You Are Here - 6

Fig. 1 Ring of Fire

The doomsday clock, like the drumming rabbit, keeps on ticking closer to midnight (Doomsday Clock).

In an "unrelated" crescendo the Ring of Fire is also acting up (Fig. 1).

Whether these are fateful, existential eventualities, or simply coincidences, they converge in an area where most of the melt water from Greenland and Antarctica is ending up (The Ghost-Water Constant, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

That added volume and weight of water is bending and deforming the crust of the Earth (Ocean Bottom Deforming).

Regular readers and I have been expecting and observing this convergence to be a problem  (Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us?, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,11, 12, 13, 14).

Fig. 2 Two Hundred Times Worse

Especially since the scope of the amount of water that will end up there is unimaginably huge (Fig. 2).

Eventually, two hundred times the current weight of water pressing on the ocean floor could be concentrated in the area of the Ring of Fire (Fig. 1);.

For years Dredd Blog has been pointing out that water is moving from "Point A to Point B" and that is not a good thing for current civilization (The Gravity of Sea Level Change, 2, 3, 4; NASA Busts The Ghost).

And all of this is happening at a time when denial-ism is at an apex (A few minutes ago on MTP Daily, Chuck Todd argued that we should lose the Doomsday Clock).

There is also something profoundly wrong with the United States of America’s system of government, which is in among other things, in retrogression (American democracy is failing).

One has to wonder why people don't get the fact that we cannot go backwards in time by twisting the knobs on our wrist watch (Convergence - Fear of Death Syndrome).

Not even if we know that the past was better than the future is going to be (Where Have We Been?).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Tangled up in News ...

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When The Mayan Calendar Was Conceived

Fig. 1 Evolution of January

Today, I want to explain some of the different figures that I have talked about and used concerning the duration of the axial precession of the Earth.

I mean figures such as 26,000 yrs,  25,960 years, and 25,771 years (see e.g. A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar,  2; On The Origin and Future of Nomads).

Fig. 2 Evolution of July

It dawned on me that the axial precession is changing, albeit very slowly, like the Earth's daily rotation rate is changing.

My suspicion is that when the Mayan Calendar was developed they used knowledge "from somewhere" indicating that the axial precession rate was 26,000 years "way back then".

Currently, some scientists say that the axial precession rate is now 25,771 years, which is a decrease of 229 years (26,000 - 25,771 = 229).

Fig. 3 January - July temps over time (deg. C)

That is less than a 1% change (0.88% to be more precise).

For comparison, the Earth's rotation rate has changed about 4 hrs. in the past few thousands of years (Mitrovica 2015), which is a larger change of about 17% (4 hrs. ÷ 24 hrs. = 16.7%).

The Mayan Calendar suggests that it is based on the axial precession, because it is based on a 26,000 year cycle as the axial precession once was, and still is very, very close to what it was:

1 Day = Kin (keen)

20 Kin = 1 Uinal (a.k.a. Winal)

360 Kin or 18 Uinals = 1 Tun (toon)

20 Tuns = 1 K’atun (k’a toon)

20 K`atuns or 400 Tuns = 1 Baktun (backtoon)

13 Baktuns or 5,200 Tuns = 1 Great Cycle

5 Great Cycles = 26,000 Tuns (~26,000 yr. axial precession)

(A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar). My guess, based on Heyerdahl et. al, (Heyerdahl, History) is that the Incas, Mayans, etc. had "inherited" the ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, etc. astronomical understanding ... but who knows where those non-Mayans got it.

Fig. 4 August - December temps over time (deg. C)

The calendar's implication (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, and Fig. 3) is that natural climate change is mild enough to give flora, fauna, and human civilization sufficient time to adapt.

Another useful take away is that it evinces a true cycle that returns back to the older temperatures as the cycle completes its circuit and restarts anew (Fig. 3, Fig. 4).

Not so with Oil-Qaeda induced climate change, which is a one way street (Humble Oil-Qaeda, Oil-Qaeda: The Indictment, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

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Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 50

Fig. 1

I. Start Here

I have several things to talk about today.

The graphs at Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 show progress being made on the rebel software.

It is still in alpha, but it is already rebellious because it takes gravity, axial relocation, rotational relocation, and both sea level rise (SLR) and sea level fall (SLF) into consideration (New Type of SLC Detection Model, 2, 3, 4).

It's about time that all developers of software models, who deal with the issue of sea level change (SLC). not do so perfunctorily, but rather to stop and think.

Fig. 2

I mean, stopping and thinking about the damage that the notion of "global mean sea level" can do to public conception of SLC issues.

First of all, there is no such thing as "global mean sea level," so the fewer times we use it in public the better.

The reality is that at any given time there are a plethora of sea levels around the globe, which are different from one another, and do not fit into the plain vanilla folder "global mean sea level."

II. Progress So Far

The software uses tidal gauge data, from PSMSL that has 30 or more years of recorded sea level.

These tidal gauge stations are located all around the globe.

That means 728 tide gauge stations, out of 1,417 in the PSMSL database, pass muster for use by the modelling software.

Professor Mitrovica says "only use those with 30 years or more" of tidal records, and so this software now does that.

The gist of it is that history is taken into consideration first, then at the end of that history, the future begins.

The future is added onto the end of history.

What a concept eh?

III. Other Stuff

Those who went out and bought heavy coats and industrial grade furnaces (because Oil-Qaeda operatives, like Senator Inhofe, said "an ice age is coming") will be disappointed (Global Warming Pause is a hoax; see also this).

Our current year, not to be outdone by all the other years before it, is claiming, so far, to be the year of the hottie (2015 So Far Hottest on record, NOAA).

Did you NOAA 'bout that, or 'bout 64 degrees F in the deep freezer: Antarctica May Have Hit Highest Temperature on Record ?

And, for those who do not read Dredd Blog, why not read Exxon of Oil-Qaeda?

It is about an old but common theme on Dredd Blog, which is the Oil-Qaeda deceit that has been written about ad nauseam here.

IV. Back To The Software Model

Wouldn't you think it is important for your local sea port builder to know what the sea level is going to be when all the plans, permits, and bucks are put together on a project that, all things considered, takes 20-30 or so years to get ready?

The "global mean sea level" fairy tale is not sufficient for prime time sea port builders (Peak Sea Level - 2).

Lawsuits and fools galore will proliferate unless we stop that savage beast from appearing on the pages of stuff we read, and from the hearings we hold as well.

Oil-Qaeda preaches with a fuzzy lack of logic.

V. How About That Ceres & Pluto?

I am not talking about candidates for "The Decider" or "The High Priest In Chief."

I am talking about those very wiggy orbs that some of our space craft are orbiting, and sending home selfies, data stories, and stuff.

It would be a tragedy if we kept on keeping on without holding Oil-Qaeda accountable, and without LEAVING IT IN THE GROUND.

Because, it is a certainty that those spacecraft will have no home to call home to should we fail to stop destroying home in the name of "progress."

VI. Conclusion

Have a nice weekend anyway!

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Dawn Mission Nears Ceres Orbit Maneuvers - 2

Fig. 1 NASA: Strange 4 mi. high mountain

The strange pyramid or cone mountain on Ceres raises some questions (Fig. 1).

The top view shows bright spots from what appear to be impacts from meteorites, indicating that this thing might be made out of the shiny material that causes the bright spots in the crater. named "Occator."

The larger question to me is why is there no sign of impact from the crater so near to this mountain, when that impact crater's edge is only tens or hundreds of meters from the edge of the pyramid / cone shaped mountain.

Yet there is no discernible damage to the mountain or to the impact crater's edge (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Impact Crater & Mountain

An impact that close would more likely than not do serious damage to ice, powdered sand, clay, or similar material.

Perhaps it is made from a tough metal or white granite rock.

Or perhaps the meteorite melted underground material which then was squished upward to solidify in the odd pyramid / cone shape.

It is quite the mysterious place.

While looking at the large photo taken by the Dawn Spacecraft here, I noticed that many of the very small craters look like the vents on Vesta (see Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 11 and Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 46).

They are too much of perfect cones to have been impact craters like those around them.

A more likely scenario is that the impact object buried under the surface to encounter ice, which is converted to steam by the intense heat of the impact, then vents to the surface.

Something non-intuitive happened or the pyramid / cone is the tailings of an alien mine?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

You Are Here - 5

Fig. 1 U.S gets the worst sea level rise (SLR)

The U.S. has, for years now, been devastated by natural disasters and economic impact as a result of the damage that has been done to The Global Climate System (The Damaged Global Climate System, 2, 3).

At 26:35 on one of the videos below, Professor Mitrovica points out that this reality we live in now is going to continue, because the U.S. is a focal point of Global Warming Induced Climate Change, specifically by sea level rise (SLR) now (cf. Fig. 1).

It will literally destroy, not merely damage, the part of global international trade conducted through U.S. and other sea ports (The 1% May Face The Wrath of Sea Level Rise First, Greenland & Antarctica Invade The United States, 2, 3; Why The Military Can't Defend Against The Invasion, Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 44).

The American East Coast today, now, is a center of the high point of SLR, and will continue to be so (ibid, cf. Will This Float Your Boat - 10).

At an ecological conference considering those economic damage factors (which these climate change events are creating now, and have been creating for decades), it was pointed out by an "insurance specialist" (in the first video below).

The world renowned insurance company, Munich RE, sent Dr. Peter Hoeppe to explain how insurance company payouts now, due to climate change, have sky-rocketed.

He points out that these now accelerating payouts involve economic calamities that have been going on for "thirty years."

He closes the video presentation by explaining that current computer software models have habitually projected worsening conditions, however, they have also habitually underestimated the degree of those worsening conditions (A Paper From Hansen et al. Is Now Open For Discussion).

The fact is that SLR is a clear and present economic danger now, yesterday, and tomorrow:

"The surge that's scheduled to hit the American coastline Wednesday isn't coming from a hurricane, but it could still leave a feeling of helplessness in its wake.

Flood insurance rates are set to skyrocket when a new bill goes into effect on April 1. Known as the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2014 (HFIAA), it's going to drive the prices of flood insurance plans through the roof for residents of all U.S. coastlines.

How much could they increase? In some areas where flood maps show maximum risk, premiums that were previously $500 could be raised to as much as $20,000 a year or more, according to estimates released in 2013.

"My insurance is more than my mortgage," said Nancy Loft-Powers, a resident of Deerfield Beach, Florida, who told the Washington Post that her premium will be raised from the $7,500 she already pays annually. "I live by the beach in an old neighborhood. I pay [too much] insurance for a crap house that’s not great." (Flood Insurance Rates To Increase, emphasis added)

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"McLaughlins’ flood insurance renewal came with a whopping rate hike of $21,000. McLaughlin said he’s convinced FEMA intentionally kept consumers and real estate and mortgage companies in the dark about the rate increases.

The astronomical increase also took McLaughlin’s mortgage holder by surprise. An oversight of this magnitude tends to expose lenders to more risk because homeowners likely can’t afford to pay for the new policies." ($24,000 Insurance Policy, emphasis added).

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"Congress ordered a rate increase because the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is $24 billion in debt. It reached that historic amount because revenue from the discounted premiums could not cover payments on flood claims, particularly after two devastating hurricanes, Katrina and Sandy, on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.
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Rising sea levels from climate change make coastal living even more dangerous, conservationists say. And the flood-insurance program that went into the red paying flood claims is deep in debt to a U.S. treasury funded by taxpayers, advocates say." (Rising Waters, Flood Debt, emphasis added)

Go ahead and tell those people who are suffering an economic impact now, that they need to worry about their great, great, grandchildren when it comes to SLR and other climate change factors.

Tell them that they are only imagining this, because it is not an economic problem now.

But, they will know you are a clueless kook (Inhofe's One Man Troofiness Crusade), because they, unlike deniers, are in touch with the reality of where they are now (You Are Here).

Experts in the field of risk management would tell you the same thing:

The sea-level rise scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) do not necessarily provide the right information for high-risk coastal decision-making and management, according to new research involving scientists from the Global Climate Forum in Berlin.

A commentary, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, warns that the IPCC scenarios are often inappropriate or incomplete for the management of high-risk coastal areas as they exclude the potential for extreme sea-level rises. This missing information is also crucial for a number of policy processes, such as discussions by G7 countries to establish climate insurance policies and allocations of adaptation funding by the Green Climate Funds.

“Although the IPCC scenarios are a big step forward in understanding how the climate system works, these scenarios are not designed from the perspective of coastal risk management and, unfortunately, this is not spelled out clearly both within and beyond the IPCC reports,” says lead author Dr Jochen Hinkel from the Global Climate Forum. Dr Hinkel is also Lead Author of the coastal chapter of the Working Group 2 contribution to the latest IPCC report.

The IPCC sea-level rise scenarios are developed for the purpose of understanding the physics of the earth system through so called process-based models, which are models based on the laws of physics. As a consequence, these scenarios cover only the central range of possible sea-level rise. For example, the scenarios of IPCC Fifth Assessment Report estimate that by 2100 global mean sea-level is likely to rise by 0.28–0.98m relative to 1986–2005. The probability of staying within this range is, however, estimated to be only at least 66 per cent.
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“Consider, for example, the situation of London,” explains Dr Hinkel, “which is protected against coastal floods through the Thames Estuary Barrier. There was concern that rapid sea-level rise would not allow sufficient time to upgrade or replace the Thames Estuary Barrier because such large engineering tasks require 25–30 years for planning and implementation.” For such a situation, the IPCC scenario range is not the right piece of information, because there is a 0–33 per cent probability of sea-level rise lying outside of this range. Such a high residual risk is not tolerable from the perspective of protecting major cities from sea-level rise. These situations require high-end scenarios in order to make sure that there are options available that can be realised even in the worst case to come.

Co-author Professor Carlo Jaeger from the Beijing Normal University says: “Ongoing work on projecting the central range of sea-level rise should be complemented with the development of high-end scenarios for different time horizons that correspond to different real-world coastal management decisions.”

“Such scenarios should also consider all the information on future sea levels including semi-empirical models, physical constraints on ice-sheet dynamics and paleo-records of sea-level change, because coastal high-risk management requires an analysis of decisions against all available knowledge, including all uncertainties and also ambiguities amongst expert opinions and their distinct approaches,” says Dr Hinkel.

(Global Climate Forum, emphasis added, cf. this PDF). Those "paleo-records of sea-level change" mentioned in the quote contain records of abrupt SLR.

Such as a "1m sea level rise in a few years or less" in America only several thousand years ago (The Surge: A Forgotten Aspect of Sea Level Rise, quoting NASA GISS).

This is a very serious economic problem now, not just for the millions who have homes and other buildings on the sea coast which are being damaged now, or to those whose economic safety is endangered by a $24,000 a year flood insurance policy.

Economic impact is growing at an exponential rate as billions of dollars are being spent now by federal, state, county, and municipal sea port authorities and other infrastructure regulators and risk managers.

Those officials are hiring architectural and construction companies to present plans to cope with the now, and with the future (New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage - 12).

The problem they feel now, and will face continually into the future, has recently been exacerbated by the addition of SLF understanding to the sea level change (SLC) phenomenon.

Trillions upon trillions of dollars, euros, yuans, marks, rubles, pesos, and other currencies have been, are now, and will continue to be, spent by port authorities to contemplate, design, remodel, reconstruct, and/or relocate sea ports.

That is, once they figure out if their particular sea port is going to suffer from the now ongoing SLF or the now ongoing SLR form of SLC (Peak Sea Level - 2).

The East Coast of America, now, has the highest SLR, and has had it for years.

Yes, America is number one in SLR  today, and will continue to have it that way (Social Dementia Causes Heated Misunderestimations - 2, Will This Float Your Boat - 3, Agnotology: The Surge - 16, and see Professor Mitrovica in the second video below).

Read these too (miscellaneous sea port problems foreseen by somewhat aware people):

"On a humid March day, trucks laden with goods bump through pools of seawater on roads to the sinking Dutch-era port." (Indonesia)

"More than 130 port cities around the world are at increasing risk from severe storm-surge flooding, damage from high storm winds, rising and warming global seas and local land subsidence." (130 Port Cities)

"In a survey posed to port authorities around the world, the Stanford team found that most officials are unsure how best to protect their facilities from rising sea levels ..." (Seaports need a plan)

"For example, if relative sea levels rise 4 feet, 72 percent of ports in the region will be at least partially inundated." (EPA Says, p.3)

"Port Perceptions of Sea Level Rise ... Seaport managers concerned and under informed" (Stanford Ocean Council says ...)

"Ports have a special need to look ahead, assess their risks and begin adapting to climate change. With truly massive fixed infrastructure, large port facilities worldwide are starting to pay particular attention to the new outlook that sea level rise has only just started. With a useful life of a half century or longer for their assets, it is very relevant to start planning ahead for the new reality. " (Seaport Magazine, Englander says ...)

"Using a mid-range scenario for future sea level rise, we find that, by 2030, more than half of the 52 communities we analyzed on the East and Gulf Coasts can expect to average more than two dozen tidal floods per year. Importantly, the rise in the frequency of tidal flooding represents an extremely steep increase for many of these communities. In the next 15 years alone, two-thirds of these communities could see a tripling or more in the number of high-tide floods each year. The mid-Atlantic coast is expected to see some of the greatest increases in flood frequency. Because many communities are already coping with tidal floods, a tripling in their frequency means that, by 2030, such floods could occur more than once a week." (Union of Concerned Scientists, see third video below).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here

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Prof. Dr. Peter Hoeppe:

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Prof. Dr. Jerry Mitrovica:

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You Are Here - 4

In the first post of this series I mentioned the psychological confusion generated by YAH ("you are here") maps.

I don't know about other mammals, but one big factor that throws people off in YAH scenarios is the "Y" ... the "you" ... the human.

We can never understand where WE are unless WE know what WE are.

Dredd Blog has been criticized ad nauseum over the years for explaining that so long as we don't know what a human is, we will continue to be disoriented in the context of YAH.

Today, I will use the space program that has been ongoing for years and years to illustrate the point.

We landed on the moon on this date almost 50 years ago (July 20, 1969).

Only a few years ago we discovered that only 1% of our genetic material is human, and the other 99% of our genetic material is microbial.

Not only that, we also learned that the microbial cells in and on us keep us healthy and/or alive (see video and this).

Anyway, the space program was designed without our knowing the "Y" of "YAH."

So, how are we going to exist in space without 99% of ourselves?

Is that why our bones turn rubbery in space after awhile?

What microbes do we have to take with us, including backup systems, when we travel in space?

You ask yourself some similar questions now ... but watch the video and especially the Q&A following the lecture to give yourself ideas.

Dr. Bassler, in the video below, (watch it to find out some critical YAH information) explains that we have only very recently found out that the "Y" is not what we have though it was for a few thousand years (On The New Meaning of "Human", 2).

Got "Y" ?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Dr. Bonnie Bassler lecture, with a follow-up question answer session:

25:00 the language of bacteria has a basic word, with "carbons" (carbon atoms) added on to that basic molecule so as to make additional "words" used by different species of bacteria.

29:30 E. carotovora releases antibodies that it is immune to, so as to eradicate competition that are not immune to those antibodies.

39:00 many, if not all, bacteria use a word known by all bacteria, when communicating with other species of bacteria different from their own species.

57:25 Q&A session ... why did we just find this out 400 years after microbes were discovered using the first microscopes? "hubris ... snobbery ... dogma that only higher species have language, etc."

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The New Paradigm: The Physical Universe Is Mostly Machine - 3

Putting a face on machine mutation

This series is about molecular machines (see the first post The New Paradigm: The Physical Universe Is Mostly Machine for a list of Dredd Blog posts about it going back to 2009).

With all the Dredd Blog posts about molecular machines over the years, I am pleased to see it now go mainstream.

The science that we are composed mostly of molecular machines such as RNA, ribosomes, and DNA, can't be held back any longer I suppose.

So, The New Your Review of Books indicates:

Today, driven by ongoing technological innovations, the exploration of the “nanoverse,” as the realm of the minuscule is often termed, continues to gather pace. One of the field’s greatest pioneers is Paul Falkowski, a biological oceanographer who has spent much of his scientific career working at the intersection of physics, chemistry, and biology. His book Life’s Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable focuses on one of the most astonishing discoveries of the twentieth century—that our cells are comprised of a series of highly sophisticated “little engines” or nanomachines that carry out life’s vital functions. It is a work full of surprises, arguing for example that all of life’s most important innovations were in existence by around 3.5 billion years ago—less than a billion years after Earth formed, and a period at which our planet was largely hostile to living things. How such mind-bending complexity could have evolved at such an early stage, and in such a hostile environment, has forced a fundamental reconsideration of the origins of life itself.
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[The ribosome] is an entity so tiny that even with an electron microscope, it is hard to see it. As many as 400 million ribosomes could fit in a single period at the end of a sentence printed in The New York Review. Only with the advent of synchrotrons—machines that accelerate the movements of particles, and can be used to create very powerful X-rays—have its workings been revealed. Ribosomes use the instructions embedded in our genetic code to make complex proteins such as those found in our muscles and other organs. The manufacture of these proteins is not a straightforward process. The ribosomes have no direct contact with our DNA, so must act by reading messenger RNA, molecules that convey genetic information from the DNA. Ribosomes consist of two major complexes that work like a pair of gears: they move over the RNA, and attach amino acids to the emerging protein.

All ribosomes—whether in the most humble bacteria or in human bodies—operate at the same rate, adding just ten to twenty amino acids per second to the growing protein string. And so are our bodies built up by tiny mechanistic operations, one protein at a time, until that stupendous entity we call a human being is complete. All living things possess ribosomes, so these complex micromachines must have existed in the common ancestor of all life. Perhaps their development marks the spark of life itself. But just when they first evolved, and how they came into being, remain two of the great mysteries of science.

(How You Consist of Trillions of Tiny Machines, emphasis added). Those "mysteries of science" are still "mysterious" because we can't yet grasp that the facts of abiology are not the facts of biology.

Abiology is the absence of biology, having evolved billions of years prior to biological life forms coming into existence (e.g. cosmology).

The trance some scientists harbor, or at least the group trance that some science writers are in, is illustrated by this sentence in the piece I just quoted from:

"One of the most ancient of ... biological machines is the ribosome..."

(ibid, emphasis added). No, Tim Flannery (author of the piece) there is no such thing as a "biological machine," so that verbiage is more bad nomenclature (Good Nomenclature: A Matter of Life and Death).

Machines are all abiotic, thus, molecular machines, being machines, are abiotic, not biotic.

There is no more reason to call a ribosome "biological" than there is to call your lawn mower "biological."

Both are used by biological entities, but that does not change their abiotic machine nature (a lawnmower does not become biological merely because it is used by a biological entity).

This same confusion about what is "bio" (life) and what is "abio" (non-life) has been perpetuated about viruses for a century:

For about 100 years, the scientific community has repeatedly changed its collective mind over what viruses are. First seen as poisons, then as life-forms, then biological chemicals, viruses today are thought of as being in a gray area between living and nonliving: they cannot replicate on their own but can do so in truly living cells and can also affect the behavior of their hosts profoundly. The categorization of viruses as nonliving during much of the modern era of biological science has had an unintended consequence: it has led most researchers to ignore viruses in the study of evolution. Finally, however, scientists are beginning to appreciate viruses as fundamental players in the history of life.

(On The Origin of the Genes of Viruses). I also hypothesized that viruses are candidates for being the first abiotic molecular machine entities to morph or evolve into cyborgs, i.e., the first to become composed of both abiotic and biotic components (compare The Uncertain Gene - 9 with On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 2).

Thus, I have also advocated for a discipline called "Abiology 101," so that the confusion and cacophony about these two opposite realms can begin to go away:

The subtitle of today's post could be "The Abiology Rebellion."

That is because, in today's post, I am going to talk about Abiology, a subject that is not yet in some of our parent's dictionaries.

Abiology is an area of science that is like Rodney "I don't get no respect" Dangerfield when it comes to the entirety of evolution.

Regular readers know that in various and sundry posts on the Dredd Blog System we have bemoaned the dearth of research within evolutionary circles concerning the subject of abiotic evolution or Abiology.

I have even done so to the point that I now encourage more scientific textbooks with the title "Abiology 101" in addition to and in contrast with "Biology 101" (see e.g. Did Abiotic Intelligence Precede Biotic Intelligence?, Putting A Face On Machine Mutation - 3).

A fair definition of Biology is:

... the science of life or living matter in all its forms and phenomena, especially with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior.

(Dictionary, emphasis added). A fair definition of Abiology, then, ought to be:

... the science of non-life or non-living matter in all its forms and phenomena, especially with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior.

(see e.g. abiological).

(Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 27). I have also done two series which look closely at the evolutionary "abio" events that took place billions of years prior to the advent of carbon based "bio" (life).

Those two series are: On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and The Uncertain Gene, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

The first proto-ribosomes (which I call robosomes in On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 6) were abiotic molecular replication machines prior to the existence of biological life.

My guess is that one of the next areas of discovery to make it to Mainstreamville will be to realize that wireless communication is done by molecular machines, and also by biological entities using those molecular machines.

Whether done by exclusively abiotic dynamics or by cyborgs (symbiotic combos of both abiotic and biotic entities), it is a reality:

It is well accepted that all objects, whether living or nonliving, are continuously generating electromagnetic fields (EMFs) due to the thermal agitation of their particles that possess charges. Interest in EMFs as alternative forms of cell-to-cell communication can be traced back to at least the second decade of the 20th century. Interactions between EMFs and biosystems have been intensively studied for over a century and a quantitative understanding of many interaction mechanisms exists, There is much evidence that biological processes can be induced or modulated by induction of light of characteristic frequencies.

Recently, distant interactions between mammalian cells through EMF coupling have been shown. Distant (non-chemical) interaction in biosystems is not limited to interactions at the cellular level. Biosystem interaction has been reported at the level of plants, insects and other biosystems.

In 1997 Cosic proposed that there is a resonant interaction between macromolecules that plays an essential role in their bioactivity. The key point of Cosic's finding is the assignment of specific spectral electromagnetic (EM) characteristics of proteins to their specific biological function. Proteins with common biological functionality are known to share one significant peak, called the Consensus Frequency, which is acknowledged to represent the region responsible for the biological functionality. Bio-molecules with the same biological characteristics recognize and bio-attach to themselves when their valence electrons oscillate and then reverberate in an electromagnetic field. Protein interactions can be considered as resonant energy transfer between the interacting molecules. In simple words each protein and biomolecule has its fingerprint electromagnetic characteristics that can be used for its identification. In living systems long-range electromagnetic fields exchange messages across a distance because of matching emissions and absorption spectra. Non-resonating, unwanted random signals are excluded simply because they do not resonate.

(On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 11). An interesting candidate for analysis was written about recently in National Geographic (With Sonar-Reflecting Leaves, Plant Lures Bats to Poo in it).

This post is getting a bit long, so I will get more into the world of molecular machines, which make up the foundation upon which biological life is based, in future posts of this series.

The previous post in this series is here.

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Enjoy the paradigm shift Hue.

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Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 46

Fig. 1 Grooves around Vesta's Equator

Regular readers are aware of a hypothesis called the Exploded Planet Hypothesis (e.g. Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 40) which I found out about in the scientific paper: The Challenge of the Exploded Planet Hypothesis, Cambridge Journals Online, International Journal of Astrobiology / Volume 6 / Issue 03 / July 2007, pp 185-197.

It is a legitimate hypothesis or theory that I have written about over the years (e.g. Weekend Rebel Science Excursion, 7, 11; Exploded Planet Hypothesis, 2; Are Some or All Comets Pieces of an Exploded Planet?).

The current cosmological hypothesis or theory of planetary and stellar evolution is discussed in the context of exploding stars, which also impact planets (On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 5).

We discussed the issue when the Dawn Spacecraft (NASA Dawn Mission) was at the asteroid Vesta (Fig. 1), before it moved on to its current location at the asteroid Ceres .(Dawn Mission Nears Ceres Orbit Maneuvers).

The phases of a planet exploding is illustrated in Fig. 2 - Fig. 5.

Fig. 2

Imagine a planet with lots of water with a continent at one of its poles, a continent with a miles-thick ice sheet (Fig. 2).

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Cosmic forces interacting with internal forces, weaken the planet (Fig. 3).

Fig. 5

Eventually the planet breaks up.

The ice covered continent is ejected into space as huge chunks of crustal debris mixed with the water and miles-thick ice chunks (Fig. 4).

As space, time, and gravity work on the chunks, some join to form odd shaped space junk, maintaining an ungainly shape for a span of time.

Let's call one of them "Proto-Ceres," which will eventually become the asteroid Ceres (Fig. 5).

Other chunks from parts of the planet without as much ice or water, but with large layers of the planet's surface strata laid down by water and wind over millennia, eventually form a less perfect spherical form, such as the asteroid Vesta (Fig. 1).

If the once-planetary fragments which have now become an asteroid we call Proto-Ceres, is large enough, it will eventually morph into a sphere:

"Planets are round because their gravitational field acts as though it originates from the center of the body and pulls everything toward it. With its large body and internal heating from radioactive elements, a planet behaves like a fluid, and over long periods of time succumbs to the gravitational pull from its center of gravity. The only way to get all the mass as close to planet's center of gravity as possible is to form a sphere. The technical name for this process is 'isostatic adjustment'."

(Why are planets round?). Remember that some of the debris is sharp-edged granite or granite-like boulders miles wide.

Fig. 6

Those came from sections of the planet's rock layers of crust and were ejected along with the great ice sheets and other matter.

As the Proto-Ceres slowly, over many years, morphed into the asteroid Ceres (Fig. 6) (over time the ice, dirt, sand, rocks, and water were relocated by the forces of gravity).

The giant chunk of granite or granite-like rock still

Fig. 7 Pyramid

emerges from the surface of the asteroid Ceres, appearing as a pyramid shaped protrusion which is being called a mysterious mountain (Fig. 7).

There are other mysteries such as the bright spots (Fig. 6) which are still being studied.

When the software problems are rectified, and the Dawn Spacecraft moves into the lower orbit of about 250 miles above the surface, more will be known and discovered.

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UPDATE: Is this (Fig. 8) a photo of the bright spots on Ceres when the Dawn Spacecraft was on the dark side of Ceres, i.e. when the other side was facing the Sun?

Fig. 8 NASA Photo Journal (click to enlarge)

The information pertaining to the photo does not specifically say:

"This image of dwarf planet Ceres, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on June 15, 2015, shows a cluster of mysterious spots that are clearly brighter than their surroundings. Dawn took this image at an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers). The resolution is 1,400 feet (410 meters) per pixel."

(Dawn Survey Orbit Image 16). The reason I ask is because in the first post about the Ceres approach, I opined that:

Thus, the light generation seems to not be a reflection, but rather light generated from two sources inside the crater.

However, some of the other bright spots don't seem to glow in the dark, so we will have to wait a few days for Dawn to enter orbit (Friday).

Then Dawn can take a look at the dark side of Ceres to see if any of them glow all the way across the dark side, or instead fade out.

If they fade out slowly the source could be sunlight generated phosphorescence that fades out while on the dark side, to be regenerated on the sun facing side --but if they immediately go out and stay out on the dark side, they could be only some type of reflection from a shiny surface at the floor of the crater (such as a flat surface of frozen ice or other reflective material).

But if they glow or shine all the way across the dark side, then the light is generated by a source in the crater rather than being merely a reflection of sunlight.

(Dawn Mission Nears Ceres Orbit Maneuvers). The photo is darker than usual so that is why I wondered about it.

It is a game changer if the spots are light generators rather than light reflectors, but less of a game changer if they are phosphorescent or have persistent luminescence.

Is BS The Only Thing Not Subject To The Law of Entropy ?

The entropy species

Introduction

In November, 1956, Isaac Asimov published a short story entitled: "The Last Question" (HTML) (PDF).

On June 16, 1965 Bob Dylan recorded "Like A Rolling Stone" (video below) which was released in the album "Highway 61 Revisited," an album which also contained the song "Highway 61."

In 1934-1961 Arnold J. Toynbee wrote "A Study of History," which chronicled the dynamics of 19 "major" human civilizations through their "birth" and "death."

In January of 1845 Edgar Allan Poe published "The Raven," a narrative poem that touches upon the "birth" and "death" of the mysterious energy of romance, and some of its consequences.

All of those works, in one way or another, are concerned with the notion of entropy.

Entropy is a subject of physics as well as being a subject concerning the scope of the existence of human civilization, and even the scope of the existence of the current configuration of the universe itself.

In this post, today, I want to discuss some of the similarities in the concept of entropy, as they apply to our personal vision of ourselves, as well as some ways they apply to human civilization's vision of itself.

Since the title of today's post contains the word "BS," I will not neglect to include some of those notions along the way, so as to make an attempt to answer the question formed by the title.

It is About Dynamics of Energy

The concept of the laws of thermodynamics goes back in time to a point before the advent of quantum mechanics, so that particular "law" has had to have epigenetic evolutionary change over that span of time.

Nevertheless, some "old timey" science still adheres to some of it (If Cosmology Is "Off," How Can Biology Be "On?").

One way of looking at the concept of entropy is the "birth" and "death" of "useful energy" (compare Big Bang with Heat Death of the Universe).

Everything in between is a matter of the dynamics of entropy (in fact, the Big Bang itself could have been an entropic event).

Entropy of Energy

Oil Is Not Energy

BS is rife and epidemic in U.S. culture to the point that we have a right to BS as a matter of law (It Takes A Culture To Raise A Compulsive Liar).

That includes Oil-Qaeda sponsored lies about no entropy, i.e. never running out of poison crude oil, even on our finite planet with finite resources (The Peak of The Oil Lies - 6).

Nevertheless, Oil-Qaeda will get to "Nevermore" one way or another.

Energy is Not Endless-Energy

Which leads to the notion of renewable, clean, and yes, endless energy (no entropy).

One of the laws of thermodynamics has to do with a perpetual motion machine, which is a myth and an illegality.

But with BS, perpetuity itself is also very difficult to grasp as a myth.

Unless one grasps that a perpetual motion machine is a mythical machine that creates new, previously non-existent energy in order to re-power itself.

Some scientists took a look at entropy and saw easily that poison crude oil was limited, i.e. while there is enough of it to kill us all, there is not enough to keep us going forever.

So they naturally looked elsewhere for perpetuity.

One of those scientists was  Freeman Dyson, who came up with a hypothesis that advanced civilizations would develop what is now called a "Dyson Grid" or a "Dyson Sphere"  (Mystery Bubble - Signal, Grid, or What?, Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 40).

Such a grid or sphere is a system which is designed to harness the energy of the sun / star at the center of a solar system.

This is what "The Last Question" (by Asimov) details, in the sense that they tapped the solar energy of their sun.

To do so they used vast computer controlled systems placed in space:

"For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.

But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.

The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower."

(ibid, link in first sentence of this post). I won't spoil it for you, so read it all, because it is quite interesting.

Entropy of Civilizations

This brings up the work of a once-very-popular historian, as I mentioned in the Introduction, who made this observation:

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). This is the type of entropy that is not a matter of pure physics.

It is, rather, something within the province of the realm known as social decay (A Decline Of The American Republic).

A type of decay which Freud attributed to group dynamics, and a psychology that was in need of a still non-existent therapy (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch).

Entropy of The Cosmos

There was once an accepted theory called the oscillating universe theory which is no longer favored, however, a hybrid version has now been advanced with a similar result in mind.

The scientists who have advanced it describe hypotheses which ostensibly argue that the universe is perpetual (Autopoiesis: It's Not Just For Machines Anymore).

However, the predominant theory now is still:

"The heat death of the universe is a historically suggested ultimate fate of the universe in which the universe has diminished to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and therefore can no longer sustain processes that consume energy (including computation and life). Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other processes may no longer be exploited to perform work. In the language of physics, this is when the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium (maximum entropy)."

(Heat Death of the Universe, links & formatting removed). This is an old back and forth debate in science.

Entropy of BS

A new paradigm in science is that the universe is mostly composed of abiotic matter, which takes the form of molecular machines (The New Paradigm: The Physical Universe Is Mostly Machine).

Therefore, it is subject to the laws of thermodynamics.

Nevertheless, some of us seem to be heading toward the Supreme BS Court in order to get the Cosmic Justices there to overturn the laws of thermodynamics.

The strategy is to thereby make everything immortal (like Oil-Qaeda did with oil through BS).

BTW, that is where everything ended up in the answer to "The Last Question" in Asimov's fiction (the same temperature).

As to Bob Dylan and Edgar Allan Poe, my take on their work, alluded to in the Introduction, is that "nevermore" and "like a rolling stone" are just artful ways of describing "entropy" (down hill until rolling nevermore).

As for BS, its users will have to pass The Test too.

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The Evolution of Models

Model evolution

The Darwinian thinking, in its embryonic state, was not a concept that abiotic entities evolve, no, it was a line of thinking based on the evolution of biotic entities.

For example, those of that ilk in that time long ago never contemplated how genes evolve, no, because they did not know that genes even existed, much less that they evolved.

Then, upon the discovery of genes and DNA, the focus changed to genetics and why genes evolve.

Of, course the "obvious" answer to that was "because they are selfish."

Our evolutionary thought processes have evolved too (The Uncertain Gene, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

Now, the real question is not what evolves, rather, the real question is why they evolve.

Even the hypotheses and theories about why "things and non-things" evolve also evolve.

Take natural selection, which was originally a concept far less evolved than it is now.

Now, it is trending towards randomness, now having evolved far away from "survival of the fittest" in the biological science realms (but see The Fittest Stars, Planets, & Species).

Where there is randomness in thinking there is variation in thinking:

"The hypothesis put forth to explain the origins of the Universe, our solar system, and our planet is called the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory IS NOT EVOLUTION! (The theory of evolution deals with living organisms, once they have come into existance" [sic] - Origins of Life).

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"What exactly happened after the Universe was born? Why did stars, planets and huge galaxies form? These are the questions that concern Viatcheslav Mukhanov, and he tries to find the answers with the help of mathematical physics. Mukhanov, Professor of Physics at LMU, is an acknowledged expert in the field of Theoretical Cosmology - and he has used the notion of so-called quantum fluctuations to construct a theory that provides a precise picture of the crucial initial phase of the evolution of our Universe: For without the minimal variations in energy density that result from the tiny but unavoidable quantum fluctuations, one cannot account for the formation of stars, planets and galaxies that characterize the Universe we observe today." - Cosmology Is Evolution

(emphasis added, cf. On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 12). Sometimes scientists get a bit possessive about "their science and their universe."

Anyway, models of sea level rise also evolve.

With the same problems.

There are as many models as there are modellers and model problems, so, let's consider some:

"EdGCM provides a research-grade Global Climate Model (GCM) with a user-friendly interface that can be run on a desktop computer. For the first time, students can explore the subject of climate change in the same way that actual research scientists do. In the process of using EdGCM, students will become knowledgeable about a topic that will surely affect their lives, and we will better prepare the next generation of scientists who will grapple with a myriad of complex climate issues.

Our goal is to improve the quality of teaching and learning of climate-change science through broader access to GCMs, and to provide appropriate technology and materials to help educators use these models effectively. With research-quality resources in place, linking classrooms to actual research projects is not only possible, but can also be beneficial to the education and research communities alike." - (Columbia University, American).

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"Climate scientists build large, complex simulations with little or no software engineering training, and do not readily adopt the latest software engineering tools and techniques. In this paper, we describe an ethnographic study of the culture and practices of climate scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre. The study examined how the scientists think about software correctness, how they prioritize requirements, and how they develop a shared understanding of their models. The findings show that climate scientists have developed customized techniques for verification and validation that are tightly integrated into their approach to scientific research. Their software practices share many features of both agile and open source projects, in that they rely on self organisation of the teams, extensive use of informal communication channels, and developers who are also users and domain experts. These comparisons offer insights into why such practices work." - (Toronto University, Canadian)

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"This educational software is originally deviced for use in high schools as part of the french curriculum in Life and Earth Sciences. It realises climate simulations given user-chosen parameters. Through a friendly interface, the user chooses the length of the simulation (from 100 years to a few billions years) and the initial conditions, and tests the influence of various parameters involved in climate: astronomic forcing, atmospheric composition, carbone cycle, climatic feedbacks (ice albedo, vegetation, ocean, water vapor). Simulation results (such as temperature, sea level and ice cover), calculated on the flys by a physical climate model, appear on the interface, through curves and images." - (SimClimat, French)

The development of a software solution that is prospective, i.e., it is going to be used to anticipate events going forward, brings up problems that remind me of sayings on the Quotes Page:

"Scientists have discovered that 'the present' has always existed, but they are not sure about 'the past' and 'the future'." -Dredd

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"One thing is for sure on the subject of global warming induced climate change: if there was ever a time to err on the safe side, it was long ago." - Dredd

Now, back to my codeine coding.

The next post in this series is here.

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TEDx Talk excerpt from transcript of video below:

"[Unfortunately, talking about climate forecasts is often a great way to end a friendly conversation!] Climate models tell us that by the end of this century, if we carry on burning fossil fuels at the rate we have been doing, and we carry on cutting down forests at the rate we have been doing, the planet will warm by somewhere between 5 to 6 degrees centigrade. That might not seem much, but, to put it into context, in the entire history of human civilization, the average temperature of the planet has not varied by more than 1 degree. So that forecast tells us something major is coming, and we probably ought to pay attention to it.

But on the other hand, we know that weather forecasts don’t work so well the longer into the future we peer. Tomorrow’s forecast is usually pretty accurate. Three day and five day forecasts are reasonably good. But next week? They always change their minds before next week comes. So how can we peer 100 years into the future and look at what is coming with respect to the climate? Should we trust those forecasts? Should we trust the climate models that provide them to us?"

(Should we trust climate models?).

The next post in this series is here.

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