Will The Earth Follow The Sun?

The song "I'll Follow The Sun" mentions that the singer will do just that, some day.

Lets hope the Earth does not do that, does not do what the Sun is going to do again, until we get ready for it.

On February 15, 2001 the Sun flipped its lid, and the Sun's north magnetic pole switched to the south magnetic pole, and vice versa:

The Sun's magnetic north pole, which was in the northern hemisphere just a few months ago, now points south. It's a topsy-turvy situation, but not an unexpected one.

"This always happens around the time of solar maximum," says David Hathaway, a solar physicist at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "The magnetic poles exchange places at the peak of the sunspot cycle. In fact, it's a good indication that Solar Max is really here."

The Sun's magnetic poles will remain as they are now, with the north magnetic pole pointing through the Sun's southern hemisphere, until the year 2012 when they will reverse again. This transition happens, as far as we know, at the peak of every 11-year sunspot cycle -- like clockwork.

(NASA). What about the Earth, what is the big deal about the Earth flipping its lid like the Sun does every 11 years?

That would not be good because the human species has not been paying attention, at least those of us in this modern space and computer age have not:

Earth’s magnetic field also flips, but with less regularity. Consecutive reversals are spaced 5 thousand years to 50 million years apart. The last reversal happened 740,000 years ago. Some researchers think our planet is overdue for another one, but nobody knows exactly when the next reversal might occur.

(NASA, above, emphasis added). And nobody knows exactly what would happen to human civilization; civilization meaning our modern space age, computer age, electronic machine age, way of life.

Human civilization could be destroyed even though there would be plenty of human survivors remaining to rebuild our civilization in due time:

The collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, which both guards the planet and guides many of its creatures, appears to have started in earnest about 150 years ago. The field's strength has waned 10 to 15 percent, and the deterioration has accelerated of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth.

During a reversal, the main field weakens, almost vanishes, then reappears with opposite polarity. Afterward, compass needles that normally point north would point south, and during the thousands of years of transition, much in the heavens and Earth would go askew.

A reversal could knock out power grids, hurt astronauts and satellites, widen atmospheric ozone holes, send polar auroras flashing to the equator and confuse birds, fish and migratory animals that rely on the steadiness of the magnetic field as a navigation aid. But experts said the repercussions would fall short of catastrophic, despite a few proclamations of doom and sketchy evidence of past links between field reversals and species extinctions.

(NY Times, emphasis added). That is the number one problem our modern engineers and scientists have been lax about, as was mentioned in a post on another blog:

IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that.

(Dredd Blog Post, emphasis added). In that post (see UPDATE comments in that post) engineers and scientists were urged to use the current green grid modifications debate and remedies to beef up the power grids.

Those grids need to be upgraded so they will be able to handle a magnetic pole reversal, because such an event might allow a time of no protection from solar flares, or might damage the power grids even if protection from solar flares stays intact during the reversal.

We must pay closer attention to the things listed in the Tenets of Ecocosmology if we are to survive as a species.

Death & Resurrection Of Memetics

Some of us watched and participated in The Journal of Memetics, hoping against hope that it would lift off like the "aircraft" of the Wright Brothers.

But alas, the winds beneath the wings were frivolous, so the final transmission from that part of space was "This incarnation of JoM-EMIT is now terminated".

In light of the recent post about our Sun and its star type in our galaxy, and the limited time intelligent species have as sojourners with that Sun, this Ecocosmology Blog will make the bold statement that memetics is the next realm of cosmic evolution.

Memetic evolution follows biological evolution in the sequence, replacing biological evolution as a means of survival of the fittest, indeed, as a means of avoiding human extinction.

The Tenets of Ecocosmology point out two ways that memetic evolution may avoid human extinction:

The first is memetic evolution whereby competent astronomical searching for, then finding, habitable planets orbiting stars develops into competent space travel whereby we colonize those newly found habitable home worlds with our species. This must be repeated ad infinitum as each newly found star eventually dies out.

The second is memetic evolution whereby we morph into a species that does not require biologically habitable planets orbiting Sun-like stars for our existence.

In either case, memetic evolution is mandated by this cosmos, which means we must lose the biological evolutionary discourse and creationism discourse as the means of going forward, because that wastes time with useless rear view mirror historical perspectives.

We need a memetics which looks out the wind shield into the space of the future to find where we are going, because where we must go is not determined by where we biologically came from.

The old memetics that tried somehow to cognitively mimic biological evolution was buried with the eulogy "This incarnation of JoM-EMIT is now terminated".

The new memetics must free us from all of that history so we may become a cosmic species focused on where we must go instead of where we have been.

The new memetics must develop the new physics that will bring us close to, or take us beyond space travel at light speed.

The new memetics must free us from conflicts of war that constantly sap us of our global potential and strength.

The new memetics must counsel us to treasure our oasis in space, our home world of wonder we call the Earth, so we may all be healthy going forward.

Finally the new memetics must use all the talent available to get us there by fusing, using, sharing and always respecting the respectable in science and in religion.

Rebel Science: Gravitating Conflicts

When papers are published in journals of science or law the "well behaved" tend to bow down and accept the assertions and enlightenment in that paper.

But there are rebels among us who just will not accept things as they should, but instead like to rock the boat to make us a bit nervous.

When the robe-wearing scientist publishes a decree, unlike those proclaimed by the robe wearing judges, there is no system of appeal.

Even though some church systems have appellate systems, science tends not to.

So, some miffed scientist will hoist up the pirate flag and fire off a few rounds into the grotto so as to tell those who published the papers what for. We recently pointed out one such altercation over "dark matter" here and here.

Another case in point is the attempt to measure "the speed of gravity" or the "speed at which it propagates". Note that the two may not be the same according to some scientists.

Anyway, after an experiment was done the results were declared to the American Astronomical Society. That article generated a rebuttal paper that was published a few months afterwards.

The rebuttal paper pointed out or argued that the experiment hadn't proved or disproved anything concerning the speed of gravity.

That controversy is still ongoing with points and counterpoints going to and fro at the speed of paper, as the fate of humanity awaits the outcome of the controversy to some degree.

The Fittest Stars, Planets, & Species

As it turns out the survival of the fittest does not apply exclusively to biological organisms or to species.

It applies also to non-biological stars and planets in the sense of the evolution of sentient beings who want to become fit to survive in this cosmos.

The tenets of Ecocosmology map out the route or path which the fittest must take in order to master survival instead of becoming extinct.

Those tenets point out that biological evolution only goes a tiny part of the full distance of that route. That aspect of looking forward is focused by a study conducted by some scientists who have done a survey of stars in the milky way galaxy.

They have found that our Sun is of a type of star that only makes up roughly about 10% of the stellar population in our own Milky Way galaxy.

That discovery ends up being very significant in several ways:

The distinction between habitable planets and planets harboring intelligent life is based on the fact that intelligent life requires stars with lifetimes greater than the time required for intelligence to evolve. For example, in the case of this solar system, we could not find ourselves around a star with a lifetime less than 4.5 billion years.

Indeed, sun-like stars seem to have the right balance: They are of high enough mass that they are more likely to host habitable planets, but they are of low enough mass that they live long enough for intelligent life to develop, and are not extremely scarce. Whitmire estimates that 10 percent of the Milky Way's stars might fall into the category they've outlined. This would still leave over 10 billion candidate stars in the Milky Way alone.

(Space). The factor that leaves biological evolution behind on this route toward fitness to survive is the factor that these Suns eventually destroy all the planets in the habitable zone, together with all biological life on them.

Survival of the fittest, which Ecocosmology calls "The Test", requires that intelligent life which develops on any habitable planet must develop competent space travel, must develop the ability to locate other younger stars with habitable planets, then must colonize those planets.

As if that were not enough, the tenets of Ecocosmology point out that those intelligent planetary species must then continue that behavior ad infinitum because all stars die out or otherwise destroy life on their planetary neighbors.

Thus, the greater part of survival of the fittest is in developing competent astronomy followed by the development of competent space travel so as to successfully locate then colonize new home worlds.

The bottom line of this area of science is that we are cosmic nomads until, as tenet 3(f) says, we "morph into a species free from that type of solar/planetary cosmic dependence".

Will We Destroy Food - The Bees?

There has been concern in the past ten years or so about the mysterious disappearing of entire groups or hives of bees.

Bee keepers and scientists alike share the concern, and we who rely on the bees should too:

It has been stated by several biologists that, if it were not for the honey bee pollinating plants, humans would only last 3 or 4 years as our food supply would disappear [but see here].

(Space). How it got to this is debatable, but we can agree to describe the bee / human relationship not as symbiotic, because the bees do not rely on us in return in the way we rely on them.

We are intelligent but they are intelligent too. A professor was doing an experiment, moving a source of nectar 25% further away each day, testing their navigation skills.

His student charged with the duty of calculating and moving the nectar each day called in one morning reporting to the professor that he had car problems and could not do the task on that day. The professor opted to do it himself:

When the professor arrived at the nectar source there were no bees present. But when he arrived at the place where the nectar should have been for that day (but had not been moved there yet), there were all the bees waiting for him! Not only had the bees gotten the math correct (25% farther), but the implication is that they had demonstrated the imagination to be able to picture the future by picturing the nectar—not where it was—but where it was going to be! The professor wrote that he would never have done such an experiment on purpose since he never would have thought that the bees could have been so intelligent!

(ibid, Space, link above). Those of you who read the biomimicry posts know that one of the tenets of Ecocosmology urges us to remember that we can learn about how to bring about our own survival by watching and studying nature appropriately.

Learning such behavior from nature is called biomimicry.

We must also be careful to not destroy the bees or their habitat, because then we could cease to exist as well, according to some scientists.

The next post in this series is here.

Heretics Deny The Dark Matter of Faith

In the post "Rebel Science: The Dark Matter of Faith" the issue of faith was discussed in the context of the "dark matter" debate.

Evidently the rebellion is now growing, and the dark matter of faith may be losing out to the more tangible universe:

Dark energy is itself a hasty fix to an inconvenient truth discovered by astronomers in the late 1990s: that the universe is expanding, and the rate of this expansion seems to be constantly picking up speed.

To explain this startling finding, cosmologists invoked dark energy, a hypothetical form of energy that is pulling the universe apart in all directions (note that dark energy is wholly separate from the equally mysterious concept of dark matter - a hypothetical form of matter that populates the universe, interacting gravitationally with normal matter, but which cannot be seen with light). In this interpretation, the whole universe is blowing up like a balloon, and from any given point within it, all distant objects appear to be speeding away from you.

But not everyone is happy with the dark energy explanation.

"It just seems like an unnatural correction to the equations - it's like a fudge factor," Temple told SPACE.com. "The equations don't make quite as much physical sense when you put it in. You just put it in to fit the data."

Temple thinks the idea of an expanding wave makes more sense.

(Space). Rebel science sometimes becomes main stream science. Perhaps our little discussion about faith helped? To the extent that article indicates a scientific difference between dark matter and dark energy it is a canard. Gravity, the expander in the expansion hypothesis, is a function of mass.

Energy and mass are equivalent in the sense of e=mc², showing that if energy increases or decreases mass also increases or decreases, and vice versa. Which came first, mass or energy, is unanswerable in the dynamic of this equation because they co-exist.

A simple expansion of the universe formula is H² = 8/3 π G p.

Italian scientists claim to have discovered dark matter but other scientists in the United States are not buying it.

Note that "dark matter" is not the only area in science where faith may be an issue.

Both the article 13 Things That Don't Make Sense and the book written after the article explain 13 similar scenarios where scientists figuratively scratch their heads faithfully.

The controversy is still raging: WIMP Wars.

Rebel Science: The Dark Matter of Faith

The basis of something that has never been seen, never been felt, never been measured, but a lot of people believe exists anyway, is faith:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed ... so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible ...

(Bible, Hebrews 11:1, emphasis added). What is seen in our universe by scientists is called matter. No faith needed.

What is not seen is what cosmologists and physicists are now calling "dark matter", and its existence really by definition is a matter of faith.

Dark Matter has never been seen, measured, touched, felt, put in a test tube, or any other things experimental, but scientists do believe that it exists.

So far they have only seen it in their minds. In fact they say there is 5 times more of this stuff no one has ever seen, felt, measured, or otherwise got a handle on, than there is of the stuff we can see, measure, and get a handle on.

There is 5 times more dark matter than there is of the matter we can see, feel, weigh, and make things with?

The existence of matter, then, comes down to matter of faith and matter of proof, depending on the type of matter, doesn't it?

Just how faithful are these scientific faithful who believe in that which they have not measured, felt, touched, or seen?

I watched a program on PBS (Nova, Dark Matter, 2008) about physicists spending millions and millions of dollars to renovate an abandoned mine in Minnesota. The abandoned mine where a super lab has now been constructed is a half mile underground.

It is way down below a half mile of bedrock so that no radiation from space or elsewhere on the surface of the earth will mess with the search for the as of now missing but most abundant matter in the universe.

They have faithfully made very, very special detectors which are kept at super cold temperatures just above absolute zero in an effort to detect the most abundant stuff in the universe, which no scientist has ever seen, touched, felt, tasted, or heard.

When asked how many units of dark matter they had actually detected in this super laboratory specially made for that purpose, the answer was none, zero, nada.

One can imagine what Jesus of the Bible would say about this degree of faith, and whether he might see it like the faith he saw in some sinners compared to the faith the chosen had shown:

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel."

(Bible, Luke 7:9). Yep, church goers stand down, you can't hold a candle to these dark matter scientists, because they take faith to the degree it is practised by the ultra faithful.

Anyway, this is probably a good time to switch to the subject of competing theories. The degree of fairness in this field is not what one would expect:

A proponent of an unorthodox idea is likely to encounter several types of difficulties. First, it is difficult to obtain funding: very few research grants are awarded for proposals to re-examine long accepted theories. Most funding agencies expect that proposals will build on existing science rather than challenge basic postulates. Second, it is difficult to publish in mainstream journals. Third, proponents of unorthodoxy may come under attack: their colleagues may shun them, they may be blocked from jobs or promotions, lab space may be withdrawn and malicious rumors spread about them. Even if they can overcome these problems, they have a hard time gaining attention.

(Challenging Dominant Physics, page 11, PDF, emphasis added). As in religion with its doctrinal wars, in science there are the hypothesis wars. As in religion these wars can resemble turf wars, because lots of money and fame are at stake.

Let me just mention one scientific protestant (protesting) denomination that does not follow the dark matter cult but prefers to evangelize another dogma, based on a well known yet invisible matter:

In papers published about a decade ago, the author and colleagues predicted the widespread presence of hydrogen in the molecular (H2) form in space (Marmet and Reber 1989; Marmet 1990a,b). Although hydrogen in the atomic form is easily detected through radioastronomy, the molecular form is difficult to detect ...

Atomic hydrogen (H), composed of a single proton and electron, is the simplest existing stable atom. Because of the spin structure of the particle, it is easily detectable using a high frequency radio signal at 21-cm wavelength. Atomic hydrogen in galaxies and in intergalactic space can be detected very easily, because the atomic hydrogen can change its spin (which changes its energy).

Electromagnetic radiation is emitted at the wavelength of 21 cm, or an absorption line is observed (in the background radiation) at that wavelength. However, when two atoms of atomic hydrogen combine, forming molecular hydrogen (H2), their spins are coupled and completely cancel each other. The radio-frequency spectral line at 21 cm no longer exists, and the molecular hydrogen becomes totally invisible at that wavelength ...

The recent discovery of an enormous quantity of molecular hydrogen not only solves the problem of missing mass; it also solves the problem of the redshift, in a non-expanding unlimited universe. The Doppler interpretation of the redshift is a variation of the Creationist theory, since it claims that the universe was created from nothing, 15 billion years ago, with a sudden Big Bang. Since a much larger amount of molecular hydrogen than previously admitted has been observed in the universe, we can now see how this hydrogen is responsible for the redshift observed. That molecular hydrogen is responsible for the redshift which is erroneously believed to have a cosmological Doppler origin.

It is unfortunate that the existence of H2 has been ignored for so long. As noted by one of the recent discoverers, E.A. Valentijn, the missing mass problem might never have arisen if the Infrared Space Observatory results (or predictions of H2) had been known earlier. It is also true that the problem would not have arisen, if the arguments presented by this author and others for the necessary presence of H, had been heeded.

With the new discovery, science can now have a logical and realistic description of nature, because we no longer have to speculate with such exotic hypotheses as WIMPs and "quark nuggets" to explain the missing matter in the universe.

(Paul Marmet, emphasis added). Did you get that? This scientist explains that yes there is invisible matter out there, but it is the common molecular hydrogen they forgot to look for. He as much as says their dark matter hypothesis is a matter of faith like the "Creationist theory" is.

Ecocosmology only asks that the scientists and religionists and theologians of all sorts work together to solve the problem of avoiding the extinction of the human species.

All theories should be analysed with that goal in mind.

350 Succeeded In Rescue Attempts

It is a day and time when few efforts of peace activists or climate change activists seem to bring real success.

Whether this reality is the sign of beginning times or end times is not clear as we speak, so we will have to wait for a bit longer to finally know.

But we will not have to wait much longer.

Recently Dredd Blog did a post concerning the worldwide efforts of 350 organization.

That post focused on their October 24 activism day which was as big as world wide.

If you need more information you can get it if you check out 350.org ...

In the meantime, check out the short video on their recent success:

UBI SUNT Is Not A Rock Band

In the piece "Where Have All The Visionaries Gone?" we discussed the metaphysical realm's much avoided subject "ubi sunt".

Where do species go when they die, do they go anywhere, or do we just decompose back into atoms and molecules?

The latter seems so obvious that even those who believe in an afterlife do not tend to try to dispute it, but those scientists who allow the question of any afterlife into their ears tend to be dismissive of the subject.

What those who believe in an afterlife do say, however, is that we are not composed completely of biological material, instead there is a metaphysical component that continues upon the occasion of our biological death.

The gist of that metaphysical assertion is that we take on a new format to thereby continue on to an existence independent of biological necessities.

Here again we find that some scientists and religionists agree, in a sense, on some aspects of this issue, that is, some scientists teach that the human species will evolve into sentient super robots then spread out into space independent of the need of a biologically habitable planet.

Ecocosmology does not deal with the subject, except to say that our biological species is compelled to live on habitable planets near central stars, from where we must periodically migrate when the star goes into demise (thereby destroying the planets orbiting them, together with any life forms inhabiting those planets).

That is, unless species on those planets orbiting those sure-to-die stars evolve into a species that does not require habitable planets orbiting stars for their survival.

If we evolve into sentient robots, as the scientists urge, or live in a form that does not require a habitable, biological planet, as the mystics urge, then the ubi sunt question has been dealt with looking forward.

That leaves us looking backwards in order to deal with the question of what happened to all those who did not evolve into sentient robots or super beings.

Did they simply vanish?

That is the essence of ubi sunt, it is not a rock band, but it is a popular consideration generating a lot of literary works:

And if that's not enough to convince you, D'Souza provides a checklist of benefits from believing in life after death: it keeps us honest, gives our lives "a sense of hope and purpose"—and "surveys show" that believers have better sex. It provides "a mechanism to teach our children right from wrong"—a mechanism that those who have been subjected to it tend to describe as a neurotic lifelong fear of going to Hell. And if your smart-alecky kid, full of all that Galileo stuff they get in school nowadays, should ask just where this Judgment business takes place, D'Souza provides you with a response. It happens in the multiverse, the infinitely multiplying complex of worlds predicted by some versions of quantum theory. In the multiverse, physical laws can take on different values, and matter itself may have a different form, so "there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that we can live beyond death in other realms with bodies that are unlike the bodies we now possess."

Admittedly, the multiverse, although a perfectly respectable concept in theoretical physics, is supported by no more empirical evidence than the soul itself.

(Newsweek). The simplicity of Ecocosmology is perfectly scientific (see Occam's Razor).

It simply says that if we stay too long on any biological, habitable planet we will cease to exist, because the star providing life for a limited time eventually also provides utter destruction, as it phases out.

That reality urges biologically bound species to get cracking to find another habitable world, while taking care of the current one they inhabit, so as to survive long enough to develop competent space travel.

The tenets of Ecocosmology are very scientifically based.

Ecocosmology is also is not dismissive of mystical ideas about a more durable species, or the scientific notion of durable robot species, but instead asserts that if we do not become durable we must be cosmic nomads "looking for a home" ad infinitum.