Categoriearchief: Universal

Applicable to all cases and the research in general

Dark Energy

Maarten Vanden Eynde
Gravitational Bending, 2010

Maarten Vanden Eynde gravitational bending

Even weirder than dark matter—the invisible stuff constituting most of the mass of the universe—is dark energy, a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate. Dark energy has been around for most of the history of the cosmos. “Nine billion years ago, dark energy was already wielding its repulsive influence on the universe,” explains Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Adam Riess. But the repulsion didn’t exceed the force of gravity until 5 billion years ago, when cosmic expansion kicked into high gear and began accelerating.

A pioneering space mission called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) delivered the first accurate account of the overall makeup of the universe. The answer is decidedly strange. Dark energy makes up 73 percent of the universe, dark matter another 23 percent. Atomic matter—everything around us and everything astronomers have ever seen—accounts for just 4  percent.

dark energy

Comparing images from the Hubble Space Telescope’s high-end cameras with the WMAP heat signature map of the early universe, Riess and his colleagues retraced the growth history of the universe with unprecedented accuracy and depth. “It’s as if you mark the height of a child against a doorframe to measure growth spurts,” Riess says. For reasons as yet unknown, the antigravitational effects of dark energy are greater now than they were in the distant past. One theory, supported by the Hubble data, is that empty space is impregnated with residual energy from the Big Bang. As space expands, so does dark energy, while matter is spread out, weakening the inward pull of gravity.

Based on a text by Alex Stone

Chu Yun
Constellation, 2006

Chu Yun

Galaxy made out of LED lights from various devices.

Dark Matter MACHO

gravitational lensing

In general relativity, the presence of matter (energy density) can curve spacetime, and the path of a light ray will be deflected as a result. This process is called gravitational lensing and in many cases can be described in analogy to the deflection of light by (e.g. glass) lenses in optics. Lensing measures all the mass, in particular the dark matter as well as the luminous matter.

There are ongoing searches to use lensing to find a type of dark matter called MACHOs (massive compact halo objects). Although MACHOs, as dark matter, cannot be seen themselves, if they pass in front of a source (e.g. a star nearby), they can cause the star to become brighter for a while, e.g. days or weeks. This effect has been observed but determinations of the dark matter are not yet conclusive.

Based on a text by Joanne Cohn.

dark halo

Artist's impression showing the approximate extent of the dark matter halo 
around a large spiral galaxy such as our own (Credit: Jose Wudka)

dark matter

3D map of the universe's dark matter (Credit: NASA, ESA and R. Massey)

gravitational lensing

Gravitational lensing caused by dark matter (Credit: NASA)

Dennis Feddersen
Dark Matter #02, 2009

dennis feddersen dark matter

The works of Dennis Feddersen truly occupy space. He experiments with different types of materials. Flexibility is one of the most important criteria for his choice of materials, thus emphasizing the possibilities that may arise during the creative process. He constantly adjusts his flexible sculptures in a series of trials: i.e. he reacts to the surrounding architecture and adapts his sculptures accordingly.

Check this illuminating video about dark matter and gravitational lensing.



					

Homo Stupidus Stupidus; The Missing Meme

missing link

Ida – Researchers from the University of Oslo have suggested the specimen, which was found 95 per cent complete, may be the root of anthropoid evolution, when primates were first developing the features that would evolve into our own.

Discovered in Germany, Ida is so well preserved that even the outline of its fur can be seen. An incredible 95 percent complete fossil of a 47-million-year-old human ancestor has been discovered and, after two years of secret study, an international team of scientists has revealed it to the world. The fossil’s remarkable state of preservation allows an unprecedented glimpse into early human evolution. Discovered in Messel Pit, Germany, it represents the moment before anthropoid primates–the group that would later evolve into humans, apes and monkeys–began to split from lemurs and other prosimian primates. This groundbreaking discovery fills in a critical gap in human and primate evolution.

www.history.com

Maarten Vanden Eynde
Homo Stupidus Stupidus, 2009 A.D.

homo stupidus stupidus

homo stupidus stupidus

Richard Dawkins
The Ancestor’s Tale: A pergrimage to the dawn of Life
, 2005

Just as we trace our personal family trees from parents to grandparents and so on back in time, so in The Ancestor’s Tale Richard Dawkins traces the ancestry of life. As he is at pains to point out, this is very much our human tale, our ancestry. The Ancestor’s Tale takes us from our immediate human ancestors back through what he calls ‘concestors,’ those shared with the apes, monkeys and other mammals and other vertebrates and beyond to the dim and distant microbial beginnings of life some 4 billion years ago. It is a remarkable story which is still very much in the process of being uncovered. And, of course from a scientist of Dawkins stature and reputation we get an insider’s knowledge of the most up-to-date science and many of those involved in the research. And, as we have come to expect of Dawkins, it is told with a passionate commitment to scientific veracity and a nose for a good story. Dawkins’s knowledge of the vast and wonderful sweep of life’s diversity is admirable. Not only does it encompass the most interesting living representatives of so many groups of organisms but also the important and informative fossil ones, many of which have only been found in recent years.

Dawkins sees his journey with its reverse chronology as ‘cast in the form of an epic pilgrimage from the present to the past [and] all roads lead to the origin of life.’ It is, to my mind, a sensible and perfectly acceptable approach although some might complain about going against the grain of evolution. The great benefit for the general reader is that it begins with the more familiar present and the animals nearest and dearest to us?our immediate human ancestors. And then it delves back into the more remote and less familiar past with its droves of lesser known and extinct fossil forms. The whole pilgrimage is divided into 40 tales, each based around a group of organisms and discusses their role in the overall story.

– Douglas Palmer –

meme

Meme

Richard Dawkins first introduced the word in The Selfish Gene (1976) to discuss evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples melodies, catch-phrases, and beliefs (notably religious belief), clothing/fashion, and the technology of building arches.

Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (in a manner similar to that of biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity’s reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Theorists point out that memes which replicate the most effectively spread best, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.

A field of study called memetics arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that scholarship can examine memes empirically. Some commentators question the idea that one can meaningfully categorize culture in terms of discrete units.

The RE- generation

We Re-act
Re-adjust
Re-admit
Re-affirm
Re-afforest
Re-animate
Re-appear
Re-appoint
Re-arrange
Re-ascend
Re-assemble
Re-assert
Re-assume
Re-assure
Re-baptize
Re-bind
Re-birth
Re-bound
Re-build
Re-call
Re-capitulate
Re-capture
Re-cast
Re-cede
Re-charge
Re-claim
Re-clothe
Re-cognize
Re-coil
Re-collect
Re-commence
Re-commend
Re-compense
Re-compose
Re-condition
Re-conduct
Re-conquer
Re-consider
Re-construct
Re-count
Re-cover
Re-create
Re-criminate
Re-crudesce
Re-current
Re-deem
Re-descend
Re-develop
Re-distribute
Re-double
Re-draft
Re-draw
Re-dress
Re-duplicate
Re-echo
Re-edify
Re-elect
Re-eligible
Re-embark
Re-enact
Re-enter
Re-establish
Re-examine
Re-export
Re-fashion
Re-fill
Re-fine
Re-fit
Re-float
Re-form
Re-fresh
Re-fuel
Re-fund
Re-furbish
Re-generate
Re-group
Re-habilitate
Re-house
Re-import
Re-incarnate
Re-inforce
Re-insert
Re-instate
Re-insure
Re-introduce
Re-invent
Re-invest
Re-issue
Re-iterate
Re-join
Re-juvenate
Re-kindle
Re-lapse
Re-lax
Re-lay
Re-lease
Re-legate
Re-light
Re-live
Re-make
Re-mark
Re-marry
Re-member
Re-mind
Re-miss
Re-model
Re-mould
Re-move
Re-name
Re-nascence
Re-new
Re-occupy
Re-open
Re-organize
Re-pass
Re-pay
Re-peal
Re-people
Re-percussion
Re-petition
Re-place
Re-plant
Re-plenish
Re-polish
Re-populate
Re-pose
Re-possess
Re-pot
Re-present
Re-press
Re-print
Re-produce
Re-prove
Re-publish
Re-pulse
Re-purchase
Re-sale
Re-search
Re-seat
Re-seize
Re-sell
Re-serve
Re-set
Re-settle
Re-ship
Re-shuffle
Re-sign
Re-solution
Re-solve
Re-sort
Re-sound
Re-source
Re-strain
Re-strict
Re-surgent
Re-surrect
Re-survey
Re-tell
Re-tire
Re-touch
Re-trace
Re-tract
Re-treat
Re-turn
Re-unite
Re-use
Re-value
Re-vision
Re-view
Re-vote
Re-wind
Re-write

News of the Future

News of the Future

News of Future is an independent publication that tells you what the world will look like in the next 50 years. We aim towards giving you the most accurate picture of the future as possible, on all aspects. We use the knowledge of today together with realistic predictions of the future to provide you with the News of Future.

Since the future in constantly changing, so will the News of Future. We publish the most likely scenario as we know of today, but change it along the way to be as close to the truth as possible.

We invite everyone to be a part of shaping the future and you can also find the argument for every news that we publish together with a chance to comment. If your prediction or comments are realistic we might revise the news, or publish a new one, and give you credit for it.

And remember, sometimes it is not the right answer that gives you the solution, it is the right question…

The Origin of Computers

first computer

Dr. Chris Evans
Science Fact, 1977

‘Man is about to create a new companion for himself an this planet, a companion who will rival vie with him not for natural resources, but for intellectual supremacy. Man, undisputed master of the earth, may before to long have to step gracefully aside and yield reins of power to a being of his own creation. Contrary to most current scenarios, the 20th century will not be remembered as the era when space was conquered, or the power of the atom harnessed, but that in which there appeared the first machines with minds’.

CompSpeak 2050

William Crossman is a philosopher, futurist, and professor involved with issues of education, media and technology, language and culture, and human rights. He is Founder/Director of the CompSpeak 2050 Institute for the Study of Talking Computers and Oral Cultures

‘The prospect of escalating conflicts and tensions around the world, together with the ongoing search for global peace, demand that we create technologies which allow everyone to communicate with everyone else. Voice-in/voice-out (VIVO) talking computers, using online voice-recognition technology, will allow all people to access the world’s storehouse of information merely by speaking, listening, and viewing graphics. We live in a world in which 80% of the population is nonliterate or functionally so, thousands of different native languages block or deter easy communication amongst people, and millions suffer from disabilities that prevent them from reading and/or writing. However, using a VIVO, a person won’t need to know how to read or write text in order to store and retrieve information. VIVO’s instantaneous language translation function will enable that person, while speaking only in their own native language, to converse with all of humanity. And if they had a disability that barred them from accessing text, they could speak, listen, or sign via their VIVO. By lowering these historic barriers to global communication, VIVOs hold the potential for democratizing information flow worldwide–one key step in creating democratic nations that support human and civil rights, freedom, justice, and equality as the necessary bases for world peace. Without our being able to hear–literally–the voices of the world’s disenfranchised, world peace will remain an illusory goal. Over the next decades, as VIVOs enable more and more of those voices to be heard, and as written language/text shrinks as our technology of choice for accessing information, the electronically-developed countries will evolve into oral cultures. By mid-21st Century, written language/text–which is essentially an ancient technology for storing and retrieving information–will be a thing of the past, and by mid-22nd Century, all nations and communities, including those we build in space, will be informationally united in a worldwide, yet diverse, oral culture.’

Mission Statement

The Institute’s mission is to study, learn, speak, consult, promote dialogue, and write about:

1. The social, cultural, and philosophical implications of talking computers and voice recognition technology–that is, the ways that talking computers will affect every area of human activity.

2. The replacement of writing, reading, and written language itself by talking computers and other speech-based and non-text visual technologies–a process that began in the 19th Century and will reach completion in the 21st Century.

3. The parallels that exist/will exist between today’s oral cultures around the world and the oral cultures that the United States and the other electronically-developed countries are becoming.

4. The ongoing school literacy crisis, its causes and its solution. The impact that talking computers will have on education in the 2lst Century.

5. The nature, history, uses, and effects of written language as a technology specifically developed to store and retrieve information under the specific conditions of the agricultural revolution 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

6.The role that human evolution plays/will play in the development of information technology (including talking computers), and vice versa.

7. How to make sure that the human right of all people, nonliterate or literate, with disabilities or without, to access the stored information of our world via talking computers is realized in the 21st Century.

‘By enabling us to access stored information orally-aurally, talking computers will finally make it possible for us to replace all written language with spoken language. We will be able to store and retrieve information simply by talking, listening, and looking at graphics, not at text. With this giant step forward into the past, we´re about to recreate oral culture on a more efficient and reliable technological foundation’ -William Crossman-

The History of Tomorrow

– a short story-

by Maarten Vanden Eynde, 2006/2007
in collaboration with Marjolijn Dijkman

Maarten Vanden Eynde The History of Tomorrow

A billion stars twinkled in the universe, irregularly like diamonds. I woke up in a sweat and tried to christalize where I was. The heavy window screens were open but I could only feel a pitch-black sky. I rolled over to the side and found my glasses. There, up there on the left, it should be there! Was I still sleeping? I blinked my eyes a couple of times, but was disappointed again. It was gone, it was really gone…

The loss of gravitation first came to general notice on the 15th of June 2008, during the Olympics in Beijing, China. On that day 27 world records were broken. Lees verder

Genetology?

In order to think of a beginning in the future, the inevitable end should be present.
The end evokes a beginning.
Human Kind is in it’s mid-life crisis of existance.
Is there an end and if so, what will it be like?
What will be left over?
What will be our heritage for the future?