tar

Accidently made a figure in clay, attempting to cut the surface off a sphere in one large piece, that has one face, one edge and two vertices. Sort of neat. Like a solid Moibus strip. Looks a litte like a cone and then another cone, with the two tips the ends of the same edge. The edge being s shaped with the center of the edge and the two vertices making sort of a triangle, causing the shape to look a little tetrahedralish. Anyone know off hand what this figure is called? Could not find it with a quick couple searches. Seems it most probably has been made before and has a name, but I do not remember seeing it before. Regards, TAR Here are three pictures of it. 1 standing on the semicircular one end of the face. 2 rolled halfway along the face. 3 standing on the other semicircular end of the face.

Let's say for instance that that closest star was spinning one time every 5 years and has undergone some event that was sending out a powerful stream of energetic particles in only one direction, (or perhaps also the diametricallly opposed direction). Let us also suppose that for two weeks every year or two we are in the path of this stream of particles, and then a year or two later in the path of the stream projecting out the opposite side of the star. At any paricular moment, which way would you figure the stream of energetic particles was facing? Would you go by the experience on Earth, or would you go by the figuring of the timing and distance of the thing, and what orientation the star has in the cosmic present? Regards, TAR Actually that is a fantastic thought experiment, because from the cosmic now the projecting streams of particles, from both sides of the star, would have to descibe spiral arms, from the point of view of the cosmic now. Interesting that that is how we visualize galaxies, both when we see one from its axia of rotation, and when we figure how ours looks from the cosmic now.

recursion, Little problem with your predictable outcome. Sentient beings using the internet and aspousing objective truth, contrary to other sentient being's take. Daesh. Regards, TAR also "Continuing, there are technological systems founded on the ability to differentiate." Or perhaps they are founded on the ability to match.

Mordred, Thanks for the links. Nice stuff. Still working on them. Seems like we have a great deal "figured out". Interesting though that so much of it is implied, indirect, "figuring" and imagining. And so little of it is actual observation of current arrangements of the universe. What what we see "means" is true, is an interesting question. And one at the basis of my concerns in this thread. The closest star to us is 2 or three lys away. There is only one instance of the thing, yet we alternately see it in our sky at night, and imagine it currently shining in the cosmic present. Which instance of the thing, do you figure is true? And which instance of the thing is included in your thermodynamic state calculation of the Milky Way? Regards, TAR

Imatfaal, I thought it interesting today to think of the various shapes and trials and thinking that led me to the pingpong ball close packing and the cubic octohedron, and the figure I learned through this thread was the Spherical Rhombic Dodecahedron, and the Janus and the 12 sections of the sphere, and the cube and the octahedron, and finally the tetrahedron sphere and the six pennies around a central penny that I started with. Interesting, because I realized I had made the tetrahedron sphere when I was 10 years old, taking the the ball of gum out of my mouth and pressing it between the thumb and forefinger of both hands. And here your picture is of the interlocking tetrahedron. Long way to go, to get to the figure so easily and naturally formed by a 10 year old. Regards, TAR

Strange, Got sidetracked, looking up carbon dating, to set up a mind experiment to help illustrate my position, but got side tracked again, so I don't have a good setup, but my idea was to set up a theoretical situation where some radio active element would not have a way to be created until lets say the third generation of stars, and lets say this element would only be created for a few moments during a certain stage of a third generation star, and would have a half life so quick as that any appreciable quantities of the stuff would degrade to some other element in a few years. Now the thought experiment is to think about how much of the stuff is currently extant in the Milky Way. Lets say a certain frequency signature would identify that some photons we are receiving now were emitted by the stuff. We know the stuff we currently see with this signature has already degraded, so we can not count that. And the signature of any that currently is extant will not be seen to be counted until later, depending on how far away it is, by which time, when we see the signature, THAT stuff will be degraded, so we can't count that either. So when determining the amount of this substance that is currently extant in the galaxy we can either incorrectly count stuff we see, or just guess at what we will be able to see later. The only way to get a proper count, is to observe the galaxy for 150 thousand years, record each sighting and the distance to the sighting and determine when and where an instance of the stuff was known to exist. Then one could pick that time 150 thousand years prior as a time to freeze, and figure how much of the stuff was extant at that moment. While this could be done, the moment in time you froze the place at, inorder to do the count, was, at the point of determination, a moment that had occurred 150 thousand years ago, so the count would be of little value, in answering the question "how many atoms of this rare stuff are currently extant in the Milky Way?" This difficulty is primarily because the system is too big to be considered at once. Regards, TAR

Yoseph, Interesting theory. Except I have not done any drugs other than caffine and nicotine and alcholol and a couple times some muscle relaxants for my back or some novacaine at the dentist, and a couple times some anethesia stuff while getting a procedure, and once a few pain pills after an operation...for over forty years. During that time of drug free operation, I went to college, was a philosophy major for a few years, graduated in Business Management, spent 4 years in the U.S. Army, later took some Engineering courses, and have done the largest majority of my reading and musing and gazing at the stars and such, NOT under the influence of drugs. I would have to conclude, that my skewed philosophy might have some grounding in thoughts I had before taking drugs, and in the thoughts I had after taking drugs, but while possibly being influenced by my two episodes with LSD, my skewed philosophy was not guided by living in an altered mental state. Quite the opposite actually as I swore off drugs when I was 18 and swore off alchohol when I was 27. And since I gave up even nicotine 9 months ago, and have a job, and a house and a car, and a wife and two daughters and such I would say I AM living quite drug free and sticking to the normal routine of living. So any insights I may have accrued over the last 40 years, were the result of something other than mind altering chemicals. Regards, TAR Unless you are saying that my two episodes with LSD have rendered me permanently defective in some manner, in which case the argument for gaining insight through the use of mind altering substances, would be completely dashed.

Thread, Here are two unillustrated methods to make the pattern (spherical rhombic dodecahedron) on the surface of a sphere. 1. Place a mark anywhere on a sphere, call it your North Pole. 2. Flip it 180 so that your mark is directly down and place another mark at what is now the very top, and call this mark your South. 3.Hold your poles level to the ground, for bearings and place a third mark directly between. 4. Place a 4th mark opposite your third. 5.Place a 5th mark directly centered between your current 4 and a 6th mark directly opposite this, so you wind up with a Norh Pole mark, a South Pole mark, and 4 equally spaced marks around the equator. 6. Now you need eight more marks to fully describe the vertices of the diamonds. You have just placed the 6 four-point vertices and need to now place the 8, 3 point vertices. 7. Take the sphere and put North directly up, you will see the North Pole and any two of the equatorial marks make a triangle. Place a mark in the center of this triangle, equal distance from the North Pole, the one equatorial point and the other. 8. Repeat this procedure three more times related to the North Pole and the equatorial points as you turn the Sphere 90 degrees each time. 9. Flip so the South pole is up, and place your next four in the same manner as in steps 7 and 8. 10. Now draw four lines down from the North pole, one to each of the marks you made in steps 7 and 8. 11. Flip and draw four lines down from the South pole to the marks you made in step 9. 12. Pick an equatorial mark, which is a four point and visualize an x on this mark extending to the two nearest ends of the lines coming down from the North, and the two nearest ends of the lines coming up from the south. Draw this x. 13 Turn 90 degrees along the equator to the next mark and draw the x again. 14. Turn 90 degress along the equator and draw the x again. 15. Turn 90 degress and draw the x again. Second procedure. 1. Create an object, (like a string or toothpick) that is one diameter of your sphere, long, with a reference mark at its middle. 2. Make an X on your sphere, marking the length of your object and the middle and then an other line crossing the first at 90 degrees. Calll this your North 4 point, with attending lines. 3. Make a South Pole X in the same manner, so that the lines are headed for, but of course will not reach, the North Pole lines (Visualize two great circles bisecting each other) 4. You will find your diameter marking object exactly reaches between the tip of a line extending from the North Pole, and the next line 90 degrees over, coming up from the South. Draw this line, and make an X out of it, by placing your marker at its center turned 90 degrees. (You will see this conviently, also lines up with the ends of a line coming down from the North and one up from the South.) 5. Make the other three Xs around the equator. In both cases you should wind up with the 12 diamonds describing the Spherical Rhombic Dodecahedron. There are other ways of course to get to the figure, as we have described, finding the center points of the diamonds with the vertices of the cubic octahedron and so forth, but these two methods are the quickest and easiest I have found so far. Regards, TAR

Taking the tetrahedral figure, with the edges being exactly two r long, and rolling it along the edges, you can describe a perfect hexagon on a 2D surface. Notice that 6 balls, placed exactly on the vertices of this hexagon, will fit exactly, as securely as 6 pennies around a central penny. The 118D toothpick lengths were placed on this track to prove that the toothpick lengths are 2r or one D, each. The spherical rhombic dodecahedron can be completely described on a sphere with 6 orthogonal crosses made with toothpicks of this diameter length. Quite interesting that three Janus sections, make a 1/4 of a sphere, and each edge of one of these quarter sphere shapes, along the surface of the sphere, is exactly on diameter in length.

Lost a post somehow. Thought I answered you both with a few more questions. Oh well. Main drift today, thinking about this thread, was related to human thought and perception. Kant figured that time and space were the two apriori intuitions. Steven Pinker talks of how the human mind shifts grain size making huge things one grain that can thought of in bunches of said grains. Everybody has seen the movie in highschool science class where you have the atom and 10 times that the molecule and the crystal and the mitochondria and the cell and the organ the organism and the family and the neighborhood and the state and the country and the continent and the world and the solar system and local part of the galaxy and the local cluster and the wall of galaxies we are part of, and so on. The brain can handle this nicely, the grain size thing. My concern, in reference to this thread is that as you get larger and larger through the above logorithmic progression, what was instantaneous, faster that we can process it, at the atom level, becomes incredibily long and drawn out on the massively huge scale of the galaxy (not even considering the even larger "local" cluster, or the distance of a type one A supernova.) In this, the speed of thought, the handling of the grain size, as taking the whole picture in at once, is not really actually possible, and the required adjustments and transforms and relationships between the components of the "at once" picture, are not consistently and properly carried through, from one end of the picture, to the other, because of our inability to view the thing for 150 thousand years, and then pick a time to freeze the whole arrangement at, and view it at once. Even if we were able to perform such an observation and figuring and lock down of the picture, it would be a picture of what happened 150 thousand years ago, and would not include any observations at all of what is going on currently, even at the closest star. We don't get that info until 2017. Yet you figure we can figure a way to apply our observations and data to equations that can accurately portray the thermodynamic state of a system millions of lys in diameter? How? Regards, TAR At what cosmic date are we freezing said system, inorder to consider it, at once?

Commanader, Yes, the divisions here are not meant to be Platonic solids with polyhedral faces. The divisions are actually drawn on the surface of a sphere. The geometry of the surface of a sphere is very interesting, as I discover more and more interesting characteristics of the spherical rhombic dodecahedreon, that Janus so nicely rendered for us, with the twelve identical solid sections, and all. (I am calling that solid shape you get when you cut along the lines of the spherical rhombic dodecadron to the center of the sphere, the Janus if it has not yet been named.) Thread, I am less concerned now that the diamond divisions are of inconsistent size. The line where the spacing between the great circle lines on opposite sides of the diamond is the greatest is the hexagonal plane line. These lines are actually skewed to the diamond in such a way as to give width to the edge divisions as well as the more central divisions, and the divisions are, after all, direct proportions of the four diamond border lines, which we have already determined, are of equal length. Found out a tentative answer to my earlier question of whether the length of the edge of one of the twelve sections was 1/6th of a circumference or was actually exactly a radius. While those two possibilities might not be the only ones, it appears, by crude measurement, that the lines are each a radius long. Using an engineering ruler with 60 divisions per inch I walked the ruler around the great circle of one of my spheres and found it to be about 370 divisions. Roughly measuring the diameter, holding the ruler behind the sphere it looked around 118 divisions. Dividing the 370 by Pi would get me a radius of 58.9 or so, dividing the circumference by 6 would be about 61.6. So I drew out my diamonds and measured the length of the 24 lines, adding them up and divided by 24 and got 58.58. This was closer to the 58.9 then to the 61.6, so I am proceeding as if the length of the lines is exactly one radius, until I prove, or it is proved otherwise. Subsequently I cut toothpicks into 118 division lengths and found I could lay out the figure (the spherical rhombic dodecahedron) laying a 118 toothpick(one D) down in its on track, making a cross with another 118 and repeating this procedure the six places on the figure where the 4-points are. Works out exactly. The six places being the North and South Poles, and the four equatorial cross points described earlier. Even more interesting was this tetrahedral figure, shown with just one toothpick at each of the six cross points. Regards, TAR The figure was made by placing on 118 D toothpick on each of the cross points and cutting off the four pieces of the sphere that stuck out beyond the subsequent tetrahedron, and then turning each of the toothpicks 90 degrees to represent the other diameter at the cross. Interestingly enough, unless I am wrong, it is exactly one diameter, along the surface of the sphere from one vertex of this tetrahedron like figure to the next vertex. You will notice the six toothpicks arranged like this, orthogonically to the missing six form a dual tetrahedron to the one the other missing 6 would form. It appears that the diameter of the sphere thusly laid out on surface, exactly meters out the surface into the spherical rhomic dodecahedron. Neat.

Yoseph, Interesting you should say that life does not have meaning to the universe. As if we are something other than universe material ourselves. I am thinking that we are absolutely universe material, because there is no other thing but the universe, for us to belong to, and to be made from. We are in and of the thing, there is no doubt. Now, when it comes to having meaning to the universe, a human endeavor, usually means something to surrounding humans. Each "other" human, is actually a component of objective reality, as far as a subject is concerned. You mean something to your living relatives, and your living relatives mean something to you. I dare say I even have some dead relatives that mean something to me. As long as you are in the memory of the people you have touched in your life, or in the memory of the the people who have witnessed your works in some manner, you mean something to some portion of objective reality. Some small "other" portion of objective reality. The universe, or a portion of it, is therefore capable of noticing you, and caring about what you do and don"t do. Think of the judgement of God, being instead the collective judgement of eight billion humans, and in addition the judgement of humans that will live in the future, and judge you for what you created and what you destroyed. Heaven and hell could be figuratively considered as being the literal judgement and memory and thoughts related to your life and persona and works that you accomplished, and stuff you ruined and so forth, in the eyes of the local universe, in the bodies of the living creatures, including humans, around you. You can not say the universe does not care and judge and find meaning and purpose, because here you and I are here doing it. Show me how I am not part of objective reality, as far as you are concerned. Tell me how you figure that you do not have meaning in my eyes. Regards, TAR

Might have a problem. The lines that divide the diamond into TAR degree diamonds may not be consistent. We already know that the two divisions per 1/12 of a sphere diamonds at the three points are shield shaped and not diamond shape. This was OK in my book, because as you divided into minutes and seconds the shield shape would be smaller and smaller and less of a percentage of the total diamond and would probably not interfer to badly with most mapping applications of the figure. However, there might be a difference in the size of the division diamonds, comparing central divisions with toward the edges divisions. Not sure yet, since this figure is surprising, but according to the trial pictured in this post, the dividing lines are great circles around the sphere. As you can see the dividing lines if extended around the sphere, intersect at the poles, form the same exact divisions on the diametrically opposed diamond (not shown). Looking at the spacing between these great circle lines, it reduces to 0 at the poles. This would seem to mean that the spacing would increase to maximum exactly half way between the poles, which would correspond to the center of the 1/12 diamond outlined with toothpick holes. This in turn would mean that the spacing closer to the diamond edges would be less, making the division diamonds, not consistent in size. Not sure yet, because the divisions seem regular, and propotional and the figure is based on the cube octahedron which has those "vector equilibrium" characteristics, but I am doing some thinking and trials and measurements on this, to determine the consistency or inconsistency of the size of the division diamonds. Regards, TAR Actually I misspoke. They are pen tip holes, not toothpick holes. The lines a drawn by moving a steak knife against the sphere in its own track, without a cutting motion attempting to keep the knife blade normal to the center of the sphere. The hexagona plane lines are made laying a toothpick against the sphere, in its own track.

Mordred, Thank you for the description. Sounds like my worries are mostly factored in and figured out already. However I still think there is room for inadvertant shifting between the actual present and the universal present. And I am still not sure in which present the formulae tell us that the universe is currently accelerating its expansion. You say we know an object is no longer where we see it, so we calculate its position. Do we also calculate what type of object it currently is? That is, if we see CMB at 1090z we know we are looking at stuff that is so far away, we are just seeing its first photons, but there is other, closer stuff, whose first photons we saw 13 billion years ago. We are now looking at more recent photons of the close objects. Maybe only 3 years old, or 30 or 300 or 3000 or 30000 or 3 hundred thousand, or 3 million or 30 million or 300 million or 3 billion lys away. In each case the equations are different in terms of how many photons that object has already released in our direction, how many have gotten here, and how many have passed us by and are on their way to other locations. In all cases there is only one instance of said object that truely exists and is currently, in the cosmic now, releasing photons. We cannot say much about the current configuration of the universe, because it is so massive as even the closest stuff is more than a lifetime of light travel away. In this situation, when we say "currently" expanding, from what vantage point, are we making this claim? What time is it, at this vantage point, and what instance of an item are we considering true, at the moment? All instances? The one we are currently witnessing? The one we are figuring might be the case we will witness in 3 years? 30 years? 3 million years? I still have at least this worry. Of what value is it to know the universe is currently expanding, if the closest items we see, within a couple million lys, are not receeding from each other in the manner in which we figure the current items of the universe should be receeding from each other? First of all, if the universe is expanding and this expansion is accelerating, then the closer items should be separated from each other, to a greater degree than the further away items. The local cluster, for instance should have been more densly packed a billion years ago, and even more densely packed 10 billion years ago. So far away things should not appear to be isotropic, they should appear to be more densely packed that space around here. If we figure the spacing we see, at huge distances, as similar to the spacing we see more locally then we have not accounted for the compression that should be evident in items that we see billions of lyrs away. How can you fit a large portion of the universe into the same thermodynamic equation, under these conditions? It is either incorrect, outdated, or inconsequencial. In all three cases, there is no way to verify, or choose a vantage point from where the thing could be considered factually correct, true or meaningful. Or so is my worry. Regards, TAR P.S. What does minus the square of c mean anyway? I thought a negative number times a negative number gave you a positive number. Plus if the speed of light is the speed limit of the universe, what meaning could squaring that number have?

Royston, A week after I stopped, back in April I gave my wife a card with some money in it. A hundred or more dollars, with the inscription "here is some money for you to blow, because I didn't" (or something like that.). Reading your story, and remembering that "after a week" point, and the card, almost made me cry just now, because it is such a powerful and important gift you have given yourself and your family, to be not spending your money and your health on pack after pack of smokes. It is as hard as it feels, but it gets progressively easier as you find ways to deal with situations that usually required you to reach for a cigarette. And it is actually as easy as not reaching for one. Not stopping at the store, keeping that bill in your wallet, and spending it on food and clothing and shelter, insurance and transportation, and maybe on a gift that would make someone else feel good. And there is plenty of neat and pleasing stuff around, that others have put together for your enjoyment. Remember sweating one day doing my yardwork on my bad knees, helping my wife set one of her gardens, and thinking that one of the reasons to keep a nice place is so people passing by have a nice place to look at. Dopamine for others. And in return, everyone else keeps there place nice. Dopamine for you. Free of charge. Don't know how to tell you to enjoy working 12 hour shifts, but if you just do a good job and make the place pleasant for the other people that have to work the 12 hour shifts...there is some dopamine to be had, even there. Completion, victory, nice sights, nice smells, nice sounds, nice feelings, are to be had, even if the place is not like a warm beach in the tropics. And sometimes just thinking about the warm beach can release a little dopamine, as we talked about earlier in the thread. Better to make smoking just not an option. Enjoy the place, enjoy life, without the stinky, expensive, false way to get some dopamine. And you have the other 12 hours every day, and weekends and vacations, to spend the money you would have spent on smokes, in some other pleasurable way. Regards, TAR

Yoseph, I see what you are saying, but do not agree that you have to believe in God to side with the rest of humanity on meaning and purpose. There is a way of looking at it, that I came upon 10 or 15 years ago, that if described here, might make you see what I mean on this. Religion is a tool, a symbol that everyone can refer to, when talking about each other, and the greater objective reality that we are all a part of. There are different takes on the "reality" of the symbols, how much is actual and how much is figurative. In this, you are probably right that everybody's take is subjectively different. But the reality of the situation is that everybody else, really does exist. So my take on religion, that I am trying to express here is that we all really do believe in each other and a greater objective reality that is beautiful, wonderous, huge and eternal. What portions of that are literal and what portions are figurative are the main "differences" that one can find from person to person and from religion to religion. So you don't have to believe in God to find common purpose and common understanding of the world. You just have to believe in the world, and each other. And since the world is evident to all, and all have equall access to it, it is appropriate that we all consider it ours. Our responsibility, and part of our feeling of self, individually and in groups. So the thread is on drugs and the meaning of life. My "making fun" of meditation, and hallucinations, is basically to point out that where ever you go internally and mentally has some large component of reality to it, as you have internalized the external world in an analog fashion, but it is not appropriate to think that changing your mind, changes reality. I admitted that I took LSD to prove that I had some first hand experience in this. And "after" my insights while on the drug in the "short circuit" condition, when my brain was no longer achieving victory and completion over nothing, I realized that everybody else did not experience the insights I had had. Everybody else did not come along for the ride. This was both a blessing and a disapointment because it was both scary and wonderful at different times, but the bottom line was that you can not, and do not exist by yourself, and the world existed and other people existed, during my trip, and continued to exist after my trip, quite indepenantly of my mind and its insights. This is why I say that when a Shaman reaches Nirvana, and becomes one with reality, he/she does it by himself, and none of the rest of us, feel the effect, so his/her achievement is an inward one, not an outward one. He/she has not become one with reality, because he/she did not include me and you. They may have included me and you in there feeling of self, but since you and I were not aware of the union, it was not actual. On the other hand, when laws are obeyed, and treaties are signed, and art is created, the real world is affected, and other people are actually included. And when you recycle your oil and ride a bike instead of motorcycle, you do something actual that has meaning and purpose for everybody else and the life on Earth, and the Earth. Things each of us are actually a part of. It is not subjective that we have these meanings and purposes. But drugs and haluciantions and Gods of various sorts are imaginary. Where figuratively useful to symbolize literal stuff, this is useful. In and of itself however, imagination is suspect. It is only real in terms of the fact that images of the real world that have already been sensed, fill the imagination, and in terms of the effect that imagination can have on real world decisions, acts, and creative endeavors. So, staying away from nicotine, and looking for the real ways to get endorphines released in your brain, is superior to the cheat of ingesting the nicotine, to "fool" your brain into releasing dopamine. Same with drugs and meditation and God. What you think you are feeling is real enough to you, but does not mean anything to anybody else. Unless the same idea works when you are straight and sober and down to Earth, in the company of others. Regards, TAR

Phi, Coming up on 9 months now. Was driving back from seeing my dad in the rehab center a few days ago. By myself, at night, in a car, coming up on a Quik Check and I thought it would be nice to buy and smoke a cigarette. Wouldn't hurt anyone, and would feel good, and I was the only one doing it, and it would be fine. Then I thought about you guys and girls, and this thread, and thought it might hurt my reputation, and I would not be the only one disappointed. Most importantly I remembered your phrase "make it just not an option". I didn't stop at the store. Kept driving. Thought about the 100 other ways to feel good and get the dopamine without the nicotine. Thanks again, TAR

Thread, Interesting observation this morning. The cube octahedron that started this investigation popped back up when describing the four hexagonal planes. In the figure here (rotated 90 degrees CW to orient to diamond number one, the RY diamond conceptually) the toothpicks are normal to each of the four hexagonal planes, describing four axis. The toothpicks are at the eight "threepoints" of the spherical rhombic dodecahedron. This configuration (my observation) is exactly the same orientation as if you stuck a toothpick in each of the eight corners of a cube. Holding one of said axis and spinning figure your center passes through each of the six balls that are positioned at the center of each of the diamonds. These correspond to the center of the six edges of a cube that are not the six edges that your axis toothpicks are stuck into the ends of. Exactly. Interesting figure.

Yoseph, Insight is an interesting word. Inside viewing. My exact point, is that short circuiting the brain provides false insight. 40 years ago or yesterday, on top of a mountain or in a cave, with sensory deprevation or chemical intervention, the happiness and eurphoria acheived through drugs is not directly related to the real world. A drug addict developes an obsession of sorts and finds happiness only when high. The fake becomes the central meaning. The main goal...which is only acheived while looking in, and has nothing to do with the rest of us. Mohammed talked with an angel in a cave. Really? Mushrooms connect you with great insight. Really? Reaching Nirvana is a reach inward, it has little to do with the rest of us. Regards, TAR

Yoseph, Really? I don't think Alan Watts and Einstein's mental experiences are of the same kind. One thing I remember well and know for certain about my two LSD trials, is that the all encompassing experience I had, was not real. That is, as it turned out, once I was no longer high on the drug, the world consisted of much more than the four people in the room, and I had not indeed encompassed all time and space on my "trip". In fact, proof of this is that 7 billion other people on this Earth did not even notice I had gone and come back. Same thing with Zen masters who become one with the universe, sans the most important 8 billion minds that are locally available. Those kinds of mental "places" to go are not readily accessable to everybody else. Einstein, on the other hand explored the place we all have equal access to, and built a working model of the place, that we can all use to explore and utilize the place. Big difference between the two. Regards, TAR One is fake based on chemical tricks and altered, mistaken senses and thoughts and feelings. The other is based solidly on reality. I would much rather be enlightened by the thoughts of Einstein, than by the thoughts of Mr. Watts.

Mordred, Still have the majority of your links to read, but to the thread topic, if there are two perspectives one can take on a particular area of space where we see the CMB, one as an event that is already done 13.8 billion years ago, which we are currently witnessing, and another imaginary perspective where that area of space currently contains clusters of galaxies which we will never actually experience, the two cannot be both included in any equation, or you would get a double count of what can only be one instance of that area of space. This is a clear and evident case where a double count can and should be avoided, and the universe can either be considered historical or imaginary. Unfortunately, this clear distinction is not as easily come upon when looking at the sky, where some things are burning up in our atmosphere, only a moment away, and others are planets and our moon and Sun, seconds and minutes away, and others are nearby stars a few years away, and others are distant stars in our own galaxy 100,000 years away and others are galaxies a million years away. In this view of the sky, where it is obviously present and real and not imaginary, it is difficult to immediately recognize an image as historical, and view the whole situation from the cosmic now point of view, because of the immense size of the place, and the incredible length of time that it has been around, concurrently with the immediacy and reality of the items sensed, measured and withnesses and fit into the imaginary model. Here is where I figure there must be a size at which physical events cannot be both withnessed as one event, and imagined as one event. Regards, TAR And here when considering a huge system, separated by more than a half a million miles, the equation formulated can either be representative of what is presently being withnessed, or representative of an accurate and true representation of the arrangement of matter and energy in the cosmic now. The translation between, the transform that takes one from one perspective to the other cannot be ignored, and large distances must be factored in and left in the transform and not discarded, primarily because holding a very large system as taking place at once, is not the way the universe works. The universe does not happen at the speed of thought, it happens at the speed of light.

Mordred, Thank you for your good descriptions and your links. I am just into Tamara Davis' Thesis, but have a conceptual problem with the cosmological event horizon. "The cosmological event horizon separates events we are able to see at some time, from events we will never be able to see. At any particular time the event horizon forms a sphere around us beyond which events are forever inaccessible. An event horizon exists if light can only travel a finite distance during the lifetime of the universe." If the areas of space that are currently viewed as CMB are currently (in the universal now, or cosmic now as Dr. Davis calls it) 46 billion lys proper distance from here, at the cosmological event horizon, that means that those areas of space are currently13.8 billion year old galaxies. Since today we see those areas of space as 380,000 year old areas, there are a great deal of events, on their way here from that area of space. The fact that we will never be able to witness an event that happens there tomorrow (in the cosmic now sense of tommorrow,) does not mean we will not see all the events that happened in that area of space between the time the place was 380,000 years old and the time it becomes 13.8 billion years old. All those events are currently on their way here. In addition, due to the stretching of space and the wavelengths of light that are traveling through it, the wavelengths of the CMB are already 1000 times their emission length. This means that a vibration of a hydrogen electron, as it fell from its energy level in a nano second will take a millionth of a second to unfold. And a second's worth of activity will take 16.7 minutes to unfold and be spread out over 186 million miles. By this conceptual visualization of the situation, that area of space might get smaller in an angular sense, as the eons and billions of years go by, but has no reason to ever disapear from view as by definition the events happening today will never reach us, and therefore what we see can only be slowed down for us, into radio waves perhaps, but cosmic waves that left that area at some point in its history would reach here as visible light. And this at some point far in our future. There is no reason to think that electromagnetic waves would not continue to reach here, from there, at the speed of light, depicting the events, albeit slowly, getting increasing closer to the 13.8 billion year mark, at longer and longer radio wavelengths, with the events appearing to be going so slowly as to appear to be still. Regards, TAR

Mordred, I think you have nailed it. My two biggest problems are with time and changing conditions. While I will give you the fact that it would be alright to assume that things everywhere, including the places and nows we can not physically witness, because of the speed of light, are galaxies and walls of galaxies and voids, and have been that kind of thing for quite a few billion years. But that means that a distant quasar we see is most probably now an area similar to our local cluster perhaps and therefore can not be counted both as a quasar and as a galaxy cluster. The count of particles and energies within a quasar is probably different than the count within a modern galaxy cluster, so one should be cautious not to count twice, and one should be particularly obvious about the fact that equations meant to describe the current universe have nothing to do with what we see, but only to do with what we imagine must be there now, for us to see it later. Or perhaps some cosmologists are talking about what we see as being presently there, in which case there might be some overlap of materials and energies as an equation starts out talking from one perspective and winds up figuring in the other. In your discription above, which I appreciate, I noticed I could not determine when you were talking about the universal present, and when you were talking about the present as witnessed from here and now. If cosmologists are talking about "currently" from a god like universal now perspective, where all items are 13.8 billion years old, I wish they would state that, more clearly. If on the other hand, it is hard to tell which perspectives are being melded during any particular equation, then I think I have a point, and there may be some calculations that use an unthoughthrough combination of the two, and may not carry some "condition" properly through the entire consideration, from end to end. Two for instances. One, I have heard, in the discussion of red shilfts and Z that there is an area of Z that seems to be dark or unaccounted for. That is that as you look out at items older and older the Z increases 2, 3, 4, 5 and then 1000 at the CMB. What happened to all the inbetween Z. There should be, if the universe is isotropic and has a smooth and consistent history a connected trail of Zs as you look back into the history of the universe. Whole peices would not just disapear, there would be items noticable at 250 Z and 500 Z and 750 Z consistent with the evolution of the universe. And the fact that we can see the CMB now indicates to me that the universe is still clearing, at the speed of light, and what is now CMB will be visable as 1,000,380,000 year old stuff in a billion years, and the stuff behind it will be visible as 380,000 year old CMB. And second for instance, is the way the local group of galaxies is considered to be gravitationally bound and not swept up in the hubble flow. That the universe "is" expanding, but space between Andromeda and MIlkly Way is not, and the space between Sun and Alpha Centuri is not, and the the space between the Sun and the Moon is not and the space between Chicago and NYC is not, and the space between my fingers is not, and the space between two water molecules in a snowflake is not, and the space between two quarks is not. So why assume the universe is "currently" expanding when nothing local and therefore more current, is expanding? Regards, TAR I made the same mistake above, when I said "as you look out at items older and older", when actually I could have said younger and younger in reference to their apparent age, or could have been thinking how old the image was, or the photons carrying the image, as they have been on their way here for, in the case of the CMB, 13.8 billion years. So the older the signal, the younger the signaler, which confounds the photon count, as some photons are on their way here, from very far away, and some photons have passed by and are on their way to some other observer, that may see the photon tomorrow, if they are 1/365th of a ly in the other direction from the sender from Earth. So do you count the photons as they pass, or do you count those that are on the way, or have passed us by, or that will never hit us? Another example of what may or may not be significant. The energy contained in a volume of space filled with books and furnishings, as in the room you are in, is significantly different on a zero degree night, with no heat, and a 100 degree day with no air conditioning. Unless you are considering as your scale of significantly different energy content the difference between a volume with a black hole at the center, and the same volume centered in the middle of a void. For human purposes, the difference between a space heated to 0 degrees F and one heated to 100 degrees F is quite significant and the only difference between the two volumes (being the same room) is time, as one survey was taken in the summer during the day and the other in the winter at night.

Mordred, Understood...I think. But still am not sure how such a statement as "the universe is currently expanding and that expansion is accelerating" is meant to be taken. First of all, the universe we see, with the cosmic background radiation at the furthest and quasars very far away and walls of galaxies hundreds of billions of years out, is not the way the universe currently is. The universe is not doing those things at the moment, those things are already done, and the items we see doing this and that have evolved and spun and accreted and radiated a great deal, since. In one sense, there can only be 13.8 billion year old stuff in the universe, and the state of that stuff is closer to the way we see closer stuff, than to the state that stuff very far away seems to be in. So no material or area of space is "just" becoming transparent to photons, as 280,000 year old stuff. That already happened 13.8 billion years ago. Currently, that area of space is likely in a state similar to our local cluster, in terms of how many generations of stars and such have evolved in 13.8 billion years. So how the universe currently is, would be better characterised by what we see locally, than by what we see very far away. And since the local cluster is thought to behave in a manner that indicates it is gravationally bound, then there is no reason to think that other areas of space would not "currently" be in a similar situation. This "current" that I am imagining does not seem to be the same "current" that would find the expansion of the universe accellerating. So somebody is not explaining what they mean by currently. Regards, TAR If you were to count the number of photons in a volume of local space and multiply by the estimated current volume of the total current universe, then you would have an exact number. But since the total volume of the current universe is not known, such a claim would be impossible to make. To measure particles in various epochs is misleading, as that would be an old count, and would not pertain but as precursors to the current count.

Here is more carefully drawn pingpong ball, with the lines depicting 10 degree divisions as opposed to the 15 degrees shown just before. Also arranged in same pattern as previous drawing of the 12 sections laid out to be seen at once, for better visualization.