Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Who is Airbnb and Why Do They Want So Much of My Personal Informaiton?
I have recently had my first encounter with Airbnb and will have to admit this will not be a positive comment. I believe investor caution is appropriate. Blame it on my browser or lap top software vintage but my wife and I spent more than an hour attempting to reserve two nights at an apartment on the New Jersey shore. After confirming by email with the owner that they were small dog friendly, we were directed to establish an account with Airbnb to complete the reservation. Simple right? Wrong. With trite e-mail explanations about why additional data beyond my credit card number and key code were needed, Airbnb proceeded to ask for copies of our drivers license and connections to social media we utilize such as Facebook, LinkedIn and others. We then received a flip response that we under utilize the social media services and they certainly can not confirm scenery. We happen to have a picture of both of us with our bikes with Acadia Nation Park in the background for our Facebook profile picture. We were now multiple e-mails into this transaction for which we had to establish a password and were discovering we could not convince whoever was on the other end of the line that we're were who we presented ourselves to be. It did not help that the Airbnb web pages had glitches and presented a labyrinth of dead ends when attempting to reenter the system after fetching the required additional information. If you do not have an account because you have not satisfied someone's interpretation of what constitutes proper identification then you get stuck and have to start over. Next we were informed that because it is so important to make sure we are the same people in the photos we sent, we now needed to create a video in which we were instructed to identify ourselves and state where we lived. To do this we were required to change our lap top internet settings to allow external audio and video access. A specific instruction require us to check the "Remember settings" box or the process could not proceed. At this time we started receiving nag e-mails indicating we only had 12 hours to run this gauntlet before the pending reservation would be cancelled. Mind you, the rental owner had already indicated through e-mail that we were ok. We made the 30 second video and checked the upload button fully believing the note on the page that indicated the process would only take a couple of minutes. What they doing we may never know but 30 minutes later with the little upload icon spinning we had no confirmation. However, we had additional nag e-mails from our second sign on attempt demanding more personal information and another warning the 12 Hour cancel clock was still running. We actually gave up and shut down assuming we did not make the grade and were reconsidering our trip. Some time later that morning we received an e-mail congratulating us on completing our transaction. We contacted the owner to confirm this was in fact true. During our stay, we were surprised to hear that the owner also had a similar experience when listing the rental in the Airbnb system. I do not know about you but I get nervous when people I do not know ask for personal information, especially more than seems reasonable without a good explanation as to why so much is needed other than they are still not satisfied. May be it is because they are not connected like large retailers or the government. I was able to get credit cards, a passport and global entry card without the same level of interrogation. And why would they insist on the "Remember settings" selection for the audio and video devices? Since the encounter, I went into my browser and multimedia settings to undo the Airbnb required settings. Like I said this was not a positive comment, consistent with my Airbnb experience. Based on this, I would recommend that potential Airbnb investors look for clear plans from Airbnb detailing how they will improve their software, begin using existing data sources for personal info to spare their customers the pain and wasted time and explain how they will prevent loss or misuse of the hoard of personal data they are accumulating. Failure to address these issues, in particular personal data protection, could drive a quick end to this venture.
Where do we go from here?
Where do we go from here?
"Take the next left.", "Apply to college or go for an advanced degree", "Get married" "Go to Mars....or not" Responses to this question require projecting oneself into the future, synthesizing a future state in your mind, viewing this future state in our minds eye and then making a decision effecting current status based on this synthesized future reality. You do this continuously during your waking hours to make decisions involving all matters of life. Eat this or that, respond yes or no, turn right or left. We do not have to think about looking ahead and we are very successful in accurately portraying an immediate future state as evidenced by our ability to get through a day without falling down or getting lost. There are of course exceptions and I would not consider it a problem if those who appear to have no understanding of the consequences of their actions suddenly acquired some foresight.
What about a more extended look? Beyond the mundane frames of our daily movie. How about the view over the hill beyond the next hour or day or even week. Does the essential skill of looking into the immediate future enable an internal synthesis to be made out across the chasm of future decades, centuries or millennium?
A simple approach would be to extend your time line along the same slope. Assume everything that is changing continues to change at the same rate and everything that is constant remains constant. The result is that you will be going to school or work just as you are today a year from now or 4 years from now. You will be living where you are living, driving the same car or bike or walking the same path and seeing the same scenery. How far ahead could you look and assume so much will remain the same? There are obvious life changing events that would prevent a smooth transition into the future. You graduate from school and travel, seek employment or attend graduate school within 2-4 years. This might involve a move. Your car probably is replaced in 5-10 years. In the 10-20 year time frame you probably could predict with reasonable accuracy people getting married, having children, getting sick and passing on. This is your immediate world line and most predictable. Beyond this would be the world lines of family, close friends and acquaintances. What about the rest of the world?
Buildings cars and roads will look pretty much the same for 20 to 30 years.
Trees, shrubs are changing on the order of 50 to 100 years. Step out 100 years and then back to the main street of a northern New England town nestled in a valley of the Green Mountains and you might need to look closely at building signs or car styles to notice a difference. Does it have to be this way, of course not. One or two significant events to provide the right external influence and large scale changes can occur and continue to occur like ripples expanding on a pond after the event. Man made or natural events such as earthquakes and floods or world wars may dramatically change the local environment beyond recognition or alter how entire populations live. In the pressure wave of significant events, before it dissipates, mass migrations occur, inventions are made and technology springs ahead. First flight and landing on the moon in 50 years is a bit cliche but none the less a perfect example. Change and the rate of change is not constant but I do not believe rapid significant change is a normal state. Therefore when projecting into the future to make predictions it is important to understand if one is in a current post significant event state or in a more static condition. The difference will be whether you predict great changes continuing to occur or the status quo with change on a scale of hundreds of years versus tens of years.
The error many visionary have made is to assume the pace of change remains fast or accelerates. It is possible that predictions as these were made during a time of great change such as the industrial revolution or post world war.
Looking forward from 2012 presents a vision that is different than if I looked forward in 1965. In 1965 we thought we would have had space stations for tourists, outposts on the moon and sub orbital flights around the globe in hours by now. The pace of events was still compressed in the wake of WW2, the Korean War and then Vietnam. Chemical, Electronic, Scientific advances were coming fast and furious. In 2012 the pace has changed. We did not get back the the moon after our brief encounter over 30 years ago. Our space station is not the vision of "2001 a Space Odyssey" the world has weathered the cold war, watched the collapse of the Soviet Union and is falling back into a 1950's style of security mania in response to attacks from violent religious fanatics. Given this status, what might we look forward to as we reel the film forward
2020 More hybrid cars. Gas is more expensive. Mass transit is still not utilized effectively in the US. Iran has had an event. The moon is visited again briefly. There are more people on the planet. There is less polar ice. Birth rate exceeds death rate significantly except in highly developed and aging countries. Many countries around the world still struggle to make their mark riding on the ambitions of a select few. Wind and solar energy generation and use still creeping up.
Age of the Electronic Curtain where rogue nations establish effective firewalls to prevent connection to the global net. After a 2015 asteroid visit by a private company sampling satellite that confirmed crystalline iron in 99% pure deposits a large commercial automated mining and processing satellite was launched from India, China and a private enterprise in the US. Details of how processed material will be utilized has yet to be determined.
2050 More hybrid and electric cars. Electric charge stations installed like air stations at convenience stores. More expensive gas. Wind and solar energy use still creeping up. Geothermal also increasing. Mars is visited briefly. Alternate earth like planets are confirmed by thermal radiation and spectrum analysis of reflected light but remain out of reach. Space station orbit deteriorates and is lost in the ocean. Birth rate and death rate nearing parity due to decease, starvation and war. Food and water wars occurring in third world. The Smithsonian adds an incandescent light bulb exhibit. Iron or ingots delivered to Lagrange orbit for holding until utilization plan developed. Dropping ingots to Earth's surface resisted by numerous organizations for environmental and safety reasons.
2080 The norm is a hybrid or electric car. Gas is used to generate electricity mostly. Polar ice is gone. Coastal migration event in process due to rising sea level and increased frequency of storm surge making shore property uninsurable. Floating villages multiplying but a extreme risk to loss from natural events. Global epidemic imminent if it has not already occurred. Emigration to more northern latitudes in new ariable land occurring. Greenland becomes attractive for settlement in new open land. Desert regions significantly increased area. Off planet habitation by large number of people unlikely until on planet conditions drive people in to closed controled environments. Not likely before 2150.
2500 Off planet settlements established and populations stabilized. Earth habitation still desirable but path to regain open air living very long. Ice Ages that have occurred every 100,000 years for 30 million years are understood and may not be avoidable even with global warming. Probe to nearest Earth like planet launched using hyper velocity technology and quantum entangled communication.
"Take the next left.", "Apply to college or go for an advanced degree", "Get married" "Go to Mars....or not" Responses to this question require projecting oneself into the future, synthesizing a future state in your mind, viewing this future state in our minds eye and then making a decision effecting current status based on this synthesized future reality. You do this continuously during your waking hours to make decisions involving all matters of life. Eat this or that, respond yes or no, turn right or left. We do not have to think about looking ahead and we are very successful in accurately portraying an immediate future state as evidenced by our ability to get through a day without falling down or getting lost. There are of course exceptions and I would not consider it a problem if those who appear to have no understanding of the consequences of their actions suddenly acquired some foresight.
What about a more extended look? Beyond the mundane frames of our daily movie. How about the view over the hill beyond the next hour or day or even week. Does the essential skill of looking into the immediate future enable an internal synthesis to be made out across the chasm of future decades, centuries or millennium?
A simple approach would be to extend your time line along the same slope. Assume everything that is changing continues to change at the same rate and everything that is constant remains constant. The result is that you will be going to school or work just as you are today a year from now or 4 years from now. You will be living where you are living, driving the same car or bike or walking the same path and seeing the same scenery. How far ahead could you look and assume so much will remain the same? There are obvious life changing events that would prevent a smooth transition into the future. You graduate from school and travel, seek employment or attend graduate school within 2-4 years. This might involve a move. Your car probably is replaced in 5-10 years. In the 10-20 year time frame you probably could predict with reasonable accuracy people getting married, having children, getting sick and passing on. This is your immediate world line and most predictable. Beyond this would be the world lines of family, close friends and acquaintances. What about the rest of the world?
Buildings cars and roads will look pretty much the same for 20 to 30 years.
Trees, shrubs are changing on the order of 50 to 100 years. Step out 100 years and then back to the main street of a northern New England town nestled in a valley of the Green Mountains and you might need to look closely at building signs or car styles to notice a difference. Does it have to be this way, of course not. One or two significant events to provide the right external influence and large scale changes can occur and continue to occur like ripples expanding on a pond after the event. Man made or natural events such as earthquakes and floods or world wars may dramatically change the local environment beyond recognition or alter how entire populations live. In the pressure wave of significant events, before it dissipates, mass migrations occur, inventions are made and technology springs ahead. First flight and landing on the moon in 50 years is a bit cliche but none the less a perfect example. Change and the rate of change is not constant but I do not believe rapid significant change is a normal state. Therefore when projecting into the future to make predictions it is important to understand if one is in a current post significant event state or in a more static condition. The difference will be whether you predict great changes continuing to occur or the status quo with change on a scale of hundreds of years versus tens of years.
The error many visionary have made is to assume the pace of change remains fast or accelerates. It is possible that predictions as these were made during a time of great change such as the industrial revolution or post world war.
Looking forward from 2012 presents a vision that is different than if I looked forward in 1965. In 1965 we thought we would have had space stations for tourists, outposts on the moon and sub orbital flights around the globe in hours by now. The pace of events was still compressed in the wake of WW2, the Korean War and then Vietnam. Chemical, Electronic, Scientific advances were coming fast and furious. In 2012 the pace has changed. We did not get back the the moon after our brief encounter over 30 years ago. Our space station is not the vision of "2001 a Space Odyssey" the world has weathered the cold war, watched the collapse of the Soviet Union and is falling back into a 1950's style of security mania in response to attacks from violent religious fanatics. Given this status, what might we look forward to as we reel the film forward
2020 More hybrid cars. Gas is more expensive. Mass transit is still not utilized effectively in the US. Iran has had an event. The moon is visited again briefly. There are more people on the planet. There is less polar ice. Birth rate exceeds death rate significantly except in highly developed and aging countries. Many countries around the world still struggle to make their mark riding on the ambitions of a select few. Wind and solar energy generation and use still creeping up.
Age of the Electronic Curtain where rogue nations establish effective firewalls to prevent connection to the global net. After a 2015 asteroid visit by a private company sampling satellite that confirmed crystalline iron in 99% pure deposits a large commercial automated mining and processing satellite was launched from India, China and a private enterprise in the US. Details of how processed material will be utilized has yet to be determined.
2050 More hybrid and electric cars. Electric charge stations installed like air stations at convenience stores. More expensive gas. Wind and solar energy use still creeping up. Geothermal also increasing. Mars is visited briefly. Alternate earth like planets are confirmed by thermal radiation and spectrum analysis of reflected light but remain out of reach. Space station orbit deteriorates and is lost in the ocean. Birth rate and death rate nearing parity due to decease, starvation and war. Food and water wars occurring in third world. The Smithsonian adds an incandescent light bulb exhibit. Iron or ingots delivered to Lagrange orbit for holding until utilization plan developed. Dropping ingots to Earth's surface resisted by numerous organizations for environmental and safety reasons.
2080 The norm is a hybrid or electric car. Gas is used to generate electricity mostly. Polar ice is gone. Coastal migration event in process due to rising sea level and increased frequency of storm surge making shore property uninsurable. Floating villages multiplying but a extreme risk to loss from natural events. Global epidemic imminent if it has not already occurred. Emigration to more northern latitudes in new ariable land occurring. Greenland becomes attractive for settlement in new open land. Desert regions significantly increased area. Off planet habitation by large number of people unlikely until on planet conditions drive people in to closed controled environments. Not likely before 2150.
2500 Off planet settlements established and populations stabilized. Earth habitation still desirable but path to regain open air living very long. Ice Ages that have occurred every 100,000 years for 30 million years are understood and may not be avoidable even with global warming. Probe to nearest Earth like planet launched using hyper velocity technology and quantum entangled communication.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Solar Cycle and the Next Ice Age
In April of 2009 I posted the following commentary about the possibility that the solar wind and coronal mass ejections that impinge on Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere might be a source of warming and when reduced or eliminated might also be the trigger for the regularly occurring global ice ages that Earth experiences.
"Solar wind, the particle flow from the sun, enhanced by flares and eruptions that eject plasma in our direction, normally impact the Earth's magnetic field that protects us from what might otherwise be lethal radiation levels. The system overloads occasionally releasing of high energy particles along the magnetic field lines into the atmosphere, mostly over the poles, a resulting in the aurora. The lights are evidence of energy being deposited into the atmosphere on a global scale. In the rarefied air at the altitudes where the aurora normally occur, temperature does not have the same meaning it does on the surface of the earth. The speeding up of the air molecules caused by solar particle impacts technically is a temperature rise but not one that would sensed by our skin. However as the energy cascades down towards the surface the effect spreads out and can not help but raise the temperature even minutely of the ocean of air it is impacting.
For many years we have been experiencing large scale activity on the sun and heightened levels of particle and electromagnetic energy impingement on the Earth's atmosphere. Though there is no doubt that human activity is raising the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere, could there also have been a contributing factor from the sun? Now with the sun experiencing the least activity recorded in recent history, could there be a noticeable effect in the rate of warming or possibly even a reversal. Not immediately of course but over a period of months or years and the longer this quite sun persists could the effect become more pronounced?
For the past 1-2 million years, based on sediment analysis of deposits of pollen, river debris and other material laid down by wind and water, it is believed the Earth has experienced major glacial advances about every 100,000 years. The last major glaciation melted about 50,000 years ago. We are due for the beginning of the next cycle. What causes the cycle is not known. Latest theories of global warming have the next glacial cycle being delayed or cancelled. This is based on the trends in temperature rise observed in the past few hundred years. However, it has been hotter than it is currently in the past and glaciers still advanced. Assuming we can extrapolate recent past atmospheric temperature history through the next glacial cycle may not be as secure as we believe. Reducing carbon emissions is the right thing to do. We need to live in harmony with our spaceship Earth. However, the statement "we do not know what we do not know" may never be truer. We do not understand why the Earth plummets into cold periods lasting tens of thousands of years but we know this has happened many times in the past. Could this be as simple as a sustained reduction in solar particle and radiation impingement on the Earth and if so is a gradual cooling and refreezing of the poles as inevitable as a oil tanker hitting the reef hours after making the wrong turn?
Stay tuned.
April 13, 2009"
It is now September 2013, four years later, and the verdict is in on the latest solar cycle. Magnetic field reversal on the sun is considered imminent heralding the beginning of the second half of this solar cycle. The significant point is that we have again experienced a record low sunspot solar maximum as can be seen by the following chart produced using data from NOAA NWS Space Weather Prediction Center.
We have been experiencing a decreasing average number of sunspots and thus reduced solar wind and high energy particle impingement on our atmosphere for the last 30 years. Does the trend continue? Are we sliding into the next glaciation? If the next solar minimum is as quiet or quieter than the prior will we see an impact on global warming trends in the negative direction?
September 28, 2013
"Solar wind, the particle flow from the sun, enhanced by flares and eruptions that eject plasma in our direction, normally impact the Earth's magnetic field that protects us from what might otherwise be lethal radiation levels. The system overloads occasionally releasing of high energy particles along the magnetic field lines into the atmosphere, mostly over the poles, a resulting in the aurora. The lights are evidence of energy being deposited into the atmosphere on a global scale. In the rarefied air at the altitudes where the aurora normally occur, temperature does not have the same meaning it does on the surface of the earth. The speeding up of the air molecules caused by solar particle impacts technically is a temperature rise but not one that would sensed by our skin. However as the energy cascades down towards the surface the effect spreads out and can not help but raise the temperature even minutely of the ocean of air it is impacting.
For many years we have been experiencing large scale activity on the sun and heightened levels of particle and electromagnetic energy impingement on the Earth's atmosphere. Though there is no doubt that human activity is raising the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere, could there also have been a contributing factor from the sun? Now with the sun experiencing the least activity recorded in recent history, could there be a noticeable effect in the rate of warming or possibly even a reversal. Not immediately of course but over a period of months or years and the longer this quite sun persists could the effect become more pronounced?
For the past 1-2 million years, based on sediment analysis of deposits of pollen, river debris and other material laid down by wind and water, it is believed the Earth has experienced major glacial advances about every 100,000 years. The last major glaciation melted about 50,000 years ago. We are due for the beginning of the next cycle. What causes the cycle is not known. Latest theories of global warming have the next glacial cycle being delayed or cancelled. This is based on the trends in temperature rise observed in the past few hundred years. However, it has been hotter than it is currently in the past and glaciers still advanced. Assuming we can extrapolate recent past atmospheric temperature history through the next glacial cycle may not be as secure as we believe. Reducing carbon emissions is the right thing to do. We need to live in harmony with our spaceship Earth. However, the statement "we do not know what we do not know" may never be truer. We do not understand why the Earth plummets into cold periods lasting tens of thousands of years but we know this has happened many times in the past. Could this be as simple as a sustained reduction in solar particle and radiation impingement on the Earth and if so is a gradual cooling and refreezing of the poles as inevitable as a oil tanker hitting the reef hours after making the wrong turn?
Stay tuned.
April 13, 2009"
It is now September 2013, four years later, and the verdict is in on the latest solar cycle. Magnetic field reversal on the sun is considered imminent heralding the beginning of the second half of this solar cycle. The significant point is that we have again experienced a record low sunspot solar maximum as can be seen by the following chart produced using data from NOAA NWS Space Weather Prediction Center.
September 28, 2013
Saturday, November 26, 2011
IT IS ALL RELATIVE
How many people had to procreate to make any of us possible? Obviously two, who were your parents. To make your parents possible, 4 people, your grand parents, had to make the leap. If you assume about 50 years for a generation this takes you back to about the time of the Wright Brothers. If you are still with me it gets better. 8 great grand parents required 16 great, great grand parents and they all had to pair up and create at least one child for you to exist. Assuming a 50 year generation interval this brings you back to when Napoleon was being crowned as Emperor in 1804.
The geometric progression marches on with 32, 64, 128 and 256 people by the year 1600 all working to support your existence. Skipping a bit we have 2,048 relatives about the time Columbus sales from Spain in 1492 and 16,384 when Marco Polo went on tour in 1300. 65,536 predecessors had to successfully mate when the Magna Carta was signed in 1215 and 524,288 distant relatives contributed when the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066.
Now it gets interesting. The estimated world population when gun powder was invented in 650 AD was 230 million and 67,108,864 of these were your distant relatives. If this progression is accurate, everyone in the estimated world population of 210 million, shortly after the last Roman Emperor reigned in 476 AD, were our direct ancestors and had to contribute a little bit to make each one of us.
Even taking into account an incest factor, we come to the same result within a limited number of generations further into the past. Either the world ancient population is very much under estimated or very incestuous or we are all related. Things that come to mind if this is true. If you could go back in time to 476 AD you would have to be careful to not prevent anybody living from dying or otherwise becoming incapable of procreating before creating one child or you would not exist. Since all the worlds population in 476 AD must mate to create you, the same is also true for everyone alive in 2017. Thus, everyone alive in 2017 is related. We all share the same set of ancestors that were alive in 476 AD. Since it is reasonable to assume that there were babies who died shortly after birth or people who died before mating in 476 AD and in all years before this not everyone in the estimated population could have participated in your creation; therefore it is also reasonable to assume that the world population must have been much greater than current estimates
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Essence
Life clings to cool damp niches on clumps of solid matter that aggregate in orbits about suns. Sheltered from the radiation that permeates space by a thin layer of gasses expelled from the solids as they bake in the heat of their star, this thin layer of scum thrives. On the scale of most things in the universe, this life and all its creations are invisible. Left to itself with the proper environment, it multiples to a fault to ultimately decay and collapse from within and leave peripheral remnants to carry on or perish. More prolific specimens exploit various means to disperse through space and colonize new cool damp locations. Local extinctions are unavoidable but the resilience of this life increases exponentially with the volume of the space it occupies. Stars die and worlds end in sublimation. Organics coating these solids contribute to the complexity of the plasma storm that expands and dissipates. The cool damp spaces not sterilized remain ready to begin again when seeded. Life again collects in gravity wells, compressed and exuding its essence to fuel the engines of evolution.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Dark as the Night
What is day and night but just your experience while located on the surface of our planet. Twenty four hours is the measure of the time it takes the Earth to rotate once on its axis give or take some seconds. In one full rotation of the Earth you will be bathed in the light from our sun directly or through clouds and the rest of the time you will be in the dark. But is the night really dark? Not exactly. Step into a closet with a tightly closing door and turn off the light. What do you see? Nothing. Without any light you can see nothing, not even your hand right in front of your face. That is truly dark.
There are many reasons for the night to not be dark. Even after you eliminating, fires, volcanoes or your porch light you will not have a truly dark experience. If the moon happens to be above the horizon you will be again be bathed in the light from our sun reflected off of the moon. Moonlight can be bright enough to see objects and your surroundings with no problem, though colors are reduced to drab shades of grey. You can see your shadow and moonlight prevents most clear nights from being dark. Take the moon away. Would you then have a dark night? As dark as the closet? Actually no, quite far from it. Turning out the lights and picking a moonless night ends the immediate glare but as your eyes become accustom to the dark, previously unnoticed sources of illumination become apparent. Lights from a nearby town or city light up the sky, especially if there are clouds passing over the light source. Light from cities reflect off clouds, moisture and dust in the atmosphere and can provide illumination nearly as bright as the moon. This sky light can be bright enough to overwhelm the light from all but the brightest stars.
Get away from the cities, towns, airports shopping malls and highways and you will leave the sky reflected light behind and again presumably set the stage for a true dark night. However, even after you have escaped from civilization and are out on a clear moonless night, especially in the summer, you will realize this is still no dark closet. The sky can still be veiled with a hazy diffuse light. This is called air glow. The molecules of air in the thin upper atmosphere of the Earth, after a day of bombardment from the ultraviolet portion of sunlight, will absorb this radiation and in doing so loose some electrons to become ionized. This is not a stable condition and as the night proceeds these gases calm down, recapture their lost electrons and in the process emit feeble light. This sky glow can also overwhelm the light of dim stars and provide enough ground illumination to see clearly by. A more energetic version of this light show is the Aura Borealis or Northern Lights. Eruptions in localized areas of the sun's surface, called flares spew clouds of high energy particles and radiation that escape the sun's gravity. A continuously flow of much lower energy level particles also occurs called the solar wind. This energetic material is captured in the Earth's magnetic field as it travels away from the sun and is guided to the poles where it streams down into the upper atmosphere and collides with the Oxygen, Nitrogen and other molecules of which the air is composed. This bombardment provides a much more sudden and violent shock to the air molecules than the ultraviolet bath of the noon day sun, particularly when a flare on the sun directs this material at the earth. These shocked air molecules also lose electrons but more more of them and when the gas calms down recapture of the lost cloud of negative electrons provides a more significant burst of light. The Aura are mostly green but can also be blue, yellow and red. A sky charged with high energy particles will emit light nearly as bright or brighter than a full moon.
So eventually you find yourself in the middle of a desert in the southwest, hundreds of miles from civilization's lights and south of all but the highest energy and least frequent low latitude aural displays. You are there preferably there in the middle of the winter when the sun's light is indirect enough to do little energizing of the atmosphere. Now you expect a dark night right? Well not so quick. When the dust settles you look around and still see the ground, your hand in front of your face and very likely your shadow. This is because all light has not been eliminated. What remains is the light from the hundreds of thousands of points of light in the sky high above and the irregular milky white band of diffuse light that stretches from horizon to horizon all of which make up our Milky Way galaxy. The light from the suns in our galaxy are shining brightly through trillions of miles of space to light our dark night. The sum of all these candles in the dark is a light that you can walk by and see nearby surroundings. A "bright, starlit night" is exactly that, bright, and this brightness is due solely to the star light shining down from all directions above.
What if we lived on a planet orbiting a star that was not isolated like our sun but a member of a group of suns all born from the same nebula of gas an dust. If we lived on a planet where our sun was a member of a cluster such as this one that I photographed through my telescope, the only dark we would know would be what we could find in a closet, closed room or cave under ground. On our planet orbiting a cluster sun, there would be hundreds or thousands of suns in our sky all farther away than our sun but close enough to have a visible disk. Some might be reddish or yellow, bluish or orange. Many shining brightly enough to be painful to look at directly and all shining their light down continuously from all directions in the sky. Sources of light to fill the sky much brighter than a full moon all the time. The only variance during the rotation of the planet would be when the sun that we orbit is above the horizon to join the many other smaller suns.
There are many reasons for the night to not be dark. Even after you eliminating, fires, volcanoes or your porch light you will not have a truly dark experience. If the moon happens to be above the horizon you will be again be bathed in the light from our sun reflected off of the moon. Moonlight can be bright enough to see objects and your surroundings with no problem, though colors are reduced to drab shades of grey. You can see your shadow and moonlight prevents most clear nights from being dark. Take the moon away. Would you then have a dark night? As dark as the closet? Actually no, quite far from it. Turning out the lights and picking a moonless night ends the immediate glare but as your eyes become accustom to the dark, previously unnoticed sources of illumination become apparent. Lights from a nearby town or city light up the sky, especially if there are clouds passing over the light source. Light from cities reflect off clouds, moisture and dust in the atmosphere and can provide illumination nearly as bright as the moon. This sky light can be bright enough to overwhelm the light from all but the brightest stars.
Get away from the cities, towns, airports shopping malls and highways and you will leave the sky reflected light behind and again presumably set the stage for a true dark night. However, even after you have escaped from civilization and are out on a clear moonless night, especially in the summer, you will realize this is still no dark closet. The sky can still be veiled with a hazy diffuse light. This is called air glow. The molecules of air in the thin upper atmosphere of the Earth, after a day of bombardment from the ultraviolet portion of sunlight, will absorb this radiation and in doing so loose some electrons to become ionized. This is not a stable condition and as the night proceeds these gases calm down, recapture their lost electrons and in the process emit feeble light. This sky glow can also overwhelm the light of dim stars and provide enough ground illumination to see clearly by. A more energetic version of this light show is the Aura Borealis or Northern Lights. Eruptions in localized areas of the sun's surface, called flares spew clouds of high energy particles and radiation that escape the sun's gravity. A continuously flow of much lower energy level particles also occurs called the solar wind. This energetic material is captured in the Earth's magnetic field as it travels away from the sun and is guided to the poles where it streams down into the upper atmosphere and collides with the Oxygen, Nitrogen and other molecules of which the air is composed. This bombardment provides a much more sudden and violent shock to the air molecules than the ultraviolet bath of the noon day sun, particularly when a flare on the sun directs this material at the earth. These shocked air molecules also lose electrons but more more of them and when the gas calms down recapture of the lost cloud of negative electrons provides a more significant burst of light. The Aura are mostly green but can also be blue, yellow and red. A sky charged with high energy particles will emit light nearly as bright or brighter than a full moon.
So eventually you find yourself in the middle of a desert in the southwest, hundreds of miles from civilization's lights and south of all but the highest energy and least frequent low latitude aural displays. You are there preferably there in the middle of the winter when the sun's light is indirect enough to do little energizing of the atmosphere. Now you expect a dark night right? Well not so quick. When the dust settles you look around and still see the ground, your hand in front of your face and very likely your shadow. This is because all light has not been eliminated. What remains is the light from the hundreds of thousands of points of light in the sky high above and the irregular milky white band of diffuse light that stretches from horizon to horizon all of which make up our Milky Way galaxy. The light from the suns in our galaxy are shining brightly through trillions of miles of space to light our dark night. The sum of all these candles in the dark is a light that you can walk by and see nearby surroundings. A "bright, starlit night" is exactly that, bright, and this brightness is due solely to the star light shining down from all directions above.
But this is a dark sky isn't it? Even though it is covered by tiny points of light, none amounting to more than a twinkling point. Even the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, though they outshine the stars, still do not exhibit more than the point source of light unless you observe them through the magnification of binoculars or a telescope. This is our dark night. But what if it wasn't like this.
What if we lived on a planet orbiting a star that was not isolated like our sun but a member of a group of suns all born from the same nebula of gas an dust. If we lived on a planet where our sun was a member of a cluster such as this one that I photographed through my telescope, the only dark we would know would be what we could find in a closet, closed room or cave under ground. On our planet orbiting a cluster sun, there would be hundreds or thousands of suns in our sky all farther away than our sun but close enough to have a visible disk. Some might be reddish or yellow, bluish or orange. Many shining brightly enough to be painful to look at directly and all shining their light down continuously from all directions in the sky. Sources of light to fill the sky much brighter than a full moon all the time. The only variance during the rotation of the planet would be when the sun that we orbit is above the horizon to join the many other smaller suns. No day and night but only bright and brighter. On a world orbiting a cluster sun the inhabitants would not know what night was, dark yes, but closet dark, not outside walking around in the dark. Outside dark would not exist and the term "night" would have no meaning or at least not the same as we give it.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
It's About Time
I would suggest that time in the colloquial sense is a measure of gaps between events such as sun rise and sun set and it implies that between those events something was happening. That something was time. Time was moving along or evolving or flowing between these discrete events or the events were embedded in the flow of time. But the gaps between perceived events are not time and in fact gaps between events are not really gaps.
If you peel back the layers of the physical world and look at ever smaller or ever larger scales, you realize there is always something going on and the gap we thought existed between events, for which we devised clocks to measure, are in fact full of activity and other events. I proposed that there are no discrete events. In actuality there is a continuum of activity, most of which falls beyond our ability to sense. Possibly as a result of our insensitivity to this micro and macroscopic sea of activity, we have created devices that section the gaps we perceive between observed events into increments of change and we call this keeping time. A clock is such a device with a visible display depicting changes that are regular and repeatable. The discreteness of its motion though is an illusion. A spring may provide mechanical energy or the chemical reaction of a battery may power a motor that causes a mechanical arm to pivot about a central pin pointing to numerals equally spaced around a circle. Long before the hand sweeps to the next tic mark on the clock face, there is a crowd of gears or clouds of electrons behind the scenes turning away or racing through circuitry, piling up pressure to move the hand. The hand then helps us section the day and night into apparently discrete intervals. What we are measuring, such as day and night are also just an artifact of our viewpoint. Night an day are just our side of the planet rotating in and out of the its own shade as it continuously spins on its axis in the light of our sun. This occurs as we continuously revolve about the sun and the sun orbits the center of the galaxy which is drifting closer or farther from the other members of our local group of galaxies all of which are linked to the fabric of an expanding universe. Nothing is discrete or still and there is no such thing as empty.
Nothing ever stops or is at rest and nothing is as exact or discrete as it appears to our limited senses. A resting "solid" object that appears motionless, is actually expanding and contracting with temperature differences across it's surface on a microscopic scale. If we look closer, the entire structure of the object is vibrating at the atomic level and electrons wander about the interior and exterior as electric and magnetic fields continuously pass through the object. Nothing is still.
Nothing is empty. Even a vacuum is not empty. If you go into deep space far from out sun, if you can see only one star you can be assured that energy from that star is continuously passing through every cubic inch of space in your vicinity. Even in the cold vast space between galaxies the vacuum is full of energy. Energy in the form of light, magnetic fields, electric fields and gravitational fields permeates all of the universe. At scales far below that of the scale of galaxies we have so called empty space again between and within the atoms that make up our bodies and all we see. On the scale of an atom there is vast, apparently empty space between the nuclei of atoms and the cloud of orbiting electrons. However, as we look at ever smaller scales we see that this apparent empty space again is not empty but a seething foam of virtual particles representing the energy that is locked into very the structure of the universe. There is no such thing as empty.
Thus all events we perceive actually are embedded in a continuum of mater and energy in motion. Events we perceive have developed to the point of our observation through a continuous sequence of events and will dissipate in a similar manner at dimensions or in forms beyond our capability to observe. If we could perceive all activity we would understand that existence is just a continuum of events, overlapping preceding and following unending.
The universe is full of continuous change. In a sense the universe was set in motion and will remain in motion unless there is a source of external influence. We perceive only a tiny fraction of the activity of the universe. Keeping time is our way to fill the gaps created by our limited perception. If we "saw" everything we would need no clocks, watches, sundials or calendars. We would know what has happened, what is happening and could extrapolate what will happen.
Time is just the human attempt to catalogue events we experience.
I've been reading some books on the subject of time. All eventually discuss whether time exists separate from space and matter or if it exists at all.
The theory that time is some tangible thing seems wrong. Sand you can see running down in an hour glass but time is more like and adjective than a noun. To answer the questing; What is time? is in trouble immediately. It would be as difficult to answer the question; "What is fast?"I would suggest that time in the colloquial sense is a measure of gaps between events such as sun rise and sun set and it implies that between those events something was happening. That something was time. Time was moving along or evolving or flowing between these discrete events or the events were embedded in the flow of time. But the gaps between perceived events are not time and in fact gaps between events are not really gaps.
If you peel back the layers of the physical world and look at ever smaller or ever larger scales, you realize there is always something going on and the gap we thought existed between events, for which we devised clocks to measure, are in fact full of activity and other events. I proposed that there are no discrete events. In actuality there is a continuum of activity, most of which falls beyond our ability to sense. Possibly as a result of our insensitivity to this micro and macroscopic sea of activity, we have created devices that section the gaps we perceive between observed events into increments of change and we call this keeping time. A clock is such a device with a visible display depicting changes that are regular and repeatable. The discreteness of its motion though is an illusion. A spring may provide mechanical energy or the chemical reaction of a battery may power a motor that causes a mechanical arm to pivot about a central pin pointing to numerals equally spaced around a circle. Long before the hand sweeps to the next tic mark on the clock face, there is a crowd of gears or clouds of electrons behind the scenes turning away or racing through circuitry, piling up pressure to move the hand. The hand then helps us section the day and night into apparently discrete intervals. What we are measuring, such as day and night are also just an artifact of our viewpoint. Night an day are just our side of the planet rotating in and out of the its own shade as it continuously spins on its axis in the light of our sun. This occurs as we continuously revolve about the sun and the sun orbits the center of the galaxy which is drifting closer or farther from the other members of our local group of galaxies all of which are linked to the fabric of an expanding universe. Nothing is discrete or still and there is no such thing as empty.
Nothing ever stops or is at rest and nothing is as exact or discrete as it appears to our limited senses. A resting "solid" object that appears motionless, is actually expanding and contracting with temperature differences across it's surface on a microscopic scale. If we look closer, the entire structure of the object is vibrating at the atomic level and electrons wander about the interior and exterior as electric and magnetic fields continuously pass through the object. Nothing is still.
Nothing is empty. Even a vacuum is not empty. If you go into deep space far from out sun, if you can see only one star you can be assured that energy from that star is continuously passing through every cubic inch of space in your vicinity. Even in the cold vast space between galaxies the vacuum is full of energy. Energy in the form of light, magnetic fields, electric fields and gravitational fields permeates all of the universe. At scales far below that of the scale of galaxies we have so called empty space again between and within the atoms that make up our bodies and all we see. On the scale of an atom there is vast, apparently empty space between the nuclei of atoms and the cloud of orbiting electrons. However, as we look at ever smaller scales we see that this apparent empty space again is not empty but a seething foam of virtual particles representing the energy that is locked into very the structure of the universe. There is no such thing as empty.
Thus all events we perceive actually are embedded in a continuum of mater and energy in motion. Events we perceive have developed to the point of our observation through a continuous sequence of events and will dissipate in a similar manner at dimensions or in forms beyond our capability to observe. If we could perceive all activity we would understand that existence is just a continuum of events, overlapping preceding and following unending.
The universe is full of continuous change. In a sense the universe was set in motion and will remain in motion unless there is a source of external influence. We perceive only a tiny fraction of the activity of the universe. Keeping time is our way to fill the gaps created by our limited perception. If we "saw" everything we would need no clocks, watches, sundials or calendars. We would know what has happened, what is happening and could extrapolate what will happen.
Time is just the human attempt to catalogue events we experience.
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