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Contents
- Sweet Confusion: Does high fructose corn syrup deserve such a bad rap?
- Closed Thinking: Without scientific competition and open debate, much psychology research goes nowhere
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Contents
- Fuzzy future: Kids may suffer impaired vision from spending too little time outdoors, studies suggest
- Building with moon rocks: Working on the moon with lunar soil and grit could prove easier, more efficient and less costly than using earthly materials
- Major twister hits Oklahoma: Its speed, which largely determines the damage it causes, is still unknown
Web edition: April 4, 2011
Print edition: December 4, 2010; Vol.178 #12 (p. 32)
Twelve years ago, astronomers studying distant, exploding stars made a discovery that irrevocably altered humankind’s view of the universe. Most scientists had assumed that the universe’s expansion, which began during the Big Bang, had steadily slowed due to gravity. But the astronomers found that the cosmos was instead expanding faster; gravity had somehow transformed from a cosmic pull into a cosmic push.
The unseen stuff supplying this mysterious push has come to be called dark energy. Together, dark energy and dark matter, the invisible material that scientists say must exist to explain galaxy formation, make up most of the universe. Left over is a measly 4 percent to form everything else, like people and planets.
In his aptly titled book, science writer Panek writes eloquently about the mind-bending search for meaning in a universe dominated by stuff no one can see. Panek weaves together concepts from particle physics, relativity, quantum mechanics and cosmology with personal portraits of astronomers. Vera Rubin, a pioneer in gathering evidence of dark matter, and various players in the discovery of dark energy are seen as they alternately scratch their heads at astonishing findings and bitterly squabble over who was first to announce them.
In the end, the legacy of dark-energy theory “wouldn’t be personal acrimony,” Panek writes. “It would be the revolution in thought that dark energy mandated. Almost certainly this revolution would require the long-awaited union of general relativity and quantum theory. It might involve modifying Einstein’s equations. It could feature parallel, intersecting or a virtually infinite ensemble of universes.…What greater legacy could a scientist leave a universe?”
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, 320 p., $26.
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Now, it is hard to seriously consider reasons to treat distance and time with some skepticism, despite our common-sense perceptions and Standard Model categorization as “fundamental quantities” in physics. From a cognitive science perspective, their fundamental reality would require humans’ sense organs and nervous system to just happen to be located at, constructed within, and sensitive to the foundational dimensions of the universe. This seems a suspicious coincidence, and not merely because it is exactly the kind of observer-centric biased assumption refuted by theories of Thales, Copernicus and Darwin.
Dark Matter and other observations suggest humans are not sensitive to domains of reality which do not relate fairly directly to molecules. A narrow spectrum of common-sense perceptual hypothesis holds initial plausibility since molecules are the defining constituents of life and living. Such an approach also appears more "dimensionally neutral, could explain why distance and time seem as real as the sun’s illusory motion across the sky, and it shares the advantage of linking our observational conditions to our conceptualizations.
I would be most interested to read about how these obvious avenues to successfully creating a new Copernican model are progressing, if any exist... and especially if that book were as well written as Panek's!
A.
UNRAVEL COMPLEXITIES OF GENETICS.
Extend Evolution/Natural Selection Backward To Genes/Genomes, BOTH ARE ORGANISMS.
Again, Correct Some Figments Of Science Imagination
pulse.yahoo.com/_2SF3CJJM5OU6T27OC4MFQSDYEU/blog/articles/273273?listPage=index&bb=0
1. Dark energy and matter YOK. Per E=Total[m(1 + D)] all the energy and matter of the universe are accounted for.
Adopt space-massdistance concept, mass-to-enrgy reconversion.
2. Higgs Particle YOK. Mass forms below some value of the above D.
3. Galactic clusters formed by conglomeration?
Galactic clusters formed by Big-Bang's dispersion, evidenced by their Newtonian behaviour including expansion acceleration.
4. The universe expansion is fueled by the mass-to-enrgy reconversion. Eventually, as expansion will slow down, will run out of massfuel, gravity will overcome expansion and initiate empansion back to singularity. The universe is a cyclic array of energy-mass dualism, between all-energy and all-mass poles, under omnipresent gravity.
5. Natural Selection is a trait of organisms, life?
No. Natural selection is ubiquitous for ALL mass formats, all spin arrays. It derives from the expansion of the universe. All mass formats, regardless of size and type, from black holes to smallest particles, strive to increase their constrained energy in attempt to postpone their own reconversion to energy, to the energy that fuels cosmic expansion.
6. Life is an enigma?
Life is just another type of mass array, a self-replicating mass array. Earth life is a replicating RNAs mass. It has always been and still is an RNA world. ALL Earth's organisms are evolved RNAs, evolved for maintaining-enhancing Earth's biosphere, for prolonging RNAs survival.
7. Cells are Earth-life's primal organisms?
NO. Earth's life day one was the day on which RNA began replicating. RNAs, genes, are ORGANISMS. And so are their evolved templates, (RNA and DNA) genomes, ORGANISMS, as evidenced by life's chirality and by life's sleep.
8. Circadian Schmircadian sleep origin?
Sleep is inherent for life via the RNAs, the primal Earth ORGANISMS originated and originally active only under direct sunlight, in their pre-metabolism genesis era.
9. Epigenetics are heritable gene functions changes not involving changes in DNA sequence?
The "heritable or enduring changes" are epiDNAtics, not epigenetics. Alternative splicing is not epigenetics, even if/when not involving alteration of the DNA sequence. Earth life is an RNA world.
10.Genetics drive biology and culture modifications?
NO. It is culture that modifies genetics, not genetics that modifies culture. Culture modifies genetics simply via the evolutionary natural selection process of the RNA ORGANISMS. Likewise many natural genetic changes are due to aging and/or circumstantial effects on the genes and/or genomes ORGANISMS, similar to aging and/or evolutionary processes in monocell communities or in multicelled organisms.
SCIENCE SHOULD UNFREEZE. SCIENCE SHOULD ADJUST ITS VISION, COMPREHENSION AND CONCEPTS.
Dov Henis
(Comments From 22nd Century)
the-scientist.com/community/user/profile/1655.page
Seed of Human-Chimp Genomes Diversity
pulse.yahoo.com/_2SF3CJJM5OU6T27OC4MFQSDYEU/blog/articles/53079
03.2010 Updated Life Manifest
the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/54.page#5065
Evolution, Natural Selection, Derive From Cosmic Expansion
darwiniana.com/2010/09/05/the-question-reductionists-fear/
Rethink Evolution/Natural Selection
darwiniana.com/2011/03/29/comment-from-dov-henis/comment-page-1/
==========================
B.
Quantum Mechanics Of Life
Life's Evolution Is The Quantum Mechanics Of Biology
pulse.yahoo.com/_2SF3CJJM5OU6T27OC4MFQSDYEU/blog/articles/271915?listPage=index&bb=0
From "Essence Of Quantum Mechanics"
pulse.yahoo.com/_2SF3CJJM5OU6T27OC4MFQSDYEU/blog/articles/245916?listPage=uncategorized
The universe, and life within it, are not just conglomerations of mechanisms. The universe, and life within it, have come into being by the nature of energy-mass dualism, and their fate, their final outcome, is governed by this dualism. The genesis and, most probable cyclic, existence of the universe are governed by the energy-mass relationship.
Energy-mass relationship governs also the routes, the mechanisms, of cosmic and life evolutions.
Mechanisms do not set/determine the classical physics fate states. Mechanisms are routes of evolution between classical physics fate states. Quantum mechanics are mechanisms, probable, possible and actual mechanisms of getting from one to other classical physics states WITHIN the expanse from cosmic singularity to the maximum expanded universe and back to singularity states.
The universe is the archetype of quantum within classical physics. This is the fractal oneness of the universe. Astronomically there are two physics. A classical Newtonian physics behaviour of and between galactic clusters, and a quantum physics behaviour WITHIN the galactic clusters.
Life's Evolution Is The Quantum Mechanics Of Biology.
UNRAVEL COMPLEXITIES OF GENETICS. Extend Evolution/Natural Selection Backward To Genes/Genomes.
BOTH ARE ORGANISMS.
The origin-reason and the purpose-fate of life are mechanistic, ethically and practically valueless. Life is the cheapest commodity on Earth.
It is up to humans themselves to elect the purpose and format of their life as individuals and as group-members.
Dov Henis
(Comments From 22nd Century)
Figments Of Science Imagination
pulse.yahoo.com/_2SF3CJJM5OU6T27OC4MFQSDYEU/blog/articles/273273?listPage=index&bb=0
"Rethink Evolution/Natural Selection"
darwiniana.com/2011/03/26/in-evolution-last-really-can-be-first/comment-page-1/
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