Rachel, Leza and Fifi

2012

Tomorrow is the End of 2012.

I turned 63, and I still feel I have some time left.

The most Relevant Science I learnt this year is the massive migration of humans to more temperate climates. Two dear friends of mine recently moved North. There are close to 11% of the US population coming from Mexico. Obama got elected by an unprecedented 10% of Mexican-American voters, that overwhelmingly (more than 70%) voted for him.

Mitt Romney was a phony, and my people saw through him.

I am planning to make 2013, the year when WE move in!

Christmas Eve Adventure

Today we went to pick up our son for Christmas. Chicago can be tricky if you don't know your way around.  Union Station, what can be easier right? Wrong, he did not take the train but a bus line, which is not Greyhound Lines. Better and cheaper service, he said. Anyway, there I am at the appointed time at the corner of Jackson and Canal. I did not bring my down jacket, I was getting cold, I spotted an old wool hat on the floor, and donned it.

Finally I see the bus at the other side of the corner I was at; there I go looking for him. I didn't find him, finally I do, we hug, and start looking for his mother. She was at Starbucks, Clinton & Adams. We are all together now. Where is the car? I asked: nearby, answers my wife, in the parking lot, we walked over there, and a BMW is blocking the way!  Nobody in sight and near freezing temperature. My son and I go in the car. She finally calls from the Church in the corner. They have Christmas Eve mass, and they already announced to get the owners to move the car.

Since nobody comes we decide to go to Union Station and wait. My son has a McDonald's treat, and Mary tells us that even though she told them her name, they didn't invited her in, because it was jam packed. How ironic we thought. Here we have Mary, her husband and son, on Christmas Eve, and they don't let us in!

Oh well, we are home now. I am so happy, since he is cozy under his down blanket on his bed.

We found a surprise gift from his grandma in the mailbox!

Push and Pull

In the previous note I proposed a possible migration north because of the better conditions. One should not forget though, the presence of a push force, from the emitting country to the receiving one; that I believe is represented by the crime wave surrounding areas in climate distress. The Sahara desert is growing, causing the death of millions of people in "ethnic" wars. I hereby propose that the Sonora desert is also growing.

That is the push force!

Complexity

Bejan says, "flow is such, that next time around it is easier". Obviously this observation does not come from fundamental physics, because there is no next time around in the basic Laws of Nature, so far postulated by physicists. Bejan is talking about emergent properties.

I am reading Leen Decin's beautiful review "Late Stages of Stellar Evolution - Herschel's contributions", one learns there, about the emergent complexity discovered with the space observatory Herschel.

Even the small galactic magnetic field, one thousandth of the Earth's field, gets into the natural game of making, "flow easier".

Amazing!

Massive Human Migration?

I found a dear student from Mexico in Portland Oregon!

She has moved looking for a better future for her future children. Another student I met several years before is already in Canada. These are anecdotal data points. What is more relevant is the 10% of Mexican-Americans who voted for Obama this year, and who do not like the GOP extreme views exposed recently through the Tea Party movement, and the Minutemen.

It seems to me that we are witnessing one of the biggest human migrations in history. From tropical dysfunctional states, to temperate cosmopolitan regions.

Be it as it may, I am happy with my two beloved children in the U.S. of A..

Beautiful Leza and Rachel

Sal Castro - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sal Castro - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Salvador B. Castro (born October 25, 1933) is a Mexican-American educator and activist. He is most well known for his role in the 1968 East Los Angeles high school walkouts, a series of protests against unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) schools. Although he has retired, he continues to lecture about his experiences and the importance of education, especially for Mexican Americans."

'via Blog this'

Zapatistas: “to be heard, we march in silence” | Reflections on a Revolution ROAR

Zapatistas: “to be heard, we march in silence” | Reflections on a Revolution ROAR:

 "As the Maya calendar ends, a new cycle of struggle begins with thousands of Zapatistas peacefully and silently occupying town squares across Chiapas."

'via Blog this'

Is This the End?

I was born in Mexico City, I live in Warrenville, IL. I do not believe the world is ending on Friday. But; my request for help from Mexico has not been granted. In one case not even answered. Today I read the Mexico City paper, La Jornada, and find out opaqueness. This very free and open newspaper has pieces on the leader of the Mexican Teachers Union, a crook I believe, who the new government seems to be protecting. Also a very courageous commentator, exposes  new Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto's  cruel attack against Mexican students.

Changing country, I expected president Obama to announce in Newtown, an attack against the gun lobby, all I saw were platitudes about our need to change.

It seems to me that evil people are in charge of governmental powers in Mexico, and the US.

I do hope that something happens on Friday, to end this corrupt system.

There.

Well today is December 21, 2012. The world didn't end.

I did find out though, that Mexico is in the middle of a drought. I expect more problems down there.

Mayan Silent Revolt!

La Jornada

The Tea Party dropped the Fiscal Cliff Bomb!

Even with Obama's proposal, I guess I am not getting my tax rebate.

Abrams & Primack

The New Universe and the Human Future

Arturo Cisneros Stoianowski, Bruce Hoeinesein, and Hector Rubalcava

These three gentlemen, graduated from Caltech, and their work has enriched the world. I recently found out about Rubalcava, his 1957 PhD thesis has astrobiological importance nowadays. I wonder why Cisneros and Rubalcava do not continue scientific work.

I am happy to report that Bruce is active in Ecuador. From the three, he is the only one I have met personally. Great guy.

Noosphereans

There are some citizens of this new country, I have my friend Edgar Altamirano, and Paul Krugman. They just inhabit the space. I know that Edgar hardly sleeps, also professor Krugman is always present online. I am slowly joining them. I depend on Google.

Today I posted a Term Paper, here, and the transparencies that go with it here.

This is fun!

Ravi Shankar

And Then Comes Society

First hydrocarbons, and other carbon based compounds are formed in space, then chemical signaling is established in the brain, finally society appears. Nowadays the Internet introduces another set of open protocols, which allow world wide communication.

There is an important aspect at the society level. Acemoglu and Robinson discovered Why Nations Fail. Now it is rules, human made rules, which produce prosperity. It seems to me that there are cradles, nurseries, or whatever you want to call them, of ideas. Where ideas are created, advanced ways to be on Earth, are discovered, and those lucky ones, live better.

Go find your cocoon. I can assure you, it won't be near a warlord!

Cosmic Furnace

With so many flammable gases in Molecular Clouds, I imagine these places as big furnaces where chemical reactions produce the observed chemical complexity which is manifest in ourselves. Even more extraordinary,  is the final step to Intelligent life. The human cortex producing Intelligence, solved the last mile problem, rather the last micron problem with chemical signaling!

Cosmic Orchestra

Using the Deutsch Constructor concept, I feel like more than one Constructor, one has an orchestra. According to the article I have been referring to, Caselli & Ceccarelli, cosmic rays also play a role in the chemical construction of complexity. Given that these charged particles are produced independently of the chemical reactions, I wonder if the coordination is not more encompassing than we have so far assumed.

How Does my Mind Work?

As far as I can tell, I look for patterns. Instead of checking every single source for accuracy, I envision sweeping narratives to give a coherent story in a few steps.

Is the world like that?

I don't have a clue; my idea of an agnostic paradigm, is my effort to deal with the way I think. The proof is in the pudding, if some of my generalizations work in a few cases, I would be satisfied. Physics has always seem to me as the study of the simple; problem is, I am looking into more complex processes now.

Chemistry studies complex processes, it is important to notice that neural communication is chemical also, not physical. Reading a review on "Our astrochemical heritage", I learn that physical processes give way to chemical ones: Those take the day, and determine the essential conditions that produced life. Maybe also, Intelligent Life; who knows?

Lionel Messi

Noosphere

Wikipedia

Vladimir Vernadsky proposed this idea; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made it popular in 1922 in his book Cosmogenesis,

"The main thrust of Teilhard's gnosis was a foundational understanding of the Universe, which was expressed in his theory of Cosmogenesis. According to Teilhard, the universe is no longer to be considered a static order, but rather a universe in process. And it is a continuing, upslope trajectory of evolution that Teilhard declares a cosmogenesis. The process of Teilhard's holistic cosmos is broken into the following categories: the Without and Within of things; the evolution of matter, life, consciousness; and the Omega Point."

From Stoa del Sol

The surface of my brain, as the keyboard of my computer, are surfaces to store and retrieve information, information being marks which can be read, interpreted, and acted on, in the process of Universe building, or construction.

 I believe current centers of learning will evolve towards the Omega point. Scientific magazines will become eZines, more and more intellectuals will contribute to the official knowledge, Wikipedia, and the arXive are just  previews of things to come. Robust platforms, better than Google Docs, will be collaborative structures. Live science will be almost subliminal. Everybody will be experiencing reality, and collectively constructing a better and better fit. The Noosphere will come of age!

No End, but a Beginning of a New World: José Argüelles.

Great Review!

Once upon a time, there was a small cold cloud of gas and dust in an interstellar medium broken into several clumps and laments of di erent masses and dimensions. Then, about 4.5 billion years ago, the small cloud became the Solar System. What happened to that primordial cloud? When, why and how did it happen? Does the Earth receive a heritage from those old eons? Can this heritage help us to understand our origins?

arXiv

Manifest Destiny and Tonantzin

Flowers, candles and messages pay tribute to the singer outside the Basilica de Guadalupe in Monterrey, Mexico.
 NYT

Tonantzin is Mother Earth, and Manifest Destiny, is a wrong headed ideology.

Tomorrow thousands of Original Americans will end their walk from Mexico to New York, to celebrate Virgin Guadalupe, aka Tonantzin. On the other hand the wrong idea of Manifest Destiny represents the exclusionary view of white Europeans towards reality. For them the Universe, Mother Earth exists to serve only them.

Now that the limits of growth are everywhere to be seen, it is reassuring to see the hope of so many Original Americans walking through this Earth, to tell the World about Virgen Guadalupe.

¡Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!

I am sad that Ritchie Valens, and now Jenni Rivera did not get the recognition they deserved while they were with us. They are such saintly figures.

Is There a New Science in the Making?

The agnostic paradigm I have been advocating in this blog, is well underway in several facilities already in operation. What I am trying to do here, is to put them neatly in one package.

Right now, I am reading the review, "Our astrochemical heritage", by Caselli & Ceccarelli already in the arXiv.  You can find there, an intense collaboration between scientists of different disciplines, looking for our extreme, or deep, "Origins Story." To my mind they represent a Constructor in the sense of David Deutsch.

Databases, computers, meteorites, and so on and so forth, in one of the biggest open source projects, I am aware of. I can call  this "The Constructor of Our Origins."

The end result, won't be a "Theory of Everything", but a "Cosmic Story of Ourselves."

The Information that is Out There

Information is all around us. The scientific method allows us to collect it, organize it, and understand it. Nevertheless current practices do not emphasize this simple fact.

We should use Claude Shannon Information Theory's framework, to address ALL information tasks.

An important element is the meaning of probability, I believe the best course of action is to stand on a solid Baysean Foundation, i.e., founded on Bayes' Theorem.

It is important to understand our work as statistical in nature, without essentialism. There are no "Laws of Nature", anywhere in the Universe, all there are, are marks for us to understand. In this paradigm we are like Hansel & Gretel ; lost children trying to follow, marks we left, and more importantly, those we did not leave.

Automatic information machines, i.e., computers, are very important in this paradigm.

Two Beautiful Little Girls

Emma Whitehead:

and my own, Leza Cantoral:

They both almost died.

The NYT has an article on Emma here.

My daughter was attacked by insects. She took a sick cat from the street, and before we knew it, she got bitten all through her skin, and the kidney malfunctioned. A great doctor in Mexico, Rodolfo Javier Gordillo de Anda, saved her life.

And life goes on.

Jenni Rivera and the Mexican-American War

Jenni Rivera died yesterday. I just finished reading Amy Greenberg's book, "A Wicked War". I feel conflicted.

Obama got over seventy percent of the Latino vote. All he had to do was to deliver what he had already offered when elected the first time. Show some sympathy for the Mexican-Americans plight. He started moving towards a comprehensive Immigration Reform.

What happened?

Americans in 1847 supported a war that ended with a few courageous boys dying while defending their military school in Mexico City. Niños Héroes. The place where they died is a few miles away from where I was born in Mexico. Those Americans wanted to make Mexico a country of slaves; just like President James Knox Polk and his wife had slaves, they wanted to make Texas, and the whole of Mexico a wretched country of slaves.

Jenni was abused by the men in her life. Some of that type of men, have brought Mexico to her knees. The War on Drugs, has produced War Lords controlling parts of the country.

My conflict is expressed in one question: Why did Mexico fail?

Mr. Obama and all of us, have to bring social justice to so many suffering human beings.

This has to end. We all have the same DNA, we are all siblings!

Jenni Rivera

George Romero

Persistence

Below I link a paper by Chao et al., with a solution to the vacuum stability problem, given the measured mass of the Brout-Higgs boson.

If there were no more physics, beyond the Standard Model, then our Universe is not stable. These scientists connect this problem, with a way to calculate other unknowns, say the neutrino masses, and the nature of Dark Matter.

There might be a better way.

Persistence is connected to stability of the ground state. Quantum Mechanics only takes us down to the ground state, if this state is not stable, we need something else.

Recently David Deutsch and Adrian Bejan have proposed what they call "The Constructor Theory", and "The Constructal Theory", respectively. In both cases I see a connection between construction and the concept of time. The way I put it is that: "Time Decodes Persistence".

I consider this a new paradigm, in the sense of Thomas Kuhn.

This is an "Agnostic Method". Given that the eye fills the blind spot with made up images, I believe the Scientific Method, as it has been used so far, does not question our perceptions, and thus has blind spots also. Reification can be a systematic error, leading us astray. I do not know if Maxwell's equations say, exist somewhere in the universe, and directs traffic, so to say. I rather assume that we have built equations, that so far have provided with numbers, that have been right on, in all cases checked. That is great, but I do not believe these equations are "real".

Information exists outside conscious observers, I propose that it exists as marks, directing the way things happen. Deutsch, makes us realize that we need a constructor in our description of anything, say the creation of complexity in the Universe. Paola Caselli, and Cecilia Ceccarelli (C&C), have a good description of "Our astrochemical heritage", in the arXiv. According to Deutsch, I will say that "catalysts" are the constructors, those are the parts that do  not change, when we go from hydrogen to helium in the CNO cycle, say, or in any of the organic chemistry reactions described in C&C's review. No observer is needed, no consciousness is necessary, the catalysts, are the constructors, they direct traffic.

There is another way to talk about a constructor, it is called: Intelligent Design, I do not want to go there, nor to the reification of "The Laws of Physics". I do not know if the constructor is intelligent, or if the equations exist. This I call the "Agnostic Method".

The proof is in the pudding, as Deutsch explains in his book, "The Beginning of Infinity", knowledge is transformative. Once some humans knew about Technetium,  they could produce it in Italy. Emilo Segrè, and Carlo Perrier did it for the first time in 1936.

In this paradigm, the observed object is persistence, time is the way we deal with this fact, in our daily experience and in science.

Space and Time are a priori, according to Immanuel Kant.

"Kant is best known for his transcendental idealist philosophy that time and space are not materially real but merely the ideal a priori condition of our internal intuition. But he worked in other areas as well. He made an important astronomical discovery, namely a discovery about the nature of the Earth's rotation, for which he won the Berlin Academy Prize in 1754. Even more importantly, from this Kant concluded that time is not a thing in itself determined from experience, objects, motion, and change, but rather an unavoidable framework of the human mind that preconditions possible experience."



Wikipedia

Again, I do not know, but within the "Agnostic Method", it does not matter.

[1210.0491] Higgs Vacuum Stability, Neutrino Mass, and Dark Matter

[1210.0491] Higgs Vacuum Stability, Neutrino Mass, and Dark Matter:

Recent results from ATLAS and CMS point to a narrow range for the Higgs mass: $M_H\in[ 124, 126] {\rm GeV}$. Given this range, a case may be made for new physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) because of the resultant vacuum stability problem, i.e., the SM Higgs quartic coupling may run to negative values at a scale below the Planck scale. We study representative minimal extensions of the SM that can keep the SM Higgs vacuum stable to the Planck scale by introducing new scalar or fermion interactions at the TeV scale while solving other phenomenological problems. In particular, we consider the type-II seesaw model, which is introduced to explain the non-zero Majorana masses of the active neutrinos. Similarly, we observe that if the stability of the SM Higgs vacuum is ensured by the running of the gauge sector couplings, then one may require a series of new electroweak multiplets, the neutral component of which can be cold dark matter candidate. Stability may also point to a new U(1) gauge symmetry, in which the SM Higgs carries non-zero charge.

'via Blog this'

Cover Letter to Waubonsee

Cover

CREATIVE UNITY

By RABINDRANATH TAGORE

It costs me nothing to feel that I am; it is no burden to me. And yet if the mental, physical, chemical, and other innumerable facts concerning all branches of knowledge which have united in myself could be broken up, they would prove endless. It is some untold mystery of unity in me, that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces the immense mass of multitude to a single point.

This One in me knows the universe of the many. But, in whatever it knows, it knows the One in different aspects. It knows this room only because this room is One to it, in spite of the seeming contradiction of the endless facts contained in the single fact of the room. Its knowledge of a tree is the knowledge of a unity, which appears in the aspect of a tree.

This One in me is creative. Its creations are a pastime, through which it gives expression[vi] to an ideal of unity in its endless show of variety. Such are its pictures, poems, music, in which it finds joy only because they reveal the perfect forms of an inherent unity.

This One in me not only seeks unity in knowledge for its understanding and creates images of unity for its delight; it also seeks union in love for its fulfilment. It seeks itself in others. This is a fact, which would be absurd had there been no great medium of truth to give it reality. In love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is the ultimate truth. Therefore it is said in the Upanishads that the advaitam isanantam,—"the One is Infinite"; that the advaitam is anandam,—"the One is Love."

To give perfect expression to the One, the Infinite, through the harmony of the many; to the One, the Love, through the sacrifice of self, is the object alike of our individual life and our society.

Gutenberg

Rabindra Sangit

Edna Cantoral in Guadalajara

Casa de mi Padre

IMDb

This is a hybrid. Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal, are neither Mexican nos American by now. Will Ferrell is in his way to become an honorary Mexican-American.

There is a new country man!

La Republica del Norte.

From a Dear Friend

Constructor Theory

 Consider an automated factory for producing goods to a particular specification. Though its purpose may only be to produce those goods, the laws of physics imply that it must transform something into them and, typically, also use other resources and produce waste products. Very few such transformations happen spontaneously; that is to say, almost all require a constructor, which I shall define as anything that can cause transformations in physical systems without undergoing any net change in its ability to do so. I shall call those physical systems the constructor’s substrates:       
                       
                                constructor
input state of substrate(s)  output state of substrate(s) . (1)

A transformation, regarded as being caused by a constructor, I call a construction.

Prevailing conception:

"everything physical is composed of elementary constituents such as particles, fields and spacetime; there is an initial state of those constituents; and laws of motion determine how the state evolves continuously thereafter."

Construction conception:

" a construction (1) is characterized only by its inputs and outputs, and involves subsystems (the constructor and the substrate), playing different roles, and most constructors are themselves composite objects."

arXiv

Nexus 7

Adrian Bejan and David Deutsch

These two scientists are dealing with construction.

Bejan discovered the The Constructal Theory, and Deutsch The Constructor Theory.

The way I understand Bejan, he asserts:  "matter flows, such that next time flow is easier."

Among other things Deutsch says that: "The most important kind of abstract constructor is knowledge. For knowledge is information which, once it is physically instantiated in a suitable environment, tends to cause itself to remain so: it survives criticism, testing, random noise, and error correction."

I see a similar code for the meaning of time. Persistence is the essence of time.

[1210.7439] Constructor Theory

[1210.7439] Constructor Theory:

 "Constructor theory is the theory of which physical transformations can be caused to happen and which cannot, and why. Several converging motivations for expecting it to be a fundamental branch of physics are discussed. Some principles of the theory are proposed and its potential for solving various problems and achieving various unifications is explored."

"Constructor theory is the ultimate generalisation of the idea of catalysis."

'via Blog this'

Dear Father

I have been thinking of you all day. Today you would've been 94. That was not going to be, you left at the tender age of 62. I am older than that now. I have my own son, he is 20. Khalil Gibran said many years ago:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children." 
And he said: 
Your children are not your children. 
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 
They come through you but not from you, 
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. 
You may give them your love but not your thoughts. 
For they have their own thoughts. 
You may house their bodies but not their souls, 
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. 
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. 
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. 
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. 
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. 
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; 
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

allpoetry.com

I hope your desire to go to Alaska, when Mexico was not providing you with a decent job, is worth following. Now I am in Illinois.

Thanks.

11/19/1918

My father was born 94 years ago tomorrow.

He died on 12/7/1980 just after turning 62.

My love for my father is great.

Climax?

The Sun is in midlife. Intelligent life seems so special, that maybe we are in the climax now. Israel is ready to attack Gaza, I expect more than one hundred dead. For the first time in its history, Israel will have a defeat, just like the US failed recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arabs know how to do this, just sit tight as Israli soldiers get tired, and Israel will be evicted. There is not much love for Israel in the Middle East, and Peaches Petraeus is more interested in scoring with well proportioned Middle Eastern women, than fighting a war.

I would've liked if the Republican Party in the US and the Likud Party in Israel would've seen this coming.

I am afraid we are in some kind of climax.

:(

[1211.2479] The Dirac Quantum Automaton: a preview

[1211.2479] The Dirac Quantum Automaton: a preview:

"Quantum Information and the new informational paradigm are entering the domain of quantum field theory and gravity, suggesting the quantum automata framework. The quantum automaton is the minimal-assumption extension to the Planck and ultrarelativistic scales of quantum field theory. It can describe localized states and measurements, which are unmanageable by quantum field theory. The automaton theory is a very promising framework for quantum gravity, since it is quantum ab-initio, with relativistic covariance as emergent and not assumed a priori, it is free from all the problems arising from the continuum, it doesn't suffer violations of causality, and has no divergences. It is the natural scenario to accommodate the quantum holographic principle. Lorentz covariance and all other symmetries are violated in the ultrarelativistic Planckian regime, but are perfectly recovered at the Fermi-scale.
In the present report, after briefly reviewing the fundamental principles at the basis of the quantum cellular automata extension of quantum field theory, I will present a preview of recent results on the Fermi scale limit [1] and on the Dirac automaton in two space-dimensions [2]. The automaton in three dimensions is under way."

'via Blog this'

Robert Brout

Robert Brout 

I am reading Englert's speech, at the Award Ceremony of the 1997 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the European Physical Society in Jerusalem. Now I understand a few things more about Robert Brout. First, the broad knowledge of Brout in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory, and condensed matter physics. Second why my professor Jean Pestieau went to Cornell for a postdoctoral position; and finally, why professor Brout accepted Jean's invitation to go to Mexico, where I met him.

What a pair of influential and honest guys. I just wish that Steven Weinberg would've been more fair in recognizing Brout's contribution.

On the conspiracy fringe - sometimes I like to be there - maybe Brout's rejection to stay at Cornell had a part to play, in Weinberg's misappropriation of Brout's work to Higgs.

Just saying.

United Family

Some of us are traveling, others on the ground, thinking, doing, and everything to keep the family going.

Together we can last longer, maybe forever ...

For Maya, Climate Change May Have Been Blessing and Curse - NYTimes.com

For Maya, Climate Change May Have Been Blessing and Curse - NYTimes.com:

"The ancient Maya civilization may have risen — and then fallen — in response to climate change, scientists report after creating precise climate records going back 2,000 years."

'via Blog this'

Trust

I do not believe that Mitt Romney told the American public the extent of his tax avoidance. He claimed tax payments of less than 15%. I believe he paid taxes in amounts of less than 10% of what he owes this country.

He lost the election, so we will never know how much the 1% is getting away with. On the other hand Europeans are killing themselves or selling their organ parts. Is Romney willing to sell one kidney to pay the mortgage?

This all seems apocalyptic. I do believe the world as we know it, is coming to an end. There are going to be losers, and winners.

As good measure I do not trust scientific papers coming from Serbia!

Bricio Cuahutenango in Atlixtac

Taken From Aprendiendo Algo de Ciencia

End of the World

Since I was a teenager, I felt these to be special times. My buddies and I used to talk about going to a commune somewhere in Baja California, to start a new era.

I told myself, that unless and until, I understood how I got here, I was not going to know when the world was going to end. Barring a big meteorite obliterating human civilization, I expect hard times, because of uncountable problems our species has to solve before we can go  through the bottleneck I see coming.

On December 21, 2012, the World is not Ending, I know that much, but the general apprehension I feel around me, tells me that the World As We Know It, is coming to an end. There are going to  be losers and winners.

Latinos are going to be winners, white elites around Mitt Romney, are going to be losers.

Barack Hussein Obama

My whole family is happy. I am happy to be with them, this president will make our life better.

They all voted for Obama, I am not a citizen yet. Next time.

Obama won because the world is growing more and more diverse. He comes from a white family, through, and through. His father was from Africa, but chose not to be present as his son grew up. His mother, though, was there until she died. His white grandparents took it from there. What a story!

Romney lost because his worldview is narrow. He is for business, and his Mormon Church. I am not against business, but a Nation is not a business.

Now I have an opportunity to get ahead with my life in the next four years.

Amen!

Thoughts on Constructal Theory

Fundamental ideas are few and far between. Professor Bejan has proposed a new scientific principle. You can learn more in his book, Design in Nature. TED Bucharest. Webpage.

Flow is such that in time, flow is more and more easy. He believes this principle explains why flows are persistent.

Here I  search for applications of the principle for Quantum Systems.

The key concept is persistence. On the other hand, the principle requires time's arrow. For atomic scale bodies, past and future are equivalent. Time appears when Information enters the picture. Quantum Information though, does have a direction in time. One will have to accept another interpretation  of Quantum Mechanics to incorporate the Constructal Law.

I believe that Quantum Mechanics, as all other fundamental laws, which can be derived from an extremum principle, are our description of reality, not reality. As descriptions go, they are intrinsically directed in time, because we are. A Quantum Theory of Information, thus, describes a real field, the Quantum Field, but our description of it, is directed in time. Bejan's Law can be incorporated, as our observation, that persistent flows take into account, past flows for future flows, i.e., there is memory.

Another problem altogether, is where that Information is stored. I propose the use of the Cellular Automaton which follows rule 110, in Wolfram's classification. This is the simplest universal computer I am aware of, discovered independently by Harold V. McIntosh, and Matthew Cook. Wikipedia. How in Nature is this rule coded? I don't know. As a human description though, it does not matter, we have to Decode Reality, as Vlatko Vedral explains in his book "Decoding Reality". Wikipedia.

Finally: We have the problem of the Holographic principle. Why everything is coded in two dimensions? I believe that this means that we can use the simplest mathematical model which shows a phase transition in Statistical Mechanics, and two dimensions are enough.

Putting these elements together - Constructal, Holographic, and Automatonical - is a task for later. One will guarantee permanence, and the other two minimanility, and completeness, respectively. This seems like a nice framework to decode reality. Whether or not, reality really works like that, is a question in philosophy not in science.

The purpose of this effort, is to construct an autopoeitic model of reality, i.e., one that maintains, and builds itself self consistently.

Science in a Smartphone?

P.S. I am reading Caselli & Ceccarelli's "Our astrochemical heritage". There are surfaces, order, and complexity there. I recommend it.

Astrochemical Heritage: Couriers, Chondrites, and Constructal

Chondrites

Constructal Theory.

Couriers are Mexican American business people crossing the border with mementos from both sides of the Mexican American huge border. You can read in Spanish an article here.

Chondrites are time and space messengers. They bring information from 4566.6 ± 1.0 Ma .

Paola Caselli and Cecilia Ceccarelli are two Italian scientists who recently wrote a review about Our Astrochemical Heritage.  I find some interesting links between these three spacetime correlations.

I believe in the existence of correlations which we have not completely disentangled yet. Almost to the point of appearing magical. In this note I record some.

The heritage Caselli & Ceccarelli are talking about, is what is stored in, among other things, meteorites, and comets. Obviously we are all made of stardust, and thus the heritage is even more intimate. Chondrites are primitive:

A specimen of the NWA 869 chondrite (type L4-6), showing chondrules and metal flakes

This may look like an ordinary rock, but it got to Earth from outer space. If you know how to read the message recorded on it, you see millions of years of slow and, seemingly purposeful processes. Chondrules are actual millenarian structures, as if they were alive millions of years ago little wormlike structures were formed.

"Prominent among the components present in chondrites are the enigmatic chondrules, millimeter-sized objects that originated as freely floating, molten or partially molten droplets in space; most chondrules are rich in the silicate minerals olivine andpyroxene."

This is fascinating; I explain.

There was no life as we know it, but some constructal principle was obviously in force. Professor Adrian Bejan discovered something he calls Constructal Theory. He says that matter flows in such a way, that flow is easier next time around. Here we have a principle in space and time, that tells us, that there is a next time around, i.e., there is permanence, I will say, Nature tries to occupy bigger and bigger volumes of spacetime.

Caselli & Ceccarelli discovered regions in space with anomalous chemical composition, mainly isotope distributions different than in the surrounding volume. These are called hot Corinos. Gas and dust lowers the temperature in these regions, by blocking heat from coming in, at low temperatures, on the surface a dust particles, chemical reactions occur producing the separation, the anomalous isotope distribution. That is our Astrochemical Heritage. We see complexity, coming spontaneously, out of the inorganic world. Those are our origins.

Now let me jump a few million years; look at another boundary, the thousand kilometer border between Mexico and the United States. As you can read in Why Nations Fail, by Acemoglu and Robinson, that border separates countries that have developed very differently. According to these authors, one difference is the political way people organize. In Mexico 98% of crimes are not  solved, according to Javier Sicilia. In the US the record is better. Inclusive Institutions vs. Extractive Institutions. 

The couriers of the article that appeared today in the Mexico City newspaper, La Jornada, which I link above, are businessmen crossing the border to communicate communities, which are not allowed free passage through the border. The links within the communities go way back, maybe fifteen thousand years. The book by Dr. David E. Hayes-Bautista, "El Cinco de Mayo", records that in 1962 Californios fought in two anti-imperialist wars at the same time. The American Civil War, against the slave owners of the South, and the Mexican French war, against the Empire of Napoleon III. These two communities, Mexicans in Los Angeles, and Mexicans in Puebla, are actually the same community. Both cities have the same name: Puebla de los Angeles, one chose Puebla, and the other Los Angeles, but they have a common heritage. 

To bring these two apparent disparate ideas together I use professor Bejan's ideas:

Once the first Americans walked all through the continent coming from Asia, they made a path, which they have been walking time and time again. This happened after the last glaciation. They did not need visas then, and do not need visas now.

Caselli & Ceccarelli are telling us that differentiation started before life appeared in the Universe. Once deuterium and other heavy isotopes were separated, they became our heritage, we are the product, of our separation, and our coming together, because after all we are all Cosmic dust. 

Information and the Modern World

I do follow information in the news and daily life. I process it and I act. To me that is the meaning of life. Right now I am teaching an Introduction to Astronomy class, reading Decoding Reality, by Vlatko Vedral, and taking an Artificial Intelligence class from edX.org.

Julian Assange is getting sick in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, Bill McKibben is organizing students for civil disobedience, and I am finally getting a grasp on what Information means.

May you live in interesting times!

Since 1968 I felt the world was coming to an end. Now the feeling is more acute, nevertheless do not expect this blog to provide a handbook, on how to survive the December 21, 2012, coming end of the world.

Please come again. I feel I have something to say.

Nice

Autopoiesis

After listening to Humberto Maturana's lecture last year at CERN, I have this to write:

1. I understand autopoiesis better
2. Some questions show the person did not understand
3. There is a discovery made by Maturana's school

I felt that professor Bertolucci felt attacked, when nothing in the presentation or answers by Maturana implies an attack. The way I understand this is through the concept of reality/objectivity. Maturana claims that we construct our path through life. This path convinces us that we are ok, most of the time. We are not crazy scientists trying to endanger ourselves and others. Nevertheless "reality" is constructed.

I do believe that there is a reality which is not "reality" that I approach to, all through my life path.

Vlatko Vedral, David Deutsch, and John Wheeler, were more willing to take this path. I do not know professor Bertolucci, but I feel better guided by the Wheeler school.

Maturana's discovery can be called the objectivity of subjectivity.

Humberto Maturana

Autopoiesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Autopoiesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

 "Autopoiesis (from Greek αὐτo- (auto-), meaning "self", and ποίησις (poiesis), meaning "creation, production") literally means "self-creation" and expresses a fundamental dialectic among structure, mechanism and function. The term was introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela:"

'via Blog this'

Information and I

I am reading in my Cloud Reader from Amazon, Kindle: Decoding Reality, by Vlatko Vedral.

This guy stole my ideas!

Actually he could have not, because I have not published them!

Cellular Automaton

Wikipedia

This mathematical object could be the foundation for a description of reality.

Recently I have written in this blog that an electron reads a Turing Machine, which could be Rule 110 in Wolfram's classification.

This is my answer to the question: How does the electron move?

If you want your code to be executed in a computer, you need to write the code, and the machine has to read it.

I believe this is a good metaphor of how an electron moves. The simplest rule I know, which can be a Universal Computer, is the 1-D Cellular Automaton 110.

Meta Theory of Thermodynamics and Quantum Gravity

Vlatko Vedral has been working on the Probability/Information Theory for Science. Recently he published in "The New Scientist" the idea of a Meta-Theory. Here I ask myself: So what?

I myself have been thinking for some time about the relevance of Claude Shannon's ideas on fundamental science. Taking the point of view, that Information Theory has two components, one technological, and the other fundamental, I write here what the consequences could be.

As a technological tool, Information Theory, describes how humans communicate, and read the Book of Nature; as a fundamental tool , it describes the interaction between two parts of the Universe, whether conscious or not, as understood by a third system, which is conscious: Us.

We can write computer programs, so an automaton directs another automaton. They will keep doing that, whether or not we die. The Voyager Program probes, are still going away from the Solar System, even though some of its creators are dead. Both voyagers could have been designed to communicate among themselves. Even if the Human species disappeared, they could have kept communicating, and maybe directing each other autonomously.

The fundamental question is if the Universe interacts this way. That is, if the law of gravity, say, describes as a computer program, how different objects direct each other. Of course we will have to Decode the Universe to maintain this point of view.

Thermodynamics is a probabilistic description of heat. The motion of objects we call heat, exists, nevertheless our description is not the thing, but the description. Quantum waves exist, our description is not the thing either. Vedral has studied both descriptions, as stepping stones to construct Quantum Computers.

The fact that computer based descriptions of Quantum Gravity, have not succeeded, could mean that there is no physical reality to Gravity at the quantum level, or that there is a confusion about the description and the thing.

Vedral's Meta Theory could mean, that whichever is the case, as long as we know what Information Theory is, we should make progress.

I hope he is right.

What a Big Fish!

Discord

Death

Death is good, because then we can see  life as a Work of Art. I read that Einstein thought so.

His life was definitely a Work of Art. From a very young age, he was curious about Nature. A magnet, given to him by a relative, set him thinking about his surroundings. His years at authoritarian German schools, led him to a more civilized place in Switzerland, his time in Italy, presented him the  contribution to culture of the Renaissance. Then Princeton witnessed, his stubborn refusal to go along with the Military Industrial Complex.

What a Work of Art!

Vlatko Vedral

Nikku Mudhasudhan

Today I went to see a friend. He wants me to help him build an ac/dc driver for street Led lamps. Also I learned that Dr. Mudhasudhan might've found a diamond planet, like the one presented in the Midnight episode of Doctor Who. Mudhasudhan is very young, he was born in the seventies, and is doing better than my friend an I.

I have to find my own diamond planet!

Thoughts

Quantum Mechanics is still mysterious, at least for me. Yesterday's Physics Nobel Prize, goes a long way towards solving the mystery.

The 1% should return the money they stole, and humanity should go back to finding out the best ways to survive the human created mess!

Physics Nobel Prize 2012

Serge Haroge and David J. Wineland won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics.

NYT

For some, this may end the mystery of Quantum Mechanics. For me it only heightens it.

Some may take this to mean, that quantum computers are around the corner, and now we live in a quantum universe of information wave functions, which are not real. For me, it supports the view that wave functions are as real as light waves, and that Albert Einstein, was right after all. I believe that the initial battle between Bohr and Einstein, was more of a political fight, than a scientific one. Einstein was left to rot in a corner of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies, because he refused to join the Military Industrial Complex, which Bohr started.

The wave function exists, even though, Quantum Mechanics is the best Statistical description we have of the microscopic world.

Here is my, very speculative opinion.

It starts with Feynman's Checkerboard.

In a discrete version of Dirac's Equation, which governs electron motion in quantum computers, a zigzag fractal path, tells the electron how to move. My question is where is the computer program directing this motion?

I believe that a 1-D Cellular Automaton, maybe the 110, studied by Harold V. McIntosh, Matthew Cook, and Stephen Wolfram, is simple enough, to exist all over the place, and that the electron, as in a Turing Machine,  can read and execute the program.

The Dirac Wave Function then, has to be real, so the electron knows what to do following the instructions.

There.

Information

I have considered Information for several years now. I entered Theoretical Physics in 1972 with the purpose of contributing to a Theory of Information. After studying Communications and Electronics Engineering, I felt that the twentieth century was the time to establish many elements of Information. One can study Statistical Mechanics as the application of Information Theory to the motion of more than two interacting particles. Besides, the Work World of data manipulation started, and is now a full fledged money making industry, as Chemical, and Electrical Engineering were before.

Jacob Bekenstein started the study of Statistical Mathematics in General Relativity, with the concept of the measure of Entropy, as proportional to the area of a black hole. John A. Wheeler, and Stephen Hawking established the importance of It from Bit, and the temperature of these objects. Now we know that,  very likely, every galaxy, has a black hole in its center, and Caleb Scharf, has published a great book on his ideas of the role of black holes in making the Universe work," Gravity's Engines".

I do not claim here any fundamental breakthrough, but obviously the twenty first century, is the time to know what Information is.

An electron follows instructions, as coded in Dirac's Equation, maybe through a one dimensional cellular automaton with a simple rule, which acts as a Universal Computer. Rule 110, as proved by Harold V. McIntosh, has that property.

I do not know how the electron reads this automaton.

Lyrics to My Dad is a Mexican Man

"my dad is a mexican man. 

my dad’s got dirt on his hands.

have you met my dad? 

my dad works for the space program. 

my dad has a few big plans. have you met my dad?"

Song here

October 2, 1968

I was nineteen years old, through the balcony in our apartment in Mexico City, I saw military tanks going towards the Three Cultures Plaza in Tlatelolco. I was planning to go, but the show of force changed my mind. The next day I saw our student movement wounded. Raul Alvarez Garin, and Felix Hernandez Gamundi, our representatives, were taken to jail.

Forty four years later, we have to keep fighting!

My Son!

Strings or Particles?

Geoffrey Chew has a new paper. I was lucky enough to hear him talk at UCSB in the middle 70s. Then, Gell-Mann  won. Nevertheless one of Chew's descendants, Edward Witten  , has kept the good fight.

I vote for Strings!

"There is no ‘Schrödinger cat’—only a ‘cat’."

You gotta love Chew!

Between IHOP and Neutrino 2012 Kyoto

Aya Ishihara just presented very important results at Kyoto. Thomas Friedman writes today that Obama knows The World We're Actually Living In.

I have been at IHOP Wheaton, several times. I like the place, and the simplicity involved, which allows me to go there, knowing exactly what to expect, so reading Friedman, I know what he means.

As Friedman writes, though, we have to go beyond the familiar. What Dr. Ishihara presented could change Astronomy. Finally we are getting a neutrino window to the Universe!

"The highest energy neutrino events observed ever!"

"We are into a very interesting era of neutrino astrophysics!"

I just finished watching six hours of lectures by Professor Alex Filippenko on Black Holes. We are living in very interesting times.

Here is my five cents worth of wisdom.

Neutrinos are weakly interacting particles, but as the energy goes up, they are more likely to interact. It stands to reason, that Astronomy will benefit from this new window of ultra high energy cosmic rays . Furthermore, since they interact less than charged particles, they point to their sources, making the Universe a huge laboratory, probed by these neutral particles.

Ishihara has positions, both at Chiba University in Japan, and the University of Wisconsin in the United States of America. Ice Cube, the collaboration he is a member of, built detectors at Antarctica. This is because it is not possible to observe in the Northern Hemisphere, what they just found out  down there in Antarctica. This has to do with contamination coming from atmospheric neutrinos up North. Maybe nuclear reactors, I really have not studied the reasons they decided to build Ice Cube down South.

In any case, all humans are in this together, which is what Obama went to say at the United Nations meeting in New York City, this week.

Humanity has to think globally, otherwise we are not getting out of the bottleneck we are rapidly approaching.

If the Earth keeps heating up, maybe the ice will melt, and Ice Cube will have trouble finishing the job, of knowing where do the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays come from.

What's Going On?

Yesterday Julian Assange directed his thoughts to all of us at the United Nations, by a video link, from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

 ALEC is writing the laws of the United States.

I know this because I follow Amy Goodman in her program Democracy Now!

I used Alex Filippenko's video on black holes, for my Introduction to Astronomy class, yesterday.

These are Interesting Times!

Jo Tuckman's Mexico

The Guardian journalist Jo Tuckman, recently wrote a book on Mexico. [Review]. [Amazon].

She has lived near downtown Mexico City for twelve years now. I almost feel like she is my neighbor, even though I've never met her. She wrote a good book. Here are my thoughts.

Recently three of the main intellectuals of Mexico wrote a note in La Jornada. Colin Woodard wrote a book about the future of North America: American Nations.


The conclusion I draw, is that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) is leading a rebellion in Mexico. The country is divided in the middle, to the North we have, what Woodard calls El Norte, and the rest is AMLO's territory.

The First Nation, as Woodard calls it, together with Mesoamerica  are the borders of European America. The First People are back, they woke up after five hundred years of stupor.

Tighten your seat belts!

I guess this is what December 21, 2012, is all about.

Open Access for Particle Physics

It was announced that the field of Particle Physics is Open!

Read here.

Vladimir N. Vapnik

Vladimir Naumovich Vapnik (Russian: Владимир Наумович Вапник) is one of the main developers of Vapnik–Chervonenkis theory. He was born in the Soviet Union. He received his master's degree in mathematics at theUzbek State University, Samarkand, Uzbek SSR in 1958 and Ph.D in statistics at the Institute of Control Sciences,Moscow in 1964. He worked at this institute from 1961 to 1990 and became Head of the Computer Science Research Department. At the end of 1990, he moved to the USA and joined the Adaptive Systems Research Department at AT&T Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. The group later became the Image Processing Research Department of AT&T Laboratories when AT&T spun off Lucent Technologies in 1996. Vapnik Left AT&T in 2002 and joined NEC Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, where he currently works in the Machine Learning group. He also holds a Professor of Computer Science and Statistics position at Royal Holloway, University of Londonsince 1995, as well as a position as Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, New York City since 2003. He was inducted into the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2006. He received the 2005 Gabor Award^[1], the 2008 Paris Kanellakis Award, the 2010 Neural Networks Pioneer Award^[2], the 2012 IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award, and the 2012 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.

Wikipedia