The Ubiquity of Positive to Negative Curvature Transformations

Yesterday, three examples confirming Bernard Riemann's truly beautiful hypothesis on the function of the curvature of space were brought to my attention. First is a remarkable and outstanding confirmation of what appears to be the playful "creativity" of plant life in problem solving in order to reproduce. In this case, sphagnum moss overcomes its limits in fostering offspring:

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists in the US have solved the mystery of how peat mosses manage to get their spores high enough to catch the wind, discovering that they produce vortex rings of air, like miniature "mushroom clouds" to boost the spores along -- the first time plants have been shown to be capable of creating such rings.

The tip of each stalk contains from 20-250,000 spores in a spherical, waterlogged capsule that dehydrates on sunny days. As it dries out the capsule collapses in on itself to form a cylinder, with the air compressed inside it. When the air pressure reaches a critical point the capsule blows its top off, shooting spores and air upwards to reach the turbulent layer at about 10 cm high. The process takes under one hundredth of a millisecond.

The vortex ring is produced as the air trapped in the capsule explodes outwards. The leading edge pushes against the atmosphere but then rolls back to form a donut-shaped ring. Several animals are known to make vortex rings, but until now no plant has been known to do so. Dolphins produce water vortex rings; jellyfish and squid use water rings to push themselves along, the human heart pushes blood from one chamber to another using vortex rings, and of course humans who smoke can produce smoke rings. 

Explosion of a Sphagnum palustre capsule. (Recorded at 10,000 fps with a 0.097 ms exposure; displayed at 15 fps.) A clear "mushroom cloud" vortex ring forms and reaches a nearly fixed width within 0.5 ms. Spores are carried upward within the vortex ring and its wake. Credit: Science, doi:10.1126/science.1190179

A vortex ring is a very efficient way to move through air or water because it moves as a single unit. The vortex ring formed by the exploding spore capsule enables the spores to keep together as they rise. Without the ring individual spores would slow down and disperse before reaching the turbulent layer, and most would fall back to the ground. Edwards said they had witnessed spore clouds reaching as high as 17 cm, but even the average height of 11 cm gets the spores well into the turbulence.The findings are published in today’s edition of the journal Science.Science journal Podcast: an interview with Dwight Whitaker on how Sphagnum mosses use "air guns" and vortex rings to aid reproductive success. Credit: Science, DOI:10.1126/science.1190179  More information: Sphagnum Moss Disperses Spores with Vortex Rings, Dwight L. Whitaker and Joan Edwards, Science 23 July 2010: Vol. 329. no. 5990, p. 406, DOI: 10.1126/science.1190179 

And here is an astronomical example on the web from the very same day of publication the preceding item:

Messier 76 
Credit & Copyright: Ken Crawford (Rancho Del Sol Obs.)

Explanation: "Nebula at the right foot of Andromeda ... " begins the description for the 76th object in Charles Messier's 18th century Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters. In fact, M76 is one of the fainter objects on the Messier list and is also known by the popular name of the "Little Dumbbell Nebula". Like its brighter namesake M27 (the Dumbbell Nebula), M76 is recognized as a planetary nebula - a gaseous shroud cast off by a dying sunlike star. The nebula itself is thought to be shaped more like a donut, while the box-like appearance of its brighter central region is due to our nearly edge-on view. Gas expanding more rapidly away from the donut hole produces the fainter loops of far flung material. The fainter material is emphasized in this composite image, highlighted by showing emission from hydrogen atoms in orange and oxygen atoms in complementary blue hues. The nebula's dying star can be picked out in the sharp false-color imageas the blue-tinted star near the center of the box-like shape. Distance estimates place M76 about 3 to 5 thousand light-years away, making the nebula over a light-year in diameter.

The final example from  yesterday came from investigations of cellular geometry. It establishes how protein signalling uses negative curvature to "decide" when to proceed with meiosis.
As I have so often pointed out here, it is the alternation of positive spherical curvature to a negative horn shockwave form that necessarily serves as a defining overriding characteristic of physical, biophysical, and noetic "space."

Biophysically Coherent Quantum Dynamics

Contrary to zealously and long held assumptions regarding the indeterminacy of the quantum regime, it is increasingly apparent that at the functional level of quantum biophysics such assumptions break down. Two recent papers bear this point out. And it is not as if the researchers in this field necessarily set out to challenge  prevailing dogma. The latest paper "Long-lived quantum coherence in photosynthetic complexes at physiological temperature" demonstrates that matrix protein energy landscapes provide an encapsulating protection of chromophores to produce a "near-perfect quantum efficiency" transfer of energy in photosynthesis. So the question here that presents itself immediately is how is it that a completely supposedly unsolvable stochastic chance quantum fluctuation can be garnered routinely and pervasively at the most elemental functioning of living systems?

Another recent more theoretical work "The relevance of continuous entanglement in DNA," educes a potential energetic model of DNA as a chain of harmonic quantum entangled oscillators. In this regard, the work of Ludmilla Yakushevich and colleagues on a DNA solitonic wave function  model is highly relevant.

Perhaps if we redirect our attention to the underpinnings of scientific epistemology toward this type of  thinking about dynamic biophysical work functions, the apparent absurdity of indeterminate randomness introduced into "pure" physics by Heisenberg et al. nearly a century ago will fade into the irrelevancy it so justly deserves. The truly "pure" substance of human creative thought as evidenced most immediately in classical contrapuntal composition is never located in the notes on the page of the musical score, but rather in that beautiful and truthful process lying above, beyond and "in between" the notes. It is the standpoint of accounting for the transformative power of human technological innovation which physics erroneously excludes from its purview. However, the scientific pursuit of what Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin espoused as the "good,"  will perforce always resolve such ugly Manichean metaphysical charades that plague today's schoolrooms.

A New Quantum Paradox

"The quantum mechanics of time travel through post-selected teleportation

Seth Lloyd, Lorenzo Maccone, Raul Garcia-Patron, Vittorio Giovannetti, Yutaka Shikano

(Submitted on 15 Jul 2010 (v1), last revised 19 Jul 2010 (this version, v2))

This paper discusses the quantum mechanics of closed timelike curves (CTC) and of other potential methods for time travel. We analyze a specific proposal for such quantum time travel, the quantum description of CTCs based on post-selected teleportation (P-CTCs). We compare the theory of P-CTCs to previously proposed quantum theories of time travel: the theory is physically inequivalent to Deutsch's theory of CTCs, but it is consistent with path-integral approaches (which are the best suited for analyzing quantum field theory in curved spacetime). We derive the dynamical equations that a chronology-respecting system interacting with a CTC will experience. We discuss the possibility of time travel in the absence of general relativistic closed timelike curves, and investigate the implications of P-CTCs for enhancing the power of computation."

I believe the probability of being paid for purveying similar arrant non-sense may be calculated in a Monte Carlo simulation that would operate as a perpetuum mobile money making machine. Oh, sorry I forgot about the so-called "rocket scientist" quants  on Wall Street that gave us the exotic derivative products. Hmm... is it just chance or could there be a connection here?

Leonardo Project

Leonardo was convinced that mankind could conquer the limitations of physical confinement across many manifolds by applying the lessons from principles that nature had resolved. The flight of birds for instance. We now no longer view that transformation of mankind’s potential to take flight as miraculous. Looking backward a narrative emerges of such earth shattering revolutionary scientific progress that fits into our ordinary commonplace perspective. While in actual fact, the transformation of thinking required for such singular outposts of progress was absolutely inimical to vested interests of the feudal powers that be at the time of Da Vinci.

Riemann in his habilitation thesis, establishes the separation of space into two distinct types: continuous and discrete manifolds. I believe that human creativity causes a transformation from the continuous manifold into a nonlinear relative discrete manifestation. This occurs as a potential moral vector for humanity. Our very language as an instrument of transformative power for the future of humanity has this inhering latency. Thought itself is nothing less than an instantiation of the discrete language bound manifold transformed from the continuum of human history as a sort of relatively subsisting solitonic form.

Today one might be convinced that mankind can conquer the limitations of spatial confinement in new ways. For instance, it has become clear that the future holds a potential of an artificial transformation of electromagnetic brainwaves into language via machine interface without reference to the physical obstruction of previously necessary utterance of sound or writing. This will act as a new such transformation for the continuum of human progress. But it must also be understood that such a new power which will potentially alter human practice for the better must be integrated as part of a program of development for humanity. Only then will good come from such technology

Obama's Brain Must Be On Something

Obama headed for the funeral of Senator Byrd, today, said we are headed in the right direction, just not fast enough. Indeed.