#Chemical Sciences Quantum Chemistry Note

[maeamian]

Hi hi I stumbled across ur tags in that one tumblr post about atoms and I loved ur response!! I also had a question related 2 it. My knowledge of chemistry and atoms is very surface level (dropped out of my environmental sciences major after 2 years lol) so forgive me if this sounds a lil silly. But I thought atoms could touch? Like when they form bonds their electron clouds can overlap right? The cloud is part of the atom so they are touching I would think, even if the nuclei wouldn’t be. Or are those models inaccurate and the electron clouds don’t actually overlap, is that just a simplification for diagram purposes when teaching bonds? Ik you said we don’t know for certain about anything! Atoms are crazy weird but I was curious what the accepted opinion is on this! Ty u seem very very cool

Great questions, my background's mostly coming from the physics side of things and is a little rusty, but I've got enough mutuals who will yell at me in the replies if I get anything seriously wrong here.

That said, generally when physicists tell you 'things don't actually touch' what they mean is a) roughly speaking the 'surface' of all normal things are made of that electron cloud you're talking about, b) when things 'touch' those electrons get (obviously) very close to each other but still have a distance between them, because c) the Pauli Exclusion Principle, one of the basic underlying things that defines basically all of chemistry says that multiple electrons can't be in the same quantum state. This is all, more or less indisputable fact as proven by the fact that chemistry works and can make extremely accurate predictions about how chemicals will form, something that they could not do without this understanding of the electron as an elementary particle

But! You're also right that a covalent bond does represent an overlap of electron! The distinction between these things is twofold, first, when you, for instance, stand on the floor, the molecules in your shoes aren't bonding to the floor, they're reasonably well bonded to each other, but generally you're not creating new chemical bonds every time you stomp your feet, at least not to any significant degree. Instead what happens is that the electron clouds at both edges get very close to each other and go 'someone's already in here' by sending a blast of photons at each other, although here I have to note that the photons are what's called 'virtual photons' in that they're more mathematical conveniences than anything that gets out further than the local interactions, you couldn't see them because they're absorbed almost as soon as they're emitted to the extent that they have any reality, which they definitely kinda do in that they have observable effects on space when it's either very empty or very small.

The other distinction is that a covalent bond, the sort you're thinking is two atoms sharing one electron, in that case I think it's pretty reasonable to say that the two atoms are, for pretty much all purposes, touching at that point, since they can not be separated without the expenditure of energy to break that bond. The case that scientists are generally talking about when they bust out this Fun Fact at parties is when two electrons try to get near each other at the edge of a shoe and the ground rather than when two atoms bond, so you're right about the thing you're thinking of, but the scientists making this observation are also right about what they're discussing, I think OP of that post made it with the understanding that people would recognize it as being this argument rather than one about bonds, but it requires having been exposed to it before to do that, which not everyone has done! Hope this cleared things up and feel free to tag on any follow ups

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/alan-sokals-joke-is-on-us-as-postmoderism-comes-to-science-23a9383c

By: Lawrence Krauss

Published: Jan 5, 2024

When I taught physics at Yale in the 1980s and ’90s, my colleagues and I took pride in our position on “science hill,” looking down on the humanities scholars in the intellectual valleys below as they were inundated in postmodernism and deconstructionism.

This same attitude motivated the mathematician Alan Sokal to publish his famous 1996 article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” in the cultural-studies journal Social Text. He asserted, among other things that “physical ‘reality,’ no less than social ‘reality,’ is at bottom a social and linguistic construct” and that “the scientific community . . . cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities.”

Mr. Sokal’s paper was a hoax, designed to demonstrate that postmodernism was nonsense. But today postmodern cultural theory is being infused into the very institutions one might expect to be scientific gatekeepers. Hard-science journals publish the same sort of bunk with no hint of irony:

• In November 2022 the Journal of Chemical Education published “A Special Topics Class in Chemistry on Feminism and Science as a Tool to Disrupt the Dysconscious Racism in STEM.” From the abstract: “This article presents an argument on the importance of teaching science with a feminist framework and defines it by acknowledging that all knowledge is historically situated and is influenced by social power and politics.” The course promises “to explore the development and interrelationship between quantum mechanics, Marxist materialism, Afro-futurism/pessimism, and postcolonial nationalism. To problematize time as a linear social construct, the Copenhagen interpretation of the collapse of wave-particle duality was utilized.”

• In March 2022 Physical Review Physics Education Research published “Observing whiteness in introductory physics: A case study.” From the abstract: “Within whiteness, the organization of social life is in terms of a center and margins that are based on dominance, control, and a transcendent figure that is consistently and structurally ascribed value over and above other figures.” The paper criticizes “the use of whiteboards as a primary pedagogical tool” on the grounds that they “play a role in reconstituting whiteness as social organization. . . . They collaborate with white organizational culture, where ideas and experiences gain value (become more central) when written down.”

• A January 2023 paper presented at the Joint Mathematics Meeting, the world’s biggest gathering of mathematicians, was titled “Undergraduate Mathematics Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Structural Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice.”

Undergraduates are being exposed to this stuff as well. Rice University offers a course called “Afrochemistry: The Study of Black-Life Matter,” in which “students will apply chemical tools and analysis to understand Black life in the U.S. and students will implement African American sensibilities to analyze chemistry.” The course catalog notes that “no prior knowledge of chemistry or African American studies is required for engagement in this course.”

Such ideas haven’t totally colonized scientific journals and pedagogy, but they are beginning to appear almost everywhere and are getting support and encouragement from the scientific establishment. There are also indications that dissent isn’t welcome. When a group of physicists led by Charles Reichhardt wrote to the American Physical Society, publisher of the Physics Education Research journal, to object to the “observing whiteness” article, APS invited a response, then refused to publish it on the grounds that its arguments, which were scientific and quantitative, were based on “the perspective of a research paradigm that is different from the one of the research being critiqued.”

“This is akin to stating that an astronomer must first accept astrology as true before critiquing it,” the dissenters wrote in the final version of their critique, which they had to publish in a different journal, European Review.

That sounds like an exaggeration, but in 2021 Mount Royal University in Canada fired a tenured professor, Frances Widdowson, for questioning whether indigenous “star knowledge” belonged in an astronomy curriculum. The same year, New Zealand‘s Education Ministry decreed that Māori indigenous “ways of knowing” would have equal standing with science in science classes. The Royal Society of New Zealand investigated two scientists for questioning this policy; they were exculpated but resigned. The University of Auckland removed another scientist who questioned the policy from teaching two biology classes.

In 2020, Signs Journal of Women in Culture and Society published an article by physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein titled “Making Black Women Scientists under White Empiricism: The Racialization of Epistemology in Physics.” Ms. Prescod-Weinstein wrote: “Black women must, according to Einstein’s principle of covariance, have an equal claim to objectivity regardless of their simultaneously experiencing intersecting axes of oppression.” This sentence, which dramatically misrepresents Einstein’s theory of general relativity, wouldn’t have been out of place in Mr. Sokal’s 1996 spoof.

Had an article like this appeared in 1996, it would have been dismissed outside the postmodernist fringe. But last year Mr. Sokal himself, noting that the article was No. 56 in the Altmetric ranking of most-discussed scholarly articles for 2020, felt the need to write a 20-page single-spaced rebuttal. The joke turns out to be on all of us—and it isn’t funny.

Mr. Krauss, a theoretical physicist, is president of the Origins Project Foundation and author of “The Edge of Knowledge: Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos.”

[ Via: https://archive.md/Bbmju ]

==

Don't forget this gem of ideological gibberish masquerading as both "science" and legitimate scholarship, when it's clearly neither.

Abstract

Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

[jcmarchi]

William Green named director of MIT Energy Initiative

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/william-green-named-director-of-mit-energy-initiative/

William Green named director of MIT Energy Initiative

MIT professor William H. Green has been named director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI).

In appointing Green, then-MIT Vice President for Research Maria Zuber highlighted his expertise in chemical kinetics — the understanding of the rates of chemical reactions — and the work of his research team in reaction kinetics, quantum chemistry, numerical methods, and fuel chemistry, as well as his work performing techno-economic assessments of proposed fuel and vehicle changes and biofuel production options.

“Bill has been an active participant in MITEI; his broad view of energy science and technology will be a major asset and will position him well to contribute to the success of MIT’s exciting new Climate Project,” Zuber wrote in a letter announcing the appointment, which went into effect April 1. 

Green is the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor of Chemical Engineering and previously served as the executive officer of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering from 2012 to 2015. He sees MITEI’s role today as bringing together the voices of engineering, science, industry, and policy to quickly drive the global energy transition.

“MITEI has a very important role in fostering the energy and climate innovations happening at MIT and in building broader consensus, first in the engineering community and then ultimately to start the conversations that will lead to public acceptance and societal consensus,” says Green.

Achieving consensus much more quickly is essential, says Green, who noted that it was during the 1992 Rio Summit that globally we recognized the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, yet almost a quarter-century passed before the Paris Agreement came into force. Eight years after the Paris Agreement, there is still disagreement over how to address this challenge in most sectors of the economy, and much work to be done to translate the Paris pledges into reality.

“Many people feel we’re collectively too slow in dealing with the climate problem,” he says. “It’s very important to keep helping the research community be more effective and faster to provide the solutions that society needs, but we also need to work on being faster at reaching consensus around the good solutions we do have, and supporting them so they’ll actually be economically attractive so that investors can feel safe to invest in them, and to change regulations to make them feasible, when needed.”

With experience in industry, policy, and academia, Green is well positioned to facilitate this acceleration. “I can see the situation from the point of view of a scientist, from the point of view of an engineer, from the point of view of the big companies, from the point of view of a startup company, and from the point of view of a parent concerned about the effects of climate change on the world my children are inheriting,” he says.

Green also intends to extend MITEI’s engagement with a broader range of countries, industries, and economic sectors as MITEI focuses on decarbonization and accelerating the much-needed energy transition worldwide.

Green received a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and a BA in chemistry from Swarthmore College. He joined MIT in 1997. He is the recipient of the AIChE’s R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering and is an inaugural Fellow of the Combustion Institute.

He succeeds Robert Stoner, who served as interim director of MITEI beginning in July 2023, when longtime director Robert C. Armstrong retired after serving in the role for a decade.

[xi-off]

did i ttell yyall bout that time i accidentally took a quantum physics class . u should hear it. it says more abt me than my mbti ever will

my first deadly yet obvious mistake was letting my cousin* help me put my schedule together. in my defense it was my first semester ever at uni and i was taking any and all help i could get. "ur doin premed u might as well take this chem class in case u need it for ur major later" he says. "ok" i say.

*this is the one notorious for building bombs in his kitchen sink. yes he was 2 semesters from getting his bachelors in chemical engineering b4 deciding it was boring and then swapping to computer science for funsies. why do you ask

so yeah the class is named some benign thing like "intro to chemistry principles" with a large footnote that its only required for a handful of STEM degrees, but it therefore covers any and every intro chem credit u will ever need. so im like awesomesauce. might as well since this uni is notorious for idiot credit transfer policies 👍

first week or two is also fairly benign. prof mentions the class is gonna b pretty intense due to the material itself being pretty intense, this isnt really an intro course so hopefully u took ap chem, and im like sure its a 4 credit class. i didnt take ap chem in high school bc our chem teacher Sucked (2/15 ap chem kids my year got a 3 and everyone else failed) so im a little nervous but prepared to hate myself the rest of the semester. pretty cool. chugging along. i dont actually have to teach myself as much basic chem as i thought bc most of its pretty intuitive but im waiting for the other shoe to drop

add/drop deadline passes. my schedule is now set in stone

everything was still fine for a bit. but as per The Rules, somewhere around the 2nd of 4 midterms stuff starts going off the rails and im like. bestie WHAT is happening.u want me modeling WHAT in this janky software from the 90s that responds if and only if it feels like it? wtf is a pi orbital? wtf is hilbert space??? (pause) ARE WE DOING QUANTUM MECHANICS in my INTRO TO CHEM CLASS

(also side note im taking 17 credit hours this semester. the other classes included calc 2 which sucks fat nuts despite the fact im taking it for the second time…its been like 2 years bc i took it in high school… and japanese 101 which ended up being worse than the ACCIDENTAL QUANTUM PHYSICS class in many ways)

so yeah i cried a lot. i got like a 60 on my final and scraped out with a B-. somehow even with Also A B- in my calc class my gpa didnt drop below my scholarship minimum of 3.5 until i failed illustration 101 later. and then i got really disabled. and then covid happened. and now ive been on academic probation for like . hang on doing math. 3 years. and also havent been able to get that resolved to take classes that entire time. and i need to go get that figured out so i can apply to another school UUUUUUGGGHHHHHHH f my gay baka life

tldr: stay in school to draw yuri on ur notes or jesus from bible will put u on academic probation for 3 years

[homework1online]

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[interactivepiner]

Build an atom

#Build an atom code#

#Build an atom simulator#

Students may be interested in the even smaller particles of quantum physics-like quarks, bosons, neutrinos, and antineutrinos. They are intended to get players thinking about what they already know about elements. General questions about the properties of elements assume standard temperature and pressure (helium is liquid below -268☌ and gold is a liquid above 1064 ☌). For this game, the most common isotopes of the chemical elements are used. This game presents a simple introduction to the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom and the way we organize the elements. Find the answers you need using scientific tools like the Periodic Table. NS 5.8.2 - Develop an understanding of properties of matter Note: In this game, use the basic building blocks of matter to build chemical elements. Any bond or intermolecular attraction that can be formed can be broken.MATERIALS For Build an Atom, you will need three containers for each grouppill bottles, jelly jars or small plastic storage containers will work. They see how the sizes of the nucleus of an atom can get very large. Chemical and physical properties of materials can be explained by the structure and arrangement of atoms, ions, and molecules and the forces between them In Build an Atom, students learn about atomic structures by making a model of an atom using beans.Directions: Create an Oxygen (O) atom (8 protons, 8 neutrons, 8 electrons). Matter is made from discrete fundamental units called atoms Part 1: Build an Atom Click on the + sign for each of the boxes (element name, net charge and mass number) to view changes as you change the number of particles in the atom. Build an Atom is an educational simulation in HTML5, by PhET Interactive Simulations at the University of Colorado Boulder.Electrons can only have sparsely defined energies. Energy band and band gap of atom According to Niels Bohr’s atomic model, electrons subordinate to an atomic nucleus do not have continuous energy. Concepts:Ĭhemical elements, Periodic Table, chemical symbols, atom, atomic number, atomic weight, protons, electrons, neutrons, atomic structure. DongJoon Atomic model, Semiconductor Simulation. In this Science lesson, students will learn about neuron signals and how they to contribute to neuron stimulation. Interactive module that introduces atomic structure Learning objectives:Īfter this activity, the student will be able to describe the basic structure of matter, name the parts of an atom, have experience using the Periodic Table, explain elements, and have the background to understand isotopes. Ana Karine Portela Vasconcelos.Teacher Information: Activity Description: Preguntas de razonamiento para todas las simulaciones HTML5Īndrés Palomo, Brisa Aguilera y Diana LópezĬomputeropdracht atoombouw leren over atoombouwįelipe Alves Silveira. Student Guide for PhET - Build an Atom in html5 We chose to build a model of a lithium atom and used the following supplies. In diagrams you often see the electrons represented by elliptical lines moving around the nucleus. How do PhET simulations fit in my middle school program? The entire text of Teaching Build an atom PhET Simulation with embedded questions aligned to Common Core and Depth of Knowledge (DOK) as well as. In an atom, the protons and neutrons are in the nucleus (the center of the atom), and the electrons surround the atom. PhET Sims Aligned to the Chemistry Curriculum This activity serves as your notes for atomic structure and you are. Yuen-ying Carpenter, Robert Parson, Trish Loeblein Please check your work and make proper corrections.

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Create your atom with this simulator and learn chemistry, enjoy science. With the help of the periodic table you can build an atom of the chemical element of your choice.

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[educomiq-com]

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[othmeralia]

Typically I would draw your attention to the beautiful illustrations in this book. And don’t get me wrong, the illustrations are stunning. In this post however, I want to share the story of the book’s author, Caroline H. MacGillavry.

MacGillavry was born in Amsterdam on January 22, 1904. She began studying chemistry at the University of Amsterdam in 1921 and graduated in 1925. After her graduation, MacGillavry became interested in the field of quantum mechanics. She earned her Masters in March 1932. Beginning in 1934, MacGillavry, inspired by the work of chemist and crystallographer J. M. Bijvoet, changed her area of study to chemical crystallography. She earned her PhD in January 1937 with her dissertation, X-ray diffraction of Veelling crystals. The crystal structure of some diamines. Starting in September 1937, she became an assistant at the Laboratory for Crystallography, where she would remain until her retirement.

Following WWII, MacGillavry developed direct methods, a form of calculus that could be used in crystallography. Her work in this area brought her international acclaim. MacGillavry was appointed appointed professor of chemical crystallography at the University of Amsterdam in 1950. In that same year (1950), she become the first female member appointed to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1950). In her inaugural lecture at the Academy, “she described crystallography as an attractive profession - also for women - partly because of the necessary 'artistry, flexibility of mind and intuition'. According to MacGillavry, the profession was practiced in a small circle and not in the usual chaos of the ‘men's science and chemistry laboratories.’”

The book shown here, Symmetry aspects of M.C. Escher's periodic drawings (1965), was the result of MacGillavry meeting Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher (1898-1972) in the early 1960s. She noted his work’s close connection to symmetry principles in crystallography.

MacGillavry retired in 1972 and focused her attention on the historical and artistic aspects of crystallography, conducting numerous lectures around the world. She died on May 9, 1993, in Amsterdam.

[a-lonely-tatertot]

Finding Home

A/N: Introducingggggg AMY and linh! it gets gay at the end dont worry, once again thanking @bookwyrminspiration for betaing for me!

Tw: mention of injuries and some phantom pains (is that what they’re called??)

Word count: 2279

Chapter 2: Runaway

A month and an accepted roommate later, she got to remember she was Sophie for a minute. Sophie before everything happened. She saw her sister for the first time since their parents were kidnapped and it knocked the breath out of her. Short, bright pink hair blowing around her set face, Amy’s wide eyes stared up at the apartment complex. 

The stairs passed in a blur as Sophie barreled down them almost tripping over her feet on the way down. Amy, her Amy. “Amy!” she yelled barreling into her sister. A moment too late she thought it would be extremely awkward if it wasn’t Amy.

But it was, and she hugged her tighter than ever. Sophie buried her head in Amy’s short hair taking in the comfort of her sister. “You smell weird,” she whispered.

“Missed you too, sis,” Amy chuckled lightly. 

“Dyed your hair and got glasses?” Sophie said, pulling away and holding her at arm's length. 

“Sorry, are we not going to address the fact that you’re passing as human? Under my original name?” Amy asked.

“Uh yeah guess I’ve got a bit of explaining to do.” Sophie rubbed the back of her neck.

“Oh yeah, but over coffee, because I was not ready to see my sister for the first time in over ten years,” she laughed, “And I need a lot more energy cause we have a lot of talking to do.”

So they talked and talked until the sun set behind the skyline and the street lights flickered on empty roadways. They talked until they were out of coffee to drink and snacks to eat and stars to count. 

Sophie could barely pay attention to the first day of classes. Every flash of strawberry blonde and soft eyes sent her back. Back to bright mornings and weird lockers and one on one classes. But not only that; it sent her back to her friends. Dex appeared in the ramblings of Jena, one of Amy’s many friends who could talk for hours about chemicals and science. He clouded her memory when she walked into Chemistry and it threw her back to his laboratory. She thought of him looking at the skinny, freckled covered kid that hung onto her Quantum Theory teacher’s every word. 

When she walked into the library, three days in, and saw the spiraling stacks she remembered Fitz and how he could get lost in a book and never leave the pages. 

Marella could be found in the rare smiles that were Anaz. How sarcastic comments came to her with ease and there was always gossip flooding the halls. 

In her English teacher’s humor, she found Keefe. How Sophie collected pens just because they were there and how doodles filled Amy’s margins. 

Red became her color. In the morning when she didn’t know what to wear Biana flooded her mind. When she didn’t know how to hide her scars she thought of her. Sophie would wear them as a testament to the people she left behind. And when her eyes caught sight of the scars that littered another student’s body, clear on their dark skin, she stood a little taller. They were a testament to survival.

Tam, she remembered when the world was so loud. How he was able to control his impulses, his power, his shadows like her telepathy and inflicting. When she just wanted to hide from it all she remembered him, and kept going.

And the one that came as a surprise to her was Stina. The cold exterior and the sense of superiority that followed Henry, who locked so much of him away in a tiny box, to hide from the rest of the world. And how when you really got to know them there wasn’t a small corner that was as cold as it seemed.

But the one that never really went away was Linh. It didn’t surprise her. No, she knew she would never really get Linh out of her head. So Sophie accepted the small tug that came with seeing people together. As they laughed and smiled and hugged, as two girls held hands firmly; she wondered if that could’ve ever been them. If their broken world would’ve allowed it.

When she thought of them, her hand found her neck and the crystal and she held on tight only to let go. Because that was no longer her, and those people were no longer her’s. Amilia Ruewen did not know them. The crystal was all she had left of them.

And at some point that would have to be okay.

-

“You’re coming to this club with the group tonight,” Amy grinned. Ugh, a night with Amy’s friends? Sounded like torture. 

“Why?” Sophie asked. In her head and in her apartment, they were Sophie and Amy. To the world, their jobs, their school, their friends, they were Amilia and Natalie. 

She didn’t have work until Saturday and she had already finished her homework and Amy knew this. There wasn’t a way she wasn’t going. Amy looked up and smiled all teeth, all eyes. Someone save me, Sophie thought.

Spoiler: it went a lot worse than she expected.

There was a feeling that Sophie knew well. It was why she was here in the first place. The feeling started in her wrists, where she had been bound countless times. It spread up and down to the edges of her fingers which had caused so much pain. The fingers that held weapons and the hands that held both the blood of her enemies and friends. It filled her shoulders with tension and her legs with a need to run. But she couldn’t. She was surrounded by bodies, moving, dancing, controlled by the beat of the drums that shook her core like a war cry. That was because it was a war cry. The image of her friends, the small family she had made, half-dead and filling up every bed in the Healing Center. She had run away from them. That was what she alone had done. Sophie ran from the dangers and the responsibility.

Coward.

“Breathe,” an order. In. Out. One. Two. Three.

“Sophie? Soybean?” Amy’s voice. Amy’s hands on her shoulders. “Hey, hey,” her fingers cradled her jaw. “You’re right here, I got you, you’re okay. We won, it’s over.”

But it wasn’t. At night the demons came back to haunt her. And she would be running from them for the rest of her life.

-

Sophie had told herself when she left the Lost Cities she wasn’t following orders anymore. Little notes and anonymous gifts were things of the past. She told herself this as she took a picture of her shifts for the next week. They flowed through her mind as she wrote notes for a lecture. Words scribbled on papers and typed on documents controlled her whether she wanted them to or not. They set the path and all she had to do was follow it.

This time it wasn’t directed at her. 

“Hey Soph, you got anyone who would send you mail?” Amy called from the hallway.

“Nope!” She had barely even heard what Amy had said, too absorbed by homework.

“Huh, okay.” 

“You sure it’s not for you? It’s from that town like an hour north of campus,” Amy asked a minute later, shoving the envelope in front of her computer. “Get out of your nerd stuff and look at important things.”

Sophie made a noise but took the envelope, “My nerd stuff is important!”

Amy chuckled lightly, “Sure dear, you’re almost as bad as Jena.”

“My lord Amy it has your name on it,” Sophie shook her head, “And Jena is really smart and, unlike you, actually capable of holding an intellectual conversation!”

“Huh, guess I’m blind.” Rolling her eyes, she went back to her homework as Amy tore open the letter. Where was she? Oh yeah-

“Do you know about that road house right outside of town?” 

“Amy I swear if you interrupt me one more time-”

Amy ignored her, “It’s a coupon to there. We could take the gang this weekend.”

“Yeah sure, totally, now just let me finish my homework,” Sophie said, not realizing that she could’ve just agreed to anything.

-

“Nat you can drink?” Amilia asked. It was a running gag.

“Oh shush, I’m not eleven anymore!” Natalie retorted. And she wasn’t eleven, she was twenty-three and Amilia had to remind herself of that often. 

The roadhouse was dark, full of wooden booths. In the corner there was a pool table surrounded by a group of guys. Amilia sat at a table with three of Nat’s friends, her friends, she reminded herself. Thunk! The sound of darts reminded her of throwing stars. Shaking her head slightly she tried not to think about all she had left behind. Amilia, she thought, but it echoed outside her head.

“Amilia!” Tina called, waving her hand in front of her. 

“Sorry, what?” she asked. Get out of your head, she thought sternly.

They all chuckled quietly and tampered off into their different conversations. It was a nice normal, zoning in and out, the words just soft buzzing. She traced the rough wood of the roadhouse with her eyes. The chipped, frayed edges. Dark, daunting, but cozy. The roof domed up to balconies with rooms for the inn part. Sophie didn’t know if anyone actually stayed there anymore. Posts came down into booths, to a karaoke machine in the corner, to the bar that stretched along the entire left side. There was a girl, flannel tight around her waist, short dark hair held up by various barrettes keeping the strands away from her face. The pen and cups flew through her hands with experience and it was mesmerizing to watch. Sophie couldn’t see her face, but there was a tugging feeling that the girl was familiar. From a past life, she thought, and laughed. She had had many past lives. At this point she wouldn’t know which one the girl would’ve been from. If she would just look up, the urge to know who she was got stronger. She was someone to her someone important-

Crash. Her heart pounded, her ears rang. The shattering sound of glass was ironic because it played backwards in her ears. Shattered heart becoming whole.

Sophie, because to that face that was all she was. Her feet moved without her permission. 

Because this girl wasn’t just someone to her, she was everything to her.

She was the hardest to leave behind and the only one that could make her stay.

“I’m supposed to be bartending,” Linh whispered into her shoulder, “and your friends are looking at us.”

“Fuck off, I get the longest hug I want after not seeing you for a decade,” Sophie laughed stubbornly into her shoulder.

Linh turned her head into Sophie’s neck and hummed quietly, “I think that’s fair.”

For the first time she relaxed. The world fell off her shoulders and she realized this was the feeling she had been chasing. Linh smelled like cigar smoke and whiskey and cats (she made a mental note to ask about that later). But she knew, as she shifted closer, holding Linh as tight as she could, after all those years she would still smell like the ocean, she’d still smelled like home.

-

The next morning she found herself passed out in a room that wasn’t her own. An old lamp sat on a wooden nightstand. Next to it, barely lit, was a piece of paper. In big bold letters it read: The Western RoadHouse. In scratchy handwriting there was a note. it filled the entire card,words running into each other. In her very tired state Sophie could barely decipher it.

Hey! Sorry I had to work early and you looked way too peaceful to wake up. How much of last night do you remember? We talked about how I got here, and how you got here. And, well, we talked for hours and did you know the more tired you are the pinker your ears get? And the easier it is the fluster you? You also get clingy and rub your eyes a lot. I ended up having to carry you up to my room and swear to Amy on everything that I had you would be okay. But I realized in that minute in a half of hauling your dead weight and listening to you murmur in your sleep that I had missed you. I ran away because I’ve always been running, but I don’t wanna run anymore. If you’d let me, I’d like to run to you instead. This is me asking if you’ll be my girlfriend, or just go out on a date if you didn’t get that. So yeah? Can I run to you?

For a moment she thought she was dreaming. Then she read it again and all she could do was laugh. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes she grabbed a pen and paper and wrote a simple message in neat, loopy handwriting.

Well then runaway,

Come running.

She wrote her and Amy’s address at the bottom and slipped it into Linh’s bag on the nightstand on her way out. When Amy pulled up in the van she only raised an eyebrow.

“Did you win?” she asked, turning down the music slightly as Sophie closed the door.

She smiled, mouth crooked, eyes wrinkled, for once unguarded and wild. “Yeah, I think I did.” Whoops and hollers rang out from the back where her friends crowded together. They whooped and hollered and clapped her on the shoulder as Amy pulled the van out of the lot.

Tag list: @enbies-and-felonies, @clearlykeefitz, @ruewen-and-rising, @you-are-the-vacker-legacy @linhamon-roll  @lemontarto  @rainbowtay-11 @an-absolute-travesty @girlofmanyfandoms(if you want to be added or removed come find me here)

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

What is a photon? Symmetry Magazine By Amanda Solliday and Kathryn Jepsen The fundamental particle of light is both ordinary and full of surprises. What physicists refer to as photons, other people might just call light. As quanta of light, photons are the smallest possible packets of electromagnetic energy. If you are reading this article on a screen or a page, streams of photons are carrying the images of the words to your eyes. In science, photons are used for more than just illumination. “They’re ubiquitous,” says Richard Ruiz, a research associate at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Krakow, Poland, and a theorist looking for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider. “Photons are everywhere in particle physics, so you almost forget about them.” The photon has fueled centuries of discovery, and it remains an important tool today. From wave, to particle, to boson People have investigated the nature of light since ancient times, with early insights coming from philosophers and scholars in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and Greece. Between the late 17th and early 20th centuries, scientists went back and forth on the answer to one question in particular: Does light behave as a particle or as a wave? In 1690, Christiaan Huygens published Traité de la Lumière, his treatise on light. In it, he described light as being made up of waves that moved through the ether, which was thought to permeate space. Isaac Newton declared in his 1704 book Opticks that he disagreed. When light reflects off of a surface, it acts like a bouncing ball; the angle at which it approaches the surface is equal to the angle at which it bounces off. Newton argued that this phenomenon, among other things, could be explained if light were made up of particles, which he called “corpuscules.” A glass prism refracts a beam of white light into a rainbow of colors. Newton noticed that when the light was then refracted again, through a second prism, it did not divide any further; the rainbow colors stayed the same. Newton said this could be explained by assuming that white light was made up of many different corpuscules of different sizes. Red light was made up of the biggest corpuscules; violet was made up of the smallest. Newton said their different sizes caused the corpuscules to be pulled through the glass at different, accelerated speeds. This spread them out, producing the rainbow of colors that could not be broken down further by a second prism. Newton’s corpuscular model had a significant drawback, though. When light travels through a small hole, it spreads out just like ripples in water. Newton’s corpuscular model couldn’t explain this behavior, and Huygens’ wave model could. Still, scientists were generally inclined to dismiss Huygens and listen to Newton—he did write Principia, one of the most important books in the history of science, after all. But Huygens’ model received some support in 1801, when Thomas Young conducted the double slit experiment. In the experiment, Young sent a beam of light through two small holes, side-by-side, and found that the light passing through them formed a particular pattern. At regular intervals the intersecting ripples emanating from the two holes interfered either constructively—combining to make brighter light—or destructively—canceling one another out. Just like waves. About five decades later, another experiment put Huygens’ model definitively in the lead. In 1850, Léon Foucalt compared the speed of light through air with the speed of light through water and found that, contrary to Newton’s assertions, light did not move faster in the denser medium. Instead, just like a wave would, it slowed down. Eleven years later, James Clerk Maxwell published On Physical Lines of Force, in which he predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves. Maxwell noted their similarity to lightwaves, leading him to conclude that the two were one and the same It seemed that Huygens’ wave model had won the day. But in 1900, Max Planck came up with an idea that would spark a brand new concept of light. Planck explained some puzzling behaviors of radiation by describing the energy of electromagnetic waves as divided into individual packets. In 1905, Albert Einstein built on Planck’s concept of energy packets and finally settled the corpuscule-versus-wave debate—by declaring it a tie. As Einstein explained, light behaves as both a particle and a wave, with the energy of each particle of light corresponding to the frequency of the wave. His evidence came from studies of the photoelectric effect—the way in which light knocked electrons loose from metal. If light traveled only in a continuous wave, then shining a light on metal for long enough would always dislodge an electron, because the energy the light transferred to the electron would accumulate over time. But the photoelectric effect didn’t work that way. In 1902 Philipp Lenard had observed that only light above a certain energy—or lightwaves above a certain frequency—could pry an electron loose from the metal. And it seemed to do so on contact, immediately. In this case, the light was acting more like a particle, an individual packet of energy. Still convinced of the wave model of light, Robert Millikan set out to disprove Einstein’s hypothesis. Millikan took careful measurements of the relationship between the light and electrons involved in the photoelectric effect. To his surprise, he confirmed each of Einstein’s predictions. Einstein’s study of the photoelectric effect earned him his sole Nobel Prize in 1921. In 1923, Arthur Compton provided additional support for Einstein’s model of light. Compton aimed high-energy light at materials, and he successfully predicted the angles at which electrons released by the collisions would scatter. He did it by presuming the light would act like tiny billiard balls. Chemist Gilbert Lewis came up with a name for these billiard balls. In a 1926 letter to the journal Nature, he called them “photons.” The way that scientists think about photons has continued to evolve in more recent years. For one, the photon is now known as a “gauge boson.” Gauge bosons are force-carrying particles that enable matter particles to interact via the fundamental forces. Atoms, for example, stick together because the positively charged protons in their nuclei exchange photons with the negatively charged electrons that orbit them—an interaction via the electromagnetic force. Secondly, the photon is now thought of as a particle, a wave, and an excitation—kind of like a wave—in a quantum field. A quantum field, such as the electromagnetic field, is a kind of energy and potential spread throughout space. Physicists think of every particle as an excitation of a quantum field. “I like to think of a quantum field as a calm pond surface where you don’t see anything,” Ruiz says. “Then you put a pebble on the surface, and the water pops up a bit. That’s a particle.” Photons as a tool Radio waves and microwaves; infrared and ultraviolet light; X-rays and gamma rays: All of these are light, and all of them are made up of photons. Photons are at work all around you. They travel through connected fibers to deliver internet, cable and cell phone signals. They are used in plastics upcycling, to break down objects into small building blocks that can be used in new materials. They are used in hospitals, in beams that target and destroy cancerous tissues. And they are key to all kinds of scientific research. Photons are essential in cosmology: the study of the past, present and future of the universe. Scientists study stars by examining the electromagnetic radiation they emit, such as radio waves and visible light. Astronomers develop maps of our galaxy and its neighbors by imaging the microwave sky. They detect space dust that blocks their view of distant stars by detecting its infrared light. Scientists collect strong signals, in the form of ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays emitted by energetic objects from our galaxy and beyond. And they detect weak signals, such as the faint pattern of light known as the cosmic microwave background, which serves as a record of the state of the universe seconds after the Big Bang. Photons also remain important in physics. In 2012, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs boson by studying its decay into pairs of photons. Physicist Donna Strickland won a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 for her work developing ultrashort, high-intensity laser pulses, formed from highly focused high-energy light. Machines called light sources create intense beams of X-rays, ultraviolet light and infrared light to help scientists break down the steps of the fastest chemical processes and examine materials in molecular detail. “Across the electromagnetic spectrum, photons can provide us with so much information about the world,” says Jennifer Dionne, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University. Dionne conducts research in the field of nanophotonics, a subfield of physics in which scientists control light and study its interactions with molecules and nano-sized structures. Among other projects, her lab uses photons to up the effectiveness of catalysts, substances used to kick off high-efficiency chemical reactions. “Light—photons—are a reagent in chemistry that people don’t always think about,” Dionne says. “People often think about adding new chemicals to enable a certain reaction or controlling the temperature or pH of a solution. Light can bring a whole new dimension and an entirely new tool kit.” Some physicists are even looking for new types of photons. Theoretical “dark photons” would serve as a new kind of gauge bosons, mediating the interactions between particles of dark matter. “Photons are always full of surprises,” Dionne says.

[metawitches]

In episode 6, the worlds ended, thanks to Adam’s double apocalypse. In episode 7, we meet the new world. And tie up a few loose ends.

Recap

The episode begins with a twist on the opening voice over- a segment from HG Tannhaus’ science show from the 1970s:

Tannhaus: “What is reality? Is it singular in nature? Or do several parallel realities exist at the same time? To address this, Erwin Schrodinger constructed an extremely interesting thought experiment. Schrodinger’s cat. A cat is locked in a steel chamber with a tiny amount of a radioactive substance, a Geiger counter, a vial of poison and a hammer. As soon as a radioactive atom disintegrates inside the steel chamber, the Geiger counter triggers the release of the hammer, which smashes the vial of poison. The cat is dead.

“However, due to the wave characteristics in the quantum world, that atom is indeed disintegrated and intact. Both states are true until our own observation forces it into a definitive state of existence. Until the moment we check and see, we can’t know if the cat’s dead or alive. It exists in two superposed states. The attributes “dead” and “alive” exist simultaneously in the microcosm.

“But what if the simultaneous existence of life and death also applied to the macrocosmic world? Could different realities exist side by side? Could we split time and let it run in two different directions, and, as with the cat, induce a state of death and life simultaneously? And if so, how many different realities could exist side by side?”

Good question- how many realities could exist side by side? Is that the normal state of reality- for many realities to exist side by side, happily coexisting long term without judging each other’s existences, each accepting that sometimes the cat lives, sometimes she dies, and sometimes she chooses to leave the box closed and uncertain forever? That does seem like what the theory predicts, doesn’t it?

The famous cat, waiting for her life to go one way or the other.

HG Tannhaus presents the 2 potential states which the cat is superposed in- it exists as both a live cat and a dead cat at the same time, until an observer opens the box and forces circumstances in one direction or the other. The observer affects the outcome because of quantum entanglement.

A representation of 3 equal states/worlds/dimensions superposed together which arose from one moment in time, showing this is possible in the Dark universe, according to science expert HG Tannhaus.

In the Prime world 2020, Alt Ex Raincoat Now Emo Martha stands outside of Hannah’s house at the end of S2, just after Adam shoots Prime Martha. Inside, Young Jonas watches his Martha die and promises to make it right. Alt Martha goes inside- or does she? In split screen, one Martha runs into the house, while the other stops when Bartosz appears and yells to her not to go inside, Back to the Future-style. He tells her that Adam doesn’t want to stop the apocalypse and will kill her in the future.

Bartosz says that they’re all doomed because of Jonas/Adam, because everything is his fault.

Of course it is. At least some things are consistent across all of Space-Time.

As the black hole warp bubble forms in the sky, Jonas runs to the basement. Bartosz takes out the time sphere and begs Martha to trust him. He can save her and show her the origin and how everything is connected. Martha and Bartosz poof away just as the shockwave hits.

So good to have Bartosz acting normally again.

Time to note the next twist of the episode- sometimes we are seeing a 3rd world, which I am going to creatively continue to call the 3rd world or Tannhaus’ world. You can tell when it’s this world because widescreen black bars appear at the top and bottom of the picture. And HG Tannhaus appears.

Except in this episode, the jumps between worlds aren’t always marked by any of the normal markers that we’re used to. Make of that what you will- do some of the scenes apply to multiple worlds? Are we seeing Bartosz’s world sometimes? Are we seeing more of Tannhaus’ world than we realize?

Did the most recent surges in time energy fry the system in some way so that the boundaries between worlds are overlapping and more fractured than usual? Maybe the new connections that were made need a while to settle down? Usually, after an event like the end of episode 6, we’d be shown where/when travel has now been opened up to- my guess is that’s why we can see Tannhaus’ world in this episode. The connection to his world has been made or changed. We’d also usually be shown the travelers along with the new places they went, but apparently we’re assuming Martha, Charlotte and Aleksander are dead.

In the Prime world, in 1986 HG told Teen Charlotte that his son, daughter-in-law and infant granddaughter, Charlotte, died when their car went off a bridge in a storm in 1971. Baby Charlotte’s body was never found. That same night, two peculiar women brought him a replacement infant to raise. The “For Charlotte” pocket watch, a Tannhaus family heirloom since the early 19th century, came with her. Teen Charlotte met Peter, who came to town that day and eventually became her husband, on the day HG told her about her past. Both HG and Charlotte were given reasons to stay in town and stay settled when they were told the story of the accident.

In the 3rd world, in 1974, the clock shop looks much more like an inventor’s workshop than usual. HG works on a machine on a table late at night. It’s unclear whether he has Charlotte in this reality. We never see her, but he could be working around her sleep and then later her school hours. In S1, Prime Charlotte found a piece of the time machine chair room’s wall paper in the bunker and recognized it for what it was.

That suggests that on the Prime world, Tannhaus brought her with him to the bunker while he worked at night and the room was originally set up as a bedroom and playroom for her. The ownership of the bunker and cabin is murky, since we’ve been shown that the property also belonged to the Dopplers, especially Helge, during the same period. Bernd Doppler and HG were the same age and may have been friends, sharing ownership of the vacation/hunting cabin between the families.

The ownership of the cabin could be a bootstrap paradox- someone could have changed history. Bernd and Helge are Claudia’s allies, so it would benefit her to pass ownership of the passage to them. Encouraging marriage between Charlotte and Peter also accomplishes that goal.

Or we could have been seeing the cabin and bunker in multiple worlds all along, but it’s only become clear now that the timelines have differentiated more. In the pilot, Jonas’ timeline, Martha’s timeline and Bartosz’s timeline may have been identical. They could be living in entirely different universes by now.

HG glances at his photo of his son and family, then the scene switches to the Winden graveyard and the family’s gravestone. They died on November 8, 1971. Marek was born on March 20, 1947. Sonja was born May 26, 1949. Charlotte’s birthday was May 30, 1971. She was just 5 months old when she died. HG leaves a red knit animal on the grave for Charlotte.

Both Charlotte and Sonja were born just a few weeks before the Summer Solstice, the peak of the light. Marek was born on the Spring Equinox, one of the balance points in the year between light and dark, this one tipped toward light.

In voice over, HG says that it’s hard for humans to accept death and loss. “We long in vain for a way to turn back time. To reverse death.”

“But if time is relative and nothing is really ever in the past, and the simultaneous overlapping of different realities is possible, shouldn’t it then also be possible to bring back something that was believed to be dead long ago and to create a new reality in which the dead live again? If our life is defined as everything between birth and death, it exists there, ad infinitum. Could we succeed in cheating death by finding a way to bring back life, there, between time?”

As he speaks, HG goes to the Doppler cottage and down into the empty bunker. He must own the cottage on this world. He looks around the bunker thoughtfully.

The bolded question is the central question of the series and especially this season. There are several different stories about how time travel began on Dark. They all have to do with bringing someone back from the dead. Generally, the characters’ theories about the knot involve blaming someone who they believe shouldn’t be alive either.

The show’s focus on how guilty characters feel about this or that serves to distract from how alarmingly frequent murder and physical violence have become. When you combine this violence with the way Adam speaks about who deserves Paradise and pay attention to how few characters Eva saves from the apocalypse, it starts to look like a multi world genocide.

Prime world, 2021.

Young Elisabeth and Hanno work to clear the rubble from the passage. It can’t be that long since Hanno finished clearing the passage the first time, in the 1920s, so he has every right to be an angry guy. Adam couldn’t send him to the 1990s for some R&R for a few years first?

Of course not, Adam doesn’t believe in happiness or fun anymore.

They reach one of the Sic Mundus doors, which gives them hope. Later, while they’re relaxing, Elisabeth looks at the For Charlotte watch that Adult Noah gave her. She asks Hanno to tell her about Paradise. He uses sign and speech. “Paradise is free of pain and sorrow. Everything we’ve ever done is forgotten there. Any pain that we’ve ever felt is erased. And all the dead live. Adam will keep his promise. The passageway will open up.”

So cruel of Adam/Jonas to raise all of these kids on the dream of a beautiful world, then take it away from them. Such a timely storyline. Better living through chemistry and physics, y’all, ’til the artificially concentrated and combined chemicals turn into poisons that build up in every system on earth.

Prime world, 1890.

Adam/Stranger Jonas is working in his workshop, wearing a leather suit that looks like a hazmat suit, but of course it isn’t as sturdy. The cesium 137 is placid in its basin until he turns on the electricity. Once it’s been hit enough times, it turns into a blue-black cloud, but it remains unstable.

When Jonas goes to one of the lightning rods to adjust something, he gets struck in the arm by an intense bolt. It gives him a large burn. The energy surge probably would have killed anyone else. He glares at the stone basin where the God particle lives- it’s sentient, so given the way he treats it, it probably is out to get him.

Later, he finds Bartosz staring out the window in the one bedroom in 1888. It’s time for their regular blame Jonas session. Bartosz is angry that Jonas hasn’t reinvented time travel and all of 20th century technology yet, after two whole years in the 19th century. He’s wasting the best years of his life here in the past and he doesn’t think Steampunk is a good look on him at all.

Jonas reiterates that he knows he’ll get the God particle working eventually, because he’s already seen it working in the future-past, but Bartosz continues to be suspicious of his intentions. Jonas explains that he wants to fix everything, not just one event or one person’s problems. He’s the savior, okay? That’s bigger than their love triangle.

Jonas: “If the portal works, then we can use it to find the origin. The one moment that started all of this. And when we’ve found it, we’ll destroy it. And everything that arises from it. That is paradise.”

Bartosz storms out and takes a long walk in the rain. Of course it’s raining. Jonas makes a mental note to do something about this situation in the future, like get Bartosz a girlfriend or a hobby so he’ll quit being such a pain in the butt.

Still in the 1890s.

Silja arrives from the 2050s, wearing Alt Martha’s 1800s outfit. She hides her hazmat suit under some brush. Bartosz comes stomping by, still fuming over Jonas. Silja makes a little noise so that Bartosz will notice her, then comes over to introduce herself.

And Jonas’ Bartosz problem is solved.

I hope that Hanno, Agnes and Silja at least got to pick out which family members they wanted to date before the first cycles in which they were used this way. Because there is no other way to interpret how they are sent to Elisabeth, Doris and Bartosz and the way Agnes was bred with the Unknown. We never see Silja question her path, but Agnes expects Jonas to keep up his side of their deal (plus, she doesn’t stay with either Doris or Unknown). Hanno/Noah openly chafes at the expectations placed on him, and eventually rebels against them, even though he loves Eli.

2023, Prime world.

After 3 years of torture by blue lightning bolts from Jonas and Claudia, the cosmic egg has developed a transparent, protective outer layer, but seems no closer to becoming a time travel portal. Claudia and Jonas give up for the day and rinse the radiation off their hazmat gear in the outer section of the power plant. Jonas is super depressed and ready to quit. Claudia tries to convince him to keep going, because, well, he just has to. Someday, somehow, it just has to work, if they can keep up their team spirit. Jonas tells her he really doesn’t have any team spirit and walks away.

Of course he goes home. He stops in the kitchen for one last look at all of his emotional touchstones- the family portrait, the kitchen table where he last saw Michael, the spot on the floor where Martha died. Then he goes up to Michael’s studio, which has tree branches growing in through the skylight. A sign from his dad, the Sun King- choose life! Jonas looks up at the ceiling beam fondly, then goes about the business of hanging himself.

He doesn’t die. Young Hanno rushes in and cuts him down, sent by either Claudia or Adam. The poor kid has been doing hard labor in the tunnels for years, now he has to live in the barren cave with his child bride, and his savior can’t even be bothered to stay alive. He tells Jonas that he and Adam made Noah and Hanno a promise that the apocalypse had to happen so that everyone would get saved. “You cannot die.”

I think if Jonas died, Hanno would kill him.

He hands Jonas a gun. Jonas holds it to his head and fires. 5 times. Hanno takes the gun back and fires the bullet in the last chamber at the wall. Time and Hanno win this game of Russian roulette.

Hanno explains that Jonas can’t kill himself, because his older self already exists. A force or a person will always intervene. He tells Jonas that he and Elisabeth have found the passage, as ordered by Jonas’ older self. So now it’s up to Jonas to keep the promises made by his older selves.

When Hanno burst into the room, Jonas asked why he was there and if he was following him. After that, Jonas stayed silent. When they’re done with the gun, Hanno brings him to the passage to prove that it’s waiting to be reopened. Jonas stays silent for this as well.

Hanno tells him again that the passage will open up and then Adam will take them to Paradise. Before then, he and Jonas are supposed to become friends, until Hanno is betrayed.

It’s always worded that way- Hanno/Noah will be betrayed and Jonas will be to blame. Jonas is never blamed in the active voice and Hanno never notices. But Hanno is also one of the few who knew Adam well before he met Jonas, so he sees Adam as the real version. Young Jonas is merely the alternate.

Jonas is already tired of the burdens placed on him by people he hasn’t become yet.

And he isn’t even saving for retirement or a mortgage or his kid’s college or keeping up with the maintenance on that poor house so he can pass it down to the Unknown. His eldercare plan for his parents is pretty rough, too.

I’m thinking Jonas’ cosmic egg is also a metaphor for all of those core wounds that get buried deep inside and won’t budge, no matter what you do to heal them. They pop out occasionally as giant black time clouds or nightmares or ex boyfriends. They say that time heals all wounds, but even time can’t heal some damage.

Metamaiden says she assumes that “time heals all wounds” means you’ll die eventually anyway and then your problems will be over.

She was born with this cheery outlook, folks.

But you see- Jonas doesn’t have death to look forward to as an end to his pain, so he keeps zapping that poor time egg. It’s ultimately a circle of torture and self-loathing, punctuated by occasional suicide attempts. He didn’t even hesitate before he pulled the trigger on that gun, 5 times in a row.

In 1904, Silja gives birth to a baby boy. She tells Bartosz she wants to name him Hanno. Bartosz realizes that this innocent newborn baby will grow up to be the killer who brought him into Sic Mundus while posing as a priest and drug dealer.

In the 3rd world, 1974, Tannhaus hangs the photo of his son’s family on the bunker wall, mirroring the way Claudia hung photos on the wall and Martha made the family trees in chalk. The 3rd world mirrors the other two, but things don’t happen in exactly the same way or at the same time.

Tannhaus: “Fate is playing a cruel trick on us. Yet we will always believe there is a way to turn the tide in our favor. If we only want it hard enough. A person is able to pursue any goal, no matter how unattainable it may seem, over the course of an entire lifetime. No resistance, no obstacle is great enough to stop the human will in its tracks… Throughout the ages, isn’t this unquenchable thirst at the heart of any progress that is ever made? No matter what motivates our will, it guides us on our path. We will only be able to let go once we have finally reached our goal.”

As Adult Tannhaus speaks, he spends the 12 years from 1974 to 1986 building a time machine in the bunker. At the same time, he turns into Old Tannhaus. The machine is a large ball with even larger rays sticking out. When he’s done, it looks like a room size version of what’s probably in the sphere.

We saw a similar aging process mirrored with Gustav Tannhaus in the carriage, which had a prophet, the wheels of time and Charlotte’s watch, even if it didn’t technically have a souped up time machine. HG’s new time machine could be seen as a high tech variation on a wheel of time or a cosmic egg as well.

Forward to Prime world, 2040.

17 years have passed in the power plant and Hanno and Jonas have aged into their older selves. Hanno works with Claudia and Jonas on the God particle. At rest, it’s still a white cosmic egg, but when stimulated by enough electricity, it gradually turns black, then becomes the larger cloud that’s a precursor to forming portals. They all look hopeful for a moment as the cloud begins to smooth out into a ball, but it doesn’t hold the formation.

Later that night, Jonas and Hanno stand outside in the dark over a fire. Jonas wonders why the portal isn’t working.

Hanno: “Maybe Claudia doesn’t want it to work.”

(This is correct.)

He asks why Jonas trusts Claudia. Jonas asks why Hanno trusts Adam (Adam raised him).  He tells Hanno that Adam’s Paradise is a lie and that he knows the portal will work eventually, because he’s seen it, in the future-future. Everything repeats itself, so this will, too, Jonas is sure that he can do things differently this time though. He and Claudia have changed enough of the components in the passage so that this time, he’ll be able to close it forever when he tries in November 2019, as Stranger Jonas.

Hanno confirms that Claudia told Jonas this. Then he asks what Jonas actually knows about Claudia. “She sometimes disappears for days. How does she know all the things she knows? She said that not all that’s here, should exist here. What did she mean by that? Claudia’s hiding something from us. We can’t trust her. I hope that you know that.”

A very pregnant Elisabeth calls Hanno inside for the night.

Alt Claudia to Prime Claudia: “He still doesn’t suspect anything?”

Prime Claudia: “No, he has no idea that you or the other world exist.”

Alt Claudia: “You must continue to guide him on this path. The matter must not function yet. You keep the knot up in your world, and I’ll keep it in mine.”

Alt Claudia pulls out the sphere, ready to leave. Prime Claudia stop her. She asks how Eva knows what will happen in the future and what instructions to give them. She wonders if Eva knows everything, every future. Has Alt Claudia met her? Alt Claudia asks who she means. Prime Claudia says, “My older self.” Alt Claudia says, “No.”

Prime Claudia: “I still remember exactly what she said. ‘If all this works, then our Regina will live.’ I’ve thought about it all these years. I just can’t believe that what she meant by that was that her suffering would repeat endlessly. There must be a way to untie the knot, without destroying all life in it. A way for Regina to live. Really live. I think neither Eva nor Adam know this path. But I’ll find it. In my world or yours.”

Prime Claudia takes out a gun and shoots Alt Claudia in the forehead. Alt Claudia dies. Prime Claudia becomes the supreme deity on 2 worlds. She picks up her prize, the Golden Time Snitch of Omniscience. Now she can figure out what the multiverse is really all about.

Because they’d never seen an Alt Old Claudia, Prime Claudia assumed she was meant to kill her. Claudias think this way. To be fair, so do Adams and Evas. They are gods, far beyond our mortal ways of thinking about murder and death. They know there’s always another version of the person, somewhere, on some world, and anyway, that person will be born again, next cycle, like nothing ever happened.

Claudia is assuming that at some point she changed the course of the cycles to bend toward favoring her Regina. And if that isn’t the reason Alt Claudia died in past cycles, well, it is now. If you ever think that changes haven’t been occurring over the course of the cycles, go watch S1Ep1 and any S2 episode again. The Windens are all very different places.

And with all the Claudia drama, we skipped right past the confirmation that she’s actively holding back progress on the God particle portal (“The matter must not function yet.”). She doesn’t need to hold Jonas back in 1888. The primitive working conditions do that by themselves. In the 21st century, they can scavenge modern materials. So she’s misdirecting him toward experiments that are ineffective, while she and Eva, and maybe Adam, work on other goals.

Swoop into the Alt world, focus on those darn scorched paintings. This scene takes place after the apocalypse in the Alt world, when Stranger Martha is aging into Eva, so it’s probably about 2040 there as well. Eva’s God particle apparatus is disassembled on the floor, so she probably lost it in the shockwave too and is trying to rebuild it.

The same scenario is being played out on all 3 worlds, in a different way on each world. As promised, no matter what, the three worlds are linked and the same archetypal events repeat between them. Family members die and get lost, going all the way back to the first Charlotte Tannhaus in the early 1800s, creating the desire to change the timeline. Time travel is invented and reinvented, repeatedly, by the same or different people. This is not a one time occurence based on a single sad event.

Tannhaus justifies following his Will with no restrictions by saying that wanting his son back so badly makes it okay. Claudia believes that saving Regina’s life justifies anything she will do for that cause, no matter who else she hurts in the process. Both arguments come back to Bernd’s advice to take what you want, because no one will give it to you. The flip side of that is the assumption that you are owed whatever you want and no one else’s needs or desires matter as much as your own.

When Prime Claudia enters, Stranger Eva asks if her alternate self is coming, too? Claudia says that Noah is watching her, so she couldn’t get away.

Note that she knows he’s suspicious of her and is limiting her movements because of him. When Charlotte disappears, Noah’s mental focus is conveniently removed from Claudia and his physical person is conveniently removed to time periods and locations Adult Claudia mostly stays away from.

Eva rolls up a blueprint for a time travel device and tells Claudia to give it to the other Claudia, who must then give it to Tannhaus to build. She asks if the Claudias understand why everything they’re doing is necessary and everything has to keep repeating. Claudia nods her head yes.

At some point, everyone in Winden will have been designed one of the time travel devices. I’m glad to see Martha get her shot. Does Alt Tannhaus also get blueprints, or does the Alt world go straight from their futuristic God particle portal design to the sphere?

Back in time to 1910. We aren’t shown a switch back to the Prime world, and for the first time all season, we’re shown the outside of Erna’s tavern and boarding house. Either we’re still in the Alt world, or this happened in both worlds. Both worlds, is my guess.

Silja has died in childbirth. A woman tells Hanno that he has to be strong now for his father. Someone holds crying baby Agnes. A crazed looking Bartosz bursts into the room and kneels at Silja’s side. The midwife tells him the baby’s name. He looks overwhelmed.

Forward to 2041.

Under a full moon, Hanno and Elisabeth leave their cabin to bring in the laundry that’s hung outside. Elisabeth asks Hanno to tell her about paradise. As he tells her the same story he told her in the caves in 2020, 2053 Charlotte and Elisabeth sneak into their cabin to kidnap Baby Charlotte. Elisabeth picks up the baby she lost 12 years prior. Charlotte takes the pocket watch.

When Hanno is done with the story, they hug and take the laundry inside, where they discover that Charlotte is missing.

Hanno vs Noah

By telling Elisabeth the story, Hanno keeps her facing away from the cabin during the kidnapping, so she has no idea what happens. But as it’s happening, he seems like he’s upset and trying to control his emotions. From where he’s standing, he should notice the movements of the two women entering and leaving his cabin.

Noah/Hanno tells the Paradise story to Elisabeth twice on camera- just after Peter dies, which he knew was coming but didn’t prevent, and now during Charlotte’s kidnapping. Did he know it was coming and that he had to let it happen? Even though he spends the rest of his life blaming Adam and Claudia?

I think he did know that he had to let it happen, but he blames them because Charlotte is taken as part of their war. Prime Hanno blames Adam/Jonas and Claudia for the whole war and the way it tears the whole family apart, starting with the death of his mother. Silja was born in the 50s. If she hadn’t been time displaced, she probably wouldn’t have died in childbirth.

Before he dies, Bartosz tells his son to ask Adam why he took Hanno back in as an adult, after the apocalypse and after Charlotte was taken, and called him Noah instead of Hanno. The biblical Noah is remembered for saving his own family and two members of every species. Since we are all theoretically descended from those winners, we see it as a victory for the virtuous.

We rarely think about the fact that Bible Noah knew the flood was coming and did nothing to stop everyone but his family from dying. Noah’s immediate family weren’t actually much better than anyone else. It’s more likely that Noah had boat building skills and was in the right place at the right time. But Noah went along with God’s plan and watched everyone die, feeling quite good about himself. In fact, when it’s all over, God makes a backhanded promise to Noah:

“Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”

God promises he won’t send another apocalypse, even though humans are born evil with no hope of ever changing. God has apparently given up on finding good in humanity and is settling for telling people to be fruitful and multiply.

Like so many others, Hanno usually has good intentions overall, but he performs evil acts, such as killing Erik, Yasin and Mads, to attain his goals. In the Dark world, consequences usually catch up with the characters over time, no matter their intentions.

Hanno leaves the cabin and goes straight to Jonas, who’s working in the bunker, and demands to know where Charlotte is. Jonas is taken by surprise as Hanno shoves him up against a wall and nearly chokes him to death. Hanno continues to ask where Charlotte is and whether Jonas or Claudia took her. He says that he finally understands how Jonas betrays their friendship. Before he leaves, he curses Jonas with endless suffering.

Too late. Jonas has been there for a long time. Or is this falling out between best friends the true origin of the timeline split? They’ve been close for 18 years. I think that’s Jonas’ real time record. And their fireside chat showed that they really were very close.

Causality. Such a slippery concept on this show.

Hanno returns to Elisabeth, who looks like her soul has been ripped from her body. She’s fondling Charlotte’s tiny knit cap. He promises to find Charlotte and bring her back. A bit of resolve forms in Elisabeth’s eyes as he gets up to leave, but they both know their life together is over. He picks up the triquetra diary and puts it inside his coat, an offering to help smooth his way back into Adam’s lair after wishing him endless suffering.

Where is Charlotte? Mikkel? Ulrich? Mads?

Noah/Hanno does find Charlotte after some number of years in his life. We aren’t told how many, though he refers to it as a long time, during their first conversation in the clock shop. When he finds her in 2019, after reading the final pages of the triquetra diary, she’s 49 years old and has already been told by Stranger Jonas that Noah killed Yasin, Erik and Mads. That’s the true betrayal of the Jonas-Hanno friendship. Adam is no longer Hanno’s friend, so I don’t think it matters what he does to Adult Hanno/Noah. Hanno is just waiting for the chance to kill Adam.

It’s Stranger who drives Hanno’s long lost daughter from him by giving her out of context information that benefits Stranger and makes Noah seem like a terrible person who’s only motivated by his cult’s orders and his own sadism. That’s what we all thought about Noah in season 1.

Instead, Noah is a driven man, more like an addict who’ll do anything to get what he needs, which is something Stranger Jonas should understand. For a long time, Jonas mainly takes his pain out on himself and Martha. But even in his more benign forms, he’s coerced into participating in Michael’s death and Mikkel’s kidnapping, which ultimately lead to Ulrich’s confinement and Katharina’s death.

Adam coerces Hanno into becoming a demon just as surely as Claudia leads Jonas to his fate as Adam, heartless mass killer. Hanno can’t simply leave his daughter alone and abandoned in the world. He’s been trained since his mother died to be a caretaker and fixer. The murder of the boys is even mixed up with raising Helge and getting him back to 1954.

Meanwhile, Charlotte is displaced in time in before she’s even born in 2041, since Hanno was born in 1904 and Elisabeth was born in 2011. In addition to her kidnapping to a third time period, she and Elisabeth give birth to each other.

Alt Charlotte was born in 1971, the year HG Tannhaus tells Prime Teen Charlotte his original granddaughter was born. But Noah and Elisabeth still enter the bunker in the Alt world and Charlotte and Elisabeth are still shown giving birth to each other on the Alt world family tree. Is this a clue or a mistake?

If this is real, and isn’t changed within 48 hours of me posting this recap, then it perhaps fits with the theory I’ve had about Charlotte since sometime in S2- I think that when she’s kidnapped as an infant, 3 versions of her are swapped between 3 worlds, not just taken to another time in the same world. If the Charlotte who’s in the Alt world was born in 1971, then she could be the Charlotte either from Tannhaus’ world or Bartosz’s world. Alt Infant Charlotte would have been taken to the Prime world and Prime Infant Charlotte would have gone to the 3rd world.

The Adult Elisabeths and Charlottes (or someone else- we don’t know who ran Marek’s car off the road) would have done this round robin with the infants between the 3 (or 4) worlds to help create or strengthen a connection in time and space- an earlier, less binding version of the Unknown. I can’t explain every detail because of the bootstrap paradoxes involved in Charlotte’s family and HG’s family, but I suspect they are the same family, slightly altered between variations in timelines, time accidents and deliberate tampering.

HG Tannhaus: “A man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills. All the paths we take in our lives, every choice we make, is guided by our deepest desires. It’s pointless to fight this sense of want. It determines every one of our actions, no matter how difficult and unimaginable they seem.”

This is a very different sentiment from the one expressed by Prime world HG Tannhaus, who’s said many times that he’s always wanted to travel, but circumstances have required him to stay in the present, running his clock shop.

3rd world, 1986, the bunker.

Tannhaus looks at the family photo on the wall and removes his lab coat. It’s time. He presses keys on a keyboard, fiddles with this and that, then decisively presses the 2 blood red buttons on the wall. The time machine fires up- literally. The center ball is coated in a thin layer of orange flames, with waves of electricity flowing up the arms, but the machine doesn’t seem to be out of control in any way. The music and other sound effects aren’t ominous either.

Prime world, 1911, Tannhaus factory.

Bartosz is in the courtyard working on a car when Hannah and her approximately 4 year old daughter approach, device/apparatus suitcase in hand. Bartosz, who already looks haunted, recognizes that this child is his wife, who’s been dead for about a year. Hannah asks for Jonas. Bartosz warns her that traveling has changed him, but still takes her to see Jonas in his lair.

Jonas is in a transitional stage between Stranger and Adam. He’s in Adam’s uniform and stands staring at the painting. But he still stands tall and straight. Adam will eventually sort of melt into rounded edges and a more socially presentable public persona. This man is still in the midst of the hottest part of the fire.

When he turns around, Hannah is momentarily shocked by the extreme facial scarring. In this time period, his face looks like a skull in ways that will soften later, maybe when he tires of punishing himself. Hannah recovers quickly and introduces his sister to him.

She’s clearly saddened by what she sees, but as a mother who wishes she could have helped spare her child this pain. She touches his cheek and explains that an old woman, Eva, came to her a few days ago and told her that Jonas needed her and where to find him. She promises to be there for him from now on.

Since Jonas doesn’t want to be spared pain, he’s not interested in her compassion and even finds it repulsive. He removes her hand from his cheek with enough menace that Hannah feels it. He finds himself repulsive and probably finds anything connected to him repulsive right now. He tells Igor Bartosz to take them to the bedroom.

Later that night, once it’s raining, Jonas sneaks into the bedroom. He goes to Silja first, but as he’s carefully folding down her covers, Hannah awakens and asks what he’s doing. He decides it’s Hannah’s turn first and sits on the edge of her bed, as we’ve seen Young Jonas do for sweet mother-son talks.

This is an entirely different situation. He tells Hannah that she and Silja aren’t right here and all of the pieces must be in the correct position. Hannah knows something isn’t right with him, but he’s got her lying down and blocked in. He gently touches her face, calls her Mom one last time, then pulls her pillow out from under her and smothers her to death.

She and Silja are both in white nightgowns. Women should refuse all white garments on this show. It never ends well.

When Jonas is done brutally murdering his mother, he turns to his baby sister and wakes her up, telling her has a secret to show her. He needs her to be quiet so they don’t wake her mom up. He carries her out so that she’s facing back toward Hannah’s body, staring at it the entire way to the door. Hannah very clearly isn’t asleep.

I can Only Salvage So Much from a Bad Situation, Okay?

So. That was sickening and exploitative. There is no good reason to include hints of pedophilia and for Jonas to brutally murder the mother he hasn’t seen in decades. Given the number of characters who commit heinous crimes, such as Helene, and are never caught, and the women who just disappear, such as Greta, there was no reason to bring Hannah back simply to kill her this way.

Though Tannhaus’ last voiceover certainly justifies indulging in any sexual or violent predilection you can come up with, regardless of the other person’s desires. Is that what this show is saying? Anything goes?

The message, if there ever was one, has gotten confused in these last few episodes, as if this show doesn’t know what it’s trying to say anymore. I’m tearing my hair out trying to continue some kind of coherent narrative through line that holds together through the final episode. I finally realized the only way to do it was to give up.

Maybe Claudia has taken the wheel and Hannah had to die out of revenge, because she allowed Ulrich and Katharina to think Regina had turned Ulrich in for rape. That’s a giant stretch though, to the point where I’m writing the show for the creators. And many innocent people who had little to do with Claudia or Regina have died horrible deaths.

I could play the mythology card, and say that Jonas is Hades, the god of the Underworld, who has been collecting young women as his Persephones. Hannah, as the Mother goddess/Demeter, came to look into the situation. Jonas sent her back to another realm, where she wouldn’t interfere with his plans. The myth is sometimes called The Rape of Persephone. In mythology, Demeter mostly wins, though they essentially end with joint custody of Persephone, creating the seasons. Demeter isn’t going to win here.

And there’s only one Persephone, whereas Jonas is collecting everyone’s children for his cult, but mostly girls. Adding a scene where he has a skull face, creeps on a small child in bed at night who’s dressed in white, then kills her mother when he’s caught and carries the little girl off, pretty much solidifies his symbolic nature as a pedophile. At least they only implied the pedophelia itself, rather than showing it.

But this finishes the assassination of both his character and Martha’s character. When we met Martha, she was was on a hunger strike to save starving children. Now she’s procuring women and girls for men who like to murder women and rape little girls?

Yes, the fairy-tale witch imagery has been there all season in Eva’s long black dress. I’d hoped they’d avoid actually going to the stereotype for old women, witches and the biblical Eve, even though they’re obsessed with stamping out original sin. I should have realized that getting rid of the “origin” would involve killing as many mother figures as possible, while turning over little girls to men as child brides.

Because it’s really all Jonas’ mother’s fault, right? She must have done something wrong to make him this way. She must love him too much or too little or embarrass him in front of the other boys. Otherwise he wouldn’t need to live in the basement forever and only have sex twice in his life.

This is an incredibly disappointing direction for this show to take, in so many ways. Beyond misogyny, the philosophy seems to be that people just can’t control themselves and there’s no point in trying.

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1920, Erna’s tavern.

Adult Hanno enters the bar, fresh from 2041. The crowd pauses for a moment when the stranger enters. He tells Erna that he’s come a long way and needs someplace to rest. She calls for Young Hanno and tells him to take their guest upstairs to a room.

Adult Hanno goes to see Adam in his lair. Adam has become the older version played by Dietrich Hollinderbäumer. Before Hanno can speak, Adam says that he’s been waiting for Hanno’s visit. He says that Hanno was right about Claudia all along. She was the one who stole Charlotte. Adam says that Hanno needs to find the missing pages from the triquetra diary, with the help of Helge. Then he’ll find Charlotte, his final destination and his Paradise. Adam hands Hanno a bible and says that this will be his last cycle. “Are you ready, Noah?”

Forward to 2052, the bunker.

Old Claudia gives instructions to Stranger Jonas. They’ve finally stabilized the dark matter/Cesium 137. She’s sending Stranger off to November 2019 to lead Young Jonas down the correct path. If he helps everyone he knows complete this cycle in the exact same way they’ve done all the other cycles, for sure change will occur this time.

I have to wonder what she’s been putting in his food for the last few decades.

She hands him Tannhaus’ book, A Journey Through Time and says that the author will repair the apparatus. Once the device is repaired, he can destroy the passage and the knot. It’ll work for sure this time.

Because doing everything exactly the same way always creates the change you’re looking for.

As he’s headed out the door, she tells him not to ever give up hope. Then she tears out the last few pages of the triquetra diary, sticks them in her coat pocket, and leaves.

Now for a brief recap of the series. Stranger goes to Winden in November 2019, when Mikkel and the other boys have gone missing. Noah experiments on the time machine chair, killing 3 boys in the process. Old Claudia gets Gretchen from 1953 and brings her Adult Claudia in 1986, to prove that time travel is real and that she’s really Adult Claudia’s older self.

Both Claudias will abandon Gretchen with Regina in order to pursue time travel and supposedly save Regina. It doesn’t occur to any Claudia, ever, to actually be a mother to her daughter, which is why I question her motives.

Claudia abandons the dog, the daughter, the lover and the father. She kills the daughter and the father and leaves the lover to die in the apocalypse. This is not a woman who will devote eternity or destroy worlds to save someone. This is an obsessed scientist who is devoted to solving a problem and needs an emotional flag to keep her motivated through the tough times.

The writers can retcon the character they created. That’s their prerogative and TV shows do it all the time. But this is the Claudia they created. She doesn’t move heaven and earth for Regina. She moves them for science.

Hey, remember that time that Bartosz decided to get in on the Back to the Future action, so he put on Christopher Lloyd’s duster and went to rescue Martha from getting killed by Adam? I know it was about 9k words and 110 years ago, but I promise you, that did happen. After 3 seasons of Claudia trying to save Regina and Jonas trying to save Prime Martha and Noah trying to save Charlotte and half of Winden trying to save Mikkel, and all of them failing, all the time, plucky little Alt Teen Bartosz jumped in and rescued Alt Teen Martha.

I knew I liked that kid, And his older self, too. In fact, I think he’s the chosen one on the 3rd planet that his Grandma is trying to take out of the system in her obsessive quest to ruin everything for everyone, everytime in everyway. That’s why this episode focused on Bartosz’s story and the story of his son, Hanno/Noah. We’ve already spent quite a bit of time on Bartosz’s granddaughter, Charlotte and her family, for 3 seasons. And Charlotte has known all along that she was important.

This episode is kind of its own little season, focusing on a third world/timeline that’s almost identical to the prime world/timeline, so we’ve switched between them throughout the episode. That’s my theory. Time is so mucked up that apparently even the writers can’t be bothered to sort it out anymore, so here we are. I can’t tell you when we were where, necessarily, just that we jumped around a lot without the normal markers telling us what world we were in.

Also, I think the HG Tannhaus time machine world, which I’ve been calling the 3rd world, is a 4th world, that’s not Bartosz’s world. As I said, Bartosz’s world is so close to Jonas’ and Eva’s that it blends with theirs, so it doesn’t get the widescreen black bars at the top and bottom that HG’s world does. HG’s world/timeline has some significant differences from the other 3, so it looks different on screen. That will be explored more in episode 8.

Okay, so. Our plucky boy hero, Alt Teen Bartosz, convinces Martha to leave Jonas in his house, so he can live in his mom’s basement forever like the loser he is. She goes back to Erit Lux with Bartosz instead.

One poof of awesome gold glitter later, and we’re there. Those paintings are still scorched and I’m sorry, I still can’t spoil how it happens. Truly annoying, I agree. The writing and editing for S3 are meant to f–k you over, but I doubt they meant for it to indecipherable rather than mind blowing. 3 episodes worth of teasing when the paintings burn? Really? And then all of the scorched painting scenes look so alike that it’s nearly impossible to put them in order, though I’m not sure why we would care enough to go back and try, when it’s all said and done. I know I don’t. Somebody didn’t think that one through.

Martha wonders why Bartosz brought her there. He tells her that the Marthas are the only ones who can save them, because they are the Light. Martha realizes she’s in the hands of an Erit Lux true believer, though she has no idea what that means.

You know what? I think it mostly means love. I think Old Claudia impersonated Eva when she brought Hannah to be murdered by Jonas. I’m going to singlehandedly exonerate Martha/Eva of this crime, for my own sanity’s sake, and go on with my life. Readers, you do you and believe whatever you want. I can’t work with a meaningless world. What would be the point? I know they’re going to continue with Eva pushing apocalypses and whatever, but I’m going to believe that she at least loves her little family of followers, even if she doesn’t show it, because I need Martha, or someone, to be a good person in order to continue writing.

And the madness continues, as Eva enters the room. Martha says something nasty to Eva and Eva says they’re more alike than she thinks. Then she gives her version of Adam’s patented “You’ll grow up to be just as bad as your parents” speech, before pulling out a dirty machete and swiping it across Teen Martha’s eye.

She tells Martha that she can’t tell all of the Marthas apart anymore unless they have festering wounds to go by. But Adam is the one who’s trying to kill her. The disfiguring wound is a reminder that things can always get worse. Choosing Jonas/Adam’s side means choosing death, while choosing Eva’s side, which is ultimately her own side, means choosing life.

This is strange reasoning for someone who’s main motivation is protecting her son- if Martha doesn’t choose Jonas sometimes, the Unknown is never born, because this is the version of Martha that brings him to the Alt world.

There’s really no way to spin what Eva’s says into something that makes much sense. They just wanted to squeeze in more mirroring of Adam/Jonas’ scenes.

I can put a meaningful spin on it, but I’m pretty sure this is coming from me, and not the show- in real life, the underlying reason for the slash would be to make Martha unattractive to creepy old men like the ones Jonas becomes. The road to women’s accomplishments is paved with women who fell by the wayside because they couldn’t take the sexual harassment, even rape, from their male colleagues anymore and were driven to quit the male dominated fields they worked in. And the women who got married and pregnant, giving up their careers.

By taking away Martha’s perfect features, she takes away her attractiveness as an innocent young woman to both Stranger and Adam. If they want her, they will have to deal with more than just Young Martha’s pretty face and apparently neither of them are ever inclined to do so. Adam collects other young women instead, until he finds a replacement Young Martha Eve to torture to death for tempting him into sin.

Yet God and Lucifer both still refuse to take him back.

Unfortunately, Martha/Eva didn’t realize Prime Claudia was also her enemy. As far as I can tell, Alt Claudia was actually working for/with Eva. Prime Claudia is the megalomaniac who took over the universe.

I suspect the creators just wanted to throw in one more senseless, sadistic action against a main character for shock value, plus they needed Martha/Eva to mirror Adam’s disfigurement, but sexism stops them from making her as scarred as Adam.

Time to take the Wayback Machine over to the end of episode 6. Adam has the other Alt Teen Martha dressed in the only rapey white slip he had left after 66 years of kidnapping and torturing women. He’s tied her to some Faye Wray scaffolding under the enhanced God particle. The God particle is turned up to 11 and it’s incredibly excited to finally be turned loose.

Martha’s yelling for mercy and Adam is excited to finally be getting somewhere in his life’s work. He’s pretty sure he’s never used an enhanced God particle to kill the love of his life and his own child inside the womb before. Surely this ultimate human sacrifice will do the trick and Time will finally be satisfied with him.

A portal opens up above Martha’s head. Then the God particle finally escapes its enslavement, mercifully taking Martha and her unborn child with it. Time has always had a fondness for her.

The cloud and the woman disappear. Jonas assumes they’re dead, because he has so few brain cells left.

I sincerely hope that Martha is in a world outside the Dark universe, with better writing and no white slips. Women actually die in the clothes we’re wearing- we don’t change our clothes when we find out murder is on the schedule, or keep a special victim dress on hand for the occasion. I f–king loathe the sight of those things. “Time to die or be abused, little girl. Here’s your pseudo-virgin gown to remind that you’re ultimately powerless.” Where is the corresponding male attire?

Jonas waits to disappear, too, but he doesn’t. He’s dumbfounded. Life is so unfair. Why does Martha get to die, but he doesn’t?

I wouldn’t mind if he eviscerated himself to see if it would stick.

A moment later, the door to the control room creaks open and his other nemesis, Old Claudia, who Noah killed on his orders almost a century ago in chronological time, walks in.

“Hello, Jonas.”

I’ll give her credit for knowing how to make an entrance.

Martha on her way to Oz- You can see Martha is getting transferred up into the cloud. The upper right part of the cloud shows a bright light and the opening to the next reality. 

Commentary

The God particle has literally never killed anyone on this show, much as Jonas has clearly tried to get it to kill him. The dark matter/Cesium 137/cloud/goo/cosmic egg transforms, it doesn’t just cease to exist. In fact, nothing in the universe ever just ceases to exist. Everything either transforms or transfers to a new location. That’s basic physics. In this case, there’s nothing left behind, so it goes somewhere else.

If Dark is following its own rules, then Time took Martha somewhere, probably to Bartosz’s world. It would make sense for this to be a way to create a new connection through time and space, maybe connecting the 3 worlds together. But we’re in the Endgame and the rules no longer apply.

If they ever did. It’s retcon time.

Next episode, we visit the Biff World of Claudia’s mind. Don’t look her directly in the eye and don’t take your hand off your valuables. Actually, that sojourn in the Old West 19th century was probably more fun than anyone realized at the time, even without antibiotics, since there was nothing Claudia or Biff wanted there.

Too bad Adult Bartosz wasn’t able to get the car he was fixing to fly- or was he???? Maybe there’s a world where instead of showing Hannah to her room, he grabbed her, Noah, Silja and Agnes and drove away as far and as fast as he could. Parts of early 20th century Northern Africa seem nice. Or maybe they took the God particle forward 50 years, then went to live in the south of France.

Wait. I just realized. Bartosz is in the Harry Potter world. He’s Mad Eye Moody! Constant Vigilance!

Kill the Origin or Find Another Timeline?

I bolded the first half of HG’s speech from the graveyard because it fits both his point of view and that of his protege, Jonas, who spends 66 years trying to go back to the origin point and bring back something that’s lost, whether it’s Mikkel or Martha. For HG, it’s Marek, Sonja and Baby Charlotte. But the second half of the speech is equally important:

“If our life is defined as everything between birth and death, it exists there, ad infinitum. Could we succeed in cheating death by finding a way to bring back life, there, between time?”

The episode takes its name from the bolded phrase, between time. The 3rd world is formally introduced in this episode. The 3rd world is the Time/Eternal Recurrence that is between the other two Times/Eternal Recurrences that we’ve been watching. What HG is really saying is, in this multiverse full of infinite possibilities, could he find another timeline where things worked out differently for his family? Could he jump to that timeline and live happily there? Or is he hoping to meld the two timelines- bring that Marek and Sonja home to this timeline? It’s not clear.

This is echoed in Stranger Jonas’ speech from S2Ep1, explaining that he is both infinite as part of the multiverse, but also finite as himself, the single soul known as Jonas:

“You could say that I exist infinitely. I’m here now. And I exist for every second between my birth and my death. I’m always Jonas. I’m the same as I was and yet not the same. Just as you’re not the same person who came through that door about an hour ago.”

No matter where or when he goes, what he does, or what he looks like, he’s still Jonas. At first, Hannah still wants the Jonas who left a few months ago, but she quickly accepts Stranger as her son, just as she accepted the proto Adam she met in this episode. In S2 Stranger was grateful for her acceptance, then, in a supreme act of hypocrisy, rejected her when he learned she’d cheated on his father one time before Michael’s death.

The next time they meet, in this episode, he murders her, either because she’s served her purpose in his plans or because she’s kind to him at a time when retaining his strength requires removing all human warmth from his life.

He is still Jonas, but he’s changed everything about himself, from his looks and dress to his demeanor to his home time period and way of thinking. He is no longer trying to save his loved ones. He is now trying to find the origin moment and destroy it. He’s redefined saving as destroying and convinced himself that saving himself saves everyone else. Maybe when he finds the origin moment and changes it, it will set both him and the God particle free from their enslavement. He is now enslaved to a life he can’t bear to live.

Gustav taught him a prophecy of a Paradise that was a dream filled with beauty and light, the Heaven or Ascension of so many religions. Jonas turned it into darkness as an absence of light, where he would remove the cancer that caused his pain (in the form of the God particle, which is the true knot) and kill the patient (himself) at the same time.

In his scenes with Hannah in this episode, Jonas’ true state is laid bare. During the time between 1890-1920, he is a 4th Jonas, Lord Death, with his facial scars meant to look like a skull.

In other words, maybe he’s made some sort of Ghost Rider deal with the God particle, but there are no flaming skulls involved. Just a pact to get out of this world together. That would explain the way they are bound. No one else seems to share quite the same relationship that he does with the God particle, Time and Death, not even Martha.

Martha, the Unknown and the God particle are his family. They all disappear at once and the other 3 versions of the Unknown presumably die in the nuclear meltdown. Unknown has time to save himself if he wants to, but he told us he was about to die. Anyway, after Jonas sent everyone else who was with him in 2053 to the past, it must be devastating for him to watch Martha and the God particle leave him behind and alive while they get raptured together.

He’s in a heartbroken, confused state when Claudia appears to tell him another story.

Images courtesy of Netflix.

Dark Season 3 Episode 7: Between the Time Recap- Hanno, Bartosz and HG Tannhaus move to the front of the house as gaps in the story are filled. #DarkNetflix In episode 6, the worlds ended, thanks to Adam's double apocalypse. In episode 7, we meet the new world.

[blackqueerblog]

Feeling anxious? It’s not just you, it’s our philosophical era of neuroexistentialism

It’s not easy being human. It never was, really, if William Shakespeare is to be believed. In the 16th century, the playwright noted that “life…is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Neuroscience is increasingly confirming this view. The more scientists learn about the human brain and how it operates, the more obvious it is that being human is no big deal. We’re just animals, complex biological systems operating according to the laws of nature — from physics to biology and chemistry.

Many scientists, like the late Stephen Hawking, and philosophers like Duke University professor of philosophy and neurobiology Owen Flanagan and SUNY University professor of philosophy Gregg Caruso in a recent issue of The Philosopher’s Magazine argue that we have no soul, no fixed self, and no inherent purpose. 

We exist simply because we exist, tiny specks on a small planet in an infinite universe, and not because a god made the Earth for us. This conception, called “naturalism,” leaves many people feeling deeply uneasy — consciously or unconsciously —and casting about for meaning.

Collectively, whether we’re aware of the effects of scientific findings specifically or not, much of society is suffering a crisis of “neuroexistentialism,” according to Flanagan and Caruso. 

”Today, there is a third-wave existentialism, neuroexistentialism, which expresses the anxiety that, even as science yields the truth about human nature, it also disenchants,” they write.

Suicide, depression, and anxiety are on the rise. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year revealed that deaths by suicide rose by 25% since 1999 across most ethnic and age groups. While there are many factors that contribute to mental illness, behavioral scientist, author and science writer Clay Rutledge argues that this trend isn’t just a result of lack of adequate mental health services. 

Rather, he says, we’re facing a new, contemporary “crisis of meaningless.” In a 2018 article in the Dallas News, he explains, “In order to keep existential anxiety at bay, we must find and maintain perceptions of our lives as meaningful. We are a species that strives not just for survival, but also for significance. We want lives that matter. It is when people are not able to maintain meaning that they are most psychologically vulnerable.”

It’s all good

For example, California Institute of Technology cosmologist and physicist Sean Carroll’s essay surveys classical mechanics, quantum physics, time, and the nature of emergent phenomena, concluding that there’s no essential meaning in the universe, as evidenced by both its vastness and randomness.

 Yet he still argues that life matters on a personal and human scale, even if “modern science has thoroughly undermined any hopes for a higher purpose or meaning inherent in the universe itself.”

Carroll contends that our lives and societies matter simply because we exist and coexist and appreciate meaning. So we can act purposefully even if we are not part of some grand cosmic plan. He distinguishes between the determined human project and the universe’s seeming lack thereof.

We reason, remember, perceive, and judge as a result of cognitive mechanisms. And because we have these abilities, we’ve also developed social practices that demand that we think and be responsible for each other. The universe may be random, and cause and effect may not always be related on a mechanistic level, but within the human experience, we have certain obligations and the capability to meet these.

As Thomas  Clark, of Brandeis University’s Institute for Behavioral Health explains in his review of Neuroexistentialism (pdf), we don’t need god to be good. There are scientific bases for moral behavior. Clark writes, “For one thing, science can explain why we are moral animals, moral to such an extent that no amount of science will end up debunking our hard-wired intuitions about ethics.”

There’s evidence that altruism, cooperation, compassion and affection are “biologically installed,” so we don’t require a higher power to force us to consider others’ needs. “The very worry about moral foundations is testament to the reality of our moral natures, so learning they are modulated by such humble (or is it noble?) chemicals as oxytocin and vasopressin isn’t likely to render us morally incapacitated,” he argues.

[manishthatte-blog]

What does wikipedia have to say about Nanotechnology?

This article is reproduced verbatim (except for minor changes) from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology

(This is because this article describes nanotechnology so beautifully and in a concise manner, that I wouldn’t even dream of writing so beautifully.)

Nanotechnology ("nanotech") is a manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for the fabrication of macro-scale products, also now referred to as molecular nanotechnology. A more generalized description of nanotechnology was subsequently established by the American National Nanotechnology Initiative, which defines nanotechnology as the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers. This definition reflects the fact that quantum mechanical effects are important at this quantum-realm scale, and so the definition shifted from a particular technological goal to a research category inclusive of all types of research and technologies that deal with the special properties of matter which occur below the given size threshold. It is therefore common to see the plural form "nanotechnologies" as well as "nanoscale technologies" to refer to the broad range of research and applications whose common trait is the size. Because of the variety of potential applications (including industrial and military), governments have invested billions of dollars in nanotechnology research. Through 2012, the USA has invested $3.7 billion using its National Nanotechnology Initiative, the European Union has invested $1.2 billion, and Japan has invested $750 million.

Nanotechnology, as defined by size, is naturally very broad, including fields of science as diverse as surface science, organic chemistry, molecular biology, semiconductor physics, energy storage, micro-fabrication, molecular engineering, etc. The associated research and applications are equally diverse, ranging from extensions of conventional device physics to completely new approaches based upon molecular self-assembly, from developing new materials with dimensions on the nanoscale to direct control of matter on the atomic scale.

Scientists currently debate the future implications of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology may be able to create many new materials and devices with a vast range of applications, such as nanomedicine, nano-electronics, biomaterials, energy production, and consumer products. On the other hand, nanotechnology raises many of the same issues as any new technology, including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials and their potential effects on global economics, as well as speculation about various doomsday scenarios. These concerns have led to a debate among advocacy groups and governments on whether special regulation of nanotechnology is warranted.

Origins:

The concepts that seeded nanotechnology were first discussed in 1959 by renowned physicist Richard Feynman in his talk There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, in which he described the possibility of synthesis via direct manipulation of atoms. The term "nanotechnology" was first used by Norio Taniguchi in 1974, though it was not widely known.

Comparison of Nanomaterials Sizes

Inspired by Feynman's concepts, K. Eric Drexler used the term "nanotechnology" in his 1986 book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, which proposed the idea of a nanoscale "assembler" which would be able to build a copy of itself and of other items of arbitrary complexity with atomic control. Also in 1986, Drexler co-founded The Foresight Institute (with which he is no longer affiliated) to help increase public awareness and understanding of nanotechnology concepts and implications.

Thus, the emergence of nanotechnology as a field in the 1980s occurred through a convergence of Drexler's theoretical and public work, which developed and popularized a conceptual framework for nanotechnology, and high-visibility experimental advances that drew additional wide-scale attention to the prospects of atomic control of matter. Since the popularity spike in the 1980s, most of the nanotechnology has involved investigation of several approaches to making mechanical devices out of a small number of atoms.

In the 1980s, two major breakthroughs sparked the growth of nanotechnology in the modern era. First, the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope in 1981 which provided unprecedented visualization of individual atoms and bonds, and was successfully used to manipulate individual atoms in 1989. The microscope's developers Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. Binnig, Quate, and Gerber also invented the analogous atomic force microscope that year.

Second, Fullerenes were discovered in 1985 by Harry Kroto, Richard Smalley, and Robert Curl, who together won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. C60 was not initially described as nanotechnology; the term was used regarding subsequent work with related graphene tubes (called carbon nanotubes and sometimes called Bucky tubes) which suggested potential applications for nanoscale electronics and devices.

In the early 2000s, the field garnered increased scientific, political, and commercial attention that led to both controversy and progress. Controversies emerged regarding the definitions and potential implications of nanotechnologies, exemplified by the British Royal Society's report on nanotechnology. Challenges were raised regarding the feasibility of applications envisioned by advocates of molecular nanotechnology, which culminated in a public debate between Drexler and Smalley in 2001 and 2003.

Meanwhile, the commercialization of products based on advancements in nanoscale technologies began emerging. These products are limited to bulk applications of nanomaterials and do not involve atomic control of matter. Some examples include the Silver Nano platform for using silver nanoparticles as an antibacterial agent, nanoparticle-based transparent sunscreens, carbon fiber strengthening using silica nanoparticles, and carbon nanotubes for stain-resistant textiles.

Governments moved to promote and fund research into nanotechnology, such as in the U.S. with the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which formalized a size-based definition of nanotechnology and established funding for research on the nanoscale, and in Europe via the European Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development.

By the mid-2000s new and serious scientific attention began to flourish. Projects emerged to produce nanotechnology roadmaps which center on atomically precise manipulation of matter and discuss existing and projected capabilities, goals, and applications.

Fundamental concepts

Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. This covers both current work and concepts that are more advanced. In its original sense, nanotechnology refers to the projected ability to construct items from the bottom up, using techniques and tools being developed today to make complete, high-performance products.

One nanometer (nm) is one billionth, or 10raised to the power −9, of a meter. By comparison, typical carbon-carbon bond lengths, or the spacing between these atoms in a molecule, are in the range 0.12–0.15 nm, and a DNA double-helix has a diameter around 2 nm. On the other hand, the smallest cellular life-forms, the bacteria of the genus Mycoplasma, are around 200 nm in length. By convention, nanotechnology is taken as the scale range 1 to 100 nm following the definition used by the National Nanotechnology Initiative in the US. The lower limit is set by the size of atoms (hydrogen has the smallest atoms, which are approximately a quarter of an nm kinetic diameter) since nanotechnology must build its devices from atoms and molecules. The upper limit is more or less arbitrary but is around the size below which * phenomena (* Please see important note at the end) not observed in larger structures start to become apparent and can be made use of in the nanodevice. These new phenomena make nanotechnology distinct from devices that are merely miniaturized versions of an equivalent macroscopic device; such devices are on a larger scale and come under the description of microtechnology.

To put that scale in another context, the comparative size of a nanometer to a meter is the same as that of a marble to the size of the earth. Or another way of putting it: a nanometer is an amount an average man's beard grows in the time it takes him to raise the razor to his face.

Two main approaches are used in nanotechnology. In the "bottom-up" approach, materials and devices are built from molecular components that assemble themselves chemically by principles of molecular recognition. In the "top-down" approach, nano-objects are constructed from larger entities without atomic-level control.

Areas of physics such as nano-electronics, nanomechanics, nano-photonics, and nano-ionics have evolved during the last few decades to provide a basic scientific foundation of nanotechnology.

Larger to smaller: a materials perspective

Image of reconstruction on a clean Gold surface, as visualized using scanning tunneling microscopy. The positions of the individual atoms composing the surface are visible.

Several phenomena become pronounced as the size of the system decreases. These include statistical mechanical effects, as well as quantum mechanical effects, for example, the "quantum size effect" where the electronic properties of solids are altered with great reductions in particle size. This effect does not come into play by going from macro to micro dimensions. However, quantum effects can become significant when the nanometer size range is reached, typically at distances of 100 nanometers or less, the so-called quantum realm. Additionally, a number of physical (mechanical, electrical, optical, etc.) properties change when compared to macroscopic systems. One example is the increase in surface area to volume ratio altering mechanical, thermal and catalytic properties of materials. Diffusion and reactions at nanoscale, nanostructures materials and nano-devices with fast ion transport are generally referred to as nano-ionics. Mechanical properties of nano-systems are of interest in the nanomechanics research. The catalytic activity of nanomaterials also opens potential risks in their interaction with biomaterials.

Materials reduced to the nanoscale can show different properties compared to what they exhibit on a macro-scale, enabling unique applications. For instance, opaque substances can become transparent (copper); stable materials can turn combustible (aluminum); insoluble materials may become soluble (gold). A material such as gold, which is chemically inert at normal scales, can serve as a potent chemical catalyst at nanoscales. Much of the fascination with nanotechnology stems from these quantum and surface phenomena that matter exhibits at the nanoscale.

Simple to complex: a molecular perspective

Modern synthetic chemistry has reached the point where it is possible to prepare small molecules to almost any structure. These methods are used today to manufacture a wide variety of useful chemicals such as pharmaceuticals or commercial polymers. This ability raises the question of extending this kind of control to the next-larger level, seeking methods to assemble these single molecules into supramolecular assemblies consisting of many molecules arranged in a well-defined manner.

These approaches utilize the concepts of molecular self-assembly and/or supramolecular chemistry to automatically arrange themselves into some useful conformation through a bottom-up approach. The concept of molecular recognition is especially important: molecules can be designed so that a specific configuration or arrangement is favored due to non-covalent intermolecular forces. The Watson–Crick base pairing rules are a direct result of this, as is the specificity of an enzyme being targeted to a single substrate, or the specific folding of the protein itself. Thus, two or more components can be designed to be complementary and mutually attractive so that they make a more complex and useful whole.

Such bottom-up approaches should be capable of producing devices in parallel and be much cheaper than top-down methods, but could potentially be overwhelmed as the size and complexity of the desired assembly increases. Most useful structures require complex and thermodynamically unlikely arrangements of atoms. Nevertheless, there are many examples of self-assembly based on molecular recognition in biology, most notably Watson–Crick base-pairing and enzyme-substrate interactions. The challenge for nanotechnology is whether these principles can be used to engineer new constructs in addition to natural ones.

Molecular nanotechnology: a long-term view

Molecular nanotechnology, sometimes called molecular manufacturing, describes engineered nanosystems (nanoscale machines) operating on the molecular scale. Molecular nanotechnology is especially associated with the molecular assembler, a machine that can produce the desired structure or device atom-by-atom using the principles of mechano-synthesis. Manufacturing in the context of productive nanosystems is not related to and should be clearly distinguished from, the conventional technologies used to manufacture nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles.

When the term "nanotechnology" was independently coined and popularized by Eric Drexler (who at the time was unaware of an earlier usage by Norio Taniguchi) it referred to a future manufacturing technology based on molecular machine systems. The premise was that molecular-scale biological analogies of traditional machine components demonstrated molecular machines were possible: by the countless examples found in biology, it is known that sophisticated, stochastically optimized biological machines can be produced.

It is hoped that developments in nanotechnology will make possible their construction by some other means, perhaps using biomimetic principles. However, Drexler and other researchers have proposed that advanced nanotechnology, although perhaps initially implemented by biomimetic means, ultimately could be based on mechanical engineering principles, namely, a manufacturing technology based on the mechanical functionality of these components (such as gears, bearings, motors, and structural members) that would enable programmable, positional assembly to atomic specification. The physics and engineering performance of exemplar designs were analyzed in Drexler's book Nanosystems.

In general, it is very difficult to assemble devices on the atomic scale, as one has to position atoms on other atoms of comparable size and stickiness. Another view put forth by Carlo Montemagno is that future nanosystems will be hybrids of silicon technology and biological molecular machines. Richard Smalley argued that mechanosynthesis is impossible due to the difficulties in mechanically manipulating individual molecules.

This led to an exchange of letters in the ACS publication Chemical & Engineering News in 2003. Though biology clearly demonstrates that molecular machine systems are possible, non-biological molecular machines are today only in their infancy. Leaders in research on non-biological molecular machines are Dr. Alex Zettl and his colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories and UC Berkeley. They have constructed at least three distinct molecular devices whose motion is controlled from the desktop with changing voltage: a nanotube nanomotor, a molecular actuator, and a nano-electro-mechanical relaxation oscillator. See nanotube nanomotor for more examples.

An experiment indicating that positional molecular assembly is possible was performed by Ho and Lee at Cornell University in 1999. They used a scanning tunneling microscope to move an individual carbon monoxide molecule (CO) to an individual iron atom (Fe) sitting on a flat silver crystal, and chemically bound the CO to the Fe by applying a voltage.

Current research:

This DNA tetrahedron is an artificially designed nanostructure of the type made in the field of DNA nanotechnology. Each edge of the tetrahedron is a 20 base pair DNA double helix, and each vertex is a three-arm junction.

This device transfers energy from nano-thin layers of quantum wells to nanocrystals above them, causing the nanocrystals to emit visible light.

Nanomaterials:

The nanomaterials field includes subfields which develop or study materials having unique properties arising from their nanoscale dimensions.

Interface and colloid science have given rise to many materials which may be useful in nanotechnologies, such as carbon nanotubes and other fullerenes, and various nanoparticles and nanorods. Nanomaterials with fast ion transport are related also to nanoionics and nanoelectronics.

Nanoscale materials can also be used for bulk applications; most present commercial applications of nanotechnology are of this flavor.

Progress has been made in using these materials for medical applications; see Nanomedicine.

Nanoscale materials such as nanopillars are sometimes used in solar cells that combat the cost of traditional silicon solar cells.

Development of applications incorporating semiconductor nanoparticles to be used in the next generation of products, such as display technology, lighting, solar cells, and biological imaging; see quantum dots.

The recent application of nanomaterials includes a range of biomedical applications, such as tissue engineering, drug delivery, and biosensors.

Bottom-up approaches:

These seek to arrange smaller components into more complex assemblies.

DNA nanotechnology utilizes the specificity of Watson–Crick base-pairing to construct well-defined structures out of DNA and other nucleic acids.

Approaches from the field of "classical" chemical synthesis (Inorganic and organic synthesis) also aim at designing molecules with well-defined shape (e.g. bis-peptides).

More generally, molecular self-assembly seeks to use concepts of supramolecular chemistry, and molecular recognition, in particular, to cause single-molecule components to automatically arrange themselves into some useful conformation.

Atomic force microscope tips can be used as a nanoscale "write head" to deposit a chemical upon a surface in the desired pattern in a process called dip-pen nanolithography. This technique fits into the larger subfield of nanolithography.

Molecular Beam Epitaxy allows for bottom-up assemblies of materials, most notably semiconductor materials commonly used in chip and computing applications, stacks, gating, and nanowire lasers.

Top-down approaches:

These seek to create smaller devices by using larger ones to direct their assembly.

Many technologies that descended from conventional solid-state silicon methods for fabricating microprocessors are now capable of creating features smaller than 100 nm, falling under the definition of nanotechnology. Giant magnetoresistance-based hard drives already on the market fit this description, as do atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques. Peter Grünberg and Albert Fert received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007 for their discovery of Giant magnetoresistance and contributions to the field of spintronics.

Solid-state techniques can also be used to create devices known as nano-electro-mechanical systems or NEMS, which are related to microelectromechanical systems or MEMS.

Focused ion beams can directly remove material, or even deposit material when suitable precursor gasses are applied at the same time. For example, this technique is used routinely to create sub-100 nm sections of material for analysis in Transmission electron microscopy.

Atomic force microscope tips can be used as a nanoscale "write head" to deposit a resist, which is then followed by an etching process to remove material in a top-down method.

Functional approaches:

These seek to develop components of the desired functionality without regard to how they might be assembled.

Magnetic assembly for the synthesis of anisotropic superparamagnetic materials such as recently presented magnetic nano chains.

Molecular scale electronics seeks to develop molecules with useful electronic properties. These could then be used as single-molecule components in a nanoelectronic device. For example, see rotaxane.

Synthetic chemical methods can also be used to create synthetic molecular motors, such as in a so-called nano car.

Biomimetic approaches:

Bionics or biomimicry seeks to apply biological methods and systems found in nature, to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology. Biomineralization is one example of the systems studied.

Bionanotechnology is the use of biomolecules for applications in nanotechnology, including the use of viruses and lipid assemblies. Nanocellulose is a potential bulk-scale application.

Speculative:

These subfields seek to anticipate what inventions nanotechnology might yield, or attempt to propose an agenda along which inquiry might progress. These often take a big-picture view of nanotechnology, with more emphasis on its societal implications than the details of how such inventions could actually be created.

Molecular nanotechnology is a proposed approach that involves manipulating single molecules in finely controlled, deterministic ways. This is more theoretical than the other subfields, and many of its proposed techniques are beyond current capabilities.

Nanorobotics centers on self-sufficient machines of some functionality operating at the nanoscale. There are hopes for applying nanorobots in medicine. Nevertheless, progress on innovative materials and methodologies has been demonstrated with some patents granted about new nanomanufacturing devices for future commercial applications, which also progressively helps in the development of nanorobots with the use of embedded nanobioelectronics concepts.

Productive nanosystems are "systems of nanosystems" which will be complex nanosystems that produce atomically precise parts for other nanosystems, not necessarily using novel nanoscale-emergent properties, but well-understood fundamentals of manufacturing. Because of the discrete (i.e. atomic) nature of matter and the possibility of exponential growth, this stage is seen as the basis of another industrial revolution. Mihail Roco, one of the architects of the USA's National Nanotechnology Initiative, has proposed four states of nanotechnology that seem to parallel the technical progress of the Industrial Revolution, progressing from passive nanostructures to active nanodevices to complex nanomachines and ultimately to productive nanosystems.

Programmable matter seeks to design materials whose properties can be easily, reversibly and externally controlled through a fusion of information science and materials science.

Due to the popularity and media exposure of the term nanotechnology, the words picotechnology and femtotechnology have been coined in analogy to it, although these are only used rarely and informally.

Dimensionality in nanomaterials:

Nanomaterials can be classified in 0D, 1D, 2D, and 3D nanomaterials. The dimensionality plays a major role in determining the characteristic of nanomaterials including physical, chemical and biological characteristics. With the decrease in dimensionality, an increase in the surface-to-volume ratio is observed. This indicates that smaller dimensional nanomaterials have higher surface area compared to 3D nanomaterials. Recently, two dimensional (2D) nanomaterials are extensively investigated for electronic, biomedical, drug delivery and biosensor applications.

Tools and techniques:

Typical AFM setup. A microfabricated cantilever with a sharp tip is deflected by features on a sample surface, much like in a phonograph but on a much smaller scale. A laser beam reflects off the backside of the cantilever into a set of photodetectors, allowing the deflection to be measured and assembled into an image of the surface.

There are several important modern developments. The atomic force microscope (AFM) and the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) are two early versions of scanning probes that launched nanotechnology. There are other types of scanning probe microscopy. Although conceptually similar to the scanning confocal microscope developed by Marvin Minsky in 1961 and the scanning acoustic microscope (SAM) developed by Calvin Quate and coworkers in the 1970s, newer scanning probe microscopes have much higher resolution, since they are not limited by the wavelength of sound or light.

The tip of a scanning probe can also be used to manipulate nanostructures (a process called positional assembly). Feature-oriented scanning methodology may be a promising way to implement these nanomanipulations in automatic mode. However, this is still a slow process because of the low scanning velocity of the microscope.

Various techniques of nanolithography such as optical lithography, X-ray lithography, dip pen nanolithography, electron beam lithography or nanoimprint lithography were also developed. Lithography is a top-down fabrication technique where a bulk material is reduced in size to the nanoscale pattern.

Another group of nanotechnological techniques includes those used for fabrication of nanotubes and nanowires, those used in semiconductor fabrication such as deep ultraviolet lithography, electron beam lithography, focused ion beam machining, nano-imprint lithography, atomic layer deposition, and molecular vapor deposition, and further including molecular self-assembly techniques such as those employing di-block copolymers. The precursors of these techniques preceded the nanotech era, and are extensions in the development of scientific advancements rather than techniques that were devised with the sole purpose of creating nanotechnology and which were results of nanotechnology research.

The top-down approach anticipates nano-devices that must be built piece by piece in stages, much as manufactured items are made. Scanning probe microscopy is an important technique both for the characterization and synthesis of nanomaterials. Atomic force microscopes and scanning tunneling microscopes can be used to look at surfaces and to move atoms around. By designing different tips for these microscopes, they can be used for carving out structures on surfaces and to help guide self-assembling structures. By using, for example, a feature-oriented scanning approach, atoms or molecules can be moved around on a surface with scanning probe microscopy techniques. At present, it is expensive and time-consuming for mass production but very suitable for laboratory experimentation.

In contrast, bottom-up techniques build or grow larger structures atom by atom or molecule by molecule. These techniques include chemical synthesis, self-assembly, and positional assembly. Dual polarisation interferometry is one tool suitable for the characterization of self-assembled thin films. Another variation of the bottom-up approach is molecular beam epitaxy or MBE. Researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories like John R. Arthur. Alfred Y. Cho and Art C. Gossard developed and implemented MBE as a research tool in the late 1960s and 1970s. Samples made by MBE were key to the discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect for which the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded. MBE allows scientists to lay down atomically precise layers of atoms and, in the process, build up complex structures. Important for research on semiconductors, MBE is also widely used to make samples and devices for the newly emerging field of spintronics.

However, new therapeutic products, based on responsive nanomaterials, such as the ultradeformable, stress-sensitive Transfersome vesicles, are under development and already approved for human use in some countries.

Applications:

One of the major applications of nanotechnology is in the area of nanoelectronics with MOSFET's being made of small nanowires ≈10 nm in length. Here is a simulation of such a nanowire.

As of August 21, 2008, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies estimates that over 800 manufacturer-identified nanotech products are publicly available, with new ones hitting the market at a pace of 3–4 per week. The project lists all of the products in a publicly accessible online database. Most applications are limited to the use of "first generation" passive nanomaterials which includes titanium dioxide in sunscreen, cosmetics, surface coatings, and some food products; Carbon allotropes used to produce gecko tape; silver in food packaging, clothing, disinfectants and household appliances; zinc oxide in sunscreens and cosmetics, surface coatings, paints and outdoor furniture varnishes; and cerium oxide as a fuel catalyst.

Further applications allow tennis balls to last longer, golf balls to fly straighter, and even bowling balls to become more durable and have a harder surface. Trousers and socks have been infused with nanotechnology so that they will last longer and keep people cool in the summer. Bandages are being infused with silver nanoparticles to heal cuts faster. Video game consoles and personal computers may become cheaper, faster, and contain more memory thanks to nanotechnology. Also, to build structures for on-chip computing with light, for example, on-chip optical quantum information processing, and picosecond transmission of information.

Nanotechnology may have the ability to make existing medical applications cheaper and easier to use in places like the general practitioner's office and at home. Cars are being manufactured with nanomaterials so they may need fewer metals and less fuel to operate in the future.

Scientists are now turning to nanotechnology in an attempt to develop diesel engines with cleaner exhaust fumes. Platinum is currently used as the diesel engine catalyst in these engines. The catalyst is what cleans the exhaust fume particles. First, a reduction catalyst is employed to take nitrogen atoms from NOx molecules in order to free oxygen. Next, the oxidation catalyst oxidizes the hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide to form carbon dioxide and water. Platinum is used in both the reduction and the oxidation catalysts. Using platinum though is inefficient in that it is expensive and unsustainable. Danish company Innovations Fonden invested DKK 15 million in a search for new catalyst substitutes using nanotechnology. The goal of the project, launched in the autumn of 2014, is to maximize surface area and minimize the amount of material required. Objects tend to minimize their surface energy; two drops of water, for example, will join to form one drop and decrease surface area. If the catalyst's surface area that is exposed to the exhaust fumes is maximized, the efficiency of the catalyst is maximized. The team working on this project aims to create nanoparticles that will not merge. Every time the surface is optimized, the material is saved. Thus, creating these nanoparticles will increase the effectiveness of the resulting diesel engine catalyst—in turn leading to cleaner exhaust fumes—and will decrease cost. If successful, the team hopes to reduce platinum use by 25%.

Nanotechnology also has a prominent role in the fast developing field of Tissue Engineering. When designing scaffolds, researchers attempt to mimic the nanoscale features of a Cell's microenvironment to direct its differentiation down a suitable lineage. For example, when creating scaffolds to support the growth of bone, researchers may mimic osteoclast resorption pits.

Researchers have successfully used DNA origami-based nanobots capable of carrying out logic functions to achieve targeted drug delivery in cockroaches. It is said that the computational power of these nanobots can be scaled up to that of a Commodore 64.

Implications

An area of concern is the effect that industrial-scale manufacturing and the use of nanomaterials would have on human health and the environment, as suggested by nanotoxicology research. For these reasons, some groups advocate that nanotechnology be regulated by governments. Others counter that overregulation would stifle scientific research and the development of beneficial innovations. Public health research agencies, such as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health are actively conducting research on potential health effects stemming from exposures to nanoparticles.

Some nanoparticle products may have unintended consequences. Researchers have discovered that bacteriostatic silver nanoparticles used in socks to reduce foot odor are being released in the wash. These particles are then flushed into the wastewater stream and may destroy bacteria which are critical components of natural ecosystems, farms, and waste treatment processes.

Public deliberations on risk perception in the US and UK carried out by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society found that participants were more positive about nanotechnologies for energy applications than for health applications, with health applications raising moral and ethical dilemmas such as cost and availability.

Experts, including director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies David Rejeski, have testified that successful commercialization depends on adequate oversight, risk research strategy, and public engagement. Berkeley, California is currently the only city in the United States to regulate nanotechnology; Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2008 considered enacting a similar law, but ultimately rejected it. Relevant for both research on and application of nanotechnologies, the insurability of nanotechnology is contested. Without state regulation of nanotechnology, the availability of private insurance for potential damages is seen as necessary to ensure that burdens are not socialized implicitly. Over the next several decades, applications of nanotechnology will likely include much higher-capacity computers, active materials of various kinds, and cellular-scale biomedical devices.

Health and environmental concerns

Nanofibers are used in several areas and in different products, in everything from aircraft wings to tennis rackets. Inhaling airborne nanoparticles and nanofibers may lead to a number of pulmonary diseases, e.g. fibrosis. Researchers have found that when rats breathed in nanoparticles, the particles settled in the brain and lungs, which led to significant increases in biomarkers for inflammation and stress response and that nanoparticles induce skin aging through oxidative stress in hairless mice.

A two-year study at UCLA's School of Public Health found lab mice consuming nano-titanium dioxide showed DNA and chromosome damage to a degree "linked to all the big killers of mankind, namely cancer, heart disease, neurological disease, and aging".

A major study published more recently in Nature Nanotechnology suggests some forms of carbon nanotubes – a poster child for the "nanotechnology revolution" – could be as harmful as asbestos if inhaled in sufficient quantities. Anthony Seaton of the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland, who contributed to the article on carbon nanotubes said "We know that some of them probably have the potential to cause mesothelioma. So those sorts of materials need to be handled very carefully." In the absence of specific regulation forthcoming from governments, Paull and Lyons (2008) have called for an exclusion of engineered nanoparticles in food. A newspaper article reports that workers in a paint factory developed serious lung disease and nanoparticles were found in their lungs.

Regulation:

Calls for tighter regulation of nanotechnology have occurred alongside a growing debate related to the human health and safety risks of nanotechnology. There is a significant debate about who is responsible for the regulation of nanotechnology. Some regulatory agencies currently cover some nanotechnology products and processes (to varying degrees) – by "bolting on" nanotechnology to existing regulations – there are clear gaps in these regimes. Davies (2008) has proposed a regulatory road map describing steps to deal with these shortcomings.

Stakeholders concerned by the lack of a regulatory framework to assess and control risks associated with the release of nanoparticles and nanotubes have drawn parallels with bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow" disease), thalidomide, genetically modified food, nuclear energy, reproductive technologies, biotechnology, and asbestosis. Dr. Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor to the Woodrow Wilson Center's Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, concludes that there is insufficient funding for human health and safety research, and as a result, there is currently limited understanding of the human health and safety risks associated with nanotechnology. As a result, some academics have called for stricter application of the precautionary principle, with delayed marketing approval, enhanced labeling and additional safety data development requirements in relation to certain forms of nanotechnology.

The Royal Society report identified a risk of nanoparticles or nanotubes being released during disposal, destruction, and recycling, and recommended that "manufacturers of products that fall under extended producer responsibility regimes such as end-of-life regulations publish procedures outlining how these materials will be managed to minimize possible human and environmental exposure".

The Center for Nanotechnology in Society has found that people respond to nanotechnologies differently, depending on application – with participants in public deliberations more positive about nanotechnologies for energy than health applications – suggesting that any public calls for nano regulations may differ by the technology sector.

[bodyalive]

vivipiuomeno: Laurence Demaison ph. - Self portrait body water

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From "Bookslut" Interview With Jeff Warren What's the origin of The Head Trip? From internal evidence, it seems to have been in the works for some time... The genesis of The Head Trip was an accident I had at 21, when I fell out of a tree and busted my neck on a street in Montreal. The hardest part of the recovery was psychological; when I returned to my studies I found I couldn’t write essays the way I once could. My style of processing had changed. My thinking went from being very linear and progressive to more lateral and associative. I don’t know how much of this interpretation is a flabby split-brain gloss on a problem I had long ago, but I can say that at the time I knew nothing about neurobiology, I only knew I couldn’t direct my attention the way I once could; the mental objects I did retrieve were often two preoccupations over from my main concern. It was like fishing for trout and hooking clams. My roommate tells me I used to bawl at my desk and moan about leaving “my brains on the road.” Eventually I developed a technique of color-coding my notes by tangent, so that when I veered off into 10 different tangents a day at the end of the week I could still string all the, say, purple tangents together into something like a coherent theme. After this transformation I became more attuned to inner experience. This was augmented by several years of tedious seasonal tree-planting work, where there was literally nothing to do for weeks on end but plant saplings, swat black flies and endure the shifting rhythms of my own shallow stream of consciousness. I became obsessed with how writers described the texture of everyday awareness, whether it was Edgar Allen Poe describing his sleep onset visions, David Foster Wallace on the fugue state of athletic absorption, or Annie Dillard talking about the unselfconscious moment. I began to collect these descriptions, with the vague idea that one day I would put together a taxonomy of elemental states of mind. A separate interest in the biological function of sleep led me into the fantastically variegated world of sleep and dreaming consciousness. In 2004 I started writing The Head Trip. ** Is it fair to say that a chief point of the book is to displace the mind/body (or, psychology/chemistry) distinction? On the one hand, almost all the science you describe is pretty nascent; on the other hand, it also seems as if they tend to point quite clearly to a reciprocal relationship between thoughts and chemicals. The chief point of the book is to re-empower the mind. The mind -- in the form of expectations, beliefs and, most optimistically, intention -- is a more-than-epiphenomenal driver of actual physical change in the body and brain. You can learn to create your own special effects. You have agency. As I write in the book, “this is both supremely hopeful and utterly depressing, since it means in nurturing, enlightened environments we may be able to cultivate whole new standards of mental health, but in violent, regressive environments we risk spawning awful new permutations of mental affliction. Technology -- that great onrushing field within which our minds are shaped -- compounds all of this, for better and for worse.” As far as the actual relationship between mind and body, that, thankfully, is still a mystery, despite the exaggerated claims of the neuro-reductos, whom I love, and the exaggerated claims of the quantum mysticos, whom I love. I guess the two other chief points of the book are: 1. to wake people up to the deliriously varied terrain of their nighttime lives, and 2. to help people look beyond black and white waking rationality, which turns out to be just one capacity on a very bright and colorful palette. Different states of consciousness seem to privilege different styles of knowledge. ** It turns out sleep is more interesting than we usually expect -- and that it even has a history! What are some key misconceptions about sleep? I would like to spiel about dreaming for a moment if you don’t mind. The writer Rodger Kamenetz tipped me off to a great Borges quote. Borges once wrote: “Lately I've been rereading psychology books, and I have felt singularly defrauded. All of them discuss the mechanisms of dreams or the subjects of dreams, but they do not mention, as I had hoped, that which is so astonishing, so strange -- the fact of dreaming.” The fact of dreaming. When you wake up in a dream and actually take a look around -- it’s bananas. It’s the absolute craziest goddamn thing in all of human life. Every night we beam down into an elaborate virtual world where we can pound the walls with our oven-mitt fists and sniff giant daisies and have elliptical conversations with archetypal bus drivers. From inside a dream there is nothing vague or washed out about the experience -- dreams are totally real, as real as getting off the plane in Lagos and ordering a beer from some guy at the side of the road. You are at this place -- you’re IN it! At the time it’s every bit as solid and real as waking. Except… and this is what’s so cool… except when you’re self-consciously aware inside the dream you can then squeeze up real close to the walls with your little magnifying glass and look for suture marks. You can conduct experiments. You come to realize that there is a set of laws operating in the dream world that is every bit as real as the laws of physics in the waking world. What are these laws? And why aren’t there as many scientists down here with their slide rules and theories as there are out there? We spend our lives in two worlds and yet we only pay attention to one of them -- the other is seen as an embarrassing curiosity, a forum for banality-rehearsal and botched sex. People protest: “but it’s not real, stop living in fantasy.” All experience is real. On the personal side, dreams reveal all kinds of junk about the self. On the scientific side, our dreams represent an unparalleled opportunity to examine the dynamics of consciousness. I mean think about it: without sensory input to dilute everything, you get consciousness in a pure culture. And it so happens that this pure culture -- The Dream -- runs like an underground creek beneath the waking world, muddying the ground in all kinds of interesting ways. And that’s just the conventional science. Who knows what else we may discover digging around in the dream world. For those interested in the wooly world of mind-matter speculation, the epistemological rabbit hole goes very deep indeed. This is going to sound hyperbolic but I really believe we’re at are at the dawn of a new age of scientific exploration. The external world is mapped; now the explorers are turning inward. The galleons have left port. They’re approaching a huge mysterious continent. They won’t be the first to arrive. There are paths already cut in the forest, where shamans and monks and others have set up outposts and launched their own expeditions into the interior. It’s a thrilling story, a lurid epic in the making, and yet almost no one has any idea it’s happening. As far as our misconceptions about sleep, I would say the biggest one is this idea that we lose consciousness when the lights go out. This couldn’t be further from the truth. At night consciousness just turns inside out. Instead of moving through a world constructed from sensory input, we move through a world constructed from memory and imagination. We do lose certain self-reflective properties, and -- critically -- our short-term memories are compromised so we don’t remember many of our experiences. But when you wake people up in the night most of them report some kind of mental activity -- either the strange snap-shot narratives of sleep onset, the fully immersive dreams of REM, or the low-level “mentation” of deep sleep. Even in the emptiest bliss-saturated realms of slow wave sleep the experiencing self remains. Consciousness is 24-hours. *** One of your key images is the "wheel of consciousness" (at least, that's what it's called in the illustrations and the title; early on you write that "the brain is a wheel, and consciousness is a pliant membrane pressed into the rim.")

[Thanks “Alive On All Channels” Archive]

[quadrantmodelquotes]

Quadrant Books 2013

The fourth is always the most important, even if it is looked down upon and “doesn’t seem to belong”. This is a fascinating thing, people say we don’t understand the nature of reality. So,

well how is it that we can understand this particle model so well. Is it that we're dumbing nature down? Do we really understand nature? Or are we shaping nature the way we want it? Are these model’s accurate?

Well, physicists say no, we actually really do understand nature, exactly. We can predict things exactly. We understand nature completely. Now the reason why some psychologists say this, is it's because they say according to Darwinian evolution, we were shaped by nature. Nature created us, so it makes sense that we would be able to understand it because we were made out of natural phenomena, and we were shaped by our environments which are natural, by selection pressures in our environments which are natural. On a side note NFs love nature, and science studies nature. So it would make sense that we would understand nature well.

There are however aspects of physics that we don’t understand. For instance quantum mechanics, physicists say, is counterintuitive. We can calculate where atoms will be located, but aspects of quantum mechanics, some schools and interpretations of quantum mechanics say, are not understandable rationally to humans and go beyond common sense. Well, again, biologists say this makes sense because humans evolved in the mesocosm, on planet Earth, to navigate within the realm where Newtonian mechanics is the dominating factor shaping phenomena that help our survival. It is Newtonian mechanics that determines whether our spear strikes the animal. But still, somehow, we discovered the nature of the quantum world and can calculate happenings within the microcosmic realm.

Psychology is different, but it encompasses all of these. Our psychology is shaped by physics. The Orch Or model of consciousness says quantum mechanical processes are integral in thoughts. It is because of the quantum mechanical nature of thoughts taking form in microtubules of the brain that we have the semblance of free will. Fascinatingly, the ancient Greek Philosopher Democritus argued something similar, which he called “atomic swerve”, explaining that particles in human’s minds have random properties in their actions which allow for the possibility of free will.

Psychology is determined by chemistry. The brain is soaked in chemicals. To understand psychology, you have to be aware of chemical processes affecting thoughts and the mind. Also think about this, we talked about how the second and fourth quadrant are opposites but also are always very connected, a lot of psychologists say that psychology is all about just brain chemistry. Psychologists also argue that brain chemistry is affected by thousands of years of evolution, so a psychologist needs to understand biology, like evolutionary biology.

Okay, then there's the possible fifth quadrant, sociology. But Comte questions if this is a necessary fifth. The essential sciences can be reduced to those four. The fourth is always transcendent. The fifth is questionable and ultra transcendent.

Okay, so we started off with physics. Physics is the most elemental of the sciences. We talked about the Standard Model of particle physics. Let's go to another thing I studied. For the last four years I went to every class that they have at UCSD and you may think, “Wow, you're probably just looking for things that fulfill the model.” Actually the honest truth, there's more than I can put down that fulfills the model. Everything almost fulfills the model pretty much, and it's difficult for me to say everything that fulfills the model. I’m overwhelmed by the task. I studied every single subject at UCSD and the quadrant model was dominant in everything. Every single subject this quadrant pattern presented itself as predominant. Let's continue on with physics. So we have the laws of kinematics. The kinematic equations describe the motions of bodies in the universe. The kinematic equations were the first thing I

[educomiq-com]

Chemical sciences Study material is complete handwritten class notes by one of the best coaching for NET CSIR IIT-JAM possesses the following 15 thick booklets

1. Chemical bonding 2. Chemical Kinetics 3. Coordination Chemistry 4. Electrochemistry 5. Group solid aromacity 6. Oraganic Synthesis 7. Organometallic Chemistry 8. Pericyclic Reaction 9. Quantum Chemistry 10. Reaction Mechanism 11. Reagents 12. Spectroscopy 13. Sterochemistry 14. Thermodynamics

Total No of pages 3400 Above are according to the syllabus of NET CSIR and notes are legible and spiral bound one.