Thursday, July 23, 2026

Introduction To This Blog System

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Image used by permission

Postings may be later combined into a compound posting on this blog. Many of the postings concern my observations in various branches of science, but there are also many on technology, religion, economics and, general world issues.

I would really like to thank everyone who reads any of these blogs for your interest.
 
SCIENCE WRITING
 
Most of the postings on this blog are visits to various places around the world, and articles about such topics as history and religion. But much of the writing is about science. I do not write about what is already known but only if I can write something new, or at least a new way of looking at things.
 
If you would like a quick background in the science and mathematics that everyone should really know in the 21st Century, the posting "Scientific Literacy" provides this in about a hundred paragraphs. Similarly, "The Way Things Work" provides a quick background in everyday technology.
 
I am a Christian and I want to show that belief in God is not unscientific at all. I was interested in science long before I was interested in religion, and have never had any trouble believing that God created everything.
 
There are five major scientific theories, each arranged in the form of a textbook. The first four of the following five are on this blog.
 
"The Theory Of Stationary Space" is my cosmological theory of how so much revolves around time being explained by us being in four-dimensional space, with the dimension that we cannot access being perceived as time. This is my version of string theory, with matter actually being strings in four dimensions rather than particles in three dimensions. Everything is ultimately based on negative and positive electric charges, with energy being able to overcome the laws of attraction and repulsion of electric charges. No one has ever explained exactly what time is, and a myriad of explanations of other things fall right into place around it.
 
"The Flow Of Information Through The Universe" is about how so much can be explained by seeing how there is a limited amount of information, and it must be the same information that constructs the highest levels as the lowest levels. A ready example is how the orbits of planets around the sun is based on the orbitals of electrons around the nucleus, in the atoms of which the sun and planets are composed. This concept is extremely useful because, understanding this, we can study things that we cannot directly see by analyzing things that we can see because all must be built on the same information.
 
"The Theory Of Complexity" is about what information actually is, how energy and information is really the same thing, and how we see the universe as we do because of our perspective of being at a higher level of information than our inanimate surroundings.
 
"The Lowest Information Point" is about how, since information and energy is really the same thing and the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, it also always seeks the "Lowest Information Point". So much is explained by how the universe prefers equalities to inequalities and related ratios where the numerator of one ratio is also the denominator of the other. This explains so much from why dust particles are as big as they to why the planets and stars are the scale that they are.
 
"The Story Of Planet Earth", on the geology blog, is about how virtually every major feature of the earth's surface, both on land and seafloor, can be explained by lines of magma emergence from below that were affected by the landing of three Continental Asteroids. Many people believe that land originated from a past "super-continent", but there is no explanation of where it came from.
 
There are a few of what we could call "minor" theories, where there is not as much written as with the major theories. On this blog, there is "How Biology And Human Life Fits Into Cosmology". On the meteorology and biology blog, there is my theory of the nature of water, "Water Made Really Simple".
 
There are compound postings about science which are groupings of writing about a certain topic.
 
Scientific compound postings include, "Computer Science", "Atomic Science", "Measurement", "A Celebration Of The Inverse Square Law", "Our Solar System", "Mind-Bending Cosmology", "The Configuration Of The Solar System Made Really Simple", "In Appreciation Of Electrons", "The Science Of Human Society " and "Orbital And Escape Velocities And Impacts from Space".
 
Compound postings about history and the world include "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began", "Niagara Stories", "Economics", "How History Repeats Itself", "The Meaning Of Freedom", "The Western Hemisphere", "Our Language" and, "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris".
 
There are two compound postings about prophecies and the Bible. There is "The Aztec Prophecy" than, for prophecies that are directly made in the Bible there is "New Insight Into Bible Prophecy".
 
"Investigations" is the compound posting that is a collection of any posting about an investigation.
 
The rest of the postings are individual postings. For more detailed information about this blog, see the posting "Thanks To Readers". For general topics of conversation, see "Thoughts And Observations", on the world and economics blog.  
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Other Blogs And Books

                                                                                                                                                          

Lights at night 

Here is a quick look at my other blogs before you start this one.

On this blog, you can see a list of all postings by clicking on the year or month to the right. But on the topical blogs, that is not the case. If you click on a year or month on those blogs, it will display the postings themselves, but the list on the right will still only show those postings that were added most recently.

To access a list of all postings on those blogs, it is necessary to click on the arrow in front of the year or month in question.

http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ is about economics, history and, general human issues.

http://www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com/ concerns progress in technology and ideas.

http://www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com/ is my geology and global natural history blog for topics other than glaciers. My natural history blogs concerning the impact of glaciers is http://www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com/ .

http://www.markmeekniagara.blogspot.com/ is about new discoveries concerning natural history in the general area of Niagara Falls.

http://www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/ is my observations concerning meteorology and biology.

http://www.markmeekphysics.blogspot.com/ is my blog about physics and astronomy.

http://www.markmeekcosmology.blogspot.com/ is my version of string theory that solves many unsolved mysteries about the underlying structure and beginning of the universe.

http://www.markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/ details my work with the fundamental patterns and complexity that underlies everything in existence.

 http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ is my religion blog.

 http://www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com/ is proof that there must be a god.

http://www.markmeekphotos.blogspot.com/ is my travel photos of Europe.

On my photo blogs, Blogspot will not hold all of the photos in each blog in a straight line. To see all of the photos, you must click on the bottom posting listed on the right at the top of the blog after seeing all that there are in the initial showing. The last posting in the North America blog should be "Tijuana, Mexico" and the last posting in the Europe blog should be "Notre Dame Cathedral Door And Arc De Triomphe, Paris". Each photo in the photo blogs can be clicked on to enlarge it to full screen.

My autobiography is http://www.mark-meek.blogspot.com/

My books can be seen at http://www.bn.com/ http://www.amazon.com/ or, http://www.iuniverse.com/ just do an author search for "Mark Meek".   

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Northern England

The general definition of northern England is everything between The Midlands, to the south, and Scotland, to the north. We have already visited "Liverpool" and "Manchester". For our visit today, let's have a look at the rest of northern England, and what it has contributed to the world.

EACH STOP INCLUDES FOUR IMAGES, FROM GOOGLE EARTH OR STREET VIEW. EXCEPT YORK WHICH INCLUDES FOUR SETS OF FOUR IMAGES 

At the mention of the city of Sheffield, the first thing that comes to mind is steel. It could best be described as England's version of Pittsburgh or Hamilton. Before the invention of modern steel-making processes, the city had long been known for the production of cutlery.

Older guns used to be muskets, which could fire only one shot at a time before being reloaded. The development of modern rapid-fire guns was challenging for steel-makers. The properties of steel can be varied by the amount of carbon that is added to the raw iron. More carbon makes a steel harder, but also more brittle. Steels can also be alloyed with other metals.

A native of Sheffield named Harry Brearley had the idea of alloying chromium with steel. The result was the very widely-used "stainless steel", which also doesn't rust.

Here is a look at Sheffield. This city is all about steel. The first four images are of the Cathedral and Town Hall and then two of a steel working complex from centuries ago. Steel has been around for a long time but mass production of it only since the Nineteenth Century.





There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >, After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sheffield,+UK/@53.3823327,-1.4717761,3a,75y,92.42h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1squmixnYIiJDPcRS6WkcKlQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0%26panoid%3DqumixnYIiJDPcRS6WkcKlQ%26yaw%3D92.4244794722493!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x48790aa9fae8be15:0x3e2827f5af06b078!8m2!3d53.381129!4d-1.470085!16zL20vMG03NWc?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUxMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

The largest city of northern England, other than Liverpool and Manchester, is Leeds. It has a diverse economy, not revolving around any one industry, and is the financial center of northern England.

In the days of sailing ships, it was a simple matter to take a reading of the ship's latitude. All that was necessary was the measure the angular distance of the north star above a flat horizon. The earth is a 360 degree sphere and latitude is the angular distance north or south of the equator, with the equator being 0 degrees, the north pole being 90 degrees north (the north star would be directly overhead at the north pole or at 90 degrees), and the south pole being 90 degrees south. Lines of latitude thus run parallel to the equator.

But measuring the ship's longitude was more difficult. The solution came when John Harrison, from the Leeds area, invented a very accurate clock that did not rely on the motion of a pendulum. A pendulum-based clock was considered as unreliable at sea because the pitching and rolling of the ship in rough water might affect the timing of the pendulum.

The ship's clock could be set to what became known as Greenwich Mean Time, GMT or the time at 0 degrees longitude which was designated as the Prime Meridian. Local solar time could be determined on ship by devices such as a sundial, and this revealed the location of the ship relative to the Prime Meridian. Each hour ahead of GMT represented 15 degrees latitude east, and each hour behind GMT represented 15 degrees west. 360 degrees in a circle divided by 24 hours in a day equals 15 degrees.

These views of Leeds begin in Millennium Square.






Bradford grew into a city around the Industrial Revolution, and was especially known for the production of textiles, wool and, silk.

After the development of radio Sir Edward Appleton, a native of the city of Bradford, began to wonder about something. Radio waves were known to travel in straight lines, in the same way as light. But sometimes, radio signals could be received far away from the transmitter. This should not be possible, due to the curvature of the earth.

To deepen the mystery, the reception of distant radio waves changed between day and night. Some distant radio signals could be received at night, but not during the day, or vice-versa.

The wavelength of the radio waves was also a factor. Some distant waves of long wavelength could almost always be received. Shorter wavelengths could be received at some times, but not at others, and still shorter wavelengths could not be received at a distance at all.

What had been discovered, of course, was the ionosphere. This is the upper layer of the earth's atmosphere where atoms are ionized by solar radiation, either gaining or losing an electron. This reflects radio waves, at least those of certain wavelengths. But since it involves the sun, it changes from day to night.

You may notice that you can receive radio stations from far away in short wave radio, but the frequencies at which they can be received changes from day to night. This is because the waves reflect off the ionosphere to get around the curvature of the earth. If the wavelength is long enough, the ionosphere effectively acts as a wave guide, and the signals can be received most anytime. But waves of shorter wavelength pass right through the ionosphere and are not reflected at all.

In North America, distant AM (Amplitude Modulation) radio stations may be able to be received at night, but not during the day. While the much shorter-wavelength FM (Frequency Modulation) stations cannot be received at a distance at all.

The trouble is that longer wavelengths, which means lower frequencies of the wave, cannot carry as much information as shorter wavelengths. The long wavelengths that are reflected by the ionosphere could not, for example, carry television signals because they contain too much information. The longest wavelengths were useful for signalling with Morse Code. Since the shortest wavelengths, which can carry the most information, pass right through the ionosphere, we use satellites in orbit as a kind of artificial ionosphere to get around the curvature of the earth.

Sir Edward Appleton explained all of this by discovering the ionosphere.

This is the city of Bradford, just west of Leeds. The first two of the following four images are of a museum of the industrial era, the second is the Wool Exchange and the fourth is the Town Hall. Wool was to Bradford what steel was to Sheffield.





https://www.google.com/maps/@53.7952317,-1.7475071,3a,75y,111.53h,90t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sUAhJF9Opk7-758Ax56dS2A!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DUAhJF9Opk7-758Ax56dS2A%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D123.74598%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100

The amazing thing about the city of York is how widely it has spread it's name. New York City and state. Toronto was originally called York, and there is the fort by that name. Yorkshire is the geographically largest county in Britain.

Here is the original city of York. It is known for it's numerous old alleys called "Snickelways". The ruins of the Catholic abbey that was abandoned after the Reformation is St. Mary's Abbey. Clifford's Tower is the keep of the original castle. York Minster is the famous cathedral. A minster is a cathedral or church that was used to train missionaries.

Have you ever wondered where perhaps the most popular of all candy bars, Kit Kat, came from? Here is York. 

These four images are of the York City Wall and fortifications.





These four images are of the old part of York.





These four images are of York's famous medieval Street, The Shambles.





These four images are of York Minster, the famous cathedral. As in Catholic times before the Reformation, the Anglican Church has two unequal archbishops. The senior one is in Canterbury, in the south, and the junior one is at York, in the north.






Scarborough is a seaside resort on the east coast of northern England. There really was a "Scarborough Fair", the subject of the song by Simon and Garfunkel, but it was in the Middle Ages. Scarborough has given it's name to a number of places, including the eastern part of Toronto. The first four images are of the beach area, the Grand Hotel and the castle.





https://www.google.com/maps/@54.2839593,-0.4004424,3a,75y,60h,100t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMv9iyxd48KGViqP17Ap9TxiQl7PLgsvPqBGoYI!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMv9iyxd48KGViqP17Ap9TxiQl7PLgsvPqBGoYI%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-10-ya169.52379-ro-0-fo100!7i12014!8i6007

As we might expect by the name, the city of Newcastle has a castle. It is not new today but was new when it was first built, nearly a thousand years ago. The city was known for shipbuilding and the ship on which I came across the ocean as a young boy, the Empress of England, was built at Newcastle, although we left from Liverpool. 

Newcastle honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his civil rights work in the U.S., and he visited in the year before his assassination.

One invention that most people do not pay much attention to is the steam turbine. It converts the energy in steam into rotary motion. A large ship has boilers which must build up steam before the ship can move. But how do you suppose the steam is converted into the rotary motion to drive the ship's propellers?

A lot of electricity is generated by nuclear power. But after the reactor generates heat, it still must be turned into the rotary energy that turns a generator. It requires a steam turbine. All that nuclear power really is amounts to just another way of boiling water.

Our world would be very different without steam turbines, which was invented at Newcastle by Sir Charles Parsons.

This is Newcastle, starting at the castle.





https://www.google.com/maps/@54.9702367,-1.6116167,3a,75y,304.57h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPK77E4GQIQSSrcqB1BXGxqgiWaHAyt5KJtU5yE!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPK77E4GQIQSSrcqB1BXGxqgiWaHAyt5KJtU5yE%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya320.20148-ro-0-fo100!7i5376!8i2688

Middlesbrough is another "steel town". Captain James Cook was a native of Middlesbrough. His Pacific voyages probably contributed more than anything else in bringing about accurate maps of the entire world, and is why there is a British flag on the state flag of Hawaii.










https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8170127,-3.0520097,3a,75y,101.39h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipP1d0gLg8h0oN9H3_vgr3yHMYelqjM5kUmWhSKz!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipP1d0gLg8h0oN9H3_vgr3yHMYelqjM5kUmWhSKz%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya217.84134-ro0-fo100!7i10000!8i5000

In the far north of England, not far from Scotland, is the city of Carlisle. It is one of the relatively few places with both a historic castle and a cathedral. It also has the more-recent citadel, with the cylindrical fortified buildings. The following scenes begin at Carlisle Cathedral. The first of the following four images are of the Citadel and the last two are of the Castle.








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