PDF/pdf2012/Feb/9%20Feb/Rossler.pdf ).

Acknowledgments: O.E.R. thanks Burton Voorhees and Ali Sanayei for a discussion. For J.O.R.

Previous Post in this Debunking Series.

Why is it necessary to debunk bad or unrealistic technologies? If don’t we live in a dream world idealized by theoretical engineering that has no hope of ever becoming financially feasible. What a waste of money, human resources and talent. I’d rather we know now upfront and channel our energies to finding feasible engineering and financial solutions. Wouldn’t you?

We did the math required to figure out the cost of antimatter fuel one would require just to reach 0.1c and then cost at that velocity, never mind about reaching Alpha Centauri.

Table 2: Antimatter Rocket Fuel Costs to Alpha Centuariat 0.1c (in metric tons)
Source of Estimates Amount of Antimatter Required Maximum Velocity

Spacecraft Mass

Cost of Antimatter per kg
(metric tons) (metric tons)

Gerald Smith

NASA

2.5E+16

6.25E+16

Total $ Cost of Fuel for Trip
A Poor Formula for Interstellar Travel

5

 0.1c

2,000

1.25E+20

3.13E+20
Project Valkyrie

100

 0.1c

100

2.5E+21

6.25E+21

The table above compiled from various sources shows that the cheapest cost of just reaching 0.1c velocity is of the order of $125,000,000,000,000,000,000. This so unthinkably large even I don’t know how to conceptualize it, and by comparison, conventional rockets appear realistic!

Also note that the large variations in the estimates of the amount of antimatter required combined with the larger variations in the mass of the spacecraft antimatter engines could propel. That is no one reallys has a handle on what this would take.

But wait, let me quote EJ Opik, “Is Interstellar Travel Possible?” Irish Astronomical Journal, Vol 6, page 299.

The exhaust power of the antimatter rocket would equal the solar energy power received by the earth — all in gamma rays (and Opik quotes Carl Sagan, Planet. Space Sci., pp. 485–498, 1963) “So the problem is not to shield the payload, the problem is to shield the earth”

I don’t need to say more. Debunked.

Next psot in this Debunking Series.

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

Previous Post in this Debunking Series.

Why is it necessary to debunk bad or unrealistic technologies? If don’t we live in a dream world idealized by theoretical engineering that has no hope of ever becoming financially feasible. What a waste of money, human resources and talent. I’d rather we know now upfront and channel our energies to finding feasible engineering and financial solutions. Wouldn’t you?

We did the math required to figure out how much fuel one would require just to reach 0.1c and then cost at that velocity until you reach Alpha Centauri and reverse thrust to orbit the star.

Table 1: Conventional Rocket Fuel Costs to travel to Alpha Centauri at 0.1c
Maximum Velocity (km/s)

1980’s cost ($/lb)

Proportion by Weight

Amount (lb)

Cost (in 1980 $)
Apollo Fuel Mass

11.2

5,625,000

$20,250,000.00
Alpha Centauri Liquid H2

0.1c or 29,970 km/s

$3.60

82.46%

6.60E+13

$237,473,684,210,526
LOX

$0.08

17.54%

1.40E+13

$1,122,807,017,544
Total

8.00E+13

$238,596,491,228,070
Note: 1) Fuel mass required to reach 0.1c or 29,970 km/s is twice 5,625,000*(29,979/11.2)^2,
once to accelerate 0.1c on leaving Earth and a second time to decelerate at mid
journey to arrive at zero km/s
2) 8.00E+13 lbs converts into 36,287,389,600 metric tons

This analysis assumes that your payload is the about the same size as the Apollo 11 command, service and lunar modules with a combined mass of 46.7 metric tons. That gives you an idea of how impractically small 100 tons is for an interstellar flight.

The total cost of a conventional rocket interstellar trip is on the order of $238,596 billion! Even if we said that the costs are over estimated by 1,000x it would still costs $238 billion!

It is so unrealistic that if you search the internet the parties who say such a trip never discuss how much it will cost. The parties who say it cannot be will also point out the mass of fuel required.

I don’t need to say more. Debunked.

The next in this Debunking Series.

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

Fukushima reawakened the world to the dangers of nuclear power, and reading back over Fearing Sellafield (2003) by Colum Kenny recently, I reflect back on how deflective and dishonest industry can be to steer clear of critical opinion. Seeing parallels suggested in other industries today, I wonder if much has really changed.

Highly Active Liquor (HAL) produced by the reprocessing of irradiated nuclear fuel at Sellafield, reached a level of 1,500 cubic meters in storage at its peak circa 2001, the capacity of a 50 meter Olympic swimming pool. Particularly unstable, a disruption to electricity & water coolant could result in such liquor boiling, overloading the ventilation filtration systems and leading to a nuclear accident. Containing about 80 times the amount released during the 1986 Chernobyl accident according to a report for the European Parliament at that time, we are rather fortunate such a serious accident never occurred. This analysis was provided by what became known as The WISE Report — so called due to associated with the World Information Service on Energy (WISE) in Paris. In response BNFL set out to reduce this liquor to a solid form known as ‘glass’ — borosilicate glass — much safer than when kept in liquid form, and put in storage — though much of it still remains to be vitrified.

In 2000/2001, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) of the HSE published a number of reports on aspects of Sellafield that led to causes of concern. One report in particular entitled ‘an investigation into the falsification of pellet diameter data in the MOX demonstration facility at the BNFL Sellafield site and the effect of this on the safety of MOX fuel in use’ suggested deliberate dishonesty in keeping records. BNFL subsequently complied with most of these recommendations.

Authors of the WISE report however still had concerns regarding increases in levels in certain sea discharges and aerial releases, and inconsistent with the UK’s obligations under the OSPAR Convention. It stated that the deposition of plutonium within 20km of Sellafield attributable to aerial emissions has been estimated at 160–280 billion becquerels — several times the plutonium fallout from all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, and that 250kg-500kg of plutonium from Sellafield has been absorbed as sediments on the bed of the Irish sea ‘representing a long-term regional hazard of largely unknown proportions’. The report had been treated with caution by the European Commission and conveniently dismissed by the National Radiological Protection Board in the UK by claiming that some of the conclusions drawn in the report were based on ‘lacking objectivity’. It seems that governments are always bent towards safeguarding industry first, leaving environmental concerns and the health of our Mother Ship as a secondary issue.

Previous Post in this Debunking Series.

I just watched Looper the movie. It is such a good movie and a great story. But then I’m biased. Anything with Bruce Willis is a great movie. Bruce Willis is getting older, which reminds me so am I!

For those who have not watched Looper I won’t give the story away … Looper is a must watch for science fiction fans. And there were other great movies and episodes about time travel. The three Back to the Future, and the Star Trek episodes, for starters.

That was the good news, and now for the bad news. Time travel is impossible. The mathematics behind time travel is excellent, but the physics is not. In contemporary physics, the mechanism of time travel requires wormholes. You get into a wormhole on one side and you pop out the other side either in the future or in the past, depending on what the wormhole was designed to do.

I did some digging, and found the Polchinski’s billiard ball paradox which is a version of the matricide paradox (travelling back through time before one’s birthday and killing one’s mother, hey what about father?) without the free will component. “A billiard ball sent through a wormhole which sends it back in time. In this scenario, the ball is fired into a wormhole at an angle such that, if it continues along that path, it will exit the wormhole in the past at just the right angle to collide with its earlier self, thereby knocking it off course and preventing it from entering the wormhole in the first place.”

Then Kip Thorne’s students came up another solution “to avoid any inconsistencies, by having the ball emerge from the future at a different angle than the one used to generate the paradox, and deliver its younger self a glancing blow instead of knocking it completely away from the wormhole, a blow which changes its trajectory in just the right way so that it will travel back in time with the angle required to deliver its younger self this glancing blow.”

Add to this second scenario that one collects the older billiard ball in a basket. Of course there are some boundaries driven by conservation of mass and when the wormhole was created, that constraint what is observed. But this then raises some questions. How many balls are there in the basket at the start? How many billiard balls does one observe in the middle of this experiment? Think parallel processing not sequential logic.

And, what can I do?” That is, since cause and effect no longer have a consistent relationship, if the basket fills up with billiard balls before I set off the experiment, can I choose not to set off the experiment?

It is sufficient to stop here to make the case that time travel is not possible.

I’m sure Kip Thorne, his students and many, many others are doing good work to develop theoretical models. I hope these older theoretical wormhole models would evolve to new ‘tunneling’ models that do not allow for inconsistent relationships between cause and effect. And these new ‘tunneling’ models will one day allow us to do interstellar travel using some kind of tunneling technology.

Right now time travel is just too easy to debunk. We are not there, yet.

The next in the Debunking Series.

—————————————————————————————————

Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

Scientific discovery in the natural sciences has proceeded at an exponential rate and we are now seeing the social sciences experience a profound transformation as a consequence of computational social science. How far computational social science will reinvent social science is the big question. Some of the themes I’ve explored in my own work have been about the relationship between political philosophy and science and whether the computational sciences can help formulate new conceptions of societal organisation. Many in the field seem to think so.

These three things—a biological hurricane, computational social science, and the rediscovery of experimentation—are going to change the social sciences in the 21st century. With that change will come, in my judgment, a variety of discoveries and opportunities that offer tremendous prospect for improving the human condition. It’s one thing to say that the way in which we study our object of inquiry, namely humans, is undergoing profound change, as I think it is. The social sciences are indeed changing. But the next question is: is the object of inquiry also undergoing profound change? It’s not just how we study it that’s changing, which it is. The question is: is the thing itself, our humanity, also changing? (Nicholas A. Christakis, A NEW KIND OF SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR THE 21st CENTURY)

A biological understanding of human nature combined with new insights derived from computational social science can potentially revolutionise political, social and economic systems. Consequently there are profound philosophical implications. Secular political philosophy specifically emerged out of the European experience of Church and monarchical rule, and socialism emerged out of the experience of industrialisation and capitalist ideology. Therefore is it possible that a new political philosophy could emerge out of the reinvention of the social sciences?

One question that fascinated me in the last two years is, can we ever use data to control systems? Could we go as far as, not only describe and quantify and mathematically formulate and perhaps predict the behavior of a system, but could you use this knowledge to be able to control a complex system, to control a social system, to control an economic system? (Albert-lászló Barabási, THINKING IN NETWORK TERMS)

With Big Data we can now begin to actually look at the details of social interaction and how those play out, and are no longer limited to averages like market indices or election results. This is an astounding change. The ability to see the details of the market, of political revolutions, and to be able to predict and control them is definitely a case of Promethean fire — it could be used for good or for ill, and so Big data brings us to interesting times. We’re going to end up reinventing what it means to have a human society. (Alex (Sandy) Pentland, REINVENTING SOCIETY IN THE WAKE OF BIG DATA)

Edge has an excellent discussion exploring computational social science and how it could transform humanity. One of the exciting challenges I see will be to integrate the exponential discoveries in the natural sciences with the social sciences, and to truly build a civilisation upon rationality.

What would it take to go from a manned human return to the Moon to a self-sustaining colony?

When we look at modern society today, there is practically no city that is self-sufficient. Metals are produced in one part of the world, paper somewhere else, cell phones yet somewhere else. The list could go on.

But this situation exists because no city truly needs to be self-sufficient. People can purchase goods from wherever they can be produced at the best price and quality.

So, are there no places on Earth that are self-sufficient? Actually, there are.

Self-sufficient places tend to be rural and poor. For example, islanders have survived for many centuries hunting fish and gathering or growing basic food stuff.

But neither the examples of urban or rural settings are altogether helpful in determining what it would take to go from a manned lunar landing to the first self-sufficient colony. The reason is that the simple rural environment provides ready resources which are not available on the Moon. These six fundamental things are: air, water, food, protection from cosmic radiation, temperature control, and sufficient gravity.

So, what would it take to secure these on a self-sustaining basis? Would one need much of the technologies which modern civilization offers or could there be a small set of technologies which are sufficient and themselves could be replaced indefinitely?

The six fundamental things not easily available on the Moon can none-the-less be developed. For example, plants require carbon and nitrogen (among other things). Carbon and nitrogen is present in adequate amounts in the icy regolith of the lunar poles. But what would it take to get that? One cannot send a colonist out with a shovel because, in time, they would be exposed to too much radiation. So telerobotic mining equipment may be necessary. But then how could the various parts of a pretty sophisticated piece of equipment be produced in a self-sustaining way? Does one need a full civilization of tens of thousands of people in an integrated economy? Or, could creativity be used to create a telerobot that works adequately but which may be wire controlled. Before the advent of integrated circuits, engineers had to use their creativity to solve problems like these.

So, my appeal is that those with the technical know how need to figure out just what exactly is the lowest technologic way to achieve a self-sustaining off-Earth colony. If it can be figured out how to achieve these things with a relatively small colony, then we may be able to achieve he first self-sustaining colony within a relatively short while after humans return to the Moon.

The Ontological Einstein: “Vertical Twin-clocks Paradox Implies reversible Change of Size, Rest-mass and Charge”

by Professor Otto E. Rossler, Chaos Researcher, University of Tubingen, Germany

Minipaper

The ordinary (horizontal) twin-clocks paradox described by Einstein in 1905 objectively transports a younger twin into the future as is well known. This is a tangible miracle.

Poincaré, who had been almost everywhere before Einstein in special relativity (except for the transversal Doppler effect), had not seen this most astounding implication of the observer-specific absolute constancy of the speed of light, c. I call it an “ontological” effect. As such it stands not alone. It possesses a much less well-known sibling of equal rank and even stronger power as it turns out, the “vertical twin clocks paradox.” It applies in gravity when the sibling is reversibly lowered to stay for a while in a redshifted region down there. The second twin paradox’s long history has yet to be written; it not only makes the twin younger: It also implies a transitory change in size, mass and charge of the lowered twin and — via the first of these three effects — amazingly re-establishes global constancy of the speed of light c in general relativity (Telemach theorem).

No colleague objects but the crowd (exempting my friends) fumes behind closed doors. There is much money involved. CERN – despite the black-hole danger revealed to the eye by Telemach – refuses to update its 4 years old “safety report” and openly ignores a court’s kind request to admit a “safety conference.” The world’s media strangely comply by the suitors (to stay in the picture of Einstein-Ulysses) while the prospect of the planet being shrunk to 2 cm in a few years’ time with a non-small probability is being tacitly embraced globally. Ithaka is at risk.

There never was a bigger scandal, so it appears to me. Love is the unique invention of humankind – ultraperspective: to see with the eyes of the other and let this be known to her or him. I dare officially ask Israel again (and Iran for the first time) to bring the matter up in public. The fact that the Security Council objects out of solidarity with its sister organization (CERN) is not acceptable. Every citizen of the planet hopes that the threshold toward a first mini-black hole having been implanted into our planet to grow there exponentially, has not yet been overstepped by CERN’s ongoing attempt to produce black holes even though its sensors cannot even detect them owing to T.O.E.

“Lampsacus Hometown of Humankind on the Internet” deserves to be implemented at long last by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran and CERN in an attempt at recompense, combined with world-wide prayers, for “this is what humankind was meant for” as I learned 15 years ago in Israel. Bless you all.