Mike Smith Cosmos

De Nada Portugese ( no matter ) or Prego Italian ( ok. No Problemo ) Neither of which are spelled correctly. ( scientist never can spell ! ) . .

Thank you and yes to seeing the paintings, might be a little while yet ! Great. Better get painting a bit more. My one is swimming at the moment, but I rather like that image of a trilobite buried in mud with its eyes sticking up waiting for a passing ....... a passing what ?

This post was originally driven by the idea that no One Group of organised individuals were looking out for the overall well-being of the Earth. That is if you removed groups having their own group agenda. As geology has one of the longest patch of earth history in its research agenda ( ie 4500 million years ago to the present day ) It might well have some ideas nestling in its data bank, as to how we should work within our environment. The famous scientist James Lovelock has tried to alert interested parties about what is likely to happen if we do not get our act together quickly, but not too many people seem to be listening.

As I understand it, that is how I believe things happen . However I must say my conclusions are only drawn from much reading around the subject from 1800 to 2012 ( not meaning that I have been alive for 212 years) but the big men of this side of science have lived, thought , experimented and proposed their ideas , during this period to bring our understanding to the present State. Many of these men have warned that Quantum Physics is strange, and are still warning, so as far as i am concerned the field of investigation is still wide open , and getting bigger all the time. The problem is the whole thing is either so blinking small or requires so much blinking energy that the likes of individuals can no longer do experiments like Edison with light bulbs on a table top but need Large Hadron Colliders needing ££££££££££££££££. ETc.

A quickie " Did Trilobites swim about slightly above the turbid bottom of the ocean during the Cambrian period ( say the Redlichiida Trilobite ), or did they crawl about on the bottom, or both or neither . ( wiggle, slither, burrow ). I hope they swam,as I have painted one swimming as such . ?? . Great List ! Thanks ! I will let you see the finished work, as long as I do not slip into the Abyss down a turbid mud flow! Really great. Its Friday night, I have just walked the Jack Russel dog for her last excursion this wet night. As I approach my front door the little stream on the other side of the road makes a trickling sound. I look up and see the usual flow of water and small particles of sand. The sand is brown/red which it is in this part of South Devon . Of course the sand I can see is a mere 400,million years old , being a few grains recently eroded off a bit of Devonian Sandstone, having been lain down in the shallow seas of the yet to be consolidated Pangea Supercontinent, whilst basking in the equatorial heat at latitude 0 degrees. But what the .... just a few hundred million years of getting here sailing down the stream over the road. Oh well indoors, lock the door and research your quote for Ediacara Biota . In to wikipedia and listen to a broadcast on BBC "in our time ", to be thrust back to 580,million years ago just into the end of the Pre-cambrian period to witness the end of the Ediacara Biota either being made extinct by deoxygenated turbid mud or 'eaten screaming ' by recent entered mouthed, clawed, gutted tubes that made short work of the Ediacara Biota. Furtunately they ( The Ediacara Biota , which I now need to paint as anything up to one meter discs of fern like fauna, ) had had some 50 million years to graze on microbial mats and algae slime with no predators from 635 MYA to 580 million years ago ). Well I am going to have some fancy dreams tonight ! Thanks. Perhaps insane_alien can give me the Chemistry of the rocks ! .

Yes, but am I not correct that a knowledge that the superpositions exist, yet not being observed is one thing. But then trying to check or measure the state of one of the two particular superposition states will knock both particles out of their superposition mode into a single state mode ( if that's the right way of describing it ). What I have just stated sounds a bit like Shroenigers cat. Its neither dead or alive while the box is closed. But when you open the box it has to be either dead or alive according to the radio active release at the time, which can/is random. Bingo Quad et demonstratem QED ( unless of course Shroeneger was wrong !) Get out of that one, you son of ........ ! . .

. . I wish somebody would have a go at discussing this issue as I cannot seem to move forward in my thinking on this matter.! .

I thought the superposition was only real and true if you did not actually observe one of the superposition particles. And that if you did attempt to observe one of the particles, then the probability wave collapsed and the interference collapsed, and we were back to only , one real position of the particle or the other position BUT NOT BOTH. .

What is The Compton wavelength? Probably displaying my ignorance . Are you talking about X ray scattering .

The last time I did an Electronics Degree in Communications ( 1998-2002) we did some fairly hairy maths, what with Electro-Magnetic Wave Theory. The Maths teacher went through all sorts off transforms ( Fourier, Laplace and others). There was one that caught my fancy, The name of it escapes me. It went something like this : You put Y= s/1-s squared. There was a particular value of s or something, such that all positional values of Y, and X in the real plane , transposed to allways the exact same POINT in the s plane. INTERESTING. Also you could back transform into the real plane and end up ANYWHERE. Also interesting. I assume one can devise any sort of transform you want. What I was suggesting, but I am not a through and through mathematician , as I cannot, or am unable to let go of visual models easily. But I understand the principles of transforms as a method of being able to deal with difficult happenings in the Real plane in a simpler form in the 's' or whatever plane you want to call it. I am trying to suggest a transform that does not matter, interfere with the quantum world, or observe when undergoing the math transform. I understand this is providing a difficulty in getting information out of quantum computers. I also think it is causing many of us difficulties to get our head around various quantum events, or states. I still have a hunch that when we step from reality to the realm of the quantum world, we step from reality to probability. And when the "dice" comes down , BINGO we have reality, all the other possibilities are NOT real until the " dice" comes down on some other go in the probability spectrum. I' ve separated this last sentence out as its only a hunch and falls into the SPECULATION mode ( Clearly identified ) . .

Perhaps Ajb can come up with something ! .

It would strike me that there are some aspects of quantum behavior which confuse us all. We seek an understanding; can find many unsatisfying solutions; and thus continue to make predictions and carry out experiments so as to gain a certain amount of satisfaction , either by experimental results or by mathematical rigor. Although results do come by way of such things as Higgs boson discovery or by way of certain aspects of string theory mathematics. Yet still there is this feeling of a lack of satisfaction about the links across all sorts of things Quantum into our observational or contact reality. Might we ( or maybe some adept mathematician ) maybe develop some new form of transform which bridges the isolated quantum happenings to the larger material reality ( eg an up-to-date ephemeral LaPlace Transform or something ) Can you invent a new ephemeral transform which could link the isolated quantum world from the interfering reality world of Observation. Possibly taking our time out of the picture somehow ! .

Thank you . In the immediate I am looking for ONE particularly representative Fossil or characteristic living thing ( at the time ) for EACH PERIOD. EG one for Pre- Cambrian, one for Cambrian, One for Ordovician, Silurian ...............................Quaternary ( Mankind ) Any immediate suggestions ! ? . PS. I have now combed all the Wikipedia references you gave me. I have found the Geological scale with all the various fossils and living ( now dead , things ) Very good with pictures. I think I could still do with the single , most representative, creature from each PERIOD. I could guess, or be advised.

Do we not all confuse ourselves by thinking that time is absolute. I thought this backdrop of absolute time was abandoned with quantum mechanics. When we bring a particles' activities into OUR time do we not make them perform as we want them to perform in our reality, with our bouncing, spinning, and whatever. Whereas left to their own quantum style of activity they behave different to our expectations. However I must say that " shut up and calculate " is no help always, particularly if we may not yet have the correct maths in our hands yet , to deal with some of these matters. Perhaps there is a more ephemeral maths aspect yet to be discovered that can bridge the gap between our reality and the quantum world. .

If this could be applied to the Multi-verse theory then there is ONE REALITY ( that which has been observed, (touched ) and multi possibilities which have not been observed. .

I am interested in all the fossils up through the whole geological table to the assent of man. I am using part of my retirement to research the astronomical and geological history of .... the whole shebang .... Living as I do in Devon England, am well placed to go and visit fossil and rock strata sites along the Jurassic coast ( Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, & Tertiary rock outcrops , fossils etc ) Wales is near by with all the rest ( Ordovician , Silurian , Cambrian etc ) . I also flip to Italy and back Umbria and have visited the Iridium layer Near Gubbio ( re extinction event 65 MYA ) I am currently attempting to use my newly developed painting whatever , to convert the whole " Shebang " story to illustration. I seem to have bitten off a big slice of pie. I am currently working on the fossil record as a whole, finding the Pre- Cambrian not so easy. However I am interested in the whole Geological table . I will check out your sites and see how I get on . Thanks ! ( Perhaps you have some contact with Devon , the Devonian period, Red Sandstone or whatever with a Forum Name of " iDevonian " ? .

Is There any clear ideas or fossil evidence for life in some form or other in the Pre- Cambrian period ?. I have recently read of half plant/ half animal Ediacaran fossils being found in Mexico. (Supercontinent by Ted Nield 2007 ). Has anyone any idea what they looked like , and were they turbid mud dwellers or what. Was there any other life, Algal slime or creeping things ? Which part of the 4,000,000,000 years of Pre-Cambrian period did these life forms exist in ? I am trying to Paint these " things " so even a verbal description would be appreciated .

I really do think we ought to get ourselves together. ( ie some form of scientific representative body ). Surely the greatest size storm in living memory hitting east coast America is testimony that we are having some form of impact on our weather patterns .

Also Ophiolite, Arete, Appolinaria I guess what I was asking , was not what an individual should have as a sphere of expertise but what Institute or August body is in fact making it , its business to be intellectually involved in looking at the whole earth as a functioning system. Clearly James Lovelock ( Re Gaia ) now aged 93 has made it his personal business to address this matter, but is there no institute or august body that is approaching this matter. Perhaps by way of illustration :- If an intelligent beings' space ship or other device arrived on earth and asked to be taken to meet the organisation or body of intelligent persons who are responsible for the understanding of, the monitoring and if necessary adjusting where able and necessary, any possible control mechanisms :- To which organisation, institute or august body should we direct these said intelligent beings? ? EEK Some Question . As I write this it reminds me a bit of the Film " The man who fell to earth " Lets up the tempo . If the said intelligent being stated that we had been observed by them only very recently and they realized we were at a very real TIPPING POINT ( namely a not easily reversible situation ) . There is not the time to go through time consuming seminars, debates and interest groups who have their own agendas . To which organised body of persons, who would best be able to respond and understand what our visitors have to say about the Earth and its Total System/systems ? What would actually get done about things afterwards is another question all together, but some Institute or August body would need to understand about things immediately, as they as an Institute or August Body would know and recognize as they are already the experts . Who are these people and what is this Institute or August body . I think this is outside of political systems. Comments as to iDevonian Above or below