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

[Jundo]

Thoughts pass like clouds across a clear open sky ... even on mars ...

NASA's Curiosity rover spots strange, colorful clouds on Mars

The clouds in Curiosity's new photos are higher in the atmosphere, although NASA didn't specify their altitude. The distinction may reflect a different composition, clouds of frozen carbon dioxide or dry ice, according to the agency, although the scientists aren't yet confident in that explanation. ... The clouds are at their prettiest just after sunset, when the last light makes the ice crystals glow, which is why scientists call them noctilucent, or night-shining.

https://www.livescience.com/curiosit...rs-clouds.html

Life as a sentient being is not just about length, but about what one does in the time one has ...

(By the way, I have a wacky idea for 'life extension' that is in my future book, "ZEN of the FUTURE!": Add something to the brain that slows down our PERCEPTION of passing time, like the setting on Youtube which slows down video replay speed to half or 3/4ths time. It would increase our perceived life span by half or 3/4ths ... PLUS make it easier to catch baseballs! I am serious, by the way) ...

Human life span may have an 'absolute limit' of 150 years

Humans may be able to live for between 120 and 150 years, but no longer than this "absolute limit" on human life span, a new study suggests.

For the study, published online May 25 in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers used mathematical modeling to predict that after 120 to 150 years of age, the human body would totally lose its ability to recover from stresses like illness and injury, resulting in death. If therapies were to be developed to extend the body's resilience, the researchers argue, these may enable humans to live longer, healthier lives.

... Even though the research suggests humans could live to 150, that number doesn't say anything about the quality of life in old age, Campisi said. In recent years, many scientists have come to refer to the number of healthy years in a person's life as their health span.

"That has huge societal implications, much more than maximum life span," Campisi said. Health in old age not only impacts a person's life, but also can have huge costs in terms of time, money, and medical resources, among others.

... "For sure, we're all going to die," she said.

https://www.livescience.com/human-life-span-limit-150-found.html

However, maybe by that time there will be a perfection of brain transfers or transplants to cloned or silicon bodies. (By the way, here in 'Lost Vegas' this week ... I am seeing A LOT of apparently silcone bodies. )

In any event, the Buddha did not measure life, nor death, nor quite believe in either (PDF) ...

https://www.arcatazengroup.org/sites/arcatazengroup.org/files/lotus_sutras_life_span_of_the_tathagata.pdf

And ... the whole universe is connected and whole ...

Dark matter map reveals new filaments connecting galaxies

A new map of dark matter made using artificial intelligence reveals hidden filaments of the invisible stuff bridging galaxies.

The map focuses on the local universe — the neighborhood surrounding the Milky Way. Despite being close by, the local universe is difficult to map because it's chock full of complex structures made of visible matter, said Donghui Jeong, an astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State University and the lead author of the new research.

"We have to reverse engineer to know where dark matter is by looking at galaxies," Jeong told Live Science.

https://www.livescience.com/map-loca...rk-matter.html

By the way, a neural network in a primate brain ... (just sayin') ...

https://sites.dartmouth.edu/dujs/2015/01/20/neural-networks-rival-the-primate-brain-at-object-recognition/

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Oh, and Las Vegas from a plane at night ... just sayin' ....

[Jundo]

Stephen Hawking is right ... and right ... yet how can it be?

One of Stephen Hawking's most famous theorems has been proven right, using ripples in space-time caused by the merging of two distant black holes.

The black hole area theorem, which Hawking derived in 1971 from Einstein's theory of general relativity, states that it is impossible for the surface area of a black hole to decrease over time. This rule interests physicists because it is closely related to another rule that appears to set time to run in a particular direction: the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy, or disorder, of a closed system must always increase. Because a black hole's entropy is proportional to its surface area, both must always increase.

According to the new study, the researchers' confirmation of the area law seems to imply that the properties of black holes are significant clues to the hidden laws that govern the universe. Oddly, the area law seems to contradict another of the famous physicist's proven theorems: that black holes should evaporate over extremely long time scale, so figuring out the source of the contradiction between the two theories could reveal new physics.

...

... To test out this theory, the researchers analyzed gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of space-time, created 1.3 billion years ago by two behemoth black holes as they spiraled toward each other at high speed. These were the first waves ever detected in 2015 by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a 1,864-mile-long (3,000 kilometers) laser beam capable of detecting the slightest distortions in space-time by how they alter its path length.

By splitting the signal into two halves — before and after the black holes merged — the researchers calculated mass and the spin of both the two original black holes and the new combined one. These numbers, in turn, allowed them to calculate the surface area of each black hole before and after the collision.

"As they spin around each other faster and faster, the gravitational waves increase in amplitude more and more until they eventually plunge into each other — making this big burst of waves," Isi said. "What you're left with is a new black hole that's in this excited state, which you can then study by analyzing how it's vibrating. It's like if you ping a bell, the specific pitches and durations it rings with will tell you the structure of that bell, and also what it's made out of."

The surface area of the newly created black hole was greater than that of the initial two combined, confirming Hawking's area law with a more than 95% level of confidence. According to the researchers, their results are pretty much in line with what they expected to find. The theory of general relativity — where the area law came from — does a very effective job of describing black holes and other large scale objects.

The real mystery however, begins when we try to integrate general relativity — the rules of big objects — with quantum mechanics — those of the very small. Weird events start to take place, wreaking havoc on all of our hard and fast rules, and breaking the area law completely.

This is because black holes cannot shrink according to general relativity, but they can according to quantum mechanics. The iconic British physicist behind the surface area law also developed a concept known as Hawking radiation — where a a fog of particles are emitted at the edges of black holes through strange quantum effects. This phenomenon leads the black holes to shrink and, eventually, over a time period several times longer than the age of the universe, evaporate. This evaporation may happen over timescales long enough to not violate the area law in the short term, but that's small consolation for physicists.

https://www.livescience.com/hawking-...confirmed.html

Fortunately, unlike physicists, Zen folks just drop all ideas of "big and small." Big is just small that is big, and small is precisely big which is small. We drop the whole question into a 'black whole," one might say.

And ... for our vanilla lovers, oh yum!

Scientists convert plastic waste into vanilla flavoring

In the future, your vanilla ice cream may be made from plastic bottles.

In the future, your vanilla ice cream may be made from plastic bottles. Scientists have figured out a way to convert plastic waste into vanilla flavoring with genetically engineered bacteria, according to a new study.

Vanillin, the compound that carries most of the smell and taste of vanilla, can be extracted naturally from vanilla beans or made synthetically. About 85% of vanillin is currently made from chemicals taken from fossil fuels, according to The Guardian.

The demand for vanillin "far exceeds" the vanilla bean supply, so scientists have resorted to synthetically producing vanillin. For the new study, researchers used a novel method to convert plastic waste into vanillin, as a way to both supply vanillin and reduce plastic pollution.

Previous studies showed how to break down plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate into its basic subunit, known as terephthalic acid. In the new study, two researchers at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland genetically engineered E. coli bacteria to convert terephthalic acid into vanillin. Terephthalic acid and vanillin have very similar chemical compositions and the engineered bacteria only needs to make minor changes to the number of hydrogens and oxygens that are bonded to the same carbon backbone.

The researchers mingled their genetically engineered bacteria with terephthalic acid and kept them at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degree Celsius) for a day, according to The Guardian. About 79% of the terephthalic acid subsequently converted into vanillin.

... "Our work challenges the perception of plastic being a problematic waste and instead demonstrates its use as a new carbon resource from which high-value products can be made," co-author Stephen Wallace, a senior lecturer in biotechnology at The University of Edinburgh, told The Guardian.
https://www.livescience.com/vanilla-...tic-waste.html

I am never touching a "double stuffed" Oreo again!

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

In a world of constant change and variation, endless creativity ... (not vegetarian however) ...

Is every spiderweb unique?

Picture a spiderweb, and you might imagine a wheel-like structure with a spiral and spokes radiating outward from the center. These are known as orb webs, and they are made by fewer than 10% of known spider species, said Samuel Zschokke, an arachnologist in the Section of Conservation Biology at the University of Basel in Switzerland, where he researches and visualizes spiderweb construction. Orb webs are ideal for catching flying insects because they provide a wide area for prey capture and are nearly invisible, according to the Australian Museum in Sydney.

And while they all may look very similar, no two are exactly alike.

Spiders that build orb webs typically follow a similar construction plan and create a similar shape. They begin with a few threads that center on a single point, in a "Y" shape; the spider then establishes a frame around the "Y," connecting a few more threads in the middle. "Then they make more threads from that middle to the frame — these are the so-called radii, or, spokes, if you're comparing it to a wheel," Zschokke told Live Science.

At this point, the spider moves to the middle and builds what is known as an auxiliary spiral from the inside out. This is a placeholding structure made of non-sticky silk. Once this temporary spiral is finished, the spider crafts a new, sticky spiral by working toward the center from the outer frame. When that spiral is finished, the spider removes the auxiliary spiral, Zschokke explained.



To some extent, all orb webs resemble each other, but there are details that differ between species. For example, spiders in the Cyclosa genus install a "decoration" in the middle of their webs made of prey leftovers and bits of leaves, which the spider may use as camouflage, Zschokke said. Other orb weavers incorporate a zig-zag structure into the web center, known as a stabilimentum. And while most orb-weavers produce webs that are perpendicular to the ground, some, such as Leucauge dromedaria, spin webs that are oriented horizontally, according to the Atlas of Living Australia.

Webs spun by spiders that are not orb weavers may look messy or haphazard by comparison. These web types include funnel webs, sheet webs, mesh webs and tangle webs, according to a study published in 2013 in the journal PeerJ.



... Recently, researchers observed individual orb-weaving spiders in the species Uloborus diversus as they built webs — one per day, over several days. Those webs were similar but not identical, even when conditions stayed the same, day after day, the scientists reported May 25 in bioRxiv, a preprint website.

https://www.livescience.com/is-every-spiderweb-unique.html

All within Indra's ever changing Net ...

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I have just read much of the U.S. government "UFO report." First off, it is only 9 pages long, double spaced! Second, it reads like it was written by lawyers and bureaucrats, with its very carefully worded and loophole filled sentences at points. It reads like the military was forced to say something ... so said as little as possible, and very carefully.

One such section is "Some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected. ... Some UAP may be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity."

Yes, they "could be" (which can mean that they are neither affirming nor denying) and yes they are "unable to confirm" (perhaps because classified right now). There is no straight out denial that the U.S. government is involved, let alone its contractors and independent agencies. The NYT quotes officials, "The report determines that a vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology, the officials said." Again, very carefully worded, so that "military" and "government" would not include private contractors and the like (and, further, the final report as I just read makes no such statement at all. It never says or determines that the U.S. government or military are not involved or the "origin," whatever that means.)

Some experts interviewed offer the best explanation (if you ask me) ... a new technology that, like all new technologies from cell phones to stealth bombers, seems incredible until, well, it is announced and becomes just common: Hypersonic drones, some capable of both air and water travel. NOT MY IDEA, mind you ...

https://youtu.be/dAxviyN8LI8

They are even triangular shaped! China's purported hypersonic spy drones from a recent parade ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/china-s-stealth-drones-hypersonic-missiles-surpass-threaten-u-s-ncna1064841

This report from 7 years ago from Popular Mechanics ...

Lockheed Gets NASA Funding for the SR-72 Hypersonic Spy Drone

NASA awarded Lockheed Martin a modest $892,292 earlier this month to study the feasibility of developing an unmanned hypersonic spy plane called the SR-72. This superfast recon drone, first teased in November 2013, would fly at speeds of Mach 6.0, or 4,500 mph. That's almost double the speed of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, which made its first flight 50 years ago.

Neither Lockheed Martin Skunk Works nor NASA Glenn Research Center officials are talking about the recent award. But a Lockheed Martin website notes that the company has been working with Aerojet Rocketdyne to find a way to integrate a turbine engine, which would get the plane up to Mach 3, with a supersonic ramjet engine, or scramjet, to push it to Mach 6.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]7113[/ATTACH]

https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/drones/a24/sr-72-lockheed-hypersonic-drone/

New and better ways to kill ourselves. It is a shame that the UFOs are not space aliens, because maybe the aliens would come save us from ourselves!

Gassho, J

STLAH

[Jakuden]

I love this thread. My news feed knows my preferences, so I usually see most of the stories outside Treeleaf anyway, but I like Jundo’s commentary relating them to our bigger interconnection [emoji4]

Gassho
Jakuden
SatToday


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Jundo]

If the universe is a donut, we just sit. The donut is us, we are the donut. If the universe is not a donut, we just sit ...

This gives a new flavor, "no place to go, always arriving" ...

Our universe might be a giant three-dimensional donut, really.

Imagine a universe where you could point a spaceship in one direction and eventually return to where you started. If our universe were a finite donut, then such movements would be possible and physicists could potentially measure its size.

... Examining light from the very early universe, Buchert and a team of astrophysicists have deduced that our cosmos may be multiply connected, meaning that space is closed in on itself in all three dimensions like a three-dimensional donut. Such a universe would be finite, and according to their results, our entire cosmos might only be about three to four times larger than the limits of the observable universe, about 45 billion light-years away.

... Buchert emphasized that the results are still preliminary. Instrument effects could also explain the missing fluctuations on large scales.
https://www.livescience.com/universe...nal-donut.html

https://youtu.be/vAjgSTv9MsY

Some other amazing maybes of the universe:

1. Braneworld

An aspect of the universe we take for granted is that it's three dimensional — there are three perpendicular directions you can move in. Some theories, however, suggest another spatial dimension — which we can't perceive directly — in another perpendicular direction. This higher dimensional space is referred to as "the bulk," while our universe is a three-dimensional membrane — or "brane" — floating inside the bulk.

2. The Big Splat

In the far future, galaxies will eventually drift so far apart that light from one can never reach another. In fact, as stars get old and die, a time will come when there's no light — or heat — left. The universe will be a dark, cold, empty void. It sounds like the end of everything, but according to one theory, it's actually the beginning of the next universe in an endlessly repeating cycle.

4. The holographic universe

Think of a security hologram. This is basically a two-dimensional object encoding a full three-dimensional image. According to this theory, the whole three-dimensional universe may be "encoded" on its two-dimensional boundary.

6. The multiverse

In this theory, called "eternal inflation," proposed by Paul Steinhardt, other bubble universes are constantly popping up in other parts of the inflationary sea, with the whole ensemble making up a "multiverse." The theory gets even stranger, because there's no reason other universes should have the same laws of physics as ours — some might have stronger gravity, or a different speed of light. Although we can't observe the other universes directly, one of them could conceivably collide with our own. Scientists have even suggested the "cold spot" in the CMB is the imprint of such a collision.

7. We got gravity wrong

If we measure the speed of stars on the outskirts of a galaxy, they're moving too fast to remain in orbit if the only thing holding them back is the gravitational pull of the visible galaxy. Similarly, clusters of galaxies appear to be held together by a stronger force than can be accounted for by the gravity of visible matter. There are two possible solutions. The standard one — favored by most scientists — is that the universe contains unseen dark matter, which provides the missing gravity. The maverick alternative is that our theory of gravity is wrong, and should be replaced by something called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND)

8. Superfluid space-time

Even if space only has three dimensions, there's still a fourth dimension in the form of time, so we can visualize the universe existing in four-dimensional space-time. According to some theories, like one proposed by Stefano Liberati of the International School for Advanced Studies and Luca Maccione of Ludwig Maximilian University, in the Physics Review Letters journal, this isn't just an abstract frame of reference containing physical objects like stars and galaxies, but a physical substance in itself, analogous to an ocean of water. Just as water is made up of countless molecules, space-time — according to this theory — is made up of microscopic particles on a deeper level of reality than our instruments can reach.

9. Simulation theory

If all of the information about the universe comes into our brains via our senses and scientific instruments, who's to say it isn't all a cleverly designed illusion? The entire universe might be nothing but an ultra-sophisticated computer simulation. It's an idea that was popularized by the "Matrix" movies, but as outlandish as the idea sounds, some philosophers take it seriously.

10. [Anthropic Coincidences]

The laws of physics involve a handful of fundamental constants that determine the strength of gravity, electromagnetism and subatomic forces. As far as we know, these numbers could have any possible value — but if they departed even slightly from the values they actually have, the universe would be a very different place. Most importantly for us, life as we know it — including, of course, ourselves — couldn't possibly exist. Some people see this as evidence that the universe was consciously designed in order for human-like life to evolve — the so-called self-centered anthropic theory, proposed by Nick Bostrom in his book, "Anthropic Bias."
https://www.livescience.com/strange-...-universe.html

Personally, I [Jundo] believe that the "anthropic coincidences" do call for some special explanation, and "simulation theory" is one of those. I am not alone, and some big name scientists take it seriously ...

https://youtu.be/pmcrG7ZZKUc

In any case, chop wood and fetch water, just sit Zazen ... inside a simulation or not ...

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

PS - And as a bonus for today ...

As little as 1.5% of our genome is 'uniquely human'

Less than 10% of your genome is unique to modern humans, with the rest being shared with ancient human relatives such as Neanderthals, according to a new study.

The study researchers also found that the portion of DNA that's unique to modern humans is enriched for genes involved with brain development and brain function. This finding suggests that genes for brain development and function are what really set us apart, genetically, from our ancestors.

However, it's unclear what this finding means in terms of the actual biological differences between humans and Neanderthals, said study senior author Richard E. Green, an associate professor of biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"That is a giant question that future work will have to disentangle," Green told Live Science. "At least now we know where to look."

... The researchers also found that the human-specific mutations arose through two distinct "bursts" of adaptive genetic changes that occurred around 600,000 years ago and 200,000 years ago, the authors said. Exactly why the genetic changes occurred at those times — or what might have been going on in the environment to trigger those changes — is unknown.

Focusing on these mutations, and understanding exactly what they do in the brain, may help researchers understand how humans and Neanderthals differed cognitively and biologically.

https://www.livescience.com/human-ge...nderthals.html

[Naiko]

This may be an interesting read: Being You

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/25/being-you-by-professor-anil-seth-review-the-exhilarating-new-science-of-consciousness

Gassho,
Naiko
st

[Jundo]

This may be an interesting read: Being You

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/25/being-you-by-professor-anil-seth-review-the-exhilarating-new-science-of-consciousness

Gassho,
Naiko
st

Thank you, Naiko. Based only on the article, much of this is basic Buddhism 101:

Reality – or, at least, our perception of it – is a “controlled hallucination”, according to the neuroscientist Anil Seth. Everything we see, hear and perceive around us, our whole beautiful world, is a big lie created by our deceptive brains, like a forever version of The Truman Show, to placate us into living our lives.

Our minds invent for us a universe of colours, sounds, shapes and feelings through which we interact with our world and relate to each other, Seth argues. We even invent ourselves.

...

Colour is not a physical property of things in the way that mass is. Rather, objects have particular ways that they reflect light that our brains include in their complex Technicolor production of “reality”.

“We perceive the world not as it is, but as it is useful to us,” Seth writes. In other words, we evolved this generated reality because operating through our hallucinated world improves our survival, by helping us avoid danger and recognise food, for example.

...

Sometimes, our hallucinated world is wildly out of sync with everyone else’s – we lose our grip on reality. “What we call a ‘hallucination’ is what happens when perceptual priors are unusually strong, overwhelming the sensory data so that the brain’s grip on their causes in the world starts to slide.”

Of course, a central tenet of our Zen way is that "self" is just a useful illusion, and also a trouble maker, and our task is to soften or drop the "self/other" divide which causes so many frictions and tensions as our "self," and its desires, bumps into the "other" from which the "self" has divided itself.

I cannot comment on the book's theory of the source of consciousness, which the article does not explain in detail (I look forward to reading it.) I suspect, if pressed, that consciousness is also something which arises, not merely in the neurons between our ears, but as an entire interaction of "outside" and "inside" in which the brain actually eliminates extraneous data, and does create that artificial self/other - inside/outside divide and visions of all the other "things" of the world, from something more basic before all those divisions.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

A photo that was taken from the International Space Station this week, the earth at the side, a "battle" of starlight and city lights, photographer/astronaut Thomas Pesquet said.

However, I see no battle ...

That orange band streaming down the side of the planet is known as airglow — a natural luminescence that occurs when ultraviolet radiation from the sun energizes molecules in the atmosphere ... These hopped-up molecules inevitably bump into each other, losing energy and faintly glowing with each collision. Just as with the Northern Lights, different molecules glow with different colors; this orange hue comes from sodium atoms colliding approximately 55 miles (90 kilometers) above Earth, European Southern Observatory astronomer Juan Carlos Muñoz said on twitter.

https://www.livescience.com/iss-airglow-sideways-earth

Gassho, J

STLah

[Tairin]

Cool!


Tairin

[rj]

Beautiful pic!

Have been reading old posts, very much enjoying this thread... very interesting!


st/rj

[Rob Parisien]

rob
sat today

[Inshin]

"Our world and the self are constructions of the brain, a pioneering neuroscientist argues."

Anyone had a go at this book?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/25/being-you-by-professor-anil-seth-review-the-exhilarating-new-science-of-consciousness?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other