The Gravity of Sea Level Change

Fig. 1 Three Phases: Ice Sheet Melt & Impact

I. Background

Sea level change (SLC) is the preferred description of what takes place when ice sheets melt.

Sea level rise does not completely nor sufficiently describe the process.

Several posts have pointed this out (Peak Sea Level - 2, Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization - 5, Sea Level Fall: The Forgotten Aspect of Sea Level Rise?).

II. The Process

The graphic, Fig. 1, depicts three generalized phases of ice sheet melt, as well as the resulting impact which the meltwater, or ice bergs flowing into the sea, have on sea level.

Fig. 2 Newton's Law of Gravity

The color cyan represents the ice sheet mass, the color brown represents the land mass above and below sea level, and the color blue represents the ocean.

Fig. 2 depicts gravitational force which the ice mass, m₁, exerts on the sea water, m₂, around it.

The distance, d, between the centers of those two masses stays the same for the purpose of this process, but in general the greater the distance between the two masses, the weaker the force of gravity is.

As the ice melts or calves into the sea, m₁ (ice mass) decreases, so the gravitational force exerted on the sea water, m₂, weakens to the degree that the ice sheet's mass effectively disappears into the sea.

The sea level near the continent, therefore, falls to the degree that the ice sheet melts or calves into the sea, thereby causing m₁ to decrease.

A. Phase I

In Phase 1, area "C" represents the Peak Sea Level near the continent upon which the ice sheet rests (e.g. Greenland or Antarctica).

The higher sea level near the continent is caused by the gravity associated with the ice sheet's mass, which exerts a force, a pull if you will, on the ocean water.

Area "B" is at the maximum distance, d, upon which the ice mass, m₁, can exert gravitational influence on the sea water.

Area "A" is: the sea level that is unaffected by the gravitational pull of the ice sheet, but nevertheless is impacted by the increased quantity of water that has ended up in the sea as the ice sheet melts or calves off the continent.

B. Phase 2

In Phase 2, area "C" represents the Lowered Sea Level near the continent upon which the ice sheet rests (Greenland or Antarctica).

The lower sea level near the continent is caused by the decreased gravity associated with the ice sheet mass, which eventually exerts no more force or pull on the ocean.

In this phase the continent is still deformed from the past ice sheet's weight that had deformed the land before the ice sheet melted (a small amount of ice and/or meltwater is still in the deformed area because it can't slide up hill over the edge). 

Area "B" is the at the maximum distance, d, upon which the ice mass, m₁, once exerted gravitational influence on the sea water, m₂.

Area "A" is: a) where the sea water ends up after being released from the gravitational pull of the ice sheet, as the ice sheet melts and its gravity therefore weakens; and b) where axial relocation and rotational forces of the Earth finally focus the sea level rise.

C. Phase 3

In Phase 3, area "C" represents the Lowest Sea Level near the continent upon which the ice sheet once rested (Greenland or Antarctica).

The lowest sea level near the continent is caused by the additional apparent sea level fall, now due primarily to the uplifting of the continent where the deformity had been.

Any ice or meltwater residue, which remained in the deformity, has now also been emptied into the sea.

Area "B" is where the lowered sea level now ends, and where the sea level begins to incrementally rise, because the melted ice sheet is now sea water.

Area "A" is: a) where the sea level rise ends up, after it has been released from the gravitational pull of the ice sheet;  and b) where axial relocation and rotational forces of the Earth focus the sea level rise incrementally, until it reaches its maximum level.

D. Lunar Gravity Induced SLC

Even though the gravitational power of the Moon is far greater than the gravitational power

Fig. 3 Lunar SLC

of an ice sheet, the impact on sea level is still a normal, everyday event along sea shores.

The graphic, Fig. 3, from Wikipedia, shows how the moon's gravity constantly causes mobile SLC on the oceans of the Earth.

Ice sheet gravity is the same force described by the same law of gravity (Fig. 2), but with weaker force.

The Moon causes high tide, however, the magnitude of that high tide, the high tide mark put on the beach, is altered by ice sheet gravity near the continent, and also altered away from the continent (area "A") by ice sheet melt-water that increases the water volume and level of the sea.

You might consider that several disciplines are involved, when comprehending both lunar and global warming induced SLC dynamics.

I am in reference to disciplines such as astronomy, astrophysics, oceanography, and climatology.

Climate scientists, oceanographers, and others, can benefit from interdisciplinary conferences, and the like, which can involve relevant scientific material that they might not otherwise consider (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 47).

III. How SLC Looks on a Map of The Earth

The video at the bottom of this post features Professor Jerry Mitrovica, Harvard University, talking about interdisciplinary perspectives, or the lack thereof, as a source of improper factor exclusion.

Fig. 4 SLC @ Greenland

For example, astronomers ordinarily consider the effect of gravity on SLC, but climate scientists ordinarily consider melting ice sheets as the cause of SLC.

When the two disciplines merge in a global warming induced climate change scenario, each discipline benefits by comparing notes on the interdisciplinary issues.

The graphic Fig. 4 was presented in one such interdisciplinary conference where the video at the bottom of this post was made.

Fig. 5 SLC @ Antarctica (see video)

The same is true for Fig. 5. 

They both show ice sheet gravity induced SLC.

Neither case is caused by the Moon's gravity.

Ice sheet gravity is every bit as critical to understanding global warming induced SLC, as lunar gravity is to understanding tidal SLC.

Both instances of the power of gravity are important to consider, because civilization cannot prepare for SLC without considering both sea level fall and sea level rise.

IV. Conclusion

Since international intercourse, in the form of sea based export and import trade and commerce, in all manner of goods, is a fundamental infrastructure of current civilization, we must consider the gravity of SLC on sea ports.

The links furnished in Section I of this post are good places to begin to comprehend the unexpected magnitude of the subject of endangered sea ports.

There are severe implications associated with facing the gravity of SLC.

The next post in this series is here.

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Professor Jerry Mitrovica, Harvard University:

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Wanted: Technology To Save Our Species - 2

We got this ..

The problem with this notion of "technology to save us" is that it is the technology of Petroleum Civilization that has caused our problems.

Petroleum addiction is the fundamental source of problems which have now put civilization on suicide watch (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4).

This is a report from AMEG:

AMEG’s Declaration

Governments must get a grip on a situation which IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has ignored. A strategy of mitigation and adaptation is doomed to fail. It will be impossible to adapt to the worst consequences of global warming, as IPCC suggests.

The Arctic must be cooled, ASAP, to prevent the sea ice disappearing with disastrous global consequences. Rapid warming in the Arctic, as sea ice retreats, has already disrupted the jet stream. The resulting escalation in weather extremes is causing a food crisis which must be addressed before the existing conflicts in Asia and Africa spread more widely.

Dangerous global warming and ocean acidification must be prevented by reducing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, especially by improved agricultural practice, thereby addressing the food crisis at the same time.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for international collaboration for common purpose.

(AMEG Declaration). Following are some other links and stuff you may find interesting:

Quantum Vacuum Engine

World Economic Forum Report - 2013

You are A Guinea Pig

Geoengineering Watch

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and finally, Dr. Guy McPherson:

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A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar

The concept of axial precession

Only one calendar I know of synchronizes with the Earth's axial precession.

The graphic to the left depicts that phenomenon, described as "Precessional movement of the Earth. The Earth rotates (white arrows) once a day about its axis of rotation (red). This axis itself rotates slowly (white circle), completing a rotation in approximately 26,000 years" (ibid).

The phenomena of axial precession and axial tilt are important for civilizations to take into consideration in their long range planning.

Or for that matter any planning that is based on ecological / environmental phenomena that have a meaningful impact on civilization.

One calendar that does so is the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar since it has a method of synchronizing with axial precession as follows:

1 Day = Kin (keen)
20 Kin  = 1 Uinal (a.k.a. Winal)
360 Kin or 18 Uinals = 1 Tun (toon)
20 Tuns = 1 K’atun (k’a toon)
20 K`atuns or 400 Tuns = 1 Baktun (backtoon)

13 Baktuns or 5,200 Tuns = 1 Great Cycle
5 Great Cycles  = 26,000 Tuns (~26,000 yr. axial precession)

(see e.g. Mayan Long Count, and Mesoamerican Long Count). We can calculate how close the Long Count Calendar is to the axial precession cycle:

Earth's axial precession = 25,771 years
26,000 Tun * 360 Kin per Tun / 365.25 solar days = ~25,626 years
25,771 years - 25,626 years = 145 years (axial precession variation)
145 is ~0.56% of 25,771 (very slight degree of variation)

(see e.g. Precession of the Equinox). Therefore, the 26,000 Tun figure is within about a half of one percent of being equal to one complete cycle of the Earth's axial precession as calculated by other astronomical means (we don't know which of the two is more accurate, but a ~0.56% variance between the two is not significant).

[Note that current calendars of civilization do not even take axial precession into consideration at all.]

Another factor of the Long Count Calendar is that "Thirteen b’ak’tuns made up a Great Cycle, which adds up to 5,200 tuns" (Mayan Calendar Portal).

So much was falsely made about a "Mayan apocalypse" on December 21, 2012, because it was the end of a 5,200 Tun Great Cycle (the next Great Cycle of 5,200 Tuns began on the next day, December 22, 2012).

Anyway, that Great Cycle concept is an additional helpful factor because the 26,000 Tun cycle is segmented into five Great Cycles of 5,200 Tun each (5,200 x 5 = 26,000).

Since five Great Cycles make up one 26,000 Tun cycle, and that relates to one cycle of the axial precession of the Earth, we can segment the cycle of axial precession into five segments or sections of time using The Long Calendar.

Why does any of this matter, and what does it have to do with a good or bad calendar, in terms of long range planning by civilizations?

The first factor to consider is the axial tilt:

The Earth's axis remains tilted in the same direction with reference to the background stars throughout a year (throughout its entire orbit).

This means that one pole (and the associated hemisphere of the Earth) will be directed away from the Sun at one side of the orbit, and half an orbit later (half a year later) this pole will be directed towards the Sun.

This is the cause of the Earth's seasons.

(Wikipedia, Axial Tilt). Next consider what happens when the axial tilt rotates during the cycle of axial precession:

Variations in Earth's axial tilt can influence the seasons and is likely a factor in long-term [non-anthropogenic] climate change.

(ibid). Thus, the Long Range Calendar would divide the 26,000 Tuns into five segments of 5,200 Tuns each, which would give such a calendar the utility to help civilizations determine when and how ecocosmological climate change, i.e., natural cosmic climate change would take place in the different hemispheres of the Earth.

Why is that important?

Because it would tell, among other things, when polar ice caps would naturally melt to cause natural sea level rise that would flood coastal areas, when the poles would naturally ice-over to again cause natural sea level drop once again, how the flora and fauna would begin to adapt as those climate changes gently and slowly began to take place, as well as many other fundamental things civilizations need to know to happily survive on a planet like the Earth (see e.g. this and this).

Wise civilizations would use a long term calendar for long term planning in terms of zoning, when and where to build, when and where not to build, how to build for the current and next cycle, and therefore how to avoid a lot of waste, destruction, loss of life, as well as avoiding great, unnecessary expense.

[This all assumes that any Earth civilizations would not cause anthropogenic global warming induced climate change, as current civilization already has done, to a very reasonably predictable Earth environment.]

In closing, let me say that that this post emphasizes the utility of the Mesoamerican Long Calendar, but more than that, it makes it obvious how unwise the current civilization is to always assume that older nations, peoples, and eras were inferior to us in wisdom, vision, and intelligence.

The next post in this series is here.

Video shows ~26,000 Tun / Year axial procession cycle:

Solar Power Even At Night

Liquid salt, it turns out, has some interesting applications in the field of energy power plants.

Today, lets look at two methods that use liquid salt.

The first one is a solar thermal power plant in Spain, a power plant that gets around one weakness of solar power, which is, that the Sun is not always visible due to weather, and it is not available at night.

There is a salty solution to that problem:

"It is the first station in the world that works 24 hours a day, a solar power station that works day and night!" said Santago Arias, technical director of Torresol Energy, which runs the station.

The mechanism is "very easy to explain," he said: the panels reflect the suns rays on to the tower, transmitting energy at an intensity 1,000 times higher than that of the sun's rays reaching the earth.

Energy is stored in a vat filled with molten salts at a temperature of more than 500 degrees C (930 F). Those salts are used to produce steam to turn the turbines and produce electricity.

It is the station's capacity to store energy that makes Gemasolar so different because it allows the plant to transmit power during the night, relying on energy it has accumulated during the day.

"I use that energy as I see fit, and not as the sun dictates," Arias explained.

(Solar Power Even At Night).Imagine a smart power grid built with these liquid salt storage facilities all along it.

As power needs fluctuate downward, energy going into the grid, whether solar thermal, solar photo-voltaic, wind, and other methods, is stored for later use when the fluctuation goes upward again.

Another place liquid salt is used for power generation has been around for quite a while.

The administrator of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, top physicist Alvin M. Weinberg, wanted a Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor (MSR), but was fired by Nixon for advocating MSR.

The following video describes MSR:

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update:

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A Cold Fusion Plant Is Being Tested

From time to time we take a look at new, hopeful forms of energy solutions that may become viable.

For a concrete in-the-now example see A Methanol Economy Way Out Of Here, or for a futuristic example see Nanoengines For Spacecraft?

Across the pond in Europe, specifically Italy, a test is taking place on a new energy system based on what some are calling "cold fusion" while others call it an "E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) device".

The test is described as:

For the next few days, PES will be scanning the net to bring you the latest and most up-to-date information about the important October 28 test of the 1 megawatt E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) device, taking place in Italy. PESN's founder, Sterling D. Allan, will be in attendance at the private event. Keep checking this page for the latest news and updates!

(Pure Energy Systems). Others describe it as a scam, or just another event in the relentless pursuit of magic energy:

I’m going to go out on a limb here with a prediction. The energy world will look exactly the same the day after October 28th, 2011, as it did yesterday. Why? On October 28th we’re expecting a public demonstration of a “revolutionary” new energy device in Bologna, Italy. The magic technology? Another too-cheap-to-meter construct called the “e-cat” machine invented and promoted by Italian Andrea Rossi. Cold fusion … again, but with an updated label; Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction. Will it change the world? No. Will it work? Doubt it.

(Forbes). The Forbes author then goes on to say purchase oil stock and keep focused, steady as she goes, on the status quo.

Thus, it is unlikely that the oil wars are going to be replaced with an era of peace any time soon.

Evidently the test did well enough to satisfy the customer:

"Q&A just finished; reading of results; 470 kW maintained continuously during self-sustain; customer satisfied; sale made; more later."

(Twitter). Will check up on this to try to verify it in the days ahead.

The Rebel Orbits of the Rebel Planets

When are the stars and planets going to conform to the law passed by human governments?

Or conform to the doctrine of human science?

Funny questions, but governments seem to think that their laws are more important than the actual laws of the cosmos it sometimes seems.

The universe does not change when we pass environmental laws or when we make doctrinal declarations about this or that cosmic reality.

That applies to our sense of cosmology, our hypothetical sense of the cosmos, and our theoretical sense of the cosmos, taught in the state universities.

Yes, the state has an approved dogma for you and I to learn, which they call "education", but some scholars have a different name for it:

And, of course, there are power systems in place to facilitate this. Throughout history it's been mostly the property holders or the educated classes who've tended to support power systems. And that's a large part of what I think education is — it's a form of indoctrination. You have to reconstruct a picture of the world in order to be conducive to the interests and concerns of the educated classes, and this involves a lot of self-deceit.

(Noam Chomsky, emphasis added). Another scholar, a noted physicist, uses similar language to point out his belief that much of "advanced" scientific theory is nothing more than fantasy:

Quantum mechanics is an incredible theory that explains all sorts of things that couldn’t be explained before, starting with the stability of atoms. But when you accept the weirdness of quantum mechanics [in the macro world], you have to give up the idea of space-time as we know it from Einstein. The greatest weirdness here is that it [quantum mechanics] doesn’t make sense. If you follow the rules, you come up with something that just isn’t right.

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The [new Penrose] book is called Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe. Each of those words stands for a major theoretical physics idea. The fashion is string theory; the fantasy has to do with various cosmological schemes, mainly inflationary cosmology [which suggests that the universe inflated exponentially within a small fraction of a second after the Big Bang]. Big fish, those things are. It’s almost sacrilegious to attack them. And the other one, even more sacrilegious, is quantum mechanics at all levels—so that’s the faith. People somehow got the view that you really can’t question it.

(The Memes of Penrose, see Discover). In general these scholars point out that you are judged by how well you learn their scientific dogma, not on how well you learn how to think or apply rigorous scientific processes.

Thus, after all your hard work to memorize doctrine and dogma, every once in awhile you get blind sided with some new information, new data, or new experimental results that give you reason to throw out the window some of the textbooks you memorized from:

Planets are thought to form in the disc of gas and dust encircling a young star. This proto-planetary disc rotates in the same direction as the star itself, and up to now it was expected that planets that form from the disc would all orbit in more or less the same plane, and that they would move along their orbits in the same direction as the star's rotation.

...

They even found that six exoplanets in this extended study (of which two are new discoveries) have retrograde motion: they orbit their star in the "wrong" direction.

"The new results really challenge the conventional wisdom that planets should always orbit in the same direction as their stars spin," says Andrew Cameron of the University of St Andrews, who presented the new results at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM2010) in Glasgow this week.

(Turning Planetary Theory Upside Down). That is the way it has been for decade upon decade, however, that is not what scientists tend to feel, because they actually have made a faith out of portions of what they call science.

Tyranny Of Dogma In Science

The common public relations front which scientists naturally like to put out there for all to see is that they are not like the political world, the religious world, or any other world that uses dogma in place of method.

There are those who set forth a lot of documentation to counter that notion, and to point out that it is a myth:

"Textbooks present science as a noble search for truth, in which progress depends on questioning established ideas. But for many scientists, this is a cruel myth. They know from bitter experience that disagreeing with the dominant view is dangerous - especially when that view is backed by powerful interest groups. Call it suppression of intellectual dissent. The usual pattern is that someone does research or speaks out in a way that threatens a powerful interest group, typically a government, industry or professional body. As a result, representatives of that group attack the critic's ideas or the critic personally-by censoring writing, blocking publications, denying appointments or promotions, withdrawing research grants, taking legal actions, harassing, blacklisting, spreading rumors."

(The Suppression of Inconvenient Facts). It would be one thing if our science had a track record of always being correct, never having to change fundamental doctrines or theories, but that is far from the case.

The case is that fundamental scientific dogma changes, and it seems that yet another dogma has bitten the dust:

A temple complex in turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution ...

The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford's archeology program. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: "Many people think that it changes everything … It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong."

(Newsweek, see video below). This is another one of those situations we are constantly pointing out.

We caution the scientific world that it has no business whatsoever denigrating people or ideas contrary to current dogma.

It is time for us to start recognizing how primitive our science is, instead of how enlightened it is, so that we can get where we must to avoid extinction.

Cassini Stays At Saturn Until 2017

A very successful NASA mission, Cassini, has been given many more orbits of the gas giant Saturn.

It is a multi-national effort:

"The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL".

(Cassini, NASA). We have covered some of the mind boggling, beautiful, mysterious, and even uncanny developments during the years of the mission.

Space travel, competent space travel that is, is a must it seems for the survival of the human species.

Competent space travel means we lose the loser rocket science we use today, and develop a new physics for new technology to replace this ancient form of propulsion.

One major accomplishment, here on earth, of the mission is that nations worked together to improve our global understanding of our solar system.

Natural Terrorism v Human Terrorism

Sorry if I offend naturalists with the term "natural terrorism".

But the facts which compose reality are not our own.

We can have our own version which we call opinion, but the actual facts are not personal, they are global and therefore belong to none of us personally, but to all of us collectively.

What brings this post up is the ongoing earthquake disaster in Haiti, the great earthquake & tsunami of 2004 in the Indian Ocean, and an email I received from some mystics about the word "eco-cosmology".

The gentleman who emailed me wondered why I did not mention the word "eco-cosmology" as being his creation since he brought it up in a chapter in a book he wrote some decades ago, where his primary focus was eco-philosophy, eco-theology, and the like.

I explained that this blog is "ecocosmology" not "eco-cosmology", then offered to let him write a post here, or I would write one about his blog, or whatever.

In the mean time I put a link to his blog on the blog list here, thinking that would be a compliment in the mean time.

For whatever reason he did not want a link to his site from this blog, and curtly severed the conversation.

One of the statements on his blog is "the cosmos is all light" or something toward a fuzzy feeling effect.

My take on this is that science offends some mystics, and some of the valid mysticism offends some scientists.

Nevertheless, I can't bother myself with the hurt feelings of others, but if they can prove or disprove some aspect of science or mysticism that is fine with me.

But hurt feelings or opinionated offence will not dissuade me from seeking the facts that are not mine personally, but belong to us all.

With that in mind, I advance the notion that terrorism is a natural phenomenon in this galaxy.

It wasn't all love and light that brought the tsunami disaster or the Haiti disaster was it?

It was natural terrorism.

People were killed, maimed, and destroyed.

People were terrified, which is pure natural terrorism.

When people do that to other people it is human terrorism.

All terrorism is "bad", but some of it is natural bad, some is human bad.

The tenets of Ecocosmology point out that the Sun, at some point, will become a terrorist, destroy every living thing on this planet, then destroy the planet itself.

You can call that light and get all warm and fuzzy with it if you want to, but I call it natural, cosmic terrorism.

If our solar and stellar science is correct stars support life for a span of time, but then they take it all back ... UNLESS ... we become cosmic adults.

This blog takes the position that we become cosmic adults via the developments of memetic evolution, not biological evolution.

We evolve our cosmic ability by working together toward developing competent technology for our collective good, rather than killing each other off, killing the ecosystem of this planet, thereby becoming unfit to survive in this cosmos.

The war on terrorism must be a cosmic effort against natural, cosmic terrorism as well as our human habit of depraved terrorism of various and sundry sorts.

The tenets of Ecocosmology point out that we can become fit, we can survive natural terrorism, if we first rid ourselves of human terrorism.

P.S. The photo at the top of this post is from Los Alamos National Laboratory reflecting, in part, the nature of our terror based technology today.

The military has control of the development of technology so we use primitive rocket science, mainly focused on delivering terror on this planet in the form of WMD.

The definition of "terror" is:

ter⋅ror –noun

1. intense, sharp, overmastering fear ...

2. an instance or cause of intense fear or anxiety; quality of causing terror ...

3. any period of frightful violence or bloodshed ...

4. violence or threats of violence used for intimidation or coercion; terrorism.

(Dictionary). The definition of "ism" is:

ism –noun

a distinctive doctrine, theory, system, or practice

(Dictionary). It would seem, then, that a natural action which causes terror fits the mold of this post because we are talking about a solar system wherein terror occurs.

Terror is a matter of degree of fear, it is extreme fear, and need not be caused by humans to have the effect of terrorism.

But either way, terror is not good so neither is terrorism, no matter what the source.

A Lovely Planet In The Neighborhood?

Upton Sinclair is said to have made a very lasting observation concerning an aspect of the nature of humanity: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it".

Scientists are paid salaries, which seems to make them very energetic in the direction all about what they "should" be all about:

The extrasolar planet, now named GJ 1214b, is about 40 light-years away.

It orbits a red dwarf star.

It is the only known "Super-Earth" exoplanet — worlds that have masses between Earth and Neptune — with a confirmed atmosphere.

"Astronomically speaking, this [planet] is on our block," meaning it's in our cosmic neighborhood, said study leader David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Mass. "For perspective, our own TV signals have already passed beyond the distance of this star."

(Space). Sometimes "astronomically speaking" is misleading, but for the most part it is probably just a bad habit.

For example, our B.C.E. technology (burning chemicals to produce thrust in rockets) which we fondly call rocket science, is not going to get us to the part of "the block" where the "near" star with planet GJ-1214b is.

Light travels at about 670,618,800 miles an hour (186,283 miles per second x 60 x 60) or 5,878,644,400,800 per year (670,618,800 x 24 x 365.25).

A planet orbiting a star 40 "light years" away, then, is 235,145,776,032,000 (5,878,644,400,800 x 40) miles away.

Our spacecraft Voyager I and II travel at about 38,000 miles per hour, or 333,108,000 miles a year (38,000 x 24 x 365.25).

So it would take them 705,914.53 years (235,145,776,032,000 / 333,108,000), one way, to get to that planet salaried scientists say is "on our block".

Many scientists' salaries come from military sources in the Pentagon budget.

The military scientists are only concerned with being able to destroy things on the earth, so "rocket science" is the apex of their intellect.

If a new discovery kills better than the last one, they will love it.

The scientist whose salary must depend on our use of current military rocket science, which is based on principles of technology developed thousands of years ago, is literally involved in a dead end endeavor in more ways than one.

This "rocket science" is not what I call modern, nor is it compliant with the tenets of ecocosmology, because we will cease to exist as a species unless we develop competent space travel technology.
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For those who think I might have been a bit hard on the boys, note that my speed calculations were liberal.

That is, the speed I gave as the probable speed for current space craft was probably a bit more than the speed at which they really travel.

I came across an article quoting salaried scientists who did some of that "astronomy speak" I mentioned above.

Notice the way speed is portrayed:

The spacecraft is just a little past the midpoint between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, and is speeding toward Pluto at a speed of about 750,000 miles (1.2 million km) per day.

(Speedy Spacecraft Now Halfway to Pluto). The rub comes when you calculate the miles per hour of the vehicle (750,000 / 24) which comes out to 31,250.

I had given them a speed of 38,000 miles per hour in the calculation that it would take us 705,914.53 years to get to a star "on our block".

The "Speedy Spacecraft" would take longer than that at 31,250 so note that I was giving the salaried scientists, who tend to bloviate sometimes, the benefit of the doubt.

The next post in this series is here.

The Mother of All Memes

The graphic to the left shows The Mother of All Memes without her clothes on or with her clothes on, depending on which scientists you are prone to believe.

One would think that her children, poor little ole memes, could have a life of their own free from the tugs, pushes, and pulls of the gravity of scientific bloviation, hypothecation, and even pontification.

But not so, alas, all things are within the grasp of scientific thought-gravity so each and every lowly meme is pulled and tugged asunder, abroad, to, fro, ever looking for a home but always a captive somewhere somehow.

The tug of war begins between the competing camps concerning the likely mother of all memes, the mind and/or the brain.

That old tug of war started by the philosophers, but now pumped up with cosmic steroids by the quantum mechanics, those meme bags even Mr. Goodwrench bows down to.

In the beginning (cool meme huh?) there was dualism and monism gravity which pulled folks into the belief that mind is a non-physical component on the one hand, but pulled folks into the belief that mind is the result of purely material processes of the physical brain on the other hand:

Philosophy of mind is a branch of modern analytic philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e. the relationship of the mind to the body, is commonly seen as the central issue in philosophy of mind, although there are other issues concerning the nature of the mind that do not involve its relation to the physical body.

(Philosophy of Mind). Well now doesn't that make a meme a bit insecure, in as much as every meme has been told that it is:

a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena

(Wikipedia, Meme). One of the scientists, a meme maker of cosmic proportions in terms of causing gastric pains to the establishment scientists, one Roger Penrose, is constantly causing memetic gamma ray wars between factions within the 100 year meme war community.

He is a master at hiding from both sides of the meme grabbers, so he postulates that:

In my view the conscious brain does not act according to classical physics. It doesn’t even act according to conventional quantum mechanics. It acts according to a theory we don’t yet have.

(Discover, emphasis added). Oh my the man is saying we have had 100 years of psychotherapy but we do not know fundamentally what we are talking about?

The memes are shuddering. No, he is saying we work on faith in science some times. His new book deals with the faith of science and will ruffle feathers.

But he is saying we don't know how the mind works at the fundamental level, so we activate our science based upon what the mind does, not on what the mind is.

That is why this blog calls for a new approach based upon what the human species needs to do in order to survive, not what we need to do just to win silly arguments.

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.

Mystery of Special Relativity Narrowed

Some of the theories of quantum gravity have been discredited.

But not all of them have been, so the study goes on.

Scientists came up with a notion to look at photons that were about 7 billion years old, having left a galaxy that many years ago at about the same time.

They wanted to see if they travelled at the same speed:

This strategy led Guiriec and his collaborators to examine photons generated by a gamma-ray burst that erupted in a galaxy 7.3 billion light-years from Earth. Recorded by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on May 10, 2009, the burst produced an assortment of gamma-ray photons, including one with an energy of 31 billion electron-volts — about 13 billion times the energy of visible light — and another photon about one-tenth as energetic.

Although the two photons had significantly different energies and journeyed for more than 7 billion light-years, they arrived at the Fermi telescope less than nine-tenths of a second apart. That tiny time difference means that these photons traveled at almost exactly the same speed, just one part in 100 million billion apart, notes study coauthor Peter Michelson of Stanford University. That difference is small enough to suggest that the speed of light is constant regardless of the energy of the photon. The finding therefore rules out any theory of quantum gravity that predicts a large energy-dependent change in velocity, he adds.

(Science News). We had posted an article discussing one of the quantum gravity hypotheses which talked about the Lorentz invariance which allows that gravity can exceed the speed of light:

Although faster-than-light force propagation speeds do violate Einstein special relativity (SR), they are in accord with Lorentzian relativity, which has never been experimentally distinguished from SR — at least, not in favor of SR. Indeed, far from upsetting much of current physics, the main changes induced by this new perspective are beneficial to areas where physics has been struggling, such as explaining experimental evidence for non-locality in quantum physics, the dark matter issue in cosmology, and the possible unification of forces.

(Gravitate Towards Light Speed). While the gamma ray photon experiment mentioned in the Science News article, linked to above, does clearly support the notion of photons travelling at the uniform speed of light, it still does not answer the question of whether or not the speed of gravity can exceed the speed of light.

Wanted: Technology To Save Our Species

When "you" discover that the Sun will destroy you at an unknown time in the future unless you move somewhere else, some people will say "lets talk about that somewhere else and how to get there fast", and some people will say "why worry about that now".

This says a lot:

... the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which has been traveling outward from the Sun for 31 years ... launched in 1977, is moving at a speed of 38,000 miles an hour. Even at this considerable speed, the spacecraft will still take 30,000 years to reach a distance equal to that of the nearest star.

(Science Daily). The nearest star is only 4.2 light years away, has no habitable planets around it, and it would take "30,000 years" [74,000 years by other calculations] to travel there. We have trouble travelling a few days to the moon and setting up a colony (it hasn't been done BTW).

Thus, our current technology does not allow us to find another habitable planet and colonize it, which we must do in order to avoid extinction as a species (because our star is going to disintegrate us along with all the inner planets out to Mars).

The NASA Kepler mission is looking for habitable planets or habitable moons of planets in the 50-500 light year range. You know, up to a million years of travel for Voyager 1 & 2 type space vehicles (see Tenet 3(b) basics).

Anyone ready to drop the silly fossil fuel technology and the song "Fly Me To The Moon", and get serious about developing the new physics?

Gravitate Towards Light Speed?

A well known scientist, known for, among other things, his willingness to question the status quo, said before his death this January:

Such a change of perspective requires no change in the assumed character of gravitational radiation or its lightspeed propagation. Although faster-than-light force propagation speeds do violate Einstein special relativity (SR), they are in accord with Lorentzian relativity, which has never been experimentally distinguished from SR — at least, not in favor of SR. Indeed, far from upsetting much of current physics, the main changes induced by this new perspective are beneficial to areas where physics has been struggling, such as explaining experimental evidence for non-locality in quantum physics, the dark matter issue in cosmology, and the possible unification of forces. Recognition of a faster-than-lightspeed propagation of gravity, as indicated by all existing experimental evidence, may be the key to taking conventional physics to the next plateau.

(Tom Van Flandern, Meta Research). Yes, taking physics to the next plateau is a noble purpose indeed, and it must be done if humanity is to exist long term in this cosmos.

One of the tenets of Ecocosmology is that species like ourselves who live on planets near central stars must develop physics, technology, and spacecraft that can attain light speed or near it, or morph into species which do not need to live on habitable planets near central stars.

And like Van Flandern pointed out, it has been pointed out on this blog that our current physics must reach another plateau, free from some of its current impairments, if we are to move to a new habitable planet near a central star.

Perhaps the breakthrough will come during the study of gravity which we really still know little about, compared to what we need to know.

Fuse Tautologies & Algebra For Gödel

It may be possible to salvage the flaws in Algebraic equations alleged by Gödel, Turing, and Penrose.

I am thinking of trying it by way of fusing equations to the logical tautologies (of symbolic logic) any time such binding would be required to avoid a contradiction, or to certify an argument (after all, even Isabelle is a step in that direction).

What "flaws" one might ask? Those pointed out by Gödel in his two theorems, and proven in 1931:

First: "Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory."

Second: "For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, T includes a statement of its own consistency if and only if T is inconsistent."

(Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems). This whole issue is brought up in the context of Tenet 3(b), which indicates that in order to survive in this cosmos, species who live on habitable planets near central stars must develop spacecraft that can travel at or near the speed of light.

Currently we cannot travel at the speed of light, or even anywhere near that speed, even though it will be required for our species to survive in this cosmos according to Tenet 3(b). Maybe understanding the nature of gravity will be a solution.

Light travels at about 670,618,800 miles an hour (186,283 miles per second x 60 x 60), but our spacecraft at optimum speed (helped by gravity, not simply pushed by their own engines) get about 30,000 or so miles per hour.

Thus light travels about 22,354 times faster than our spacecraft do. For each light-year a distant habitable planet is from us, it will take us about 22,354 years, at our current "speed", to get there.

A planet at 50 light years distance from us would take us about a million years of travel to reach.

Kepler is looking for habitable orbs "up to 500 light-years away from the Sun".

Do you get my drift? If not, you will not need to worry about it.

Thus, "a new physics" (better understanding and better technology) will be required for our species to survive the cosmos we live in.

That new physics must be better than our current physics, which is based upon flawed formal equations, and that new physics must be safe at any speed.

Ladies and gentlemen, create then start your engines.

High Technology Boll Weevil

Here it is, a NASA photo from the newly repaired space telescope in the famous Hubble Mission everyone is once again excited about.

It is a photo of deep space beauty in an area of the cosmos NASA describes as:

"NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped this panoramic view of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster.

The image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million stars. Globular clusters, ancient swarms of stars united by gravity, are the homesteaders of our Milky Way galaxy. The stars in Omega Centauri are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old. The cluster lies about 16,000 light-years from Earth."

(NASA Hubble). That "16,000" figure is how long it takes light to travel from Omega Centauri to us, so the photo actually depicts what Omega Centauri looked like 16,000 years ago.

I have always considered it interesting that our modern cosmological dogma, for the most part, is based on what the cosmos looked like well before human civilization existed, and in some cases even before the human species ever existed.

Anyway, do you remember the song Woody Guthrie, and other folk singers, sang about the Boll Weevil looking for a home?

Let me tell you that Omega Centauri is out of reach for any Earth species looking for a home; even though, in the long run, according to the tenets of Ecocosmology, we are like the Boll Weevil, and must find another solar system with a home world, another habitable planet, for the human species to live on.

To be sure, it will not be Omega Centauri that we migrate to first, even though it has millions of stars and probably thousands of potential home worlds.

We will not migrate there first because it is way, way out of our range. Even if we travel at the speed of light, it would take us 16,000 years one way.

We must focus on another NASA project, The Kepler Mission, to potentially realize our hopes as a species needing a new home world.

The maximum stellar distance criterion in that mission is about 500 light years, which compared to the 16,000 in Omega Centauri, leaves a 15,500 light year difference.

Hey, read this closely and stay in awe, because we live in a very large neighborhood:

A planet at 50 light years distance from us would take us about a million years of travel to reach.

(Fuse Tautologies & Algebra). That is how long it would take unless we develop a new physics, then the science to develop speeds required by Tenet 3(b), which is at or near the speed of light.

We can learn from the cat species and hang in there hoping beyond hope, because there is a chance we will survive too.