The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

[Jundo]

PS - About a year ago, Sekishi (with his son, Owen) fed everything I have ever said at Treeleaf into a neural network algorithm for a "Virtual Jundo (VJ)". They asked virtual me, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?," to which VJ wisely responded (here is a small taste) ...

Actually, it is actually a passive ‘handclapping;' FOLKS! :shock:

The question is about the Apart one, started on the 22nd of the month ...

... 'Mindra Yamana Moving , performed by Rohatsu 'Marx' Barzani Jundo, appeared in the book lists of chapters grant by Angaku Roshi, student of Buddhism period together with Gajin Ramachandran.'

I feel most rightly that although Brahma may have been in such a position when these claims are made, it still stands as an empty, silent place ... a place through which so many things are born, when this form becomes trying to find itself alive. In other words, Shikantaza is made of various elements named by Memorial Priests, and apart from a few pieces like Expia Ikku and the like, it might get not all that much told as a plot attachment, which is all that is actually there....

... To be honest, the Shikantaza "Gassho, Heart Sutra/Shambhala" passage we are looking at is something of a classic Roshi story (Gassho) ...

Sangha Mind Throws A Darkness Apart, compares

No wiser words were ever spoken by me.

(Sorry, VJ's post ran long)

[Amelia]

I am interested in trying Chocolate Chicken Chicken Cake...

Gassho
Sat today, lah

[Jundo]

Here, let me explain the complicated physics here to everyone: When a black hole crashes into a black hole ... ya get a REALLY BIG black hole!

Largest black hole collision ever detected

Seven billion years ago, two truly huge black holes slammed together and formed one 142 times the mass of the sun.

Seven billion years ago, two large black holes crashed together and formed a massive new one. It is the largest black hole collision ever detected in space, and the new black hole formed in the crash is the largest of its kind ever detected. It's so large, in fact, that physicists weren't sure it could exist at all.

The ripples from that collision reached the two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors in the U.S. and another in Italy called on May 21, 2019, after traveling through space for 2.5 billion years longer than the sun has existed. Those ripples revealed signatures of the merger of at least two black holes — one a black hole 85 times the mass of the sun and one 66 times the sun’s mass. When they collided, they formed a black hole 142 times the mass of the sun. The missing nine suns’ worth of matter got converted into energy in the collision, shaking the universe hard enough for LIGO and Virgo to detect and interpret. And that's how scientists learned that 85 solar mass black holes and monster 142 solar mass black holes can exist at all.

https://www.livescience.com/super-bi...ole-crash.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

And I usually don't post Covid-19 stories, but the science on this one is pretty amazing ... if it proves out in later testing!

The medical/biology journal printing the report (eLife) is reputable and respected, but nothing for sure pending later controlled testing and confirmation!!

A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 — and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged
A closer look at the Bradykinin hypothesis


Earlier this summer, the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee set about crunching data on more than 40,000 genes from 17,000 genetic samples in an effort to better understand Covid-19. Summit is the second-fastest computer in the world, but the process — which involved analyzing 2.5 billion genetic combinations — still took more than a week.

When Summit was done, researchers analyzed the results. It was, in the words of Dr. Daniel Jacobson, lead researcher and chief scientist for computational systems biology at Oak Ridge, a “eureka moment.” The computer had revealed a new theory about how Covid-19 impacts the body: the bradykinin hypothesis. The hypothesis provides a model that explains many aspects of Covid-19, including some of its most bizarre symptoms. It also suggests 10-plus potential treatments, many of which are already FDA approved. Jacobson’s group published their results in a paper in the journal eLife in early July.

According to the team’s findings, a Covid-19 infection generally begins when the virus enters the body through ACE2 receptors in the nose, (The receptors, which the virus is known to target, are abundant there.) The virus then proceeds through the body, entering cells in other places where ACE2 is also present: the intestines, kidneys, and heart. This likely accounts for at least some of the disease’s cardiac and GI symptoms.

... The renin–angiotensin system (RAS) controls many aspects of the circulatory system, including the body’s levels of a chemical called bradykinin, which normally helps to regulate blood pressure. According to the team’s analysis, when the virus tweaks the RAS, it causes the body’s mechanisms for regulating bradykinin to go haywire. Bradykinin receptors are resensitized, and the body also stops effectively breaking down bradykinin. (ACE normally degrades bradykinin, but when the virus downregulates it, it can’t do this as effectively.)

The end result, the researchers say, is to release a bradykinin storm — a massive, runaway buildup of bradykinin in the body. According to the bradykinin hypothesis, it’s this storm that is ultimately responsible for many of Covid-19’s deadly effects. Jacobson’s team says in their paper that “the pathology of Covid-19 is likely the result of Bradykinin Storms rather than cytokine storms,” which had been previously identified in Covid-19 patients, but that “the two may be intricately linked.” Other papers had previously identified bradykinin storms as a possible cause of Covid-19’s pathologies.

https://elemental.medium.com/a-super...d-31cb8eba9d63

I caution again: The above is a theory, a possibility, although an interesting one that may or may not prove out. Take the above with a grain of salt.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Amelia]

That is very interesting.

Very often, when I am feeling helpless in the face of major world situations, I think of something that Mr. Rogers said his mother told him: "When you're scared, look for the helpers." Those who are studying the virus like this, despite all the craziness of the world, are the helpers.

Gassho
Sat today, lah

[Jundo]

My new car ... but I will also stay 4 ft. in the air around a parking lot ...

https://youtu.be/-Gx5ijVqxNM

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I must confess to some mixed feelings about this .... our doggie friends ...

https://youtu.be/-Dvqj2JzRVA

Gassho, J

STLah

[Eva]

PS - About a year ago, Sekishi (with his son, Owen) fed everything I have ever said at Treeleaf into a neural network algorithm for a "Virtual Jundo (VJ)". They asked virtual me, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?," to which VJ wisely responded (here is a small taste) ...
Actually, it is actually a passive ‘handclapping;' FOLKS! :shock:

The question is about the Apart one, started on the 22nd of the month ...

... 'Mindra Yamana Moving , performed by Rohatsu 'Marx' Barzani Jundo, appeared in the book lists of chapters grant by Angaku Roshi, student of Buddhism period together with Gajin Ramachandran.'

I feel most rightly that although Brahma may have been in such a position when these claims are made, it still stands as an empty, silent place ... a place through which so many things are born, when this form becomes trying to find itself alive. In other words, Shikantaza is made of various elements named by Memorial Priests, and apart from a few pieces like Expia Ikku and the like, it might get not all that much told as a plot attachment, which is all that is actually there....

... To be honest, the Shikantaza "Gassho, Heart Sutra/Shambhala" passage we are looking at is something of a classic Roshi story (Gassho) ...

Sangha Mind Throws A Darkness Apart, compares


No wiser words were ever spoken by me.

(Sorry, VJ's post ran long)

wow,
"I feel most rightly" is added to my random collection of genius phrases along with "stop being wrong" ...

Gassho,
eva
sattoday and also LAH

[Inshin]

I must confess to some mixed feelings about this .... our doggie friends ...

https://youtu.be/-Dvqj2JzRVA

Gassho, J

STLah

There is an episode of Black Mirror about almost same looking dog... And it's scary

[Inshin]

I happen to live in "Science City" Tsukuba, home to the M.I.T. of Japan, the Japanese "NASA", 3 or 4 Super-Computers, one Particle Collider, and several robot factories. At least one fellow here believes that we are already designing our "replacements" as homo sapiens, the next species to take over from us in this world: It will be a combination of human body, genetic engineering (to improve the biological portion), seamlessly combined with artificial and bionic parts, and computers wired directly into our brains, all connected to a "super-internet" of all other computers and minds worldwide. Yes, sounds like Robo-Cop meets the "6 Million Man" mixed with the Borg!

The fellow has a sense of humor, and calls his company "Cyberdyne" and his robot suit "H.A.L." (Ya gotta be an SF movie fan to get the references, but "Cyberdyne" is the company that built the Terminator, and H.A.L. is the paranoid computer from 2001). So far, "H.A.L." is just one of these bionic exo-skeletons (although thought controlled), but he hopes in a few years it will let the paralyzed walk, and (by the time I am old) give me super strength to lift up cars with my thoughts!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT7IXfcifHE

Anyway, the hybrid of human and machine will resolve the question about whether there will be sentience and emotion ... because it will come from us.

Gassho, j

My former colleague suffering from pancreatic cancer underwent recently a tumor removal surgery. He was on the operating table in London and his surgeon was performing the operation from Seattle with a help of virtual hand. Pretty amazing how this thread started in 2015 and how much progress reaserch on AI and the development of technology happened since then.

Gassho
Sat

[Jundo]

Disproving things is important science too ...

Three physicists won a $3 million Breakthrough prize for proving there is no fifth force (that we know of). And it all started with a series of table-top experiments using cheap equipment.

Eric Adelberger, Jens Gundlach and Blayne Heckel together lead the "Eöt-Wash Group," which is devoted to precise tests of physical laws. They take their name from the early-1900s physicist Loránd Eötvös and the University of Washington, where they work. These Eöt-Wash researchers got their start in the mid-1980s, using a device known as a "torsion balance" to disprove claims of an undiscovered fifth force in physics. Since then, they've used more elaborate versions of the same device to test the true strength of gravity, detect the tug of dark matter in the Milky Way and search for theoretical physical effects like extra dimensions and "axion wind."

... A torsion balance is a simple device: Weights hang from a fiber such that Earth's gravity pulls them straight down. If the only other forces acting on the weights also pull straight down, they won't move at all. But if any forces pull them at even a slight angle, they'll rotate, and the fiber will twist. It's possible to measure even very subtle twisting of a torsion balance's fiber and detect extraordinarily tiny effects.

... Over time, the team's torsion balances have become more refined, requiring precise engineering. They rely heavily on workers in the University of Washington's machine shop —— one of the few left in the country attached to a physics department —— to constantly update and test their balances before experiments. It's important to get a torsion balance calibrated just right, Heckel said, because once an experiment begins it can run for days, months or years. And all that time is wasted if the machining and calibrating isn't perfect. Any unexpected wobbles or forces beyond the experiment that don't get cancelled out can spoil a batch of data.

The trio's techniques have been used in all sorts of experiments that require very stable measurement devices. Technology they developed to counteract seismic rumbling now helps keep the laser beams of gravitational-wave detectors stable — contributing to the Nobel Prize-winning first detection of gravitational waves in 2016 and a whole new field of astronomy.

Their newer, more advanced torsion balances hunt much fainter effects than the disproved fifth force. Heckel designed a torsion balance that detects the subtle force of electrons whirling circles in a metal disk . It was designed to hunt the subtle pressure of "axion wind," a possible effect of dark matter passing through Seattle. The balance never detected the wind, but did put new limits on how dark matter particles couls look and behave.

The researchers have also built a torsion balance sensitive to the gravitational pull of the Milky Way. Because the mass of visible star systems in the Milky Way is well-known, they were able to cancel it out of their experiment. That left just the effect of the Milky Way's dark matter on the torsion balance, which they could directly measure. Their measurement showed no effect of Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), a theory that rejects dark matter and claims that more complicated theories of gravity explain its apparent effects. (Unlike the fifth-force experiment, this result didn't convince MOND theorists to give up their claims, Edelberger said. MOND researchers are a tough crowd to persuade.)

And using yet another torsion balance they measured the force of gravity to unprecedented precision, canceling out other effects to come up with an extraordinarily precise number for the gravitational constant —— a number that governs equations using gravity.

https://www.livescience.com/torsion-balance-breakthrough-prize.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Of course, Zen folks must appreciate the lines about a "cosmic web"

Hubble images reveal new aspect of mysterious dark matter in the universe

The quest for dark matter just got a little more interesting.

While stars, planets and other celestial bodies may seem like bright jewels that stand out against the dark void of space, they only make up a small percentage of the universe. In reality, the elusive and invisible dark matter that provides the universe with its structure accounts for most of the universe's mass. Scientists know that because of dark matter's gravitational influence on the other things that are visible, like clusters of galaxies. These clusters are some of the largest structures in the universe, and they contain a multitude of individual galaxies. These formations also contain a lot of dark matter -- not only because it binds them together, but because the individual galaxies they're comprised of contain dark matter, too. Dark matter can't be seen because it doesn't interact with other particles in space or emit, absorb or reflect light.

If we could see dark matter, it might look like what researchers call the cosmic web -- essentially interconnected filamentary scaffolding where galaxies can form.

Astronomers have searched for these mysterious particles for decades. But the only way dark matter has revealed itself so far is through its gravitational tug.

So, one of the ways astronomers can detect dark matter is through gravitational lensing, in which gravity essentially distorts space. This occurs when the gravity of dark matter in a galaxy cluster acts like a magnifying glass. It warps and magnifies the light of distant background galaxies beyond the cluster.

Now, astronomers have discovered that smaller clumps of dark matter, associated with individual cluster galaxies, were concentrated enough to produce gravitational lensing effects that were 10 times stronger than expected. Using the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, the scientists detected these distortions by studying 11 massive galaxy clusters.

The detail afforded by both telescopes showed small, distorted images of distant galaxies within larger gravitational lensing distortion in the core of each galaxy cluster. The small distortions look like arcs and smears in images taken by the telescopes. These small aberrations could be created by densely concentrated pockets of dark matter in individual cluster galaxies, the researchers suggested.
https://us.cnn.com/2020/09/11/world/...rnd/index.html

I note that the article says, "could be" ...

Personally, I think they just forgot to clean the lens!

Gassho, J

STLah

[Gareth]

I agree, but personally I also find it an appealing idea that there is other sentient life in the universe. Perhaps they even meditate as well

Gassho,
Gareth

Sat

[Jundo]

I agree, but personally I also find it an appealing idea that there is other sentient life in the universe. Perhaps they even meditate as well

Gassho,
Gareth

Sat

But if they have 120 legs, or are gelatinous blob creatures, how do the get into the Lotus Posture?


dlt jabba.jpg

Which leads to this story from today's news ... LIFE ON MARS! ... I mean, LIFE ON VENUS?

Life on Venus? Astronomers see hint of life in clouds of Venus

Scientists Monday announced the discovery of a possible sign of life high in the clouds of Venus, according to a new study.

Using telescopes based in Chile and Hawaii, astronomers spotted in Venus' clouds the chemical signature of phosphine, a noxious gas that on Earth is only associated with life.

Based on the many scenarios the astronomers considered, the team concluded that there is no explanation for the phosphine detected in Venus’ clouds, other than the presence of life.

“This means either this is life, or it’s some sort of physical or chemical process that we do not expect to happen on rocky planets,” said study co-author and Massachusetts Institute of Technology research scientist Janusz Petkowski.

… Not a single process we looked at could produce phosphine in high enough quantities to explain our team’s findings.”

The phosphine could be coming from some kind of microbes, probably single-cell ones, which live their entire lives in the 10-mile-deep clouds. The microbes could be microscopic organisms that float free of the planet’s scorching surface, with access to water and sunlight, but needing to tolerate very high acidity.

... Venus is a very challenging environment for life of any kind. Life is not possible on its surface, with its boiling hot landscape, where temperatures reach 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and stifling air that is drier than the driest places on Earth. There is, however, a narrow, temperate band within Venus’ atmosphere, about 30 miles above the surface, where temperatures range from 30 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, according to MIT. Scientists have speculated, with much controversy, that if life exists on Venus, this layer of the atmosphere, or cloud deck, is likely the only place where it would survive. ... And it just so happens that this cloud deck is where the team observed signals of phosphine.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...newstopstories

https://youtu.be/lXqz2LlX9mM

Gassho, J

STLah

[Gareth]

I’m not sure how anyone gets into Lotus Posture!

Gassho,
Gareth

Sat