Friday, October 22, 2010

The Falls of Man, or Why the Children are Curious

Somewhere between sensitive and obvious, Neanderthals fell without the benefit of warning; a particular group of their descendants became Homo Sapiens.

It's probably no surprise to some that the Fall of Man, depicted in famous art works and by theologians since - well, the Fall - is best equated with the phasing out of the Neanderthals, probably by a remarkably successful group of their offspring. Of course the transition then from the Neanderthals was not marked by specific, egregrious, onerous and insufferable violations of God's laws as the events during the most recent few thousand years which signaled the fall of Mankind. Stories like that of Cain and Abel are sufficiently equivalent to be of similar import: they may refer to groups, even very large groups, constituting species, as well as to individuals.

This has some meaningful real-world implications. Neanderthals fell, and the Church says that Man has already fallen. It's only a matter of time before the next group of dominant creatures, probably much like us in some ways, will have such different genetic codes in its chromosomal nuclei that no mating between the two would be possible. Wondering why I felt like an old coot, it's not just me after all.

Nothing symbolized the current Fall more distinctly than the Crucifixion of Christ, nor the rise, both preceding and following it, of great constructions and inevitably (because it was an evolutionary and instinctive goal) the attainment of the Moon.

Attainments and failures by the Neanderthals, while identifiable as an ability to survive almost anywhere and wielding materials in tools and weapons that were too big and clumsy, do not involve such distinct events. Even so, some of the same patterns exist. Modern humans can survive anywhere and already do, yet are extravagantly wasteful of massive quantities of the Earth's resources, and unconscionably savage in the rapacity with which the Earth's living creatures are slaughtered by industrial machinery for foodstuff as if they are so much dirt.

The parallels must be drawn more carefully and completely than is possible by this one author. It is vital from the beginning to equate any extinction of the human species with the Fall of Man described by the priests, because first, that is the eternal theater or arena which is compreheded by religion and it is already highly sophisticated at exactly that; and second, because human beings are now setting out (even though their children are now wireless) to begin a million or ten million years of Planethood, easy.

If the scenarios are well coordinated so that they can be presented as potential yet differing pre-concepts, then the concept can emerge without specific written dedications - as it should, because new people must be born in liberty. If the scenarios are neglected or ignored or badly presented, they will do nothing of value, and the next species of human beings will be clumsy in some other unredeemable way only to find itself in its own Fall, and watching its children doing something new which their parents don't understand.

The measures of the Earth, its people, and other factors are already being understood and compiled well. It only requires being tolerant of those setting out in the new directions. This is not so easy as it sounds for an old warlike civilization with a lot of blood on the hands of its species. Men still worry whether their kids will be good soldiers or better yet, generals and admirals. They worry whether their children are going into space rapidly enough.

Instead, it has to be taken into account that the great space adventures are thousands of years in the future, potentially more. The Solar System has nothing worth hurried development of, except for aggression against somebody else on Earth. On the Moon and other planets in this our Solar System there is no farmland arable or not; no breathable air, no open water, no life of any sort. Only the Moon and Mars even have solid surfaces on which to stand at temperatures that will not kill within minutes, and neither of them has any significant atmosphere.

To comprehend the scale on which no evidence has been found of any signals from transmissions in space almost requires a degree in electronic communications. The sensitivity of the receivers is astonishing, and they continually and minutely scrutinize every wavelength in existence.

This does not mean that those facts must be ignored forever, but the plain real actual honest truth is, there is no good reason to waste money going to the Moon or Mars or any other place in the Solar System, while Earth has the problems that it has. To be obsessively complete, there is no way to even TRY to reach any other star system yet.

Many, many people, apparently all fools, stack ifs like they were layers of cake and popcorn, to conclude that despite those facts, nations should be heavily or not, investing valuable money, time, coordination, human dreams, imagination, cooperation and planning in going to the Moon and Mars with the intention of colonizing those places. The most urgent schedule that can be made for flights to these two places at the present time is to solidly and believably confirm, for the benefit of all the people on Earth, that the reports by the United States, Russia and Japan are true. Gaining that credibility by the sheer integrity of each nation that goes visiting there is truly and vitally important for the whole world's peace of mind.

Beyond that, little more importance can be given to space flight beyond the Moon, a reasonable preferred limit to human space flight for now. Robots to the planets are okay; they seem to endanger no one and tend to be increasingly successful. Eventually when it is a piece of cake, human flights will take place throughout the solar system, but they could wait until technological development reaches a sophistication not yet met by human beings. For instance, exploration of the solar system wants a space ship with the resources to roam at will if necessary, and dispatch landing craft to the surfaces of other planets and moons. It would have to be equivalent preceptually to, say, fusion powered interplanetary space ships with antigravity, or something like that.

Orbital flight around the Earth already pays for itself and is certainly worth its investments in communications, weather, soil, land surface and oceanic surveys and every other kind of knowledge about the Earth. It's not at question. Strangely, it should not be necessary to fend of defensive people who obsessive so much about the need for massive human aggression into space that they attack even on just thinking about the factors involved in making policy. Some seem obsessed with the idea that space aliens must be lurking in every Moon shadow. Still others are utterly convinced the United States is lying about the Moon in its meticulous and candid reports, and falsifying information about nonexistent alien spacecraft, life in canyons or caves, and other crap. I know one person who insists there must be an inner world within the Moon where gardens exist, in which zebras, monkeys, antelopes, animals and crocodiles and alligators must surely live.

Yeah, right.

Some of the most surprising nations are among the most offensive in filling the entertainment world's fertile imaginations with an insistent regime of dogma that we must hurry to prepare defenses against - you can probably see it coming - space aliens. The worst is our own parent, England, which has given some kind of licence to the British Interplanetary Society to trump up UK sovereignty over all the Earth on the basis that only England can provide the sophisticated moral basis for government and negotiations with the new Galactic Empire. Oh, good.

Russians are not bad about developing such nonsense themselves, but they never call it down even when it misleads millions of people. Americans are possibly the most difficult though maybe I see it that way because I am one. We not only tolerate the British invention of fantastically funny, imaginative plot lines like Dr. Who and Red Dwarf, but add to it bathtub plunges like Stargate SG-1...n and weird journeys through tunnels. These and other superviolent shows provide the Pentagon with lots of material to spice up arms and weapons development, which was already way way way way WAY over the top in 1946. But just in case, The War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, the Martian Chronicles, and other Doom From Space theater is available so that Christians can deal with any competing religion.

The problems are so big, Man, that the only path from this species to the species that rules the Earth for millions of years will be through the worm tunnel.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Cost of the Moon

From this observer's view of the slow fine energy terms throughout the elements in evolution, it appears the trillion dollar deficit in the United States is in phase with more factors if it is viewed as the realization of the monetized vast economic outlays required to go to the Moon recently, than any of the short term factors to which it is so commonly attributed.

Those outlays spanned all of agriculture, housing, industry, transportation, war and other factors. Some of these may be described in different ways by different persons of course.

The important thing is that the energy terms, which are trade-offs under the action with chronological and geological time, are in the same range of values and scales in nature - molecular spectra in the quantum electrodynamics of evolution, and in the long slow rotation of the celestial spheres - as the thousands of years old dynastic efforts to reach the Moon, more than anything else.

To be sure, the flights to the Moon were justified by all and everything having to do with human existence. Life began washing back and forth toward and away from the Moon billions of years ago in the tides, even shaping the evolution of Man. The Moon appears to have been the essential cause of construction of the Pyramids and all the empires and events since then. That is why it is vital to make as much of the opportunity to bring the world to common, sound understanding of the nature of Peace, if that can be.

It could be that the United States and other countries are still poised on the brink of violent resistance or worse, if any sign of opposition to the attainment of the Moon appears. Along with potential terrestrial opposition, defense against superstitiously anticipated space aliens from other worlds was included (as in the tanks versus the flying saucers in "Day the Earth Stood Still", "War of the Worlds" and "Mars Attacks") and fortunately the alien threat never panned out. Those at least are ideas that should be among the resources of peacemakers who should be respected by militarists.

In other words, there never were any space monster aliens and in fact never will be, yet it was such extensive superstition that even modern militaries were galvanized against that kind of threat. Nobody on Earth needs that kind of nonsense any more.

Cultural Infrared

Whole villages of houses, trees, paths and bridges drew one's vision to the near infrared of campfires as evening changed into night during thousands of years of time.

China is often interpreted as red, and has what is called in English, a ruddy aspect. One can even see it when looking at Chinese cities on Google Maps Satellite. The implication is that China conceives itself in the INFRARED. Just what part of the spectrum that is will require gentlemanly, polite, courteous, civil scrutiny by specialists in color perception, atomic spectra, and probably several other distinct fields.

It is well known as possible, to train one's eyes to see a shade more deeply in both the ultraviolet and the infrared edges of the visible spectrum; on inquiring of others, they concur. In practice, few persons strain to see every perceptible wavelength clearly. That leaves a region of the spectrum which is still within, on the infrared edge from 700 millimicron to 800, less than twice the wavelength of the 400 mmu ultraviolet limit. While both limits are fuzzy, the violet edge is more sharply bounded. An attractive goal is development of LED's that are bright in the 700-720 millimicron near infrared part of the spectrum, just beyond the edge of the conventionally visible.

As one gradually sees the shapes of a room and its furnishings in the near infrared, the Chinese concept becomes more explicable and common-sense.

Both infrared and ultraviolet regions of the spectrum are hot political issues ancient in both government and religion. Many different animals see in the infrared or ultraviolet, and different plants are responsive to those wavelengths as well. One wonders what Unicorns see.

It would be well worth the time and money to determine just how far into the infrared people perceive-and conceive-their environments and of course, themselves, each other, and foreign groups.

A suspicion is that even if people do not actually see in the infrared, they may have evolved a concept of their world, or at least perhaps its durable forms and structures, through interpretation of heat radiation during centuries or thousands of years of time.

Different social groups may see more or less clearly at 730 or 750 millimicrons than is commonly assumed. During hostilities, it would be stupid to allow others to know one can see in the infrared. In peacekeeping, it might be well to find out.

One harmless test would be to ask volunteers to traverse a maze that is illuminated with infrared light, and account the time required, at different wavelengths of infrared for them to find the exit. This could be entertainment at a carnival.

Might save some bloodshed. It is in the ultraviolet and infrared that many fears are hatched.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Quantum Action and Economic Planning

Action is a fundamental constant in nature and appears with special, universal value in many phenomena. Although action appears in all kinds of mechanics from building pyramids to launching space flight vehicles, it also appears in light and light-like radiation of other frequency and energy.

Money is of supreme importance in economic activity and is often defined as an enumerated constant which is employed in transactions. These are acts in trade in which, usually, an amount of money is traded for some good or service.

The action in light is even more fundamental than that of transactions in economic activity. Even so, economic concepts are thoroughly practiced, and they cover the nature of action in the physics of natural law broadly. Describing nature's action with economic activity is like covering graffiti by repainting the entire wall.

Light-like activity is important at this time in history because economic activity is changing in some ways, and stable in others. Very essential activity involves definitions in finance and trade that have been stable for centuries, even thousands of years, are not expected to change in principle (though perhaps volume of trade) in the foreseeable future, and are highly predictable in a number of their fundamental values. Light also is an important model for economic activity which is changing because its predictable time domain has increased, and agents are in the process of determining which factors will respond to the new time domain and how. (For modeling irregularly fluctuating phenomena, light is not as useful a model; that will require principles different than these, which pertain to slowly varying components and long-term changes of kind.)

The recent past, whether one observes it in centuries or thousands of years, is one of singular change for planet Earth. This is the time when, as many writers have noted, Earth changed from a primitive planet dominated by the instincts of wild evolution, to a more or less civilized, rational planet which knows itself from other worlds in the solar system, and conceives itself as one living system, though with many individual economic agents. While much more can be said about it in detail, the crux is that the planet has committed itself to change for ever, a span of time that already comprehends a half billion to several billion years depending on how one defines economic life. During the time prior to the shaping of tools and the use of fire, economic activity consisted of kill or be killed, zero sum games of life and death and there was no money.

Now, it is changing to a world in which economic activity is always, at least eventually, gauged in terms of win-win transactions with money tokens, rational expectations, demands for human rights, ownership of and responsibility for property and accounts, and automatic systems for performing necessary and extremely valuable calculations. These will be in use thousand of years hence. It is this vast global change from wildness that has caused this time to be one of a vast beginning spanning perhaps millions of years and more.

Light provides a model for change on a vast timescale, because of the early 1900's discovery in astrophysical cosmology by the astronomer Edwin Hubble, of a shift in wavelength in light which originally emanated in the stars of distant galaxies. The fainter the galaxy, the more the light which is emitted by it is observed here on Earth as having become longer in wavelength and commensurately diminished in momentum.

With exact equivalence, the energy of light is known to be equal to the product of the speed and momentum of light. Thus it is understood, and quite valuable, that the longer light takes to reach Earth from distant galaxies diminishes in energy and increases in wavetime. The inverse of wavetime is frequency, which is more often used in this context, in part because the entire frequency spectrum of the United States is defined in commerce by the Federal Communications Commission. So believe what you are reading, and remember it: light does change slowly in energy as it travels, and the action goes into its wavetime. The action is not lost; it merely and slowly shifts or diffuses from the internal, topological-physical energy domain of the wave into the internal topological-physical time domain of the same wave.

What on Earth does this have to do with economic activity?

Consider the economic activity represented by a dollar bill. It undergoes numerous transactions and its economic frequency is understood as the number of transactions each year in which that dollar bill is used. The number of times each dollar bill is used in its lifetime-that is, before it becomes torn, is its total utility measured in acts of trade. The number of transactions is a measure used in designing currency notes to last a long time. Durable currency notes are valuable to a nation; it costs money to print new ones.

In the time from 1900 to 1950, economic activity events were measured in periods of time lasting up to five years (such as two world wars and a monstrous depression) the future was not very predictable. It was in fact frighteningly unpredictable.The world had almost survived two thousand years in one great dynasty called Rome, enumerated with the Gregorian calendar which has been invented by Julius Caesar (maybe one of his graduate students.) No other dynasty, all the way back to Cheops and Tutankhamen, had ever done that. All had fallen apart within a hand of centuries, until just about six hundred years prior to Caesar when the Babylonian civilization of Nebuchadnezzar discovered the difference between reptiles and mammals. That means one could be more effective in trade, if one took into account that human economic activity from barter to finance, would have a cold blooded side in the primitive, and a warm-blooded side more often found among people one could trust.

That's why, after Rome had assimilated that for six hundred years, a carbon's atomic number of centuries, the Roman empire was so fundamentally correct that its calendar would span as many millennia as would be necessary to reach the Moon. The United States has already trod the Moon and fetched samples of rock from it, Russia has fetched samples with robots, and a Chinese Long March rocket is on its way to the Moon to do the same, and it is rationally predicted that someday there will be tourist accommodations on the Moon (though I think the time delay will be longer than expected, it will be WELL within the next thousand years.)

We should assume that if the Moon had not been attained by now, or very soon, there would have been a nuclear war, to start over with some better idea than the cities as they exist. Where was I? Oh, yeah.

Consider two projects that are approximately equivalent in the magnitudes of their action. For various reasons such as relative differences in the rate of availability of labor and supplies, one is planned and completed in a period of five years, the other is planned and completed in twenty. Planners, with their PERT, GANNT and other time scheduling computers will put high energy into the shorter time span, and will prepare lower energy in the longer time period. This is a quantum mechanically balanced, fundamentally efficient tradeoff. Time and energy are efficiently and inversely proportional wherever the total action is constant, because action is a linear magnitude variable. That the smallest amounts of action observable are around the magnitude of the quantum is a consequence of a certain ratio that was discovered in light by atomic scientists such as Franck, Hertz and eventually Max Planck for who the quantum was named. The ratio of energy to wavelength is a constant, and the action adds linearly.

Where this relationship of time and energy are taken into account in industrial market activity, it may be more or less confidently assumed that the players have attained quantum mechanical, and probably atomic and nuclear sophistication. Industrial market activity is far more likely to be well planned in relation to the finite resources, natural environment, and on a large scale, delicate fragility of the planet.