Twenty three hundred years ago Aristotle described the universe as a series of concentric spheres made of a crystalline material called "Quintessence" (The Fifth Element). The Sun, Moon, planets, and stars were all embedded into their own individual spheres which rotated around the Earth at different rates. Four hundred years later, the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy could not reconcile his observations with the circular motions implied by Aristotle. But circles were perfect, and the heavens must also be perfect, so he invented "epicycles". He said that the heavenly bodies each moved in small circles around a point, and that point moved in a circle around the Earth. Over the centuries, as observations improved, Ptolemy's epicycles weren't enough. So more were added. Wheels within wheels. And even they were not enough so other contrivances of speed and angle were added. In the middle of the sixteenth century Copernicus, who believed that God lived in the Sun, moved the Sun to the center and found he could eliminate some of the epicycles and other contrivances used to match observations. But many still remained. In the early part of the following century Johannes Kepler showed that the shapes of the orbits of the planets were not circles, but were ellipses, with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse. Just a few decades later Isaac Newton collapsed all the previous centuries of observation and reasoning down to one simple formula. F=Mm/r^2. A century later, Einstein, stimulated by the work of Maxwell, Michaelson, and Morley showed us that Newton's formula was an approximation of a rather more complicated rule having to do with time, space, and the speed of light. He called it his general theory of relativity. Two decades later, using the best theories of gravity at his disposal, and Hubble's distance laws for galaxies, Fritz Zwicky noticed that the galaxies in the Coma cluster were moving too quickly for gravity to hold them together. He proposed that there must be more material in the cluster than was visible. He called that material, Dark Matter -- a term first coined by Henri Poincaré to describe a different phenomenon. By the 1960s there were many observations that galaxies rotated too quickly to hold themselves together. The speed of the stars at the outskirts of the galaxy move well beyond the escape velocity of the visible matter. Today we conclude that the universe is full of something we call Dark Matter. It forms the seeds of galaxy clusters, and it's shape outlines the webs of those clusters that are woven through space. We think that this dark matter outweighs visible matter by a factor of nearly six to one. And we have not the slightest clue what this stuff might be.

They kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and after 300 days they finally shot those innocent jews in the back of the head.   They are Nazis.  And like their spiritual forebears they must be destroyed, utterly.

This!

Free speech isn't guaranteed to be forever

History is full of long stretches of dominance by noble ideas and despots, times of prosperity and of dark ages. Each of which must have seemed lik...

In the late 90s a team of researchers studied a large number of these events, reaching extreme distances, and therefore extremely far back in time.  By measuring the red-shift of the spectra of those events they calculated how fast they were being carried away from us by the expanding universe -- and they discovered something very strange. We expected that the mutual gravity of all the galaxies, and all the matter in the universe should be slowing the expansion of the universe down.  After all it takes energy to climb against a gravitational field; and that energy loss must be slowing things down. What the researchers found, instead, is that the expansion of the universe is speeding up.  This means some kind of energy is being pumped into the universe that opposes the inward tug of gravity and pushes the galaxies away from each other ever faster and faster as time goes by. We call that new energy "Dark Energy" -- and we have no idea what it is or where it comes from.

I wrote a book about how to effectively combine procedural, OO, and Functional programming.  The title is "Functional Design"

This is fun!… Where does punctuation come from?! via #[1]

Getting ruby to work is a gigantic pain.  I think the whole Ruby module management system went off the rails a long, long, time ago.  (No pun intended.)

Neutrons in isolation are unstable. They will energetically decay, becoming a proton, electron, and an anti-electron-neutrino with a half-life of about 10 minutes. This is called ß-decay. This reaction is reversible through a process known as electron capture. If a proton and an electron are forced into near proximity, they can combine to form a neutron, emitting a normal electron-neutrino. In the collapsing iron core of a high mass star, in the last microsecond before it blows itself to kingdom come as a type 2 supernova, the electrons and protons within the iron are forced together and undergo this inverse ß-decay becoming neutrons and emitting an overwhelming barrage of neutrinos. The newly formed neutrons rapidly sort themselves out into energy shells. Neutrons are fermions. Identical fermions cannot co-exist together in the same system. Thus the neutrons in the collapsed core separate into a vast number of different energy shells. Low energy neutrons are deeper in, higher energy neutrons are farther out. There is no way for the higher energy neutrons to lose energy since all the lower shells are full. All those neutrons are in a constant state of vibration and collision. Higher energy neutrons vibrate and collide faster than lower energy neutrons. All that vibration and collision creates an outward pressure that holds back the inward crush of gravity. So the object, now only a few miles in diameter, settles into a stable state called degenerate matter. This object is often called a neutron star; and the degenerate matter within it is sometimes referred to as neutronium. A teaspoon of neutronium would weigh several billion tons. Much of the angular momentum of the original star remains within the neutron star. However, since the radius has shrunk by three or four orders of magnitude, the angular velocity has increased by a corresponding factor. These objects can spin at thousands of RPM. Moreover, much of the original star's magnetic field is trapped within the neutron star, and has likewise been compressed by several orders of magnitude. Thus, the neutron star is a very powerful spinning magnet. When you spin a magnet you create an electric field. The electric field across a newly formed neutron star is enormous. That field accelerates vast numbers of charged particles to stream outwards from the magnetic poles. However, the powerful magnetic field lines force those particles to move in a spirals as they stream outwards. When charged particles move in spirals they induce electromagnetic waves -- light. And those light waves travel in straight beams emitted from the magnetic poles of the neutron star. Those beams of light carry away some the rotational energy of the Neutron star. This creates a drag on its rotation. But given that the star contains a solar mass of neutronium spinning at thousands of RPM, it has plenty of kinetic energy to spare and so the reduction in rotational velocity is very gradual. If the magnetic poles of the neutron star are not perfectly in line with its spin axis, then those beams of light swing around through space like a lighthouse beacon. If they happen to be in line with the Earth, we see the object emitting pulses of light as the beams pass by. We call these pulsating stars Pulsars.

The collapsing iron core of a massive star that has exhausted its fuel will quickly reach densities at which electrons and protons can no longer remain separate. They combine to form neutrons in an extremely violent reaction that tears the rest of the star apart and blasts it's contents all over the sky as a type 2 Supernova. At the time of the explosion the structure of the star looks like an onion. There is an outer shell of Hydrogen gas, then a shell of Hydrogen fusing into Helium. Below that is a shell of Helium fusing into Carbon and Oxygen. Deeper still is a shell fusing Carbon into Neon, Magnesium, Sodium, and Aluminum. Deeper still is a shell fusing Neon into Oxygen and Magnesium. Still deeper the Oxygen fuses into Silicon, Argon, Sulfur, and Calcium. And finally a shell that fuses Silicon into an isotope of Nickel that decays into Iron. All this material is blown to smithereens when the barrage of outrushing neutrinos produced by the core's transmutation into neutrons collides with those shells. The over-pressures cerated in that collision stimulate even more fusion. The environment of the explosion is rich with free high energy neutrons, and alpha-particles (Helium nuclei). These particles are absorbed by the elements within the explosion, transmuting them further into the vast majority of the elements on the periodic table up to element 36. All these nuclei are scattered amidst the rapidly expanding cloud of debris and eventually mix with the interstellar medium, polluting the existing clouds of neutral hydrogen and, if close enough, stimulating them to collapse into planetary systems. The Oxygen and Nitrogen in our atmosphere. The Carbon and Calcium in our bodies and bones. The Sodium in our seas, and the Iron and Aluminum in our buildings, originated from this process. Those elements all came from stars that blew their guts up all over the sky, and seeded future stars with the elements of life and civilization.

Most of the stars were see in the night sky are extremely luminous giants. Stars the size of our Sun are too faint to be seen beyond a few dozen light years. This is ironic because the Sun is much larger than the majority of stars. There are a vast number of nearby stars that we simply cannot see with the naked eye. Giant stars burn very hot, and very bright, and for a very short time. A giant can fuse hydrogen into helium thousands of times faster than the Sun. It can exhaust its fuel in as little as ten million years. In their cores, they first fuse hydrogen into helium, then helium into carbon and oxygen. However, unlike the Sun they are massive enough to continue the process and fuse carbon into a number of other elements, that eventually are fused into silicon At each stage the rate of fusion must increase because the reactions become less efficient. On the very last day of a giant star‘s life, it begins to fuse silicon into iron. This reaction is so feeble that the star will burn through a full solar mass of silicon in a matter of hours; all the while a nugget of iron, the size of the Earth, with the mass of the Sun, accumulates in its core. Fusion reactions with iron are endothermic. They consume energy as opposed to producing it. So when the silicon is exhausted, and the iron begins to fuse under the weight of the star above it, the core cools. The cooling core collapses, it can no longer produce the energy needed to hold up the mass of the star. The collapse proceeds so rapidly that the material at the center approaches a sizable fraction of the speed of light. The rest of the matter within the star is pulled down with it at a slower pace. When the core has shrunk to approximately 10 miles in diameter the pressures are so great that the electrons and protons within it are forced to combine into neutrons. This reaction creates a barrage of neutrinos heading outward at the speed of light. Meanwhile the neurons in the core rapidly arrange themselves into an energy shell structure that resists any further collapse. The collapse stops dead. The outrush of neutrinos carries a vast amount of energy that is more than sufficient to reverse the inflowing matter of the star and blow it out into space at a fraction of the speed of light. This reversal creates temperatures and pressures that stimulate even more fusion within the outrushing guts of the star. The explosion is so energetic that the dying star’s luminosity increases by approximately twelve orders of magnitude. For several weeks it will outshine the galaxy it lives in. This is a type 2 supernova, and we don’t want to be close to one. 50 light years is not far enough. Within that radius the radiation slamming into the Earth would be disastrous for life. Fortunately there are no stars within that radius that are likely to blow up soon. But keep your eye on Betelgeuse — it’s likely to blow in the next few thousand years — maybe tomorrow. At 500 light years it would put on a hell of a show. It would be brighter than the full moon and you could read by it at night.

Out in the vast interstellar emptiness float huge clouds of dust and gas -- mostly neutral hydrogen, H2 molecules that are loosely bound together by their diffuse gravity. The masses of such clouds are sufficient to create hundreds of stars like our Sun; but the thermal energy of their temperature, and their weak but non-zero angular momentum, are sufficient to prevent their gravity from collapsing them. They are stable structures that will last hundreds of millions, if not billions of years, if not disturbed. But disturbance can come in the form of a shock wave from a distant supernova or stellar explosion. That shock wave can compress portions of the cloud into densities with sufficient gravitational potential to enter a runaway collapse. As the collapse proceeds it can stall if the collapsing fragment has too much angular momentum. The cloud, now spinning much faster because of the collapse will often assume a dumbbell shape and the two lobes will separate. With most of the original angular momentum having been shed into their mutual orbit, the two lobes are free to continue their collapse into a binary star system. Most of these new stars are small, and will collapse into an object roughly the size of Jupiter with little or no internal energy. We call them brown dwarfs. They have been heated by their collapse to glow in the infra red, but will gradually cool. Some clouds are larger and will collapse to the point where fusion reactions will begin in their cores. First it is the deuterium that fuses, generating quite a bit of heat. But deuterium is rare and that fuel is rapidly exhausted. If the new star is massive enough it may begin to fuse regular hydrogen into helium. Many of these objects are one tenth the mass of the Sun and glow in the red, and near infra-red. We call them red dwarfs. They burn slowly and will last for tens of billions of years. Some have about the mass of our Sun. They are comparatively rare, but will shine brightly in the visible spectrum, fusing Hydrogen to Helium, and then eventually Helium into Carbon. In the final stages of their live they will become red giants, and will end their lives by repeatedly ejecting their outer shrouds of hydrogen, until only the white hot carbon core remains. These are White Dwarf stars. But as noted earlier, stars often form in binary pairs. And sometimes the two partners are as massive, or even more massive than the Sun. The first to die will spread into a Red Giant and disgorge massive amounts of material into the space around it as it pulsates through its death throes. Sometimes that material reaches the partner star, adding slightly to its mass, and reducing the distance between them through friction. When the Red Giant finally become a White Dwarf, it may be close enough to the partner star to gradually steal material from it -- especially if the partner enters the Red Giant stage. Matter, mostly hydrogen, builds up on the hot surface of the White dwarf. The White Dwarf may have half the mass of the Sun, and be only a few thousand miles in diameter, roughly the size of the Earth or Mars. Thus the gravitational potential at the surface is huge, and the infalling hydrogen is strongly compressed and heated. This process continues until the hydrogen accumulating on the surface of the White Dwarf reaches the temperatures and pressures sufficient to ignite hydrogen fusion. This results in a massive thermonuclear explosion called a nova. The explosion is strong enough to blow all the accreted material off the White dwarf and re-expose the carbon core to begin the process again. From our point of view the binary pair will brighten by many orders of magnitude every few decades. We may just see one of these this Summer or Fall in the constellation of the Northern Crown (Corona Borealis)

The Sun, our local star, is just under a million miles in diameter. The surface temperature is about 5,000K, and the power output is about 4E26 watts. All that power is coming from the innermost 10% of the star -- the core -- where the temperatures are around 17E6K, and the pressure is ...um... crushing. At those temperatures the Hydrogen atoms cannot hold onto their electrons. So protons and electrons are free to zoom about without binding. The velocities of the protons are so high, and the pressures are so great, that every once is a great while two protons will get close enough that the strong nuclear force will bind them together into Helium. This happens to about 500 metric tons of Hydrogen each second. In that reaction a lot of high energy gamma rays are released. Those gamma rays are trapped within all those charged particles in the core. They bounce around in the core, doing a random walk for thousands of years. But eventually they reach the outer shell of the core where they can heat the Hydrogen gas outside the core. The bouncing around of all those gamma rays creates an outward pressure that keeps the core of the Sun from collapsing under the weight of the Hydrogen above it. The hydrogen outside the core, heated by the gamma rays escaping the core, rises to the surface of the star in a massive convection current. Upon reaching the surface, the heat of that gas is radiated at 5000K and reaches us ~8 minutes later. This process has been going on for nearly five billion years, and will continue for another five billion or so. However... The Helium building up in the core takes up space. This impedes the fusion reaction. Fewer gamma rays are produced, causing the core to contract. This heats the core driving the fusion rate back up, but at a slightly higher temperature. Thus, the Sun is gradually warming. It is about 10% hotter today than when it formed, and it will continue to get hotter and hotter as the eons pass. In about 200 million years, it will be too hot for water to remain liquid on the surface of the Earth. So, I guess we'll have to move the Earth a bit farther out.

Harris campaign caught editing WDAY Radio and other news outlets headlines | WDAY Radio - AM 970 and FM 93.1

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We're All Far Right Now (Official Music Video) via #[1]

Read the first paragraph. https://becketnewsite.s3.amazonaws.com/20240813183534/injunction.pdf

Imagine an empty room with 1000 coins on the floor. The room sits above a subway line, and when trains go by it jostles the coins and flips some over. The room is locked and you have the only key to this room. You come into this room for the first time on Tuesday and you count 300 heads. On Wednesday you count 400 heads. What do you believe the count was on Monday and why? And what does this have to do with the universe at large?

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Kamala is tough on crime. Kamala is tough on immigration. Kamala will kill tax on tips. Kamala will drill baby drill. Kamala is Trump. Who knew?

We are currently in an ice age, which is defined as any period during which there are ice caps. The current ice age began 2.5 Mya. It is suspected that the cause was the gradual reduction in CO2 caused by the weathering of the Himalayas, the migration of Antarctica over the South Pole, and the closing of the isthmus of Panama blocking ocean heat transfer at the equator. There have been over a dozen significant glaciations since the ice age began. They are likely driven by the orbital cycles of the Earth. In the last million years they’ve fallen into a regular pattern of ~90,000 years of advancing cold and ice, and ~10,000 years of retreating ice and relative warmth. We are in one of those warm periods now. It started ~12,000 years ago. Winter is coming.

If the idea of curved space time, as described by General Relativity (GR), confuses you, consider the following analogy. The theory of GR was sparked by Einstein’s “happiest thought”, that gravity and acceleration are equivalent. That means that you, standing on the ground, are accelerating upwards. But you can detect no motion in that direction. How does that make sense? Consider the amusement park ride sometimes known as “The Rotor”. It is a room sized cylinder that you walk into and stand against the back wall. Then the cylinder is spun up and you are pressed against the wall by centrifugal force. For you, gravity seems to shift and you feel as though you are lying on your back with the center of the cylinder above you. Your acceleration vector is toward the center of the cylinder. But your velocity vector is parallel to the back wall, 90 degrees away from the acceleration vector. So, when you are standing on the ground, accelerating upwards, your velocity vector, as you move through curved space time, is shifted 90 degrees into the dimension of that curvature, which is a dimension you cannot directly perceive.