Monday, July 27, 2009

What Now in the Sudden Aftermath of Five Thousand Years?

A great deal of controversy surrounds the question of investing human and industrial capital in colonizing the Moon. The Moon is bleak, airless and waterless and the cost of development is extremely great. Also, it will continue to orbit the Earth for millions or billions of years, so no hurry exists. What human beings do or do not do about the Moon now is important.

It is early in the game, and the investment in Earth itself is exremely important especially in the light of the considerable and substantial problems of poverty, severe population overload, destruction of the natural environment, rapacious consumption of wildlife as food, and the existence of some factor of misconstruction in present economic directions.

It may help to look at this problem as one of the instability and chaos attendant singular events, in this case, the attainment of the Apollo project after five or more thousand years of dedicated construction and war toward that end.

Mathematically, what comes next takes place in a field of envelopes on the time axis. These envelopes have in common that to some extent they consist of

1. A Gaussian distribution around the event of attaining flight to the Moon and determination of what it is;

2. An exponential decay of obsolete developments which either existed before human constructions or were misconstructions from the start;

3. Logarithmic ascents and descents to a norm, of new, useful developments.

4. A curve which resembles the Plank black body energy-wavelength curve. Several markedly temporal events are distinct in history. This curve appears in economics.

5. The first pyramid constructions and the Taoist statistics which emerged about five thousand years ago. These appear to both be divergent branches away from the indigenous Earth.

6. Three thousand years Greeks discovered the ideal and description of the state as Republic. With it came the immediate realization that determination of the nature of light and the action, energy and power constituted a set of paramount goals. It was not until the 1500’s that extensive progress began in these two vital questions.

7. Two thousand years ago many things appeared with the Roman empire, among them estimates of the distance to the Moon; the resurrection of the Republic; the appearance and resurrection of Christ as a humanized integration of the spirit and species of man; first uses of artificial electricity; extensive bridge, aqueducts and roads; and military conquest and settlement of vast amounts of otherwise uncoordinated human civilizations. All this continued for 1500 years.

8. In the Sixteenth Century, the development of the printing press, optics, and several other technological inventions including the steam engine, which heralded vast supplies of energy to free human and other sentient beings from burden of irksome toil. Discovery of the New World - a euphemism that comprehends both the Western Hemisphere (which actually was already inhabited by human beings, so quite discovered) and the Moon as a small airless object orbiting the Earth, and the other planets revealed with telescopes.

9. During the 17th and 18th centuries, mathematics and physics, especially mechanics, emerged strongly along with the Independence of a Constitutional Republic in the United States.

10. In the early 1900's, discovery of the quantum of action and a resulting flood of new understanding of the atom; discovery of the exterior galaxies. The twentieth century also saw the emergence of global war in pursuit of the attainment of the Moon began.

11. Global war, involving massive numbers of deaths, commits the world to the immediate goal of attainment of flight to the Moon; nuclear energy emerges with nuclear reactors and atomic weapons.

12. Actual attainment of the Moon, with the decisive discoveries that it contains no inhabitants, no air, no water, no arable land, no good farmland, no enemies and no friends and that would be the condition for billions of years, apart from what human beings to or make of it. This was accompanied by naive visions of what lay in extremely distant futures, which gave much weight to those who suggested development of the Moon was urgent.

In fact it turned out that about the only thing to do on the Moon is look at Earth, something which can be accomplished by robot cameras at far less expense, and thus sparing resources for the far more productive activity of near Earth orbit. For each of the intervals suggested by the events of the past, there is an interval in the future, of accommodation of those events or of events which transpired since that time of their inception.

Among other things, at the time of the Apollo flights to the Moon, which were the first in all Earth's history, the world was sharply divided into the developed industrial market countries which were largely in Europe and North America. Other great nations were emerging though still imperiled by war and transfiguring revolution. The rest of the world, approximately half its population, lived in primitive conditions of existence and had few technological resources though communications was beginning.

The promise brought by communications itself caused such hurried panic to enforce what it seemed to imply that it resembled an opening day sale at a big department store, with people being trampled to death in the crowds lunging for the new wares. That was trumpeted as "the communist revolution"; meanwhile, others announced that human beings would be turned into robots, docile obedient slaves. Neither was true of course. The social revolutions were largely hasty ill planned moves attempting to match the patient resolution that existed in the Roman construction, Constitution and Republican traditions. It is only to be understood in the future whether the massive wars of the 1900's were necessary or not.

After all, it is possible that if the determination had not been to reach the Moon BEFORE the end of the second millennium, the emerging new millennium could well have invited global apathy and a resolution only to reach the Moon within another thousand years. Or, to leave the attainment itself until AFTER the new millennium, that is, after Y2K, would place the beginning in a shadow, with war having occurred anyway. With the race to reach the Moon prior to Y2K - actually taking place thirty years earlier - the more substantial second series of flights to the Moon can be better understood from the beginning, comprehended by more people who, with better communications, live in better conditions of existence and will likely benefit more directly from the event. Possibly more important, human beings worldwide are likely to perceive that they benefit from the second series of Moon flights.

Instead, technological industries presented the entire population of the Earth with telephones, radio, television, computers and the internet. Most people became, politically, much more moderate-so much so they seemed to be, to visionaries, under some kind of enslaving control. In fact, with communications, entire populations were skimpy turning to the work at hand, to improve the disposition of the world which had been so torn by war, exploitation, mining, rapacious slaughter of sentient beings as food chemicals; and other difficulties.

Eventually long-term human existence on the Moon, Mars and possibly a few other places in the Solar System seem likely. They do not seem to be inevitably permanent at this time, if by permanent is meant millions of years. Within the century, long-term might mean months or years. By the end of the new millennium, long-term could mean lifetimes - centuries and more. It depends on Earth's consensus, whether the planet in its evolutionary context and without the imagined threat of aliens from space, decides it is important or not.

The point about those who proclaim urgency to establish long-term settlement of the Moon and Mars as soon as possible is that the decisions involved do not involve those who live today. They involve those who are to be living when the ideas are considered in the future. IT is timely now, to be preparing the second series of Moon flights. In the initial phases it was believed that 2020 was a good estimate. Yet in the light of understanding and knowledge brought by the Apollo series, there is no mandatory schedule, and the actual date may be earlier, or later, with little difficulty.

For one thing, other nations such as China and the European Union, possibly Russia, India, possibly a South American economic union, are all interested in the ca 2020 Moon flights. The result may be that some collaborate with the United States or with each other, which could mean the Moon would have new footsteps on it sooner. Or other important world activities, such as conservation, may become so important in the judgment of new people, that the project is given lower priority. Perhaps the 'second series' of moon flights will span several decades, and consist of several flights by several different nations representing several different main streams development in human civilization.

In the 1980's, NASA measured the rate at which the Solar System and Earth in it move around the Milky Way Galaxy. Within the great firmament of exterior galaxies exist the three rotating celestial planes - Galactic, Ecliptic, and Equatorial - which define right in an unambigous and clear way.

For an individual person, the requirement is to be right in all three - only one of 2^3, or eight, possibilities exist which is correct and true in all three. That is quite feasible for any responsible planner.

This is an excellent time for deep and true resolution of the situation in which the Earth finds itself. Young people can depend on the remarkably consistent new understanding of history brought by photography and its successor technologies.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Magnetism and Electricity of Evolution toward the Moon

The Magnetism and Electricity of Evolution toward the Moon.

The speed of light and the action quantum are far more fundamental and necessary to the peace and stability of the world than are the existing magnitudes of the Henry and the Farad. Both the Henry and the Farad were arbitrarily assigned quantities. They have a relation to the speed of light through an equation in which they appear as a product, but any value could have been assigned to the Henry, as long as the Farad were changed proportionally. Conversely, any value could have been assigned to the Farad, as long as the Henry were changed accordingly.

The conventional but overly specific equation for the speed of light is

v = 1/SQRT(mu*epsilon)

The numerical value of mu was derived from existing knowledge on the basis of the arbitrary magnetic field constant, the Henry. It was found that the electric field constant derived from the Faraday had the relationship shown to the speed of light. As a result, the electric field constant was given a value which would make not only that equation correct, but would justify the value of the Faraday in relation to the Henry. That was obscure enough to establish a claim that the Henry and Faraday are absolutely fundamental. They are not. Any other set of experiments could have been used to construct a measure of magnetic field strength similar in dimension to the dimensions of the Henry, and if it resulted in a different numerical value, an appropriate value could have been assigned to the electric field constant so that the equation would predict the speed of light correctly.

The motion of light is in a space-time topology in which two dimensions are present along with a velocity dimension. This is sometimes called SU(2) X U(1). Dimensions which are equivalently fundamental include those of distance and time. The units humans choose are not the units on which the universe is based, however. The universe is based, in dimensions of length, on certain sizes of things which are mostly atoms and particular wavelengths. It is also based on such things as the magnitudes of electric charges, the masses of atoms, and magnetic constants such as the Bohr magneton.

These are sometimes called fundamental or atomic constants of nature. Arranging atomic constants as fundamentals accessible to all nations is vital. This is the kind of change in our thinking for which Albert Einstein called. The most obvious way of doing this is through the manufacture of popular goods, commonly called consumer goods, which manifestly display atomic constants and are available worldwide. To a great extent this is taking place already, in the manufacture and distribution of such goods as cameras, computers, radios, televisions and telephones.

What must not be forgotten, and the instinctive nature of the human species becomes familiar with these widely available goods, is that they are not merely salable objects manufactured for capitalist profits. Profit is a measure of the success of the selling, and to be sure it is sometimes, even often, abused. But of particular goods being sold, many are essentials for human existence, and many are manifest representations of principles new in the evolution of life on Earth. They must be taken as solutions for peace, and not mistaken as causa bella. To do this brings one more obligation, that of ensuring their assimilation is gauged, its relation to international peace is understood, and appropriate responses to changes in the market include products which are, literally, in the correct place for the next step in negotiating the difficult back-scaling from the conflicted times in the final stages of Earth's five thousand year history of constructed struggle to the Moon.

The Chinese people are currently dominant in the dielectric constant. Perhaps given or ceded to them after the magnetic storms of war that swept Europe in the last century, it is also because they were anciently familiar with the duality of the Yin and Yang, more deeply than Judaeo-Christian culture. Though they did not early on resolve the electric field constants, which do exist, it was easy for them to do so when the industrial revolution began and electricity and magnetism were resolved in common sense. Generally it appears masculine is equated with the dielectric and feminine is equated with the magnetic.

This is strong enough to be noticeable when working with delicate sticky issues such as transparent tape, paper, and clean surfaces. That is probably the origin of the phrase "red tape". To a person familiar with red tape, it is easy, but most of the business world is not and so such issues seriously impede business and other negotiations.

This would be nothing more than a static issue except that the historical resolution of the electric and magnetic field constants was set in 17th and 18th century English and European traditions in which the first thing that took place was the creation of arbitrary standard units for magnetic and electric fields. Principles such as those in physics were at that time named after persons who could be equated with monarchs, princes or theological figures. As a result, a magnetic field constant was named the Henry, and an electric field constant was named the Farad, after Michael Faraday. The Henry of course was equated with several Kings Henry, notoriously Henry VIII who set a large number of things that could not be distinguished from eternal in motion. Faraday's name Michael was at least equitable with the Archangel Michael. I know of that well as my name is Michael. We are not tough politicians and tend to be equated with mica, glass, paper, plastic film and such things.

The real problem is that the implementation of these constants into the real industrial world and urban infrastructures was immediate even though they were chosen with arbitrary magnitudes long before the magnitudes of the speed of light and the action quantum were discovered. Those two latter constants are reshaping physics every day in a process of change that could span 500 or a thousand years if the arbitrary disposition is not nipped in the bud. The reason of course is that the constants were named in England and France and were quickly used as bedrock and pillars of colonialist foreign policy. They were also used to divide East and West along the European midnight, which was constructed as the Prime Meridian. Subsequently, Europe and Russia to the East was put literally in irons and to the West, eventually the Americas, the United States in particular, was put to acting as a kind of Great Meridian engaging in wars on both western and eastern fronts itself.

Examination of empirical results in manufactures in the common domain reveal that the arbitrary magnitudes of the Henry and Farad resulted in the manufacture of very large magnetic devices and very small dielectric or capacitive devices. For a long time motors, transformers and generators were very large, and set on power line poles like the magnetism in the body of Christ. Capacitive devices were almost unknown until the manufacture of synthetic fabrics and plastic films, and then improved rapidly into sophisticated devices such as transistors and digital memory chips. Their future is vast. Capacitor transformers have appeared as large capacitors became possible, and magnetic devices have become smaller. All this change is since the discovery of the two constants c and h, the speed of light and the action quantum. Those two constants are truly vintage research, as the study of the motion of light and the nature of action began thousands of years ago. It was fortuitous, and in part tragic, that the path to the Moon stumbled at the imposition of arbitrary magnitudes for magnetic and electric fields in the Henry and Faraday.

Research reviewing the development of physics during the last four centuries, premised on the speed of light and the action quantum as most fundamental principles, will reveal vast quantities of desirable and feasible change that will provide far more agreeable global terms in which the nations of the world can get along.