Cloudscape

A personality is made of its own choices; it is a set of inclinations and preferences.

Sorrow can make a man passionate about beauty, and passion for beaut can make a man sorrowful.

One should not be ashamed of what one used to be, but pride oneself on what one has since become. Shame itself can only be at something past, for as soon as there is shame it changes one: shame is the pain of changing. It is the soul that sees the wounds it brought to itself by lowering itself to a lower level and painfully tries to heal the wounds. Only when shame lapses can one relapse to whatever deed or habit one is ashamed of.

If you don't know, let go. It is no use, if you cannot find the answers, to torment yourself with uncertainty: seek less, and you will find in time. If you yearn for knowledge, you must learn, then, to embrace mystery in your quest for it, just as one must enjoy the path itself towards one's goals even when one is standing still. Your curiosity, then, will not be a curse as well as a blessing, for even when the answer is lacking there is the question, which in itself is already beautiful in its mystery. And whatever the answers may be, in the end they can only be beautiful.

You can't know what you can achieve until you have. And all it takes to achieve something is time, whatever it may be. There is no failure, therefore; only delay. It is no use, then, to wonder if you can do something. Set about doing it, hold on, and you'll get there someday. The only restriction to what you can achieve is your lifespan.

The mind is like a lamp in the dark. If there were no-one to see the world, there would be no sight, there would be no light.

In the silence you can hear things you otherwise cannot. Remember this when you feel alone, that you would listen to the silence. Only when you are alone, you can fully connect to yourself, and discover what you feel, and what you want. This may be a hard lesson, which is why loneliness can be so painful, but know that the lesson does not last forever, and you will become a wiser person from this lesson if only you learn from it. When you are alone, you are alone with God.

The more memory capacity any computer has (be it a human or a machine), the less processing speed it needs: this is so because it can then simply remember a calculation, rather than repeat it.
An example is factorials. If a computer needs to calculate very large factorials over and over, it will take longer for it than to simply recall them. This is so because recalling what 12 x 11 x 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 is (that is, what 12 x 11 is, 132, what 132 x 10 is, 1320, what 1320 x 9 is, 11880, and so on), is considerably more demanding than recalling the cipher 479001600.
Therefore, memory capacity can reduce the need for processing speed, so that even when the latter would reach a limit, the speed of computation could still grow as the former does. As many computations are repeated, making use of otherwise unused memory space to store their results increases computational speed. If all unused memory space were used, computational speed could be furthered enormously. Almost all calculations could then be based on more basic calculations which could then be remembered rather than reiterated.

Unlike nanorobots, which used atoms in their environment as building blocks, picorobots would produce particles as their building blocks. One way to do this is hadronization - a process in which hadrons duplicate. This process arises when the quarks which constitute hadrons (such as protons and neutrons) are taken at a sufficient distance from one another. Because the strong force is proportional to distance (unlike other forces), the farther quarks are taken from one another, the more energy it takes to keep them apart. At some point, this energy will create new quarks between the other quarks. So if one tries to separate the quarks in a meson (which has two quarks, one quark and one antiquark), all one manages to do as one splits them in two is to create two new mesons. In this way, with enough energy input, one can create new quarks indefinitely: the energy is materialized.
Picorobots could also concentrate light by adding up the energies of their photons. In this way, two photons could be combined to one photon with double energy, and therefore double frequency. In this way, the photons could eventually be made so energetic that upon colliding with each other they would create matter, which the picorobots could use to create atoms. In this way, light could, in essence, be converted into matter. We’d long learned to convert mass into energy, but it wasn’t too long ago we’d learned to do just the opposite.

To travel back in time is to travel back in space. What appears to be the most esoteric of technologies, then, actually happens daily. Step backward in the selfsame way you stepped forward, and your body has traveled through time.
The same applies to a molecular, atomic or subatomic level: if two classical particles collide on a straight line, both will travel back in time as they rebound. If every quantum in the universe could move in exactly the opposite direction, it would regress to what it was earlier. Doing so in any closed system would cause the same for that system.
However, doing so would require to surmount the obstacle of Heisenberg uncertainty - at least, it likely would. If the movement of every particle in an isolated system would be reversed at the same moment, however, it’s possible that they’d move in exactly the same way, but in the other direction. This could be so if Heisenberg uncertainty is caused by the system itself. If it is not, Heisenberg uncertainty would violate causality, as it would mean that it is purely stochastic, independent of the state of the system.
It’s possible that one wouldn’t need to know the position and momentum of every the quanta in order to revert their motion, however: doing so would, in principle, require only one very simple alteration: changing the sign of their mass.
As kinetic energy is proportional to mass, if the mass will change sign, so will the kinetic energy. Therefore, its vector will change sign, which means that it will move in the opposite direction. If the mass of every particle in an object would change sign, then, the object would regress to its former state. This makes the manipulation of mass extremely important, as it may allow any lost information to be retrieved. Most notably, this technology could be used to revive people upon information-theoretic death. If this method would be applied on a large enough area, it could save anyone or anything from the worst cataclysm long after it has happened.
If we could also control the absolute value of mass, we could also control time in any way at all: that is, we could really manipulate time like we do in motion pictures, pausing, rewinding, going forward - even though we’d not need to know the past or future to do so: we could; we could slow it down or speed it up, raise it to infinity or stop it. And this all would in no way entail the absurdly high energies of ultrarelativistic speeds.
Another way of manipulating time without needing to reach the speed of light, however, is manipulating the speed of light itself, as lowering the speed of light could make it easier to travel through time: right now, we’d have to speed up to a speed of three hundred million meters per second, so that it would take a mass of two thousand tons an energy of 10^22 joules to slow down time thousandfold. But suppose that we’d have to speed to only three hundred millionths of a meter per second, then this would take only 10^–10 joules, 10^–32 times less.
Aside from time travel, changing mass would have many more applications. For instance, as E=mc^2, in accordance with the law of conservation of energy the speed of light should change if the mass of an object would change, which could make the applications in time travel said above possible.
Also, changing the mass of an object would automatically change its speed. In this way, though we cannot undo energy, we can undo its effects: for mass is what impedes energy it in its expression in movement. And if forces are mediated through exchange of momentum, then controlling mass, which will change momentum, could allow us to control the mediation of forces. If we could control mass, then, we could control the universe. The Higgs boson, supposed to be responsible for mass, fully justifies its apellation “God particle.”

An important reason why criminals need to be punished is that they lack the natural punishment of guilt.
. This issue was now resolved by simply inducing guilt in their minds through neurological procedures - something done by nanorobots present in their brain, which could there simply copy the guilt felt in a healthy person. This could resolve their psychopathy, and at the same time give them a more apposite punishment than one could imagine.

Foglets could cease fires by forming a wall around them and sucking away air from around it, gradually replacing it with a buffer gas such as nitrogen.

Not only in science, but even more in art did brain-computer interface find applications: for not only words or formulae, but even sounds or pictures could be converted from ideal to real. In this way, not only could one write or calculate within one’s very mind, but also compose, or paint. In anything logical or analytical, our computers would assist our brains by using their own logic and analysis; in anything artistic or intuitive, they would do so by enabling us to use our own artistry or intuition. Thus, not only could they augment our natural abilities, but they could also help us bring them to expression.
In essence, just thinking of something brought it into being. The challenge, now, was to think of it. Yes, this method didn't make art less challenging, just faster.

Colonies built inside asteroids could be illuminated by optic fibers which would run from the surface down into its interior. These thin tubes of reflecting material are as efficient than mirrors could be - actually, that's essentially what they were: tubular mirrors. And because light which entered it could not be reflected back into outer space, all of it ended up in the center of the planetoid. Not all photons reached its hollow at the same time because some covered more distance than others, but they all did eventually. Thus, these fiber optics could enlighten the asteroid as though it were exposed to open air.

Walking on walls, falling from high heights without damage, flight without propulsion - it could be possible with magtech.

(Written from the perspective of the future)

Magtech is a branch of technology which made use of magnetic fields generated in our bodies. Our every cells are filled with nanorobots, and these can each create a magnetic field, so that so could our bodies themselves. If these magnetic fields are made strong enough, this can be used to repel or attract our bodies. This can be very useful, for instance to create artificial gravity, so that we can walk on magnetically charged walls, or on the contrary counter gravity, so that we can safely fall on a magnetically charged ground.
The important thing is that there is a gradient in the magnetic field generated by the foglets. Because electromagnetism is so much more dependent on distance than gravity, if the body's magnetic field were homogenous, the magnetic force it would experience would not be. So, if magnetic attraction was to be used as artificial gravity, the magnetic force has to be stronger at the head than at the toe.
Although this was first applied in spaceflight, today we use it in our daily lives. For instance, we can now actually walk on the walls of buildings - something now seen ordinary, but the mere idea of which would once have seemed surreal. In this way, the walls of buildings have also become walkways - walkways, as it were, to the sky.
Magtech can also be used to cause a magnetic object to fly: because nanorobots are spread throughout the atmosphere, and each of them can generate a magnetic field, they can do this to attract (or repel) another magnetically charged object or person as it comes close.

A. A Comparison between Schizophrenia and Autism

Although there is some similarity in the symptoms between schizophrenia and autism, there is also a dichotomy in their causes: schizophrenics are thought to have a lack of glutamate function, while autistics are thought to have an excess. Glutamate is implicated in latent inhibition, the blocking of seemingly irrelevant stimuli. Autistics will only assimilate stimuli which are most relevant to them, while schizophrenics will be flooded by an overflow of irrelevant stimuli.
Obviously, latent inhibition impairs concentration, but it also enhances abstract thought. This is why autistics can’t think abstractly, while psychotics think too abstractly, so that they both have trouble communicating with others. In autistics, high latent inhibition may also lead to fear of novelty, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and lack of imagination, while in schizophrenics, low latent inhibition may also lead to delusions, paranoia, and thought disorder.
Glutamate decreases serotonin, modulates dopamine (increases dopamine in some areas and decreases it in others), increases acetylcholine, decreases noradrenaline, and decreases melatonin - these changes are all found in autism except for increased acetylcholine, which is decreased - in schizophrenia, the exact opposite of the effects of glutamate are seen except for increased melatonin. Autism and schizophrenia may be considered to have opposite chemical causes, even though many of their symptoms seem similar. Autism could potentially be treated by glutamate antagonists, just like schizophrenics are treated by glutamate agonists (atypical antipsychotics).

B. More on Schizophrenia

Psychotic depression, a relative of schizophrenia, has a neurological pathology which is very similar to that of schizophrenia, but in a milder version . Psychotic depression, like schizophrenia, is characterized by delusions, paranoia, and often hallucinations. Both schizophrenic and psychotically depressed people often hear voices, which will either judge them or order them. In psychotic depression, these will always be persecutory, while in schizophrenia, they may sometimes seem benevolent. In both, these may criticize the patient or tell him or her to commit suicide.
Both syndromes are caused primarily by a combination of stress and diathesis, although the diathesis (the genetic and neurological susceptibility to suffer from a condition) is usually more pronounced in schizophrenia than in psychotic depression. Both syndromes are caused primarily by a combination of stress and diathesis, although the diathesis (the genetic and neurological susceptibility to suffer from a condition) is usually more pronounced in schizophrenia than in psychotic depression. Schizophrenia can therefore be interpreted as a severe form of psychotic depression. The hallucinations and delusions that characterize is are either a manifestation of stress (eg thinking that the entire world is against the patient, or hearing voices which criticize the patient or encourage him or her to commit suicide) or, conversely, as a defense mechanism against it (eg thinking that one is sent for a mission or an imagined friend).
All symptoms of schizophrenia are a manifestation of stress, even though stress that induces schizophrenia in one person needn’t do so in all people. However, all people have susceptibility to schizophrenia, each having a different threshold of stress needed to cause it. This threshold may or may not be altered by other factors such as substance, but it is inherently there in each of us.
Research has shown that chronic stress leads to an increase of serotonin and noradrenaline and a decrease in glutamate, which are all seen in schizophrenia. Thus, one could say that anyone who suffers for a long time will become slightly schizotypal, although this is usually in such a mild form that it is not psychotic. Psychosis is still so common not only because evolution has preserved it, but also because it is not fully evolutionary.

In schizophrenia, imagination and reality merge. It is as if their dreams impinge on their waking days, which is why schizophrenics have less dream recall. This may be attributed to a disruption in the circadian biorhythm: normally, we can only distinguish imagination from reality when awake, but not in our sleep. One could say that all of us are schizophrenic, but our schizophrenic episodes are all restricted to our sleep. This could be why chronic insomnia can lead to psychosis, something sometimes seen in the manic episode of bipolar disorder. And while mania is associated with elevated glutamate, manic psychosis as well as schizophrenia are associated with reduced glutamate.
Glutamate is a neurotransmitter which enables us to distinguish imagination from reality, but schizophrenics have a deficit of this neurotransmitter. Normally, glutamate cycles from day to night, but in schizophrenics, this cycle is disrupted. The glutamate is one of the neurochemicals involved in the day-night cycle, its rhythms not only caused by but also causing it , which is why administration of glutamate may increase both wakefulness and sleep . During sleep, glutamate is normally counteracted by adenosine , which triggers, so to say, healthy nighttime psychosis.
We are all somewhat mad, but our madness usually occurs only in sleep: our insanity is usually safely relegated to our dreams. Although dreams have many more functions, they can also be said to be a deposition of psychosis. Arthur Schopenhauer said that "Dreams are brief madness and madness a long dreams.” Actually, it may be that dreams and madness have the same duration, but occur respectively during night and day - in psychosis, the order is reversed.
The involvement of adenosine in the day-night cycle also explains why adenosine agonists can alleviate the symptoms of schizophrenia and why caffeine, an adenosine antagonist, worsens positive symptoms of schizophrenia . Although an acute administration of adenosine will cause a short-term decrease in glutamate, more chronic administration will cause an amplification of the glutamate rhythms. This is so because the adenosine agonist will have more effect if more adenosine is present. This principle applies to for every neurotransmitter: any neurotransmitter agonist will have more effect if it has more of the neurotransmitter to act upon.
Possibly, schizophrenia may largely be attributed to anomalies in circadian rhythms. In schizophrenia, this cycle is disrupted, so that restoring this cycle might reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia. Ironically, by by treating its nighttime symptoms, we may also be able to treat the daytime symptoms of schizophrenia. This is also one reason why melatonin has proven useful in the treatment of schizophrenia: melatonin is one of the most important chemicals involved in the biological clock. Melatonin is dubbed the “sleep hormone,” and low levels have been observed in schizophrenia as well as in depression. In addition to the voices, this is also a reason why schizophrenia have trouble sleeping. Furthermore, there is evidence that melatonin potentiates glutamate transmission.
An insufficiency of glutamate could cause both positive and negative symptoms, which are respectively delusions, paranoia, hallucinations, and thought disorder, and apathy, blunted affect, anhedonia (lack of pleasure) avolition (lack of will), alogia (saying little), and hypomimia (lacking mimic). The cooccurrence of these symptoms seems paradoxical because positive symptoms are caused by an excess of dopamine, and negative symptoms are caused by a shortage of dopamine. This apparent contradiction is resolved by the fact that glutamate is self-modulatory, meaning that the increase of glutamate in one brain area will cause a decrease of glutamate in another. As glutamate increases dopamine levels, this will likewise affect dopamine throughout the brain. This is clearly illustrated in how increased dopamine is found in the striatum and MPOA in schizophrenia, which is an effect caused by increased glutamate. The dichotomy of positive and negative symptoms in schizophrenia is proportional to the imbalance of glutamate.
The lack of dopamine in some brain areas which ensues from lack of glutamate can set in motion a vicious circle consisting of two separate cycles, together leading to the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. These cycles may occur as follows. (Mentioned symptoms may or may not be present, according to severity and type of schizophrenia.)

1) In brain areas where glutamate is decreased:

- glutamate ↓
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ dopamine ↓
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ GABA ↓
→ glutamate ↓
→ serotonin ↑
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ anhedonia
→ motor retardation
→ acetylcholine ↓
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ serotonin ↑
→ noradrenaline ↑
→ dopamine ↓
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ attention / concentration ↓
→ GABA ↓
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ serotonin ↑
→ noradrenaline ↑
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ hallucinations
→ anxiety
→ insomnia
→ serotonin ↑
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ glutamate ↓
→ acetylcholine ↓
→ GABA ↓
→ noradrenaline ↑
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ blunted affect
→ noradrenaline ↑
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ blunted affect
→ dissociation
→ inhibition
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ blunted affect
→ attention / concentration ↓
→ latent inhibition ↓
→ thought disorder
→ hallucinations
→ delusions
→ avolition
→ apathy

2) In brain areas where glutamate is increased:

- glutamate ↑
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ dopamine ↑
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ melatonin ↓
→ GABA ↑
→ glutamate ↑
→ serotonin ↓
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ obsessive-compulsive disorder
→ latent inhibition ↓
→ thought disorder
→ hallucinations
→ delusions
→ acetylcholine ↑
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ serotonin ↓
→ noradrenaline ↓
→ dopamine ↑
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ blunted affect
→ ACTH ↑
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ anxiety
→ GABA ↑
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ serotonin ↓
→ noradrenaline ↓
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ auditory hallucinations
→ blunted affect
→ serotonin ↓
NEUROLOGICAL:
→ glutamate ↑
→ acetylcholine ↑
→ GABA ↑
→ noradrenaline ↓
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ paranoia
→ obsessive-compulsive disorder
→ anxiety
→ noradrenaline ↓
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ attention / concentration ↓
→ memory ↓
→ melatonin ↓
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ insomnia
→ anxiety
→ depression
PSYCHOLOGICAL:
→ anxiety

GABA, or gamma-aminobutyric acid, may have an important yet little recognized role in schizophrenia. GABA is implicated in the auditory pathways, and most hallucinations in schizophrenia are auditory. Also, it modulates latent inhibition : both an increase and decrease of GABA reduces it, which is why benzodiazepines, which act on the GABAA receptors, are weakly hallucinogenic. Moreover, withdrawal of Zolpidem, a benzodiazepine, may lead to both auditory and visual hallucinations. In schizophrenics as well as in people withdrawn from benzodiazepines (which can lead to delirium tremens) GABA receptors are decreased.

Psychiatry and psychology are just two ways of looking at the same phenomenon - the human mind. Emotions aren’t caused by chemicals, and those chemicals aren’t brought about by emotions, either: these chemicals were our emotions. Neurochemistry and psychology were just two facets of our emotions, not two distinct causes of our emotions.
The bidirectional causal relationship between emotions and chemical reactions has been a mistake psychologists and psychiatrists have made for many years. It’s not so that some depressions are caused by chemical imbalances and some are caused by emotional complexes - all depressions are caused by both, because one leads to the other. When one’s neurochemistry is influenced, so are one's thoughts - after all, our thought processes are neurochemistry.
Anyone can increase his levels of neurotransmitters through sheer concentration, in this way energizing oneself. In this way, one could also increase one’s motivation, although this in turn required motivation, so that this is, like all emotions, something which amplifies itself. Furthermore, increasing one's motivation makes one's life more stimulating, which increases motivation and so on - the opposite is also possible, a vicious circle which can lead to depression.

If you hate yourself, you can never be happy because you will not allow it, and only when you love yourself will you think yourself worthy of happiness.

As any system inherently controls itself, any system can also inherently be controlled: we need only to know how it controls itself to control it. There must be some interaction between the system and part of the rest of the universe as the existence of the system would otherwise not be relevant. By controlling that part of the universe we could control that interaction, and in this way, interact with this system. If we find out how to do this, we can fully control the system, and any phenomenon that is part of it. With that knowledge, we can control anything. The only barrier to omnipotence, then, would be a barrier to omniscience.

It follows that anything in the universe can be controlled, merely because the universe itself can control itself, and we are part of that universe. If it is connected to our universe, it can be controlled - if it isn't connected to our universe, it doesn't really exist to us. There is therefore no limit to what we can achieve except for the limit to what the universe itself can achieve - that is, the limit to what exists in the universe. If the complexity of the universe is infinite, so the complexity of our knowledge of it will become, and therefore so will the complexity of our technology.

The idea that there is no limit to technology is known as the sans ceiling hypothesis.

For a discussion on whether or not the universe can be infinite in complexity, see the Infinity Principle:
http://cloudscape.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/28/the-infinity-principle.html

Related entries, on the eventual "theosis" (deification) of intelligent species such as ourselves:
http://cloudscape.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/28/god-theory-part-i-analytical.html
http://cloudscape.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/04/28/the-god-theory-part-ii-holistic.html

Perhaps vacuum energy serves as an “ether” through which quanta propagate. The vast majority of the waves in vacuum energy would be a noise called vacuum fluctuations, consisting of virtual particles - these would in some respect be much like the waves of the sea.
Through interference, these wavelets could then cohere to collectively form a coherent whole, just like any other wave. This would explain why quantums can be at two positions simultaneously - much like a wave. Rather than fundamentally being both waves and particles, they would then be waves on small scale which manifest as particles on a large scale: if a large number of waves are superimposed, a single crest results. This single crest is a particle.
So, elementary particles aren't both particles and waves - they're just waves. Only the collective whole of elementary particles behaves as a system of particles.

Below we come to a number of formulae which relate dimensionless heat capacity to heat in a striking way, showing, notably, that pressure times volume is a constant fraction of heat.

The formula of specific heat capacity is

c = Q/mT

According to the ideal gas law, Q = NkT on a microscopic level, so that

c = Nk/m = k/M

(where M is mass per molecule).

Q = cmT

Now, according to the ideal gas law,

PV = nRT
⇔ T = PV/nR

If we substitute this, we get:

Q = cmPV/nR

As m = nM,

Q = cMPV/R
⇔ PV = Q · (R/cM)

Now, heat capacity is the ability of a substance to store heat with increase of temperature. It is equal to the product of mass and specific heat capacity (the heated needed to heat a kilogram of a substance by one kelvin):

C = cm,

and, according to the heat equation,

Q = cmT,

so that this is equal to

C = Q/T

Now, the dimensionless heat capacity of a substance is equal to its heat capacity divided by the number of moles times the universal gas constant:

C* = C/nR,

the inverse of which is:

1/C* =nR/C

Now, the number of moles equals the total mass divided by the mass of one mole. Substituting m/M in n, we get:

1/C* =mR/MC,

and, as said, C = cm, so that

1/C* = R/cM.

Substituting this in the formula we got earlier, ideally:

PV = Q · (R/cM)

we get:

PV = Q/C*,

This formula may be useful because it relates heat, pressure and volume, showing that pressure times volume is a constant fraction of heat.
Now, according to kinetic theory,

P = ⅓ρv^2
⇔ PV = ⅓mv^2
⇔ PV = ⅔Ek

Thus,

⅔C*Ek = Q

This formula succinctly relates heat to kinetic energy. Note that kinetic energy equals work divided by two, so that

⅓C*W = Q

Also, according to the Dulong-Petit law, any crystal has a dimensionless heat capacity of 3, so that

2Ek = Q
⇔ W = Q

This means that, for any crystal, the heat of a crystal is the total work it may perform. This means that its internal energy twice its heat:

U = W+Q = 2Q = 2W

In this essay I've tried to get to a formula to calculate the average time between two molecular collisions. I'm not sure if it's correct, but I've not found any errors. If you do, please inform me.

Molecular Collisions.rtfx

On the influence of the distribution of charges on the total strength of the forces mediated between them:

Distributivity.rtf

This is of immense importance to the cohesion of all matter. The formula included may be useful someday in foglet technology because foglets would adhere to one another through magnetism, to calculate the required charge to keep their total mass together with a specified strength.

I've decided to move my album, Hidden Flowers, to a place where there's a sane amount of space for them: http://oneiromancernjv.deviantart.com/

For more of my photographs, a full gallery here: http://gallery.mac.com/frans.vandamme#100038

Galaxies may have arisen in a way similar to that in which solar systems arose. Suppose that a very heavy star would explode in a gamma ray burst, then its core would presumably have collapsed into a black hole; this black hole could later have grown to the giant in the center of the Milky Way’s active galactic nucleus, for example. If such giant star would have spun before its explosion, this could in part explain why galaxies are usually oblate, although galactic tidal forces would also play a role in its oval shape, especially when galaxies actually collide.
The stellar nebula which would have formed upon this gamma ray burst would become an immense star nursery, from which eventually the first stars of the galaxy would form. And just like the planets which formed from the protoplanetary disc orbited their star, the stars which would form from this protostellar disc would orbit their black hole. Later, this black hole would form the center of the active galactic nucleus of the galaxy. This would also be the cause of quasars, which then may or may not cool down to later become active galactic nuclei (quasars themselves are far too energetic to be AGNs, able to produce up to 100 times more energy than the entire Milky Way galaxy, that is to say, ~1038 watts).
Later, the galaxy would gradually accrue as it would continually capture migrant stars from other, smaller galaxies interacting with it. These, in turn, would also have arisen in similar processes, feeding on even smaller galaxies, which would in turn have fed on even smaller galaxies, and so on until the first galaxies were formed from stars wandering in intergalactic space.
Eventually, like the planets formed from planetesimals, galaxies formed from galaxisimals; and like the planets had cleaned their orbits from planetesimals, the galaxies would have cleaned their paths from galaxisimals.
If this is true, then the most destructive forces in the universe are also the most creative. The feared phenomena of black holes and gamma ray bursts could actually lie at the root of our own existence.
It is possible that this evolution is even happens even today, although it happens far too slowly to be observed. Gamma ray bursts are registered in our telescopes once a day, and the energy released in them is gigantic - on the order of 1047 joules - a thousand times more than in a supernova and ten times more than in a hypernova. As the sun, as an average star, has a power of 3,827 · 1026 J, and there are 400 billion stars in the galaxy, the Milky Way’s stars together have a total power of 1036 watts, so that it takes the galaxy‘s stars a hundred billion seconds - or three thousand years - to produce as much energy as a gamma ray burst: supernovas happen only once every fifty years in the Milky Way.
If galaxies may arise in this way could be corroborated easily: the farther away an object is, the older its light is, so that the farther one looks forward in space, the farther one looks backward in time. So to say, distance in space equals distance in time by the speed of light (s=t/c). (That’s why quasars are all billions of light years away. It might also be why most gamma ray bursts are billions of light years away, so we probably don’t need to worry about gamma ray bursts occurring anywhere near us.)
So the farther a cluster of galaxy is, the greater the frequency of interactions between those. This increase of frequency with distance, and therefore time, could be extrapolated back into time perhaps billions of years, so that one would arrive back at the time where galaxies were born. If small galaxies are found to interact with remnants of very large stars, this would also indicate that these may lie at the origins of galaxies.
In conclusion, the evolution of a galaxy would basically look roughly like this:

Red hypergiant
→ gamma ray burst / hypernova
→ black hole + stellar nebula
→ black hole + star nursery
→ quasar
→ active galactic nucleus
→ galaxisimal
→ galaxy

A brief exposition of a theory on the range of forces based on the fact that cross-section of particles decreases with speed.

Particles traveling at higher speeds have a lower cross-section, meaning that they are less likely to interact. An example of this is how fast neutrons are less likely to collide with uranium nuclei to trigger nuclear fission, which is a reason why for some time early experiments with nuclear fission required more energy than they produced.
This is so because the wavelength λ of a particle with frequency f is proportional to its speed v:

Ek = hf = hv/λ

And the higher the wavelength, the smaller the chance that the particle will interact with another: this is intuitive because it then covers less surface area then.
If gravitons travel twenty billion times faster than photons, they are less likely to collide with other particles and therefore less likely to influence them. Because of this they travel a far greater distance before they actually cause gravity, which is why the reach of gravity is so much greater. At a short distance, however, gravity is far weaker.

Finite potential barrier is a term describing a phenomenon in which quanta may spontaneously pass through a barrier of finite potential. The possibility that this happens equals:

P(T) = 1/(1+ 2md^2V/ħ^2)

where

m is the mass of the particle(s),
d is the thickness of the barrier
V is the potential of the barrier
ħ is the Dirac constant (1,05457168 · 10^–34 Js)

For photons, mass varies enormously: as this value is equal to

m = hf/c^2 = h/cλ

and the wavelength may vary from as little as on the order of tens of picometers (10^–11 nm, gamma rays) to as much as on the order of tens of meters (10 nm, micro waves), the mass of one photon may be trillions of times greater than that of another. As a result, the chance of transmission may also be trillions of times greater for one photon than for another. Micro waves will have a far greater chance to be transmitted than gamma rays, which may be one reason why they can so easily cross barriers normally impassable to particles. This could also be why neutrinos are almost impossible to detect. Neutrinos have an extremely small mass, which in the early twenty-first century wasn’t even great enough to be measurable; for some time, they were even thought massless.
In addition, while the net distance photons travel in a specified period remains constant, photons with smaller wavelength will travel a greater gross distance in the same time: the ratio between the angular velocity and the phase velocity is known as the wave vector.

The gravitational energy of a black hole on a photon traveling away from it equals:

E = GMm/r

while the kinetic energy of the photon equals:

E = mc2

Thus, if these energies are equal,

GMm/r = mc^2
⇔ r = GM/c^2

Now, r is the distance from the black hole beyond which no energy can escape. This region is called the ergosphere.
Now, the formula of the Schwarzschild radius equals:

r = 2GM/c^2

So that the ergosphere radius is half the Schwarzschild radius.

A mole of hydrogen atoms has no *net* charge, yet it would have a total charge of:

Q = 2Ze
= 6,023 · 10^23 · 2 · 1,602 · 10^–19 C
= 1,9298 · 10^5 C

Note that this is only so on an atomic scale: at a subatomic scale, this is even greater, because just like molecules, nucleons in turn consist of charged particles. Thus, if this process were driven further to use all energy of all quarks, this would produce even greater amounts of energy:

Q = Zq + Nq’

where q is the total charge per proton and q’ is the total charge per neutron:

Q = Z(2⅔e + ⅓e) + N(2⅓e + ⅔e)
= ⅓e(5Z + 4N)

It could turn out, however, that quarks themselves are in turn made up of particles which also have a charge, which could then provide even more energy. This is already so for five material constituents once thought “fundamental:” mixtures, compounds, atoms, nucleons, and quarks! Yet, intriguingly, even though massive amounts of charge-energy is stored within all matter, it is seldom noticed - in nature manifesting only in phenomena such as lightning or magnetism.
As physics advances, this symmetry between charge and anti-charge could appear to go on into infinity. And essentially, perhaps all springs from this symmetry: if one adds up the vectors of the kinetic energy of the particles in a gas, the result is zero. Yet, it is evident that any gas has kinetic energy, as is manifested in pressure and temperature. The same applies to everything: fundamentally, the universe has zero net energy, just like the empty space around it. Existence itself may then be a quintessence of holism: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts because the sum of the parts is zero. Therefore, there exists nothing but information. Information is the one thing which can actually be created.
Perhaps mass is nothing more than neutralized charge: if one combines positive and negative charge, the result is mass. As a mass is moved, the namesake charges collide - this could increase the plasticity of larger masses, as they are composed of more charges. A similar effect has been proposed by stochastic electrodynamics, which states, among other things, that electromagnetic drag with vacuum is responsible for inertia.
The law of inertia, in effect, is simply a variant of the law of conservation of energy. If charge in itself has energy, it must therefore obey the law of inertia - and indeed, charge increases with momentum, a phenomenon known as “running.”

Dirac thought that the negative energy results of the Dirac equation could be explained by the existence of antimatter. However, the energy of antimatter is actually as positive as that of ordinary matter. This becomes evident when the two are combined to produce energy rather than destroy it: if matter was composed of energy and antimatter of anti-energy, they would simply disappear when combined, rather than being converted into photons. After all, the sum of both energies would be zero.
Moreover, antimatter can be produced by matter. Thus, in the process, not only antimatter, but also matter should be produced for energy to be conserved: negative energy cannot arise from positive energy unless more positive energy likewise arises from it.
According to Feynman, antiparticles are particles traveling back into time. He though this a solution to the paradox of negative energy: a particle with negative energy traveling forward in time would actually be a particle traveling backward in time. A particle moving back in time, however, when seen from the past, would travel forward in time, so that it is actually impossible for a particle to move back in time.
Feynman believed that a particle which combined with its antiparticle to create a photon was actually a particle which created a photon to become its antiparticle. But if the particle would travel forward in time and then become an antiparticle which would travel backwards in time, then where does the photon come from? After all, no energy should be lost or gained as it travels backwards in time. This therefore violates the law of conservation of energy, as the energy of the particle is smaller than the energy of the antiparticle plus the energy of the photon. Another problem with this is that it would be acausal.
Another possibility may be that anti-energy simply has anti-mass. The notion of anti-mass, however, is hypothetical: it has never been observed, and nothing seems to indicate that it should exist at all.
Maybe the problem of negative energy is actually a very simple one. Perhaps, we meet negative energy daily as well as positive energy, and they are as hard to tell apart as negative and positive charge. Rather than being a property only of some exotic particle, it can be a property of half the particles in the universe: negative energy may simply be energy which has an opposite direction relative to positive energy.

If there is a change, then there is obviously a rate at which this change happens. As gravity causes a change in gravitational potential, then it must therefore have a speed of propagation. This speed would be greater than that of light.
If the influence of gravity was instantaneous, it would be acausal. Einstein himself did not believe in a force acting from a distance.

http://ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html

We could find evidence of whether the speed of gravity exceeds that of light or not by observing interacting galaxies: as galaxies merge, the tidal forces between them become increasingly strong. If these tidal forces have a lag, this means gravity needs time to travel.
Another indication could be giant diffuse galaxies (GDGs): these can be some 6 million light years or 1,8 million parsecs in diameter, gargantuan compared to the 100.000 light years of the Milky Way galaxy. Galaxies can move at a speed of hundreds of kilometers per second, so if GDG's can move at equal speeds, it's essential that the speed of gravity would exceed that of light, as GDG's could otherwise not be kept together.
Why? Consider a galaxy of 6 million light years in diameter whose center moves at a speed of 100 kilometers per second. If gravity travels at the speed of light, then by the time the star at one end will be attracted by the center of the galaxy only within 3 million years. By this time, as 100 km/s is one three thousandths of the speed of light, it has traveled thousand light years. As a result, giant diffuse galaxies would have to be very elongated and diffuse at one end, and very compacted and dense at the other, so that it would have a distinctly oval shape, leaving behind stars in a comet’s tail. Thus, unless giant diffuse galaxies barely move, the speed of gravity must be greater than the speed of light.

That gravity influences light is not necessarily proof of space-time curvature. It may as well mean that gravity propagates faster than light. Photons may simply be deflected from their course by gravitons. This needn’t mean that the constancy of the speed of light is violated, however, as the path it needs to cover also becomes longer, albeit in a three-dimensional way.

A bit hypothetical: in a system of points, the average distance from one point to its nearest neighbour is equal to the third root of 6 by the point density:

r = ∛(6/n)


Average Minimal Distance.rtf

A simple formula in combinatorics: for a combination (n,2) (the number of possible pairs formed by n):

(n,2) = Tn - n

where Tn is the triangle number (eg T5 = 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15). Proof in file.

(n,2).rtf

In biochemistry, any reduction tends to be mutual. For instance, the adenosine receptor, found ubiquitously in the body, slows down metabolism. Adenosine acts on it because it is the residue of burnt-up ATP, which is the “energy currency” of the body. The more ATP is used, the more adenosine will be available, as it is its final metabolite. This means less ATP, less adenosine. This is an ingenuous mechanism by which the body regulates its own metabolism: the higher the metabolism, the more it inhibits itself.

Insulin causes an increase of vasopressin, which explains why lack of insulin may lead not just to diabetes mellitus (characterized by hyperglycemia), but also to the lesser known diabetes insipidus (characterized by polyuria). Because of this, food intake will also decrease urine passage, which is why polyuria may also occur in anorexia nervosa.
The hypoglycemia caused by lack of insulin also causes a decrease of osmotic pressure in the blood plasma (glucose absorbs water). This may be responsible for the hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating) which is characteristic of hypoglycemia.

Unhealthy food has been associated with violence. This may be caused by a decrease in serotonin associated with excess omega-6.

Just like Leonardo Da Vinci based his plans of the first working robot ever built in 1495 on the human body, we will base our plans of the first working nanorobots on the human organelles. As nanotechnology already exists in nature, it's obvious that we can steal that technology from her. The only difference is that nanorobots would have to be controlled.

Older chromosomes have more base pairs: the Y-chromosome has 50 million bases in 231 genes, the least of any known chromosome, while the X-chromosome has 150 million bases in 1184 genes, placing it between the seventh and eight chromosome -- the Y chromosome is much younger because males haven't been around as long as females, what with asexual reproduction.
A possible explanation that older chromosomes have more base pairs is that the newer chrosomes removed redundant DNA. Perhaps, the number of genes of a chromosome is proportional to its age, and we can calculate, approximately, how old a chromosome is based on this. We can then know when the X- and Y-chromosomes arose, and therefore when femininity and masculinity arose - in the sense we know today.

As there is 15 kilogram biomass per square meter, the biosphere when spread out in liquefied form would form a layer of only 1,5 cm around the Earth, assuming the earth to be perfectly round. If this were how the biosphere was defined, it would be very thin indeed.

Live every moment of your life as if you had repeated your life just waiting for that moment.

There is one thing you know for sure about consciousness, and it is that you are conscious at this moment. All the rest is assumptions. It is insufferably ignorant and arrogant to claim with certainty that one can fully understand consciousness; for there is per definition no way to objectively prove something subjective, let alone subjectivity itself. As we can therefore not even conceive a way to prove what consciousness is today, one might ask if we even ever will.
To those who believe they know what consciousness is, I ask: do you have any proof of your claims at all? Are they even based on anything at all? Or is it merely intuition, rather than reason, which led you to these delusions?
When you can find decent answers to the following questions, I'll believe you:

1) What would happen if you'd stop time for a while and then resume it? Would you still be you?
2) What would happen if you'd separate every atom in your brain from every other and after a while replace them? Would you still be you?
3) What would happen if you'd destroy your brain and recreate it at the same moment? Would you still be you?
4) What would happen if you'd destroy your brain and recreate it a while later? Would you still be you?
5) What would happen if you'd destroy your brain and recreate several identical copies at the same moment? Which would be you?
6) What would happen if you'd destroy your brain and recreate another which has just very small differences? How much difference could there be if you were to still be conscious of that other brain? Would you still be you?
7) What would happen if you'd be cryopreserved and then reanimated? Would you still be you?
8) Do you have any guarantee that you will still be you once you've finished reading this sentence?

If the universe is infinite there would be an infinite number of exact copies of yourself. What would happen if you'd die instantaneously? Would you just live on in one of those copies, as if uploaded? If so, which one? Is this merely stochastic?
But if there can be no interaction between the copies, why would the consciousness end up in one copy rather than another, if they are all exactly alike? If consciousness is nothing else than patterns, then the "selection" of this copy is purely random, and therefore acausal.
This leads to an even more bizarre conclusion: no matter in which way you’d die, you’d always be revived in another copy. Even if your decease would take time, the moment you would forever lose consciousness would not. Therefore, your consciousness would simply be “transferred” to another copy just about to die, so that it is transferred to another, and so forth ad infinitum. If this would happen an infinite number of times, it would happen in an infinite number of different states: at the moment of death, anything can occur in the environment outside the brain. Because this change in the surroundings will recur an infinite number of times, it will be anything at all. This includes changes which may interfere with what happens inside the brain, some of which could save the consciousness just before it vanishes. Thus, in an infinite universe one can, in principle, impossibly die, because just at the moment one is about to lose consciousness, something would happen to preempt it - at least, if patternism is correct.
Also, when one dies, what suddenly becomes so radically different in the patterns of one’s mind that is so fatal? Even then, they will all be quite complex, yet they will no longer give rise to consciousne