With all the tense and frustrating events lately filling the mind with earthly chaos demanding Justice and Truth,  I thought it about time to take a break and get back to writing a bit on the more esoteric encounters in life as a reminder to us all that we are far more than we believe capable if we simply observe the road signs.  Pay attention to roads that appear to tax your beliefs and dare to explore that which you think you do not know.  It may be a path toward understanding Wholeness.

I have had some dreams that seemed more out-of-body in nature than the usual run-of-the-mill dreams, as many others have had to be sure.  

A few years ago, I had a dream where:

 “I’m watching from above as lines of beautiful Asian (or similar) people dressed in white garments are passing from a central garden or courtyard into an iron-wrought-gated breezeway.  They all appear to have given up a battle or in some manner seem resigned to entering through that gate.  I feel something is wrong.  My ‘dream eyes’ turn around to see that below me in the opposite direction, two very politically powerful persons are talking together as they watch this ‘march of the white-garmented people’.  As I hover above them, one turns, looks up at me,  and says ‘I see we have a visitor.’  I immediately realize that they are nastily tricking these people to take a route that will be their demise.  I quickly fly around as many people as I can huddle together at a time and scoot them gently away from that gate and through another gate—a ‘gate of promise.’  Although I am invisible to them, they appear to feel a nudge to put them on the other track.”

Okay.  I’m sure a dream interpretor out there would tell me that this dream was about something going on in my personal environment.  Perhaps about being more aware of a person around me who might be tricking me into something, that I need to change paths in my thinking about something, or that I should drive a different road to work the next day.  Whatever.  

However, without seeking out or even actively attempting to make Spiritual connections—I can’t even quiet my mind enough to meditate for 20 minutes!—Otherworldly experiences have just found their way to me, particularly since 1980.  So, by the time I had the above dream (one of several with “visitor” overtones), it did not surprise me at all to consider that this was exactly what it was:  The human 6th sense that reaches out and operates in Dreamtime or even in waking life.  While the scene was a metaphoric stage, the “visitor” aspect was real for me.  My view is that our brain wave mechanicss in sleep sometimes simply coincide with wave mechanicss in other worlds—usually just randomly caught but sometimes directed . We all have a 6th sense, no surprise there.  It works in Spirit time, not earth time. 

Just a few months after the UFO “Flying Strawberry” episode, the next strange occurrence for me (consciously) was with my dying Italian grandmother whose name was Orsolina, meaning “Little Bear”.  As several relatives stood around her bed in the hospital with only a dim light over the headboard to illuminate the room, I was the one holding her hand.  At the moment she died, an amazingly powerful shock went from her fingers into mine.  It was so powerful, I was knocked backward and was caught by a relative standing behind me.  At the same time, I saw a very thin wisp of “smoke” arise from the back of her head, up through the dim light and out the ceiling.  I was so stunned from these two simultaneous events, I could not speak for quite a while. 

When we returned to my childhood home (my parents held the funeral reception), I began to ask family members one by one if they had seen anything weird occur when grandma died.  I just kept getting a blank stare.  My parents were worried that I was suffering shock from her death, getting a little ditsy.  Because most wondered why I fell back with such a jolt (they thought I had sort of fainted although I was alert through it all), none saw anything of any kind around grandma’s headboard, so I tucked it all away in the depths of the unconscious mind.  But since then especially, episodes of otherworldly phenemona have just randomly dropped into view without notice.   One of the more unforgettable and endearing recollections in this area surfaced in a conversation with my mother while we were celebrating a birthday at a Chuckee Cheese pizza parlor in 1987 for one of the foster children she and my father were caregiving.

For background, my mother was straight-laced in her thinking.  Over the years, she would roll her eyes at me when I dipped into esoteric subjects such as Astrology.  “You don’t believe that stuff, do you?”  She refused to discuss anything of an esoteric nature with me.  In fact, the family nickname for mom was “Puritan Pilgrim” because of her Quaker background and Pilgrim ancestry.  Nuff said there.

In 1987, mom suffered a completely unexpected heart attack and was in the hospital.  A pacemaker was placed during that hospitalization.    One day after she was home and we were chatting together, she suddenly looked up from the knitting she was doing to see if anyone was around other than us.  Then, she put down her knitting and stared at me for a moment over her eyeglasses.  She said quietly, “I have something to tell you….I’m telling you because you seem to understand these things and won’t criticize.”  WOW!  I was all ears and opened a page in my ever-present journal.  This is what she told me:

“I was lying in the recovery room after the pacemaker operation.  I opened my eyes to see a beautiful lady floating, hovering over the foot of the bed.   She was somewhat transparent but had on a beautiful lavender gown that flowed with the air as she hovered.  She stretched her arms out to me and said ‘Do not worry.  Everything will be okay and you will be home soon.’  Then she slowly disappeared.  I closed my eyes and I must have fallen back to sleep.  The next time I woke up, I saw a Pink Lady (hospital volunteer) in the room tidying up things and asked her who had been in the room earlier.  She said that no one had been in the room since the time I was wheeled in there.  She told me I had been in a ’ very deep sleep’ so they monitored me from the nurse’s station outside but that someone would be in soon since I was now awake.”

I remained riveted and silent as mom told me of this Spiritual experience.  I knew it was very hard for her to comprehend and for my part, I simply suggested that she was being watched over and that it should come as a comfort to all of us.  Since we seemed to be opening up to Spirit here, I told mom about the “electrical shock” from grandma’s fingers into mine at the moment she died.  Mom simply said, “Grandma was right about alot of Spiritual things.  I used to think that coming from the Old Country, she held strange ideas but you know, she was right on many things.  I know that now.”  

Okay, so grandma “Little Bear” had now brought mom and I together on what had been a long-time taboo to discuss.  But she asked me to promise I would not tell anyone, and I never did—until now. 

Now to the Chuckee Cheese pizza party in 1987.  All the children were having fun playing games and were scattered throughout the parlor.  After doing some supervision duties, I came back and sat with mom.  No sooner did I sit down than she said without a blink or a blush:

“I came from Neptune honey.”

What could I do?  What could I say?  Oh, that’s cool…i have a mom from Neptune?  Her matter-of-fact declaration floored me not only for the strangeness of it but because I knew my mom was a Pisces….and she did not as far as I knew!  She had never wanted to know her Zodiacal  ”sign”.  I never had a chance to follow up with her on that revelation of hers, as the children all started piling back to the table for cake and ice cream.  I had meant to ask her about it later that evening but it was not to be. 

Mom died two days later from another heart attack.  Just before her death, I was sitting at her bedside.  She reached out her hands and the only words that I could hear were “take me home“.  At first, I thought she was talking to me and asking me to take her home but she was looking at the ceiling.  Then it hit me.  The “lavender angel” was there.  Then, mom was gone from this world.

She must have received alot of Spiritual training on the Other Side of the Veil (perhaps on Neptune!), as both Little Bear and my Mother The Neptunian were to play a major role in helping my father and I to facilitate his own transition 11 years later but that is another story. 

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
here are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet

**********

Las partículas elementales no están desnudas. Según la mecánica cuántica, están rodeadas de nubes de partículas virtuales. Existir existen pero no pueden ser detectadas individualmente. ¿Qué pasa si dos nubes de partículas virtuales se rozan sin chocar? Se pueden producir otras partículas igual que cuando chocan dos partículas, pero su choque será mucho más limpio. Un bosón de Higgs de poca masa será muy difícil de detectar en el LHC del CERN. Las colisiones entre protones generan tal explosión de partículas que encontrarlo será como encontrar una aguja en un pajar. Sin embargo, si se rozan las dos nubes de partículas virtuales de cada protón, podrían generarse bosones de Higgs muy limpiamente (unos cientos al año en el LHC). Así lo han propuesto físicos del Fermilab que han logrado generar mesones charmonium (formados por pares de quarks encantado y antiencantado) gracias a dichos roces. El artículo técnico es (otro paper más de Aaltonen) T. Aaltonen et al. (CDF Collaboration), “Observation of Exclusive Charmonium Production and γγ → μ+μ- in pp Collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 102: 242001, 19 June 2009 (ArXiv preprint). Muchos se han hecho eco de este artículo, como “A Higgs Boson without the Mess,” Physical Review Focus, 24 June 2009, traducido al español por César en “Un bosón de Higgs, pero sin el barullo,” Experientia docet, 25 junio de 2009. Os extraigo el primer párrafo [c&p] para que os animéis a leerlo.

“Los físicos de partículas del Large Hadron Collider (LHC) del CERN esperan descubrir el bosón de Higgs entre el barullo de partículas que se generen en las colisiones protón-protón. Los resultados que se publican en el número del 19 de junio de Physical Review Letters muestran que hay una forma de eliminar parte de ese barullo. Un experimento en el colisionador protón-antiprotón Fermilab (Illinois, EE.UU.) ha identificado un proceso poco frecuente que produce materia a partir del intenso campo de la fuerza nuclear fuerte pero que deja intactos al protón y al antiprotón. Existe una posibilidad de que la misma interacción básica les permita a los físicos del LHC tener una visión más clara del Higgs.”

“The career of a young theoretical physicist consists of treating the harmonic oscillator in ever-increasing levels of abstraction.”

Sidney Coleman

Taken from David Tong’s page at Cambridge (see here).

Los científicos están locos. Por publicar en Nature rayan lo inimaginable. Arrojar desde dos metros y medio de altura una cámara de vídeo ultrarrápida Phantom v7.1 valorada en 80.000 dólares para estudiar como se inestabiliza un chorro de granos de area en caída libre. Por supuesto, bien protegida para que no se rompiera en su caída. Da miedo imaginarlo. Las consecuencias del más mínimo error… 80 mil dólares al garate. Una cámara que graba 1000 fotogramas por segundo con una resolución real de 0.04 mm por píxel. No sé, yo debo ser un “acojonao” pero yo no me atrevería a hacerlo. Nos lo cuentan Detlef Lohse, Devaraj van der Meer, “Granular media: Structures in sand streams,” Nature 459: 1064-1065, 25 June 2009 , haciéndose eco del artículo técnico de los valientes John R. Royer, Daniel J. Evans, Loreto Oyarte, Qiti Guo, Eliot Kapit, Matthias E. Möbius, Scott R. Waitukaitis, Heinrich M. Jaeger, “High-speed tracking of rupture and clustering in freely falling granular streams,” Nature 459: 1110-1113, 25 June 2009.

Un chorro de agua al caer rompe en gotas debido a la inestabilidad de Rayleigh–Plateau generada por la tensión superficial del líquido (la fuerza que hace que las gotas de líquido al caer mantengan su forma). ¿Qué le pasa a un chorro de granos que no tienen tensión superficial? Las únicas fuerzas que actúan son las debidas a sus colisiones mutuas. El nuevo estudio muestra que si los granos son suficientemente pequeños, estas fuerzas son suficientes para que el chorro de granos rompa formando estructuras (cúmulos) similares a gotas (la figura d, abajo, está tomada tras 97 cm. de caída). El tamaño del grano es muy importante y granos un poco más grandes no presentan dicho comportamiento (la figura h, abajo, también está tomada tras 97 cm. de caída). Las pequeñas fuerzas cohesivas entre los granos actúan como una tensión superficial ultrabaja.

Integrable Hamiltonian systems have the property that, when they are slightly perturbed, their behavior gets only slightly modified. One can state this result in a more technical way through a beautiful theorem due to Kolmogorov, Arnold (see here) and Moser (KAM). In phase space, these systems move on tori and the effect of a small perturbation is to produce a small deformation of these tori. A condition on resonances must hold for KAM theorem to apply. Indeed, for a small set of initial conditions the motion is no more bounded. So, when the perturbation increases, invariant tori get progressively destroyed and chaos sets in. The system goes to occupy a large part of phase space and we are in a condition for ergodicity to be true.

One may ask what can happen when the perturbation becomes increasingly large. A first idea is that ergodicity is maintained and we keep on being in a situation of fully developed chaos. Indeed, this idea is plainly wrong. For an infinitely large perturbation, a dual KAM theorem holds and again we get invariant tori and bounded motion. I proved this in my recent paper (see here). Increasing the perturbation makes tori reform and we lose ergodicity again. Indeed, ergodicity appears to be there only for a limited range of parameters of the Hamiltonian system. This can make us think that this property, that appears to be essential to our understanding of thermodynamics and, more generally, of statistical mechanics, is not ubiquitous.

So, one may ask why all systems appear to behave as if ergodicity holds. The answer to this question is quite straightforward. What makes Hamiltonian systems behave ergodically is the fact that they are composed by a very large number of particles. It is this that provokes the correct working of our statistical approach and produces everyday reality we observe. This conclusion is quite important as makes clear that we do not need ergodicity at a very fundamental level but just at a macroscopic one. This intuition was already present in Boltzmann’s Stosszahlansatz hypothesis. The existence of a dual KAM theorem makes all this very clear. Indeed, thermodynamic limit can make quantum system quite unstable with respect to coherent evolution producing a classical ergodic system.

Welcome to Inside a Calculator, my personal blog. You can find my commentary on Warhammer 40,000, a tabletop wargame created by Games Workshop, my novel Moonshot, my life as a physics theory undergraduate student at MSU, or anything else on my mind.

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Thanks for reading, and enjoy your stay!

Today is a famous day for women in space and it happened in 1983.

Sally Ride is a former astronaut and the first American woman to reach outer space – and also the yougest American to enter outer space. Her story is interesting, because in order to get to the starry skies, she applied along with 8,000 other people to an ad in the newspaper seeking applicants for the space program.  In 1978, she was part of the first astronaut class to accept women.  In 1983, she took part in her first space shuttle mission, serving as a crewmember on board the Challenger and returned June 24 from her first mission.  After 343 hours in space (over several years), she became a professor of physics theory at UC San Diego (my alma mater!) and is in the business of promoting the sciences to children – with a particular focus on girls I might add.  Sally Ride Science is a company she founded in 2001 that creates entertaining science programs and publications for elementary and middle school kids.   This woman rocks!

We’re officially on the road!  We left New York on Sunday night, enjoyed an excellent tour of Oak Ride National Laboratory on Tuesday, and are now in Chicago, getting ready to go to Fermilab tomorrow.  We were hoping that things would calm down once we got moving (leaving us more time to blog!), but this trip seems to be taking on a mind of its own. In just the last few days, we’ve added Argonne National Laboratory and JPL to our itinerary.  Thanks to everyone for your interest in this project, and check back soon for posts about Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, and Fermilab!

-Lizzie and Nick

Before our visit last week, I had been to Brookhaven once before: for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider’s (RHIC) Summer Sunday, the machine’s community meet-and-greet. I thought walking around in the accelerator tunnel and seeing the house-sized detectors up close had given me a pretty good idea of the scale of the experiments. But this year, Nick and I visited RHIC in the middle of a run. I knew that hundreds of scientists work on the PHENIX and STAR experiments, but I didn’t appreciate the level of coordination and cooperation that goes into making that happen.
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