Arquivo para a ‘Física’ Categoria
But what are black holes ?
10
Nov
Black holes are regions in space-time (neither space nor time are absolute
as idealists think) where the gravitational field is so intense that nothing we know, no particle or electromagnetic radiation like light, can escape it, Einstein’s theory of general relativity foresaw this as calculating an extremely compact mass that would deform spacetime to form a black hole.
On April 10, 2019, a gigantic black hole was “photographed” (figure), nestled in the heart of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy located 55 million light years away was photographed as a dark circle surrounded by a flaming ring.
This photo actually used a computational algorithm, as scientists can’t directly observe with the telescopes they use to detect other bodies using X-ray, light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation, but can infer by detecting interference in bodies next to matter nearby, so if a black hole passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, it will draw the matter inward in a process known as accretion, it first heats up and then is torn apart as it goes towards it, thus having a dramatic interference in the bodies in its vicinity firing powerful bursts of gamma rays.
Black hole formation is so far known as a result of stellar collisions, shortly after launch in December 2004, NASA’s Swift telescope observed powerful flashes of light that were gamma-ray bursts, and shortly after the Chandra event and the Telescope NASA’s Hubble Spacer collected “afterglow” data from this event which led scientists to conclude that powerful explosions occur when a black hole and a neutron star collide, producing another black hole.
Even though the basic process of formation of black holes is known, a mystery remains that they exist on radically different scales, spread across the universe, on the one hand there are many remnants of massive star explosions, they are generally 10 to 24 times larger in “stellar mass” than the Sun, others are small and difficult to detect, but scientists estimate that there are ten million to one billion of these holes in the Milky Way alone.
At the other extreme are “supermassive” black holes that are millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun, astronomers believe they may be at the center of all large galaxies, including our Milky Way, observation is possible from the effects in the stars and in the gases close to it.
Planets, ExoPlanets, Brown Dwarfs and stars
09
Nov
Planets as we know them are celestial bodies that revolve
around a gravitational field composed of at least one sun (there may be more than one), while the exoplanet orbits a star that is not a sun, until September 21, 2021, 4841 exoplanets were known in 3578 systems, with 796 systems having more than one planet.
A star is generally more than 80x the mass of Jupiter, however there are smaller and less bright stars as they get older, they have a mass 13 to 80 times that of Jupiter, and astronomers have already found about 2,000 in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
In general brown dwarfs are new, however it was recently discovered, by chance like most astronomical discoveries, a body called WISEA J153429.75-104303.3, with more than 13 million years, as it was fortuitous its discovery was nicknamed “The accident”.
Age is interesting because it can tell us something about the origin of the universe, or the origin of this universe in case there is a multiverse, but due to its age it will give many clues.
A brown dwarf is a body larger than any planet, but too small and too cold to be a star, this is because the dwarf does not have enough mass to fuse hydrogen in its core, and thus release stellar energy, with age it gets colder.
The brown dwarf has different characteristics than the others, it doesn’t even have the faintest glow (see below for a detection image), and this intrigued scientists, said Davy Kirkpatrick: “This object defied all our expectations”, one of the co-authors of the discovery Published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Two other surprising facts about the “Accident” is that it is about 53 light years away from the Sun, almost neighbor to the Solar System, and it travels through the galaxy very fast, at about 207.4 k/s, or , 25% faster than any other brown dwarf.
The mysterious universe makes us not only think about the origin and destiny of everything that exists, but also its originality and beauty that emanates from something superior to us.
The divine environment and the human phenomenon
28
Oct
Chardin’s worldview on the human phenomenon ranges from
cosmogenesis, the origin of the universe and of life to the complexification of nature and the place of man in it, what the pandemic shows is that this complexification grows and even science has limits to deal with it, however, this pandemic can bring new horizons, when it thinking and clarifying it needs science.
Among his various works, Teilhard Chardin makes a singular journey between The divine environment, written between November 1926 and March 1927 and the Human Phenomenon, written between July 1938 and June 1940, which form an “inseparable whole” also says edition I have of Editorial Presença de Lisboa, Portugal.
Singular because it transits from the divine to the human, as the names of the works attest, without slips or ravages, it shows us the “need for the connection between science and religion equally affirmed by Einstein”, an expression by Helmut de Terra, friend and admirer of Chardin. Chardin initiates the divine environment by realizing “the confusion of religious thought in our time” (page 41) and attests that the man of our time “lives with the explicit awareness of being an atom or a citizen of the Universe” (idem).
The timeliness of the text is because the author affirms at the beginning of his book something that has a lot to do with our days, a collective awakening that a beautiful day “makes each individual aware of the true dimensions of life, necessarily provokes in the human mass a profound religious shock, both to slaughter and to exalt ”(ibidem).
This is because the world is too “beautiful: it is to him and only to him that they should worship” (p. 42). What is then the “divine environment”, the world (in our case we explore the universe’s worldviews) will not be more and more fascinating and it would not be and it would be “eclipsing our God” (idem), and there is a connection, in the view of part of Christianity, between God and matter, the Eucharist, she and she alone can create a real sense of reconnecting us to the divine, “this is my body and my blood” said Jesus, and those who eat will have access to eternal life.
Chardin says “the slowly accumulated tension between Humanity and God will reach the limits set by the possibilities of the World, and then it will be the end” (p. 177)… that we must wait not as a catastrophe but as an“ exit ”to the world to which we must collaborate with all our Christian forces without fear of the world, because his enchantments could no longer harm those for whom he became, in addition to himself, the Body of the One who is and the One who comes ”.
Chardin, Teilhard. (no year). O meio edivino: ensaio sobre a vida interior (The divine environment: I teach about the inner life). Lisbon: Editorial Presença.
Man’s place in nature
27
Oct
Edgar Morin we’ve already done some posts here. However, we
want to dialogue with the anthropocentric concept that dominates many studies and increasingly we see that it is a limitation since nature has its own course, and the brutal interference of man can modify and harm this course.
According to Ways (1970) cited in Chisholm (1974) there is a tendency in Western epistemology to objectify nature to see it “from the outside”, and this is responsible for the arrogant and insensitive way of dealing with the natural world, according to the author’s own attitude of separation of man from nature constitutes the basis of the growing human knowledge of nature, being, therefore, an anthropocentric interpretation of the evolution of the natural world.
On the other hand, the complexification of nature in man is undeniable, as an animal that is aware, or in other words aware of its own conscience, which can lead to another extreme, which is the “internalization” where culture and nature are confused , where subjectivism can be a responsible trend for this aspect.
The paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, in his work “The Human Phenomenon”, observes that there is no anatomical or physiological trait that distinguishes man from other higher animals, on the other hand, it has the zoological characteristic that makes it a being apart in the animal world. , is the only one that inhabits the entire planet, another characteristic that comes from its form of consciousness is its organization as consciousness and thought structure, which Teilhard de Chardin calls “noosphere”, a sphere of thought that is also world-wide.
As for man, it remains to be seen, and even science does not know, if it is a mere superficial accident that has happened or if there is an intention in him since the Universe was created, whether Big Bang or not, reflects Teilhard Chardin: “that we should consider it – about to sprout from the smallest fissure anywhere in the Cosmos – and, once it has arisen, unable to waste all the opportunity and all the means to reach the extreme of everything it can reach, outwardly of Complexity, and inwardly of Consciousness” (CHARDIN , 1997).
CHARDIN, T. (1997) Man’s place in nature, trans. Armando Pereira da Silva, Ed. Instituto Piaget, Lisbon.
CHISHOLM, A. (1974) Ecology: a strategy for survival. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
Volcanoes, between science and superstitions
28
Sep
The volcano in the Canary Islands, which has been burning for
more than a week, and for the time being just increasing the volume and quantity of glowing lavas have raised questions and fears, not everything is really right, volcanologists and geologists have no forecast for the volcano to cool down and not all superstitions came only from prophecies and apocalyptics.
The possibility of a megatsunami, starting from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean has more volcanoes and earthquakes in the so-called circle of fire (photo) than the Atlantic was studied after the Indonesia tsunami that gained notoriety, but it was Japan, which affected the Fukushima Plant the most amazing.
The warning came not from superstitious, but from British researchers in a 2001 article (Ward & Day, 2002), the article gained notoriety for directly citing the Canary Islands (see photo above), and was published in the scientific journal Yearbook of Science and Technology , carried out other studies in cases that have already happened, such as the 1st. April 1946 in the Aleutian Islands where there was a landslide similar to the one off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
Cited that the largest land displacement, which caused megatsunami, was the landslide in 1929 due to an earthquake in Newfoundland National Park, Canada, on the Burin peninsula, which reached the coast of Scotland and Holland, but only was noticed because of fragments that were deposited on the coasts of these countries.
The article carried out experiments by computer simulation, which shows that the efficiency of tsunami generation increases with the speed and volume of the landslide, and made a simulation precisely with the Cumbre Vieja volcano (fig. 3 above), on the island of La Palma (one of the Gran Canary Islands), and wrote verbatim: “continuous and recent movements of the flanks of a number of oceanic island volcanoes including Kilauea in Hawaii and Cumbre Vieja in La Palma in the Canary Islands are possibilities that these can break [the flanks] during an eruption in the not-too-distant future” (Ward & Day, 2001).
T he volume has increased since last Sunday (19/09) and one of the flanks opened, but it did not collapse and the lavas had not reached the sea until the present day yesterday.
We had other volcanoes during the year, in Italy Etna, in Russia the Ebeko volcano in the Kuril Islands and in Iceland the Fagradalsfjall, but these do not pose any danger, in the case of Iceland there was a period of interruption of air traffic in the region.
Other volcanoes in the world have manifested this year, in Africa the Nyiragongo in early June, in Indonesia the Sinabung in early March, in Guatemala the Fire Volcano, but the eruption has already ceased, there are others around the world, active volcanoes ( but not in eruption) there are more than a thousand altogether, Brazil is far from the tectonic plates that, in addition to volcanoes, cause earthquakes.
For a few hours the Cumbre Vieja Volcano stopped spouting lava, but it returned, whether the duration and volume of material will be sufficient for a tsunami depends on the intensity and duration, neither volcanologists nor geologists who follow the volcano can say with certainty.
Ward, N. and Day, Simon. Suboceanic Landslides. Steven Yearbook of Science and Technology,
Ward, N. and Day, Simon. (2001). Suboceanic Landslides. Steven Yearbook of Science and Technology, McGraw-Hill, Available in: ward&day.pdf (ucsc.edu)
The human purpose and its finitude
24
Sep
Unlike the machine that has the environment as its purpose
(see previous post), the human purpose is to reaffirm existence through the perpetuation of life, and also everything that is alive can and should defend this existence, as explained by Edgar Morin:
“The impositions that inhibit enzymes, genes, and even cells, do not diminish a freedom that does not exist at this level, as freedom only emerges at a level of individual complexity where there are possibilities of choice; they inhibit qualities, possibilities of action or expression” (MORIN, 1977, 110), machines are not without purpose, but whatever they are, they are means.
But this freedom when it is at the human level, and it is “only at the level of individuals who have possibilities of choice, decision and complex development that impositions can be destructive of freedom, that is, become oppressive” (idem) .
It is the development of human culture that can develop these potentialities, as Morin says: “It is certainly culture that allows the development of the potentials of the human spirit” (ibid.), it depends, therefore, on the development of a culture of peace, solidarity and of preserving life within the human spirit.
Morin will say in the chapter of his conclusion on the “complexity of Nature”, that in the so-called “animistic” universe, or mythological in the case of the Greeks, “human beings were conceived in a cosmomorphic way, that is, made of the same fabric as the universe.” (MORIN, 1977, p. 333).
This presence of what Morin calls “generativity”, the animated and animating beings, all existing within the universe, implied a communication between the spheres: the physis, life and anthroposocial, if we extend these concepts to Sloterdijk’s spherology: anthropotechnic.
But as we reasoned a few posts ago, the separation of physis into nature (animate) and physics (inanimate) not only “disenchanted the universe, but also desolated it.”
He completes his reasoning with a sentence that shows our multiple crises and nights: “There are no more geniuses, nor spirits, nor souls, nor soul; there are no more gods; there is a God, strictly speaking, but elsewhere (the emphasis is on the author); there are no longer existing beings, with the exception of living beings, which certainly inhabit the physical universe, but come from another” (idem).
Thus he concludes that nature was returned to poets and physis to the Greeks, and so the universe of techniques (which are means) dominated life (which is purpose) and so “science and technique generate and manage, like gods, a world of objects” (MORIN, 1977, p. 334).
It does not let finalism (or fatalism) be the last word: “it is from the crisis of this science that new data and notions that allow us to reconstruct a new universe come out” (idem), quantum physics, from the third included (the quantum between two quanta) and entropy/neguentropy are renewed.
Every universe is “anima”, the theologian Teilhard Chardin also agrees with this thesis, and also that life is the complexification of the universe, in which the human phenomenon is its apex.
In addition to the animist or mythological interpretation for these purposes of life, which is death and life in life in death, a Heraclitian principle also cited by Morin, the Christian reflection on the passages already cited above about who Jesus is (Mk 8,27 and Mc 9,31), and He must suffer greatly.
It is complemented by the question about abandoning what is the transitory purpose of life (therefore only means) and if it is not useful for the ultimate purpose (and therefore, they are only means and should be relativized) if your hand, your foot or your eye leads you to sin (forget the ultimate end of human life which is the eternity of life) it is better to lose them to have the living purpose.
But his last word is to accept those who see this reality differently, if they are not against us, it is in our favor (Mk 8, 40) and (Mk 8,41) and “whoever gives you a drink of water , because ye are of Christ, he will not remain without receiving his reward”, so many can cooperate with the growth of the human anima, with the life and living Nature on which we all depend.
MORIN, E. (1977) The nature of NATURE. Lisbon PUBLICATIONS EUROPA-AMERICA, LDA.
The complexity and its genesis
21
Sep
As we penetrate into the increasingly studied man-machine
relationship, it is necessary to understand what has been theorized about nature so far, which means forming a model for nature, and in turn, making human and non-human collectives and individuals, composed in a culture, or in a tradition, or in a more general scope, what is articulated and what is only configured.
That is, the model may be subject to error or failure according to the areas implemented and can be determined by them, but by re-articulated it within its own history of creation, not naturalization but the culturalization of concepts, we understand the model that we have a priri, and that it is not always nature itself.
The one who penetrated deeper into this idea was Edgar Morin and from there conceived his method and developed complexity, conceiving nature requires ultimately preserving the network from which he conceptually emerged and correcting where the concepts were separated, identifying a network.
So it’s about identifying the culture that developed around nature, Morin puts it in lowercase to differentiate it from Nature itself in capital letters which is all that was said here and so the complex develops, which means what was “fabric together”.
What we then say about nature is the culture that developed around the idea that we could dominate it, but one of Francis Bacon’s maxims is that “we can’t dominate it if we don’t understand”, modern quantum physics, Modern astrophysics have shown how naive the models of Newton, Galileo and Copernicus were, but they were woven together to arrive at the new models proposed today.
Edgar Morin explains the “disorder of order” starting with two quotes to say that the order: “simplified laws invented by the wise” (Brillouin, 1959, p. 190), abstractions taken by the concrete (Whitehead, 1926)” (MORIN, 1977 , p. 76).
It is now, according to Morin, squeezed “between microphysical chaos and the diaspora”, and it matters to know how it was born: “How did it develop from scratch? How to conceive of it despite, with and in disorder? How can she appear to us as the sole sovereign of the universe if it is now so difficult to justify her existence? (idem).
What is the genesis? “the concept of order, in classical physics, was Ptolemaic. As in Ptolemy’s system, where suns and planets revolved around the Earth, everything revolved around an order”. (MORIN, 1977, p. 82).The Copernican revolution, however, was not the final word: “Hubble took away the entire astral or galactic center. And here is the great Meta-Copernican and Meta-Newtonian revolution, which went underground from Carnot and Boltzmann to Planck, Bohr, Einstein and Hubble. There is no longer a center of the world, whether it is the Earth, the sun, the galaxy or a group of galaxies” (idem)
And he continues: ”There is no longer an unmistakable axis of time, but an antagonistic double process that emerged from the same and single process. The universe is, therefore, simultaneously polycentric, centered, decentered, disseminated, diasporizing…” (ibid.).
MORIN, E. (1977) The nature of NATURE. Lisbon PUBLICATIONS EUROPA-AMERICA, LDA.
What is natural and the possibility of knowing
15
Sep
The problem of knowing the world (natural and not cultural,
this is what we have) must start from a premise of clearing our minds of cultural convictions, most of them idealistic, that blind us to the possibility of understanding that we do not dominate nature as proposed the Enlightenment, and worse, we run the risk of destroying it and putting civilization in check.
Quoting Edgar Morin in the epigraph of his general introduction of the book “The Nature of NATURE”, he write the second in capital letters even to deify it in the sense that it is still unknown to us, and contains mystery that affects us, as proved by the current Pandemic that still challenges us.
Edgar Morin, opening the first chapter: “The Spirit of the Valley”, quotes Karl Popper: “Personally I think there is at least one problem… that interests all thinking men: the problem of understanding the world, ourselves and our knowledge as part of the world”, so this knowledge is neither definitive nor eternal, as everything evolves and is perishable.
To introduce these convictions, he makes a second quote by Jacob Bronowski: “The concept of science is neither absolute nor eternal”, and he will make a third, which is for the next post.
He begins with 5 convictions that made him start this book and where is his “cogito” his suspension of judgment of everything he thought before, his first conviction of these problems states that he: “holds us to the present, they demand that we let go of it to consider them in depth” (Morin, 1977, pg. 13), and professes his second conviction: “the principles of knowledge hide what, henceforth, it is vital to know” (idem) thus detaches himself from his previous ideas.
His third conviction is the strongest, increasingly convinced that the relationship science Ʌ politics Ʌ ideology [Ʌ in text it´s triangle] when it is not invisible, continues to be treated in an indigent way, through the reabsorption of two of its terms in one of them that has become dominant” (idem) , gives you food for thought.
His fourth conviction is that “that the concepts we use to conceive our society — the whole society — are mutilated and lead to inevitably mutilating actions” (idem).
Finally, his fifth conviction is: “that anthroposocial science must be articulated in the science of nature, and that this articulation requires a reorganization of the structure of knowledge itself” (Idem), so the knowledge we have needs to be modified to from its bases.
He knew that his task was really encyclopedic and vast, that’s why he even isolated himself in a castle (I don’t have the precise data) because his task: “I myself needed exceptional circumstances and conditions’ to move from conviction to action, that is, to work” (idem).
And it is from there that he wrote his complex method with three initial questions: “What does the radical self of self-organization mean? • What is the organization? • What is the complexity?” (page 14).
MORIN, E. The nature of NATURE. Lisbon PUBLICATIONS EUROPA-AMERICA, LDA., 1977.
The ineffable that exists and the metaphor
22
Jul
Many phenomena in nature and in a broader sense of the
universe, although they may have explanations, are ineffable, that is, because even when described, they have limitations due to their complexity and not obviousness.
One of these phenomena is the quantum tunneling of quantum mechanics in which particles transpose energy states that “logically” would be prohibited, they escape from regions surrounded by potential barriers even though they have a kinetic energy lower than the barrier.
Einstein, Podolski and Rosen (EPR) wrote an article in the 1920s calling this effect “ghostly” but in the 1970s it was proven and also breaks with the classical thinking that there is A and non-A, there can be no third hypothesis, it exists and it is proven, at least in physics.
The ineffable in everyday life are human phenomena that cross the imaginary barrier and are physically realized, they are mysteries and they exist not only to demonstrate tricks that are convincing to deify this or that group, or to make a “magic”, that is, field of charlatans, but for a clear phenomenological awareness of something beyond the human.
One of the functions of the metaphor is to be able to describe this phenomenon without resorting to a very complex logic for common sense, and to allow many people to understand these mysteries.
The figure in the parable enters into this aspect, with a small difference from the metaphor by using examples from everyday life and common sense, it is pedagogical in explaining how the mystery of life (and also death) can be seen in order to understand the fate of humanity and what life is.
Far from explaining its origin in the physical sense, Genesis for example, refers to Adam and Eve, the fact that man came from some complex aspect of nature is explained as being made of clay, the metaphor is that man came from organic compounds of nature, and of course, after God blew his nostrils and gave “life” in the spiritual sense, it is not difficult to understand that this life exists.
Love and divine logic
26
Mar
Only those who are able to overcome the limits of pain, hatred and
contempt can approach a divine love, it is necessary to overcome the dualistic logic of the struggle between good and evil, deo-logic is the one that always meets for good, what the Greeks called agathosyne, which comes from Agathon kindness in a high sense of spirit, and which is pursuit.
There is a third party included who walks with us.
Pain is often what hurts the soul the most, but it can also be the one that broadens it, in these moments of evolution of the pandemic crisis in the country, we face the most serious need to seek strength beyond sanitary measures, weak is true, but the The defense of life must continue in those who show solidarity with those affected by the virus.
Only by understanding this deeper sense of pain will we be able to embrace it, to have hope and to look to a future where we will no longer have to run after lost time, but prepare and anticipate ourselves to avoid even worse humanitarian crises, which may come.
There is always a third possibility and just as pain is a transition from one state to another, what can arise after much suffering is an even greater novelty, a leap in quality in what we are as men and as nature, and overcoming current stage.
Edgar Morin wrote in his recent book It is necessary to change the path: lessons from the coronavirus, in this sense as well: “The utopia of the best of all worlds must give way to the hope of a better world. Like every great crisis, like every great collective unhappiness, our planetary crisis awakens hope. ”
It can thus be better understood, both in the theological and philosophical sense, in a central passage of Jesus’ passion when on the cross he shouts (Mark 1,34): “. 34At three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice: – “Eloi, Eloi, lamá sabactâni?”, Which means: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, Because it is in this pain that the human and the divine become merge, emerging a new reality of death and resurrection, yes God died say the philosophers, but there is a third included: after he rose, so you can understand the passage from death to life.
All this pain, this “great collective unhappiness” says Morin awakens hope, because it is indeed a passage, perhaps the most painful that humanity has gone through, even though we have had hateful wars, even though we have conflicts of a social, ethnic and religious nature, there is a feeling of pain.
All this pain will only make sense if we find another way of looking at it right there in front.
