C-THIS QUOTE OF THE MONTH - COUNT DOWN TO THE QUOTE (now recent first!)
This site is an interest or past time (when I have got time) or even a hobby containing random space art, traditional pictures and thoughts about science and related subjects, all of which I have created. Part of the site also contains an old magazine. This bit has a Monthly Quote and a few...
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st Feb 2012
" Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth "
Martin H. Fischer - is a Swiss American biochemist
Life
Countdown to the Quote (of The Month) 3:Its a process that is self sustaining combined with a system of opportunity and its environment. A biological process is a process of a living organism. The organism is reliant on internal regulation combined with external or environmental opportunist systems, to maintain its structure.
Countdown to the Quote (of The Month) 2:Its internal environment is in a constant state of regulation by organization of units. Homeostasis is the regulation needed in the internal environment maintaining a constant state, for example, temperature. This system can be either open or closed. The units refer to the structure of cells which are the most basic parts of life.
Countdown to the Quote (of The Month) 1:Its a mix of regulatory inferior negative feedbacks to a potential superior positive feedback. This is the only time on my site I cannot get what a sentence actually means, apart from, it could be that the system cleverly discriminates what it needs to keep itself turning over. It could be that the feedbacks that are inferior to the system make a negative response towards it, because it hinders its chances of surviving and the opposite with a potential positive, or maybe it means the system learns, over time from experience, what to discriminate in order to achieve its most positive or optimum potential in order survive.
It's that nebulous but most complex of all things in our scientific understanding of the universe, but some of its complexity evades us even now. We know lots about life, and can even model it on a computer, but that doesn't mean we know its most fundamental tricks.
The theme is life so any two of these tracks with the words life in them sort of go with this months topic. Well sort of. One of my favourtie singers, Amy Macdonald - This Is The Lifehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA Another of my favourites by Amy Macdonald - An ordinary life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvDdAkXpmBQ
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st Jan 2012
" Everything's got space between it, the planets, trees, your eyes. Your eyes get too close together, it's a whole different world. You can lose perspective. "
By Mos Def - an American actor and emcee known by the stage names Mos Def and Yasiin Bey. He started his hip hop career in a group called Urban Thermo Dynamics, after which he appeared on albums by Da Bush Babees and De La Soul
Perspective
Countdown to the Quote (of The Month) 3: Subjects size of dimension along this being shorter than dimensions across it. Change your perspective on perspective! The line of sight was the missing part for 'it' - a main term used in perspective. The size of an object's dimensions along the line of sight, which was the part, is relatively shorter than dimensions across the line of sight again. Perspective is a method of drawing using lines, co-ordinates and points, that create a three dimensional scene on a flat plane, like paper or on a computer screen.
Countdown to The Quote of the Month 2: Has similarities to S and G Relativity by Cartesian coordinates but for its planes, scenes and axes. A Cartesian coordinate system is a branch of geometry specifying each point uniquely in a plane by a pair of numerical coordinates, which are signed distances from the point to two fixed perpendicular directed lines, that are measured in the same unit of length. Each reference line is a coordinate axis or an axis of the system. The point where they meet is called its origin. The coordinates can also be used as the positions of the perpendicular projections of the point onto the two axes or called signed distances from the origin. In physics they are a set of axes were, orientation, position and object properties are measured. It's also the state of motion of the observer. To some degree the Cartesian co-ordinate system used in perspective has some similarities with the co-ordinate system used in classical mechanics, where Special Relativity is integrated with classical mechanics and general relativity. Were space-time and space are flat in Newtonian mechanics and special relativity, the shape of space-time in General relativity, using this system here means in general relativity, that the same restrictions on the shape of space-time and the coordinate system to be used are gone. If involving inertia, a different definition of motion is used that is a type of geodesic. This is where it all goes into form. As it's assumed that General relativity is four dimensional, this works with the use of four systems that describe a co-ordinate to include proper time but... as the Cartesian co-ordinate system is flat, the combined form using this is reduced to Special Relativity. Another way is of seeing this is the use of Lorentz transformations used in Special R. On a separate note, it could be that perspective relate to both Special Relativity and General Relativity in a more of a roundabout way, were Special Relativity, like perspective, is like motion as a relative view with no absolute state of rest, and all reference frames are viable. The perspective view is the observer in a frame - whether at rest in that frame, is an interesting point to consider. Also a view of the planes and axes, to the vanishing point, is relative to the observer depending on where they are in the frame, and not one plane, scene or axis in perspective, as nether one could be seen as any more viable than the other - but only when the observer has to re-create the scene again from the same image. An expample is saying that in graphical perspective, there is one-point -were it's plane is parallel is parallel to two axes of a rectilinear, or Cartesian, scene. Two-point perspective exists when the plane is parallel to a Cartesian scene in one axis but not to the other two axes. Three-point perspective exists when the perspective is a view of a Cartesian scene where the picture plane is not parallel to any of the scene's three axes This goes to four-pionts, then there is zero. In General Relativity it is the geometrical molding of points and the intervention of Euclidean geometry etc, that defines its own perspective of points or scenes. The vanishing points, lines, scenes and axes, in the use of perspective in this respect, are in some ways similar....but they need not be too complicated to think about, but if they are, just go and have a walk up to the top of a mountain instead.
Countdown to The Quote of the Month 1: We are often told to get a perception in it and it's used in a form. We are often told to get a sense, which is a form of perception, of perspective. The form it's used in is an art form like, computer graphics, computer-aided geometric design, geometry-related systems, 3-D computer games, ray-tracers and CAD engineering drawing. Thsi creates a sense of dimension in a drawing using, a vanashing point, lines, scenes and axes.
It is often said that if you can't change your surroundings in life, you can change your sense of perspective towards them -which could be just as important. The link to the music and video of Vangelis - Ask The Mountains. This video here shows how a walk to the mountain tops is a good way of creating a new sense of perspective, not just on life, but the universe and everything about it. At 4mins 2 secs into the video, you can see (I think the best camera work I have ever seen on TV) the spectacular camera angle moves right above the mountain, but then, in a twist of genius, it rotates (and makes you very dizzy!) only to leave two contrasting shots of the same mountain range - one, the cold and blue shady side, and then two, the contrasting warm sunny side - absolutely brilliant! Please expand the video picture to maximize and play the whole lot with speaker sound on max - and what a great start to the New Year! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUBACTi7ezA
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st December 2011
" Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause."
Voltaire - writer, historian and philosopher
Chance
Countdown to the Quote 2: It could be probability or not as post hoc ergo propter hoc. Chance events happen that can be worked out, to a degree, by using the rules of probability and are generally predictable within reason. An example is randomness. It could be argued that randomness under certain situations, like the micro quantumn world, isn't random at all, and that chaos, as another unpredictable theory that is similar, is actually more unpredictable than randomness itself. There is a possibility that one day a powerfull computer, or insight, will predict chance events. The post hoc ergo propter hoc is a term used to describe a logical fallacy. It's a fallacy of a particular type of deduction and can make the theory of chance (in a reptrospective way) quite often misunderstood. An example is that if two events happen at the same time, the human response is to make logical deductions or related connections, based on a temporal sequence in time about those events, as apposed to any underyling cause for each separate event, so they appear connected. To put it simply, when seen together or even separate, are often refered to be happening by chance.
Countdown to the Quote 1: Is often attributed by something but not its own co-occurrence.Leading on from happening by chance, the two events that appear connected, are often not, so they have causes that are disconnected and pre-determined - they are not often attributed to something in common in the squence of time. However, they may have a common co-ocurrance - an example is that two quantum events might not be connected but they are both measured as quantum states, which when you think about it, is the only thing that they do have in common. The Pauli Exclusion Principle is an unusual way of looking at chance on the particle scale. Two particles with the same value can not occupy the same state or, they have different values, but in this way, can then occupy tthe same state. All physics and chemistry is based on this system. There are many others on a classical scale, like clouds, traffic, birds and even human beahviour that follow similar rules. Chance has it's reasons to happen but it is not often the reasons that are thought... amazing, but I would say that.
No not Abba, Take A Chance On Me....if two people ever meet again, will it be by chance? Timbaland - If We Ever Meet Again ft. Katy Perryhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDKva-s_khY
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st November 2011
"I think it shows our sphere of inlfuence, if you like, our sphere of knowledge expanding beyond the Earth, our machines have put their foot on the surface of Titan. We've shown that we can do it. It's part of that process of exploration, that I think we have always done. I think it's part of what defines us as human beings. "
John C. Zarnecki is an English Sir Arthur Clarke Award winning professor and researcher in space science, who has taken part in several high profile space probe missions and is an expert on space debris, space dust and impacts. This is quoted from the BBC programme 'Destination Titan' that was directed by Stephen Slater. See below for info.
Space Exploration
Countdown to the Quote 3: It was marked by the 1st orbital launch in a man made object in 1957Sputnik 1 is part of the answer but I intended that the term space exploration was the proper one. This space race was bweteen the Soviet Union and the United States who had their soace exploration really.
Countdown to the Quote 2: The nearest planet was featured in one of its journeys in 1969It is Apllo 11 that landed on the Moon in July 1969 and I was in my mum's tummy so can't remember that much about it, but the answer is still space exploration.
Countdown to the Quote 1: Orbitors, landsliders and rovers went to a cold planet to achieve this in the 1960s This is the, again, space exploration of the planet Mars by the Soviet Union, the United States, Europe, and Japan that occured after the 1960's. We haven't done that well at getting data back form Mars because of all the technical problems that kept going on - a bit like buying a cheap toaster from Tesco, they went up, but unlike a toaster, they didn't go up in smoke.
I chose the music, Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMXaE9NtQgg, that is used in the BBC space exploration progamme Destination Titan, that was directed by Stephen Slater. I had been tweeting to Stephen breifly in October http://twitter.com/#!/steveslater1987and watched this programme, so chose a second peice of music that was more cheerful that is about how space exploration was once someones dream that became real. Electric Light Orchestra - Hold on Tight.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TLmpL2AzLs
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st October 2011
"Geometry has two great treasures: one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may name a precious jewel "
Johannes Kepler - was a German mathematician and astronomer.
The Golden Ratio - 1.61803399
Countdown to the Quote 3: Two quantities that are compatible but not symmetrical that when combined become beautiful. The unusual properties of the Golden Ratio, which is based on the The Fibonacci series of numbers, is the two quantities, were one is larger than the other and when combined in the golden ratio that is, if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. This ratio, or proportion as it is often called in art, is supposed to be really beautifully aesthetic where it is more often called the Golden Section and it's also found in science and nature.
Countdown to the Quote 2: Its effect can be found in organic form right under your nose or non organic form up above your head. Somewhere a few years ago I was reading some of mathematician Ian Stewart's work, whos work is also on my site, and came across pictures of natures plants, like broccoli, flowers and shells which, at least in the first two, explained the properties of the golden ratio which also included to some extent, the idea of fractals. The other areas it can be found is in the human forms created in architecture.
Countdown to the Quote 1: Artists, mathematicians and architects use this proportion that is also universal in other areas. As explained in the other two countdowns, the Golden Ratio is found in quite a few places - it's really good to get kids into this to see if they can spot it.
I chose the music Grease - We Go Together (Film Version) because of the lyric "We go together..." meaning the two proportions in the Golden Ratio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pyA6jAM3_I
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st September 2011
" “If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?” "
Stephen Wright an American comedian, Actor and Writer
To recap Count Down To The Quote on this page: I put a First 1st of the Month Quote here, who quote belongs to, now with link to music, and a brief explanation of its connection. Now with my twitter page, about 3 to 4 days before 1st of the Month Quote I tweet a hint a day, as a countdown but called a Twint, about what the next months quote subject is about. It's like a little puzzle. It all goes togther:
This month I couldn't find a good quote about ...
Trajectory
Count Down To The Quote 3: Its position over time is the difference between being here and not here. Asteroid travel path along a trajectory toward Earth could mean hit or miss. Its motion is the trajectory pr path it takes to do that.
Count Down To The Quote 2: It is down to kinematics that include the forces of orbital mechanics.kinematics is the motion of objects like planets but without the causes of such forces. However, Tthere are forces included in orbits of planetary trajectories. Space ships are a different kettle of fish.
Count Down To The Quote 1: Its not so obvious but it can be curved in a sport involving a ball. Curvball - Curved pahts occur in Baseball as the trajectories can be curved sideways (horizontal) with the right throwing technique. This effect can be an optical illusion because we are often unaware of how the real forces act upon the ball, so assume what postion in space and time the ball is, which may or may not reveal the real physical event. There is a whole subject on this that can make for an interesting read. The same effect can also be found in football like Leeds United if they are good enough.
Song to go with quote: Eminem - Space Bound. Take the swear words out and its a good song. WARNING: Contains swear words and some violence in video. Not for the under 6yrs.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JByDbPn6A1o&ob=av2e
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st August 2011
"Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality. "
Hermann Minkowski - a German mathematician who created the geometry of numbers and methods to solve difficult problems in number theory, mathematical physics, and the theory of relativity.
Shadows
Don't believe in them but old tales say they where there behind somewhere. In the olden days some people in certain cultures thought shadows where ghosts that lurked in dark corners so they were often referred to ghostly shadows.
The magnitude of the object equal to and no higher than -4 makes them visible. Light emitting astronomical objects such as the Sun, Moon and sometimes Venus emit light bright enough to create shadows on Earth. Lamps and torches also create the same effect.
The only real event were its cross section becomes a two dimensional effect. A shadow is the result of an obstruction from an opaque object when a light is in front of the object and the shadow is behind the object. A shadows size corresponds to the distance of the light source and its angle to the obstructing object.
On the recent tragedy of singer song writer Amy Whinehouse's death, I must admit I have never liked Amy Whinehouse's music, but thought she was very talented. It was a sad waist of talent when she died so young and troubled. I chose the subject of shadows because it goes with the brilliant Oasis song 'Cast No Shadow' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6thmKcSRwcthat I have always loved. The words in this song also remind me of the recent tragedy of Amy Whinehouse and it's as if they where what she thought about in her life, they were written for her or they remind me of some writer who thinks about life and their predicament. Try changing the lyrics in the song from the 'his' and 'him' parts to 'her' and 'she' and see what it sounds like. Is Amy the lyric where it says, "As he (she) faced the Sun he (she) cast no shadow" - Icarus - did Amy fly too close to the Sun?
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st July 2011
"I do not think that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application"
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was a German physicist who expanded the electromagnetic theory of light and was the first to demonstrate the existence of electromagnetic waves with VHF or UHF radio waves.
Waves…out of phase.
Referring to my twitter page, about two weeks ago, I tweeted that I woke up at 3 am in the morning sneezing severely. As I was half asleep at the time of sneezing, it occurred to me that maybe the brain could be jolted by way of a sneeze and therefore change our thought processes. Later I needed an idea for Countdown To The Quote and thought of something that could go out of phase or synch, much like being half asleep and then be jolted awake by a sneeze. The first thing that came to mind was that the sneezing event might have caused my brain waves to change from one state to another or become out of phase temporarily which would produce a new shift of mind.
The idea I chose was that waves are specific to many occurrences, whether they represent brain waves which are based on electrical pulses, light, water or sound. They have a beauty and have simple deterministic effects. The behavior of wave physics underlies how they change or merge depending on the source and their medium and the type of wave.
Waves Out Of Phase
They can stand being cancelled but can't stand being the same. Standing waves. Waves caused by the combination of waves when combining their opposites. A standing wave is a stationary wave that occurs when two opposing waves create a third wave by canceling out each other. In power lines, where voltage and current are opposite to one another, the combination of the type of these waves, whether frequency and wave length, affect how the forces are transformed.
Not by chance but repeat local meaning over larger. Interference pattern. Waves are consistent from their source, have rhythm and when two in similar structure are combined and out of phase, they produce a local effect of zero - vice versa in phase producing a sinusoidal wave pattern.
A normal variation of the brain and suppressed by expert dance. Brain waves. The brain creates 5 various different waves depending on what it is doing. The 5th wave state is called Mu which occurs at rest. Physical actions reduce Mu states. It was discovered that expert dancers who dance or watch dance on film are very good at suppressing the Mu wave state. It is also produced when brain waves are out of synch before stabilizing to another state.
One result of two opposing effects out of a double standard enigma. The double-slit experiment. A physics experiment that says, whether light is either a particle or wave, when passed through two slits simultaneously, it produces an enigmatic interference pattern. One of the two effects of this is an out of phase behavior that produces a net effect of dark bands which make up the overall pattern.
A Little Bit Of Physics In A Madonna Song.
Still on the theme of Madonna, I chose this song by Madonna called 'Love Profusion' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUtvUFsPA6Y to go with this months theme and quote. When I first played it in my lounge a few years ago, I was stood in the next room but with the central door open. As I listened to the song, about just before half way through (about 1 min 43 secs in), I heard a 'wozzy splag' sound that appeared closer to my ear, which I thought was coming from another source outside. Later I realised it was from this song. Then I thought that if the 'wozzy splag' sound was from this song, then who ever mixed it (not Madonna, nothing against her expertise) must have cleverly sound engineered it to be specific and stand out from a background of groups of other sounds that were similar in structure. More simply, from the lounge, the main sound waves coming from this track appeared farther away anyway, as they would, but as I was in the next room, I figured that the different sound wave that produced the 'wozzy splag' was also bouncing off the door - it was at a 45 degree angle to the speakers. So my theory goes, the door could have enhanced any out of phase waves that were already making the 'wozzy splag' sound nearer to my ear, even when standing directly opposite and between the speakers when I heard it before. So the door in between the rooms must have amplified the 'wozzy splag' effect. If you notice the 'wozzy splag' it sounds like it's nearer to your ears and its specific wave properties seem separated out, maybe to be 'out of phase' with the other sound waves.
I might move the quote info every month (like the text above to show the coundown theme) to the Random Thougths page, with a link or else the quotes here will get swamped!
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st June 2011
"Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going to fast-you also miss the sense of where you are going and why "
--Eddie Cantor - was an American illustrated song performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter on Broadway, radio, movie and early television.
Refering to all future quotes I will put here, I have created a new idea called 'Count Down To The Quote' see on twitter http://twitter.com/ClaireCSmith. The idea is that about 4 to 5 days before putting the quote here, I will tweet a hint every day about the quote so as the day gets nearer to the quote, the more relevant the hinting tweet to the quote. I am calling a tweeting hint a (twint).
The theme here that the quote is refering to is about the slowing of time. Ever wondered what you pick up if you slow down a film of a simple walk down a street, for example. There could be a large amount of information at normal speed that is missed. Read next paragraph to say what they each tweeting hint (twint) meant:
So here goes....slow!
Cats and Dogs licking up water. A new discovery, of a recent film, that is slowed down to reveal how cats and dogs use the forces of physics to drink water with their tongues. Something missed when time is at normal speed.
The bullet scene in the film The Matrix. A modern film editing sequence technique, that combines a collage of shots taken from separate angles from a sequence of separate cameras, all of one subject, but are such that, the same time frame of frozen time, in which the different reference frames the cameras are positioned, create an appearance of movement and dependence of an apparent time frame when played back. This bullet filming technique is not the same as, but I think it has some similarities with Special Relativity, an established physics theory about the paradoxical, yet true aspect of time and space, inertia, frames of reference and the observer.
Change the rate for micro expressions. When slowing down a film of the human facial expressions, its micro expressions become more apparent. These are often missed at normal time rates but sometimes the onlooker picks them up subconsciously.
It's The End of Something for Julian. Julian Barbour is a British physicist, with research interests in quantum gravity. His book 'The End of Time' is about time on a small scale which suggests that on quantum time scales, time is an illusion because it is based on more than traditional theory of position and momentum as snapshots. Barbour's quantum snapshots explain a re-working of configuration space, which is a breakdown of how quantum physical systems fit into a possible framework. His theory is also based on Ernst Mach, an Austrian physicist and philosopher.
The music I chose for thei months Quote is from the original Abba Swedish pop group track, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" ...(ahem). These two versions are called "Hung Up" by Madonna. 1st one is instrumental which was my 1st choice. Notice how the lyrics repeat 'time goes by...so slowly...' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlexdbbaNdQ&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDwb9jOVRtU
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st May 2011
" Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"
Physicist Richard P. Feynman on Beauty in science. Iv'e chosen a song by Akon - Beautiful ft. Colby O'Donis, Kardinal Offishall, great melodic song but listen to the part where the rap and electic guitar kicks in, beautiful?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSOzN0eihsE&feature=fvst
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st April 2011
"....The notion that all these fragments is separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who live in it. Individually there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it. ... "
David Bohm from 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order', American-born British quantum physicist who made contributions in the fields of theoretical physics, philosophy and neuropsychology, and to the Manhattan Project. The link here to the music, reminds me of the war between the conquest of opposites. VANGELIS - Conquest Of Paradise (Special Version)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIRQStKU2PE&feature=related
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st March 2011
"Aeroplanes are not designed by science, but by art in spite of some pretence and humbug to the contrary. I do not mean to suggest that engineering can do without science, on the contrary, it stands on scientific foundations, but there is a big gap between scientific research and the engineering product which has to be bridged by the art of the engineer. "
From Funny Engineering Quotes, by Walter G Vincenti - Professor Emeritus of Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering at Stanford University. Link to 2001 A Space Odyssey - Space Sequences Tribute Part 1of4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDAWszeZtNg&feature=related
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st Feb 2011
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
by Scott Adams (American Cartoonist, 1957)........Creativity is Honey. Link to Abba http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=honey+honey+abba&aq=2
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st Jan 2011
"Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars."
Henry Van Dyke quotes (American short-story Writer, Poet and Essayist)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyXmp-FiPJo
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st December 2010
"If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars. "
by Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter and playwright. This months quote and music links are here in loving memory of Andrew Elliott, who was a superb inspirational friend and to all of us alike at our Astronomy Club, who passed away from cancer on 28th Nov 2010http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul14FkRLhoYby Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent) and for something a bit different, I don't know why, but Andrew reminded me of Elton John (even though Elton John is is a musician not an Astronomer - and vice versa and Andrew was only a few years older than Elton) so I've put another link here. But just before that, you will notice that the video shows Justin Timberlake superbly playing a young Elton John:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsuHAn54wPsElton John - This Train Don't Stop There Anymore
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st November 2010
"Science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the boderline between the two respective domains "
Maurits Cornelis Escher, as M. C. Escher was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations. Ref Wikipedia. Link to my favourite classical track by a a Czech composer Bedrich Smetana - Má Vlast Moldau: by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Later I'll be adding to this section about why I chose this music (it might go on for a bit - it might take a week).http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdtLuyWuPDs
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st October 2010
"Before we go there and set up greenhouses, dance clubs, and falafel stands, let's make sure that, in some subtle form that could be harmed by the human hubbub, life does not already exist there. If not, then by all means build cities, plant forests and fill lakes and streams with trout -- bring life to Mars and Mars to life. We'll then be the Martians we've been dreaming about for all these years. "
By David Grinspoon an American astrobiologist who studies surface and atmospheric evolution of Earthlike planets elsewhere in the universe, with a focus on possible environments for extraterrestrial life. He is a frequent advisor to NASA on space exploration strategy. The theme/story by which the music I chose this month goes the other way. The link is Justin Hayward's Forever Autumn track, referenced from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds concept album. Superb track - I like the string section part that starts at 2:20 seconds in. This track is in my top 5 music best - I play this often when driving through countyr lanes in Autumn.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO9Qx7Kp_I8
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st September 2010
"Mathematical physics represents the purest image that the view of nature may generate in the human mind; this image presents all the character of the product of art; it begets some unity, it is true and has the quality of sublimity; this image is to physical nature what music is to the thousand noises of which the air is full... "
Théophile Ernest de Donder, was a Belgian mathematician and physicist famous for his 1923 work in developing correlations between the Newtonian concept of chemical affinity and the Gibbsian concept of free energy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmTmJebn_ks Link to Girls Aloud - Untouchable (Full Album Version Official Video). Just imagine the superb and rather lovely to look at Chris Martin from Coldplay singing the vocals for this song, just up to 1.14secs, instead of the girls. When I first heard that bit of the song, it reminded me of Coldplay. The song writers for Girls Aloud knew what they were doing though. I bet that if any of their vocals were sung by a bloke, the music would get more credit(not meant in a bad way - I think guys have more authority) also I want to zoom around in one of those space pods in the video (videos aren't real of course) but just imaging entering the Earths atmosphere in one. If they ever wanted an extra girl in Girls Aloud...
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st August 2010
" The solution of the difficulty is that the two mental pictures which experiment lead us to form - the one of the particles, the other of the waves - are both incomplete and have only the validity of analogies which are accurate only in limiting cases. "
Werner Heisenberg - German Physicist. This month I chose music by Jan Hammer - Crockett's Theme http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2TmOpcBxYYto go with quote because the pulse at the start reminded me of particles, the first synthesiser represent waves, second synth is the quantum world observed and finally the electric guitar overlay represents its collective towards classical physics and life itself (you might have to use your imagination for the visuals - perhaps close your eyes to the music, to visualise the principles here).
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st July 2010
"What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable. I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explains almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives. "
Writing in the New York Times, Lebanese-born essayist, scholar and former practitioner of mathematical finance, Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains The Black Swan Theory or "Theory of Black Swan Events" from his book - ref Wikipedia. His claim is that almost all consequential events in history come from the unexpected—yet humans later convince themselves that these events are explainable in hindsight (bias) - ref Wikipedia. My thoughts are that human nature must wise up to future risks (bad or good) because they happen and are a part of life, but we still seem to behave like they are not, so the best we can do is reduce the chances or probability of them (bad) occuring. Even then, some might be beyond our control. But what Nassim is talking about here is the very opposite, he talks about how we react and behave with our use of stats methods to reason out rare events after they occur - so Nassim is also right about the symbiosis of the events that include our human reactions and theories towards them. When rare events have happened we make theories for them - we could use the same method of logic to predict other events - but from reading about this, that would be about taking variations in statistical methods we already have. So it appears that our statistical methods are not scrutinised enough and this is important for the world economy and of science. The link I put here is to illustrate what it would be like if a mistake, in itself as a rare event, was a person as apposed to a mathematical event - and where a line would be drawn between its human behaviour and the physics of rare events. James Blunt - Same Mistake-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3c32wBYdU0&feature=channel
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st June 2010
" Our time is just a point along a line. That runs forever with no end "
By Al Stewart - From Lord Grenville on 'The Year of the Cat' album . Great ship, sea and portrait art pictures in this link- maybe a Turner...This is already the HQ Stereo version so you don't<- need to click on link below video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv7GoySiO_0&fmt=18
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st May 2010
" Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why"
Bernard Baruch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-LkApti4Y4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuZj_MQ5a6Ehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o3uLrKduS0&feature=related. Explanation for these links with quote( probably not really to do with the songs here, but just makes them interesting): 1st video, Gravity refers to Art (the music Gravity by Embrace, written by Chris Martin from Coldplay, (added Coldplay version o f Gravity here, 4th May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIXFW0UznVc&feature=related What do you think?) Physics. 2nd video, Gravity refers to love not really Physics, but hey, Physics. 3rd video, refers to Biology or Psychology. Embrace lead singer studied psychology at Uni then left to play in band. He has super eyes and lovely floaty hair (not sure what's going on with his pic on his twitter page though) but Danny Mcnamara is very good looking - works well as front man. Embrace music is good. I am trying to find the Embrace website to put a link from here. (Next bit also added 4th May)- Iv'e only got 2 Embrace CD's - got more Coldplay and Oasis CD's than Embrace - something's got to be done about that, rapid!
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st April 2010
" The earth is simply too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."
Arthur C. Clarke- this video has nothing to do with this quote and everything to do with this quote.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st March 2010
"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself. "
Galileo Galilei (video link here is great and music super. Has iyt got anything to do with this months quote? Well yes.)http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/ken-block-slo-mo-directors-cut?VideoBrowserMode=this-week
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st Feb 2010
".“The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.”"
Tom Bodett
C-This Quote Of The Month 1st Jan 2010
"...so as I go by, I look over and on the ground over here, there's a big piece of foil, and so I said boy, this foil would be even more fun and I watched it go up and up and up, more than anybody could ever throw a ball, even an olympic athlete couldn't throw anything as high as I could on the Moon..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_BeanBy Alan Bean, a former NASA astronaut and engineer, who became the fourth person to walk on the moon in November 1969. Alan Bean resigned from NASA in June 1981 to devote his full time to paintinghttp://www.alanbeangallery.com/. Quote taken from 'James May On The Moon', Part 5 (see link below). (This quote has inspired me to write about what it means to throw a piece of foil up in the air, on the Moon. See Harvard page for that quite soon.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Kngxv-gtI&feature=related
C-This Quote Of The Month December 1st 2009
" They say a restless body can hide a peaceful soul. A voyager, ad a settler, they both have a distant goal. If I explore the heavens, or if I search inside. Well, it really doesn't matter as long as I can tell myself I've always tried"
By Abba - very lovely words in this song, and the song is really good. In the video for it (see link below) you can see a couple of planets in it too. Very fitting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc7b_cEE7ys&feature=related
C-This Quote Of The Month November 1st 2009
"Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind. "
By Henri Frédéric Amiel (September 27, 1821 – May 11, 1881) was a Swiss philosopher, poet and critic.
C-This Quote Of The Month October 1st 2009
"Statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge; statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely anecdotal; it is the "logic of science"; it is the instrument of risk-taking; it is the applied tools of epistemology; you can't be a modern intellectual and not think probabilistically — but...let's not be suckers. The problem is much more complicated than it seems to the casual, mechanistic user who picked it up in graduate school. Statistics can fool you. In fact it is fooling your government right now."
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb - a literary essayist, epistemologist, researcher, and former practitioner of mathematical finance. Taken from "Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics"
C-This Quote Of The Month September 1st 2009
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to most slow-witted man if he hasn't formed any idea of them already but the simplest can't be made clear to most intelligent man if he's firmly persuaded that he knows already."
From Tolstoy - a Russian writer
C-This Quote Of The Month August 1st 2009
"Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime. "
From Kid's ideas about science
C-This Quote Of The Month July 1st 2009
"Bayesian decision theory points to subjective utility functions and subjective prior probabilities that cannot be avoided when making decisions in the face of uncertainty"
By Stephen P. Smith PhD from joint idea with Stephen and myselfhttp://www.emergentmind.org/smith.htm
C-This Quote Of The Month June 1st 2009
"I guess a blind man will intuitively choose a quantum-mechanical description with states whose phase varies with time and location, with probabilities, with uncertainties, with interference patterns, etc. Teaching him to describe the world classically would be counter-intuitive because he cannot continuously know the position of the objects. He has to infer it with square state (blind stick projected on detected object) probabilities. Paradoxically, we could say that quantum mechanics is best understood when you're blind... "
Common sense quantum Physicist and Engineer, Arjen Dijksman. The link here provides the correct context for Arjen's thinking.http://commonsensequantum.blogspot.com/2009/04/quantum-mechanics-is-best-understood.html
C-This Quote Of The Month May 1st 2009
"Cars have become safer in many ways, but airbags can hurt you anyway"
Can we predict logical problems? Anders Sandberg's in quote here about 'Memory modifiction', taken from his distributed brain essays on technology, science and the human condition.http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2009/04/index.html
C-This Quote Of The Month April 1st 2009
"Change your thoughts and you change your world. "
Norman Vincent Peale - US clergyman; wrote "The Power of Positive Thinking" 1952
C-This Quote Of The Month March 1st 2009
" To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge. "
Copernicus. Polish Astronomer, 1473-1543
C-This Quote Of The Month February 1st 2009
"Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards. "
Astronomer Fred Hoyle
C-This Quote Of The Month Jan 1st 2009
" That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
Dr. Carl Sagan quotes (American Astronomer, Writer and Scientist, 1934-1996)
C-This Quote Of The Month December 1st 2008
"Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it. "
Buckminster Fuller
C-This Quote Of The Month November 1st 2008
"Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor. "
Benjamin Franklin on Happiness
C-This Quote Of The Month October 1st 2008
"Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there."
Kid's Ideas About Science
C-This Quote Of The Month September 1st 2008
"It shows there is nothing nerdy about people who study astronomy and physics. In fact, the motivation for making music and for studying science both come from the same thing - a kind of emotional curiosity about the world and what makes it, and you, work."
- Brian Cox, a physics professor at Manchester University, on Brian May's PhD on space dust, Astronomy-from the timesonline wesbsite.
C-This Quote Of The Month August 1st 2008
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few engage in it."
Henry Ford
C-This Quote Of The Month July 1st 2008
"Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers."
From -Kid's ideas about science-
C-This Quote Of The Month June 1st 2008
"He worries cosmologists are creating theories based on a very limited observations and mathematics because they don't, and may never, understand the big picture"
From the Radio Times, what Jane Fletcher, BBC producer of The Sky at Night, said about Sir Patrick Moore's angle on modern theories, on his recent celebration of the BBC programme The Sky at Night (this one I attended, see intro page)
C-This Quote Of The Month May 1st 2008
"You're in this world where you're in your head but you're connected to something wonderful around you. They're both indescribable experiences. I remember thinking, when I was quite young, if all there is to life is just staying alive, then why would we bother? Life has to be about more than just being. There has to be something higher. And to me the higher things are exactly these; music and art, beautiful images, and thoughts of the way things work. I love that. Moments of discovery."
Brian May (ex band member of Queen) on Astronomy being interviewed by THE GUARDIAN
C-This Quote Of The Month April 1st 2008
"I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing. "
A answer from a child in a science test
C-This Quote Of The Month March 1st 2008
"The picture looks very complicated, but with a little practice one can make free-hand sketches which are quite accurate. "
From the book, Electromagnetism For Engineers - An Introductory Course, by P. Hammond, pages 56-57 subject, 3.10 THE METHOD OF CURVILINEAR SQUARES (I have been reading this book the last few years, and so far, my favourite out of a collection of 81 elementary and higher text books I own on the subject of physics.)
C-This Quote Of The Month Feb 1st 2008
"Animals speak more wisely with their eyes than people do with their mouths"
Ludovic Halevy
C-This Quote Of The Month Jan 1st 2008
"There is nothing that cannot be explained, but there are wrong insights that can lead to explanations that are identical to the explanation for a correct but rather subtle insight."
PIET HUT, Professor of Astrophysics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (from Edge Magazine Jan 2008)
C-This Quote Of The Month December 1st
"Clouds just keep circling the earth around and around. And around. There is not much else to do."
From -Kid's ideas about science-(I had previously mistakenly referenced these two last quotes by Discover Magazine which I often read. ) I can't find the source.
C-This Quote Of The Month November 1st
"When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting. "
From -Kid's ideas about science-
C-This Quote Of The Month October 1st
" ...you may wish to know that Oppenheimer, upon learning that two of his friends were reading Dante in the original, also spent a month to learn enough Italian to read Dante outloud to them. Dirac was unimpressed, and told him he was wasting his time. Indeed, Dirac one time refused a couple of books that Oppenheimer offered him since “reading books interfered with thought”."
Commentor LDM, replied on 'Not Even Wrong' Blog by Peter Woit
C-This Quote Of The Month September 1st
"The large-scale homogeneity of the universe makes it very difficult to believe that the structure of the universe is determined by anything so peripheral as some complicated molecular structure on a minor planet orbiting a very average star in the outer suburbs of a fairly typical galaxy"
Steven Hawking
C-This Quote Of The Month August 1st
"If we live to-day in the midst of worlds full of wonder, it is because men of science have taken for their own different things to study. They have been a team working upon many subjects"
From my book called "The Wonder Book of Science"
C-This Quote Of The Month July 1st
"The trouble with all investigations into zoology is that we have only one standard, and that is our own. We are unable to apprectiate how far other animals think and how they feel when they react to stimuli"
From my "The Wonder Book of Science" book, section Instinct and Reasoning. (This book was my first introduction to science age 7). I will quote more from it in August.
C-This Quote Of The Month June 1st
"I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book."
Groucho Marx
C-This Quote Of The Month May 1st
"you cant change the wind but you can ajust your sail"
anonymous
C-This Quote Of The Month April 1st
"Whatever you can do or dream, begin it."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
C-This Quote Of The Month March 1st 2007
"."...................................................................... "
by blank space
C-This Quote Of The Month Feb 1st 2007
"We have to think to and build together new connections between thought and intuition, exactness and imagination, research and creativity, art and science, which are together (and only together) the driving forces behind a new Humanism. A more educated, open-minded and pluralistic Humanism. The beauty and the depth of our thought have to become unavoidable elements of our life. Science should speak a language which is understandable and "beautiful" and has to come nearer and nearer to Arts."
VITTORIO BO - Director, Festival Della Scienzia, Genova, on "WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT?" from edge.org
C-This Quote Of The Month Jan 1st 2007 HAPPY NEW YEAR!
"00100100111100010010001010100010010 "
A computer
C-This Quote Of The Month December 1st 2006
""In chaos theory, the edge is the meeting point between order and chaos, between the known and the unknown. In nature it is where creativity and self-organizing happen. It is where new information is created." "
Dana Zohar & Ian Marshall
C-This Quote Of The Month November 1st 2006
" “Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking”"
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
C-This Quote Of The Month October 1st 2006
"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. "
Buckminster Fuller
C-This Quote Of The Month September 1st 2006
"Both science and art form in the course of the centuries a human language by which we can speak about the more remote parts of reality "
Werner Heisenberg
C-This Quote Of The Month August 1st 2006
"I wish I knew how these elements combined to create anew idea. It would be wonderful to produce some kind of scientific formula that reliably resulted in a best selling product or breathtaking invention. However, given that so much of the process seems to take place in the unconscious, and somewhat mysterious, way, I suspect that a formula will forever be beyond our grasp. "
By Professor Richard Wiseman on creativity, who holds Britain’s only chair in the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. From www.spaceforideas site
C-This Quote Of The Month July 1st 2006
"Here is the shadow of a dream
Ideas possess the creativity team
Silhouettes dance in a fire,
A single thought can never tire. "
By © Dennis Perrin & Edward de Bono Creative Team 1999
C-This Quote Of The Month June1st 2006
"A computer isn't smart enough to make a mistake"
Unknown
C-This Quote Of The Month May 1st 2006
""What do scientists and artists have in common? They see reality in new ways. While everyone else saw a pendulum swinging back and forth, Galileo saw it falling and rising."
New Scientist, 29th Oct 05
C-This Quote Of The Month April 1st 2006
"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
Erich Fromm
C-This Quote Of The Month March 1st 2006
"The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it. "
P. B. Medawar (1915 - )
C-This Quote Of The Month Feb 1st 2006
"In my own work I have to say that I work completely on the basis of intuition. It's totally irrational. In creating a new field of mathematics you have to work completely on instinct. You're looking for new concepts. You are working with unconscious emotions and it's a magic, mysterious process. Once you come up with an idea, a new idea on which to base a new field of mathematics, then there is, I agree, a rational element in mathematics which is that you have to verify that the idea works. But the act of creation in mathematics is just as magical and mysterious as the act of artistic creation. I would also say that mathematics and art are much more similar than people realize, in that I would say that mathematics is an art. I would say that good mathematical ideas have to be beautiful'"
-transcript of a talk given July 2001 at a meeting to Bridge the Gap between the sciences and the arts by Gregory J. Chaitin who is a mathematician at the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Buenos Aires and at the University of Auckland
C-This Quote Of The Month Jan 1st 2006
"'Some people would rather die than think."
Bertrand Russell
C-This Quote Of The Month December 1st 2005
"Mistakes are an important part of the thought process"
- New Scientist's Special Issue article (Oct 29th 05, page 45) "Creative Minds", on Timothy Gowers, Rouse Ball professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge
C-This Quote Of The Month November 1st 2005
"Science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the boderline between the two respective domains. "
M.C. Escher
C-This Quote Of The Month October 1st 2005
"Archimedes then showed them his method (BOX 1), which depended upon cutting solids into infinitely thin slices and hanging the slices on a balance. "Hmmph," said Kink. "Doesn't seem very logical to me." "Definitely fallacious," admitted Pox. "Yet it works," said Archimedes. "Funny old world, isn't it?" "
Professor IAN STEWART from "Do Mathematicians Think Logically?" (Ian is featured on this site)
C-This Quote Of The Month September 1st 2005
"Take a look around you, at the world we've come to know. Does it seem to be much more, than a crazy circus show? But maybe from the madness, something beautiful will grow..."
from War Of the Worlds
C-This Quote Of The Month August 1st 2005
"The future's for discovering. The space in which we're travelling "
by lead singer Chris Martin from the track Square One from the X+Y album by Coldplay
C-This Quote Of The Month July 1st 2005
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
Theodore Roosevelt
C-This Quote Of The Month June 1st 2005
"People only get lost in thought because it is unfamiliar territory"
Paul Fix
C-This Quote Of The Month May 1st 2005
"Nature tends to be more creative than we are"
Alvaro de Rújula from CERN the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the world's largest particle physics centre.
C-This Quote Of The Month April 1st 2005
"So many of us start off dreaming about a wonderfull life that is wild and free, but that's usually a long way from where we actually end up"
By Bradley Trevor Greive from - The Meaning of Life
C-This Quote Of The Month March 1st 2005
"If you don't think, you can stay alive only by being a parasite on the thinking of others"
It's actually David King (oops the last name I put was wrong!)
C-This Quote Of The Month Feb 2005
"In spite of our feelings of invincibility and immortality our existence is far more tenuous than we might think"
Bradley Trevor Greive from - The Meaning of Life
C-This Quote Of The Month Jan 2005
(I looked for a quote for about half an hour or more, to reflect the recent tsunami tragedy that occured. Whether this quote is appropriate I am not sure, but it seemd calming to read, so I hope it's ok)
"It is a quiet and peaceful place - and a fitting place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest. "
Robert D. Ballard