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Interesting theory created by Garrett Lisi: http://www.ted.com/talks/garrett_lisi_on_his_theory_of_everything.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/garrett_lisis_new_e8_paper

www.topdocumentaryfilms.com The title speaks for itself.On this website you can find lots of interesting documentaries.A few examples: Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman (also on Discovery Science): http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/through-the-wormhole/ The universe season 1 : http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/universe-season-1/ Visions of the Future with Michio Kaku: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/visions-future/ Enjoy!

This may be off-topic even for this group. But my hope is that I could find some help with this problem from people who seem to understand much more difficult problems. My question is kind of a Flatland kind of question, but also involves time. In the usual examples, if a 3D object sticks their finger in a 2D world, the 2D beings see a series of 2D images. What the 2D being views as a 2D image appear out of nowhere, and change through time, the 3D being views as a single unchanged 3D object that moved through space. The usual examples are of simple geometric shapes. My opinion is that those were just for the sake of simplicity. But that any 2D shape possible to be viewed by a 2D being could be a slice or set of intersecting points between the particular 2D world and a 3D being. So that the types of shapes possible would not be limited to simple shapes. Similarly, my view is that if a being that extends in n dimensions in space, where n is greater than 3, intersected at some points with our world, that we would be able to view a series of 3D slices that could be of any imaginable 3D shape, including that of a human, and that what we viewed as a single 3D person changing throughout time, could be a single unchanged slice of that n-dimensional being. The debate eventually came to the subject of expressing this mathematically. I am trying to picture a way to describe this mathematically, providing it is possible to describe a section of 3D history of someone mathematically in terms of a higher dimensional slice of a higher dimensional being that is simply moving through space at an axis other than the ones we are familiar with normally. My initial thoughts are to break down the contour's of a human into smaller pieces individually describable as simpler shapes, and then to write out ordered pairs of coordinates, showing how the 3D shape slices were subsets of the n-dimensional slice. If you did not start with a simple geometric shape, but instead started with a life form that happened to have a human like shape, and it extended in space with that sort of shape in more directions than a real human, if they intersected with our world, would the 3D intersection look like a human or something else?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101118141541.htm "ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2010) — Researchers have uncovered a fundamental link between the two defining properties of quantum physics. The result is being heralded as a dramatic breakthrough in our basic understanding of quantum mechanics and provides new clues to researchers seeking to understand the foundations of quantum theory. The result addresses the question of why quantum behaviour is as weird as it is -- but no weirder." "Previously, researchers have treated non-locality and uncertainty as two separate phenomena. Now Wehner and Oppenheim have shown that they are intricately linked. What's more, they show that this link is quantitative and have found an equation which shows that the "amount" of non-locality is determined by the uncertainty principle."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101119162926.htm "ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2010) — The first study to ever explore biological activity in the deepest layer of ocean crust has found bacteria with a remarkable range of capabilities, including eating hydrocarbons and natural gas, and "fixing" or storing carbon." ""This is a new ecosystem that almost no one has ever explored," said Martin Fisk, a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. "We expected some bacterial forms, but the long list of biological functions that are taking place so deep beneath the Earth is surprising."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101117141432.htm "ScienceDaily (Nov. 20, 2010) — Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have demonstrated quantum entanglement for a quantum state stored in four spatially distinct atomic memories." "Their work, described in the November 18 issue of the journal Nature, also demonstrated a quantum interface between the atomic memories -- which represent something akin to a computer "hard drive" for entanglement -- and four beams of light, thereby enabling the four-fold entanglement to be distributed by photons across quantum networks. The research represents an important achievement in quantum information science by extending the coherent control of entanglement from two to multiple (four) spatially separated physical systems of matter and light."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101119201429.htm "ScienceDaily (Nov. 20, 2010) — Elliptical galaxies were once thought to be aging star cities whose star-making heyday was billions of years ago." "Elliptical galaxies were thought to have made all of their stars billions of years ago," says astronomer Mark Crockett of the University of Oxford, leader of the Hubble observations. "They had consumed all their gas to make new stars. Now we are finding evidence of star birth in many elliptical galaxies, fueled mostly by cannibalizing smaller galaxies. "These observations support the theory that galaxies built themselves up over billions of years by collisions with dwarf galaxies," Crockett continues. "NGC 4150 is a dramatic example in our galactic back yard of a common occurrence in the early universe."

Full article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101115210937.htm "ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — The study, by researchers from Imperial College London, involves a new class of materials called metamaterials, which can be artificially engineered to distort light or sound waves. With conventional materials, light typically travels along a straight line, but with metamaterials, scientists can exploit a wealth of additional flexibility to create undetectable blind spots. By deflecting certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, an image can be altered or made to look like it has disappeared."

Hope you like this cartoon!

Full article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=habitable-exoplanet-gliese-581 "After more than a decade of telescopic monitoring, astronomers have added two newfound worlds to a nearby planetary system already known to harbor four other planets, and one of the new discoveries looks to be the kind of place where life might be able to take hold."

Full article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fermi-bubbles "A group of astrophysicists has located two massive bubbles of plasma, each extending tens of thousands of light-years, emitting high-energy radiation above and below the plane of the galaxy. The researchers found the structures in publicly released data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, which was launched in 2008 to investigate sources of extremely energetic photons—namely, gamma rays, which have higher frequencies than x-rays."

Full article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101116150041.htm "ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — By examining the distinct wave patterns formed from complex biochemical reactions within the human body, diseased organs may be more effectively identified, says Zhengdong Cheng, associate professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, who has developed a model that simulates how these wave patterns are generated."

Full article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101116080321.htm "ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — The troposphere, the lower part of the atmosphere closest to the Earth, is warming and this warming is broadly consistent with both theoretical expectations and climate models, according to a new scientific study that reviews the history of understanding of temperature changes and their causes in this key atmospheric layer."

It's a long time since Penrose wrote the book that inspired this group, and I have seen a lot of development of the ideas he looked at. Today I suddenly came across a book I bought perhaps 5 years ago that impressed me greatly at the time, "The Quantum Brain" by Jeffrey Satinover. Described by one reviewer as "the first great book of the 21st century" It is considerably broader and deeper than TENM in many respects, and a lot less dusty (in my opinion). If anyone has not read this book, I would recommend looking at a preview on Amazon and then snapping up one of the ludicrously cheap copies you can get from 3rd party sellers at the moment. Many of the chapters in this book are individually as enlightening as most other good books manage to be in their entirety, and it's a very enjoyable read as well (although there is plenty to strain the brains of even well-informed readers in there somewhere). To readers of this group, some important issues are (in my opinion), the author has a much deeper and more up to date understanding of both neuroscience and artificial intelligence than Penrose, and is not so distracted by mathematics and the theory of computability. There are some very powerful "aha!" concepts that could change your view of the world completely. People interested in physics might like the very entertaining chapters on the long-running intellectual struggle between Einstein and the proponents of quantum theory, including the wrong turns that were taken and how they were resolved. Other topics that get involved are cellular automata, learning machines, a very subtle investigation of how the brain learns and its relationship to physical analogs (way beyond what I have seen elsewhere), quantum mechanics and how it is relevant to the brain and AI, and many more.

Would anyone be interested in making a DH key exchange purely for recreation? Pick whatever large prime you want to be public, and then pick you favorite base number. The higher the number, the better-but don't make it too high! I assume that DH can work for more than 2 people?

Physicists tell me that the way that particles get mass is something to do with extra space dimensions getting curled up, giving mass to particles that would be massless without the extra dimensions. I don't really understand this, but it sounds neat. Following the white hole in a kitchen sink and Hawking radiation from a black hole analogue, today's hot topic in the arxiv blog is a low energy system where massless particles acquire mass from the curling up of an extra dimension! Apparently the charge carriers in graphene are very well-modelled by equations that treat them as massless (perhaps one can think of them floating in a sea of other electrons?). Some smart guy discovered that if you turn graphene into a nanotube (curling up one of the two dimensions), the equations get modified so that the electrons act as if they have acquired some mass. Maybe some day I'll understand how that happens... Mass generation in graphene (original paper)

Distinguished nanotechnology researcher presents at NNU Thursday, October 21, 2010 NNU's new Engineering Program sponsored a public lecture and remarkable visual demonstrations of “The World’s Most Water Repellant Materials” by Dr. John Simpson, Senior Scientist at Oak Ridge National Lab. Dr. Simpson was the recipient of both the 2008 R&D Top 100 Award and the Oak Ridge Inventor of the Year award. Dr. Simpson presented his research on superhydrophobic nano-structured materials and addressed their possible applications and uses . He demonstrated the “MOSES EFFECT” of water standing vertically off these specially engineered surfaces. These superhydrophobic materials are extremely water repellent and may be used for drag reduction on the hulls of ships and the insides of pipes as well as for creating self-cleaning surfaces. The presentation was held in the Jackson Auditorium (Room 138) of the new 50,000 sq ft Thomas Family Health & Science Center, 603 Dewey St., Nampa on the campus of NNU. Admission and parking are free. Tours of the new Thomas Center engineering labs are open to the public at 6:15pm. If you would like to learn more about this presentation or have any questions, please contact Dr. Stephen Parke, NNU Professor of Engineering, at 208-467-8881. Photo caption: The “MOSES EFFECT” of liquid on a superhydrophobic nanomaterial surface will be demonstrated Thursday evening at NNU.&nb This is another source for this effect that explain the miracle of separating the Red Sea in 2 parts. http://www.riken.go.jp/lab-www/library/publication/review/pdf/No_44/44_156.pdf

Been around chess.com for over year but I'm relatively new to the group and playing in the match vs. Team Dalmatia. First time it's ever happened to me that my opponent is requesting that we agree to 2 draws before he's made his first move --- says he's tired of playing online. My immediate reaction is to refuse and play on. Since this is a team match I thought I'd should check with my mates and see if there is some established protocol for the ENMs? He is rated about 125 points higher than I am. -mike

Just spotted some news that the first rocky planet with a moderate temperature has been identified, and a very rough first estimate how many there are in our galaxy.

The question is simple, do numbers exist independently of any human mind? Put another way do we discover or invent mathematics? Also on a more important note it is written and spoken math.......s. Afterall we british invented...er discovered...er conquered numbers!