Validate Your Life

Richard Feynman was one of the greatest physicists ever.   think the most provocative and admirable quality of Richard Phillips Feynman (okay more than one) is:

1. The fearlessness, humor, and outspokenness of his voice (when he speaks he just speaks his mind and he’s usually thought about what he says a great deal, so he just projects, barks it out and delivers truthful and illuminating utterances.  When he detailed how the O-Ring on the Challenger Shuttle lost resilience below 0° celcius at the Presidential Rogers Commission of 1986, he just dunked the ring in ice water and spoke this discovery.  It was the crucial key-pin discovery that explained the Challenger catastrophe, and he just opened his mouth and said it.  He didn’t conceal his words nor use trickery nor politics of any kind and it showed in his voice.  I aspire to do the same and sometimes recognize (albeit short) pronounced moments where I feel I have the same simultaneous clarity, boldness,and just naturalness of communicating as Feynman.  But his “communicational style” is not the interest with this point.  Don’t get confused. It’s the clarity, intelligence, self-integrity, and humility that he held that make his voice fearless and outspoken.  I think one could say he didn’t care about perceptions, but he was viciously committed to explaining how things worked to people. What I mean by this is if he wanted to explain the details of the weak nuclear force he would just say it like it is, no strings attached, no air of pomposity, no boasting, no bragging.  Indeed! That is the very most admirable quality of Feynman’s voice that he DIDN”T try to communicate.  See a lot of people, I guess you can bring Reagan, the Great Communicator, into this although he’s a bit of an acception being a pretty solid guy it seems.  But a lot of people try to communicate.  They focus on pronounciation and delivery and how to stand or when to say what or something and their message is hollow.  I guess it’s kind of like trying to build a house and all you do is focus on the where to put the house and the millions of details of placement and foundation etc but you never actually construct anything when you speak.  Feynman on the other hand, just seemed to think about things and then just “build the house” to follow this increasingly odd analogy.  In other words, he didn’t have an agenda under than making someone understand.  Now THAT is extremely, extremely rare.  Even people whom I met whom have that agenda, usually their’s some splinter of “I want to look smart so I’ll explain this” or ” I want to have some reputation of a good explainer” or something of the sort.
2. 2)His ability to Discover.  Feynman said  “The thing that doesn’t  fit is the most interesting!– (Feynman)” Because it means that that’s some new law of nature (or of the great grand chess game or something which he referenced as an example of figuring things out) and it menas you’re just spotted a hidden (and tip of the iceberg emerging) element of a whole other law of Physics or detail of Nature.   He talked about how he loved interpreting Russian and Mayan hierglyphics just because they were this awesome puzzle to work out.  I love puzzles because solving them is an accomplishment in itself.  ”The reward of a thing well done is to have it done”, wrote Emerson.  And Feynman’s discoveries and excitement to intellectually discover earned him man got-it-well-done rewards.
3. 3)His intelligence. The guy was wicked smart. Done.
4. 4)His adventuresome almost partying personality.  If anyone ever thought of the idea of a “Rock Physicist”, Feynman would probably fit the depiction.  He frequented a strip club now and then, played the bongoes like no other and played some excellent pranks, but still — first and foremost — held the dignified and well-qualified demeanor and hosted the cognitive abilities of a Nobel Prize winning theoretical Physicist.
5. 5)His total and utter lack of snobbiness.  He easily could have held the “I know how this works and you don’t” POV, but it he didn’t.  He told stories.  He was extremely kind (but not in the cheesy “look at my generosity” way), but in a sharp kind of way, mitigating the chances of his intelligence being exploited — of that I seriously admire as well.  He made attempts to explain these freakishly complex quantum topics to laymen.  He Shared a good laugh and was an awesome gentleman dude.

Man, this guy was just so indescribably awesome!  But I will attempt to describe.  He was a master of logic.  Things he says and describes are always clear and rock-solid in their structure and stability.  Meaning, when Feynman described something you also were getting a dose of logic, natural sciences, math, learning process-theory, and probably a dash of humor.

He was clear, pure, genuine.  The kind of person from which you could learn heaps of truly worthwhile stuff and trust that you’re in Good company.  I distinguish worthwhile learning (actually truthful knowledge of natural sciences and math) from unworthwhile learning (religion, subjective beliefs, New Age bs, most all of psychology — indeed Feynman condemned psychology as a crock, which it is — for starters) because what Feynman knew and taught – Natural Sciences, specifically theoretical quantum physics — was the undeniable truth and quintessentially, inexplicably “worthwhile”.  That’s how things worked.  That’s how and why the sun rises and sets (okay that’s more of the classical mechanics branch of physics).  But the composition of matter is the very stuff in which he explored and made breakthroughs.  If anyone thinks that kind of knowledge isn’t worthy to learn, they should get their head checked.  I guess he kind of new the underpinnings of matter and energy and as a result of that incredibly electrifying (couldn’t help the pun) knowledge, he always had that never-pompous, always humble, but joyful look in his eye of “I know how this works.  I figured it out, and if there’s still more to discover, I’ll enjoy figuring that out too.”. Indeed,  if there was any person who directly personified Emerson’s quote of getting a job well done, it was Feynman.  I don’t think Feynman saw things as work or play.  Of course not.  He couldn’t.  That capacity of not distinguishing between work and play is something I do (but of course on a much less advanced caliber than Feynman) and it definitely puts you at a different rhythm or cadence with the wolrd (most whom of which lives for the weekly paycheck and operates as a brain drone living paycheck to paycheck never bothering to discover why they don’t atomically sink through the floor when the particles of the floor and their own feet are mostly empty space).

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Astronomy: The Phoenix craft of the “Mars Scout Program” to mars is a $475 million mission to launch and land the Phoenix spacecraft on the surface of Mars and explore it. When you consider the massive undertaking of such a project, NASA’s slim budget of $475 million is extremely frugal, pennies really, but despite it’s relatively slim budget, it’s been an incredible success. The Phoenix lander was set to explore Mars for 90 “sols” (Martian days, or about 92 earth days). But instead of lasting a mere 3 months, it lasted almost 5, and only lost transmission to the approaching harsh Martian winter. Phoenix broke the barrier setting a lot of discoveries in previously uncharted territory.
The Phoenix included a set of ovens to heat minerals and materials it picked up as well as an electronic “wet chemistry lab” to run various experiments on the substances it sampled. Phoenix was the first spacecraft to ever “break the surface” (pun somewhat intended) and dig beneath the ice of another planet. This technological advancement revealed that the northern plains of Mars are more habitable for life than expected. Instead discovering inhospibility soil acids, Phoenix discovered alkaline soils, which could be actually conducive to potential plant life!!! It may not be green aliens with three heads and phasers, and rather possible microbes, but the Phoenix has come the closest mankind ever has to discovering life on another planet!

The Future of the Mars Scout Program will include an exciting “SUV-sized” Mars Science Lab (MSL — and yes, and actual “laboratory”) hehe. Like its predecessors Spirit  (January 4, 2004 landing) and Opportunity, (January 25, 2004 landing)  the MSL will have vehicular mobility.

Science: The journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion just announced a possible breakthrough for astronauts enduring long-distance space travel. The earth is protected from meteorites, high velocity cosmic rays, and other space debris from its surrounding “magnetosphere”. Cutting edge physicists aim to simulate this magnetosphere around a space craft. Scientists intelligiently merely mimicked the sophisticated protection mechanism already surrounding the earth and voila, a new breakthrough that could extend space travel incredibly.

Bottom-Line: Magnetic Force field aims to protect astronauts from space harshness.

Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic “umbrella” that deflects harmful space radiation around their crew capsule, scientists say.
The super-fast charged particles that stream away from the Sun pose a significant threat to any long-duration mission, such as to the Moon or Mars.
But the research team says a spaceship equipped with a magnetic field generator could protect its occupants.
Lab tests are reported in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.
The approach mimics the protective field that envelops the Earth, known as the magnetosphere.
Astronauts’ risk
Our star is a constant source of charged particles, and storms that arise on the Sun’s surface result in huge numbers of these particles spilling into space.
As well as this plasma, or “solar wind”, high velocity particles known as cosmic rays also flood through our galaxy.
The Earth’s magnetosphere deflects many of these particles that rain down on the planet, and our atmosphere absorbs most of the rest.

The first time we switched it on, it worked
Ruth Bamford
International space agencies acknowledge that astronauts face a significant risk of ill health and even death if they experience major exposure to this harsh environment.
And even the spacecraft themselves are not immune to the effects. A solar flare crippled the electronics on Japan’s mission to Mars, Nozomi, in 2002, for example.
But researchers from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), the Universities of York and Strathclyde, and IST Lisbon have shown how it might be possible to create a portable mini-magnetosphere for spaceships.
People scale
In its experimental set-up, the team simulated the solar wind in the laboratory and used magnetic fields to isolate an area inside the plasma, deflecting particles around the “hole”.
It was not initially clear the idea would work, said Ruth Bamford, who led the research.
“There was a belief that you couldn’t make a little hole in the solar wind small enough to do this at all,” Dr Bamford, from RAL, told BBC News.
“It was believed that you had to have something very large, approaching planetary scale, to work in this way.”
The team has had to take into account the physics of plasmas at the comparatively tiny human scale. To create its metre-sized trial, the team used a plasma jet and a simple $20 magnet.
“The first time we switched it on, it worked,” said Dr Bamford.
What is more, the trial field seems to adjust itself automatically. “It does have the capacity to be somewhat self-regulating, just like the Earth’s magnetosphere is,” Dr Bamford explained.
“When it gets a strong push from the solar wind, the bubble gets smaller. The video shows us increasing the pressure of the solar wind, and the shield gets smaller but brighter.”
Power issues
Many more experiments are needed, Dr Bamford admits, to understand how best to harness the effect; and a practical implementation is probably 15 to 20 years away.

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Heath Ledger might win the oscar for his maniacal Joker character, making this the second posthumous “Best Actor” award in over 30 years, the most recent (hardly not recent) went to Peter Finch in Network in 1977.

Also, I noticed the ever-growing “I hate Paris club” has continued to spawn. Disdain for that woman — who, imho, is not really that bad, and in some areas, quite likeable, like her ability to handle media and magnetize press to her image (that also, of course, is the same reason why so many loathe her) — has become a “fad” a trendy thing to do. Even actresses I admire, like incredibly talented Tina Fey appear to loathe her: “She’s so unbelievably dumb and so proud of how dumb she is. She looks like a tranny up close. Her hair looks like fraggle.” What really stumps me is how she so effectively gets under the skin of so many successful people. Does she threaten? Are they confused by her success? If she was a nobody they wouldn’t bother commenting about her. Anyways, that ridicule, no doubt, satisfies Ms. Hilton’s image agenda rendering her more successful. Bad flack or Good flack still registers as some kind of attention, so if you objectively seek attention, she’s got it!

In other news, Matt LeBlanc’s former “Friends” agent, Camille Cerio (not to be confused with pregnant Camilla Alves, McConaughey’s girlfriend, of no relation) is trying to sue him for $1 million in unpaid commissions. He actually EARNED $1 million per show, though! And considering that the Friends’ series tallied NUMBER episodes, he should have no problem covering that, but gotta pay those dues!

That about raps it up for celebrity gossip, other than the usual — a lot of babies, a lot of pregnancies, a lot of marriages, and a lot of trips to the beach! One question, do they “time” these things. It just seems like babies are popping out all over the place in the summer with Pitt-Jolie’s twins and McConaughey-Alves’s expecting and more, it seems that way.

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Okay, I thought this would be a great post because there’s a TON of ambiguity about dusk, dawn, sunset, sunrise….How long is a “sunset”? When exactly is dusk? Can there be a set time for dawn and dusk or is always “when things get darker or brighter outside”? And what about twilight, how does that fit into all of this?

Crepusclar celestial events refer to everything when the sun is “close” to the horizon. This is the time when you get the most beautiful colors in the sky as the sun’s rays become filtered in through the atmosphere. So why not learn about those actual phases so you can know more precisely what’s going on when you see that magical palette of rich oranges and reds off your favorite beach at sunset?!

First off, sunrises and sunsets.

This one is simple. Sunset is the exact moment trailing edge, which would be the “upper edge” of the sun sphere disappears below the horizon. The moment you can no longer see the “orb of the sun” is the last second of a sunset and “sunset phase” is over. Therefore, a sunset lasts exactly how long it takes for the trailing edge of the sun to disappear from the horizon after the leading edge of the sun first hits the horizon. Sunrise, the exact opposite, is the exact moment the trailing edge of the sun full emerges from the horizon. A sunrise “commences” when the leading edge first appears on the horizon, but the sphere is not yet visible, and a sunset “commences” when the leading edge first touches the horizon, but the full sphere is totally visible. Technically sunrise and sunset is when the geometric zenith distance of center of the Sun is 90.8333 degrees, but that’s “hyper technical”.

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All this information IS going somewhere after all! Wondering why I wrote such a detailed and thorough article on Solstices and Equinoxes? Well — in addition to my car being an Equinox, having written a screenplay called “The Solstice” about a ship, and my love for nautical science and understanding how our celestial place in the universe creates Natural calendar and seasonal occurrences — the Chinese New Year is BASED ON Solstices and Equinoxes! So you’ll need to read that article I wrote to get the most out of this.

For all those people who’ve slacked a bit on New Years resolutions, do not fret! On the Chinese Calendar, you still have a almost a month until New Years! New Years, you see, falls on the day after the 2nd new man after the winter solstice. Remember, the winter solstice is when our planet Earth is tilted furthest away from the sun in its elliptical orbit around our Sun star. In 2007 that winter solstice occurred occurred on Dec. 22. Yep, (by definition of a winter solstice) the shortest day and the longest night of 2007 was Dec. 22. Then just whip out your trusty lunar calendar (I know all you have one of those! haha. And if you’re a nautical-celestial navigation freak like me, or some astrologer/astronomer, you probably already do have a lunar calendar) and you’ll see that the 2nd lunar (after Jan. new moon is February 6, 2008. So February 7th, Chinese New Years, here we come!!

Earth’s Inclination
Everyday would be an equinox (Latin’s equinoxium, meaning “equality night and day”) if it weren’t for the earth’s subtle inclination. An equinox, the moment when the sun is at it’s zenith directly above (perpendicular to) the equator at noon is the opposite of a solstice (Latin’s solstitium, meaning “the point where the sun stands still”), the moment when a sun is lowest in the sky (the most inclination north or south away from perpendicular) at noon. Obviously, each solstice occurs in a different hemisphere. In short, yes, the sun move’s east to west daily, but it cycles north and south on an annual basis, with the winter solstice marking it’s nadir – most southern location (commencing northern movement), and summer stolstic marking the zenith -most northern location. This diagram

is false, because it doesn’t show the earth’s inclination. The above diagram shows an earth with no solstices, all equinoxes. However, because of the earth’s tilt and elliptical pattern (faster movement closest to the sun), the annual sun inclinations do occur, resulting in solstices, resulting in seasons.

Occurrence
Equinoxes and solstices each occur twice per year, so there are four equinox-or-solistice events per year, occurring roughly every three months (every season. Equinoxes occur spring and autumn (March and September), while solstices occur winter and summer (December and June).

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Swell – Swells is long, oceanic surface waves, consistently formed by tropical storms and wind systems. A few fractions of a second difference in a wave, on the other side of the ocean, creates a totally different set of waves. Swell waves are often mixed with local chop “noise” waves.

Swell Size — Swell waves are measured in “swell size” which is 33% of the largest wave in a set (trough to crest).

Fetch – The fetch is just the “un-wave” part of water. The larger the flat water (fetch) and the stronger the wind, the larger the wave will be. Shores that have inslands in front of them have a very short fetch (blocked), so smaller waves. The swell is generated by wind blowing consistently over a fetch.

Local Wind – too intense of a local wind will make the swell waves too choppy and unsurfable. Ideal is a slight offshore wind, that blows into the face of the wave, scooping them out even more!

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Virga — Whenever any form of precipitation (rain, sleet, snow, hail) forms, but then evaporates before reaching the earth, it is called virga. Virga is a common characteristic of microbursts.

Microbursts — A microburst is the complete opposite of a tornado. A tornado consists of convergent upward funnelling winds, while a microburst consists of divergent downward-motion winds. While the wind direction and flow is the complete opposite of a tornado, from afar, the two look quite similar. Microbursts is a type of downburst, but more localized than large-coverage wind shear.

Squall — A squall is simply a drastic, abrupt increase in wind velocity in the midst of a storm; it’s a non-sustained surge in wind speed. They primarily occur away from strong mid-level height falls or mid-level tropospheric cooling because those regions frequently have strong upward wind motions, minimizing the potential for a squalls abrupt downward wind burst.

White Squall — Combine a microburst with squall phenomenon, while at sea, and you get a white squall. A white squall is a violent windstorm that emerges out of nowhere, providing no “black cloud” warning. The white-capped waves and broken water, are the key characteristics of a white squall. They’re mainly considered to be myth, but many sea tragedies have been attributed to these intense nautical microbursts.

Parralax — okaya parralax is the “apparent” (But not actual) movement of an object visually because of the REAL movement of the observer. Most common is the STellar parralax where a very distant (millions of miles) star appears to move, but realy it’s the earth orbitting annually revolving around the sun that creates the impression of the star moving, a parallax. A large parralax angle means the star is closer. the farther away a star is (or an object is )from the observer, then the smaller the parralax angle (The smaller amount of shifter that occurs on the visual spectrum. A sundial is a perfect eample of a natural parralx (the dial moves (attached to the earth taht moves) creating hte impression that hte shadow moves. Just bottom-line, the observer (earth, or dial, or whatever) moves creating the impression that a distant objects moves. The closer the object, the larger the parallax angle.

Another well known parallax is the mercury retrograde. Note: this is mercury’s apparent (not real) retrograde, that said, all apparent retrograde is really just a parallax effect. Mercury or Mars does not actually move backwards in the orbit. The earth just loops back around the sun so the vision the sun casts (From the earth) makes it look like it flips back the other way, In short, whenever the earth gets horizontal with a planet(it hten goes diagonal, given different rates of revoltion), the the parralax fliparound retrograde effect occurs.

Star Trek, Astronomical, Cosmological, Planetary Physics terms you have got to know.

1. Parsec Contraction of “parallax second”; Distance – “parallax – apparent motion — of one arc second”; astronomical unit of length where the earth’s orbit extends an angle of one arcsecond; 19 trillion miles, 3.26 ly
2. Pulsar – A neutron star that puts out pulses of radio energy. A pulsar is a neutron star that is emitting a beam of radio waves, and spinning, and so the effect is like that of a lighthouse. Pulsars keep exceptionally good time. Most of them ‘pulse’ at a rate between ten times a second and once every three seconds; some spin around hundreds of times a second.
3. FUA
4. The Vicinity of Our Universe

Earth (and our sun and solar system) is located on the inner arc of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy, not unlike our own Earth, revolves and rotates. For the Milky Way galaxy to complete one full rotation (pivot) — our for our solar system to complete one full orbit — it takes roughly 250 million years! So our solar system has completed about 23 orbits (or 0.0008 orbits since humans) so far. The Milky Way galaxy and the nearby Andromeda galaxy together form a binary system.

• 10 ly — Neighborhood Stars — Our nearest star (to our sun) is 7000 times further away than the edge or our solar system. Examples of some stars within 10 lightyears from our sun include, Alpha Centauri, Proxima (a red dwarf), Wolf, and Sirius Nearly 80% of universal stars are red dwarfs (smaller than our sun, 1/10 the size, and 1/100 the luminosity).

• 250 ly — 1/3 Visible Stars — This tiny section of the Milky Way galaxy (relative to its enormous size) marks most stars that can be seen with the naked eye. About 1/3 of the visible stars from earth fall into this 250 ly range. We can view about 1500 luminous stars in this range, and some stars near the end of this distance range are N. Vel. and C Pup.

• 5000 ly — Orion Arm — – At 5000 light-years away we zoom out to our location in the Milky Way Galaxy, Orion’s Arm. Compared to the large Sagitarius Arm (located near the galactic center), the Orion arm (our sun’s location) looks like a fairly minor arm The bright giant and supergiant stars (1000x more luminious than our sun) composing the Orion constellation, make up the most visible stars from this distance. At 100,000x the luminosity of our sun, and 4000 ly away,many consider Rho Cassiopeia (Cas) to be the largest star in our Orion Arm vicinity.

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I’ve come to realize how truly insignificant — because of their instability, tendency to produce conflict, and mercurial nature — most of the religious, political, and social ballyhoo is, compared to the science of our planet, solar system, and galaxy. Squabbling over borders and domains truly is rubbish, when we glance at our global “home”. And considering what “Wired” concluded, only about 24 humans have actually seen the entire earth from space with their own eyes, we could grow a lot by attuning ourselves to our spatial placement.

It’s especially easy to be keen on global awareness on “earth day”, but we should develop not just a year-long reverence for our planet, but a perpetual fascination with our entire placement in galactic space.

Let’s examine our FUA.

If, say, you want to give the “Full Universal Address” (the FUA of yourself and you, for example, are located in Santa Monica, you really shouldn’t stop after the “Country”. After all, what if there’s another Santa Monica, CA, United States located on some other planet in a totally different and distinct solar system, in a completely different galaxy, and galaxy cluster! So, really, you should say this:

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I’ve come to realize how truly insignificant — because of their instability, tendency to produce conflict, and mercurial nature — most of the religious, political, and social ballyhoo is, compared to the science of our planet, solar system, and galaxy. Squabbling over borders and domains truly is rubbish, when we glance at our global “home”. And considering what “Wired” concluded, only about 24 humans have actually seen the entire earth from space with their own eyes, we could grow a lot by attuning ourselves to our spatial placement.

It’s especially easy to be keen on global awareness on “earth day”, but we should develop not just a year-long reverence for our planet, but a perpetual fascination with our entire placement in galactic space.

Expanding our conscious scope to understanding spiral galaxies, Alpha Centari, dark matter, and neutron stars is just so much more meaningful and enduring. That said, let’s delve into a quick synopsis of our closest star cluster.

Although triple-star system Alpha Centari, aka Rigel (1) , at 4.4 light-years, is the closest star system (smaller than a star cluster galaxy, but still a fairly decent sized arrangement of stars) to our own solar system, it is actually bigger and brighter than our own sun. To get technical, only Alpha Centari A, the largest star of the triple-star Alpha Centari system, is brighter than our sun. Actually, to get hyper-technical at 4.2 light years away, Proxima Centari, the mini red dwarf (2) star of Alpha Centari is the closest star (3) (other than our sun) to earth. However, because of its proximity, almost all interstellar science fiction mentions the Centari star system as a travel waypoint of sorts. Furthermore, in actual space travel, the first inter-galactic checkpoint for robotic probes will most likely be Alpha Centari. Although this is just a single minute, iota of spatial knowledge, learning about Centari is most certaintly a vital point to validating the significance of our planet.

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