Wired Sage

I saw a pulp-science show the other month offering a scientific explanation of life after death experiences with quantum entanglement. My question to you: What do you think of a sentient universe? That is, one with the ability to think, being quantum-ly entangled to every living brain within it. Does that make science into a religion?

With the multitude of stars and the ability for entanglement to work instantly without regard to distance, think about the possibility of billions upon billions of sentient life forms throughout the universe, all contributing to a higher, universal consciousness.

Maybe religion wasn’t far off with an “all knowing” or omnipotent god?

Think about each brain as massively parallel organic computer, and think of quantum entanglement as a network bringing them all together as a supercomputer cluster. Think about the processing capabilities! Think about the intellect of the macro-consciousness! Mind boggling!

Have we mere mortals peered into Heaven?  Have we just glimpsed the mind of God?

Let me start this by saying, I’m a thoughtful and intelligent person. I’m an amateur astronomer. I sit in my backyard often gazing at the night sky. I know the difference between a planet, a star, a galaxy, a meteor, and a plane. Now that I’ve said my peace, the following will be that much harder to believe.

I was sitting outside with my dogs — they were supposed to be doing their business, but instead they were being cute and cuddly — gazing at the night sky. My eyes fixed to a bright light above. I immediately thought it was Mars, because it was about in the same place as Mars was a few weeks ago. But then I realized, Mars hadn’t risen yet. Venus? No. Then, the planet I was trying to identify started moving across the sky. Yes, I said it. While I was staring at, what I thought was a planet, trying to identify it, the damn thing started moving.

OK, not a planet. Am I looking at a plane? No blinking lights. It’s moving away from me, bearing SSE, and it’s very bright. The bright lights on a plane face forward… they are landing lights. No, this was not a plane.

Then I got excited, and scared. Was it a meteor? No fiery tail. But could it have appeared to be “not moving” because it was actually coming towards me?

As I watched, the light dimmed, getting very small and changing to a red tint. I was now convinced I was witnessing a meteor burn up in the atmosphere from a very unique and frightening perspective. I was pretty excited at that fact. It’s not often you get to see a meteor last that long in the sky, let alone one coming straight for you.

I reflected on my identification process. The effect of the object dimming almost made it look like it had climbed high into the sky. I was thinking how that would be very easy to mistake as something flying away from you instead of coming at you and burning up. Then the unthinkable occurred.

It did not burn out. Let me say that again because even I don’t believe it. It did not burn out. The light went red, and got very small and very faint, but it did not go out. Instead, what I witnessed was incredible and unbelievable. The little red dot seemed to change from red to a whitish blue and move north in the sky.

So, what I think I may have witnessed is a real life UFO. I can’t think of another explanation. The shrinking, dimming and the red color change was the object climbing upwards through the atmosphere. Then I watched as it crossed half of the sky (that’s a 90° arc or more from my perspective) in ten seconds. I noticed it shifted slightly blue when it was approaching and red when it was receding from me. I make no estimates on the altitude or speed of the light. I will however stick to what I observed.

This just happened moments ago. After I lost sight of it, I wanted to tell my wife, but she was putting the kids to bed. Believe me, you do not want to interrupt bed time with exciting stories like this — not if you know what’s good for you. So I grabbed my laptop and wrote it all down.

What did I see? I can only say it was a single point of light, that was very bright, then dimmed, then went across the sky. I wonder if the local airport saw anything on Radar?

I received an email from my brother yesterday. It was a joke email with a subject “Don’t swallow ocean water” and had the following attachment:

Don't Drink Ocean Water

I had a chuckle. I am a guy after all. Low-brow humor affects me. But several hours after receiving this email, the horror of the image hit me. That poor, harmless, mammal, has been killed, hauled up on deck, and will be carved up, shipped to Japan and sold for close to $115 per pound at current exchange rates.

For a brief moment, I was ashamed that I thought it was humorous. Then it hit me. This is genius! If other people react like I did, then they’ll laugh, email the photo around, and hopefully come to the same conclusions I did and be horrified they laughed at a photo depicting slaughter. This image is viral. It should be passed around harmlessly as a joke, and hopefully the image will slowly eat away at the psyche of the viewer and convert their way of thinking.

I don’t condone the killing of whales. I personally think something needs to be done. I feel protesting with your wallet is the most powerful way to make a statement. You vote every time you reach for your credit card. Maybe a boycott of all Japanese electronics? All goods Japanese?

The Universe as viewed by some.

I was browsing through the Internet one day. In the merry, merry month of July. I was taken by surprise, because right before my eyes, I saw a lot of really stupid things out there.

Browsing a while back, I came across a website that proposed that the Sun revolved around the earth. If that wasn’t bizarre enough, they were offering $1000 to anyone who could prove them wrong. So I said to myself, “Self, this has to be easy; I bet it can be done with basic high school physics and math.” Then myself challenged me with, “Bet you can’t.” The argument ensued, “Can too!” “Can not!” “Can too!” “Can not!” “Can too!” “Can not!” “Can too!” “Prove it!” “Damn, how do I keep losing arguments with myself?” Well, I did have to prove it. So, that is what I did. I set out to prove that the Earth actually does revolve around the Sun and not vice versa.

I submit my humble, high school physics attempt at a proof that the Earth revolves around the sun for your consideration and enjoyment.

First, we must agree upon these as facts:

Let Newton’s three laws of motion and Law of Gravity be agreed upon as correct and relevant (1):

Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it.
Force is equal to the change in momentum (mV) per change in time. (For a constant mass, force equals mass times acceleration. F=ma)
Every action has an equal and opposite re-action.
Force = Gravitational constant * Mass-a * Mass-b / distance^2 (2)

We also agree that:

The Solar Mass is 1.989 x 10^30 Kg. (3)
The Mass of the Earth is 5.976 x 10^24 Kg. (4)
The distance between the Earth and the Sun is 149,597,892 Km. (5)
The Circumference of a circle “C” is calculated as C=2*pi*r. (6)
The velocity “v” of an object is calculated as v=distance/time. (7)
The acceleration of an object in a circular path is a=v^2/r. (8)
G is a natural constant which has been measured in a laboratory and equals approximately 6.6742×10^-11 m^3 s^-2 kg^-1. (9)(10)

We finally agree for the sake of this proof:

The motion of the earth, or sun, would be in a curve around the other.
We will accept that the orbits of the celestial bodies are circular instead of elliptical to simplify the math and we agree that this does not affect the results of this proof.
We agree that each body would complete a single orbit around the other once per year, and in the case of a geocentric model, the earth spins to create day and night.

If you can’t, or don’t, agree to the above, you’re not living in the same universe as I am.
Go back home on your transcendental, rainbow, space ship.

Now to the proof.

Let m1 = mass of the sun
Let m2 = mass of the earth
Let t = 1 year or 365 1/4 days or 31,557,600 seconds
Let r = 149,597,892,000 meters

v=d/t
c=2*pi*r
a=(v^2)/r
F=m*a

Note on Mathematical Notation: * denotes multiplication, ^ denotes exponents, ()’s are used to group operations, / denotes division, pi denotes the value 3.14159265358979323846… (11)

Simple physics, and all agreed upon above. Now, we will create a hypothetical Geocentric model where we assume the Sun revolves around the earth.

The sun will travel the circumference of the circular orbit (also agreed upon above for simplicity) around the earth. So, the distance is the Sun travels is the circumference ‘c’ of the circular orbit c=2*pi*r. d=c=2*pi*r, where ‘r’ is the distance between the sun and the earth, r=149,597,892,000 meters.

We can now solve for the velocity of the sun in this scenario by substituting (2*pi*r) for ‘d’ in the equation v=d/t, v=c/t, or v=(2*pi*r)/t, where t=31,557,600 seconds.

Now we solve for the acceleration of the sun around the earth by substituting the sun’s velocity, above, into a=(v^2)/r to get a=(((2*pi*r)/t)^2)/r.

Now we can solve for the Force of the sun traveling in this scenario around the earth. F=m*a, we substitute F=m1*((((2*pi*r)/t)^2)/r), where m1=1.989×10^30 kg.

Now we go back to Newton’s Law of Gravity which states F=G*(m1*m2)/r^2 or m1*((((2*pi*r)/t)^2)/r)=(G*(m1*m2)/r^2).

Now we solve for G, or in this case G1, the gravitational constant in our geocentric model.

G1=(r*(((2*pi*r)/t)^2))/m2, where m2=5.976 x 10^24 Kg.

Now we repeat the calculation above, but instead of calculating the force of the sun revolving around the earth we will calculate the force of the earth revolving around the sun. G2 is the gravitational constant in our heliocentric model.

G2=(r*(((2*pi*r)/t)^2))/m1, where m1= 1.989 x 10^30 Kg

Now we compare G1 and G2 to the accepted value of G above taking into account the cocktail napkin mathematics employed here will not produce an exact value, but should be within a reasonable margin of error.

G1 = 2.2208 x 10^-5 m^3 s^-2 kg^-1
G2 = 6.6726 x 10^-11 m^3 s^-2 kg^-1

Not only is the difference between G1 and G2 astronomical (pun intended) but my approximation of G is much closer than I would have even expected. This proves for the Sun to maintain an orbit around the earth the gravitational constant would have to be one million times stronger than it’s accepted, laboratory measured value. This isn’t a trivial difference nor can one argue against the rough calculations I employ here.

Hence, I put forth that my rough calculation of G in these two models proves a heliocentric orbit beyond all rational doubt.

I asked the website to please feel free to publish my email address and my Internet nickname on their site. I would provide my name and my work address in another email from this same account so they could send the $1000 check. Funny, I never heard back from them and they took the website down.

It’s also known that some people feel the Earth is completely stationary in the universe. They believe, think, feel, have faith, trust that the Earth doesn’t even spin. For this to be true, the Sun would have to complete a full orbit around the Earth every 24 hours. So, in our calculations above, the time value ‘t’ would be 24 hours * 60 minutes/hour * 60 seconds/minute = 86,400 seconds instead of 31,557,600 seconds. In that case, a Geocentric Gravitational Constant calculates out to

G3=(r*(((2*pi*r)/t)^2))/m2, where m2=5.976 x 10^24 Kg. and t=86,400 s.

In this case

G3=6.1543×10^+17 m^3 s^-2 kg^-1

The difference between that number and the scientifically measured and accepted value of the Gravitational Constant is Ten Billion, Billion, Billions (28 zero’s to be more precise) times greater.

Now let’s think about how silly this is. If gravity was stronger, we’d feel heavier. Fighter pilots will black out under 9Gs of force. That’s only nine times (9x) the force of gravity. In both of our geocentric models gravity would have to be millions (10^6) or ten-billion-billion-billions (10^28) times stronger. I’m glad the Earth revolves around the sun, or we’d all be paste.

Geocentricity is bunk!

End Notes:
(1) Newton’s Laws of Motion = http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/newton.html
(2) Newton’s Law of Gravity – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation
(3) Solar Mass – http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/SolarMass.html
(4) Earth Mass – http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/EarthMass.html
(5) Earth Sun Distance – http://www.astro-tom.com/getting_started/earth-sun_distance.htm
(6) Circumference – http://www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/vol2/circumference.html
(7) velocity – http://ceres.hsc.edu/homepages/classes/astronomy/fall97/Mathematics/sec5.html
(8) acceleration of a object in a circular orbit – http://www.mcasco.com/p1cmot.html
(9) Gravitational Constant – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant
(10) Gravitational Constant – http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/GravitationalConstant.html
(11) The Value of Pi – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi

The image on this page, above, was taken from http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Geocentricity.

Taken with a fixed lens point and shoot digital camera.

Last Wednesday, February 20th, there was a full lunar eclipse that was visible from my back yard. There was speculation in the local media that we might miss it because of cloud cover; but, luckily the weather-persons had it wrong. It was a beautiful evening for sky watching.

I took my new JVC HDD camera outside on a tripod and started filming just after the eclipse started. The beauty of this camera is that I didn’t have to replace tapes twice during the event. All I had to do was reposition the moon in the video frame to compensate for the rotation of the earth and during the total eclipse where the moon was completely in the umbra I switched my camera to a 1/2 shutter speed to capture the orange-red glow I saw with my unaided eye.

I took three hours of video, transfered it (faster than real time!) onto my hard drive, edited out the parts where I was moving the tripod, time lapsed it (5136.63%) to make the video two minutes and twenty two seconds (well, it had to match the music length), and published it here on the web for your viewing pleasure.

I could have had all that done the next day, if I didn’t have a job or a life.

While looking for information on this lunar eclipse, I stumbled across… OK, I didn’t stumble across anything; I was systematically searching through each and every solar eclipse that was going to happen in my lifetime. I really want to see (and capture on video) a full solar eclipse. Lo and behold, on August 21st, 2017 (a mere nine years from now) there will be a full and complete solar eclipse (of the sun even) close to my home. I was thinking we would have to cruise or fly some where to see one. But I only have to wait nine years for it to happen here where I live.

Below is the 4.8MB FLV video made for web streaming. If you’d like to download the 29.4MB quicktime mov file, feel free. I’m not offering the 49GB of DV footage I have for download, but if you really want it, I’ll burn it to disk and ship it to you for a reasonable licensing fee plus my time and materials (or perhaps a trade: an external Firewire Blue Ray burner and discs would be practical — I could then ship you one disk with all the footage on it).

Oh, come on… maybe someone other than my friends or family will read this page — it is in google after all. If you’re not a friend or family member please drop me email at my yahoo account, my username is on my About Me page, I’m sure I’m going to need it as proof to stop the laughter over that last side note in the parenthesis above.

Enjoy.