Arquivo para a ‘Física’ Categoria
Universe mysteries and universal forces
25
Nov
When Einstein formulated the Theory of General Relativity, two
big “holes” remained in his theory, one he recognized as wormholes, paths in a space-time dimension in which there could be spaces, from a mathematical point of view, of immense gravity in which everything “disappeared” and another unrecognized one was the formulation of quanta as a dimension between time and space where there is a third hypothesis between matter and non-matter, the “quanta”.
According to physicist Jim Al-Khalili “He devised a new theory about the entire Universe, in which he also said that when stars collapse they form black holes”, and that at that time he believed they were just mathematical hypotheses, necessary to close the account, but “that they didn’t exist, that they were just products of mathematics”, but it was something that bothered him said Al-Khalili in the BBC interview.
The quantum issue was a state called entanglement, today called quantum entanglement, a state of the particle where there was a collapse of the wave function, and thus, the actual existence of the particle was in an “adjacent” reality which is precisely the entanglement, Einstein, Poldoski and Rosen wrote an article that by their names was called EPR in which they said that the particle was always present and rejected the hypothesis of a “third state”, which was later proved.
Black holes not only exist, but pictures have already been taken (a famous one was published in April 2019), which are actually made by algorithms that map the magnetic effects around it, and thus build an image, it is now known that they are numerous and even some exist within our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Universal forces are increasingly arousing curiosity and also fear, a large comet was recently discovered and was named after the Brazilian Bernardinelli who were doing a doctorate in cosmology in the US, called Bernardinelli-Bernstein (C/2014-UN271) 150 km in diameter and can be seen in 2031, but they are the meteors that populate the imagination of the apocalyptic on duty, they are numerous and unpredictable, some are discovered moments before passing close to our planet.
NASA started a test mission in an attempt to redirect asteroids, the project called Dart (Double Asteroid Redirect Test) will try to send a small spacecraft to collide against Dimorphos, “moon” of the asteroid Didymos, in an attempt to change its route, does not represent danger to the planet, so this is just a test.
The universe is mysterious, we still know little about it, 68% is made of dark energy (picture), and this energy does not dilute as the universe expands (the entropy principle), and if this expansion is faster and faster, as Einstein supposed, this can lead to some curious conclusions, such as the fact that this strange “energy” arises in this expansion.
Look at the Universe and its mysteries should restore us to the humility of how little we know, how admirable is the mystery of life and our destiny as a person and as a planet.
Distances in light years events in millions of years
12
Nov
If on a scale of human life we speak at most hundreds of years,
on a planetary scale we must speak of millions and even billions of years, if in terms of distance we can speak of thousands of kilometers on a planetary scale, in astronomical terms this scale is millions of light years, the time light travels per year.
This is not even to say that extraordinary events do not happen, because in terms of planetary and universal life billions of years have passed, so at some point in time this could happen, like the end of the dinosaurs, the ice age and changes in the planet’s geology that have already occurred, and neither that it will occur tomorrow or in the next few years, but at some point in time they may occur.
The volcano on the island of La Palma shows signs that it may be ending its eruption, so the catastrophes that were suggested (hypothetically and with a rare possibility of occurring) will not happen, but it doesn’t mean that others elsewhere on the planet cannot happen, earthquakes and weather events have occurred and caused tragedies such as Fukushima in Japan in March 2011.
This pandemic also seems to be at the end of its cycle, although Europe is alert, but there more than here the number of people who have resisted the vaccine is very large.
We must always be alert, life on the planet is at risk, the problem of environmental balance, the social problem arising from the pandemic crisis, but which was huge before it, the eternal danger of wars over market disputes and religious intolerance is always hanging around us.
A great international agreement that unites peoples and establishes a truce in conflicts, that brings solidarity between peoples and resolves the ecological balance, could be a great encouragement for a civilization in crisis.
In spiritual terms it means that humanity must also evolve at this point, and the signs are not the best, so it is not a matter of apocalypse or threat, when the human spirit releases all energy contrary to its well-being and progress moves towards an abyss and towards tragedies, the day when a great night will fall on men seems to be at hand, so says the Bible reading (Mk 13:24-15): “In those days, after the great tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the light it will no longer shine, the stars will begin to fall from heaven and the forces of heaven will be shaken”, but the reading immediately afterwards also indicates (Mk 13:32): “no one knows about that day and hour, not even the angels of heaven , nor the Son, but only the Father”.
So let’s live life and let’s favor what is good for all humanity, not just for groups or ideologies, life needs to go on and it is necessary to fight for it.
The evolution of stars and white dwarfs
11
Nov
The evolution of a star like the Sun goes from a giant to a supergiant
phase and ejects a planetary nebula and then transforms into a white dwarf when it is losing its energy and brightness.
The basis of stellar evolution calculations is called Hydrostatic Equilibrium whereby the pressure of the gas counteracts gravity in most of the lives of stars, since if there is no such dynamic equilibrium or time it collapses, so stars have nuclear reactions at some stage in their evolution, the ones that don’t have are brown dwarfs.
Using the ALMA radio observatory in Chile, which study a dozen red giants, the evolutionary stage at which stars approach death, they release an enormous amount of energy, producing a constant stellar wind, ie, ejecting a stream. of particles that throws the mass of the star itself in all directions, and these are the bases of its spectacular images.
If they were solitary nebulae, they would only have concentric shapes, but the presence of other companion stars and even planets that orbit the red giants, the influence of their fields ends up forming other images, influenced by the surrounding objects, giving specific configurations and colors.
One of the project scientists Carl Gottlieb, co-author of the study “(Sub)stellar companions shape the winds of stars evolved” said: “We now have an unprecedented view of how stars like our Sun will evolve during the last stages of its evolution”, this is of course on a scale of millions and even billions of years.
Palaeontologist and theologian Teilhard Chardin said that on the scale of the Cosmos: “only the fantastic has the condition to be true, planetary nebulae form incredible cosmic images that look more like divine paintings and are formed around a star that has reached the giant stage red, and recently scientists discovered why their shapes are unique.
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.
