Thursday, August 6, 2020

South Wales

Cardiff is the major city of south Wales. It is built around a Norman castle, but has only been a major city since the Nineteenth Century. The modern city of Cardiff was made by the shipping of coal from the mines of Wales. Much of the population of Cardiff today is descended from English and Irish migrants, who came to work on the docks. This was once the busiest port in the world.

England and Wales united in 1536, Scotland joined in 1707. The union of England and Wales took place during the reign of Henry VIII (the eighth), who was from the Welsh Tudor Dynasty. The British royal title "Prince of Wales" is a recognition of the medieval Welsh kingdoms becoming part of Britain, but the holder of the title does not have to be Welsh.

"South Wales" is just a geographical designation, and not an official name. But it's name is reflected in the Australian state of New South Wales.

I am English by birth, but I was born within walking distance of Wales and have some Welsh ancestry.

Here is Cardiff Castle. There are actually several castles around Cardiff. In fact, it is said to have more castles than any city in the world. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Castle#/media/File:The_West_Gate,_Cardiff,_by_Paul_Sandby.jpg

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

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4799042,-3.175713,3a,75y,330h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-fr04T8ZqkCc%2FVG4OhMDrfFI%2FAAAAAAAAA9o%2F99dvfe2OFO0mX-wIwq9NAJAiK_DtpICQQCJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-fr04T8ZqkCc%2FVG4OhMDrfFI%2FAAAAAAAAA9o%2F99dvfe2OFO0mX-wIwq9NAJAiK_DtpICQQCJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya84.61333-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i5632!8i2816

Another thing that Cardiff is known for is the Cardiff Bay Barrage. There is a very wide tidal range at Cardiff, that is the difference between high tide and low tide. This meant that extensive "mud flats" were exposed for most of the day, which were unsightly.

The idea arose of building a dam across Cardiff Bay, with sluices to control the flow of water so that there would be, in effect, a permanent high tide. This opened the possibility of waterfront development, because the edge of the water would always be in the same place.

The project was highly controversial. Opinions of the proposed Cardiff Bay Barrage ranged from brilliant to too expensive to ridiculous to both ridiculous and too expensive. Then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made clear her opposition to the project. But south Wales is left field when it comes to politics, and the opposition of the staunchly conservative prime minister seemed to be all the more reason to move forward with the project.

It turned into a massive civil engineering project that is today considered as a brilliant success, and was a great bonus for the city.

This is a set of sluices and control building for the Cardiff Bay Barrage. The gates allow the water that flows into Cardiff Bay to continue on to the sea, but keeps the level of water in the bay always at the former high tide level. This makes it different from the dikes in the Netherlands, in that it holds water in rather than keeping it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Bay_Barrage#/media/File:Sluices_at_the_Cardiff_Bay_Barrage.jpg


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Bay_Barrage#/media/File:Cardiff_Bay_Barrage_Control_Centre.jpg

Here are some scenes around the Cardiff Barrage, the dam that separates Cardiff Bay from the sea, so that the bay is no longer tidal.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4500767,-3.1650533,3a,75y,107h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-7BTRnr3m0XQ%2FVh_pZ6s3L7I%2FAAAAAAAAB_0%2FmE7yZ4Bp71EQyREb4L1jkCKWDdQWPLo6ACJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-7BTRnr3m0XQ%2FVh_pZ6s3L7I%2FAAAAAAAAB_0%2FmE7yZ4Bp71EQyREb4L1jkCKWDdQWPLo6ACJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya312.9225-ro0-fo100%2F!7i10240!8i5120

Welsh voters rejected the idea of having a national assembly that was separate from England. But there is a strong emphasis on the Welsh language. Welsh was the majority language in Cardiff until Victorian times.

In the past, the British Government made an effort to get everyone to speak English. There used to be a Celtic language called Cornish, in Cornwall, that is now extinct. But the effort to suppress Welsh was less successful. Today the BBC actively supports broadcasting in the Welsh language.

According to the census, about 15% of people in Wales can speak, read and, write in Welsh. Those are concentrated in the western part of Wales, furthest from England. It is not like French in Quebec. Welsh is on signs everywhere, and is on radio and television. But there are no daily newspapers in Welsh, and hearing people speak it in daily conversation is elusive.

One way to know if you are in an area where a significant number of people speak Welsh is that it will appear first on bilingual traffic signs. Around Cardiff, that is not the case so English appears first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language#/media/File:Wales.cardiff.slow.jpg

Welsh is a Celtic language. W and Y are used as vowels. The city of Cwmbran is pronounced as "Coom-bran". There is doubling of some letters to represent different sounds, dd, ff and, ll, which are not the same as the singular letters together.

Look at the name of Cardiff Castle here, spelled as Caerdiffe. This shows how the name of the city was originally Welsh, but has been anglicized into Cardiff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff#/media/File:Cardiff-Castle.jpg

All along the border between England and Wales is the familiar sign of:

"Croeso i Gymru", meaning "Welcome to Wales".

The reason that the Welsh language is so different from English is that the Welsh people are considered to be the descendants of the original people of Britain, while English people and their language are the descendants of settlers from northern Europe, such as Angles, Saxons, Danes and, Vikings. This is why Welsh is a Celtic language but English is related to the other northern European languages.

This is the area around Llandaff Cathedral, starting inside the cathedral from the 12th Century. This is not in central Cardiff because remember that Cardiff was the town that grew around the castle, but was not a major city until the Nineteenth Century. There is thus no very old, centrally-located, Cardiff Cathedral. There is the cathedral in central Cardiff that was built in the Twentieth Century.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4957754,-3.21813,3a,75y,105.48h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-aNcimTa66Ww%2FU8_aoDnm-qI%2FAAAAAAAABvU%2F77i0mdFlw7skvXwwo19EmOVjtABwDvy0gCJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-aNcimTa66Ww%2FU8_aoDnm-qI%2FAAAAAAAABvU%2F77i0mdFlw7skvXwwo19EmOVjtABwDvy0gCJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya310.5653-ro0-fo100%2F!7i9216!8i4608

Here is an older residential area of Cardiff, to the west of the central part of the city. There are Welsh names around Philadelphia, such as Bryn Mawr and Bala Cynwyd, and any Philadelphian would feel right at home in Cardiff's row houses.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4702071,-3.1845084,3a,75y,84.09h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1scsEgvIDm33AYZb_hx4XJFQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DcsEgvIDm33AYZb_hx4XJFQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D80.55752%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

Another major city in south Wales is Newport, to the east of Cardiff. This is a medieval city that, like Cardiff, grew up around a Norman castle. This was a more important port than Cardiff until the mid-Nineteenth Century.

Here are some scenes around Newport, including the ruins of the castle. Notice that we are starting in front of the BBC Cymru office. This is the BBC channel which broadcasts in Welsh. "Cymru" means "Welsh" in the Welsh language.

The central business street of a city in Britain if often named "High Street", the equivalent of "Main Street" in North America.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5888876,-2.9971458,3a,75y,254.25h,85.8t,1.39r/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1saDaa5NKGQL-IOOYpaSusnQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DaDaa5NKGQL-IOOYpaSusnQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D61.19553%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

To the west of Cardiff is another city on the coast of south Wales, Swansea. Unlike Cardiff and Newport, Swansea specialized in metals, rather than coal. Workers in Swansea were so skilled in separating metals from their ores that ore was often brought from other countries to be refined in Swansea. The city's nickname used to be "Copperopolis".

What Swansea does have in common with Cardiff and Newport is that it also grew up around a Norman castle. Isn't it ironic that the three major cities of south Wales are built around castles that were originally put there to defend against the native Welsh people? Welsh cities center around castles, just as English cities center around cathedrals.

Here are some scenes around the center of Swansea.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6211677,-3.9407826,3a,75y,40.95h,87.78t,-0.63r/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sra4WgisLGY9TbDgrcYoaXg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Dra4WgisLGY9TbDgrcYoaXg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D142.5%26pitch%3D-7%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

Here is a look around a residential area of Swansea, with the very Welsh name of Brynhyfryd. You can be sure that you have crossed the border and left England when you see a name like that.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6427027,-3.9480799,3a,75y,281.29h,93.96t,357.71r/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1ssGn1qbMgzo65xGngCRjEfA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DsGn1qbMgzo65xGngCRjEfA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D6.954975%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 

Carmarthen is a town in southwest Wales that is not on the coast. It has a very long history and was important in medieval times, before the Industrial Revolution made the coal that was handled by the port cities so important.


Tenby is a seaside resort town that goes back to the days before mass transportation brought inexpensive vacations in sunny places. The first of the following scenes are at Tenby's medieval walls, much of which is still standing.

There is a tidal island, meaning it is only an island at high tide. If you wonder how on earth this geological arrangement came to be, and you are familiar with Wales, there is the posting "The Carmarthen Raceway", on the brief blog about glaciers www.markmeekworld.blogspot.com 

The arrangement is not geological but is caused by massive slides of ice, at the end of each ice age, from the mountains of Wales toward the coast, along what I call "The Carmarthen Raceway".

If you see the palm trees, you are not imagining it. Tenby, like Cornwall in England, are the places in Britain that are most exposed to the Gulf Stream, which brings warming water. So yes, palm trees can grow in Britain.


Monmouth is within walking distance of where I was born. It is built around a castle, but the castle came later. Monnow Street, where the following scenes begin and the main street of Monmouth, has been used since ancient times. The famous stone arch, on the bridge over Monnow River, is from the Thirteenth Century.

I can remember, from early childhood, when I was first brought to look in the shops on Monnow Street. We usually went to Gloucester for shopping but one day we came here.

There is a statue of Charles Rolls, one of the founders of Rolls Royce, in Monmouth. It has always been the world's ultimate car and ultimate status symbol. But Charles Rolls was actually more interested in aircraft. His statue is holding a model plane. He ended up being the first Brit to die in an air crash. Rolls Royce today is known more for high-quality aircraft engines than for cars, and makes more aircraft engines than any company except General Electric.

Charles Rolls grew up in a mansion near Monmouth, known as The Hendre. It was a private home but looks like one of Henry the Eighth's brick palaces.

One thing that should be more widely-known is that, in medieval times, the idea of making a simple warm hat out of sheep's wool arose in Monmouth. This resulted in what was known as the "Monmouth Cap". What this led to was the ubiquitous knit caps, sometimes called a beanie, that are seen in cold climates across the world today.

Also near Monmouth is Tintern Abbey, which we saw in the posting on this blog, "The Reformation At 500", February 2017.

The Natural History Of The Flu

The ordinary flu is at a kind of idealized equilibrium with humans. It produces symptoms in those it infects, coughing and sneezing, that are necessary to spread the flu to other people. But the symptoms are usually not severe enough to keep home everyone, or even a majority of people, who have the symptoms. The symptoms are mild enough that even those who do stay at home because of them rarely stay at home until the body has completely overcome the flu.

Humans develop immunity to the flu. But the flu mutates into different strains and it is necessary to become immune to each one. Many strains of the flu have a similarity to ones that came before. This is why many people get the flu less as they get older. There is typically one strain in late autumn and another later on in the winter.

But what this says is that humans and the flu have a long history together, and have been continuously adapting to each other by natural selection.

Imagine yourself in the flu's position. You naturally want to spread as much as possible. A virus is not actually alive, it is just bits of genetic code that instructs it's host what to do.

The first thing that the virus instructs the host, in our case humans, to do is to produce many copies of the virus. This is how the virus spreads.

Unlike illnesses caused by bacteria, the virus is not actually alive. A virus cannot move by itself. It relies on something else to move it so that it can spread.

That is where the symptoms come in, in our case coughing and sneezing. The virus needs these symptoms in order to spread to other people. Our bodies try to expel the virus, after creating multiple copies of it, but this is what the virus needs to spread.

Can you see how the virus has reached an idealized equilibrium with it's human hosts?

It has to irritate it's hosts enough to get them to develop the symptoms that spread it, after replicating it, coughing and sneezing. But yet it has to be mild enough so that people who have the flu will not stay home and away from other people, at least not most of the time.

A flu cannot be so mild that it's hosts do not develop the symptoms associated with expelling it from the body, because that is what it requires to spread. But yet the symptoms cannot be too severe, certainly not deadly, because that would keep the host away from other people and the virus would not spread.

The way that the virus must have adapted itself to this idealized equilibrium with humans is through natural selection, over a long period of time. By random chance, due to background radiation and other factors, some virus strains will develop that are more or less contagious than others. Some strains will emerge that are more in harmony with the host, so that they produce less severe symptoms, or less in harmony with the host so that they produce more severe symptoms and can be more deadly.

Eventually the idealized equilibrium that the flu has with us today came to be. The flu has to irritate our bodies enough so that we try to expel it, by coughing and sneezing, because that is what spreads it to other people. But yet those symptoms have to be mild enough so that people do not mostly stay home and so not spread the virus.

Humans developed immunity to the flu but the virus found a way around that, through natural selection, by mutating into different strains. But we can see how people tend to get the flu less as they get older.

This is because the flu has not yet had time to adapt to the fact that human life expectancy has significantly increased in modern times. The virus has not yet developed enough strains so that people past a certain age will get a virus that is different enough from any that they have already developed immunity to for them to catch it.

The great danger with other viruses, such as the Spanish Flu and Ebola, is that they do not have this long history together with humans. They may have jumped from animals to humans.

The conclusion is that the flu was once deadlier than it is today, but not usually deadly enough to "put itself out of business". The flu gradually got milder, through natural selection which favored milder strains because they were more successful in spreading the virus because people were less likely to stay home, and away from other people, if they had a milder strain of the virus.

It may have been that, if a strain of the virus was easier to replicate, that meant it would be more in harmony with it's host and symptoms would thus be milder. The strain would thus be doubly-favored, by being more contagious and also more mild. But a strain that was too mild would die out because the symptoms, coughing and sneezing, are necessary to spread the virus.

Archeology, Plastic And, Space Exploration

In the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, momentous discoveries were made in archeology. There were excavations of Assyria and Babylon. 

Perhaps the most famous single discovery of the time was that of King Tut's Tomb. King Tut had not been an exceptional pharaoh, actually dying in his teens. What is so significant about his tomb is that, unlike nearly all of the other royal tombs, it still contained all of it's riches because it had been missed by ancient grave robbers. The unearthing of the entire city of Ur, in Mesopotamia, captivated the world.

At around the same time it was the Gilded Age with people building fabulous wealth through business. The modern era of "big business", with widely-known corporate brands, was taking shape.

I have long thought that there is a strong connection between the two. Archeological discoveries, much of which was of a relatively mundane nature such as bookkeeping on clay tablets, has had a great effect on the development of the logos and packaging of consumer goods.

In the backs of our minds, archeology reminds us that someday our times will be ancient times. But the archeological future of our times is complicated by our use of paper, and then digital, to store information. Unlike the clay tablets and carvings in stone of ancient times, our digital data will be utterly lost and paper, unless it is carefully preserved, does not last for centuries.

We have seen this already, in the posting "Archeological Representation", November 2012 on the World And Economics Blog, http://markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/2012/11/archeological-representation.html

On the other hand our use of plastic has a great effect on the archeological future of our times. Most plastics are very resistant to environmental degradation and can last for a very long time.

There is also no erosion in space, other than the impacts of micrometeorites. The remnants of lunar missions, the footprints of the astronauts, and the tire tracks of the lunar rovers, may easily last for many thousands of years.

Likewise, since the moon has no atmosphere which can cause orbits to decay, spent rocket stages and abandoned command modules may be in orbit around the moon and the sun, waiting to be examined by future archeologists, for thousands of years.

Mars has an atmosphere, but it is thin and mostly composed of inert carbon dioxide. Mars seems to have had water at one time, but not to have water or weather now. This will preserve all of the spacecraft that have landed on Mars.

Then there are the spacecraft that have gone on through interplanetary space, and on into interstellar space, meaning beyond our Solar System.

What about on earth, corporate logos and names particularly on plastic packaging that can last a very long time? I have long believed that part of the underlying psychology behind advertising and packaging is a thought of how we will be remembered beyond our time, prompted by news of spectacular archeological discoveries.

In exploring ancient Egypt, it was found that pharaohs were represented by a logo that enclosed the pharaoh's name and very much resembled a modern corporate logo. It was known as a cartouche. Could it be that a cartouche is actually the ancestor of corporate logos?

The landfills of today could be the archeological digs of the future. Archeologists two thousand years from now might uncover a landfill that was active in the late Twentieth and early Twenty-First Centuries. By comparison with what was recovered from other landfills of that era, it will enter studies of ancient history that McDonald's and Burger King had many widespread locations but that Dave's Sub Shop was unique to the town that the landfill once served.

It is human nature to occasionally give some thought to how we, and our times, will be perceived by future generations. Archeology is nothing new, there were archeologists in ancient times. But the fantastic archeological discoveries of relatively recent times has given it a whole new dimension. Time capsules have become popular as a way of communicating, at least one-way, with the future.

Although I do not suppose that it is documented anywhere, is this maybe part of the underlying reason that we do not incinerate or recycle trash more? It is not that we want to litter but we subconsciously want to leave behind landfills full of plastic artifacts, to be sure that the future will not forget us since all of our digital data will almost certainly be inaccessible.

Remember that the Space Age was also the Nuclear Age, and the Nuclear Age came first. Could it be that part of the underlying reason for space exploration was that, knowing there was a chance that our days might be numbered unless we could send colonies of people into space, it would at least leave behind artifacts for future generations, safe from destruction, just as past generations had done for our generation?

Remember that the two spacecraft's Voyager I and Voyager 2, launched in 1977, contained extensive time capsules, and messages to anyone who might find them. This included representations of what humans look like and recordings of music.

I consider this as representing an important part of what the Space Age, as well as packaging and corporate logos, are all about.

The Nineteen Prophecy

Has anyone ever thought of this?

We know that the number 7 is important in the Bible. One of the first things in the Bible is that God created a seven-day week by creating the world and universe in six days and then resting on the seventh day. One of the first things in the Book of Revelation is a description of the Seven Spirits of God. The Book of Daniel has the "Weeks of Years" prophecy.

Another important number in the Bible is twelve. There was the Twelve Tribes of Israel and then the Twelve Apostles of Jesus.

Since these two numbers are so important in the Bible, what would we get if we added them together so that 7+12=19?

We can see that, in the story of the Bible, the importance of seven came before that of twelve. The number nineteen does not show any unusual significance in the story of the Bible but, since it is an addition of the two, maybe it's significance may not show up until later.

The next major chronological story in the Bible is that of the Apocalypse. Could it be that, in the time leading up to the fulfillment of the prophecies, that there will be interesting things happening that involves the number nineteen?

We saw how the world is approaching the fulfillment of the Bible prophecies of the "Last Days", in our time, in the posting on this blog, "The End Of The World As We Know It", June 2020.

The one-lifetime countdown to the establishment of the Kingdom of Jesus on earth, following the reign of the Antichrist and the Apocalypse, is the original city of Jerusalem coming back under Jewish control after a long time under Gentile control.

This occurred in 1967. But there had been a nineteen-year delay between the ancient nation of Israel being reestablished, in 1948, and the addition of the original city of Jerusalem in 1967.

We saw what could be the reason for this nineteen-year delay, to give the new generation coming of age in the 1960s a chance to build the Millennial Kingdom themselves without going through the Apocalypse, in the compound posting on this blog, New Insight Into Bible Prophecy" October 2016, in the section 17) CROSSING THE RED SEA.

There is no nineteenth month on our calendar. But the modern cycle of conflict, in the new millennium began on 9/11, which includes a 1 and a 9, when nineteen hijackers flew planes into buildings.

The modern era of terrorism, at least in the U.S., involving simple mass killing without the hostage-taking that had typified terrorism in the past, could be said to have begun with the truck bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh.

But did that bombing presage 9/11? The bombing occurred on April 19, which is 4/19. Later, four planes would be flown to their targets by nineteen hijackers. Timothy McVeigh would be executed on June 11, exactly three months before 9/11, and only three of the four planes on 9/11 would reach their targets.

Nineteen years after the attack by the nineteen hijackers would be the unforgettable year of Covid-19. It was so-named because it was discovered in 2019. In fact, it was identified on December 19.

In the world as a whole the modern era of terrorism, again meaning simply to kill as many people as possible to make some point with meaning beyond the perpetrators which differentiates it from mass shootings, could be said to have begun with Iran's Cinema Rex fire of August 19, 1978. Previous terrorism almost always involved taking hostages.

The number of the Antichrist is 666. 7 is the number of God and 6 represents falling short of God, just as the three sixes added together to get 18 represents falling short of 19.

The creation in seven days represents a direct action by God. The twelve tribes and then the twelve apostles, humans who are to bring the Word of God to the world, represent not a direct action by God but actions by humans on behalf of God. The establishment of the Kingdom of Jesus on earth, following the Apocalypse, will go back to being a direct action by Jesus and beyond human power.

Notice that the numbers representing direct divine power, 7 and 19, are prime numbers. But the number representing human activity on behalf of God, 12, is a very divisible number, the direct opposite of a prime number.

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Orbitals In Atoms And Orbits In Space

The orbitals of electrons around nuclei in atoms is very similar to the much-larger scale orbits of moons around planets and planets around stars. But there is one crucial difference that I think should get more attention because it reveals a lot about the underlying electrical nature of the universe.

The difference between the two confirms the principle seen in my cosmology theory, described in the compound posting on this blog, "The Theory Of Stationary Space", that both space and matter is composed of nearly-infinitesimal negative and positive electric charges. Opposite charges attract and like charges repel. Empty space is a perfectly alternating pattern of the negative and positive charges. Matter is any concentration of like charges, held together against their mutual repulsion by energy.

This energy that holds the like charges of matter together against their mutual repulsion is why matter has mass. It also explains why a certain mass is equivalent to a certain amount of energy, the well-known Mass-Energy Equivalence.

Antimatter is like matter except that the electric charges are reversed from ordinary matter. Positively-charged positrons are in atomic orbitals around negatively-charged anti-protons. When matter and antimatter are reacted together, the electric charges composing both realign back into the alternating pattern of empty space and the fantastic burst of energy that is released is the energy that had been holding like charges of each together against their mutual repulsion.

Matter, as opposed to space, is where there is energy holding together like electric charges against their mutual repulsion. But if the two electric charges, negative and positive, are equal then the two rules of electric charges, that opposite charges attract and like charges repel, must also be equal. If matter is where energy overcomes the rule that like charges repel, that means there must be a net attractive force involving matter.

There is indeed an attractive force involving matter. It is what we call gravity, and this explains what it is.

If energy can overcome the repulsive force between like charges to create matter, then energy should also be able to overcome the attractive force between opposite charges. That is what creates electromagnetic radiation and is why using energy to move electrons along a radio antenna, overcoming the bonds that the electrons had to the nuclei of their native atoms, creates radio waves.

When matter and antimatter are reacted together, the energy of the Mass-Energy Equivalence that was holding the like charges of both together against their mutual repulsion is released. The electric charges that comprised the matter and antimatter rearranges themselves into the alternating negative and positive charge pattern of empty space. The energy that once held the like charges of both together, against their mutual repulsion, is released. What energy always ultimately does is to overcome the basic rules of the electric charges. The released energy now goes to overcoming the attractive forces between opposite charges in space. That is why the energy that once held the masses of matter and antimatter together is released as a burst of electromagnetic radiation.

The difference between the electron orbitals in atoms and the orbits of moons and planets involves the space between the two.

There is one obvious difference between the orbits of a Solar System and the electron orbitals inside atoms. The gravity that governs orbits in the Solar System is solely an attractive force. But the electrical forces within atoms include both the attraction of the negatively-charged electrons to the positively-charged nucleus, and the electrons' mutual repulsion of each other.

The mutual repulsion of electrons in an atom bring about rules of their orbitals, nothing like of which applies to the orbits of a Solar System. Electrons orbit in shells that are governed by their mutual repulsion. The shells are numbered 1,2,3... The maximum number of electrons in a shell is given by the formula 2 (N squared). N is the number of the orbital.

The maximum number of electrons in the first orbital is thus 2 x 1 squared. Since 1 squared = 1, that means the maximum number of electrons in the first orbital is 2.

The maximum number of electrons in the second orbital is 2 x 2 squared, which equals 8.

The maximum number of electrons in the third shell of any atom is 2 x 3 squared, which equals 18.

The maximum number of electrons in the fourth orbital of any atom is 2 x 4 squared, which equals 32.

The formula for the maximum number of electrons in an electron orbital shell stops here. There can be more than four electron shells but the maximum number of electrons in any shell of any atom is 32.

The reason that the formula is 2N is that the 2 is because electrons exist in pairs, each with a spin that is opposite to the other. There are two possible spins for an electron, "up" and "down". There may be unpaired electrons and in some materials the orbitals of unpaired electrons can be aligned so that the material exerts an electromotive force. Materials with the orbitals of their unpaired electrons aligned are known as magnets. The square in the formula of 2N squared is because energy in space is governed by the Inverse Square Law.

That is one major difference between the orbitals of electrons in atoms and the orbits of planets and moons in a Solar System, the organization of electrons into orbital shells, but it is not the difference that I am referring to today.

In astronomical orbits, distance is always equivalent to energy. If we give a satellite in orbit more orbital energy, it will not move faster in the orbit it is in. Rather, it will climb to a higher orbit.

The formula is squared. If we give an object in orbit three times the orbital energy, it will climb to 9 times the altitude but will move at one-third the speed.

But the difference that I find so significant is that, with the orbitals of electrons inside the atom, it is the opposite.

The Periodic Table of the Elements is arranged according to the number of electron shells of each element, and the number of electrons in the outermost shell. The table is arranged like a calendar, with the same number of electron shells in all elements in the same row, and the same number of electrons in the outermost shell in each column.

As we go rightward across a row on the table the elements get successively heavier, with one additional proton and electron with each space in the table. This means that there is more electrical force between nucleus and electrons, because with each successively heavier element there is one more negatively-charged electron in an orbital and one more positively-charged proton in the nucleus.

Since negative and positive charges mutually attract, this means more orbital energy. If the same rules applied as in astronomical orbits, the atoms should get larger as we move rightward across a row on the Periodic Table, but instead the atoms actually get smaller in diameter, more massive and compact but smaller in diameter.

I can remember when this used to really puzzle me. It makes sense that atoms should get more compact as we move rightward across a row of the Periodic Table, because there is one additional proton and electron with each successive atom and thus the atom gets more compact, and smaller in diameter, at least until we add another electron shell.

But yet it also makes sense the way additional orbital energy in an astronomical orbit results in a higher, rather than a more compact, orbit. We can see that, if two objects fall to earth, the one that was higher will impact the ground with more energy. This shows that orbital energy is stored as distance in space, the altitude of the orbit.

The question is why, when the orbitals of electrons in atoms are so similar to the orbits of moons and planets in space, the way that additional orbital energy is stored is opposite. Atoms get smaller in diameter, more compact at least until an additional electron shell is added, while astronomical orbits get higher when additional energy is added.

There is actually a simple answer but it requires accepting the premise of my cosmology theory that empty space is composed of an alternating checkerboard of nearly-infinitesimal negative and positive electric charges, in multiple dimensions. An alternating pattern of negative and positive charges is the lowest energy state, because of the basic rules that opposite charges attract while like charges repel.

Energy can rearrange this alternating arrangement of negative and positive charges. In fact, energy ultimately always overcomes the basic rules of the electric charges.

We saw how the particles comprising matter, such as electrons, are concentrations of like charges, held together against their mutual repulsion by energy. This energy is why matter has mass and is referred to as the Mass-Energy Equivalence. This energy is totally released during a matter-antimatter reaction and partially released during a nuclear reaction.

If energy is thus released from matter it will go from overcoming the mutual repulsion of the like charges comprising the matter to overcoming the attractive force between opposite charges in empty space. This is how electromagnetic waves are produced.

This explains why the addition of orbital energy in atoms and at an astronomical level obeys opposite rules.

Space, as described in my cosmology theory, is composed of an alternating checkerboard of opposite electric charges, in multiple dimensions. Energy is stored by overcoming the basic rules of these charges, that opposite charges attract while like charges repel. It is the presence of charged particles that so distorts the usual alternating checkerboard of opposite charges in space.

The electric charges in atoms, other than ions that have gained or lost electrons, ordinarily balance out to zero. This means that, in our scenario of astronomical orbits, net electric charge is not a factor. The electric charges in the earth, the moon and, the planets, all balance out to zero.

But within the atom, that is not the case. The electrons in orbitals have a negative charge, and the protons in the nucleus a positive charge. The space between them is composed of alternating negative and positive charges.

The difference between the astronomical orbits and the electron orbitals is that, within the atom, the charged particles distort the alternating pattern of the charges in the space between the nucleus and the electrons in orbitals. The electrons pull positive charges of space toward them, pushing negative charges away, while the protons in the nucleus do the opposite.

Adding another proton and electron, in successively heavier atoms, distorts the checkerboard structure of charges in the atom until an equilibrium is reached, the repulsion between like charges now dominating the electric charges of the space within the atom, until it balances the electrical attraction between the electrons and protons within the atom.

With astronomical orbits, because the electric charges balance out to zero, this is not possible and the only way to store orbital energy is the altitude of the orbit.

This proves, as stipulated in my cosmology theory, that space must be composed of alternating electric charges.

The cosmology theory is more briefly described in the posting on this blog,"In Cosmology, Everything Just Fell Right Into Place", May 2019.

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Recent News

COMET NEOWISE

If you are awake before sunrise there is a brilliant light in the eastern sky. I saw it but thought it was Venus. It is actually a comet, called Neowise. It will not pass close to the earth again for more than six thousand years. I remember seeing the comet Hale-Bopp in 1997.

"The Configuration Of The Solar System Made Really Simple", March 2017, explains the mystery of why the orbits of comets are so extremely eccentric.

We know that the sun is a second-generation star because it contains heavy elements that are beyond it's current stage in the fusion process. The sun and Solar System originated with a large star that exploded as a supernova, and some of it's component matter fell back together by gravity to form the Solar System.

A supernova is a star exploding from it's center, due to changes in the equilibrium of the star as it moves through the successive stages of the fusion process. But it can also undergo a lesser explosion in an effort to regain it's equilibrium as the energy released by the fusion process increases as successively heavier elements are fused together in the star's core. This is a nova that blasts off the star's outer layers, as opposed to the star exploding from the center as a supernova.

I am certain that the massive star that preceded the sun underwent at least one nova before exploding as a supernova. More likely it underwent three. A nova would have blasted into space the lighter elements in the outer layers of the star. It was from these lighter atoms that comets formed.

The comets thus formed would have been in orbit around the still-massive star. The energy of an orbit is the area of space enclosed by it. When the star exploded as a supernova the much-smaller sun formed from some of the matter which fell back together by gravity.

But the comets couldn't have had the same orbital energy as before, simply because the sun was much smaller than the star it had replaced. The orbits of those comets would have to somehow "shrink", but yet the original information of their orbits around the star that had preceded the sun couldn't just be lost.

That explains why the orbits of comets are so eccentric and elongated today.

DONALD TRUMP AS KING

Don't forget why Donald Trump, and U.S. Republic presidents in general, do not think it necessary to adhere to rules that the president of a democracy would usually have to follow.

The compound posting on this blog, "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris", December 2015, was written well before Donald Trump took office. It explains how America's Republicans are actually the continuation of the Bourbon Dynasty of France.

This dynasty was America's first ally, helped it gain independence, and was the first to give America diplomatic recognition. But then the Bourbon Dynasty was overthrown and guillotined in the French Revolution, although it was temporarily restored after the time of Napoleon.

America's Republicans became the heirs of this dynasty. This is why Donald Trump acts like a king, rather than a president. That confirms what we saw in the posting.

A king doesn't have to answer to ordinary mortals if he wants to pardon his friend from justice. The critical book by Donald Trump's niece fits this royal scenario also. She would represent a cadet, and possibly rival, branch of the royal family.

GREETINGS TO TORONTO READERS

I would really like to spend a nice day having a look around Toronto. But, of course, I can't. That does not change that neither the border nor this ridiculous virus can stop my thoughts from being with my Toronto readers.

The Number Of Stars In The Universe

Here is something to think about. There are a certain number of stars in the universe. Although we do not know the exact number that number is information, and information must come from somewhere. Why are there as many stars in the universe as there are?

My theory of "The Lowest Information Point", December 2017, offers an answer. Although we cannot tell the actual number of stars, we can see where the number comes from.

The theory is based on the idea 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 we can see that energy and information is really the same thing is in how 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 our lives physically easier and also less complex.

We know that the universe always seeks the lowest energy state. An object will fall to the ground because that requires less energy than holding it in the air. Matter collecting by gravity in space will form a sphere because a sphere is the three- dimensional geometric form with the lowest energy.

So then if the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, and energy and information is really the same thing, then the universe should also seek the "Lowest Information State", hence the name of the theory.

The lowest information state would mean reusing numbers. It would also mean preferring a square over a rectangle, a square requiring less information because it's two dimensions are equal. This can mean a square in pattern, and not necessarily an actual geometric square.

Another example of the Lowest Information Point is related ratios.

Suppose that we have two sets of related ratios as follows,

A / B = B / C and

A/ B = C/ D

The universe should prefer the first set of related ratios. It contains only three pieces of information whereas the second set contains four. The first set only contains three pieces of information because the numerator of one ratio, B, is also the denominator of the other ratio. Such reuse of numbers makes it possible for the universe to reach the lowest information point.

There is a section of "The Lowest Information Point", December 2017, titled 1) THE BIAS TOWARD DUST. According to my cosmology theory, "The Theory Of Stationary Space", everything in the universe, both space and matter, is composed of nearly-infinitesimal electric charges. Planck's Length is a nearly-infinitesimal distance that shows up in all manner of physics formulas, and the reason is that it is the size of one of these electric charges.

Then we have an idea of the scale of the entire universe.

The reason that so much of the matter in the universe is in the form of dust, at least the heavier elements that have been through the fusion process in stars, that there is a "bias toward dust", is explained by "The Lowest Information Point". It is that the typical scale of a speck of dust is exactly halfway between the nearly-infinite scale of the entire universe and the nearly-infinitesimal scale of it's component electric charges.

Such reuse of information is how the universe achieves the "Lowest Information Point".

So we see this clear relationship between the entire universe, the electric charges composing it, and the dust that is the form of so much of it's heavier matter. But what else might we be able to discern from it? There is a finite number of stars in that universe, but whatever that number is it is information, and information must come from somewhere, and the universe always seeks the "Lowest Information Point".

Googling the number of stars in the universe gives us a figure of a billion trillion. This number would be written as a 1 followed by 21 zeros. There are higher estimates that I have seen but this is the generally accepted figure, not counting red and brown dwarfs as stars.

Students of chemistry may notice how close this is, relatively speaking, to Avogadro's Number, which is 6.02 followed by 23 zeros. In fact, our figure for the approximate number of stars is just about a six hundredth of Avogadro's Number.

Avogadro's Number is the number of atoms or molecules in an object, relative to it's mass in grams.

The atomic mass of iron is 56, meaning that there are 56 nucleons, protons and neutrons, in an atom of iron.

So, if we get a piece of iron with a mass of 56 grams, it will contain Avogadro's Number of atoms.

The atomic mass, sometimes called the atomic weight, of an element is always the total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus. Electrons have an equal, but opposite, electric charge to the proton but have so little mass that they don't count. We can also use molecular mass, meaning the total number of nucleons in a molecule.

A gram is about the mass of a paper clip. Avogadro's Number is an arbitrary unit based on a gram. If the gram was different then Avogadro's Number would be different.

The dust of which so much of the matter in the universe is composed, because of "The Bias Toward Dust", consists of many different elements which have different masses. We know that the component elements of dust must be heavier than the two lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, which were the original atoms of the universe before fusion in stars. We also know that, as a rule, lighter elements tend to be more abundant than heavier elements.

Suppose that the average mass of an atom in the dust of the universe is that of oxygen, with an atomic mass of 16. Remember that we should expect a mote of dust in the universe as a whole to be heavier than one on earth because dust in the universe, mostly debris from exploding stars that hasn't yet condensed by gravity into new stars, will tend to contain much more metal than dust on earth.

If Avogadro's Number is six hundred times the number of stars in the universe, and we divide that by sixteen, that means that if the average bit of dust in the universe had a mass of about 2/75 gram, it would mean that there is about the same number of stars in the universe as there is atoms in a typical speck of dust toward which the matter of the universe is biased and of which so much of the heavier matter of the universe is composed.

This would make perfect sense and would be an ideal example of the principle of "The Lowest Information Point". There is a bias toward dust because the scale of a typical mote of dust is exactly halfway between the scale of the universe itself and the scale of the nearly-infinitesimal electric charges of which the universe is composed. Then there is about the same number of atoms in one of these specks of dust as there is stars in the universe.

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Energy And Information In Water And Planetary Impacts

There have been a lot of investigations on this blog recently but science is what I really enjoy writing about.

A fundamental principle of my information theory, detailed in the compound posting on this blog "The Theory Of Complexity", August 2017, is that energy and information is really the same thing. We can see all around us how energy and information always end up being equivalent.

Let's look at two examples today, water and planetary impacts.

We can immediately see that energy and information is really the same thing because 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 we can see that energy and information is really the same thing is in how 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 our lives physically easier and also less complex.

ENERGY AND INFORMATION IN WATER

Distance in space is information. Since energy and information is really the same thing then distance must also be energy. This is why it requires energy to move an object from one place to another.

If distance is energy then the surface area of an object must also be energy. We know that the universe always seeks the lowest energy state. That is why the sphere is the default gravitational form of matter in the universe, such as for planets and stars. A sphere has the lowest surface area per volume of any three-dimensional geometric form. Since distance, and thus surface area, is energy, this makes the sphere the lowest energy state.

If we heat water, the heat is energy. The water will expand in volume, increasing it's surface area because surface area is equivalent to energy and information.

If the heated water is within colder water, the heated water will rise. This is because altitude is also energy, which shouldn't be surprising because altitude is distance. We can easily see how altitude is energy in that an object falls with greater force when it falls from a higher altitude. Also, if we give more orbital energy to a satellite then it will orbit at a higher altitude.

If we heat water to the boiling point it will expand in volume by a few percent. But more of the water will evaporate as it is heated. These water molecules in the air have the effect of greatly increasing the surface area of the water, because surface area is equivalent to energy.

Water evaporates from it's surface. But when the water reaches a certain temperature, related to the atmospheric pressure on the water, evaporation begins to take place throughout the volume of the water. This condition is known as boiling.

The bubbling within the water as it is boiling effectively increases the surface area of the water, because the heat that brings about boiling is energy and surface area is equivalent to energy. The surface of the water loses it's smoothness as the boiling point is approached and that also increases the surface area of the water.

The water molecules leaving the water because of the heat energy increases the surface area of the water, because surface area is equivalent to energy. But the molecules rise into the air, and altitude is also energy. This represents too much energy. But when water molecules condense together to form steam, this has the effect of decreasing the overall surface area of the water, bringing it back into line with the actual heat energy, even though the total surface area, including the steam droplets, is more than the surface area of the water before it was heated.

The formation of steam thus serves to maintain the equivalence of surface area and energy, because the altitude of the water molecules that left by evaporation is energy too.

Wind contains energy. Wind across water produces waves. The waves increase the surface area of the water to reflect the energy of the wind, because surface area represents energy.

Water evaporates because water is actually lighter than air by molecule, although it takes energy to break the hydrogen bonds in water. But upon reaching a certain altitude, with thinner and cooler air, water molecules condense together, upon a suitable condensation nuclei such as dust. When these droplets, which form clouds, condense together it means a loss of surface area.

Since surface area is energy, this must mean a loss of energy. But energy cannot just be lost, it shows up in the altitude energy of the now- much heavier than air large water droplets, and then the energy of their impact on the ground when they fall as rain.

ENERGY AND INFORMATION IN PLANETARY IMPACTS

The reason that impacts are still going on in the Solar System is explained by my information theory.

The Solar System formed, maybe four and a half billion years ago, when a massive star that preceded the sun exploded as a supernova. Only the largest stars can explode as a supernova. Much of the matter fell back together by gravity to form the sun and planets. We know that the sun is such a second-generation star because it contains heavy elements that are beyond it's current stage in the fusion process.

Each planet has it's own orbit. The planets do not collide for the simple reason that, if they were going to collide they wouldn't have formed separately in the first place.

But while planets themselves do not collide, there is still plenty of consolidation going on in the Solar System by gravity.

For each object in orbit around the sun, such as a planet or asteroid, there is it's orbital energy and the information of it's position. To understand why impacts take place during the ongoing consolidation of the Solar System, we must understand that we cannot keep the same orbital energy when the information of position in the Solar System is reduced by consolidation.

The reason for that, of course, is that energy and information is really the same thing.

Orbital energy is based on distance from the sun. The higher the orbit the higher the energy. If a meteor or asteroid, from a higher orbit, collides with the earth, so that it becomes part of the earth, the difference in the energy of it's former higher orbit shows up as the energy of the impact.

Another way of looking at it is that if the meteor or asteroid joins the earth so that the two now share information of position, that means less total information. Since energy and information is really the same thing then it must also mean less energy. But neither energy nor information can just disappear, it must go somewhere. The energy of the impact of the meteor or asteroid with the earth is where the excess energy went. The change to the earth's surface by the asteroid impact is where the latent information went.

This is, of course, because energy and information is really the same thing.  Distance is information and we know that a higher orbit is a higher energy orbit. This means that orbital energy and information of position is really the same thing. My information theory explains why distance is information. A higher number is no more complex, holds no more information, than a lower number. The complexity of a number, it's information level, is the value of the denominator when the number is expressed as a fraction or ratio.

9 is no more complex than 4 because 9 is really 9 / 1 and 4 is really 4 / 1.

But a ratio like 1 / 5 means that there are five possibilities and there must be information as to why one or more are included but the others are not.

Thus there is a complexity level of 5.

Distance is thus information because there are more possibilities of where something of a given size could be located within the distance, and the information of the entire distance would be necessary to specify where that location was.

A heavier impact by the meteor or asteroid on earth would involve more energy, but that means more information because energy and information is really the same thing. The greater information of the impact lies in the greater number of atoms and molecules that were displaced over a greater distance from their original positions.

This can only mean that energy and information is the same thing.

Thursday, July 2, 2020

The Latest Developments


NAVIGATION BY TELEPHONE POLES AND TRAFFIC LIGHTS

We have gotten really dependent on GPS. But remember that it can be vulnerable to something like a solar storm. Satellites can also be shot down.

There is a low-tech potential complement to the GPS system right in front of us.

Wherever people settle there will be telephone poles, spaced roughly evenly. We often express driving directions in terms of traffic lights.

Why not just attach a visible number to every traffic light and telephone pole? Location can then be easily expressed or determined by the nearest number. The information for the entire world could easily be stored on an app or added to Google Maps.

This would be so simple and convenient. There are distance markers on highways, why couldn't we do this?

Remember that one reason for the awkwardness of the GPS system is that we count by tens but the angular measurement is done by a base twelve system. We saw this in "The Queen Of Numbers", on the Progress Blog, www.markmeekprogress.blogspot.com .

SPACE JUNK AND RADIO RECEPTION

One thing that should get more attention is the connection between space junk and radio reception.

Much has been written about "space junk", the mostly metallic debris that is leftover since the beginning of the Space Age. The fragments orbit the earth at high speed and endanger space vehicles and satellites.

Trying to clean up space junk risks making it worse because it would be better to have one large piece, that can be more easily tracked and avoided, than to have it break into smaller pieces.

But there is a plus side to space junk. It should improve radio reception over long distances.

The earth's ionosphere reflects waves of longer wavelength. The longest waves, meaning the lowest frequency, can use the ionosphere as a waveguide. But shorter waves, particularly television and higher-fidelity radio waves, pass right through the ionosphere, which are layers of charged particles in earth's upper atmosphere.

That is where communication and broadcast satellites come in, receiving and retransmitting signals that would otherwise not be received because of the curvature of the earth.

But each bit of space junk is, in effect, a micro-satellite. The average altitude of space junk is about twice as high as the ionosphere. Space junk should shorten the wavelength threshold of the signals that are reflected back to earth and possibly lengthen the surface distance that waves that are not reflected can be received.

In fact, the increase in radio reception can be used as an index of the dangers of space junk, as more smaller pieces, as opposed to fewer larger pieces, will not only improve radio reception at a distance more but will also be more perilous to satellites and spacecraft.

WORD DEVELOPMENT

A quick look at an old book or document shows how words change over time. We can see how modern technology and signage is accelerating the changes in our time.

Aside from abbreviations,

Night is becoming Nite.

Through is becoming Thru.

You is becoming U.

Want To Be is becoming Wannabe.

For is also being expressed as 4.

THE RETURN OF HIEROGLYPHICS

We saw in "The Center Of The World", on the World And Economics Blog, www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com how important Egypt has been to human history. The ancient Egyptians used a system of writing based on pictures, known as hieroglyphics.

But the development of alphabets, first by the Phoenicians and then the Greeks, and Oriental writing with characters, hieroglyphics fell out of favor.

But then along came modern technology, and with it global travel and communications, and now hieroglyphics is making a major comeback.

On highway signs across the world, a knife and fork with a plate is the symbol for dining and food. A person sleeping is the symbol for accommodation. A fuel pump is the symbol of a filling station. Male and female figures are the symbols of washrooms.

The use of hieroglyphics will only increase. Other methods of writing have the advantage of being easier when writing is difficult and time-consuming. But that ceases to be the case with modern graphics technology.

The great advantage of hieroglyphics is that it requires little or no translation for people speaking different languages, and in our globalised world that makes all the difference.

Remember that we saw the real meaning of Egypt's pyramids in "The Underground Orion Correlation Theory", March 2016 on this blog.

Thursday, June 4, 2020

America's Plains And Rocky Mountains

In the Nineteenth Century America's frontier moved westward. The Louisiana Purchase added a vast tract of land west of the Mississippi River. Remember that "frontier" is the one word that defines America better than any other, as we saw in "The Land Of The Frontier", on the World And Economics Blog.

Albuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico. As a boy recently arrived in America, I remember my sense of accomplishment when I was able to spell "Albuquerque" as well as "Mississippi" and "Tallahassee". We have already visited another city in New Mexico, Santa Fe, in the posting on this blog, "The Would-Have-Been Nation Of Westland".

Albuquerque began as a Spanish settlement. It became part of independent Mexico and then passed to U.S. control. One reason for settlement of the southwest, other than gold and inexpensive land, was that the dry climate was beneficial for those with certain ailments.

New Mexico is where the first atomic bomb was tested. The fissile material can be either plutonium or the 235 isotope of uranium. Both materials are difficult to obtain. Only about one atom out of 140 in natural uranium is the 235 isotope. The rest are mostly the heavier 238 isotope.

An atom of uranium has 92 protons in it's nucleus. This means that an atom of the 235 isotope has 143 neutrons and the 238 isotope has 151 neutrons. Isotopes are atoms of the same element but with differing numbers of neutrons. The 238 isotope is held together by it's greater number of neutrons more securely so that it cannot be split by a high-speed neutron. Only the 235 isotope is fissionable. When the atom is split, several more neutrons are released and the chain reaction continues.

The one atom of the 235 isotope out of about 140 in natural uranium must be painstakingly separated, in one of several possible ways, in the process known as enrichment. Plutonium is a man-made element that comes from firing neutrons into uranium so that they join, rather than split, the nucleus. This creates an unstable uranium nucleus so that two neutrons transform into protons by ejecting electrons. This creates the new element of plutonium, since an element is defined by the number of neutrons, and plutonium, like uranium-235, is fissile.

The first nuclear detonation, the one tested in New Mexico, was a plutonium bomb, which is of a more complex design than a uranium bomb. The design of the uranium bomb was considered as so simple that it didn't need to be tested.

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a uranium bomb and the one on Nagasaki a plutonium bomb. The research and building of the atomic bomb had been called the Manhattan Project.

If you ever run out of things to worry about there is always how careless we can be with nuclear weapons and materials. Did you know that a nuclear bomb was once accidentally dropped in New Mexico, but the information was not released until much later?

Three U.S. states in a row, Georgia, South Carolina and, North Carolina all have had bombs dropped on them either accidentally or because of an aerial mishap. The one dropped off the coast of Georgia has never been found.

Four bombs were once dropped on California due to an aerial mishap.

Four bombs were dropped on Spain because of an aerial refueling accident, one of which landed in water.

Fortunately, none of the above bombs resulted in a nuclear detonation.

As for the security of nuclear materials, a vast amount of it, specifically plutonium, went missing after the end of the Soviet Union, and has never been recovered or accounted for.

Anyway, here is Albuquerque.

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

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.100916,-106.6675713,3a,75y,220h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNQLT0gjaheM-fQdCVuisVfTxJfSSdx0hyvHNxm!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNQLT0gjaheM-fQdCVuisVfTxJfSSdx0hyvHNxm%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0.13288252-ya83.0461-ro0.8508663-fo100!7i8192!8i4096

This is being written from Niagara County, in New York State. In 1995 there was the terrible bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. What kind of people would do something like this? The bomb was a rental truck filled with barrels of racing fuel mixed with nitrogen- based fertilizer. Even if this was an enemy of the country, this was in no way a military target and the vast majority of those killed were civilians, including many children.

Then came the unbelievable news that it was a local, Tim McVeigh, who had carried out the bombing. Someone who had grown up among us had done this. McVeigh was unrepentant about the bombing.

The first of the following scenes is at the Survivor Tree, so-called because it survived the bombing.


Tulsa, also in the state of Oklahoma, is known for two things, Christianity and oil. The U.S. south is known as the Bible Belt, and Tulsa is called " The Buckle of the Bible Belt".

One thing that populated California was the "Dust Bowl" of the 1930s on the Plains. Incessant plowing led to a tremendous amount of wind erosion, with great clouds of dust in the sky. Arrivals in California from Oklahoma were known as "Okies".


Denver is in a logical place for a city. It is immediately west of the Rocky Mountains and clearly originated as a place for people moving westward to rest and resupply before proceeding across the mountains.

Due to it's altitude, Denver is known as the "Mile-High City". This means that water boils more quickly in Denver than at lower altitudes, because there is less atmospheric pressure. If the earth's radius is about 4,000 miles, and Denver is a mile above sea level, a quick calculation of gravity, using the Inverse Square Law, tells us that an object that weighed 1,000 kg at sea level would weigh only 995 kg in Denver.


Salt Lake City is in the state of Utah. It is built in the relatively flat area, known as the Great Basin. We saw in my geology theory, described in "The Story Of Planet Earth", on the geology blog www.markmeekearth.blogspot.com that the Great Basin is actually where the north pole was in the previous polar era. It is flat, amid the Rocky Mountains, because of magma emergence from below as the longitudinal lines of magma emergence, caused by the earth's spin, converged there. This also explains the hot geyser, Old Faithful, in Yellowstone National Park.

This is explained in sections 6) and 7) of the theory. Near Salt Lake City is the Great Salt Lake. We saw in section L) of the theory that this is one of the regularly-spaced centers of magma emergence across the world. This is what provides the heat for Old Faithful. In our visit to "Hungary", we saw that the hot springs there are because Lake Balaton is another of the centers of magma emergence.

The reason that the Great Salt Lake is so-called is that this was once seafloor, pushed westward by the spreading of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge until it was forced upwards by collision with the Pacific Plate. This tectonic collision is also what formed the Rocky Mountains. Ocean water was trapped as the seafloor was forced upwards. Most of it evaporated, leaving it's salt concentrated in the Great Salt Lake.

Salt Lake City is also known for the Mormons. The following scenes begin in Temple Square, between the Salt Lake Temple and the Salt Lake Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is the oval domed building. The Temple could be thought of as the Mormon version of Solomon's Temple. The Seagull Monument commemorates when the Mormon Pioneers crops were being consumed by crickets, until seagulls descended and ate the crickets.

This is being written not too far from Palmyra, NY, where Joseph Smith lived and claimed to have been guided to the golden plates, written in a "Reformed Egyptian" language by the angel Moroni, and to have been able to translate the writing on the plates, which told about the appearance of Jesus in the western hemisphere, using a "seer stone", to produce The Book of Mormon, which is accepted by Mormons alongside the Bible.

This is Salt Lake City.


Kansas City is in both states of Missouri and Kansas. It is near the center of the U.S. St. Louis has it's arch, representing the " Gateway to the West". But the terrain of Missouri is green and looks "eastern". It is not until we pass Kansas City, entering Kansas, that the terrain really starts to look "western".


Wichita, in Kansas, began as a stopover on the way westward. It is the world capital of aircraft manufacturing. When I was eight years old, not only was "Wichita Lineman" always on the radio but we moved to a city with an airport. I was taken to the airport one day and got a chance to look inside a Cessna Skyhawk, which must have been manufactured in Wichita.

Remember the unit of measure for vertical distances that I thought of, called a "Grav" for gravity. If we measure time in seconds then a grav is 16 feet. This is a very convenient distance to measure by because if we measure an altitude in gravs then the square root of that number is the number of seconds that a compact object would take to fall from that height to the ground, neglecting air resistance. Conversely, the square of the number of seconds that the fall takes gives us the altitude in gravs.

This is Wichita.


Omaha, in the state of Nebraska, was, like Chicago, a great center of meatpacking.


Des Moines, in Iowa, originated with a French fort.


Milwaukee, in the state of Wisconsin, is to wheat what Chicago and Omaha are to beef. Wheat was shipped from Milwaukee out onto the Great Lakes. Before the opening of the Welland Canal the furthest east that a ship could go from Milwaukee was to Buffalo. The grain silos on Buffalo's Lake Erie waterfront held and processed great amounts of wheat from Milwaukee.

Milwaukee is also known for it's breweries. It was a focal point of German immigration, for whom beer was a necessity.


Fargo, in North Dakota, is named for one of the founders of Wells Fargo Bank. William Fargo was once mayor of Buffalo, NY. He had a mansion in Buffalo but it has been demolished.


Thursday, May 14, 2020

The Front And The Back

Here is something that I cannot see has ever been pointed out.

Suppose that there was a way to illustrate how living things fit into the universe around using simple everyday words. There actually is, the words are "front" and "back".

Humans have a front and a back. Animals have fronts and backs. But plants, such as trees, do not have a definable front and back. Plants have a top and bottom but not a front and back.

Nothing in the inanimate universe around us actually has a front and back. This includes stars, planets, galaxies, atoms, clouds, rocks, etc.

Like plants, things in the inanimate universe can have a top or a bottom. The rotational axis of a planet can be said to give it a one-dimensional definition of what could be a top or bottom. A spiral galaxy can likewise be said to have a one-dimensional rotational axis that can be defined as a top and bottom, although it is a matter of perspective which direction is the top and which is the bottom.

The reason that something like the rotational axes of planets and galaxies cannot have one end of the axis definitely defined as a top or bottom is that this would require another dimension of information.

Here is what I find to be so interesting. Only living things with free will, such as humans and animals, have a front and a back. Unlike plants and collections of inanimate matter, we have a two-dimensional definition. We have not only a top and a bottom but also a front and a back.

This reflects what we saw in the theory on this blog, "How Biology And Human Life Fits Into Cosmology", June 2016. There are two dimensions of information whereas inanimate matter has only one.

Remember that in my information theory, we are at a higher level of complexity than our inanimate surroundings. This is why we have free will. Free will doesn't make sense unless we are more complex than our surroundings. The reason that we can be wrong about things, which is a result of having free will, is that there is not enough complexity in our inanimate surroundings for everything that we can conceive of to exist.

In my information theory, plants are no more complex than the inanimate surroundings. That is why plants have a top and bottom but not a front and back. But plants are far more intricate than the surrounding inanimate environment, which means more complexity per mass. This also explains why we rely on plants for food but no one plant can provide a balanced diet. We require several plants because they are not as complex as we are.

The fact that plants are of far greater intricacy than, although no more complex than, the inanimate surroundings is shown in how objects of a similar size to the plants, such as rocks, do not have meaningful tops and bottoms. But the entire planet, with it's axial rotation, does have a top-bottom axis, although it cannot be any more than a matter of perspective which is the top and which is the bottom.

When we make things out of inanimate matter we are imposing our complexity on it. That is why many of the things that we make, such as houses, cars, appliances, signs, documents and, photographs do have fronts and backs.

So if inanimate matter has only this one-dimensional, top-bottom definition, then where could the definition of the other dimension, the front-back, have come from? It must have come from outside the universe. We must have been created by God. Plants show evidence of God's creation too, because of their far higher intricacy than their inanimate surroundings.

Testing The Theory Of "The Lowest Information Point"

We know that the universe always seeks the lowest energy state. An object will fall to the ground because it requires less energy than to hold it in the air. The default gravitational form of matter in the universe is a sphere because surface area is equivalent to volume and a sphere is the geometric form with the lowest surface area per volume.

My reasoning is that energy and information is really the same thing, because we cannot apply energy to anything without adding information to it, and we cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it.

Another way we can see how energy and information is really the same thing is in technology. We can use technology to make our lives physically easier but only at the expense of making them more complex. We can never, on a large scale, make our lives physically easier and also less complex.

The next step in my reasoning was that, if energy and information is really the same thing, and if the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, then shouldn't it also seek the lowest information state?

I found this to be a deep and far-reaching principle. The compound posting describing the theory is "The Lowest Information Point", December 2017.

This concept of the Lowest Information Point that the universe always seeks can be illustrated either algebraically or geometrically.

If we have two sets of related ratios, A / B = C / D and A / B = B / C, the second set is the Lowest Information State because it contains only three points of information, A, B and, C, while the first set also contains D. This shows how reusing numbers creates a lower information state because the denominator of one is also the numerator of the other.

Another way to illustrate the principle is geometrically. The universe should prefer a square, with both sides equal, to a rectangle because the square thus contains less information. The is the basis of my concept that, since the Big Bang, the universe has been moving toward a square in that, through nuclear fusion and gravity, the total number of things has been decreasing while the number of different things has been increasing. The rectangle has been closing into a square.

What if we could test my concept of "The Lowest Information Point"? We saw how the universe as a whole is moving in this direction but could there be any way to test it on a limited scale?

It probably would not be a lab experiment because gravity is the primary vehicle for moving the universe toward the Lowest Information Point. But the test or experiment would have to be a closed system, with no outside influences, so that it could be a microcosm of the universe as a whole.

Although one way to easily illustrate this principle is to put a hot object in a cooler environment. The longer side of the rectangle is the temperature of the object, the shorter side the temperature of the environment. The rectangle will move toward being a square, with both at the same temperature.

What about our Solar System?

We know that our sun is a second-generation star because it already contains heavy elements that are beyond it's current stage in the fusion process. A large star exploded as a supernova and scattered it's component matter across space. Some of the matter fell back together by gravity to form the sun and planets.

This falling back together of the matter after the supernova is a microcosm of the Big Bang, which began the universe, and the general moving of the matter of the universe from an extremely elongated rectangle toward a square is reflected in the vast number of pieces of matter from the supernova falling back together by gravity into the relatively few planets and moons of the Solar System.

Gravity and nuclear fusion are the primary vehicles in moving the universe from the extreme rectangle that resulted from the Big Bang, a vast number of total things starting with hydrogen atoms, but very few different things, to fewer total things but more different things.

What I mean by the number of "different things" is the compound forms that atoms collect in. For example: stars, planets, galaxies, rocks, clouds, etc.

This is what I mean by the universe moving from being a rectangle to a square, which is a lower information point than a rectangle because both dimensions of a square are equal. One dimension represents the total number of things in the universe and the other dimension represents the number of different things. The universe will be at it's Lowest Information Point when the two are equal, meaning only one of each different thing that exists.

The Solar System is not an entirely closed system. It may be occasionally affected by the gravity of passing stars. But the nearest outside star, the Alpha Centauri system, is four light-years distant. The center of the galaxy, around which our sun revolves, is so distant that it's tidal effect, the difference in gravity from one side of the Solar System to the other, is minimal.

Other than within the sun, the newly-formed second-generation star, the Solar System did not have fusion as a vehicle, but did have gravity. All elements up to uranium were produced but some were much more common than others.

Have you ever noticed the amazing match between the abundances of the most common atoms and the scales of the planets? The Solar System is doing what it can to restore the square, which is the Lowest Information Point because the information in it's two dimensions are equal.

From the Wikipedia article "Abundance Of The Chemical Elements", here is a chart of a few of the most abundant elements in the universe and their mass fractions in parts per million.

Hydrogen 739,000

Helium 240, 000

Oxygen 10,400

Carbon 4,600

Neon 1,340

Iron 1,090

Nitrogen 960

Silicon 650

Now look at the relative scales of the planets in the Solar System.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#/media/File:Planets2013.svg

Notice how there are two large planets, two somewhat smaller planets, and several small planets. This closely resembles the relative mass distribution of the most common elements.

This match between the two shows the validity of the Lowest Information Point, since it involves less information because it shares the same information. This is also part of another theory on this blog, "The Flow Of Information Through The Universe", January 2016, and that theory is actually an extension of "The Lowest Information Point".

Thursday, April 23, 2020

How Secularism Leads Us Astray

Have you ever noticed how secularism leads us astray? The Theory of Evolution, published as "On the Origin of Species" was introduced in 1859. In no way does it disprove the existence of God, and doesn't really try to explain how life arose from inanimate matter, but it became widely popular as the intellectual foundation of life without God.

But this changed our whole way of thinking in ways that have led us astray.

After the end of the First World War the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up. Two new nations were created, Czechoslovakia in the north and Yugoslavia in the south. Both of these nations were created by the victorious Allied powers in the war. Neither nation would last indefinitely, both coming apart in the 1990s.

But their ends would be very different. Even in the secular late Twentieth Century the primary difference would be based on historical religion.

Czechoslovakia was compromised of Czechs and Slovaks. Both had been historically Catholic. The breakup of Czechoslovakia was completely peaceful, and became known as the "Velvet Divorce".

Yugoslavia broke apart too, but the breakup was far from peaceful. Europe was horrified that organized massacres and the shelling of besieged cities was going on here.

How could the endings of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia possibly have been so different? What about, of all things, religion?

The two primary ethnic groups comprising Czechoslovakia were both historically Catholic. But Yugoslavia was compromised of historically Catholic Croatians and Slovenes, historically Orthodox Serbs and Montenegrins and, largely Moslem Bosnians.

The breakup of Yugoslavia was a multi-faceted conflict. But every one of the conflicts was between sides of different historic religions. Combat between Catholic Croatians and Slovenes and Orthodox Serbs, some combat between Croatians and Moslem Bosnians and, worst of all, between Serbs and Bosnians.

Later in the conflict the autonomous region of Serbia known as Kosovo, which was predominantly Moslem, would attempt to separate from Serbia. The only two Yugoslav republics that would remain federated throughout were Serbia and Montenegro, both of which are historically Orthodox by religion.

The only republic that separated peacefully was North Macedonia. That also follows the historic religious pattern. Like Serbia it was primarily Orthodox but it's church had earlier separated from the Serbian church.

This deadly conflict was 100% along the lines of historic religion. But why was Yugoslavia put together as it was in the first place? Serbia had not been part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire but was included as the core republic of Yugoslavia.

Could it be that the secular mentality that was brought about by evolutionary theory caused those in the victorious Allied powers to disregard how important religion was? Religion was rarely mentioned in the news of the breakup of Yugoslavia, other than pointing out that Bosniaks were primarily Moslem, but the multi-faceted conflict was entirely along historic religious lines.

The other great empire which was broken up after the First World War was that of the Ottomans. As in Europe, new nations were created out of it's former territories. A new nation was created called Iraq, centered on the historic city of Baghdad.

But, as in Europe, the secular mentality caused religion to be ignored. Sunni and Shiite Moslems, as well as an ethnic mix of Arabs and Kurds, were packaged together in one nation.

Such a new mixed nation needs an extended period under a strong leader to hold it together, what I refer to as the Strong Leader Binding Phase. In Yugoslavia this strong leader was Josip Broz Tito who was, by the way, a very good leader. The best known of the strong leaders of Iraq war Saddam Hussein. But, as we can see, the country fractures along religious lines when the strong leader dies or is removed.

Once again, the secular mentality led the victorious Allies to put together a country that ignored religious lines.

Humans are designed to believe in something. When we do not believe strongly in God we just make something else into our "religion". How many people have you known who treat their economic or political ideology like a religion?

In 1929 the global economy crashed, beginning in New York. The primary reasons were over-speculation and workers not being paid enough to be able to buy all of the goods that were being produced by the industrial complex that had been built up during the First World War.

Unlike Donald Trump in 2020, U.S. President Herbert Hoover did essentially nothing to support the economy, it being against his Republican ideology of "laissez-faire", leaving the economy alone. The resulting Great Depression was almost certainly the worst time in modern history, as it directly led to the Second World War. A party called the Nazis got the idea of absorbing unemployment by drastically increasing the armed forces and getting factories back to full production making military equipment for them.

With humans being designed to believe in something, ideologies like Nazism and Communism thrived by giving people who no longer believed in God something to believe in.

If it were true that we "evolved" without God then a human being is nothing more than a bundle of molecules that just happened to bounce together by random chance. If a person is really just a bunch of molecules, then what is really so bad about killing them?

Finally see if you can believe this. After the Theory of Evolution was introduced there were people who thought that wars were primarily religious in nature and that secularism would be a wonderful thing because it would end wars.

For more about how we must have been created by God see the creation blog, www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com

For more on how religion really does underly the world see the posting,"Understanding The World In Terms Of The South And West And The North And East", April 2016.