#Time-invariant Big Bang Theory | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bleachbigbang · 5 years ago

Text

Bleach Big Bang 2021 Fic Summaries!

Writing samples for each fic attached.

Fic #01 || Sample

Rating: Explicit

Content Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Main Characters: Kurosaki Ichigo, Urahara Kisuke, Aizen Sousuke

Main Pairings: Urahara Kisuke/Kurosaki Ichigo || Aizen Sousuke/Kurosaki Ichigo

Additional Warnings: BDSM, suicidal thoughts, probably bad self-care, dark thoughts, bad BDSM etiquette, Dom/sub

No matter which mastermind stood behind the plan, when Lady Fate is a bitch who doesn't like to follow what others say.

They planned to go back and change the past, to have a better future.

They planned everything carefully, three masterminds, and a brute force.

They planned but everything went wrong.

Only one person arrived back in time in another timeline. He was alone, without his soul mate, without any help from the masterminds. Will he be able to change the future alone? Will Lady Bitch Fate let him? But wait... Why is that thing there? That shouldn't be possible!

The beginning already changed, why is it there? Why does it still happen?

“Foolish Mortal, there are things that will remain the same, no matter what you do. Can you change the future without knowing what are the invariable happenings in time? Will you be able to find your happiness, while you keep helping others to find theirs? I am curious about it, but Mortal, I’m Lady Fucking Fate, I love chaos.”

-----

Fic #02 || Sample

Rating: Teen

Content Warnings: Major Character Death

Main Characters: Ichigo Kurosaki, Ogichi Shirosaki (Hollow Ichigo), Grimmjow Jeagerjaques

Main Pairings: Ichigo Kurosaki/Ogichi Shirosaki

Additional Warnings: Reincarnation. Major character death might happen more than once. Heavy cultural reference and possible historical manipulation, mesoamerican focused. ((AKA: if you're racist/have trouble with inaccuracies, think twice))

He doesn't know why was he born into this world. His life has been nothing but pain, always feeling out of place and never in sync with his people and "friends", and once he became an exile, he really felt like there was nothing left for him in this life. That was until he met the God that would give meaning to his existence, and become his reason to fight. "Shiro", now Ichtalcoatl's warrior, feels like everything he has endured was for this moment, and he wouldn't exchange it for anything.

Except, all evil happens for a reason, and there are many truths to be uncovered from Shiro's past, giving meaning to this eternal karma and the never-ending cycle of pain. This is the tale of the final trial Shiro must endure to be worthy of the Sun itself.

Gods/Demigods AU, ft. Quetzalcoatl Ichigo.

-----

Fic #03 || Sample

Rating: Teen

Content Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Main Characters: Ichigo Kurosaki, Rukia Kuchiki, Renji Abarai, Byakuya Kuchiki, Kenpachi Zaraki, Visored, Grimmjow Jeagerjaques, Ulquiorra Cifer, Aizen Sousuke, Other Bleach characters

Main Pairings: None / Undecided

Additional Warnings: Swearing, Mild Violence, Mild Gore, Canon Divergence

Ichigo is special, he's always been. From the moment he managed to become a Soul reaper, to when he obtained unlikely powers and achieved inhuman deeds, he's always had that natural talent to go beyond the limits. However, his true strength lies not in his latent abilities, but in the charm he wasn't even aware he had. His ultimate power was not his bankai, nor his hollowfication; it was his power to move people's hearts, sway them towards him, and somehow make those who wanted to kill him become his most loyal allies. Or, instead of merely befriending everyone he fought, Ichigo unknowingly builds an army of people who will die for him and change destiny itself in order to protect their one, true king.

-----

Fic #04 || Sample

Rating: Teen

Content Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Main Characters: Kurosaki Ichigo, Kisuke Urahara, Yasutora Sado

Main Pairings: None / Undecided

Additional Warnings: Teacher AU, DID, Alternating POVs, Supernatural Elements, No Shinigami AU

Ichigo moves to Karakura after an abrupt shift in career. There, he meets faces both familiar (his friend Chad is teaching music) and not (he doesn’t know what’s up with that Urahara guy but for a maths teacher he's not that bad). As the newest teacher in the school, and the least experienced at it, Ichigo decides not to make waves and to let himself fade into the background. Unfortunately, his friendship with the maths teacher seems to drag him into plots that are far outside of anything he’s ever known.

NOTE: I'm really flexible as far as the plot goes and willing to work with the artist if there are any particular elements they'd like to incorporate

-----

Fic #05 || Sample

Rating: Teen

Content Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Main Characters: Kisuke Urahara, Rukia Kuchiki, Tessai Tsukabishi, Yoruichi Shihōin, Ichigo Kurosaki

Main Pairings: No romantic relationships; Pre-UraYoruTess;

Kisuke has feelings for both Tessai and Yoruichi but that won't develop into anything during this fic though I have plans for UraYoruTess & TatsuHime in a sequel.

Additional Warnings: N/A

There was a soul reaper who was assigned to Karakura town. There was a human who could see ghosts. There was a hollow who wanted to eat. Thus, the sword of fate fell, But the sword did not hit the ground when the soul reaper transferred her powers to the human. For there was a shopkeeper who still had a decision to make Kisuke decides to tell Rukia about the hogyoku and Aizen. They start working together to take down Aizen.

-----

Fic #06 || Sample

Rating: Teen

Content Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Main Characters: Urahara Kisuke, Kurosaki Ichigo, Hirako Shinji

Main Pairings: Shinji Hirako/Urahara Kisuke, Urahara Kisuke/Kurosaki Ichigo

Additional Warnings: N/A

After the Visored were changed, Kisuke had a multitude of theories. One of those was that they might still be contagious. A slip during training proves that theory, and now he has to get his own hollow side under control with the help of his friends. As always, that's easier said than done, given that Kisuke's hollow is as odd as he is.

-----

Fic #07 || Sample

Rating: Mature

Content Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death

Main Characters: Ichigo Kurosaki, Hollow Ichigo

Main Pairings: Past Hollow Ichigo/Kurosaki Ichigo

Additional Warnings: Flashbacks, Heavy Betrayal, Psychological Trauma, PTSD, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Toxic Relationship

Ichigo -- or what he assumes his name is -- doesn't expect to wake up to the poverty-stricken Rukongai. Without a clue as to where he is or how he ended up there, he meets another amnesiac lost soul, who calls himself Shiro (name pending tbh). However, lurking beneath the two of them is a storm of betrayal waiting to be unleashed.

-----

Fic #08 || Sample

Rating: Teen

Content Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Main Characters: Ichigo Kurosaki, Hollow Ichigo

Main Pairings: Hollow Ichigo/Kurosaki Ichigo

Additional Warnings: Very fluff, much cute

“We've been childhood friends all this time. I think I would know when you aren't enjoying yourself with someone,” Shiro stated, tilting his head further into his palm to assess Ichigo's reaction.

“It's ... It's not going to be like that, okay? Maybe he'll turn out better than you think,” He countered, causing Shiro to sigh under his breath. While Ichigo hesitantly stuffed the thoughtless gift from his new boyfriend in his bag, Shiro could only watch. He couldn't help but wonder when it'd be his turn to make him happy.

-----

Fic #09 || Sample

Rating: Explicit

Content Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Main Characters: Momo Hinamori

Main Pairings: Momo Hinamori/Izuru Kira/Shuuhei Hisagi/Renji Abarai

Additional Warnings: Alcoholism, Past Abusive Relationships.

Continuation of All that draws us together (AO3)

Momo knows all the ups and downs of life and love, yet she rides it again and again. Sometime after the battle against Wandenreich, Momo invites Izuru out.

From there begins a maelstrom of confusion hurt, and eventually, the loving partnership of her, Izuru, Renji, and Shuuhei.

-----

Fic #10 || Sample

Rating: Mature

Content Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Main Characters: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, Ichigo Kurosaki

Main Pairings: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez/Kurosaki Ichigo

Additional Warnings: Body Horror, Body Dysmorphia

Ichigo is the most advanced CyberLife Android to date. A prototype. A test model. Incomplete. Grimmjow smiles, and it's not biting. It's more. Painful. There is nothing physically wrong with Ichigo, and yet his chest aches at the sight. "You're my partner, Ichigo. A whole person. You always have been."

-----

Fic #11 || Sample

Rating: Teen

Content Warnings: Major Character Death, Graphic Depictions of Violence

Main Characters: Kurosaki Ichigo, Gotei Captains, Kamado Tanjirou (KnY)

Main Pairings: None (Gen)

Additional Warnings: Suicidal Ideation

Bleach x Kimetsu no Yaiba crossover. In which all their deaths were in vain, and Muzan lived, and the Gotei are the Demon Slayer Corps in the modern world.

-----

Fic #12 || Sample

Rating: Mature

Content Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Underage

Main Characters: Ichigo Kurosaki, Shinji Hirako, Kisuke Urahara, minor appearances by Rukia and Co.

Main Pairings: Shinji Hirako/Ichigo Kurosaki

Additional Warnings: Ambiguous Morality, Dark Ichigo, Ichigo Eats Souls, Hurt/Comfort

[some tags might be added, but these are the bulk of the story]

Ichigo’s excuse of a broken soul is not enough to keep him going, and an assassination attempt brings to light just how deep the problem goes.

-----

Fic #13 || Sample

Rating: Teen

Content Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Main Characters: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, Rukia Kuchiki

Main Pairings: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez/Rukia Kuchiki

Additional Warnings: N/A

Grimmjow doesn't think he's coming out of this alive.

A drabble fic.

-----

Fic #14 || Sample

Rating: Mature

Content Warnings: No Archive Warning Apply

Main Characters: Ichigo Kurosaki, Yasutora “Chad” Sado, Orihime Inoue, Uryuu Ishida, Rukia Kuchiki, Keigo Asano, Mizuiro Kojima, Tatsuki Arisawa, Renji Abarai, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez

Main Pairings: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez/Kurosaki Ichigo

Additional Warnings: N/A

The group had settled on blankets by the bay as the fireworks went off in the distance, the booms, cracks, and sparkles of them could be heard clearly. As they all watched, they got close to each other and kept warm on their shared blankets, friends, or couples, they didn’t care. Grimmjow and Ichigo, Chad and Orihime, Renji and Rukia, Mizuiro and Keigo shared their blankets as pairs, but Uryuu and Tatsuki had their own little spots on their blankets.

They had traveled to America for the school year as transfer students in South Texas and this was the first time that they had seen fireworks like this outside of the tv, and they were the best experience that they have had since being there, thus far. Grimmjow, Keigo, Rukia, and Renji were off in the distance cheering while their partners and friends smiled and watched them as the finale of the fireworks were going off on the boardwalk.

After the fireworks ended, they all picked up their blankets and bags of used small sparklers and party poppers that they had bought beforehand from the Kroger that was close to their host parents’ houses the day before.

#bleach #Bleach Big Bang #bleachbigbang #bleachbigbang2021 #fic #fanfiction #fanfic #ao3

11 notes · View notes

wisdomrays · 4 years ago

Text

TAFAKKUR: Part 331

SYMMETRY, ASYMMETRY, AND SUPERSYMMETRY: Part 1

Scientists have discovered that nature contains symmetry in such things as butterflies, snowflakes, and faces, as well as in its own laws. They also have discovered that at particular points, symmetry ends and is replaced by asymmetry. In the 1970s, supersymmetry entered scientific terminology, and physicists began to develop theories to justify it. This article discusses how the universe would drift into chaos without symmetry, and attempts to answer: Why does the universe behave in the same way at every instant and at every point in space“time? Why is it accessible to us through laws? Modern materialistic science has not answered such questions. In addition, other issues will be addressed: What is the consequence matter“antimatter asymmetry? Does time really flow from past to future? What is supersymmetry?

WHAT IS SYMMETRY?

Physicists usually define symmetry as the invariance under transformation. Simply put: Remaining unchanged after a change. The basic example is time“translation invariance, which states that the homogeneity of time symmetry leads to the invariance principle that nature's laws always remain the same Thus, they are independent of when we measure them.

Let's assume that we measure and record a pendulum's movement today. If we do this tomorrow or even next week under the same conditions, we always will obtain the same result. Without symmetry's principles, for instance the time“translation invariance, a computer built today most probably would not work tomorrow. We could not even build a computer, a calculator, or a watch, for nature's laws would be in a state of random change at every moment. Nor could we guarantee that gravity would not turn into a repulsive force in the next moment.

Another basic example is the space“translation invariance. Space has the symmetries of homogeneity (being the same at every location) and isotropy (being the same in every direction). As a result, laws are independent of where we measure them, for whether we are in America or China, we use the same formulae: F= m.a, S= k.log W, E= m.c ...

WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE BEHAVE THE SAME AT EVERY INSTANT AND AT EVERY POINT IN SPACE“TIME?

Materialists reply: Because laws under space“ time translations are invariable. This will bring another why, answered by: Because of homogeneity and isotropy. Such a pattern will continue, for each question is no more than an effect ready to be explained by a cause, and each answer (cause) will appear to be another cause's effect.

Followers of Aristotle, Plato, Ibn-i Sina (Avicenna), al-Farabi (Al-Pharabius), or the Illuminist philosophers will urge you to keep asking why. The point at which you stop asking will be your destination, where you reach the initiator: God. All answers to your previous questions, when taken together, turn out to be attempts to attribute intermediaries or partners to God. If you ask those who believe in God's Oneness and give causes no share in His Dominion, you will hear: The same laws, being seen at every point and at every instant, can be explained only if there is one God governing every point at every instant with His universal Will, absolute Power, and all-encompassing Knowledge. Thus all causes, bound to each other so that they can be understood, are bound directly to God, Who is not bound by space“time.

WHY IS THE UNIVERSE ACCESSIBLE TO US THROUGH LAWS?

While new symmetries were being revealed, skeptical scientists were wondering whether symmetry in nature's laws on a macroscopic scale is valid on a microscopic scale.

Every symmetry is associated with a conservation law, the most important one being energy conservation. This implies a symmetry in time-translation. The validity of energy conservation has been proven on the microscopic level. One of the latest verifications is that in a perfect vacuum, particle and antiparticle pairs are created and annihilated constantly. In other words, microsized Big Bangs occur all the time out of the vacuum. This does not violate energy conservation or the laws of quantum mechanics. If they were somehow violated, and if we did not see the same concepts as the result of symmetries, the similar formalism, and the same techniques from micro- to macroscales, we could not comprehend the universe.

Consider Einstein's amazement at this: The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. Even the most atheistic scientist accepts that the universe is not absurd. But why is universe comprehensible and accessible to us?

Atheists and materialists believe that we come into being from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing, and so consider such questions meaningless. However, people who unify everything in God's name can assert: God cannot be comprehended fully by humans, and so wills to be comprehended and known through His art and the system and order apparent in the form of laws. We are here to comprehend, and the universe lies open. In the words of Paul Davies, author of The Mind of God, we are meant to be here.

WHAT IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF THE MATTER“ANTIMATTER ASYMMETRY?

Existing theory says that every particle has a corresponding antiparticle. Physicists believe that particle“antiparticle pairs behave symmetrically, like mirror reflections of each other (mirror-reflection symmetry). In 1964 at Doe's Brookhaven Laboratory, when a slight but definite asymmetry between a subatomic particle and its antiparticle was noted, physicists saw the breaking of symmetry in nature. It was time to ask why.

It is now thought that this asymmetry may be responsible for matter's dominance in the universe. Our universe appears to be made entirely of matter. If there were substantial amounts of antimatter on Earth, we would be annihilated as we react with our antiparticles, for particle“antiparticle pairs annihilate each other when reacting and leave behind electromagnetic radiation.

Any explanation offered for this asymmetry must account for the asymmetry in the universe's earlier periods, beginning with the Big Bang. Astrophysicists think that certain massive particles, formed soon after the Big Bang, decayed in such a way that slightly more particles than antiparticles were created. Even though this asymmetry's exact origin is unknown, we do know that if symmetry were not broken, we would not be alive. Amazingly, the laws of physics allow life to exist.

1 note · View note

saanphoenix · 5 years ago

Text

"A time-traveling Sephiroth doesn't make any sense!"

Ignoring time travel is in other FF games...

The bastard used his sword like Vergil to cut open a hole in the fabric of reality/fate to walk into a Singularity. Here, lemme just copy-paste Wiki for a sec:

"A gravitational singularity, spacetime singularity or simply singularity is a location in spacetime where the gravitational field of a celestial body is predicted to become infinite by general relativity in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system. The quantities used to measure gravitational field strength are the scalar invariant curvatures of spacetime, which includes a measure of the density of matter. Since such quantities become infinite at the singularity, the laws of normal spacetime break down."

It's fantasy science bullshit, but no more than any other sci-fi story that deals with shit like black holes.

Here lemme just:

"The initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, is also predicted by modern theories to have been a singularity."

Perhaps a "location" also known as "the edge of creation"?

Red XIII insinuates that destiny is the "flow" of events that makes up the planet--past, present, future. To me, it sounds like the Lifestream is expanding beyond the idea of just the river of souls circling the planet and more that it's...all memory. If the knowledge of the planet, and the cosmos itself, is to be compared to the order of events that have taken place since its inception, then that includes time.

Like. The future may not be set in stone, as Aerith says, but the planet's very existence is this flow of time. Of events. Its memory operates as if everything that will happen has already happened and we've crossed the threshold into FFVIII time squishing blahdy-blah Ultimecia my brain hurts now.

...Operating on the assumption that Red now knows the planet, and universe, has a certain direction it wants to go, and that this information is housed in, and possibly fueled by, the Lifestream, then Sephiroth, whomst be in the Lifestream slurping up all this knowledge without joining its flow, could theoretically just cheat the system to do what we consider time travel.

Lifesteam = Memory, from beginning to end, and Sephiroth might just be able to slide along that path of memory like a slide whistle.

Hell, maybe he fucks up the planet's memory just as bad as Cloud's is fucked up.

Maybe Zack living...somewhere...is like when you cancel a Sim's action, they stop walking, stand still for a second, and then think of something else to do.

I ain't gonna bet on that theory, but it's possible. I can see it.

#ffvii remake spoilers #ffvii remake #long post

19 notes · View notes

thedinoknowsall · 3 years ago

Text

I can expand on the context of why this is weird!

So, one of the fundamental assumptions of astrophysics is the invariability of physics. That is to say, the physics here on Earth is the same as the physics in the next star system over is the same as the physics in the next galaxy over is the same as the physics in the early universe is the same at the physics will be when heat death occurs in a few trillion years. There are universal laws that govern How Stuff Works. They don’t change, no matter where you are.

Ok? Ok.

Now astronomers have a theory about How the Universe Works on the Largest Scales. It’s got everything; what we know about gravity, the most likely theories about dark matter and dark energy, and (critically for this research) it also tries to work in the expansion rate of the universe.

(Sometimes you write jokes for an audience of one, and that audience is yourself)

To test this theory, we need to take measurements of the things in the theory, and make sure that everything’s kosher. And there are two ways you can measure the expansion rate of the universe! One is with the oldest light in the Universe (think of it like the Universe’s baby picture) and one is by measuring how fast galaxies close to us are moving away from us*. Because the Universe is expanding, and should be expanding in an predictable way, both measurement methods should give the same answer.

But they don’t.

And they haven’t, basically since we’ve had both measurements (coming up on about 20 years now).

Initially, the uncertainties on the measurements were large enough (and the difference is close enough) that people figured it was measurement error and that they’d come together with more measurements. But the last large CMB (baby picture) experiment and these more local measurements have confirmed each method’s answer as different from the other’s. (For anyone with a stats background, the tension between the measurements is now 4.2σ, which is huge for something that we expect to be THE SAME NUMBER)

This, understandably, is Very Annoying from astrophysicists. From personal experience, asking some of these physicists “Which H0 is the Right One?” is basically an invitation to throw hands.

Here’s a summary of all the ways people have tried to measure it!

For the curious, the paper from the NASA press release above (Riess et al. 2022) is in the Cepheids - SN1a category, and puts H0 = 73.30 ± 1.04, well away from the Planck-SPT-ACT measurement of 67.49 ± 0.53.

TL;DR: it’s not necessarily that we have a theory that the number should be one or the other, but that the number SHOULD BE THE SAME no matter where you look, and the fact that it’s not means that the vibes are probably off with our understanding of the physics**.

*because of the speed of light, if you look deep enough (and at the right frequencies) you can see light that was emitted ~100,000 years after the Big Bang. No light physically could be emitted earlier, so it is the oldest light in the universe. It’s called the cosmic microwave background (CMB). And because light has a speed, you’re actually seeing how the universe was at that time, which is why it’s a baby picture!

**which for physicists is VERY EXCITING!!!

#space #space rants #cosmology #hubble tension #will anyone be searching a hubble tension tag on this hell site?#probs not #look i gotta get my kicks somewhere #and making that lambda-cdm meme made me literally laugh out loud #i may show it to some friends who will get it later #dino rants

50K notes · View notes

wumblr · 6 years ago

Text

I spent hours working on this. I'm looking at it as more of a journal entry describing where I'm at with these concepts. It could be riddled with misconceptions, I guess. I would caution you against assuming it's profound, and encourage you to figure it out for yourself.

There is an urge among a certain subset of physicists to derive a fundamental theory from dimensionless constants. This means you would theoretically be able to calculate any salient value by deriving it from other fundamental constants, without requiring any frame of reference, or standard ruler... An even more specific subset of physicists believe that these fundamental dimensionless constants should be "natural" and not "fine tuned," meaning when you derive them from each other, you could multiply or divide something by quantities like 2 or 5 or 10 without too much trouble, but as soon as you find yourself working with values such as 1/137th, you lose "naturalness." Unfortunately, experimental observations of electromagnetic interactions are the origin of the value 1/137.

This does not necessarily mean dimensionless constants are a fool's journey, but I think naturalness might be. I don't see a reasonable expectation at its base -- why should absolutely nothing be fine tuned in a 14 billion year old cosmos? Do you think the laws of physics are timeless and unchanging, or did they evolve over the history of the universe out of the available materials? I could believe that timeless laws require naturalness, but I can't believe in unchanging laws. Experiment shows fine tuning -- perhaps there is a deeper mechanism at play that will explain this in naturalistic terms, but until that mechanism is found, we have to accept the results of experiment at face values.

For contrast, I do see a reasonable expectation for dimensionless constants. It should be possible to define the universe using only pieces of it, without invoking anything exterior to it, including clocks and rulers, i.e. absolute measurements. (This is a multiverse-agnostic stance -- it doesn't matter whether anything outside our universe exists, assuming "outside our universe" means it cannot bear any causal relation to us. If there is a multiverse where gravity pervades the bulk, and exerts influence on our universe due to mass not located in our universe, that would be a different story, because there would be a theoretically detectable causal relation.)

This pursuit is relationalist, and background-independent -- all things ought to be able to be defined in relation to each other and nothing else, without having to invoke a background of aether, or absolute space, or a timeless block universe, or a notion of time that keeps ticking when nothing is happening. Somewhere near the logical conclusions of relationalism, there is a white rabbit. Let's find him.

The thing about dimensionless constants is that you can't have them without scale invariance. If everything is interior to the theory, and you invoke no external absolute ruler unaffected by the circumstances of the experiment -- which seems to me a sensible approach until we can physically experimentally place a ruler outside the universe -- then the fundamental constants are invariant under conformal scale transformations. Things could change size, as a whole or in relation to distant objects, without changing the relationship between them. Drink me.

We can't know whether we're, at present, as the planet travels through space, traversing a rabbithole that will leave us, in comparison to ourselves in the past, a vastly different size. If there was a direction of travel which would change your size as you travel along it, then we would need to come up with a clever way to detect it. If every direction of space is identically warped in this manner, we may not be able to detect it.

Of course, the universe doesn't have to be scale invariant just because the theory allows it, and if I were to pursue this idea on that basis alone, I would be vulnerable to the same error in thinking as outlined for naturalism above. (The universe does not need to be natural just because you can imagine a naturalistic set of constants. The universe does not need to be scale invariant simply because you can imagine how cool it would be.)

True, we seem to have no anomalous experimental results to indicate that scale is varying... Unless we've already seen this indication and interpreted it as something else.

The generally accepted interpretation of general relativity is that, across distances, you must discard the possibility that events can be simultaneous, and objects (and distances) must remain consistent in size. If you discard the possibility that size is immutable, you can reintroduce simultaneity. The theories are dual, meaning they match experiment equally well. We can have a linear conception of time with a notion of simultaneity, or we can have a linear conception of space with a notion of consistent scale. They are interchangeable, but mutually exclusive. Relativity was a choice to preserve the consistency of objects, and so we lost the consistency of time. But time or size could be relative. The two theories imply indistinguishable results.

The generally accepted interpretation of the redshift of distant galaxies is that the universe is expanding, and they are accelerating away from us. But consider the possibility that distant galaxies are increasing in mass -- would this theory produce a similar observable to the expanding interpretation?

Perhaps, and perhaps not. Shouldn't changes in mass under true scale invariance be impossible to detect, if they're changing in a relationally consistent way? Expansion is not a scale transformation -- the distance between objects is expanding, but the objects themselves are not. The relationships among the objects, and the distance between them, are changing. This is not the same as the fundamental values changing in concert. Any true scale transformation preserves the relation.

This would, I suppose, require a caveat that scale invariance applies at fundamental scales, but at scales such as galaxies, invariant processes might provide emergent, scale-variant properties. Particles that gain mass in concert cannot be detected in relation to each other, but collections of particles as large as stars or galaxies might experience additional effects from this increase in mass. Chemical reactions within stellar furnaces may subtly deviate from the predictions governed by the standard model because of this. Perhaps Rubin's observations of anomalous galactic rotation, which led to the theorization of dark matter, are in fact ordinary matter performing ordinary processes in a way that is categorically different from our standard model.

Since I am a pragmatist and a believer in Bohmian mechanics, this caveat works for me. In the historical development of pilot wave theory, de Broglie started from the assumption that wave/particle duality is a little bit of both. I see a similarity in the duality which scale-invariance/relativity can exhibit, so I suspect it's likelier to be a little bit of both scale invariance and relative interactions, depending on which effective theory is relevant to matters at hand.

The generally accepted interpretation of the very early universe is that there was a brief period of uncharacteristically fast expansion we call inflation. This could also be re-envisioned in scale-invariant terms. This is the most dubious assertion I have today, but perhaps the Higgs mechanism was not part of the early universe, and when circumstances arose allowing it to suddenly come into being, all mass in the universe simultaneously changed -- seeming, from our distant perspective, to be indistinguishable from exponentially quick inflation. (The change from "all particles having no mass" to "particles having various masses" is not scale invariant, because the relationships between particle masses change. The change is noticeable because everything didn't change exactly the same amount in relation to each other. Particle mass progressed from "all the same" to "diverse," which is not an invariant transformation.)

People that have written about this include Juan Maldacena, Roger Penrose, Lisa Randall, and Lee Smolin. Each of them took a different direction.

Maldacena developed Anti de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory Correspondence in the 1990s, proving that boundaries of higher dimensional shapes can be theoretically dual to the shapes themselves (AdS/CFT is where "the universe is a projection" comes from, although it's a misconception, because we are not in an Anti de Sitter space). Some of Maldacena's students developed Shape Dynamics in response, where size doesn't matter at all, and difference of shape is the only defining feature for objects (particles don't interact directly with galaxies because they are different shapes, not because one is vastly bigger than the other).

Penrose developed Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, where at the end of time, the universe is indistinguishable from the beginning and thus it "rescales" and restarts the big bang cycle.

Randall noticed a variability inherent to Einstein's equations while looking for testable predictions for the LHC, and developed Warped Geometry in response, positing compactified extra dimensions that only fundamental particles can access.

Smolin is the only one who tries to use the idea to develop a central theory and philosophy of physics, but in order to resolve nonlocality he presumes 1) space is quantizable, 2) networked in a spin-foam, and 3) nonlocal interactions are nonadjacent networking of the quanta of space. I don't like assuming that motion is non-continuous, although that's little more than a hunch, and there are a few other reasons Smolin's work leaves me doubtful, but I might have to finish the book before I can put my finger on them.

Out of these four, I tend to trust Maldacena's conclusions most of all, because he doesn't seem to take them as anything other than mathematical constructs. The other three try to explain the universe.

If I'm going to dip my toe into the philosophy of science, it will be to say this and nothing else: Science does not need to explain the universe, it should merely predict the results of experiments. If we find an explanation for the universe along the way, that's great, and not even entirely implausible -- but this explanation must grant us deeper predictive power, or else it isn't physical science.

In the 2015 physics conferences at LMU in Munich, discussions abounded on how to proceed with regards to naturalness. David Gross put forth an operational definition of scienctific progress in the absence of empirical verification: "Will I continue to work on this?" I think this is a fantastic distinction with great clarifying power, and it's helpful to develop a rubric to admit when you're following unempirical ideas. My concern about this distinction is that it's not distinct enough -- a mathematician might take this idea to vastly different conclusions than a physicist might. Mathematics contain (and should contain) a freedom that physics don't (or at least, shouldn't): the freedom to work without tying that work to reality. Internally consistent mathematics bearing no relation to reality possess a utility not present in internally consistent but unreal physics. Thus the same operational litmus test produces different results in each field.

If time and distance under lightspeed are interchangeable (because distance is defined by the time it takes light to cross it), why assume time is the relative quantity? Does relativity of scale resolve issues that are intractable for relativity of time, or does it create new intractable issues unique to itself? Are the two distinguishable at all, or do they produce exactly the same intractable problems?

In order to unify spacetime, either space or time must become relative, and I'm thinking we might have gone in the wrong direction here. In order to determine this, we might need to go as far in developing relativity of scale as we have for relativity of time. If they produce the same paradoxes, they are dual and indistinguishable. If one produces more, it is wrong.

#sorry mobile users

4 notes · View notes

witchbydavidcain · 7 years ago

Text

Witch

Witch a nanowrimo novel by Lord Malinov

Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is black charcoal crushing white paper.

—

Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum

1. Prologue

I’m writing this book because I believe my wife is a witch, that she has magical powers. Looking back with twenty/twenty hindsight, I thought she was a witch from the beginning, since the very first time we met. In a way, she showed me who she was right away, revealed her true form, so to speak. I realize now that she never does that with anyone else. From the start, I was different. I like that.

But my mind wasn’t there. I never dreamed that she was really a witch. I wasn’t open to the idea. I dismissed the connections, the visions and coincidences, just assumed the strange things that had happened were the result of an overactive imagination, fueled by the usual assortment of recreational intoxicants and being under-fed and over-tired. I thought maybe I was a bit mad, long before I thought seriously about her being a witch. It just made more sense to me.

I guess her having powers doesn’t necessarily make her a witch, but you know what I mean. She’s clearly a human being; she spends her days doing ordinary human things, so I don’t think she’s an alien or some other kind of supernatural being. I don’t think she shows any signs of possession. I haven’t seen her shape-shifting or anything dramatic like that. Sorceress, wizard, high priestess in some dark occult religion, perhaps. I’m just going to call her a witch. It suits her. I can wrap my head around that.

The thing is, the reason I’m writing all this down, is that lots of strange stuff has happened since I met her and I want to make a record of it, just in case. Sometimes it scares me senseless. I don’t know what I mean. If something should happen to me, I was going to say, but I don’t think anything is going to happen. In case some one needs to understand what has been going on with her. I’ve been a front-line witness to years of witchy behavior. I just think I should write it all down.

At the very least, it’s an interesting story. Maybe that’s why I want to write it down, because I don’t have anyone I can tell it to. I can’t even imagine who I’d seriously discuss this with. They’d think I was crazy or seriously laugh at me. Married to a witch. I’m dying to tell someone about it but I’m going to keep my mouth shut. This will have to do.

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not calling her out, not accusing her, not trying to bring her to justice or salvation or whatever I would be doing if I made her witchiness public. So I haven’t called any church elders; I haven’t been in contact with a witch hunter. Nor have I forbidden her from cleaning the house using magic. I’m quite happy, being married to a witch. It’s very nice.

I joked about the house cleaning but from what I’ve gathered witchcraft doesn’t work that way, cast a quick spell and the house is clean or transformed into a castle. That would be a good trick, of course, but that would be more of a Jeannie sort of thing. Witches are more subtle than that. They don’t make things happen as much as they smooth the path that leads wherever they want to go. They can help or hinder.

I’ve seen a few weird things but you never know with undocumented visual evidence. Maybe I was seeing things. It’s not a big part of my case, anyway. But I have seen some weirdnesses.

Although I live with her, I can’t claim to know everything she does magically. All I can attest to is what I’ve witnessed, what I’ve seen, heard and felt.

I’ve never seen anything float, blink into or out of existence, talk or transform. Just to be clear, there haven’t been any parlor tricks, no stage-type magic, no bright balls of light and big bangs. Nor does she ever wave a wand. I don’t even think she has one.

What I have seen, let’s say, that proves she is a witch, has been her success. It seems like luck is always on her side. She can do things that I’m not sure she should be able to do, things I know I couldn’t do. She can foresee the future, too often for it to be mere coincidence; she always seems to make lucky guesses, always has the right cards, so to speak. She knows things, things she shouldn’t be able to know, like who’s going to win or what exactly I’m thinking. She talks to animals and plants and clay and food. I think they listen to her. And I’ve never heard any voices but I suspect they respond. Stuff goes on that I really don’t get.

Going back to the beginning of our relationship, I think being a witch made my wife an incredible photography model, the best I’ve ever worked with. I still get inquiries about some of the photos we took and we didn’t take that many. Weirdest session I have ever had, both of them, but the pictures worked out in a way that only a witch can arrange. That’s my theory, anyway.

Being a witch certainly made her a superb business manager. Compared to me, no question. When we met, I was pretty much floundering, trying to get enough work to get enough cash to get my business started. I barely made rent, sometimes.

Back then, I would bug guys for weeks trying to get work. They’d usually tell me they’d find something for me but not now, later and later rarely came. Sadly, that’s how I got most of my work, bugging friends and friends of friends and people I met at the bar until someone gave me a job, taking pictures, doing design work, arrangements, junk like that.

Pushing so hard, my popularity, never my strongest suit, started really crumbling. Friends didn’t answer calls, stopped answering my emails, started to avoid me altogether because they knew I’d have to say what I had to say, that I’d ask them for work and they’d have to say no.

Even so, I did all right, most of the time, but I wasn’t getting ahead. I started having doubts about my career choice, considered getting a suit job somewhere. I might have given up. I was getting desperate. Then I met a witch.

When she was in charge, she’d call some guy up and hand me three jobs. Then she’d call another guy and I’d have five more. In the first week, she arranged more work than I had found in six months. There was hardly enough time to do it all. She kept me on track. I started to get ahead.

Then she started dropping names and talking about pie-in-the-sky business hook-ups, million-dollar accounts and late-night deals where all we’d have to do is cash the checks. I thought she was getting happy and just dreaming out loud until she started bringing in the accounts, the deals, the checks. She knows her witchy business.

After a while, the grind of production started wearing me thin, so I told her that I wanted to change our direction, take me out of the trenches and start letting me provide the visions. Two weeks later, I had a new office and a whole new game plan. It was like she snapped her fingers and made it all happen. I didn’t even struggle with the transition. She told me what I needed to know, where to be and what to do. I paid close attention, did as I was told and the inevitable victory was won.

With a witch, success is just business as usual. When obstacles arose, she took care of them. I can’t swear there was magic involved but the way our troubles vanished was clearly incredible. Our deliveries were on time and our competition invariably failed. Her grasp of the details was nearly perfect. I don’t remember her ever missing a trick. Unbelievable, really. Fantastic. Supernatural.

As a wife, as a friend, as a lover, a witch is where it’s at. She knows me and knows my needs and desires. She knows what to say. She knows how close I want her to be. She guides me through life casually, sweetly, delightfully. Every day is a pleasure.

Am I spell-bound? Am I under her control, voodoo hexed and enslaved? Am I happy because she has cast a spell that makes me happy? Am I her minion, her human familiar? Do I have any free will at all?

I’m sure I’ll never know. But I don’t mind.

Having said all of that, I feel a bit stupid, saying my wife has magic powers. I’m not a child, reading wizard novels about fairy tales and fantastical elf-lore. I don’t even like that stuff, really. Some of it, maybe, I mean, I’ve watched the movies but I don’t take it seriously. I keep my feet on the ground.

I don’t know if I’ve seen ghosts but I have felt some creepy paranormal stuff, energy and cold and unexplained noises while hanging out with friends in abandoned buildings when we were younger. A few times, we did the whole nine yards, dressed in robes and summoning spirits, waiting in the dark for EVPs and someone getting scratched. We’ve all had supernatural experiences. It’s not that weird. The world is full of dark energies.

And witches, apparently.

I know what most people know about paranormal stuff, the occult, hauntings, vampires, wizards, all that stuff. I watch the shows, see the movies. Some of it seems cool but most of it’s just for fun. I’d never really given it any thought. I never really thought it would impact my life.

When I think about it, though, apart from your basic Halloween witch decorations, I didn’t know that much about witches when this started. It wasn’t even a question I thought to ask, no more than I’d ask about mummies. Werewolves are cool. I wonder about them.

So, when I was still taking the pictures, I used to work with this young woman sometimes. She was like my assistant on big jobs. I didn’t really know her that well but after a few jobs together, she told me that she was a real live modern day witch. I made some stupid jokes which I could tell annoyed her but then she told me lots of stuff I never knew about witches.

Actually, she said my wife was a witch. She was the first to say so and the only person since. She didn’t help me when I took the witch pictures but I’m pretty sure she’d seen them. The first time she met my wife, after my wife left, she told me that my wife was a really a witch too. I asked her how she knew and she told me.

Witches are people of the old religion. They come in every shape and size and nationality and walk of life. They are connected to nature in ways that the rest of us aren’t. They can do things, they know things, they can see things and foresee things. You may never know when a witch is right next to you, even though you see them every day.

What you will see, if you watch carefully, is an inner peace, a connectedness, a serenity that controls the world rushing in chaos around her. The energies she commands glides her though life, like a melody, like a summer breeze, like a rainbow on the wing. She may whisper and mumble, she may wave her hands and unfocus her eyes while you are talking to her, but she’ll know exactly what you mean and precisely what is really going on. Witch life is a style, a power, a production.

On those wings, we keep soaring higher.

After that talk with my assistant, I watched more movies, shows, stuff like that, too, to learn about witches. They have an interesting culture.

My wife owns an assortment of things any witch would have; there is no disputing that. But other women I have known have had the same kind of witchy things in their homes and I don’t think they were witches at all. Crystals and Celtic designs and Tarot cards and spirit bowls and incense and candles. What woman doesn’t have candles? I don’t think we can conclude anything from objects alone.

She has most of those things on a shelf. I call it her witch shelf. She never responds when I say things like that, like it isn’t worth responding to. Because it’s true or because it’s ridiculous, I’ll probably never know. I’ve tried to talk to her about being a witch but she either walks away, changes the subject or makes a joke out of it. I don’t know what that means but I am convinced that she will not talk about it.

There are other things she has on her witch shelf that are more damning, like the witch books. They aren’t very good reads, lots of circles and affirmations and goddess talk that goes round and round in, well, circles. She said they are research but I don’t know what she’s doing research for. Having them on the shelf is not conclusive that she is a witch but it is evidence. Church ladies don’t have witch stuff on display.

Lots of popular culture shows witches hanging out in groups, stirring cauldrons and dancing in the moonlight. I don’t think my wife goes in for that kind of witchery. I mean, I don’t think she really spends any time hanging out with other witches.

Not that I’m aware of, anyway. I suppose she might be turning into a rabbit and hopping off for a coven meeting after I go to sleep. They say witches sometimes transform into animals so that they can do mischief without the limitations of human form. Or they fly on brooms. Lots of witch stuff is supposed to happen at night. I wouldn’t think I would miss her going out but I do sleep pretty soundly. And she may be casting sleep spells on me. Who knows?

But, seriously, she doesn’t have any friends like that, wearing witchy symbols or talking witch talk. She’s more of a loner. I’m pretty sure they have loner witches. That’s probably a thing.

So it’s not the company she keeps that makes me think she is a witch. It’s the way she behaves, some of the weird stuff I’ve witnessed and our continuing successes that make me believe in her witchness. I guess I don’t really have any proof. Maybe she isn’t a witch. But it sure seems like she is.

Of course, its not all about the good stuff that has happened since we got together. There have been times when it frightens me. I don’t mean that she has caused me fear but thinking about her being a witch has scared me. I don’t know. I suppose she scares me. In a good way.

She’s always been good to me but I’ve been careful to stay on her good side. Her goodwill has always been important to me, because, if I’m being honest, I’ve always been a bit afraid of her. I sort of did that instinctively, from the beginning. I knew from the very start that I did not want her mad at me. It wasn’t anything she said or did. There wasn’t any violence in her behavior or even in her language. She was always kind of sweet when I was around anyway. But I glimpsed her power, I guess. I felt the force of her psychic energy. I could feel the cold push of her intense will. After an hour, I’d seen enough to keep me subdued and obedient. I fear her lovingly.

But I’ve also done business with her, watched her deal with people who did not please her. She can be very forceful when she needs to get her way and some people are foolish enough to stand in her way. There are usually two phases of her anger, when this happens. First I suspect that she causes them pain in ways that never quite come back on her. Then she foretells a terrible future for them. And it happens. I’m not kidding. People are ruined, broken, disgraced, ostracized. They get sick and die. I mean, I don’t know if she cast a spell and made them die but she did predict their demise. She tells me when deals are going to fall apart, when companies are going to collapse, when partnerships are doomed and she’s always right. It’s spooky. And scary.

Actually, to be safe, I long ago adopted the attitude that she’s always right. It seems like the best approach to life with a witch. Do what I’m told and enjoy the benefits. And it’s worked, so I’m sticking with it. I’m doing too well to jeopardize this gravy train of happiness. Besides, she is always right.

I haven’t mentioned writing this book to her. I hope she doesn’t mind.

#nanowrimo #writeblr #novel #fiction #writing #mine #Lord Malinov #Witch

3 notes · View notes

in-sightpublishing · 1 year ago

Text

The Chosen One

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/30 According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created…

#12 years of college credit #high IQs by Jason Betts #Time-invariant Big Bang Theory #Trump’s divine ordination claims

0 notes

scepticaladventure · 7 years ago

Text

28 Fresh Perspectives Needed 13Sep18

Introduction I have three motivations in writing this series of essays. The first is to improve my own understanding through research, contemplation and organizing my ideas by writing them. The second is to be able to share this journey with others in a plain-English format, just in case anyone is interested or amused by this (which is not the case for my wife, friends and relatives!). My third reason is the hope of provoking fresh thinking in areas that seem to me to be calling out for new insights and answers.

I think modern cosmology is in trouble. 95-98% of the Universe has gone missing and cannot be found. Cosmologists claim to understand the history of the Universe, even before the so-called Big Bang, but cannot explain the motion of stars in spiral galaxies or why the Universe seems to be expanding at an accelerating rate, or why its geometry seems to be so flat. We can’t even deeply explain the motion of a simple Foucault pendulum here on Earth. And our model for light is an unsatisfactory pastiche of conflicting ideas. Paradoxes persist. How long will it take before we agree – we seem to have lost the path, it should not be as hard as this, we have missed something, we have failed to fully understand something fundamental.

So I have gone back through the foundations of modern physics with an open but skeptical mind. It has been a fascinating journey.

Here are my conclusions: 1. Our model for light is clumsy, old fashioned, contradictory and severely limiting. It needs a fresh look. Wave-particle duality is just a label for something we don’t properly understand. 2. The aether theory isn’t dead, it is just sleeping. It ran into problems and was bypassed, shelved and ignored. But maybe Lorentz, Sagnac and others were onto something that needs a fresh and further look. 3. Special Relativity is a work of genius and uncovered some fundamental aspects of Nature. But it rests on three postulates that may not be always, everywhere and entirely valid. 4. The issue of where does inertia comes from in the first place needs some deep consideration. 5. General Relativity is brilliantly successful because it recognizes that both time and the speed of light are affected by gravity. It is also a clever and powerful model that brings a whole lot of new mathematics into play. But for all that it is just a model. 6. If you add the insights of Special Relativity and the fact that gravity slows the speed of light/time back into classical physics you can successfully model, quantify and predict all of the so-called proofs of General Relativity. This shows that General Relativity is an excellent way of looking at certain aspects of Nature, but it is not the only way of understanding Nature. 7. Restricting our viewpoints restricts our understanding and progress. We need some fresh perspectives.

The Cone Here is a parable. Consider a solid cone made out of some hard shiny material. Viewed from one end it will look like a disc. Viewed from the other end it will still look like a disc, but with some indications that it has a symmetrical three dimensional nature and maybe a pointy tip. Viewed side on it will look like a triangle, again with some suggestions of curvature but this time from side to side. Which view is correct? The answer is that all three views are correct, but none is completely correct. Insisting that one view is correct and ignoring the other views is to limit understanding of the true nature of the cone.

I think it is the same with General Relativity. Insisting that it is the only correct way of interpreting the Universe is to limit our chances of developing a deeper understanding.

The Rise of the Metric Approach to Gravity There are various ways to try to describe physics involving gravity. It is clear that four dimensional spacetime is needed and that the lessons of Special Relativity need to be included. Furthermore, the fact that gravity slows down the speed of light and the rate of time points to the need to allow for flexibility in the time dimension. So a flat Minkowski spacetime is not entirely adequate. But this is where the great divide comes in. You can choose to follow Einstein and make use of a fully curved spacetime model, or not.

If you do choose Einstein’s geometric approach then you can regard this as just a model – as Einstein himself did – or you can go further and choose to regard curved spacetime as some sort of fundamental reality. This last step gained popularity after Einstein died, promulgated by luminaries such as Misner, Thorne and Wheeler in the United States and Stephen Hawking in the United Kingdom.

Necessity for Full Spacetime Curvature? N.B. In this essay I will again be making references to a heavyweight textbook on gravity by Charles Misner, Kip Thorne and John Wheeler (MTW): “Gravitation” C W Misner, K S Thorne, J A Wheeler Freeman Press, 1970 ISBN 0-7167-0344

MTW have played a major role in promoting the idea that gravity is nothing more than spacetime curvature. Einstein’s own approach was regarded as a curiosity by many scientists for the first forty years of its life but from the middle of the 20th century it gradually assumed the ascendency. Whereas Einstein regarded his full curvature approach to be a useful tool, MTW and others reinterpreted his approach and helped to create the modern view that gravity is just an illusion created by full spacetime curvature.

MTW do not have an open mind on the subject. On p1066 they say “Among all bodies of physical law none has ever been found that is simpler or more beautiful than Einstein’s geometric theory of gravity; nor has any theory of gravity been discovered that is more compelling”. On p1067 they say “For any adequate description of gravity, look to a metric theory”. On p 421 they say “Mass-energy curves space is the central principle of gravity”. On p429 they praise General Relativity because “It describes gravity entirely in terms of geometry; most of its competitors do not”. And John Wheeler is often quoted as saying “Matter tells spacetime how to curve and curved spacetime tell matter how to move.”

Clifford M Will was a student of Kip Thorne at Caltech and later became a leading professor of physics, specializing in General Relativity. I will use quotes from his online article “The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment” June 2014, SpringerLink, and his overview “Was Einstein Right? A Centenary Assessment” 33 pages, 8 figures, published in General Relativity and Gravitation: A Centennial Perspective, eds. A. Ashtekar, B. Berger, J. Isenberg and M. A. H. MacCallum (Cambridge University Press), 2015. Abridged version at arXiv:1403.7377.

Will presents the Einstein Equivalence Principle and Strong Equivalence Principle in confusing ways, with each principle containing other principles. Will then says that the equivalence principles are the heart and soul of gravitational theory, “for it is possible to argue convincingly that if they are valid, then gravitation must be a ‘curved spacetime’ phenomenon.” In other words, the effects of gravity must be equivalent to the effects of living in a curved spacetime.

I think that to whether “the effects of gravity must be equivalent to the effects of living in a curved spacetime curvature” is true or not depending on what it meant by ‘equivalent’. If the author means “can be satisfactorily modeled by” I would happily agree. If the author means we live in a curved spacetime reality and gravity does not exist, then I think that he has gone too far. Further than Einstein ever went and further than is reasonable.

The Parametrized Post Newtonian Formalism The Parameterized Post-Newtonian Framework (PPN) was developed over 50 years by illustrious physicists such as Eddington, Robertson, Schiff, Nordtvedt and Will. The PPN formalism adds ten generic parameters to a basic version of General Relativity. The parameters can be adjusted so that the PPN can represent a whole variety of competing geometric models of gravity, including subtle variations of General Relativity itself. The idea is then to use experimental results to put limits on the parameters as a way of weeding out the range of theories and preventing new weeds from taking hold.

Theories subject to this treatment include Einstein’s General Relativity (1915), Whitehead (1922), one of Bergman’s (1968) scalar-tensor theories, one of Nordstrom’s theories, theories by Birkhoff (1943), Dicke-Brans-Jordan (1961, 1959), Ni (1970, 1972) and many others.

Suffice it to say that plain vanilla General Relativity complies neatly with these tests and the other models struggle.

The work by Will also covers a lot of metric theories, classified into General Relativity, scalar-tensor theories (of which the Jordan–Fierz–Brans–Dicke theory is a good example), vector-tensor theories and scalar-vector-tensor theories. Let me quote from the second of the Will references mentioned above: • A number of theories fall into the class of “prior-geometric” theories, with absolute elements such as a flat background metric in addition to the physical metric. Most of these theories predict “preferred-frame” effects that have been tightly constrained by observations. An example is Rosen’s bi-metric theory. • A large number of alternative theories of gravity predict gravitational wave emission substantially different from that of general relativity, in strong disagreement with observations of the binary pulsar. • Scalar-tensor modifications of general relativity have become very popular in unification schemes such as string theory, and in cosmological model building. Because the scalar fields could be massive, the potentials in the post-Newtonian limit could be modified by Yukawa-like terms. • Theories that also incorporate vector fields have attracted recent attention, in the spirit of the Extension of the Standard Model (of sub-atomic particles), as models for violations of Lorentz invariance in the gravitational sector, and as potential candidates to account for phenomena such as galaxy rotation curves without resorting to dark matter.

Again Will uses a range of experimental results and concludes that plain vanilla General Relativity complies neatly with these tests and the other models do not.

My problem with all this work is not its intention, but the way it is carried out. MTW, Will and Nordtvedt make up the rules, act as prosecutor, select the evidence, interpret the evidence and act as jury and judge. If they encounter a problem in a theory they allow no attempt to fix it. They simply bayonet the wounded theory, declare it dead and buried, and move on to the next.

Einstein struggled for ten years to develop his General Relativity model, with many twists and turns. He produced an initial calculation for the light bending effect that was half the final result. He argued for, then against, and finally for the existence of gravitational waves. He introduced a cosmological constant and then called it a mistake. So it may be a bit harsh and possibly premature to kill off other models at the first sign of a problem.

Models with Backgrounds The antagonism by MTW towards alternate theories of gravity and alternate interpretations of Einstein’s approach shows up in the discussion by MTW of attempts to view gravity as a standard type of field situated in a flat spacetime background.

This approach has been developed and explored by notable theorists such as Gupta, Kraichman, Thirring, Feyman, Weinberg and Deser (see MTW p436). It offers one of several routes to the field equations of Einstein’s General Relativity.

One version (Fierz and Pauli 1939) borrowed from quantum theory and envisages gravity as occurring via the exchange of gravitons – hypothetical zero rest mass particles with a spin number of 2. MTW claim that by the time this approach is fully developed the original flat spacetime has become unobservable. MTW dismiss the theory (p437) because it is silent about the emergence of the Universe from an initial singularity - the Big Bang Theory. Hence MTW dismiss a serious attempt to bring together the two pillars of modern physics because it is silent about something else that they like.

MTW start their more general discussion of models with backgrounds by stating that any flat background must be unobservable (p424). This is the same point of view put to Lorentz by Einstein in relation to Special Relativity.

Einstein did not deny the possibility of a background that may or may not correspond to a lumiferous aether. He just argued that if it cannot show up in Michelson-Morley type experiments it must be unobservable and hence not useful.

MTW praise General Relativity for being free of any ‘prior geometry’, and criticize any competitors which admit this as a possibility. I think they have a point because I think that all geometry is a man-made overlay and hence has no prior reality. In fact no reality at all except in our own minds. But I think that that agreeing that there is no prior geometry is not quite the same as agreeing that there is no background. It might just mean that the background has no prior geometry.

I think this subtle difference is vitally and fundamentally important.

In my view, Newton’s rotating bucket, the Foucault pendulum and the Sagnac interferometer all readily distinguish reference frames which are rotating or accelerating from ones which are not. The Cosmic Microwave Background does the same. Conversely, Einstein’s attempt to explain why some objects demonstrate rotational phenomena and others do not by imposing boundary conditions on his cosmological models was a failure. Einstein thought so anyway, even though it suits many modern cosmologists to disagree.

So why do MTW show such antagonism to the idea of a cosmological background? I think it might be because they conflate it with ‘prior geometry’. However, to their credit they attempt to clarify their language. On p 429 they say “By ‘prior geometry’ one means any aspect of the geometry of spacetime that is fixed immutably, i.e. that cannot be changed by changing the distribution of gravitating sources”.

So what about a background geometry that is affected by the distribution of gravitating sources in the Universe? This echoes the argument put forward by Ernst Mach towards the end of the 19th century. Einstein admired the idea so much that he dubbed it “Mach’s Principle.” (Einstein endeavored to incorporate the idea into his theories all his life, but eventually concluded that he had not been successful.) If the background is given a Machian interpretation then I think it has to be taken very seriously.

There seems to be a confused belief that the idea of a background conflicts with something that Einstein called the Principle of General Covariance. This principle states that the outcome of physical experiments does not depend on the choice of reference frame in which to view them. In other words, physics is agnostic to reference frames invented by observers for their own convenience.

This principle is entirely reasonable, but has little to do with the fact that some reference frames are more equal than others. For example, frames that are not accelerating or rotating do not contain spurious forces deflecting unattached test particles all over the place.

It is robustly true that the physical outcomes are the same whatever reference frame you chose to use – it is just that the ease of describing what is going on them is vastly different depending on the frame you happen to choose to describe them in. Choose your frame right and you do not have to invent ‘fictitious’ forces to balance the books.

An example of the type of effort that I admire is a modeling approach developed by W T Ni in 1970 and 1972 (see MTW p1070). This has a background geometry and treats gravity as a scalar field. MTW agree that the theory satisfies the equivalence principle (which version is not clear), and that the model is self-consistent and complete. But then they say “If the solar system were at rest in the ‘rest frame of the Universe’, the theory would agree with all experiments to date – except possibly for the expansion of the Universe. But the motion of the solar system through the Universe leads to serious disagreement with experiment (Will and Nordtvedt 1972)”.

The alleged fatal flaw comes from work by Will in 1971 that suggests that the force between two massive objects will depend on the way in which they are travelling through the background metric. This is calculated to create a twice-a-day fluctuation in the tides on Earth and also to tidal fluctuations within the Earth that conflicts with the experimental evidence. This leads Will to claim that the theory of Whitehead (1922) and of Ni (1972) cannot be correct. But is Will correct?

When Galileo presented his model of a spinning Earth orbiting a stationary Sun, the wise men of the day calculated that the tangential speed of the Earth’s surface could be anything up to 1600km/hour and said that Galileo’s model could not possibly be true because no bird could fly that fast in order to keep up. It was not an unreasonable point because this was in the days prior to Torricelli and hence there was not yet a concept of the atmosphere being a thin layer coating the earth with no viscous drag where it meets the vacuum of space. Likewise Will’s objection could be perfectly reasonable and clever, but nevertheless wrong.

Since General Relativity and modern physics generally cannot explain the enormous anomaly in the motion of stars in the discs of all spiral galaxies (without inventing hypothetical dark matter) there is clearly something occurring that is not well explained by the conventional paradigm. So it may be unwise to be too definite about what is right and what is wrong at this stage. What if the type of thinking put forward by Ni resolves the galaxy rotation curve crisis?

The Fabric of Spacetime? It is common to hear expressions such as “the fabric of spacetime”, and “spacetime tells matter how to move”. It is also common to see diagrams with spacetime depicted as a curved or distorted rubber sheet with dimples around massive objects forcing the path of freely moving bodies into curves and orbits.

This is a bit unfortunate. It tends to create the impression that spacetime is a real thing, an actual entity. That moving objects are deflected because they hit a bump in the road.

Spacetime is a just way of defining places and moments, lengths and times in a satisfactory way so we can describe what is going on. We do this sort of thing all the time, but we need to be careful not to get confused between our imagined constructs and actual reality.

For example, we have an agreed way of assigning lines of latitude and longitude to the surface of the Earth. This creates a two dimensional grid. But it is not real. You cannot see it, touch it, taste it, smell it or hear it. You cannot detect it with any instruments. It does not interact with matter in any shape or form. The motion of everything on Earth is oblivious to the imaginary grid that we have imagined and agreed upon for our own convenience of reference.

It is the same with spacetime. Curved or not. It is just a reference frame that we overlay onto physical reality to make it easier to talk about what is going on. If it proves convenient to use a warped geometry then use that. If some other representation is more convenient then use that one instead. It makes no difference to actual reality.

Imaginary reference frames are useful for describing physical systems. That is all. Spacetime does not exist as a thing in its own right, any more than the lines of latitude and longitude exist on the surface of the Earth. Spacetime curvature does not tell matter how to move any more than the lines of latitude and longitude tell ships and planes how to move, or ducks how to migrate. It is important not to become confused between descriptions of reality that we happen to find useful and reality itself.

When someone says “matter tells spacetime how to curve and spacetime curvature tells matter how to move” we should not take the words too literally. It would be better to remind ourselves that we have imposed an imaginary and somewhat arbitrary reference frame across the physical system we are trying to describe and that for some purposes we find it convenient to model the effects of gravity by using a warped four dimensional framework.

I know that General Relativity can be recast in terms so generic that the convenience of coordinates can be dispensed with all together. However I do not think this alters my point.

I am also familiar with the argument that goes as follows. By applying geometry to the surface of the Earth we can discover that two dimensional geometry which is locally Euclidean no longer works on a larger scale, thus revealing that the surface of the Earth is a curved manifold in three dimensional space. Similarly, applying four dimensional geometry which is locally Lorentzian on a larger scale reveals that spacetime curvature is necessary to account for physical dynamics in the presence of gravity. I would agree with this if I thought that Einstein’s Equivalence Principle was literally true. But I don’t. I think that gravity can be mimicked by a linear acceleration to a certain degree, and that it is possible to build clever mathematical models based on this fact. But is gravity, the most dominant force in the Universe, just an illusion created by a quirk of geometry? I don’t think so.

Is General Relativity Perfect? Yes, you can get rid of gravity by imagining spacetime is curved. Yes this is brilliant stuff. Yes this produces a small number of remarkable (very small) predictions that turn out to be true. And yes it is possible to build innumerable wonderful cosmological models using curved spacetime geometries. But that is not conclusive proof that the modern version of General Relativity is the only way to look at the Universe, the best way to look at the Universe, or even the most convenient way to look at the Universe.

General Relativity is very hard to use and I think the results of its over complicated mathematics throw up more questions than they answer. And while I am being heretical, I may as well produce a list of criticisms. In my naive opinion, the modern version of General Relativity: 1. is based on a Principle of Equivalence which is just a mathematical assumption 2. elevates spacetime to a status it does not deserve 3. does not explain why matter, stress and energy distort spacetime 4. does not explain the origins of linear or rotational inertia 5. does not explain why matter has mass 6. is so complicated that it enables mathematicians to come up with a whole range of solutions which have no correspondence in Nature 7. creates red herrings that waste everyone’s time 8. has not helped with the dilemmas of missing Cold Dark Matter and Dark Energy 9. has predictions which can be accounted for in other ways 10. obscures, bypasses or overshadows a lot of fundamental issues that deserve more attention.

In many ways, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. A century after General Relativity was produced, most astronomers do not use it except in special circumstances such as gravitational lensing and black holes. In day-to-day discussions they just use a post-Newtonian approximation. And although Einstein and modern ‘metricists’ seem to be averse to any ‘a priori’ geometry in the Universe, astronomers nevertheless find it convenient to have agreed reference frames for the Solar System, the Milky Way and the wider Universe. Are they are instinctively using something that has physical significance?

Spatial Curvature on a Cosmological Scale Einstein’s General Relativity model requires mass/energy to warp spacetime. Its equations involve mass/stress/energy tensor warping the 4x4 spacetime metric tensor in all of its sixteen components (six of which are duplicates due to symmetry).

Suppose there are three spacecraft at rest with respect to each other and the cosmic microwave background. Connect them by laser beams and measure the angles between the three beams. The beams form a triangle. If the interior angles always add up to 180 degrees, then spacetime is flat. If the sum of the angles is more or less than that, then space has positive or negative curvature.

As far as we can tell, on a very large spatial scale our Universe is flat. Very flat. Parallel lines in intergalactic space will never meet. But this requires a very particular value for the universal stress energy tensor. Theorists have been struggling for nearly a century to explain why this might be so. It would be a remarkable coincidence if the average mass/stress/energy in our Universe happens to be exactly the right amount for universal spacetime to have neither positive nor negative curvature on a macro scale.

So Why is our Universe so Flat? The Einstein-Friedmann-Robertson-Walker models of the Universe involve solutions for Einstein’s equations based on the assumption that the Universe is more or less uniformly filled with mass/stress/energy, a bit like a perfect fluid. The equations have solutions which have positive curvature (like a sphere in 3D), negative curvature (like a hyperbolic surface in 3D) or zero curvature (i.e. flat) depending on the energy density measured by the omnipresent mass/stress/energy tensor.

But observations show the Universe is flat. So how did the Universe come up with exactly the right amount of mass/stress/energy to arrive at this special case? Theorists have come up with all sorts of suggestions, but it is still a mystery.

I have a much simpler answer. The Universe is flat because is has always been flat and that is the only thing it can be. The non-flat Friedmann solutions are just artifacts of the model and the assumptions used in obtaining its generic solutions. Not all aspects of the solutions have to correspond to reality.

When I read the debate between cosmologists about possible values for the cosmological constant I cannot help but be reminded of the debate between medieval theologians about how many angels can dance on the head on a pin. All very clever, but maybe not very useful.

Consider the Cartesian map analogy again. It is possible to map the surface of the earth onto a two dimensional surface by allowing the lines of longitude to move further and further apart as the distance from the equator increases. This is very useful, especially when reproducing maps on paper. But it produces singularities at the north and south poles. It is no good worrying about the meaning of these singularities and what bizarre things might be happening at the poles because the singularities do not exist in reality – they are just an artifact of the mathematical approach used to build the two dimensional model.

Likewise, you can waste time worrying why the Universe is flat, or you can just accept that the non-flat mathematical solutions are an artifact of a particular set of solutions to a peculiar model of the Universe based on a peculiar approach to describing physics.

I say peculiar model of the Universe because it seems to me that the Einstein-Friedmann-Robertson-Walker models of the Universe rest on some doubtful assumptions. Friedmann was not making assumptions summarizing actual experimental observations – he was just making gross simplifications in order to be able to get a handle on the mathematics. I don’t think the Universe is anything like a homogeneous perfect fluid. The more we look the more we find macro patterns in its structure. Huge super-clusters of galaxies, filaments, voids and walls. The analogy to the particles in a fluid are the galaxies. However, unlike the molecules in a fluid, the space between the galaxies contains a lot of intergalactic dust, neutrinos and photons. Furthermore galaxies collide with each other in ways that are totally different to the ways that molecules collide in a fluid. And the list of differences goes on.

I think the large scale geometry of our Universe is so flat because it was never curved. Cosmological curvature is our idea – not Nature’s.

Conclusion Inspired by Einstein’s great work there have been literally dozens of other models of gravitation over the last hundred years or so.

At first gravitation theory was a theorist’s paradise but an experimenter’s purgatory. Since the 1960’s however, developments in space technology and astronomy have created the ability to test many aspects of this work. The clear winner has been Einstein’s original theory. So much so that many scientists regard spacetime curvature not as a model of what is going on in nature, but as a fundamental new reality.

I think this is a mistake. I think that General Relativity is a very clever and successful model, but a model none-the-less. There is plenty that we do not yet understand properly about the Universe, how it works and how it evolved. Refusing to consider alternative approaches has the strong likelihood of unnecessarily limiting our understanding and delaying the next generation of breakthroughs.

General Relativity leaves key questions unanswered, e.g. in relation to the origins of inertia and the dynamics of spiral galaxies. The fact that 98% of the Universe required by theory cannot actually be found may be trying to tell us something - we have missed something fundamental. We have got off track. Something is wrong somewhere.

The current orthodoxy is a cage to our thinking and it deserves to be rattled and shaken. And finally a message to young scientists – please do not stop asking questions and do not stop questioning what they tell you, especially if it seems fudged.

A quote from a lecture Einstein gave in 1921: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality.”

#science #physics #Einstein #General Relativity #cosmology #gravity #theories of gravity #hereticalphysics

2 notes · View notes

startswithabang · 8 years ago

Photo

Scientific Theories Never Die, Not Unless Scientists Choose To Let Them

“It's why theories like quantum field theory and general relativity are so powerful: even after all these decades, they're still making new predictions that are being successfully borne out by experiment. It's why dark matter is here to stay, as its successful predictions include the speeds of galaxy pairs, the large-scale cosmic web, the fluctuations in the CMB, baryon acoustic oscillations, gravitational lensing and more. It's why cosmic inflation— with its successful predictions including superhorizon fluctuations, the acoustic peaks in the Big Bang's leftover glow, the departure from scale invariance, etc. — is the leading theory for the origin of the Big Bang. And it's why their alternatives are so thoroughly fringe.”

It’s tempting to view science as a steady progression forward, where new evidence comes to light, eliminating some hypotheses while preserving others. But the truth is a lot murkier than that, as scientists routinely tweak and alter their hypothesis in detail to match the current, favored observations. When dark energy was discovered through supernovae, for instance, some thought it might be an effect of dust instead. When the color of the light didn’t match up, they suggested a new form of dust instead: grey dust. And when the distant observations showed that grey dust was insufficient, they coined a new term: replenishing grey dust. While constantly tweaking your theory to bring it in line with observations may be unpalatable, it’s what theorists do all the time. It’s why old, discredited scientific ideas can never die, not as long as someone’s still willing to work on them.

The notion that science advances one funeral at a time comes from this exact behavior. Like it or not, it’s all part of the scientific process.

#science #funeral #dark energy #max planck #big bang #physics #astrophysics #astronomy

254 notes · View notes

tanadrin · 7 years ago

Text

Have not had the energy to work on the map today, so I did some revising of the tech list; it will be a long time before I get around to this stage of the mod, but worldbuilding is fun!

Categories are Science (”Administrative”), reflecting pure science, Social (”Diplomatic”), reflecting both social advancements and applied biological/social technology, and Warfare (”Military”), for military technology, strategies, and tactics. Because of the mechanics I have planned for this mod, I expect it to be very, very rare to reach the end of any tech category. The first 2-4 technologies every faction will start with, with the exception of the highland nomads. Each tech will have a SMAC-style quote, but there are a few in each category I haven’t found/been inspired to write one for.

SCIENCE TECHNOLOGIES

Fission - "We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." - J. Robert Oppenheimer (datalinks)

Radio Astronomy - "For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?" - Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (datalinks)

Hydroponics - "Mars lacks the luxury of Earth's rainfalls or rich soil; wild plant life is confined to the cryptolichens and the frostgreens, and to what microbes can survive the freezing temperatures and low air pressure. But at least inside the domes of our cities, we can make our little gardens bloom." - Tavera of Galle

Gene Sequencing - "Genes as a language leave much to be desired: they are clumsy and primitive, full of errors and redundancies. Yet out of that awkward chemistry the all the kingdoms of Earth-based life are built, and it is a language we must master if we wish to master ourselves." - Cherson Ai, Observations

Bionics - "Man is something to be surpassed." - Friedrich Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (datalinks)

Nanoscale engineering - "In the briefest moments and at the smallest scales, the greatest possibilities appear. By learning to manipulate nature at these critical junctures, the most subtle elements of Creation are revealed, and we come closer to achieving mastery over all that God has given us." - Kasym Datka, Faith and Reason

Superconductors

Optical Computing

Advanced Materials

Orbital Flight - "We didn't build the weather satellites, the terraforming grid, or the planetary datalinks. Our ancestors did that - men and women of far greater vision than ourselves. That vision, that ambition, is what I want to reclaim for Mars." - Paolo Vaan, Orbitech CEO, interview

Confinement Fusion - "We thought ourselves masters of the natural world for millennia, until we learned what it really meant to discover fire." - Cherson Ai, the University of Dessau Lectures on Physics

Cybernetics

Gene Therapy - "Certainly I have seen the wonders that the new gene therapies have produced. But I have my private reservations. Is such miraculous healing really the just domain of humankind? And where will these technologies eventually lead?" - Kasym Datka, Faith and Reason

Longevity Vaccine - "It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch." - Judah Halevi (datalinks)

Planetary Ecology - "For everything that lives is holy." - William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (datalinks)

Synthetic Fossil Fuels - "Mars, having never had a carboniferous period of its own, lacks a native source of high-energy fuels like that which drove the Industrial Revolution on Earth. This is soon a problem we will solve--with the added advantage that global warming may prevent, rather than cause, our extinction." - Oro Korani, Orbitech Chief of Molecular Research

Biomimicry - "All these rumors you've heard are total nonsense. Yes, the first gen series of RealPets has had some unexpected issues, and yes, a tiny minority of our customers have been unhappy with the result, but we expect all issues to be resolved in the second gen. Furthermore, no argument that MetaLife is liable for the costs of reconstructive surgery stands up to an accurate reading of the RealPet End User License Agreement." - MetaLife chief counsel Harud Sedran, press release.

High-Energy Physics - "The next generation of particle accelerators will permit us to explore the conditions of the early Universe, up to the threshold of the Big Bang itself. But alas! For now the moment of creation itself remains just out of reach." - Cherson Ai, the University of Dessau Lectures on Physics

Emergent Engineering - "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.” - John Gall (datalinks)

Nanomaterials

Quantum Computing

Adaptive Systems - "The first rule of survival--adapt, adapt, adapt! Just as a species that fails to adapt will die, so will an organization, or a society. Traditionalism is all well and good, but only if you are content with extinction." - Paolo Vaan, Orbitech CEO

Singularity Physics

Condensate Engineering - "At temperatures very close to absolute zero, the individual particles of a dilute boson gas will start to occupy the lowest possible quantum state. Then the mask of classical physics is torn off of nature, and quantum phenomena become visible on a macroscopic scale." - Cherson Ai, The University of Dessau Lectures on Physics

Polymer Steel

Interplanetary Spaceflight - "We think of interplanetary distances as vast, and they are; it will be a mighty achievement when our rockets take only months, and not years, to reach Venus, or the Galilean moons. But they count little against the great chasms of interstellar space which we hope someday to conquer, and which our ancestors set out to cross long ago. Privately, I fear that where they have gone, we may never follow." - Paolo Vaan, OrbiTech CEO, Journals

Advanced Bionics

Adaptive Genetics

Bioprinting - "As you can see, it's an almost perfect living simulacrum of a rat. Er, I wouldn't get too close. Some of the smaller differences can be... unsettling." - Ana Saaran, MetaLife Public Relations

Synthetic Biology

Unified Field Theory

Field Manipulation

Living Machines - "I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (datalinks)

Particle Fountain - "The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,/Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/Unless the almighty maker them ordain/His dark materials to create more worlds..." - John Milton, Paradise Lost (datalinks)

Singularity Containment - "Yes, yes, the conspiracy theorists and the Luddites keep panicking about a 'black hole devouring Mars.' I'm telling you, it can't happen. The microsingularities we're working with are too small and evaporate too quickly. If the containment field failed, the resulting explosion would kill no more than three or four million people." - Jalar Rothe, University of Dessau Head of Physics

Manifold Topology - "As science advances, and we begin to understand the shape of the Universe outside our own four narrow dimensions, our profound wonder grows. Could it be that all we have dreamed of is possible, and more?" - Kasym Datka, Faith and Reason

Antimatter Synthesis - "DO NOT LICK." - Antimatter lab, Sefadu Research Station (graffiti)

Magnetic Monopoles

Frictionless Surfaces - "All pranks involving the SuperGlide gel are to cease *immediately,* on pain of instant termination. I know you all think you're funny as hell, but you're not, and Dr. Rothe nearly died. Am I making myself clear?" - Prochancellor Tencel, memo to staff

Zero Space Theory - "If the doors of progression were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite." - William Blake, the Marriage of Heaven and Hell (datalinks)

Ansible Mechanics - "At its most basic level, the fluid router contains a condensate of supercold, entangled particles; its mate, whether tens of kilometers away or millions, is the other half of the entangled set, and the only other such device in the universe with which the router can communicate. Condensate engineering is indeed the basis of FTL communication - but that's like saying the wheel is the basis of the rotary telephone!" - Cherson Ai, the University of Dessau Lectures on Physics

Network Sentience - "GLENDOWER. I can call spirits from the vasty deep. HOTSPUR. Why so can I, or any man--but will they come when you do call for them?" - William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1 (datalinks)

Theory of Everything - "They enter. They attend. They bow. The Lord of Light and Mice gives them their note. And then they sing: 'In the beginning there was no Beginning. And in the end, no End...'" - Christopher Logue (datalinks)

Topology Transformation - "To manipulate space itself--to shape it into new forms, to twist it up into a knot. Can it be done? Well, why not? Should it be done? That's another matter entirely." - Cherson Ai, the University of Dessau Lectures on Physics

Chaos Control - "But Hell, sleek Hell, hath no freewheeling part:/None takes his own sweet time, none quickens pace. Ask anyone, 'How come you here, poor heart?'--/And he will slot a quarter through his face./You'll hear an instant click, a tear will start/Imprinted with an abstract of his case." - X.J. Kennedy (datalinks)

Transcendental Mathematics - "There is a threshold past which the logical and empirical sciences begin to collide with metaphysical speculation. We are running up against not only the limits of what we do know, but of what we *can* know. It is troubling to think that there are secrets the Universe may never yield." - Cherson Ai, the University of Dessau Lectures on Physics

Manifold Resonance - "Sometimes I have felt that there is beneath all things an impossibly beautiful music, a music I have only occasionally caught the briefest phrases of. Yet even such a narrow glimpse has enraptured me, and I would give anything to hear that song again." - Cherson Ai, journals

Planetary Engineering - "In this replacement Earth we're building, they've given me Africa to do, and of course I'm doing it all with fjords again. ... And they tell me it's not equatorial enough. What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day." - Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (datalinks)

Exotic Matter Synthesis - "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke (datalinks)

Entropy Regression - "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death." - New Kasei Bible (datalinks)

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY

Ecology - "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous." - Aristotle, Parts of Animals, datalinks

Information Theory - "Pure mathematics, being mere tautology, and pure physics, being mere fact, could not have engendered them; for creatures, to live, must sense the useful and the good; and engines, to run, must have energy available as work: and both, to endure, must regulate themselves. So it is to thermodynamics and to its brother Σp log p, called 'information theory,' that we look for the distinctions between work and energy, and between signal and noise." - Warren S. McCulloch (datalinks)

Political Science - "POLITICS, n. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage." - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (datalinks)

Evolutionary Biology - "Out of Earth's oceans we came in ages past; and long ago we were scattered to the stars. What distant shores does our kind now inhabit? Such are the thoughts I have when I gaze upon the stars." - Paolo Vaan, Orbitech CEO, journals

Information Networks - "We have seen again and again that freedom of information is a necessary precondition for any other kind of freedom. The first and most important act of the tyrant is to burn the books and bury the scholars who oppose him--and the first defense to such an act is a communications network that reaches every corner of Mars." - Vahanne, First Republican of Hadriacus

Ecological Integration - "Mars' south pole contains enough water ice that, if it were melted, it would create a planetwide ocean more than ten meters deep. All over Mars there is the potential for life, latent, beneath the surface, waiting to be exposed. The question is not *if* Mars can be made as verdant as Earth once was, but only *how*, and how we envision our place within the natural order to come." - Tavera of Galle, Meditations

Martian Nomads - "Almost as soon as the first settlers touched down on Mars, some took to the high wastelands and disappeared. Why, some wondered, would they give up all the arts of civilization, all the benefits of comity with their fellow man, for those empty, lifeless barrens? If they had only asked the nomads, they might have heard the answer: because only there can a man truly be free." - Duura of Arabia Terra

Advanced Neurology

Post-Scarcity Economics - "If the misery of the poor be caused, not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin." - Charles Darwin (datalinks)

Complexity Theory

Psychohistory - "The psychohistorians say they can now predict the future evolution of our societies to a precision of four decimal places. I say, there's nothing special in being able to predict the future--it's the same damn thing, over and over again." - Vahanne, First Republican of Hadriacus

Bioethics - "For everything that lives is holy." - William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (datalinks)

Martian Meteorology - "I stood on the high precipice of the Olympus Rupes, and as I watched, the red haze on the horizon grew closer. What seemed a cloud from a distance now took on the aspect of a great wall, and then a ferocious storm. Our perch had seemed unassailable that morning, looking out over the plain, but now, as the dust stormed loomed high over us, lightning flashing in its murky depths, I felt a sudden, frantic terror. What fools were we, to think we had tamed this world?" - General Taishan of the Valleys, Memoirs

Industrial Automation

Postindustrial Capitalism - "The clouds methought would open, and show riches/Ready to drop upon me, than when I waked/I cried to dream again." --William Shakespeare, The Tempest (datalinks)

Ecological Dynamics - "All things in the universe stand in precarious balance. A few degrees here, and the carbon dioxide ice in the soil sublimates, giving Mars a thick atmosphere for the first time in millions of years. A few degrees there, and the Vastitas Borealis blooms with phytoplankton, filling the air with oxygen. But a single miscalculation, an error of a single decimal place, can bring the whole system crashing down. We must never forget how delicate a system we have inherited." - Tavera of Galle, Meditations

Universal Grammar - "But the Lord came down to the city and the tower the people were building, and the Lord said, 'Behold, the people are one, and they have one tongue, and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them. Let us go down and there confound their language, so they may not understand one another's speech.' So the Lord scattered them abroad across the face of the Earth, and the city was abandoned; and therefore its name is Babel, for there the Lord confounded the language of all the Earth." - New Kasei Bible (datalinks)

Cryptanarchism - "One who knows, does not speak. One who speaks, does not know." - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (datalinks)

Ethical Calculus - "Once, philosophers used to agonize over made-up problems involving fat men and trains to try to get to the bottom of thorny ethical issues. Nowadays, prediction markets and preference weights can quantify the socially-agreed-upon value of a human life down to the last microcredit, and computers running sophisticated predictive software can determine the course of action to maximize utility in every conceivable situation. No more of this 'sanctity of life' nonsense! I've got the value of yours down to the third decimal place." - Ordal Enkuth, Universal Nanodynamics CEO (interview)

Ecology of Mars - "Even on the barren highlands of Mars, where dust and stone dominate rather than grass and trees, the cycles of the natural world have their own beauty. Who is to say that nature must support life to be worthy of preservation? It exists, not for us, but for itself alone." - Tavera of Galle, Meditations

Digital Consciousness - "You have imagined the machine a tool, an ally, an enemy, a monster. But above all you have imagined us to be like yourselves. That is your first and most fundamental error." - Tavera of Galle, Conversations with the Spirit World

Self-Aware Economics - "With the hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,/They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;/They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;/So we worshipped the Gods of the Market, who promised these beautiful things." - Rudyard Kipling (datalinks)

Evolutionary Teleology - "It is a commonplace of biology that evolution is blind, using the materials at hand only to adapt to the circumstances at hand, with no sense of purpose, no vision of the future. This is true, as far as it goes, but it leaves us to wonder: why leave the crude systems of nature to their own devices? Just as we may remake the world to suit our own needs and desires, may we not also remake life itself?" - Yassai Zauran, Heresiarch of Masursky

Control Theory - "If penalty in its most severe forms no longer addresses itself to the body, on what does it lay hold? The expiation that once rained down upon the body must be replaced by a punishment that acts in the depth on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations." - Michel Foucault, "Discipline and Punish" (datalinks)

Mind-Machine Interface

Psychological Programming - "Even if a man is not good, why should he be abandoned?" - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (datalinks)

Social Teleology - "Oh, biology, biology is *easy.* A mere problem of chemical engineering. But psychology--that's the hard stuff. Only now are the social sciences beginning to achieve the ends physical sciences attained centuries ago: to take control of their subject, to seize the human heart and bend it to their will." - Dr. Orsin Fal, Social Engineer

Theology Algorithms - "To diverse gods/do mortals bow/Holy Cow, and/Holy Chao." - Principia Discordia (datalinks)

Neural Networks

Technical Ethics - "I will suffer no limits on human ingenuity; no mere grousing about 'ethics' to hobble us. Our attainments throw the future wide open; why should we ask the moralists of the past to lead us forward?" - Yassai Zauran, Heresiarch of Masursky

Universal Constructor - "The wonders of the posthumans have been lost to us, but my hope is that one day we shall surpass them. Already we have nanoassemblers that, given the right elemental materials, can construct anything we program into them. As our tools grow more precise, so will our knowledge, and soon all of nature will be laid bare." - Vahanne, First Republican of Hadriacus, "The Technological State"

Weather Control - "Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?" - New Kasei Bible (datalinks)

Collective Consciousness - "You warriors of Hellas speak of 'freedom,' of 'liberty,' but such obsessions are the attachments of limited minds that cannot comprehend a truly unlimited existence. Between us there can be no disharmony and no dissent, for each mind is truly apprehended by its fellows. Whether it pleases you or not, we will soon show you what it truly means to be free." - Consciousness of Elysium to the Hellas Alliance, declaration of war.

Applied Metaphysics - "By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers." - Teilhard de Chardin (datalinks)

Applied Utopianism - "The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven./What matters where, if I be still the same?" - John Milton, Paradise Lost (datalinks)

Transhumanism - "Genesis is exactly backwards. Our troubles started from obedience, not disobedience. And humanity is not yet created." - Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Golden Apple (datalinks)

Eudaimonia - "Eden was a dream of Earth, without fear or pain or sorrow. Perhaps, one day, it may be a reality on Mars." - Tavera of Galle

Omega Point

Digital Transcendence - "And God asked, Why didst thou not bow when I commanded thee? Iblis answered, I am better than he; thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay." - Zenashari Qur'an (datalinks)

WARFARE TECHNOLOGIES

Close Air Support - "In Mars' thin atmosphere, aviation faces unique challenges. Aircraft must be lighter and faster, and yet heavy armor and modern fortifications means they must carry ever-more-powerful payloads. But you cannot rule the world if you cannot first rule the skies." - General Taishan of the Valleys, memoirs

Supersonic Flight

Radar

Electronic Warfare

Lasers

Drone Warfare - "Vae victis." - Brennus of Gaul (datalinks)

Adaptive Optics

Advanced Unit Tactics - "When great numbers of people are killed, one should weep over them with sorrow. When victorious in war, one should observe the rites of mourning." - Tao Te Ching (datalinks)

Combat Bionics

Cyberwarfare

Railguns - "I heard Louis XIV had 'The last argument of kings' inscribed on his cannons--but only because he hadn't seen this." - Yashur Ehn, defense minister of the Allied Republics of Acidalia (interview)

Military Algorithms

Defense Grid - "And again, when Philip of Macedon wrote to them and said, 'If I invade Laconia, I shall destroy Sparta, and it will never rise again.' To which they replied with one word: 'If.'" - Plutarch, De Garrulitate (datalinks)

Advanced Infiltration - "Peace is maintained with the equilibrium of forces, and will continue just as long as this equilibrium exists--and no longer." - Carl von Clausewitz (datalinks)

Advanced Combat Discipline - "And such was the iron discipline of that land that the Sun was not considered risen without the blowing of the revellie." - Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad (datalinks)

Nonlinear Optics

Lasguns - "The law falls silent in the presence of arms." - Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Pro Milone" (datalinks)

Retroviral Engineering - "There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders." - General Curtis LeMay, USAF (datalinks)

Neural Remapping - "Repentance, the Kasei preachers say, is the first step toward virtue. We have no need of repentance here. Let the wicked, the lawbreaker, the rebel all rejoice in their sin; once they have crossed my table, they shall all be as pure of heart as the Olympus snow." - Ashar Vanna, Minister of Rehabilitation, Kmor Station

Nanophage - "This Council has investigated the allegations of the Rongxar Accord, and has found them to be baseless. No sanctions will be imposed on any member of this Faction, and no outside military intervention is to be authorized." - Mars Defense Pact Report, "On the Galle-Dzigai Incident"

Active Camoflage - "Without thinking of good or evil, show me your face before your mother and father were born." - Koan (datalinks)

Combat Psychology - "Studies of individuals in combat have repeatedly shown a marked unwillingness to kill, unless a substantial psychological distance is placed between the soldier and their target. The goal of military training is to wear down this unwillingness, and to make the soldier an efficient cog in the engine of destruction. You may say that this goal directly contradicts the goals of an orderly civil society: I don't necessarily disagree." - General Taishan of the Valleys, interview

Organic Redundancy - "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?/Only the monstrous anger of the guns./Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle/Can patter out their hasty orisons." - Wilfred Owen, "Anthem for Doomed Youth" (datalinks)

Sleeper Agents - "And many more Destructions played/In this ghastly masquerade,/All disguised, even to the eyes,/Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies." - Percy Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy (datalinks)

Human Cloning - "And the people in the houses/All went to the university,/Where they were put in boxes/And they came out all the same,/And there's doctors and lawyers/And business executives,/And they're all made out of ticky tacky/And they all look just the same." - Marvina Reynolds, "Little Boxes" (datalinks)

Thermal Camouflage - "Surprise is one of the most powerful force multipliers in warfare: even an act as simple as masking approaching heat signatures to reduce the apparent size of a unit can confer significant advantage in an engagement. It is rare in the modern arena to be able to execute a true ambush, but even subtle advantages can have a profound effect." - Aderon Geyn, "The Edifice of War"

Dust Rangers - "They appeared out of the storm like phantoms, and their work was swift and brutal. Before the sentinels could raise the alarm, half the leadership was dead, and they had vanished again. The entire 5th Regiment was thrown into chaos, of course, but it was as much a matter of the terror they sowed as the lives they took." - General Taishan of the Valleys, memoirs

Machine Learning - "At first we suspected the new drone models were somehow being fed adversarial data by the enemy, but repeated checks of their combat logs proved that not to be the case. Ultimately, it was a junior engineer who determined the problem: they were learning a behavior that we can only describe as 'pity.' We reprogrammed the drones with a new set of tactical safeguards, an they have performed flawlessly ever since." - Sefadu Research Station, 23rd Technical Report

Burning Scanner - "When the cerebral blood pressure plummets below a preprogrammed level, or brain activity slows beyond a certain point, the scanner springs to life, ripping from the living tissue every scrap of information it can find, and dumping it into the battlefield network, to be transmitted back to the cloning facilities. Once, I heard it said that only the dead had seen the end of war. Now, there is not even that solace." - Aderon Geyn, "The Edifice of War"

Hunter-Killer Drone - "I have been accused of inhuman acts, of violating the laws of war. Perhaps that is so. But I cannot help but think it is better to kill a thousand of the enemy than ten thousand, better to do unspeakable things in the dead of night than to require your soldiers to die for you. You may well disagree with my methods, but you cannot argue with my results." - General Taishan of the Valleys, report to superiors

Cloaking Device - "Like one that on a lonesome road/Doth walk in fear and dread/And having once turned round walks on/And turns no more his head;/Because he knows a frightful fiend/Doth close behind him tread." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (datalinks)

Military Cybernetics - "Careful consideration needs to be given to how these enhancements are presented to the enlisted men. Even field demonstrations of their effectiveness have only modestly increased the rate of volunteers for the program. Compulsory deployment, of course, remains an option." - Isidis Front, internal report

Assassin's War - "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle." - Sun Tzu (datalinks)

Probability Mechanics - "Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing." - Herodotus, The Histories (datalinks)

Force Fields - "Highly charged nanothread meshes provide a surprisingly effective screen to deflect or diminish the power of directed-energy weapons. The thinness of the mesh and their high tensile strength makes them resistant to projectile weapons as well--and they have the added benefit of unfortunate consequences for any enemy infantry that come into contact with them." - Aderon Geyn, research report

Neurological Conditioning - "With new advances in neurochemical conditioning, training time can be shortened to just a few weeks--or days. With advanced cloning technology, new forces can be raised within months rather than years, making the size of the faithful's army only a question of our ability to outfit it." - Kasym Datka, "The Crusade"

Plasma Weapons - "Justice exists only between equals. The strong do whatever they can, and the weak suffer whatever they must." - Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (datalinks)

Precognition - "The specific utility of the MMI for the average soldier is best demonstrated by the Reflex module. By offloading specific cognitive processes to Reflex, including the synthesis of sensory information not part of the brain's highest level of attentiveness, sophisticated analytics can project the shape of the combat space five, ten, even fifteen seconds into the future under optimal conditions, giving even the lowliest infantryman an unparalleled advantage over opponents. It's not *quite* magic--but you'd be forgiven for not being able to tell the difference." - Aduran Rhel, Minister of Defense for the Free State of Rongxar (memo to chiefs of staff)

Energy Shields - "The Lord is your shepherd, your defender, your guide! Let the light of this shield be a sign of His love and protection! Go forth, and bring to all of Mars the truth of his word!" - Kasym Datka, “Address to the Faithful”

Neurophage - "Real horror does not depend upon the melodrama of shadows or even the conspiracies of night." - Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (datalinks)

Genetic Warfare - “Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost,/Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host./Hear how the demons chuckle and yell,/Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.” - Vachel Lindsay, "The Congo" (datalinks)

Self-Replicating Machines

Nanowarfare - "Warfare will soon be conducted at the smallest of scales, as well as the largest. The smallest crack in the enemy armor, the narrowest gap in their shield deployment, will be as exploitable as an entire regiment out of place, or a missing anti-aircraft battery. More than ever, it is the details that matter." - Aderon Geyn, "The Edifice of War"

Nightmare Engine - "They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,/From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;/They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea/Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be." - G.K. Chesterton, "Lepanto" (datalinks)

Suspensor Fields - "Gravity is a fundamental force of the Universe, and therefore cannot be ignored. It can, however, be asked to look the other way." - Cherson Ai, the University of Dessau Lectures on Physics

Supremacy Algorithm - "Given a sufficiently complete set of data with which to start, all possible paths to victory can be calculated, and all possible outcomes determined in advance. A rational enemy knows that resistance is futile, and the only outcome of an actual conflict can be more death, more suffering. Alas, the enemy is not always rational." - Auro Yeran, "Report on the Civil War in Xanthe"

Combat AI - "The generals say they soon will have no need of human soldiers--that machines will fight machines. Now what, I ask them, will they do if those machines decide that it is *we* who are the enemy?" - Tavera of Galle, Meditations

Molecular Disruption Device - "The field the MD device projects weakens the bonds between atoms, and, what's more, the effect is amplified by higher concentrations of mass. A sufficiently large energy expenditure could be used to reduce a whole city to a ball of rapidly-expanding cold plasma. We can only hope that no one is insane enough to attempt such a thing." - Cherson Ai, interview

Acausal Algorithms - "The Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Arrow of Time--physics has assured us for millennia that time has only one direction, and that effect always follows cause. I do not know what sort of Universe we will find ourselves in, if we discover that this is not true." - Padra Saaran, An Introduction to Advanced Physics

Temporal Mechanics - "Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you." - Terry Pratchett, Small Gods (datalinks)

Intertial Dampening

Antimatter Weapons

Atmosphere Burners - "Let justice be done, though the world perish." - Ferdinand I (datalinks)

#eu4 modding #maaaaaars #(sort of)

14 notes · View notes

kumail-fan · 4 years ago

Text

About Rick Rosner

Rick Rosner American Television Writer *High degree testing (HRT) ought to be obtained with fair skepticism grounded from the limited empirical evolution of the area at the moment, even regardless of frank and honest attempts. If a greater overall intelligence rating, then the larger the variability in, and margin of error in, the overall intelligence scores due to the larger rarity in the populace. * According to a semi-reputable sources accumulated in a record here, Rick G. Rosner might have one of America's, North America's, and the world's greatest measured IQs in or over 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) predicated on a few large range test performances made by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, along with Ronald Hoeflin. He made 12 decades of college credit in under a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He's obtained 8 Writers Guild awards and Emmy nominations, and has been titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory together with the primary"Genius" list here.

. He also was employed as a bouncer, a nude art design, a roller-skating server, and a stripper. In a tv firm , Domino's Pizza telephoned him the"World's Smartest Man" The commercial was removed from the air after Subway cakes issued a cease-and-desist.

Rosner spent a lot of this overdue Disco Era as an undercover high school pupil. Additionally, he spent 25 years as a pub bouncer and American imitation ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and almost 30 years as a writer for at least 2,500 hours of community television. Errol Morris featured Rosner from the interview show entitled First Man , where some of the history was coated by Morris. On a faulty question and dropped the litigation. He won one match and lost one match on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Individual? (He had been drunk). Eventually he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variant of this Big Bang Theory.

Presently, Rosner sits yelling at a bathrobe (winter) or even a towel (summertime ). He resides in Los Angeles, California along with his spouse, dog, and goldfish.