The response of the people of Buffalo, NY to the recent deadly blizzard has been absolutely awesome. It is reminiscent of the response to the deadly shooting last May. People are helping each other, buying each other food and supplies, and even taking people into their homes.
This is amazing. I have never been more impressed with Buffalo. I do visits all over the world on this blog but these are my people.
Last week we visited Pakistan's two southern provinces, Sindh and Balochistan. The remaining two provinces are Punjab and the Northwest Frontier. The Northwest Frontier province has been renamed Khyber Pakhunkhwa.
I would like to express profound sympathy to Buffalo.
We know that the city of Buffalo, NY gets snow. Being at a latitude that gets cold in winter, Buffalo gets large-scale storms on the national or continental scale.
Buffalo also gets what is known as "Lake-Effect" snow. Most of the really heavy snowfalls are Lake-Effect.
The prevailing wind at this latitude is from the west. Lake Erie is an elongated member of the Great Lakes, aligned mostly east-west, and Buffalo just happens to be at the eastern end of it. What this means is that the prevailing westerly wind passes over the long length of Lake Erie before reaching Buffalo.
Water has a high heat capacity, meaning that it can hold a lot of heat and so requires time to cool. More water evaporates when the water is warm. Air can hold a certain amount of water vapor but warm air can hold more than cold air.
Lake-Effect snow usually occurs in the autumn and early winter. If it suddenly gets cold the air gets cold before the water, since water has a higher heat capacity. As the west wind crosses the length of Lake Erie the water is still warm but the cold air can't hold the water vapor for as long as warm air could. So what happens is that much of the water vapor captured from Lake Erie gets dumped on Buffalo as snow.
Aside from this Lake-Effect snow Buffalo is also vulnerable to some unique snow events. These can produce the greatest and most destructive blizzards of all.
The first that comes to mind is the one that started in late January of 1977, the fabled "Blizzard of "77" that killed nearly thirty people. What happened is that Lake Erie is shallow. It is the only one of the Great Lakes that freezes over because deeper lakes can hold more heat, remember water's high heat capacity. If it gets cold enough for Lake Erie to freeze over the Lake Effect Snow ceases because water is no longer evaporating from the lake.
In the winter of 1976-77 Lake Erie froze over early. There was heavy snow after this, not Lake-Effect snow but from a large-scale blizzard. The snow piled up on the frozen lake. What happened next is that gale-force winds from the southwest picked up the snow from the frozen lake and deposited it across western New York and southern Ontario. Not only was there this heavy snow but there was also a lot of snow already on the ground. To make it even more destructive the wind was extremely cold. Many people froze to death, or suffocated, in their cars when they were stuck and then buried by snow.
If that was all it would have been bad enough, but it wasn't. When the snow melted in the spring the excess water, hindered from running off by a highway that had been built, caused the chemicals to emerge from below ground in what became known as the Love Canal.
This week Buffalo had the "Blizzard of '22", which has killed even more people than in 1977. This was also a unique snow event. Much of the U.S. and Canada were suffering from heavy snow and frigid temperatures. What happened this time in Buffalo is that it had a large-scale storm and Lake-Effect Snow at the same time, that was why the snow was so heavily concentrated in Buffalo.
It had only just been warm in Buffalo and the water of Lake Erie was still warm, meaning that water was evaporating from it. The polar region is usually surrounded by a jet stream, which keeps the warmer and cold air separate. But global warming has weakened the jet stream so that polar air can move south. This brings a very cold spell, known as a "Polar Vortex". Meanwhile warmer air is moving into the polar region and helping to melt the ice caps.
Whenever cold air pushes warm air, or vice-versa, a cold or a warm front, there tends to be storms and precipitation. This is simply because cold air cannot hold as much water vapor as warm air and so the warm air must drop some of it's water when it comes in contact with the cold air. This is how the Polar Vortex created the large-scale storm across the U.S. and Canada.
When this storm with very cold air crossed the length of Lake Erie, with the prevailing west wind, water was still evaporating from the lake. This gave Buffalo a Lake-Effect snowstorm besides the snow that was falling in the large-scale storm system. That was why this was a unique snow event in Buffalo. It was actually two storms in one.
As for which storm was worse the "Blizzard of '22" has killed more people but in 1977, I was 16 years old, I remember the bodies of birds in the spring that had frozen in the blizzard. I don't think that "'22" had that kind of extended cold. As a general rule if birds didn't know how to survive in the cold then they wouldn't be here.
Another unique snow event in Buffalo happened in the Autumn of 2006. Snow usually doesn't start until after the leaves have fallen from the trees. What happened in 2006 is that there was heavy snow very early, when the leaves were still on the trees. This caused the trees to hold onto the snow and the weight of the snow caused the branches to break. The night was filled with the sound of branches snapping and a vast number of trees in the Buffalo area were destroyed.
I live within sight of a really tall smokestack and I habitually glance at it for an idea of what the weather will be like. Obviously when the wind is from the north it will be colder and when it is from the south it will be warmer, but usually without a great change in weather. The prevailing wind at this latitude is from the west and a west wind may bring a change in weather, although usually without a great change in temperature.
What I notice is that when there is something major and large-scale going on in the weather, it may reverse the prevailing wind. This is especially true for remnants of hurricanes along America's east coast which show up here, near Buffalo, as an east wind. Recently there was a major storm system across America's south. Although everything was calm here I noticed that it temporarily reversed the prevailing wind.
The name of Pakistan means "Land of the Pure". It is composed of four provinces. Today we will visit the southern two, Sindh and Balochistan.
There have been two visits to Pakistan on this blog. " Where India Began", August 2022, was about the Indus River Valley civilizations in ancient times. Then there was "Lahore And The Mughals", November 2022..png)
2023 will be the year that India will become the most populous nation in the world. India goes far back into ancient times. Let's have a look at possible historic connections between the West and India.
HINDUISM AND ANCIENT EGYPT
I consider Egypt to be the greatest of ancient Middle East civilizations. This is due not only to the artifacts and monuments left by the ancient Egyptians, but to the sheer longevity of the civilization. Assyria, Babylon and Persia all reached a peak that was as great as that of Egypt. But none of these lasted very long as a great power.
In later days, ancient Greece appeared suddenly as a brilliant light on the world, but then faded just as quickly. Even as widespread as Rome was, it lasted only a few centuries as a great power.
Egypt, in contrast, was a truly great kingdom for maybe two thousand years. A major part of the reason was certainly it's somewhat protected location and the reliability of the Nile River.
My belief is that Hinduism may well be a continuation of the religion of ancient Egypt. The similarities, allowing for change over time, are just too close and numerous. Hinduism is a very old religion that arose in India at the time that Egypt was a thriving civilization. Unlike every other major religion, Hinduism cannot be traced to any one founder or event.
The people in Egypt in the days of the pharoahs did not seem to believe in the personal reincarnation that is so central to Hinduism. But in the clear skies of Egypt, they took note of the "death" of celestial bodies in the western sky every evening and their "rebirth" in the eastern sky. The Egyptians considered the constellations in the vicinity of the north star to be "immortal" because they never set below the horizon.
Egypt's world-famous pyramids, over a hundred of them, are always located west of the Nile River, except for one. Pyramids are tombs and west is where the sun and stars set ( or die ) every evening. It seemed natural to the early Egyptians for west to represent death. India doesn't have anything that seems to correspond to Egyptian pyramids but the pyramids were built only during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, and then fell out of favor as too expensive.
Just as in Hinduism, astrology had great importance to the ancient Egyptians. Consider the Sphinx, for example, a huge stone carving of the head of a woman on the body of a lion. The woman represents the constellation Virgo as the beginning of the zodiac and the lion represents Leo as it's end. Both religions consist of numerous deities, the Egyptian Ra, the sun god, has a role similar to the Hindu Vishnu.
The most important physical feature of Egypt is the Nile River. Without it, all of Egypt would be a barren desert. The Nile carried fertile soil upstream and deposited it on it's banks and it's Mediterranean delta. The ancient Egyptians clearly recognized the importance of the Nile and worshipped the river itself as a god.
To Hindus, it is the Ganges which is a holy river in a very similar way. Pilgrimage to Benares, which is situated on the river, and bathing in the Ganges is a sacred Hindu ritual. In Hinduism, the Ganges is a goddess just as the Nile was a god to the ancient Egyptians.
Cows are very important to Hindus today and are actually considered as gods. In ancient Egypt cows were also very important. Gods were sometimes in the form of cows. Probably the best-known example is Hesat.
I am not the first person to think of this. You can read in detail about the many similarities between the ancient Egyptian religion and Hinduism by doing a Google search for "Ancient Egypt Hinduism".
The many close similarities are there and the timeframe is right, the next question is how the religion got from Egypt to India. For one thing, there were trade routes all over the Middle East and Near East in ancient times.
In the early 1970s, there was a project and then a movie made about it called "The Ra Expedition". This was the construction of a boat from papyrus reeds, following the plan of such a boat from ancient Egypt. The boat was sailed and, on the second attempt, it made it across the Atlantic Ocean. This proved that the ancient Egyptians could definitely have accomplished such a feat, and they did indeed have a fleet of ships in the Red Sea about 2,000 BC.
If such a boat had sailed from Egypt southward on the Red Sea, the ocean currents could have carried it from there straight to the west coast of India. My claim is that the evidence presented here makes it a better than even probability that modern Hinduism is a continuation of the religion of ancient Egypt, whether it was brought to India by land or by sea.
THE AMAZING STORY OF ABRAHAM
Here is something about the world that is already known, but not widely-known. Everyone should know about this.
There are, broadly speaking, two main classifications of religion in the world.
There are the western, or monotheistic, religions of Judaism, Christianity and, Islam. Monotheistic means to be based on one god. The original monotheistic religion was Judaism, and Christianity and Islam sprang from that.
Then there are the eastern religions, the major ones being Hinduism and Buddhism. Hinduism came first and Buddhism sprang from that.
These are not the only religions but the others are minor, in the number of adherents, by comparison. Jainism is another eastern religion. Sikhism is a kind of a bridge between the eastern and western religions. Confucianism is more of a philosophy than a religion.
The predominant religion greatly affects the nature of the society in which it operates. We saw in the posting on this blog, "Understanding The World In Terms Of The South And West And The North And East", April 2016, how the concept of the nation differs in the two halves of the world.
In the North And East, the nations have tended to stay the same since ancient times. But in the South And West, new nations have tended to come into being with new ideas.
The two halves of the world are based on their predominant religions. The South And West is based primarily on the monotheistic religions and the North And East is based primarily on the eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
The two main families of religions, the monotheistic and the eastern, are generally considered as polar opposites. The monotheistic religions focus on salvation by a personal God. The eastern religions typically focus on seeking enlightenment through a fundamental cosmic principle and reincarnation.
The Jews began with a man named Abraham. He had faith that there was only one God, not the multitude of gods typically worshipped by people of the time. Abraham's God was an almighty and all-powerful God. Abraham's God led him from a place called Haran, probably in modern Iraq, to the Jews' Promised Land, which would become the nation of Israel.
Israel was divided into twelve tribes. The Israelites became known as Jews for the tribe of Judah, which became the predominant tribe.
Before Christianity and Islam the Jews, in the nation of Israel, were first delivered from bondage by God. Later they were disciplined by two exiles from their homeland. The first exile was the permanent exile of the ten tribes of the northern nation of Israel, after the twelve tribes had split into the two nations of Israel and Judah. These ten tribes were scattered around the Assyrian Empire, and have since been known as the Ten Lost Tribes.
The second exile was the temporary exile of the remaining nation of Judah to Babylon. The Jews' original Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians and the Jews built the so-called Second Temple in it's place after they were allowed to return from Babylon, after it had been conquered by the Persian Empire.
But not all of the Jews returned to their homeland. Some were doing quite well in Babylon and chose to stay. The result was a thriving Jewish community that lasted from Babylon until modern times. Most of these Iraqi Jews were finally brought to Israel in the 1950s, but the community in Babylon, that declined to return from the exile, played a prominent role in Jewish history.
Some Jews from places like Babylon and Syria migrated eastward to Iran and India, where there were thriving Jewish communities.
There were also ancient Jewish communities, that survived into modern times, in Yemen and Ethiopia. Most were eventually brought back to the modern nation of Israel by airlift.
Judaism was the original of the western monotheistic religions. Christianity is the belief that Jesus was the Jews' long-awaited messiah. Islam acknowledges Jesus and the prophets of Judaism, but claims that Muhammad restored their true message, which had been mistranslated and distorted, and was the "seal" of the prophets.
Just as the original religion of the western, or monotheistic, religions was Judaism, the original eastern religion was Hinduism. Buddhism later sprang from Hinduism. We do not think of India today as a Buddhist country but the wheel symbol on the Indian flag is actually a Buddhist symbol, because Buddhism did originate in India.
Hinduism is polytheistic, meaning many gods, but centers on the universal cosmic principle, known as Brahman.
Hinduism, originating in India, used to be known for it's caste system. The highest caste was of Hindu priests and religious figures, and was known as the Brahmins.
The universal cosmic principle is called Brahman. It's priestly caste are called Brahmins.
There is a writing script that appeared in northern India several centuries before the time of Christ. It is known as the Brahmic Script. It is very important because almost all of the later writing scripts in India are descended from it.
According to the Wikipedia article on "Brahmic Script", it is generally believed to be of Semitic origin. Semitic means the people of the Middle East, including the Jews. We saw above that Jews had migrated eastward to India from Babylon, Syria and, Persia.
Having related words from the same root has been seen before in India. Indian civilization emerged around the Indus River, in what is now Pakistan. The predominant religion in India is Hinduism. Notice the similarity of the words "Indus", "India" and, "Hindu".
Now, what do you notice here?
The words "Brahman" and "Brahmin", which are so important to religion in India, and the word "Brahmic", which is so important to writing in India, is very similar to the name of Abraham. The Brahmic Script, which is of Semitic origin, seems to have been named for Abraham.
Abraham's God was the one all-powerful and almighty God. The western monotheistic religions begin with Abraham. Brahman is the Hindu concept of the universal cosmic principle. The eastern religions begin with Hinduism.
Doesn't it seem that Brahman was named for Abraham? The migrating Jews brought the script to India and the Jews were the people of Abraham.
I am not the first person to notice this but I do think it deserves more attention. The eastern and western religions look like polar opposites but this appears to be a fundamental link between them.
THE ILIAD AND THE BHAGAVAD GITA
Considering the other likely ancient connections between India and the Middle East there is one more that I can't help noticing. I wonder if there could be a connection between the Iliad, the famous epic of ancient Greece, and the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scriptures.
The Iliad certainly came first. Several centuries after the Iliad was written came Alexander the Great. What is interesting is that Alexander conquered as far east as India. Alexander's forces, having some learned men with them, and India had a considerable effect on each other, and Alexander's foray took place right around the time that the Bhagavad Gita is believed to have been written.
The Iliad is about a short period of time in the Trojan War. The fabled Trojan War involves the Greek siege of a city named Troy. The King of Troy is given a giant horse on wheels as a gift. But there are Greek soldiers concealed inside the horse. They emerge at night, open the gates of the city, and the city falls to the Greeks. The term "Trojan Horse" has been in use ever since, today in computer malware.
There has long been mixed opinion about whether the Trojan War actually happened. It could have literally happened, it could be the consolidation of events in other battles, or it could be pure legend. Evidence has been found that there was a city named Troy, although not that this siege of it happened.
The main epic of the Bhagavad Gita has a striking similarity to the Iliad. The Bhagavad Gita is about a relatively brief period of the main battle of a great war. Like the Iliad it contains all kinds of moral lessons and interactions with gods. Also like the Iliad it is written in the form of an epic poem.
Also very interesting is the parallel correspondence between the Odyssey, of ancient Greece, and the Ramayana, of India. The Odyssey is related to the Iliad, both believed to be written by Homer. While the Iliad is about the Trojan War the Odyssey is about the adventures of a hero, Odysseus, on his long journey home after the war.
Just as the Odyssey related to the Iliad in Greece so the Ramayana related to the Mahabharata in India, and the Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabharata.
Similar in tone to the Odyssey the Ramayana is also about adventures on a long journey. A prince, Rama, his wife, Sita, and his brother, Lakshmana, are exiled to the forests. While Odysseus journeys across Greece, the prince journeys across India.
The journey of Odysseus lasts ten years, the journey of Rama lasts fourteen years. Like Odysseus Rama was a king that eventually arrived home. Odysseus arrived home in Ithaca, in the far western extent of Greece. Rama arrived home in Ayodha, in the far northern extent of India.
The campaign of Alexander into India is well-known. This doesn't mean that there could not have been earlier contacts that have since been forgotten or were never so widely-known.
INDIA AND ZERO
Have you ever noticed the bizarre curve in the progress of technology in human history? A lifetime is really too short to notice but technical progress since the beginning of civilization has been somewhat like a turtle morphing into a very fast rabbit for the last 1/15 or so of a race. If we consider civilization as having begun about 7,000 years ago, almost all of our technical progress, relatively speaking, since then has been in the last 350 years.
There has been intermittent progress throughout civilization such as the development of writing, alphabets, geometry, cement and, flying buttresses. However, none of these steps had much effect on the daily life of the average person. In contrast, the last three and a half centuries have been incredibly different.
Before this, humans were adept at agriculture, building, medicine, navigation, mining, measurement, writing, calendars and, time-keeping. The one thing that was missing was machines. Anything that human beings made before 350 years ago that could be described as a machine was very rudimentary. When the Industrial Revolution came, it was based on machines and affected all other areas of progress.
But why did human history unfold like this? I believe that the Reformation opened the psychological door to the Industrial Revolution but did not provide the vehicle. The newly-invented printing press spread the Industrial Revolution and promoted mass-education but I do not believe that it was the cause of it. National rivalry spurred competition but I do not believe that it caused the such progress either.
My conclusion is that it was simple arithmetic that turned out to be revolutionary. Geometry, which is vital to the construction of complex buildings, was quite advanced in ancient times. In fact, it was much more advanced that arithmetic.
It struck me one day that there are no complex calculations discussed or mentioned in the Bible. The most complex calculation seems to be 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. In contrast, the construction of the temple is told in geometric detail and plumbs and surveying is also discussed in the Bible.
The Industrial Revolution actually began with a gradual numbers revolution and when that became embedded in our thinking, the machines naturally followed. People could count since prehistoric times either with their fingers or piles of stones. A variety of abaci (the plural of abacus is abaci) and counting boards have been in use for thousands of years.
What I have concluded that changed the course of history is the concept of zero. When the importance of zero is fully grasped, very complex calculations can be done on paper. Without using zero, we are limited to the relatively simple calculations that can be done with abaci and counting boards. It is not necessary to understand the importance of zero in order to use these simple devices but it is to do complex calculations on paper.
Geometry became advanced long before arithmetic because it did not require understanding of the importance of zero. The building of elaborate structures requires geometry but only relatively simple arithmetical calculations because buildings do not have moving parts. The planning of machines, in contrast, require complex calculations with numbers and this could not be done in ancient times.
Have you ever noticed the similarity between an addition or multiplication problem and the operation of machines involving wheels or pistons? Not only did the ability to do complex calculations make the development of machines possible, those early machines even resemble the operation of an arithmetic problem as the operation moves from one column to the next. The Arabs seem to have introduced the idea of zero to Europe but merchants brought it to them from India.
INDIA AND CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
Here is something that has really got to be written, that everyone has got to know about, but that seems to have been forgotten.
Columbus Day is the holiday commemorating the landing of Christopher Columbus in the western hemisphere in 1492. This was not the first time that Europeans had landed in the western hemisphere but it was the landing of Columbus that established permanent contact between the two hemispheres.
Columbus correctly believed that the earth was spherical and was trying to reach the east by sailing westward. What happened is that he unexpectedly ran into the western hemisphere along the way.
Columbus was seeking India. He thought he had landed in India and referred to the native people where he had landed as "Indians". The native people of the western hemisphere are still called Indians today.
Columbus Day has become a controversial holiday. Whether the landing of Columbus is something to be celebrated, or to be mourned, depends on one's point of view. It opened up a new world but the native people of the western hemisphere suffered tremendously.
In all of the controversy over Columbus Day, between those of white European and native Indian backgrounds, the thing that gets almost completely forgotten about Columbus Day is that the voyage was motivated by India, and thus without India the western hemisphere would never have developed as it did.
Sooner or later some other ship would certainly have come across the western hemisphere, but the whole purpose, at the time, of finding a shorter route to the east was to reach India. The west had long known about India because of trade along the Silk Road. It may be that the rise of the Ottomans, in the eastern Mediterranean, prompted the search for another route to the east.
But the reason for this great effort to reach the east was India. Spain, having finally gained complete independence from Moorish control, commissioned Columbus to try to reach the east, specifically India, by sailing westward. Portugal took the opposite approach and sailed around southern Africa, with Vasco da Gama succeeding in reaching India.
So while it was Portugal that reached the objective of India, Spain established contact with the previously-unknown western hemisphere. Some time later, a Portuguese ship on the way around southern Africa would happen to reach the coast of Brazil, which is why Brazil speaks Portuguese today. It is not quite certain whether the Portuguese discovery of Brazil was accidental or not.
Columbus was not on a colonizing journey, even though it was his voyage that initiated the Age of Imperialism. He had only three ships and was not heavily armed. Columbus was on a mission to explore and trade.
But what could India possibly have that was so valuable, that made it so important for western Europeans to reach it? Nations commissioned voyages and sailors risked their lives to reach a nation on the opposite side of the world. The question is "why"?
It couldn't possibly be gold, or other minerals. There was gold to be found in places all over the world and India is no richer in minerals than many other places.
There is one simple and obvious answer what India had to offer that started a rush to reach the opposite side of the world, that drastically changed the world in the process. It was India's food, specifically spices.
This means that Indian food is the reason the nations of North and South America are what they are today.
The two continents could have been named for curry, North and South Curry. America could have been named for biryani the United States of Biryani.
Thanksgiving, the following month after Columbus Day, is celebrated with a feast centering around turkey. It parallels Columbus Day in that it is a harvest festival celebrating the first permanent English settlement in what is now the U.S.
But the turkey is a myth that was invented much later. I think it would make more sense to remember the reason for Columbus' voyage that so changed the world and to celebrate Columbus Day, and especially Thanksgiving, with a feast of Indian food. I celebrate Thanksgiving with chapati, rather than with turkey.
HAS INDIA ENTERED ANOTHER GOLDEN AGE?
India is an ancient country that has had it's share of past "golden ages".
The Mauryan Empire ruled in India during the Fourth and Third Centuries B.C. This was the beginning of India's periodic golden ages. The best-known emperor of the time was Chandragupta I. We don't think of India as a Buddhist country today but Buddhism actually began there and got a major boost when it was embraced by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka.
The time period centered around the Fourth and Fifth Centuries was the time of the Gupta Empire in India. One of it's emperors took the name of Chandragupta II. This was a great golden age that, among other things, brought the numerals that we use today, the 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Possibly the most important invention ever is the concept of zero. You may have noticed that there are no complex calculations in ancient times involving numbers, although there is with geometry. There were abacus, and various counting devices, but complex calculations with numbers are impossible without understanding the importance of zero.
A thousand years ago, around the beginning of the Second Millennium, India had the Chola Empire. This was another golden age.
Today there are former Hindu temples across southeast Asia. The great temple of Angkor Wat, which is on the Cambodian flag, was built as a Hindu temple. We have visited My Son, the ruins of a Hindu temple in Vietnam.
Angkor Wat, depicted on the flag of Cambodia, was originally a Hindu temple that was constructed during one of India's past golden ages. Image from the Wikipedia article "Flag of Cambodia".
Hinduism on the Indonesian island of Bali is a legacy of India's far-reaching influence during it's golden ages. The vast majority of the population of this densely-populated and much-visited island are Hindu by religion. Southeast Asia is often referred to as "Indochina" because it was influenced by both India and China.
India is a diverse country and it's golden ages are not associated with any one religion. The Mauryan Empire, although not originally Buddhist, is associated with spreading Buddhism. The Gupta and Chola Empires were Hindu. The remainder of the Second Millennium saw two more golden ages in India, first the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughal Empire. Both were Moslem and both saw India producing a very significant share of global wealth.
India's Mughal Empire produced what might be the most famous building in the world, the Taj Mahal.
Images from Google Street View
We can see that India's golden ages happen almost on a regular schedule, about every four hundred years. History is a powerful force and what that means is that the next golden age should be beginning right about now.
There is no announcement when a golden age begins. They don't start and end suddenly. Every king, emperor and politician would like to promote his reign as a golden age. A golden age may not even be recognized at the time, but by historians long after.
There is plenty of reason to believe that India has already entered another golden age. 2023 is the year that India will become the most populous nation in the world. Indians abroad often enter politics. At the time of this writing the prime ministers of both Britain and Ireland are of Indian descent. Jagmeet Singh is the leader of Canada's NDP party, and could potentially be prime minister. Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, ran for U.S. President. Nikki Haley has announced her candidacy for 2024. Part of the New Indian Empire is not conquest but politicians in other countries, even though their allegiance is not to India.
Another part of the New Indian Empire is space. Missions to Mars have a high casualty rate and India is the first nation to launch a successful Mars mission on it's first attempt. I have already suggested here that the region around the moon's south pole could be named "New India" because of the country's exploration there.
If we always seem to be hearing about India and Indians it could be because it's next golden age is arriving right on schedule.
Inflation is too high but yet there are plenty of jobs available, in fact many companies cannot find enough workers. Maybe these too facts are actually related. So much of what happens is often a matter of simple demographics.
What is happening is that the Baby Boomers are retiring, and many need medical care. The Baby Boomers are the demographic bulge in the population brought by children being born to returning veterans of the Second World War. Baby Boomers are generally defined as having been born from 1946 to 1964.
The enduring popularity of Rock Music is because it is the anthem of the Baby Boomers. The deadliness of the Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed people in their prime, can be easily seen in how we do not see a "baby boom" after the First World War, as we do after the Second World War. It is because the Spanish Flu killed so many people in their prime.
What the retirement, and increasing medical requirements as they age, of the Baby Boomers has done is to make the economy, in effect, into more of a service economy. The fundamental basis of the economy is production but as time goes on, and production becomes more efficient, fewer of the workers are actually producing anything tangible.
But yet their spending is needed to keep the economy going. So what happens is that service jobs are created. These are jobs that provide some useful service but do not manufacture anything tangible.
The basis of the economy remains actual production. So the new service jobs must be carried on the actual production jobs, in terms of wages. This is why countries with more of a service economy have higher both wages and prices that do more of actually making things.
Remember my tier of workers. Those who actually make things come first, and the others "ride" on them.
1) Those who make things
2) Those who fix things
3) Those who move things
4) Those who run things
The increase in jobs taking care of Baby Boomers is making the economy into more of a service economy, because it is not actually producing anything. But their wages have to "ride" on those that are producing things. This drives up wages and, since there is not a corresponding increase in production, it must also drive up prices.
This is the driving force behind the inflation of today. There is a more detailed explanation in "The Wage And Price Disparity", on the World and Economics Blog. Here is a link to it:
www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/2011/08/wage-and-price-disparity_18.html?m=0
OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
Now that Covid has mostly passed millions of people are visiting the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico City. Remember what we saw in the compound posting, "The Aztec Prophecy", April 2018. That posting is about more than "The Aztec Prophecy". The first five sections are about "The Aztec Prophecy".
The Aztecs were very special to God. They had the prophecy that they would see an eagle, perched on a cactus, devouring a snake. That was where they were to build their capital city, and the result was the city of Tenochtitlan. This prophecy is on the Mexican flag.
But the Aztecs were at a lower level than they thought. They had the prophecy right but the snake in the prophecy was actually their chief god Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent. The wings of the eagle resemble the sails of the ships by which the Spaniards would arrive.
The most important part of the prophecy is the cactus. The eagle is perched on the cactus but the snake isn't. The cactus represents the real God, the Spaniards had Christianity. The tilma (cloak) of Juan Diego was made of cactus fibers. It has been miraculously preserved, at the shrine, for nearly five hundred years. Plant fibers usually deteriorate fairly quickly.
This is absolutely amazing and now Our Lady of Guadalupe is by far the most visited Catholic shrine in the world, which is what God had planned all along.
CUSTODY OF LOCKERBIE BOMBER
One of the suspects in the bombing of the Pan Am jet that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 is in U.S. custody. The majority of people that were killed were American. Syracuse University, downstate from here, lost a lot of students.
A bomb, in luggage with a timer, is believed to have been put on a plane in Malta, it was transferred in Frankfurt and then onto the doomed plane in London. The bombers were eventually caught because, probably due to airline delays, the bomb exploded when the plane was over land, instead of over the ocean. This made a forensic investigation much easier.
I once went through Lockerbie on a train.
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Image from Google Street View
The bombing was purportedly done by Libyans to avenge the U.S. bombing of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, in April 1986. This raid tends to get forgotten today, maybe because the catastrophic meltdown at Chernobyl happened a few days later. But this 1986 U.S. air raid on Tripoli, done to avenge Moammar Gaddafi's alleged support of terrorism and the bombing of a nightclub in Berlin that was popular with U.S. military personnel, was quite interesting.
The U.S. bombed one of it's own former air bases. What is now the main airport of Tripoli was once Wheelus Air Force Base. The U.S. turned it back to Libya in 1970. When it was a U.S. Air Force base there was an entertainment crew on the base. One of it's members would later play the role of Reuben Kincaid on The Partridge Family.
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Image from Google Earth
The raid targeted the home of Moammar Gaddafi. It was long suspected that he had been forewarned shortly before the raid. It is now believed that the Prime Minister of Italy warned Gaddafi by telephone.
Much of the world condemned the U.S. air raid, although a lot of the condemnation seemed half-hearted. The vengeance sought by Moammar Gaddafi's government ultimately led to the bombing of this plane. But he also recruited an African-American street gang in Chicago to undertake terrorist activity against the U.S.
On the subject of the now-defunct airline, Pan-Am, the first public flight of the new Boeing 747 was made from New York to London early in 1970. The deadliest air accident, not including terrorism, was at Tenerife in 1977. A Pan-Am and a KLM (Dutch) plane collided at the fog-shrouded airport. Did you know that the Pan-Am plane that was involved in this collision is the same one that made the first 747 flight?
XI JINPING VISITS SAUDI ARABIA
In the recent posting, "Remembering Jimmy Carter" October 2022, we saw how international finance works. The U.S. took advantage of it's dominant position early in the postwar era to get the dollar widely accepted as the international reserve currency. The U.S. dollar still has momentum behind it.
You may notice that the currencies of countries like Britain and Canada are more subject to changes in value, relative to other currencies, than the U.S. dollar is. That is because the value of a currency, like the value of consumer goods, operates by supply and demand. Getting the U.S. dollar as the defacto reserve currency in the world ensured that there would be continuous demand for it, thus steadying it's value.
But there is nothing written in stone that the dollar has to be the reserve currency of the world. China is trying to get it's currency used more in international transactions. A step toward this was to get it's purchasing of Saudi oil in Yuan, rather than in dollars.
INDIA-CHINA BORDER CLASHES
Part of the trouble with these periodic border clashes between India and China is that the two countries don't play the same sports. India has more rivalry with Pakistan but at least the two countries play the same sports. India and Pakistan now act out their rivalry on the cricket pitch and there hasn't been another war between the two in over fifty years, after previously having three wars within 25 years.
Did anyone notice that, when Xi Jinping visited India in September 2014, India's Mars mission was arriving at it's destination at the same time as Xi Jinping was arriving in India? Maybe that wasn't a coincidence. Just a reminder of how capable India's rockets are.
But have India and China ever thought that western powers might have an interest in planting discord between them because we don't want the two most populous countries to gang up on us?
I periodically collect postings of similar subject matter together into compound postings. They are of book-length or near-book-length. Here is an index of the compound postings, and a link to the posting:
COMPOUND POSTINGS ABOUT HISTORY AND THE WORLD
"The House Of Holy Wisdom Where The Modern World Began" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-house-of-wisdom-where-modern-world.html?m=0
"America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2015/12/america-and-modern-world-explained-by_12.html?m=0
"Economics" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2019/11/economics.html?m=0
"How History Repeats Itself" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-history-repeats-itself.html?m=0
"The Meaning Of Freedom" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-meaning-of-freedom_1.html?m=0
"The Western Hemisphere" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-western-hemisphere.html?m=0
"Our Language" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/08/our-language.html?m=0
"Investigations" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2018/12/investigations.html?m=0
"India And The West" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/12/india-and-west.html?m=0
COMPOUND POSTINGS ABOUT CHRISTIANITY
"New Insight Into Bible Prophecy" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/10/new-insight-into-bible-prophecy.html?m=0
"The Aztec Prophecy" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2018/04/?m=0
COMPOUND POSTINGS ABOUT SCIENCE
"Computer Science" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/07/computer-science.html?m=0
"Atomic Science" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/12/atomic-science.html?m=0
"Measurement" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/09/measurement.html?m=0
"A Celebration Of The Inverse Square Law" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-celebration-of-inverse-square-law.html?m=0
"Our Solar System" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/10/our-solar-system.html?m=0
"Mind-Bending Cosmology" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/05/mind-bending-cosmology.html?m=0
"The Configuration Of The Solar System Made Really Simple" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-configuration-of-solar-system-made.html?m=0
"Orbital And Escape Velocities And Impacts From Space" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2014/11/orbital-and-escape-velocities-and.html?m=0
"In Appreciation Of Electrons" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2022/01/in-appreciation-of-electrons.html?m=0
"The Science Of Human Society" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-science-of-human-society.html?m=0
"The Moon" www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-moon.html?m=0
China's history goes back about five thousand years and the present government is solidly rooted in that history. It is widely considered that Imperial China, with it's successive dynasties, came to an end in 1911. But a dynastic history that has been going on for thousands of years isn't going to just end suddenly like that.
China's dynasties are usually divided into Early, Middle and, Late Imperial China, with three successive dynasties each. We might call the era that China is in now "Post-Imperial", but the same rules will apply.
The first Post-Imperial "Dynasty" was the Nationalist Dynasty, from 1911 to 1949 and led by Sun Yat-Sen and Chiang Kai-Shek. The second Post-Imperial "Dynasty" is the present Communists, ruling since 1949.
What the present leadership has going for it is that in each of the first two imperial eras, Early and Middle Imperial China, the first dynasty was a rather brief one but was important in that it reunited the country after the collapse of the previous dynasty, thus bringing in a new era.
These previous dynasties were the Qin, from Early Imperial China, and the Sui, from Middle Imperial China. In Post-Imperial China these correspond to the Nationalists, who indeed dealt with the warlords and fragmentation that occurred after the end of the Qing Dynasty, in 1911.
The good news for the present Communist "Dynasty" is that the brief Qin and Sui Dynasties were followed by two of the most glorious periods in Chinese history. These are the Han Dynasty, of Early Imperial China, and the Tang Dynasty, of Middle Imperial China. The present Communist "Dynasty" corresponds to these glorious eras of the past.
So we are expecting great things from China.
Just an idea for China. There is an Eighteenth Century scroll painting called "Prosperous Suzhou", about the city by that name near Shanghai and Hangzhou. It shows daily life across the city. A scroll painting is the long-ago version of a movie. How about making it into a modern movie?
Again the capital city of China has moved so many times, I wonder if it will ever move again. Xian was the first capital, and also served as capital at other times since then. I remember, from when I was very young, the news of the discovery of the Terra Cotta Army that had been buried with the first emperor of Imperial China. How about Xian if the capital ever moves again?
Police in Germany arrested coup plotters across the country, before they had a chance to carry out their plans. The news described it as a "far right" would-be coup but the plan was actually to bring the country back under the control of the nobility. This would essentially restore the German monarchy, the Kaisers, that ruled from 1871 to 1919.
The plotters were allegedly going to seek assistance from Russia. Although the Kaisers and the Romanovs were on opposite sides in the First World War, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas were actually related.
This is an illustration of what I explained in the posting, "The Far-Reaching Legacy Of The Holy Roman Empire". The Holy Roman Empire was brought to an end, very early in the Nineteenth Century, by the conquests of Napoleon. But it was an order that lasted in Europe for a thousand years, so it must have had a long-term effect.
The Kaisers began their reign over a united Germany more than sixty years after the Holy Roman Empire had come to an end. But they were from the House of Hohenzollern, which had ruled Prussia before the country had been united. The House of Hohenzollern had been part of the ruling structure of the Holy Roman Empire. An order that lasted for a thousand years isn't going to just go away.
www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-far-reaching-legacy-of-holy-roman.html?m=0
It is not widely known just how the rule of the Kaisers ended. Here is a link to "The End Of The First World War":
www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-end-of-first-world-war.html?m=0
Scotland held an independence referendum in 2014, and the result was to stay in Britain. The Scottish National Party recently filed a suit for another referendum but a British court said "no". The Scottish National Party has referred to the next general election as being a defacto referendum on independence, with Scotland being generally more liberal than England.
I have long thought that it is the party that wants independence and they are trying to drag the population along with them. The recent court decision caused no significant reaction among the people of Scotland. If there had been any widespread wish for independence there would have been demonstrations in the street against the recent court decision. The fact that there wasn't says that there is no great desire for independence.
Polls are not entirely reliable because a person may say they want independence just to sound patriotic and to make sure that the central government doesn't take their loyalty for granted. In the last referendum the polls were much closer than the actual vote, indicating that many people said they wanted independence but then didn't actually vote for it.
The Scottish reaction to the recent court decision, or rather the lack of a significant reaction to it, was a defacto referendum for independence from Britain and the resounding result was NO.
Donald Trump recently suggested that the U.S. Constitution should be suspended. This should not be surprising in the least. Donald Trump is really a king. We saw this in "The Theory Of Kings", April 2022. Ever since the beginning of civilization kings and emperors have ruled. Something that has lasted that long is not going to be changed overnight by the drafting of a constitution. In the modern era we haven't done away with kings, we just don't call them kings anymore. Instead of actual kings we have demagogues that act like kings. There is democracy and not every ruler is a king or queen but kings are as present as ever.
The recent cycle of prime ministers in Britain might have seemed chaotic, and in a way it was, but it was also democracy at it's best. Britain has never been ruled by a dictator. If a leader falls too far out of favor then they are gone. Britain would have never gone through what America did with Watergate because Nixon would have been gone. In a democracy the leader is supposed to be working for the people, not the other way around. The basic meaning of democracy is that no one is special. If you want to be special then you have to earn it. How many majority-white countries would let a dark-skinned children of immigrants lead the country?
So much of what goes on is a matter of simple demographics. The reason that there is a shortage of workers is not that leaders have been brilliantly successful in creating jobs, or that the economy is booming. It is because of Baby Boomers retiring. When there is an increase in crime it may not be because of failed political policies. It may be the simple demographics that males between the ages of 15 and 25 tend to equal crime.
Don't forget that anniversaries can be very important in determining the course of events. Is it a coincidence that the first major racial uprising in the U.S. during the 1960s, at Watts, took place in 1965, which was the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation? The tumultuous events of 1989, the fall of Communist governments across eastern Europe as well as the uprising in Tiananmen Square, took place on the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. The recent emergence of a far-right government in Italy came just in time for the 100th anniversary of the 1922 March on Rome, which brought the fascists to power.
History is so important because we tend to repeat it, often without realizing it. There used to be a movement to unite the Arab countries, the Pan-Arab Movement, but it never succeeded. The primary basis of a nation tends to be language or religion, neither of which was a factor here. But history was the factor. There was a brief union between Egypt and Syria, the United Arab Republic, but it didn't last. There was a movement to unite Syria and Iraq, but that didn't succeed even though both were ruled by the same Baath Party. But what about the history of the successive caliphates and their capital cities? The Umayyad Caliphate was based in Damascus. It was replaced by the Abassid Caliphate that was based in Baghdad. Next came the Fatimid Caliphate that was based in Cairo. Damascus already existed but Baghdad and Cairo were specially built to serve as the caliphate capital. Modern Egypt and Syria could unite only briefly because of this historic difference. Iraq and Syria couldn't unite at all because their two historic caliphates were direct opponents, the Abassids having overthrown the Umayyads.
There have been a number of separation referendums in western countries in recent years, Quebec, Catalonia and, Scotland. The trouble is that the separatists are the ones who make up the rules. Is it right to break up a country that has existed for centuries on a simple majority vote? The next question is the definition of the entity that is separating. Who says that the entire entity, such as Scotland or Quebec, is a whole? If the separatists can divide the country then why can't the country divide the separatists? Instead of the whole separating why shouldn't it be done by individual counties voting to leave or stay? Politicians in the separatist entity may have a vested interest in separating, not for the good of the people but for their own place in history. It is their chance to go down in history as the George Washington of a new country. Polls are not an entirely reliable measure of the desire for independence as people may say they want independence just to sound patriotic or to send a message to the central government not to take their loyalty for granted. Even during the vote some people may vote for independence not because they actually want it but because they want the vote to be as close as possible, lest the central government take their loyalty for granted.
A controversial topic nowadays is artifact repatriation. In general I am in favor of giving artifacts back. A nearby museum, on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, returned the mummy that had been identified as Rameses I to Egypt. But it can get complicated. Suppose that you visit a country and buy a souvenir. Then there is a revolution in the country and the new government realizes how important the souvenir is. You are told that the government that was in power when you bought the souvenir was not legitimate and that you must give the souvenir back. Then there is the question of who has the right to claim an artifact. Just because a modern country occupies the land area of the civilization that produced the artifact does that mean they have the right to it if it is now in another country? Of course stolen property should be returned but what is the definition of "stolen" if the artifact was purchased from someone, implying that the seller had the right to sell the artifact? Then there is the concept of world history, these artifacts are the heritage not only of the civilization that actually produced them but of the whole world. It is also true that it is the museums in the west that have actually made the artifacts as valuable as they are. In times past local people would look for things that looked ancient to sell to travelers, not considering the artifacts as of any significant value to themselves. The Egyptians of about a thousand years ago actually set out to dismantle the pyramids, as can be seen today with the blocks missing from the Pyramid of Menkaure. Many countries take in a lot of money by tourism of ancient sites but travelers would not have been aware of the sites if not for the artifacts in western museums. So it is a complicated question.
I periodically collect postings of similar subject matter together into a compound posting. There is a list of the other compound postings in the introductory posting at the top. Each of the following sections are separate from the others and are in no particular order. Some of the sections have subheadings.
This compound posting is about atoms. But the nature of atoms inevitably delves into cosmology. Since light atoms are fused into heavier ones in stars, and the matter of our Solar System was blasted out into space by a supernova, these astronomical processes are also part of a discussion of atoms.
I have been interested in atoms ever since I had this childrens' book when I was ten years old.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) ATOMS AND LIVING THINGS
2) THE CHEMICAL-NUCLEAR-ASTRONOMICAL RELATIONSHIP
3) ELECTRON REPULSION AND BINDING ENERGY
4) THE SUPERNOVA EQUATION
5) THE INACCESSIBLE STRUCTURE OF ELECTRONS
6) THE LACK OF IMPACT FUSION
7) NUCLEAR REACTIONS IN TERMS OF INFORMATION
8) THE DANGER OF FUSION IGNITION
9) THE FIFTH OF MATTER AND SUPERNOVA
10) THE CHEMISTRY CONUNDRUM
11) PROOF OF THE BIG BANG
12) THE MYSTERY OF NEUTRINOS
13) THE MASS DEFECT AND COSMOLOGY
1) ATOMS AND LIVING THINGS
The modern science of atoms actually began with meteorology, because atoms explained how moving air behaves. But I find that the complexity, and particularly the vision, of living things gives us pointers toward the scale of atoms.
Complexity is the information within something as to how it came to be. The unit of complexity of matter is not necessarily at the level of atoms, if one arrangement is just as good as another, as in the bricks of a house. Living things are composed of the same atoms as their inanimate surroundings, but have far more complexity in the arrangements of their atoms.
I have found that a broad and general rule is that the proportional size ratio of intelligent living things to the scale of atoms is roughly equal to the cube of the complexity of that living thing. Of course almost all atoms in living things are smaller atoms, particularly carbon.
Complexity can be defined as the number of possible meaningful arrangements of some system, such as a living thing. There are secondary determinants to the size of a living thing, but the primary determinant is the size of the atoms of which the living thing is composed.
That can be expressed as follows: size of living things x number of possible species x possible variation within the species = reciprocal of the size scale of the atoms of which the living things are composed. If complexity means also potential for change, then the possible changes of aging, sickness and, injury all point toward the scale of the atoms of which arrangement all such changes are rooted, since these all represent changes that are different arrangements.
The scale of atoms is the primary determinant of the size of living things. But there are secondary determinants. The number of available atoms to build the structures of living things, in other words food, is also an important factor. If food is not in abundant supply, living things tend to compensate by constructing the same complexity with fewer atoms.
While it usually does not make sense for living things to be bigger than necessary, because it would require more food, there is the "arms race" factor involving prey and predator.
Another secondary determinant in the final size of living things is described in the posting on the meteorology and biology blog, www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com , in the posting "The Bone To Flesh Ratio". Land creatures with skeletons of bone must gradually get smaller as time goes on, such as dinosaurs to mammals, simply because the bones of dead creatures decay, so that their component atoms can return to circulation in the biosphere, far more slowly than the flesh of dead creatures does.
The minimum size of living things are the result of the scale of the atoms of which they are composed, because these are the building blocks of the complexity of the living thing. The maximum size of living things is determined by their environment. On land, trees are the living things which can continue to grow because their growth is based mostly on the carbon in the air. In the sea, whales make the best of both worlds in that they are mammals and surface to breathe air so that, unlike fish, they are not limited in size by the volume of oxygen that can be dissolved in water. Whales also have better access to the atoms in bone than creatures on land, because these atoms return to circulation in the biosphere much more quickly in the sea.
In intelligent living things, meaning excluding plants, it is the complexity of the brain that really counts, rather than that of the body. The fundamental essence of intelligent life is that it constructs a model within it if the surrounding reality. But doing this would not be of much use without a body to convey senses, respond to commands and, provide nutrients and oxygen to the brain.
The brain must be more complex than the body. Have you ever stopped to think that, if this were not so, we would be unable to recognize each other. You could look through photos of everyone in the world, and pick out persons who were close to you or that you knew well. But this can only be done by having a mental model of those people, and this would be impossible if the brain did not hold more complexity than the body.
Vision is especially related to the size scale of atoms. Mammals have much better vision than insects, simply because the eyes of mammals are vastly larger and this size provides more atoms and thus more potential complexity.
Now stop and think, if there were no such thing as atoms or other fundamental building blocks of matter then there would be no limitations on squeezing any amount of complexity in any volume of matter. This would mean that there would be no reason insects could not have vision as good as mammals. But clearly, this is not the case and the reason is the size scale of atoms. This means that atoms are the fundamental building blocks which set the limit of potential complexity.
If matter is indeed composed of atoms, then a small eye cannot hold the same complexity as a large one. But this brings us to what I will refer to as the "cube rule". The relative complexity of the eye cannot be in direct proportion to the number of atoms because the structure must be strong enough to hold together in it's environment and this means that in a large eye all parts would have to be thicker in proportion to their size, as well as wider and longer.
Ants have eyes, but not very good vision and get information mainly with their antennae. Suppose that a a human being is a million times the size of an ant, in terms of volume. If the vision of the two was equivalent, it would mean that atoms as building blocks must be either non-existent or extremely infinitesimal. The better the vision of humans, in comparison with ants the larger that atoms must be because the greater the potential complexity difference between two sizes, the larger the fundamental building blocks must be. Based on the cube rule, if human vision is a hundred times better than that of an ant then a human should be about a million times the size of an ant and that is just about what we find.
I have noticed that there must be a rule that no creature can ever directly see atoms, not even with magnification. The reason is that to see something, we must be able to construct an image of it in the eye and a model of it in the brain. This model must be constructed with atoms, because these are what we have as fundamental building blocks. The wavelengths of light that would reflect off atoms would be that which is comparable in size to those atoms. This would be impossible to focus and process by structures that were made of building blocks the same size of atoms.
Why do we see the wavelengths of light that we do? This is also ultimately related to the size scale of atoms, compared with the wavelengths of light. A lot of complexity, which must be based on the structures made of atoms, is required to sense and process the information contained in light. With too short of wavelengths, there cannot be enough complexity to process all of the information contained, because shorter wavelengths carry more information but require fine structures to sense and this fineness is limited by the size of the basic building blocks. With long wavelengths, there cannot be large enough structures within the eye because electromagnetic waves are reflected and refracted by structures similar in size to the wavelength, longer waves would also not carry as much information.
The number of colors that we can discern, from the differences in the wavelengths of light that we can see, are related to the relationship of the size scale of atoms to the wavelengths of light. Smaller atoms or shorter wavelengths mean that we would be able to discern more colors and shades.
Besides the number of shades and colors that we can see, another way that we can see how the wavelengths of light that we see must be very much longer than the size scale of atoms is the fact that an apparently perfect reflection can be seen in a pond or puddle. The water is made of atoms, but these are so small in scale relative to the wavelengths of light that they have no effect on the image and the water appears as nothing but a smooth surface.
2) THE CHEMICAL-NUCLEAR-ASTRONOMICAL RELATIONSHIP
I have noticed a simple relationship between chemistry, nuclear reactions and astronomical bodies that I have never seen documented.
CHEMICAL AND NUCLEAR ENERGY
First, let's review the difference between chemical and nuclear energy. A material, such as wood, has bonds between the atoms holding it together. These bonds involve the electrons in orbit around the atomic nuclei in the material. Generally, organic substances are held together by so-called covalent bonds, in which neighboring atoms share electrons.
Metals are also held together by shared electrons among a group of atoms. This is why metals tend to conduct electricity, these loose electrons can be made to flow in one direction by the application of a voltage pressure to the metal. Non-metallic inorganic materials are held together by simple ionic bonds because one atom loses an electron to a neighboring atom.
Since the positive charges in the atomic nucleus are usually balanced by the negative charges in the electrons orbitting the nucleus, this means that the losing atom becomes positively charged and the gaining atom, negatively charged. Thus, the two atoms electrically attract each other and are bound together.
These types of inter-atomic bond are known as chemical bonds because they involve only the electrons in orbit around the nuclei of atoms and not the nuclei themselves. These chemical bonds contain energy. If the bond is somehow broken, such as by heat, the energy that was in the bond holding the atoms together is released, also in the form of heat, which causes still more bonds to be broken and to release their energy. This is how burning takes place, if the breaking of the bond releases more energy than it takes to break it so that the process is self-sustaining.
In chemical reactions, the nuclei of the atoms are not affected at all. However, the positively charged nuclei of atoms also contain energy, in fact far more energy than the chemical bonds. The positively-charged protons in an atomic nucleus are held together by a powerful so-called "binding energy".
If the nucleus can be split, such as by a fast-moving neutron, this tremendous binding energy is released in the form of heat. This is the basis of nuclear fission in atomic bombs and reactors. Just as in simple burning, the released energy and neutrons from a split nuclei go on to split other nuclei and sustain the reaction.
There is another nuclear process, fusion, which operates by crushing together two or more small atoms to form a larger atom but where there is less binding energy required than in the smaller atoms together. Thus, the extra binding energy is released as radiation. This is how stars operate. Energy is released by both burning, a chemical process, and nuclear fusion. As a general rule, the energy from fusion is about a billion times that from chemical processes.
SPHERIZATION IN ASTRONOMICAL BODIES
Now, consider the structure of an object such as a rock. The atoms in the rock are held together by chemical bonds, forming the rock's structure. The rock also has gravity, but in a small rock or boulder, this internal gravity is insignificant in determining the structure of the rock.
Gravity is a very weak force compared with the other basic forces of nature but it is cumulative, meaning that it adds up as mass accumulates. If we begin adding matter to the rock, eventually we reach a point in which it's gravity becomes more important in the rock's structure than the chemical bonds between atoms. At this point, the rock and the matter that has been added to it begin to take the shape of a sphere.
This is because a sphere is the geometric shape in three dimensions requiring the least energy to maintain, having the least surface area per volume. Most of the asteroids in the solar system orbitting between Mars and Jupiter are not spherical in shape. But the largest asteroids, such as Ceres and Vesta, are spherical or close to it. And, of course, larger bodies such as the earth, moon and, sun are inevitably spherical in shape. As a general rule, there is no body to be seen a thousand kilometers or more in diameter that is not spherical in shape.
The shape of such astronomical bodies reveals the most important factor in it's structure. If chemical bonds between atoms predominate, the shape will be non-spherical. When there is enough matter together so that gravity becomes more important than the chemical structural bonds, the shape will become spherical.
THE FUSION THRESHOLD
Now suppose we keep adding still more matter to our now-spherical body in space. Let's keep adding millions and millions of times the matter it had when it first took on a spherical shape. As we add more and more mass, the internal gravity of the body keeps building and building, because remember that gravity is cumulative. Eventually something will happen, the body will begin to glow with a light of it's own. A star has been born.
The body became a sphere when the cumulative gravity was strong enough to become more important than the chemical structural bonds in forming the body's structure. The process of nuclear fusion begins and forms a star when the internal gravity of the body becomes so strong that it overpowers the electromagnetic force in the atoms at the center of the star and crushes them together, against the mutual repulsion of negatively-charged electrons, to form larger atoms out of smaller ones. But the new larger atom contains less internal energy than the total of the smaller atoms that were crunched together to form it. This releases binding energy in the form of heat and light to continue the process and form a star.
THE CHEMICAL-NUCLEAR-ASTRONOMICAL RELATIONSHIP
What I am pointing out in this relationship is that the order of magnitude in the energy obtained from nuclear, as opposed to chemical fuels is roughly the same as the order of magnitude between the amount of mass necessary to reach the spherization threshold to the amount of mass necessary to reach the fusion threshold and create a star. I have never before seen this pointed out and it makes the different branches of science seem much more inter-connected than ever before.
3) ELECTRON REPULSION AND BINDING ENERGY
We know that energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changed from one form to another. This brings us to a question about the nuclear binding energy which binds the like-charged protons of the nucleus together in an atom. Where did this binding energy come from? What kind of energy was it before lighter atoms were crunched together into a larger atom? If it is true that energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changed in form, then there must be an answer to this. It must have been some other type of energy before it was binding energy.
Electron repulsion is simply the mutual repulsion between negatively-charged electrons in the outer shells of adjacent atoms. Remember that like charges repel while opposite charges attract. This is what keeps matter intact, because atoms cannot merge into one another due to this. This is also why matter and antimatter mutually annihilate, antimatter has positively-charged positrons in it's orbitals instead of negatively-charged electrons so that there is no such repulsion between matter and antimatter.
My view is that radiation released by the sun and the stars is actually the orbital energy of electrons as they are crunched into protons to form neutrons. That also explains why the binding energy per nucleon actually increases as we move to heavier elements, at least up to iron.
The energy in the electron orbitals is the same as the energy of electron repulsion. It is true that some of the mass or the nucleus is actually transformed into binding energy, as we move up the binding energy curve, but it still requires energy to overcome the mutual repulsion of like-charged nuclei so that the nuclear force can take over and apply binding energy to hold the nucleus together.
But where does this ever-increasing binding energy in progressively heavier nuclei in the star, up to iron, come from? There is only a certain amount of energy in the star to be changed from one form to another and, as time goes on and lighter atoms are continuously crunched into larger ones, the total binding energy within atoms within the star just keeps increasing.
Electron repulsion resists gravity, it holds back the crunching of smaller atoms together by the gravitational mass of the star. If it can resist one of the basic forces of nature, then it must be energy. Just as we use the energy in fuel to launch a rocket or aircraft in opposition to gravity, electron repulsion is energy that resists gravity.
The binding energy that holds the nucleus of an atom together against the mutual repulsion of the like-charged protons in the nucleus is also energy. That is why it is called binding energy. In fact, the binding energy in the nucleus is the exact opposite of the electron repulsion that keeps atoms apart until it is overwhelmed by the gravitational mass of the star.
Electron repulsion uses the mutual repulsion between like charges to keep atoms apart, while the binding energy in the nucleus keeps the atom together by overcoming the mutual repulsion of the like-charged protons. The the short-range nuclear force can then take over and convert some of the mass of the nucleus into binding energy.
Can you see what I am moving toward here? The electron repulsion between atoms is the exact opposite of the binding energy that holds atoms together. As the star progresses in crunching smaller atoms into larger ones, the overall electron repulsion of all atoms in the star decreases because there is less overall atomic surface area, while the total nuclear binding energy in the star increases because as atoms get heavier the binding energy per nucleon increases according to the binding energy curve in elements up to iron and nickel.
The energy in electron repulsion must have gone somewhere, and the binding energy in the nuclei must have come from somewhere. But there is more energy than is needed to accomplish this, and the excess energy is what is released as radiation by the star.
If you guessed that it is the energy in the electron repulsion that makes material composed of smaller atoms less dense and resists the crunching of atoms together that gets transformed into the energy that overcomes the mutual repulsion of positively-charged nuclei of lighter atoms being crunched together so that the short-range nuclear force can convert some of the mass of the nucleus into the binding energy that holds the atomic nuclei together, then you are absolutely correct.
As lighter atoms are crunched together within stars, there is progressively less electron repulsion. There are fewer electrons in orbitals of atoms, but more neutrons as electrons are crunched into protons to form neutrons. There is the energy released as radiation, but yet there is more binding energy within the nuclei. It must all form an equation.
The energy that was in electron orbitals is reversed so that it can force the nuclei of light atoms close enough together so that the short-range nuclear force can take over and convert some of the mass of the nucleus into the binding energy which permanently holds the nucleus together.
I maintain here that the energy in electron repulsion gets converted into the inward energy that makes it possible for the nuclear force to convert some of the mass into binding energy as many smaller atoms are crunched together into fewer larger ones. The many smaller atoms have more total energy of electron repulsion, in their orbitals, but the fewer larger atoms have more total binding energy.
The fewer larger atoms have fewer total electrons in orbitals than the many smaller atoms. Since there is energy in the orbitals of these electrons, energy must have been released as electrons were crunched into protons to form neutrons. This is why stars shine. Neutrons are secondary particles, formed when an electron is crunched into a proton, and require the support of being within the nucleus to exist. A neutron on it's own will decay back into a proton and an electron in an average of about 15 minutes.
A uranium atom, for example, has 238 total nucleons in the nucleus but only 92 protons and electrons. This started out as 238 hydrogen atoms with one proton and one electron, meaning that 146 electrons got crunched into protons to form neutrons. Much of that former orbital energy must have gotten released as radiation.
The orbital energy of the electrons in higher orbitals would have also come from the same source as the energy which forces nuclei together. When two smaller atoms are crunched together into a larger one, there would not be enough room in the lower orbitals for all of the electrons in the new atom. Some of them would form a higher orbital shell, and the higher energy of that shell would have come from the same former energy of electron repulsion that was being converted to the inward energy that forces nuclei together.
4) THE SUPERNOVA EQUATION
The largest stars may eventually explode in a supernova. This does not happen to most stars, our own sun doesn't have enough mass to form a supernova and will simply burn out.
My definition of the difference between a nova and a supernova is that a nova is the star blasting off it's outer layers, in an effort to regain stability, while a supernova is the entire star exploding from the center. A supernova may be preceded by one or more nova and, if that fails to restore stability, may then explode altogether from the center.
A star is born when enough matter comes together in space, by it's mutual gravity, to overcome the electron repulsion that keeps atoms separate so that smaller atoms are crunched together into larger ones. One of the new larger atoms has less overall internal energy than the smaller atoms that were crunched together to form it. The excess energy is released as radiation and that is why stars shine.
The star is an equilibrium between the inward force of gravity and the outward force of the energy that is released by the nuclear fusion. As time goes on, and smaller atoms are continuously being fused into larger ones, more energy per time is being released. This is because it is larger atoms that are being fused, even though the energy released per larger atom is less. This upsets the equilibrium of the star, increasing the rate of energy being released at the center. This causes the star to swell, the sun will eventually swell into a "red giant" star, but in the largest stars it may blast off the outer layers altogether, this is known as a nova. This lowers the gravitational pressure on the center of the star, which slows down fusion and may restore stability to the star, at least for a while.
The ordinary fusion process only goes as far as iron. This causes the star to start running out of it's nuclear fuel. This slows down the fusion at the star's center and again upsets the equilibrium, this time in favor of the inward gravitational pressure. The large star contracts, rather than expands, but this acts to reignite the fusion at a faster pace, as most of the atoms have not yet fused into iron, and this causes the star to explode as a supernova and to scatter it's component matter across space.
Some of the matter from a supernova may fall back together by gravity to form a second-generation star. We know that our sun is such a second-generation star because it contains heavier elements that are beyond it's current stage in the fusion process. The sun's present fusion stage is fusing four atoms of hydrogen into one atom of helium. The sun was preceded by a much-larger star that reached the iron stage in fusion, so that it partially ran out of fuel. This is why iron is so abundant in the inner Solar System, Mercury is known as the "Iron Planet" and iron is the most common element in the earth by mass.
Elements heavier than iron require an input of energy and are formed only during the brief time that a supernova is actually taking place. The tremendous release of energy fuses atoms heavier than iron together. This is why iron, and elements lighter than it, are exponentially more common than elements heavier than iron, such as silver, gold and, uranium.
Some of these heavier elements, whose atoms were forced together by the tremendous energy released by the supernova, are less-than-stable. These heavy atoms gradually give off particles or radiation in an effort to regain stability. These emissions are known as radioactivity.
Even as the previous star was exploding in the supernova the heavier-than-iron elements that were being fused together by the energy released had time to separate into layers by mass, with heavier elements toward the center of the star. The reason that the heaviest of rare earth elements tend to be found together in mines on earth is that they were formed last and didn't have a chance to separate by gravity before the energy being released by the supernova increased and they were hurtled off into space.
Some of the matter scattered across space by the explosion, in a supernova, of the large star that preceded the sun fell back together to form the sun and planets. This means that every atom in your body was once part of a star that exploded.
My belief is that there were three nova preceding this supernova. The first blasting off of the outer layers of the previous star provided the molecules of light atoms that formed the distant Oort Cloud of comets. The second nova formed the closer Kuiper Belt of comets. The third nova, the final one preceding the supernova, formed the light molecules, such as water, methane and, ammonia that forms much of the mass of the outer planets of the Solar System.
The reason Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and, Neptune are so much larger than the inner planets is that they are in a zone where the distribution of heavier matter, from the supernova, and lighter atoms, from the third nova, intersect. The cores of these planets are heavier matter, like the earth and other inner planets, while their outer layers are lighter molecules from the third nova.
Just as the energy released during a supernova can fuse together the elements heavier than iron, which wouldn't form by the ordinary fusion process, the much-lesser energy of a nova fuses the light atoms in the outer layers of a star together into molecules, and there is energy in the molecular bonds. This is how I believe water formed. Hydrogen is diatomic, consisting of two bonded atoms with energy in the bond, when we use hydrogen as fuel we are releasing this energy that originated with a nova.
It is my conclusion that if there was only a supernova, with no preceding nova, then a solar system that formed around a second-generation star would have only solid matter, metals and rock. For gases and liquids to be present, forming atmospheres and oceans, there must be nova before the supernova. Atmospheres and oceans are formed of molecules put together from light atoms by the energy released by a nova, rather than by a supernova.
It is not known what proportion of the previous star's matter fell back together to form the present sun and Solar System, and what proportion was blasted away into space forever. A clue is in the highly-eccentric orbits of the comets. By "eccentric" I mean a highly-elongated ellipse, very far from being circular. These comets were once in orbit around the previous star, which was much larger than our sun, before the star exploded in the supernova. The comets then were in orbit around the sun, after it formed from some of the matter from the supernova after it fell back together by gravity.
An orbit contains energy, the higher the orbit the higher the orbital energy. The total orbital energy is a function of the space enclosed within the orbit and is proportional to the mass of the central body. When the previous star exploded, and some of it's matter fell back together to form the much-smaller sun, the orbital energy of the comets was suddenly reduced by the reduction in mass of the central body. This meant that their orbits had to reduce in size, but yet the information of their orbits around the previous star couldn't just be lost. So the orbits of the comets reduced in size, the amount of space enclosed in the orbit, by becoming very elongated.
This means that the greater mass of the previous star, relative to the present mass of the sun, must be approximately equal to the area of a circle, with the aphelion of the comet being one point on the circle and the center of the circle being the center of the sun, relative to the present area enclosed by the eccentric orbit of the comet.
But all of this, the proportion of the mass of the previous star that went off into space forever compared with the proportion that fell back together by gravity to form the sun and planets, must form some kind of equation.
Any chemical or nuclear process can be expressed in terms of a mathematical equation. Although this supernova, and the forming of the second-generation sun, was on a very large scale it is fairly simple and there must be some equation involved, even if it does not reveal exactly what proportion of the mass of the previous star fell back together by gravity to form the sun and planets.
There are seven basic factors that are involved:
1) The initial mass of the previous star. This mass, of course, contained internal energy according to the Mass-Energy Equivalence, where a certain amount of mass is always equivalent to a certain amount of energy.
2) The energy given off by the previous star as radiation, released by fusion during it's lifespan, before exploding in the supernova.
3) The energy released by the previous star as it exploded in the supernova, and also including any nova that came before the supernova. Some of this energy was released as radiation. Some energy propelled the mass of the star out into space. Some energy that was released went to fuse together atoms that are heavier than iron, such as silver, gold and, uranium.
4) The present mass of the sun and Solar System.
5) All of the radiant energy ever released by the sun.
6) The total orbital energy in the Solar System, including the planets and comets.
7) The Mass-Energy Equivalence of the matter from the previous star that was blasted far out into space by the supernova and didn't fall back together to form the sun and Solar System.
This process of supernova and then part of the matter falling back together to form the sun and Solar System must, like every other process in physics or chemistry, be expressible as an equation or formula. Since we are dealing with the breaking apart and forming of atoms, in fusion within stars, we have to take into account the equivalence of mass and energy. This is expressed as the well-known Mass-Energy Equivalence, where a certain amount of mass is always equivalent to a certain amount of energy. The only way to release all this energy is matter-antimatter annihilation.
The previous star was obviously much larger than the sun, since only the largest stars will explode as a supernova. So starting with 1) The initial mass of the previous star, we have to subtract some quantity that we will refer to as X to get everything to do with the present sun and Solar System, which are 4), 5) and, 6).
The only factors remaining to be subtracted from 1) The initial mass of the previous star, are 2) and 3), and the lost matter of 7).
2) The radiant energy given off by the previous star during it's lifetime.
3) and 7) The energy and mass released during the supernova of the previous star. This includes the Mass-Energy Equivalence of whatever matter went far off into space and didn't fall back together to form the sun and Solar System.
But this is obvious and still doesn't explain why the proportional difference between the sun and the previous star is as it is.
Since none of the last three factors could have had an influence on the proportional ratio of the previous star and the sun, the last three are result factors rather than determining factors, the only option remaining that makes any sense is that 2) and 3) must be equal.
There must be some equation somewhere in this, aside from 1-3 being equal to 4-7.
2) The radiant energy given off by the previous star during it's lifetime, is equal to 3) The energy released in the supernova of the previous star.
This release of energy would include any nova, blasting off the outer layers of the previous star, that took place before the star finally exploded from the center in a supernova. The previous star may have shone for hundreds of millions of years, larger stars typically don't last as long as smaller stars, but a supernova can temporarily outshine an entire galaxy.
Presuming that the previous star initially consisted of hydrogen and helium, the radiant energy emitted by the star during it's lifetime was released as those light elements were progressively fused into heavier elements. This fusion into heavier elements made the star more dense, even though some of the mass of the initial light elements was being converted to the energy that was released as radiation.
The higher density meant stronger gravitational pressure in the center of the star, and it is the gravitational pressure that drives the fusion process. This then meant a speeding up of the fusion process. This speeding up of the fusion process unbalanced the equilibrium of the star, the balance between the inward pressure of gravity and the outward force of the energy being released by fusion in the star's center.
This increased outward pressure is what caused any nova before the end of the star's life, a blasting away of the outer layers, and when this didn't slow the fusion process sufficiently to restore equilibrium, the final explosion of the star from the center in the supernova took place. This wasn't entirely the end of the star as some of the matter fell back together by it's mutual gravity to form the sun, which we call a second-generation star, and planets.
Exactly what proportion of the previous star fell back together to form the sun and planets, but not including the comets and the light molecular mass of the outer planets because these resulted from nova which preceded the supernova, is an inverse function of the energy released in the supernova. The greater the energy released the more mass would be blasted further away so that it wouldn't fall back together by it's own gravity after the supernova.
Since the previous star was much more massive than the sun something must explain why some of it's mass, thrown out into space by the supernova, fell back together to form the sun and Solar System while some didn't. Whatever explains it must be a major feature of the supernova and the logical explanation is that the energy released by the supernova would have been enough to blast all of the matter outward, so that none of it would fall back together again, but much of it was released as radiation and some of it went into fusing atoms together into elements heavier than iron. It was the radiation away of the energy released by fusion during the lifespan of the star that led to it's eventual explosion that released more energy, including the nova preceding the star, so it is only logical that the two releases of energy should be equivalent.
It was the increase in density of the star that ultimately brought about the supernova. The star emitted radiation during it's lifetime as the increase in density progressed. Remember that when smaller atoms are crunched together by gravity into larger ones the new larger atom contains less internal energy, the Mass-Energy Equivalence described above, than the smaller atoms that were crunched together to form it. The excess energy is released as radiation and this is why stars shine.
Since there was no significant input or loss of energy from anywhere else, and since we know that all physical processes like this are governed by an equation or formula, and since the first process caused the second process we can safely presume that the emission of radiation during the star's lifetime and the emission of energy during the nova and supernova must be equal. There must be a halfway point in the release of energy from the beginning of the star to the end of the supernova, and this is the logical place for it.
The best way to measure this mass is, as stated above, the difference between the area enclosed by the typical elongated orbit of a comet relative to the much-larger area that would be enclosed if the orbit were circular.
5) THE INACCESSIBLE STRUCTURE OF ELECTRONS
As far as we can tell electrons are mere point particles of negative charge with no internal structure that we can discern. We can see that the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the atom are composed of quarks, but there is apparently no such internal structure for electrons. But let's stop and consider this today.
How do we measure and look into things? We can receive electromagnetic waves, such as light, and can sense magnetism and electrical forces as well. But electromagnetism is the only way that we can receive information about the world around us.
Not only is electromagnetism the only way that we can receive information about the world around us but the only way we can receive that electromagnetism is by it's effect on electrons. The photoelectric effect, for example, that enables us to see results when the energy in electromagnetic radiation can knock an outer electron in an atom out of it's orbital.
The electrons in the outer orbitals have the highest energy and additional energy from the radiation may be enough to knock it out of the atom altogether. This causes a flow of electrons that the nerves in our eyes can sense or we can measure with electronic equipment.
Because we can only see by receiving electromagnetic waves, that puts certain limits on our vision. An optical microscope is limited by the wavelengths of light to a magnification of about 1400 x. Any magnification beyond this is impossible because the wavelengths of light that we see are too long to convey the necessary information. We can get around this limitation by using an electron microscope, which uses a beam of electrons instead of visible light.
Since we do not actually see an object, but only the light emitted or reflected by the object, that brings about the phenomenon of optical illusions. That is another factor in our vision that there may be conditions in which the electromagnetic waves that our eyes receive do not accurately convey what we are looking at.
The classic optical illusion is a rainbow. When the sun is at our back and there are droplets of water in the air up ahead, if light is refracted twice within the droplets so that it comes back to us it will break white light down into it's component colors. Since shorter wavelengths are refracted more than longer ones the colors are separated.
The optical illusion that we see the most often is the blue sky. There is no blue wall as it appears. Objects reflect the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that are about the same as their wavelength. The fine particles of dust that are small enough to remain airborne in the atmosphere are of a scale that reflects blue light, the shortest wavelength of light. The blue light is reflected all around and that is why the sky appears blue.
At evening, when the sun is low in the sky, it's light comes at us through a greater depth of atmosphere. The result of this is that the blue light is scattered away altogether so that only the light at the opposite end of the scale of visible light remains. This is red light and is why sunsets appear as red. If we look at the boundary region between night and day from out in space, we can see a line of blue light that was scattered away.
During a major forest fire the sky may appear as orange or yellow, instead of blue. That is because the air is temporarily full of larger particles of dust, which reflect longer wavelengths of light.
But all of this is an optical illusion because we are seeing light that has been refracted by the atmosphere so that it does not represent a physical object that it has been reflected or emitted by. The fact that light can be refracted, as well as reflected or emitted, is generally what brings about optical illusions.
Another optical illusion of refraction is the apparent shimmering water mirage that is sometimes seen on the road up ahead on a hot day. But when we arrive at where the water seems to be, we find that it has moved further back so that we never actually reach it. That is caused by the light being refracted by heated air rising from the road.
The interface between water and air also brings an optical illusion. If you look at something below the surface of the water, it is not exactly where it seems to be because water and air have different indexes of refraction. You can see this by how a pole that you hold and put into the water seems to bend where the air meets the water.
So if we are dependent on electromagnetism for information about the world around us, and it's effect on electrons is the only way that we can receive this electromagnetism, isn't it possible that there might be other "illusions" or limitations in the information that we receive?
What about electrons themselves? We are absolutely dependent on electrons, and the fact that they can be made to flow as an electric current by being knocked out of electron orbitals, to receive information. If the nature of light, as electromagnetic waves, brings limitations due to wavelength and optical illusions, then what about the nature of electrons?
Have we ever thought about how the fact that we can only receive information by way of electrons might affect our understanding of the electrons themselves?
We perceive electrons as simply negatively-charged points with no discernible internal structure at all. But we use electrons as "bits" in receiving and processing information. This information is brought to us by whole electrons and never by anything smaller than an electron. Electrons themselves are the smallest "bits" in the receiving and processing of information.
So how can electrons be anything but simply a negatively-charged point? By using whole electrons as the smallest "bits" or information we are limited to determining that an electron is there, but cannot see what it might be made of or it's internal structure. This is not true of protons or neutrons, in which we can discern an internal structure, but only of electrons.
It is reminiscent of trying to get an optical microscope to magnify something more than about 1400 x. Electromagnetic waves are reflected by objects that are about the same as their wavelength and this means that we cannot directly see objects smaller than this wavelength. But we can get around this, seeing at least an image of an object smaller than this, by using an electron microscope that shoots a beam of electrons at an object.
But we cannot do this if we want to further observe electrons themselves. Electrons are the only "bits" that we have to receive and process information. This means that the only way we can discern whatever internal structure the electron might have is to use a "bit" of information that is smaller than the electrons themselves but will somehow interact with them and that is something that, at this point, we do not have.
We can never learn everything about our world because we are limited by the process that we use to receive information.
6) THE LACK OF IMPACT FUSION
I would like to show how things that do not happen illustrates how universe works, just as does things that do happen. For example, there is a limited area in center of a star where nuclear fusion takes place. Fusion does not take place throughout the entire star. This is shown by the fact that impact fusion does not take place, even though it should be theoretically possible.
Just a quick review of how a star operates. A star is born when a vast amount of matter, mostly gas and dust, gathers together in space by it's mutual gravity. If there is enough matter, the tremendous gravitational force at the center of the mass becomes enough to overcome the electron repulsion that keeps atoms from merging together because the electrons in the orbitals of both atoms are negatively-charged and like charges repel, just as opposite charges attract. This crunches smaller atoms together into larger ones, in the process known as fusion. When this happens, there is less total energy in the new large atom than there was in the smaller ones, and this energy is released as heat and other radiation so that the star shines. Electron repulsion must be overcome to attain fusion and it is the reversed energy of the orbitals that goes into binding energy.
But no example of such impact fusion has ever been seen. There was somewhat of a scientific fad in 1989, known as Cold Fusion, in which atoms could be made to fuse together at room temperature. Fusion of limited numbers of atoms can be done today by lasers, although we are nowhere near making it into a large-scale source of energy.
So why couldn’t high- velocity impacting meteors bring about fusion? Impact fission takes place. Nuclear fission, used in reactors and atomic bombs, is the opposite of fusion. Fission is initiated by a high-speed that neutron splits the nucleus into two smaller atoms, and releases several leftover neutrons at high speed, which split more nuclei, and so on, thus initiating what is known as a chain reaction. Nuclear fission is only known to take place with two atoms, Plutonium which is a synthetic element and the 235 isotope of uranium. The number 235 refers to the total number of nucleons, protons and neutrons, in the nucleus. Ordinary uranium has 238 total nucleons, and cannot undergo fission because the three extra neutrons hold the nucleus together more tightly.
Cosmic ray spallation is a natural form of nuclear fission in which nuclei in space are split into smaller atoms by cosmic rays. It is believed that some of the lighter elements, such as lithium and beryllium, originate mostly from cosmic rays breaking apart larger atoms. Cosmic rays is actually a misnomer, since they are particles and not radiation.
I think it is safe to conclude that if a particle strikes a nucleus with enough energy, it will result in the splitting of the nucleus by fission, as with cosmic ray spallation. But if one atom strikes another with enough energy, it will result in the two atoms merging as fusion. This is what happens in the centers of stars. If impact fusion were to take place, outside of stars, the velocity would likely have to be approaching the speed of light, depending on the size of atom and electron repulsion to be overcome.
But where would the energy come from to drive an atom to undergo fusion if it collided with another atom, outside of a star? It would naturally take the energy released by fusion to drive an object with the force required to bring about fusion. Remember that after a large star has "cooked" up heavier atoms by fusing lighter ones together, it blasts these atoms out across space when the star explodes in a supernova. Thus, it is actually the energy of fusion that scatters matter out across space. The matter may exist as meteors or dust, and then fall back together by mutual gravity to form planets or a second-generation star.
But this shows how a star operates, only a fraction of the matter that is blasted into space by a supernova was actually close enough to the center of the star to be undergoing fusion at any given time. So the force of the supernova explosion that is imparted to the matter of the entire star thrown out across space must be much less than required to bring about fusion if this matter should undergo a collision. The fact that much of the scattered mass can fall back together by gravity, to form planets or a second-generation star, shows how limited the kinetic energy that was imparted to it by the supernova explosion is in comparison with the energy that would be required to bring about impact fusion by the force of collision.
In fact, we can safely state that atoms probably never collide with other atoms at a velocity great enough to bring about fusion, outside of a star, even though it seems to be theoretically possible.
But this can be considered as the result of the size of the central “furnace” area of star, where nuclear fusion actually takes place, in comparison with total volume of the entire star. If the energy imparted to moving matter, when scattered outward across space by the supernova explosion of the star, is from the fusion at the center of the star, and it logically requires propulsion by fusion to drive matter with enough energy to undergo fusion upon impact with other matter, since fusion is the greatest known source of energy, and the zone in which fusion actually takes place in the center of the star is very limited in comparison with the total volume and mass of the star, then the matter thrown out across space by the supernova explosion of the star should propel the matter with an energy level that is far less than that which would be required to produce impact fusion. That is why we do not see impact fusion taking place anywhere, even though it does sound theoretically possible.
This scenario also shows how the total mass of star multiplies it’s kinetic energy, of the inward gravitational attraction, to produce fusion at the center. There is not enough pressure to bring about fusion in the outer reaches of the star, but all of the mass is pressing together at the center so it does bring about fusion there.
Similarly, we can see how the way things work shows how atoms must be mostly empty space.
Solar energy evaporates water molecules. Molecules were bound by hydrogen bonding, which involves the fundamental electric charges. This shows that atoms must be mostly empty space. If atoms were not mostly empty space, if the molecules were pure concentrated charges it would be impossible for solar energy, which itself originates from the basic rules of the electric charges itself. to pull molecules bound by the electric charges apart. Water could only evaporate if atoms were mostly empty space.
7) NUCLEAR REACTIONS IN TERMS OF INFORMATION
The first thing that is confusing about nuclear science is that there are two basic major reactions, fission and fusion. Fission means "to split the atom" and fusion means to fuse atoms together. The two are thus opposite processes. But what doesn't seem to make sense is that if one process releases energy then shouldn't the opposite process either absorb energy, or at least not release energy? That is usually the way it works in chemistry. But yet both of these nuclear processes release energy, actually tremendous amounts of energy.
Fusion, the fusing together of small atoms into larger ones usually by the tremendous heat and pressure in the centers of stars, actually does require an input of energy, but only for elements that are heavier than iron. These heavier elements are formed only during the brief time that the star is actually exploding as a supernova, and the energy released makes the required fusion possible. That is why iron and elements lighter than it are exponentially more common than elements that are heavier than iron. Many heavier elements, their component smaller atoms having been forced together by the energy of the supernova, are less-than-stable. They gradually emit particles or radiation in the seeking of a more stable state. These emissions are known as radioactivity.
At the time of this writing, all nuclear power that we use comes from fission of uranium. We can get smaller atoms to fuse together by lasers, which is fusion, but no one has yet succeeded in getting net energy from the fusion process. But so many people are trying.
In the centers of stars, smaller atoms starting with hydrogen are fused together into ever-larger and heavier atoms. Two prominent fusion processes, depending on the size of the star, are the Triple Alpha Process and the Proton-Proton Process. Sometimes light atoms, which are usually common, are broken back down by natural fission process, cosmic ray spallation, and this is why light elements such as lithium and beryllium are relatively rare.
INFORMATION AND ENERGY IS REALLY THE SAME THING
We have seen, in my information theory, that energy and information is really the same thing. We cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it, and we cannot apply energy to anything without adding information to it. Another way that we can see the two as really being the same thing is in technology. We can make our lives physically easier by using technology, but only at the expense of making them more complex. We can never, on a large scale, make life both physically easier and also less complex.
We can see that both of these opposite nuclear processes release energy, which is somewhat confusing. But what happens if we express the nuclear reactions as information, instead of as energy, since energy and information is really the same thing?
THE TWO SETS OF INFORMATION IN ATOMS
There are two sets of information within atoms. The first is the electrical repulsion relationship between the protons in the nucleus. There has to be neutrally-charged neutrons to hold the protons together, against their mutual repulsion, so that the electrical relationships between the protons vary due to the distance between them. Each proton has this electrical relationship with every other proton in the nucleus. These relationships are information.
Let's call this the Inter-Proton Relationships Information.
The second set of information in the atom is the outer surface area of the atom itself, that of the outermost electron orbital. Distance, and thus surface area, is information and energy. The size of an atom is typically about ten thousand times that of it's nucleus.
The outermost electrons, which form the surface area of the atom, have the highest orbital energy of all the electrons in the atom. We can see how higher electron orbitals have higher energy than lower ones in that radiation can sometimes shift an electron to a higher orbital, and more radiation is released when the electron drops back down. This is the principle behind fluorescence and phosphorescence. One way to see how energy, which is also information, changes the surface area is that the energy in wind increases the surface area of water by creating waves.
Let's call this the Surface Area Information.
Simple arithmetic tells us that, when an atom is split in two by fission, the total number of protons will remain the same but the Inter-Proton Relationships will decrease. If a nucleus has 12 protons, and each has the electrical relationship with all of the others, then there are 12 x 11 = 132 interrelationships. But if we fission it into two nuclei, each with 6 protons, then there are only 6 x 5 + 6 x 5 = 60 interrelationships.
In practical terms, since heavier elements tend to have more neutrons per protons in the nucleus, this also means that several neutrons will be released. In fission, a nucleus is split initially by a high-speed neutron, and the released neutrons go onto split other nuclei. This perpetuates the process and is what is called a chain reaction, at least until enough energy is released to blast the mass of material apart.
This is a drastic decrease in the number of Inter-Proton Relationships, which is information and thus energy that must be released. But when one atom is split in two in such a way, something else is also happening. The other set of information in the atom, the Surface Area Information, is increasing. This is because the two new smaller atoms have a greater overall surface area than the original larger atom. Surface area is also information, and thus energy.
In real terms, a 235 isotope of Uranium is typically split in such a way into an atom of krypton and barium.
But if we fuse atoms together, in the centers of stars, the opposite to this process occurs. The total surface area decreases but the number of Inter-Proton Relationships increases.
THE TWO SETS OF INFORMATION MUST BE EQUAL
The essence of what I have realized is that, in any ordinary atom with equal numbers of protons and electrons, these two sets of information, the Inter-Proton Relationships Information and the Surface Area Information, must be equal in terms of information.
This gives us a valuable bridge to understanding information and how it is the same thing as energy. There is no reason for the two sets of information to be not equal. The two electric charges, the positive of the protons and negative of the electrons, are opposite but equal. Having them equal means that we have two different kinds of information that we know much hold equal information simply because it is the Lowest Information Point. An equality is less information than an inequality.
The protons and electrons attract each other, because they have opposite electric charges, but it does not operate in quite the same way as a gravitational attraction. Electron orbitals in atoms are not free-ranging, like gravity, but are arranged in shells and sub-shells. Gravity is solely an attractive force but electrical repulsion is also factor in atoms as electrons in adjacent shells repel each other by like-charge repulsion.
THE ENERGY SURFACE AREA
This equivalence of the two information sets readily explains why the two opposite processes both release energy and can also give us a way to explain, in terms of information, exactly what is happening. But there is a factor that we have to take into account as to how it operates differently from gravity.
With objects in orbit around the earth, for example, the higher the orbit the higher orbital energy. If a satellite is given three times the orbital energy that is has, it will then orbit at 9x the distance but will move at only 1 / 3 the speed. This is because gravity, like electric charge attraction or repulsion, operates by the Inverse Square Law.
But inside the atom, the electrons in orbitals operate differently. As we move to the right across a row on the Periodic Table of the Elements, to successively heavier elements but with the same number of electron shells, each successive element has one more proton and one more electron (unless it is an ion) then the one before it. But instead of getting larger, with a higher surface area, as it would be with gravity, the atom contracts due to the increase in opposite charges pulling the electrons to the nucleus.
But since this means higher energy, and thus more information, we take not the literal surface area of the atom but what I will call the "Energy Surface Area". What we do to calculate the Energy Surface Area of the atom, which we know must be equal to the Inter-Proton Relationships Information, is to take the reciprocal of the difference between the radius or surface area of the given atom, subtract it from the radius or surface area of the atom in column 1 of that row on the Periodic Table, and then add it to the radius or surface area of the element in column 1 of that row.
Here is a periodic table, although it only has the symbols but not the names of the elements. A row is right-to-left, a column is up and down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#/media/File:Simple_Periodic_Table_Chart-en.svg
Take, for example, the top row of the Periodic Table. There are only two elements in this row, the two lightest elements of hydrogen and helium with 1 and 2 protons each. The Wikipedia article, "Atomic Radius", under "Calculated Atomic Radii", states that a hydrogen atom has a radius of 53 picometers and a helium atom 31 picometers. Radius is proportional to surface area so that means that a hydrogen atom is considerably larger, although not heavier, than a helium atom.
But the helium atom must contain more information because it has 2 protons, while each hydrogen atom only has 1. The reason that the helium atom is smaller is the additional opposite charge pull of it's two electrons toward the two protons in the nucleus. So that we do is take the reciprocal of the relative size of the helium atom to the hydrogen atom.
31 is .5849 of 53. The reciprocal of .5849 is 1.71. 53, the radius of the hydrogen atom, x 1.71 = 90.6.
This is thus the Energy Surface Area of a helium atom, which is directly proportional to it's Energy Radius, even though it's actual radius is only 31 picometers.
WHY OPPOSITE NUCLEAR PROCESSES BOTH RELEASE ENERGY
The reason that these two opposite nuclear processes both release energy is the simple number of atoms. The split by fission uranium or plutonium atom only splits into two secondary atoms. But the fusion of a helium atom from hydrogen involves four hydrogen atoms being crunched into only one helium atom.
There is more information, and thus energy in the Inter-Proton Relationship of the helium atom than there is in the four hydrogen atoms with only one proton each, but the Energy Surface Area of the new helium atom is so much less than that of the four original hydrogen atoms, that the excess energy is released. That is why the sun shines since the sun's stage in the fusion process is now crunching four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom.
But in either nuclear process, the results are uneven and that is why energy has to be released. The reason that the process is uneven is the neutrons that are necessary to hold together the protons in the nucleus but do not participate in the Inter-Proton Relationships Information because they have no electric charge.
Heavier elements must have progressively more neutrons per proton in the nucleus. Neutrons are readily formed during fusion by crunching an electron into a proton. This is known as K-capture and results in the neutron with it's neutral electric charge.
In the fusion of four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, there is the increase in Inter-Proton Relationship Information but the decrease in Energy Surface Area is so much greater that a lot of energy is released, and that is why the sun shines.
Obviously, large atoms tend to undergo fission while small atoms tend to undergo fusion into larger atoms. In fission, the splitting of a large atom such as uranium, there is an increase in the Energy Surface Area, as there is now two atoms rather than one, but this increase is less than the decrease of the Inter-Proton Relationships in the nucleus, as it is split in two.
This is why fission also releases energy, even though it is the opposite process of fusion. The release of energy by fusion tends to be much greater because so many protons become neutrons, by having an electron crunched into them, and are thus eliminated from the collective Inter-Proton Relationship Information, which does not involve neutrons because they have no electric charge.
WHY THE ORDINARY FUSION PROCESS ONLY GOES AS FAR AS IRON
This model of seeing nuclear reactions in terms of information, rather than energy, and realizing that the two sets of information in atoms must be equal because that is the Lowest Information Point, also explains why the ordinary fusion process only goes as far as iron and why the input of energy from a supernova is the only way that heavier elements can be formed.
The total number of Inter-Proton Relationships decreases as lighter atoms are crunched by the successive fusion process into ever-heavier elements. This is simply because heavier elements must have more neutrons per proton in the nucleus. Protons must have electrons crunched into them to form neutrons, known as K-capture, and are thus eliminated from the Inter-Proton Relationship Information. But due to the increasing number of electrons that each electron shell can accommodate, as we move outward from the nucleus, the Energy Surface Area of atoms does not increase as fast as the Inter-Proton Relationship decreases.
The point where the two cross is iron.
The last element that can thus be formed by the ordinary fusion process, which releases energy and is known as the S-process for "slow" is iron. Elements much heavier than this require the input of energy from a supernova explosion, which is known as the R-process for "rapid".
Making use of this principle that energy and information is really the same thing, and seeing the two opposite reactions as information rather than as energy, shows not only why both release energy but why the ordinary fusion process only goes as far as iron.
Finally you may notice that this concept of the information of the surface area of atoms being interchangeable with that of the inter-proton relationships is a different way of expressing what we saw in section 3) ELECTRON REPULSION AND BINDING ENERGY. Electron repulsion is the same thing as surface area and nuclear binding energy is the same thing as inter-proton relationships.
8) THE DANGER OF FUSION IGNITION
Progress toward developing nuclear fusion into a practical source of energy was in the news again recently. Present nuclear power comes from fission, splitting the atoms of a certain isotope of uranium. But nuclear power, as we have it now, had a downside. It creates wastes that will remain dangerously radioactive for centuries, and it is vulnerable to meltdowns and other accidents. It also requires the scarce and expensive 235 isotope of uranium or man-made plutonium for fuel.
The highest-profile nuclear disasters have been Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl, in Ukraine, and Fukushima, in Japan. The Fukushima disaster was caused by a tsunami. "The China Syndrome" was a 1979 movie about the meltdown of a nuclear reactor. The movie was so-called because the super-hot reactor core might burn it's way right through the earth and emerge in China.
Getting nuclear power from fusion, rather than this messy fission process, will supposedly do away with all that. Fusion means combining atoms together, rather than splitting them apart, and is the process that takes place in stars including the sun. Both processes release energy, fusion far more, and any material can theoretically be used in the fusion process. The fusion process produces no dangerous radioactive wastes.
Part of the problem with nuclear energy is that it's early proponents made too many promises. Energy would be so inexpensive that we wouldn't even bother metering it. When that never became reality it made nuclear power look like somewhat of a failure, even though it really isn't.
But here we go again with the development of fusion. Pretty soon we will live in a fusion wonderland. All of the energy that we could possibly need will be produced cleanly and efficiently. Along with electric vehicles this will save the environment, and we will all live happily ever after.
The trouble is that we will be dealing with temperatures and energies that we have never dealt with before. That is the great challenge of fusion, how to contain the process. We are replicating the process that goes on in the center of the sun and no material on earth can withstand it. Before combining into larger atoms the original atoms first come apart into a state of matter called plasma. The approach is to suspend the process in a magnetic field. The most common device for accomplishing this is called a Tokamak.
When the first nuclear bomb was detonated, in New Mexico in 1945, no one knew exactly what was going to happen simply because there had never been a known nuclear explosion on earth before. Some people were worried that it might cause the atmosphere to ignite. But the test went as planned and nothing of the kind happened.
But today we keep reading reports that we are getting closer to making nuclear fusion, as opposed to fission, into a practical source of energy, and I think we should take another look at this concern.
Nuclear fusion is what forms all elements, other than the hydrogen and helium and traces of lithium that formed in the Big Bang. Atoms are usually kept separate from one another because the negative electric charges of their outermost electrons mutually repel. But when enough matter is brought together by it's common gravity the pressure at the center of the mass is enough to overcome this mutual repulsion and crunch smaller atoms together into larger ones.
All mass contains a certain amount of internal energy, known as the Mass-Energy Equivalence. But when atoms are crunched together like this the new larger atom contains less internal energy than the smaller atoms that formed it. This excess energy is released as radiation. The volume of mass that has enough force, by it's mutual gravity, to crunch smaller atoms into larger ones is known as a star, and the release of the excess energy is why stars shine. The energy released adds to the heat inside the star and it is this tremendous heat and pressure that continues the fusion process. Our sun is presently at the stage of fusing four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, but it contains heavier elements because it is a second-generation star.
Fusion is the crunching of small atoms into larger ones, usually by the tremendous heat and pressure in the centers of stars. The opposite process is fission, the splitting of large atoms usually by high-speed neutrons. Both processes release energy, but fusion releases far more energy per mass.
All of the nuclear energy that we use at the present time is from fission, the splitting of either the 235 isotope of uranium or plutonium. Efforts have been going on for a long time to get energy from fusion. We can fuse smaller atoms together into larger ones, one way is by using lasers, but, as of this writing, no one has yet made fusion into a net source of energy, meaning that we get more energy out of the process than we put into it. However the latest news is that we are making definite progress in that direction.
Fusion is what makes so-called "thermonuclear" weapons so much more powerful than an ordinary atomic bomb. A thermonuclear weapon is also known as a hydrogen bomb. In such a bomb an ordinary atomic bomb acts as a mere detonator, bringing about the heat and pressure needed to start the fusion process.
The easiest atoms to fuse, those requiring the least energy, is the hydrogen isotope know as deuterium. Ordinary hydrogen is the simplest and lightest atom. An ordinary hydrogen atom is just one electron in orbit around one proton. But there is an isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, which has a neutron, as well as the proton, in the nucleus.
When atoms are fused together heavier atoms typically have a higher neutron-to-proton ratio in the nucleus. A neutron is formed by crunching an electron into a proton, the process known as K-capture. Deuterium is the easiest to fuse because, unlike ordinary hydrogen, it has a neutron already there.
A molecule of water is two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, the familiar H2O. If the hydrogen atoms are deuterium, with the neutron in the nucleus, it is about 10% heavier than ordinary water, and known as "heavy water". Heavy water is useful in nuclear processes because, as a moderator it won't absorb neutrons because it's hydrogen atoms already have neutrons, and, as fusion material because it's hydrogen atoms have neutrons already there.
Within a thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb, an ordinary atomic bomb, based on the fission (splitting) by high-speed neutrons of either plutonium or the 235 isotope of uranium, acts as the mere detonator to provide the heat and pressure to get the fusion process going, which may use heavy water as a fusion material. In a typical design the extremely high-energy X-rays from the initial explosion will be enclosed by a radiation case so that they will bring about the fusion in the split second before the entire bomb is blasted apart. The radiation case can itself be made of fissile material, uranium, to add to the explosive yield.
With that background let's go back to the concern, in 1945, that the first nuclear test might cause the atmosphere to ignite.
Most of the air around us consists of nitrogen and oxygen. The atoms of nitrogen and oxygen are diatomic, meaning usually two atoms of nitrogen together as well as two atoms of oxygen. If such a diatomic molecule of oxygen has a carbon atom attached it forms carbon dioxide. There is also water vapor in the air. Air is thus a mixture, rather than a chemical compound, there is no such thing as a molecule of air.
(Note-My theory is that it is these diatomic molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the air that result in circular storms, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones and. typhoons. If the molecules spin, and the spin of the long axis gets coordinated with other molecules, the result will be a circular storm. Of the air just consisted of single atoms there would be no circular storms. The same principle applies to water molecules linking by hydrogen bonding. If not for this there would be no eddies or whirlpools in water).
Here is the danger of atmospheric ignition. Now that we are reportedly getting closer to making nuclear fusion a practical source of energy, which involves tremendously high temperatures and energies, what if we reached a point where there was so much energy in such a confined space that it caused the diatomic molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in the air to start fusing into a single atom?
If we fused two atoms of nitrogen together we would get an atom of silicon. If we fused two atoms of oxygen together we would get an atom of sulfur. But remember the reason stars shine. After fusion the new larger atom contains less internal energy than the atoms that were crunched together to form it. That energy must be released. What if that energy caused two more oxygen or nitrogen atoms to fuse, and that excess energy was released, and the process continued?
The atmosphere would literally ignite.
If an atomic bomb is detonated on sand, the tremendous heat and pressure may fuse the sand into glass. But that is just chemical fusion, combining atoms into molecules without affecting the nucleus of the atom. Nuclear fusion, as takes place in stars, is actually combining atoms to make completely different atoms.
Ordinary ignition, such as burning fuel, is just chemical ignition. Molecular bonds between atoms contain energy, and breaking the bonds releases that energy. If the molecular bonds in a material release more energy than it takes to break the bonds, that material will burn. What I am referring to here is a similar concept, but the far greater energy being both released and required by nuclear fusion.
It is not so much the actual amount of energy being released, a vast amount of energy is released already by nuclear tests and reactors and even by lightning, it is rather energy density, confining the energy to a very limited area as does the radiation case in a thermonuclear weapon.
I consider this as the fusion version of a reactor meltdown but, unless it could be stopped, would destroy life on earth. I am not saying that this is going to happen, just that we should give it some thought. It doesn't just apply to the air, but also to the earth and the water of the sea. It wouldn't go any further than iron, because the ordinary fusion process only goes as far as iron, but fusion ignition could theoretically turn everything on earth into iron.
9) THE FIFTH OF MATTER AND SUPERNOVA
THE FIFTH OF MATTER AND NUCLEAR FISSION
I went over a news article involving nuclear weapons negotiations with Iran when something caught my attention. ( New York Times Sept 8 2015 )
In a nuclear reaction, what is known as a chain reaction takes place. A high-velocity neutron strikes the nucleus of an atom and splits it. Two smaller atoms result but the nuclear binding energy of the two new nuclei is less than that of the one large atom. This energy is released and this is where the energy of a nuclear reaction comes from.
The two new atoms have fewer overall neutrons than the original large atom. This is because the number of neutrons per proton must increase as we move to heavier atoms. These neutrons are released, to continue at high speeds and split more nuclei so that the chain reaction continues.
Only two elements are suitable for such a fission reaction. These are plutonium and the 235 isotope of uranium. Plutonium is an entirely man-made element formed by getting uranium to absorb neutrons, creating an unstable nucleus so that a neutron transforms itself into a proton by emitting an electron, thus forming a new element. In other elements, and the usual 238 isotope of uranium, there are too many neutrons which hold the nucleus together too tightly for it to be split by a neutron.
The number 238 or 235 refers to the total number of nucleons in the nucleus, protons and neutrons. The number of neutrons emitted per fission of a nucleus varies, for uranium-235 it averages about 2.5 and for plutonium it averages about 3. These neutrons then fly off at high speeds to each split another nucleus and continue the chain reaction.
But the geometry of the mass of plutonium of uranium-235 is also a factor. The nucleus is very small in relation to the total size of the atom. The vast majority of an atom is empty space. The often used model is of a strawberry in the middle of a playing field in a sports arena, where the strawberry represents the nucleus and the arena is the orbitals of the electrons in the atom.
A neutron is so-named because it has an overall neutral electric charge, meaning that it is not affected by the negative charges of the electrons and the positive charge of the nucleus in an atom. Since the space within the electron orbitals are so vast compared with that of the nucleus, the neutron nearly always misses the nucleus and passes right through the atom. Splitting atoms and continuing the chain reaction depends on neutrons eventually hitting a nucleus before reaching the edge of the fissile material.
This means that, if the mass of plutonium or uranium-235 has too few atoms, too many neutrons will leave the mass altogether before striking a nucleus, and the chain reaction will cease. The mass must be of at least a certain size because one of the high-speed neutrons may possibly pass through millions of atoms before it strikes a nucleus. That certain minimum size needed to keep a chain reaction going, although there is always an element of chance involved, is known as the "critical mass".
The mass is also shaped in the form of a sphere because it has the lowest surface area per volume over which the neutron could escape before striking a nucleus.
The critical mass is necessary due to geometry and the ratio of the scale of the entire atom to the nucleus. But the energy released from each fission of an atom is a different factor altogether. When a nuclear chain reaction begins, the energy being released will blast the mass apart well before all of the atoms in it have undergone fission. This, of course, will halt the chain reaction even though it creates the explosion.
The figure given in the article that I mentioned was 1 / 5. In the first nuclear test, which used plutonium, in New Mexico, it was determined that only about 1 / 5 of the atoms in the mass had actually undergone fission before it blasted itself apart and halted the chain reaction.
But why was it 1 / 5? That one-fifth is information, and information must come from somewhere. The fact that the figure was 1 / 5 must tell us something about nuclear physics or the nature of matter.
A mass of a metallic element is held together by what are known as "delocalized" electrons. This means that, rather than having all electrons in orbitals around their home atoms, as is usually the case with non-metals except for the covalent bonds of carbon compounds in which two atoms may share outer electrons, metal atoms share their outer electrons among a vast number of atoms. Most bonds between atoms of non-metals are ionic, in which one atom loses an electron to another so that they are bound by the fact that one has a net negative, and the other a net positive, charge.
This means that the entire metal mass is held together by the opposite charge attraction between it's negatively-charged electrons in orbitals around atoms and the positively-charged nuclei of those atoms.
When an atom of plutonium of the 235 isotope of uranium is split by a neutron during the fusion process, it releases only a few percent of the total binding energy between like-charged protons in the nucleus. Two smaller atoms are formed by the split, typically krypton and barium, but the nuclei of these two atoms has less total binding energy and also a few fewer neutrons than the original uranium or plutonium atom, and that is the energy and neutrons that get released as it is split.
To release all of the energy within the atom, including the Mass-Energy Equivalence energy, we would have to react equal amounts of matter and antimatter together. Antimatter is not much different from our familiar matter, except that the electric charges are reversed so that positively-charged positrons replace electrons in orbitals around a negatively-charged nucleus.
To understand why the critical mass of metal blasts apart, halting the chain reaction, after one-fifth of it's atoms have been split by the fission process, imagine the entire mass as one large atom. This is how it behaves since it is held together by electrons in orbitals around vast numbers of atoms rather than only one or two atoms. A section of metal over which the atoms share their outer electrons is referred to as a crystal.
The reason that the critical mass of metal blasts itself apart after 1 / 5 of the atoms have been split is explained in simple terms by my cosmology theory, "The Theory Of Stationary Space", in the compound posting on this blog by that name, specifically section 5).
First remember from the theory of how information works, "The Theory Of Complexity". The complexity of a number is defined as the value of the denominator when the number is expressed as a fraction or a ratio. That 1 / 5 is information which must come from somewhere and it involves a complexity of fifths.
In the cosmology theory everything, both matter and space, are composed of infinitesimal negative and positive electric charges. Space is defined as a perfectly alternating pattern of negative and positive charges in multiple dimensions. Matter is defined as a concentration of like charges, held together against the mutual repulsion of like charges by energy. Energy is thus equal to mass and this is what we refer to as the Mass-Energy Equivalence. This is also where Einstein's famous formula for the conversion of mass and energy comes from, E = MC squared.
Section 5) of the cosmology theory stipulates that, within matter, actually only two out of every five interfaces between adjacent electric charges are between like charges. The other three out of five are between opposite charges. But the interfaces between like charges hold three times as much energy as those between opposite charges.
This factor of three explains where the information for the operation of quarks comes from. Protons and neutrons are each composed of three quarks. Up quarks have an electric charge of + 2 / 3 and down quarks have an electric charge of - 1 / 3. Two up quarks and one down quark give us a proton with an overall charge of +1. Two down quarks and one up quark give us a neutron with an overall charge of zero.
The fact that each of the 2 / 5 of charge interfaces which are between like charges each holds three times as much energy as the interfaces between opposite charges, because it takes energy to hold like charges together against their mutual repulsion, means that 2 / 3 of the overall energy in the interfaces between electric charges within matter are in the interfaces between like charges. This is because 2 x 3 is twice as much as 3 x 1.
That explains why the relativistic mass increase for an object moving at half the speed of light, 1.155 and it's reciprocal .866, is exactly the same as the trigonometric functions, secant and cosine, as a 30 degree angle which is 1 / 3 of a right angle. If, as in my cosmology theory, velocity is really an angle with the speed of light being a 90 degree angle, then a 30 degree angle is 1 / 3 of the speed of light.
That is a reflection of 2 / 3 of the energy within matter being held in the interfaces between like electric charges. The other 1 / 3 that is held in the interfaces between opposite charges "does not count" because if the matter were not there it would be empty space. Space is a perfectly alternating checkerboard pattern of negative and positive electric charges in multiple dimensions, although the perfect pattern can be disturbed by the ripples of energy that we refer to as electromagnetic waves.
So, in calculating anything about the energy in matter we do not include this 1 / 3 of energy in the interfaces between opposite charges in the matter that would be there anyway if the matter were empty space.
Now remember that the critical mass described above is held together by the opposite charge attraction between the negatively-charged electrons and the positively-charged nuclei. Even though both the electrons and the protons in the nuclei are matter in that 2 / 3 of their energy in electric charge interfaces is held between like charges, that does not apply to the attraction between the two that holds the atom together and also the mass of metal because the definition of a metal is that a vast number of atoms share their outer electrons between them. The mass of metal is held together by the opposite charge attraction between those electrons and the nuclei.
Since the mass of metal, within the protons and electrons themselves and not the space between the two, 1 / 3 of the energy in that mass is held in the interfaces between opposite charges, and each atom and also the entire mass is held together by the opposite-charge attraction between electrons and protons, that means that the 2 / 3 of energy within the matter that is held in the 2 / 5 of the charge interfaces that are between like charges, that means that these 2 / 5 hold twice as much energy as that in the electron-proton attraction that holds each atom, as well as the entire mass, together. Because, again, 2 x 3 is twice as much as 3 x 1.
That means that when 1 / 5 of the atoms in the critical mass have been split by fission, releasing their energy, that matches the energy in the opposite-charge electrical attraction that is holding the mass of metal together. That is why in the critical mass of plutonium in the first nuclear bomb that was tested, in New Mexico, only 1 / 5 of the atoms were actually split because, at that point, the mass blasted itself apart which halted the fission process.
The total energy held in the 2 / 5 of interfaces between electric charges in matter that are between like charges was not released, remember that only a few percent of the total energy in a nucleus is released by fission. But this was the energy that would be released in the stage that was involved, that of splitting a large atom of plutonium, or the 235 isotope of uranium, into two smaller atoms, which also forces a rearrangement of the crystalline structure of the metal, held together by shared electrons. The rest of the energy in the interfaces between like charges is still held in the two smaller atoms.
But the fact that it was 1 / 5 of the atoms in the critical mass that split before the mass blasted itself apart shows that what I have explained all along in the cosmology theory is correct.THE FIFTH OF MATTER AND SUPERNOVA
In the initial tests of nuclear bombs, it is known that only about 1 / 5 of the atoms actually underwent fission. The bomb works by firing high-speed neutrons at a critical mass of either plutonium or the 235 isotope of uranium. A neutron has a neutral electric charge and so is not affected by the negative charges of the electrons in atoms, or the positive charge of the nucleus.
The nucleus takes up only a very small space in the center of the atom. The vast majority of an atom is empty space. But eventually, a neutron will probably strike a nucleus before exiting the mass of fissile material. This splits the nucleus into two smaller atoms, typically krypton and barium, and, since these two new atoms have fewer total neutrons than the larger original atom, these excess neutrons also fly out at high speeds and (hopefully) strike and split another nucleus before exiting the critical mass.
This thus forms that is referred to as a chain reaction. The average number of neutrons released by a split uranium-235 atom is about 2.5 and by a plutonium atom about 3. This is why most uranium atoms, isotope 238, will not work as fissile material. There are too many neutrons holding the nucleus together so that it cannot be split by the neutron.
That is why the mass undergoing fission has to be at least the critical mass in size, and spherical. If the mass is smaller than the critical mass then too many neutrons will escape before striking a nucleus because the smaller mass will have a higher surface-to-volume ratio.
My cosmology theory explains why only 1 / 5 of the atoms actually undergo fusion. The reason that the fission is never anywhere near complete is simply that the mass will blast itself apart before the chain reaction can get to all of the nuclei in every atom.
The reason that it is 1 / 5 of the atoms undergo fission is that 2 / 5 of the interfaces between electric charges in atoms are between like charges, which mutually repel but are held together by energy. This energy holding like charges together is, in my cosmology theory, what forms matter, and is the well-known Mass-Energy Equivalence. The other 3 / 5 of the interfaces between electric charges are between opposite charges, which naturally attract.
Empty space is made up of a multi-dimensional checkerboard of opposite negative and positive electric charges. Like charges can be held together, against their mutual repulsion, by energy. There is some energy in all interfaces between charges but the ones between like charges have three times as much energy in them as the ones between opposite charges.
The bonds between like charges, held together by energy, are what hold the fundamental particles together, the electrons and quarks that make up the nucleons. But it is the attraction between opposite charges that holds the whole mass together. But since 2 / 5 of the total interfaces between electric charges are between like charges, which each have three times are much energy as the 3 / 5 between the opposite charges that hold the whole mass together, that means that the energy released when 1 / 5 of the atoms have been split by fission, enough energy has been released to surpass the energy in the interfaces between opposite charges that hold the mass together, and thus the mass is blasted apart.
With that review, now let's see how this applies to a supernova and our Solar System.
We know that the sun is a so-called "second-generation star". We can tell by spectroscopy that the sun contains heavy elements that are well beyond it's current stage in the nuclear fusion process. Fission, described in the review above, is the opposite of fusion. Fusion is the crunching together of atoms by gravity. A star is born when enough matter comes together by it's mutual gravity that the electron repulsion that ordinarily holds atoms apart is overcome and small atoms are crunched together into larger ones.
Large atoms contain less energy than the smaller atoms that were crunched together to form them. This is because the nucleus of the larger atoms must contain more neutrons per protons and an electron is crunched into a proton to create a neutron, and this is a lower energy state than the proton and electron separate. The excess energy is released as radiation and this is why the sun and other stars shine.
Another way that we could look at the internal energy of atoms, the Mass-Energy Equivalence, is in terms of the surface area of the atoms. Surface area represents distance, and thus energy. The new and larger atom has less overall surface area than the smaller atoms that were crunched together to form it. This is the solar or stellar energy that gets released as radiation.
The lightest, and by far the most abundant, element in the universe is hydrogen. The sun is presently crunching four atoms of hydrogen into one atom of helium. The leftover energy is released as the sun's radiation. When the hydrogen is used up, the sun will begin crunching the helium together into successively heavier atoms. The process continues until we get to iron, element number 26. The ordinary fusion process can only go as far as iron.
This ordinary stellar fusion process, up to iron, is known as the slow or S-process. Elements heavier than iron, the heaviest naturally-occurring element is uranium, number 92 meaning that it has 92 protons in a nucleus, are formed only by the release of energy as a large star explodes as a supernova. That is why iron and elements, and elements below it, are exponentially more common than elements heavier than iron. These heavier elements require a net input of energy which is not possible without the explosion.
A star is an equilibrium between the inward force of gravity and the outward energy of it's nuclear fusion. As the star keeps crunching smaller atoms into heavier ones, and then those into still heavier ones, the energy released per time increases because larger atoms being crunched together releases more net energy than smaller ones. This upsets the equilibrium of the star and it begins growing outward. Late in it's life, the sun is expected to reach what is known as the "red giant stage".
But if the star is large enough, meaning that more atoms are undergoing fusion in it's core, the star can actually explode and scatter it's component matter across space. That is what the Solar System is today, and why the sun is a second-generation star. A large star exploded and much of it's matter fell back together by gravity to form the sun and planets. That previous star must have been much larger than the sun because the sun is not large enough to explode as a supernova.
I define a nova as the blasting away of the outer layers of a star, due to the increased energy release of fusion in the star's core, and a supernova as the explosion of the star from the center. This is why, in my view, the outer planets of the Solar System contain a preponderance of molecules formed of light atoms, such as methane and ammonia, and comets are made of ices such as water. The previous star first blasted away the lighter atoms in it's outer reaches, which went further out into space because they had a higher starting point, before exploding from the center.
We can easily see how the ordinary fusion process only goes as far as iron, before the previous star exploded in a supernova, by how abundant iron is in the earth and the inner Solar System. Mercury has been nicknamed "The Iron Planet". The earth is 64x the volume of the moon, but has 81x it's mass, because, while both are made out of rock, the earth has a heavy iron core that the moon lacks. This lack of an iron core shows in the fact that the moon has practically no magnetic field.
Iron is the most common element in the earth by mass and close to 1 / 3 the mass of the earth consists of iron. We know that lighter elements in the inner Solar System were forced outward by the sun's heat and the solar wind, the stream of charged particles from the sun.
Now here is my hypothesis. The mass of the earth and inner planets, up to Mars, are now close to 1 / 3 iron. But originally, before lighter elements being forced toward the outer Solar System by the heat and solar wind, the mass of the inner Solar System was about 1 / 5 iron.
This means that the supernova, the explosion of the previous star that existed before the present sun, occurred when about 1 / 5 of the mass in the core of the star was in the form of iron, and the fusion process could not go any further. A supernova is not exactly a nuclear explosion, it is a change in the previous equilibrium of the star, but it is driven by the fusion process.
This is like an inverse mirror image of the fission critical mass, described above, blasting itself apart when 1 / 5 of the atoms have been split. The energy released comes from the interfaces of like charges that are held together by energy, what science calls the "Mass-Energy Equivalence". 2 / 5 of all interfaces between electric charges in matter are such interfaces between like charges. These each have three times, according to my cosmology theory, as much energy as the usual interfaces of empty space between opposite charges that naturally attract.
That is why, when 1 / 5 of the atoms undergoing fusion in the core of the star have become part of an iron atom and the process can go no further, the energy released surpasses that of the 3 / 5 of the interfaces between opposite charges that holds the star together, but each has only 1 / 3 of the energy of an interface between like charges. This is what causes the star to explode as a supernova and is why, after much matter consisting of lighter atoms has been forced outward by the heat of the sun and the solar wind, close to 1 / 3 of the matter in the inner Solar System is iron.
10) THE CHEMISTRY CONUNDRUM
I very much doubt that I am the first person who has noticed this. There is something about basic chemistry that is confusing and doesn't make sense. It concerns valence, or the exchange of electrons between atoms to form molecules.
There are two electric charges, negative and positive. But negative and positive are represented by the symbols "-" and "+". The confusion begins because these two symbols also have another meaning.
Minus, "-", means to subtract or take away. This is the same symbol that is used for negative electric charge.
Plus, "+", means to add or join to. This is the same symbol that is used for positive electric charge.
There are two types of bonds between atoms so that they form compounds or molecules. Ionic bonds are where one atom loses an electron to another so that one atom has a net negative charge and the other has a net positive charge, so that they join together by mutual opposite charge attraction. Covalent bonds, in structures such as the complex structures of carbon atoms, is where two atoms share one or more electrons.
Ionic bonds are more in inanimate matter but the molecular bonds in living things rely on covalent bonds. As you can see by your flesh, matter based on covalent bonds is often flexible while ionic bonds tend to be brittle or inflexible.
This conundrum concerns ionic bonds. Suppose that two atoms are close together and one takes an outer electron from the other. Because electrons have a negative charge, the atom that loses the electron will then have a net positive charge. The atom that gains the electron will then have a net negative charge.
Do you see how confusing this is?
An atom loses an electron which has a negative charge, as in "-", yet it now has a positive charge, as in "+", as if it has gained something because "+" also means addition.
The other atom gains the electron. To gain means to add something. Addition is symbolized by the plus sign, "+", but the atom now has a negative charge, which is symbolized by the opposite sign, "-".
The negative and positive designations given to the two opposite electric charges are entirely arbitrary. We could just as easily called negative positive and vice versa. If we said that the electron has a positive charge, while the nucleus has a negative charge, which is now what we define as antimatter, it would make more sense.
An atom that GAINED an electron would then have a POSITIVE electric charge, as in "+".
An atom that LOST an electron would then have a NEGATIVE electric charge, as in "-".
Wouldn't that make more sense and be less confusing?
11) PROOF OF THE BIG BANG
Most scientists agree that the universe began with what is referred to as the "Big Bang". Scientists didn't arrive at the Big Bang, it was actually introduced by a Belgian Catholic priest, Georges Lemaitre, based on the Christian idea of the beginning, but is now very widely accepted in the scientific community. Before the Big Bang there was the "Steady State" Theory of the universe.
