Halley

All planets in our solar system, orbit the Sun in the same direction. Unusually for an object in the solar system, comet Halley's orbit is retrograde; it orbits the Sun in the opposite direction to the planets, or clockwise from above the Sun's north pole. Why does Halley choose to be so different?

Planet's complete their orbits in circles around the Sun. However, many comets revolve along more stretched-out ellipses with the Sun near one end instead of in the centre. The point closest to the Sun is the perihelion. There is also a point where the comet is farthest away from the Sun. At this point we say it is at aphelion. Comet Halley is a fine example of a short period comet, taking about 76 years to make one orbit around the Sun. At the perihelion the comet is only 88 million km from the Sun. At the aphelion Halley is 5.2 billion km from the Sun, and thus beyond the orbit of Neptune. This site will give you a far better idea of a comet's journey:
http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/SEGwayEd/lessons/cometstale/frame_orbits.html

Did you go to the site? Did you see how the comet's tail grew so much longer the nearer it was to the Sun? A comet is thought to be mostly made up frozen ice. This is supposed because 80% of the material ejected by Halley was found to be water. The Giotto space probe found Halley's surface to be rich in carbon. The nucleus of Halley's comet, is in-fact one of the darkest objects in space. This is why American astronomer F.Whipple proposed a hypothesis on the comet nucleus being a "dirty-ice-ball".

The matter which makes up a comet is relatively small. Halley is peanut shaped, 15 km long, 8 km wide and 8 km thick. It's the enormous, bright 'fuzzy patch' which makes comets so visible. As the comet draws nearer to the Sun, the freed gas and dust particles form a cloud or 'halo' around the comet which astronomers call a coma. A comet's coma can get as large as 100, 000 km across as the comet nears the Sun. Not all the material liberated from the comet iceberg remains in the coma. Gas particles sweep out into a long tail pointing away from the Sun. In addition, the dust particles in the outer coma are pushed into a gentle curving dust tail. Comet tails can stretch out for more than 10 million km, yet they contain so few particles in total that the material in a comet tail could easily fit into an average suitcase - and leave enough room for a change of clothes.

Scientific opinion is that the coma and tails are formed by particles being released by the heat of the Sun, and also by the flow of high speed particles from the Sun (known as solar wind). I'm searching for evidence of a more electric relationship.

Comets that reach their aphelion become pretty dim objects out in space. The comets burn brighter the nearer they are to the sun. This then would suggest that the comet offers a higher resistance to the electric current as it draws closer to the Sun. Your normal household lightbulb does the same thing. An incandescent lamp works by the filament resisting the electricity; the resistance makes the filament heat to a high temperature; the heated filament then radiates light. If we wanted a far more brilliant flame of light to match that of our comet, then perhaps we should take a look at the carbon arc lamp.

An arc lamp produces light by the sparking (or arcing, from voltaic arc) of a high current between two carbon rod electrodes. The relatively high resistance to electric current in the gap region, causes the electrode tips to heat to incandescence and emit a brilliant light. I'm imagining our comet as one of these carbon rods. The carbon vaporizes as it works. Also, Swan bands are a characteristic of the spectra of carbon stars, comets and of burning hydrocarbon fuels. This vaporisation of carbon might help explain a comet's dust tail.
http://www.astrogeo.va.it/astronom/spettri/cometen.htm

A hydrogen gas envelope surrounds the coma of the comet and trails along for millions of miles (it is usually between the ion tail and the dust tail). The hydrogen envelope is about 10 million km across at the nucleus of the comet, and about 100 million km long.

The comet Hale-Bopp, observed in March 1997, has a similar composition to Halley. A third tail (between the dust and the ion tails) of the comet , 50 million km in length, was found to consist largely of sodium atoms. Sodium chloride being an important component of sea water - salt.

On burning in air, magnesium produces a brilliant white light. From electrolysis magnesium chloride produces magnesium. Magnesium is found in over 60 minerals. Dr. Joseph Nuth, Supervisory Astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, made observations in 1989, that found crystalline olivine dust (forsterite Mg2SiO4) in comet Halley. The mineral olivine is a magnesium iron silicate.

In a simple experiment with electrolysis where the electrodes are coated with platinum, it is found that when the battery is removed, the reaction reverses. The platinum acts as a catalyst allowing the hydrogen and oxygen to recombine. These electrodes can also be made from carbon.

Instead of putting electricity into the cell to split the water, hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water again, and produce electricity. Eventually this reaction comes to an end, but it shows a very simple way of storing energy. Could this process explain why Halley's journey is so far out at its aphelion? Even though the comet no longer draws a current from the Sun, perhaps it has to wait until all its stored energy is spent, before it is attracted back once again.

So why is Halley's orbit opposite to the direction of the planets in the solar system? There's no gravity in the electric Universe - only magnetic fields. Diamagnetism is the property of an object which causes it to create a magnetic field in opposition of an externally applied magnetic field, thus causing a repulsive effect. It is a form of magnetism that is only exhibted by a substance in the presence of an externally applied magnetic field. Diamagnetism is generally quite a weak effect in most materials, although superconductors exhibit a strong effect. Superconductivity is characterised by exactly zero electrical resistance.

The Earth is thought of as a diamagnet. It is behaving then in opposition to the applied magnetic field. All the other planets in the solar system would therefore also appear to be diamagnets. The planets all orbit the Sun in the same direction as the Earth. Water is highly diamagnetic. If a comet was made up of water, you would expect it to behave purely as a diamagnet. Halley's orbit works in direct contrast to all other planets. A diamagnet is repelled by a magnet. Paramagnetism works in the opposite way, and is attracted to the applied magnetic field.

Paramagnetism is a kind of magnetism characteristic of materials weakly attracted by a strong magnet. Most elements and some compounds are paramagnetic. What relationships, if any, have the paramagnetic, and diamagnetic materials formed onboard Halley's comet?



Many thanks to all the following for their knowledge and insights:
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/photos......
http://www.scienceclarified.com/El-Ex/Electrolysis.html
http://www.lafavre.us/brush/lamparc.htm
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/waves3.html
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997DPS....29.3706W
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/01/01.html
http://comets/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v201/n4923/abs/2011015a0.html
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/spacesci/solarexp/cometfulltxt.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine

Anti-Gravity Machine?

Some folks can build an anti-gravity device. A neodymium magnet is left floating beween a structured magnetic/diamagnetic sandwich. There's no electricity involved. Some think the forces of gravity and magnetism are two very different things. A large magnet is used in the device to counter-balance the force of gravity. Surely the relationship between gravity and magnetism is much closer than we think. You can see the anti-grav device here:
http://george.ph.utexas.edu/~schreck/schreck/MagicMagnets/index.html

Sheer Velocity

I'm standing on the Sun. I'm holding the toy car from our science experiment. Imagine the car is acting as electromagnetic radiation leaving the Sun. I've tied to the car one end of a reel of ticker-tape. I'm going to throw the car down to planet Earth. The ticker-tape is passing through the stamping machine. The machine stamps a dot once per second. At first the dots are close together, but as the velocity of the car increases, the dots grow further and further apart. The dots become less frequent. The car is travelling at lower and lower frequencies.

The car is electromagnetic radiation. It is light. It is the speed of light. As the velocity increases ever faster and faster, what is there to restrict its speed? The potential energy of the car is being unravelled into kinetic energy. This little car is getting faster and faster. By the time it reaches the planet, the car is travelling at an incredibly low frequency - but just imagine how much energy it's packing. With nothing to restrict its speed, the car can travel faster than the assumed speed of light (300,000 km/s). Hell, if the frequency was low enough it could make the journey instantaneously.

So what determines the velocity at which the car falls? We could say gravity, but I'm afraid there's no such thing as gravity in my Universe. In an electrical circuit the current is the velocity. The source injects energy while the load extracts it. If you increase the load - you increase the current, and so you increase the velocity of the electromagnetic energy. The Sun is our energy source. It has to be creating an extremely high voltage to seperate the charges. The Earth then is the load. Do we all live on some kind of cosmic light bulb? Or better yet, a cosmic motor?

Many thanks:

http://www.feandft.com/Cold_Electric_sun_4.jpg.gif

Kilometers to Nanometers

Charges in an AC electrical circuit vibrate at a frequency of 50 -60 Hz. AC electricity works on the basic theory of a generator pumping charges in the cable to create a flow of electrical energy, or rather, electromagnetic energy. Therefore the vibration of these charges at 50 - 60 times a second, emanates a wavelength of electromagnetic radiation we know as electricity. The size of this wavelength is 6000 km on a 50Hz supply, and it revolves around the cable. Electricity follows a cable route from the power station to your home and ends up in a light bulb. When we pass 50Hz electrical current through the substance (tungsten) of the lamp, it converts the energy into a very high frequency vibration - namely the visible light spectrum. In the visible light spectrum the charges are now vibrating at a frequency between 400 - 790 terahertz (THz). One terahertz is one trillion cycles per second. The wavelength of the electromagnetic energy has now been reduced from 6000 km to the region of 380 - 750 nanometers - the wavelength of visible light. A nanometer is equal to one billionth of a meter.


The electromagnetic radiation then travels from the lamp to the surface it is illuminating. This increases the velocity of the radiation. A higher velocity means a lower frequency, so the light now travels as infrared radiation until it reaches a surface. It is thought that 90% of the input energy of a light bulb is wasted as heat. Perhaps this is not the case at all. Maybe the light that is emitted by a lamp is simply travelling in the guise of heat. The frequency at which matter vibrates will dictate how it reacts with the electromagnetic waves, before the waves are reflected into the eye. My feeling is that the waves are thus converted into visible light in the eye, rather than at the object itself.

When we switch on the lamp it draws more power from the circuit and so the current increases. Current is a rate quantity - as is velocity a rate quantity. On a simple circuit, the current is everywhere the same. The current, even though under-going velocity, remains balanced throughout the circuit. This suggests another force at work, other than simply charge flowing from a higher potential to a lower potential. This balance of current could be created by a force working in the opposite direction - flowing from the lower potential to the higher potential. The current coming in is equal to the current going out. It's a point worth making here, but the neutral wire which carries current from the home, and back to the power station - carries a current but has no electric charge. In my mind, electromagnetic energy arises in the shape of a double helix which flows in both directions.

In Britain, the mains frequency is transmitted from the power plant to the household at 50 Hz. This frequency does not change throughout its transmission, so therefore the wavelengths of electricity remain the same. The higher the load, the higher the current - so therefore the velocity of the electromagnetic force must be increasing. Electric fields come from charges. So do magnetic fields, but from moving charges, or currents, which are simply a whole bunch of moving charges. In an electrical cable the charges are wiggling. They are not increasing their velocity as the current increases. They remain wiggling at a steady pace of 50 cycles per second. The electric field is proportional to the electric charge of an object, but does not depend on its velocity. The magnetic field depends on the charge and the velocity. Therefore, the velocity of an electric current would appear to be implied by the magnetic force.

What, if any, restrictions can be placed on the velocity of the magnetic field? It is supposed that each joule of EM energy flows at nearly the speed of light between generator and distant load. But what's stopping the magnetic field from moving faster than the speed of light?

Potential

I'm trying to understand what is really meant by the words 'voltage' and 'current'. Voltage measures the energy per charge. Current is the 'flow' of electric charge, while voltage is considered to be the 'push' behind it. The push is created by something known as the difference in electrical potential. The difference in electrical potential between two points is known as voltage. So, what is meant by potential energy?

There was once a science experiment we tried at school. It involved pushing a little wooden car along a table, and then letting it fall over the edge to the floor below. Where's the science you might well ask? Well, attached to the back of the car was the end of a long flowing reel of ticker-tape. As the car moved along, the tape behind it passed through a machine which, once every second, punched an ink stained dot onto the tape. So if the car was stationary, all that would appear on the tape was one ink dot, and for each second that passed, another was over-imposed upon it. Once the car started moving, the tape would be pulled through the machine, and a line of dots would then start to appear. The faster the car was moving, the further apart the dots would be.

When the car sits idle on top of the table, it has a potential energy. The car's doing nothing but it has the potential to do something. If I push the car over the edge, it will fall, and crash to the floor. Okay, let's look at the ticker-tape. Where the car was doing nothing, the tape shows a rich ink stain where it has been repeatedly stamped. Then, little gaps start to appear between the dots because the car has left the table. These gaps grow further, and further apart as the falling car gains velocity. Wham.... the car's hit the floor and it's motionless. Now there are no longer any distances between the dots - there is just one dot which is over-imposed by another dot, for each second that passes. The car has returned to its previous state of doing nothing, but it still has the 'potential' to do something.

The difference in potential is between the car doing nothing (potential energy) - and doing something (kinetic energy). As the car falls it gains more velocity, its kinetic energy increases as its potential energy decreases. In theory, with a high enough fall, and no wind resistance, the car could keep falling and it would keep on transferring potential energy into kinetic energy.

Let's look at the ticker-tape again. Where the dots move further and further apart from one another, the potential energy could be described as being unravelled. The dots are also becoming less and less frequent, so we could say the energy now has a lower frequency. The energy is stretched by lower frequencies until ..... the car hits the floor. The car has now returned to a state of potential energy. So even though we think of the car as doing nothing, it's actually seething with energy. The energy was stretched to a lower frequency by its velocity, and then, when the car is motionless, it is squashed back together again.

In an electrical circuit the velocity of the charge flow is measured by current. Voltage would be a measure of the energy needed to push the car off the table. Supposedly, increasing the height of the drop also increases voltage, but this is based on the assumption that the force of gravity acts upon a falling object. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as time-space in my Universe, so there's no such thing as gravity. I will return to voltage in another post.

If you were on a hill and a huge boulder came bounding towards you, it's unlikely that you would raise a hand to try and stop it - because you know it would bloody hurt. When the boulder is motionless at the bottom of the hill, then that would be the more perfect time to approach it. It illustrates just how powerful energy is once it's in motion. A falling boulder is unravelling its potential energy, and transferring it into kinetic energy. Just a moment before the boulder reaches the bottom of the hill, will be the point where it will have reached its maximum velocity. This velocity determines the current. Perhaps voltage determines the size of the boulder.

There are two kinds of charge - positive and negative. So far the models with the car, and the boulder are describing how a positive charge works (in conventional electricity). Basically, a negative charge would work in the opposite way. If the boulder were a negative charge, it would roll back up the hill - and gain momentum. I'm going to explore this further in my next post. I'm also interested in how these models apply to the energy we recieve from the Sun.

Many thanks:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Electronics/Voltage,_Current,_and_Power
http://www.electricitycentral.com/articles/whatisvoltage.ht

Turn A Light On In Heaven For Me

Outer space is black. When we look at the night sky we can see stars which offer us a pin-prick of light, but they do not swathe the Universe in light. Our own Sun bathes our planet with visible light, but outer space remains empty and black. As the Earth revolves around the Sun we have night and day. As the energy from the Sun reaches half the planet it is transformed into visible light. The other half revolves in darkness, and is offered light only by the moon. If light from the Sun always travelled as visible light, then surely the Universe would be awash with light. How does light (electromagnetic radiation) travel from the Sun to the Earth?

The average distance of the Sun from the Earth is 150 million km. Light, travelling at the speed of light takes about eight minutes to reach the Earth. We can illustrate this passage of light as a frequency. If we assume a frequency is one cycle per second (or 1Hz), then we can create the frequency of light in one second. The wavelength of this frequency would equal the distance travelled by the speed of light (300,000 km/s) - so the wavelength would be 300,000 km. It would take light travelling from the Sun 500 seconds to reach the planet. This frequency could be written as 0.002 Hz. Therefore the size of the wavelength travelling from the Sun shall be much bigger, around 500 times bigger. A frequency of 0.002Hz will give us a wavelength that is a total of 150 million km in circumference.

Is the Earth simply bathing in this extremely low frequency of 0.002 Hz? Somehow then it must convert it into the various shorter wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that we are more familiar with. I'm reminded here of a lamp in an AC circuit. A lamp converts the longer wavelengths of electrical energy into the much shorter wavelengths of visible light. In doing so it increases the velocity of the charge flow (current). What comparisons, if any, can be made between a simple household circuit, and the relationship between the Sun and the Earth?

Many thanks:

http://%20www.flickr.com/photos/johnlemon/263411081/

http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/CLASS/circuits/u9l2c.html

Magnetism

I've been shopping at Wiki again, exploring ideas on magnetism, and magnetic charge. I quote: "A magnet (from Greek μαγνήτης λίθος, "Magnesian stone") is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other magnetic materials and attracts or repels other magnets." Ferromagnetic (iron) materials are the only ones strongly enough attracted to a magnet to be commonly considered 'magnetic'.

Convention states that the magnetic field lines emanate from the north pole of the magnet, and re-enter the magnet through the south pole. Some think of magnetic field lines being created by the planet in the same way. This is an assumption that magnetic field lines travel in one direction, but surely, both opposite poles are attracted to each other? Two poles that are alike will repel each other; north will repel north, and south shall repel south. On a bar magnet it would appear that the energy does not simply emanate from the north pole and move to the south pole. The energy moves out from both poles. Are the forces which move from a bar magnet completing a circuit of some type?

The geographic north pole is a magnetic south pole. On a compass, it's the north pole of the needle which is attracted to the magnetic south pole. We might forget perhaps that the south pole of the needle is also attracted to the magnetic north pole.

The movement of any charged particle will produce a magnetic field. In previous posts, we have seen how charges are attracted from a higher potential to the lower potential. We also suspect that there are charges which are attracted from the lower potential to the higher potential. New research on lightning shows not only a strike reaching down from clouds (higher potential), but that it is met halfway by a strike from the ground ( lower potential). A typical bolt bridges a potential difference (voltage) of several hundred million volts.

The movement of charges in the magnetic fields suggests that there is a difference of potential in the ends of a bar magnet. This idea is a little hard to confirm because magnetic fields are invisible. We can spread iron filings over a piece of paper on top of a bar magnet, and this will give us some idea of the shape which the magnetic field lines take. Unfortunately, the iron filings do not reveal from which direction the lines emanate.

Ultimately, magnetic fields can produce electric currents, and electric currents produce magnetic fields. If an electrical cable acts as an antenna for an ELF wave - what then is at work with an ordinary bar magnet? There's something special about iron, and it's natural magnetism. Does the iron act as an antenna for an ELF wave? If it did, the relatively weak magnetic forces of iron without an induced electric current, would imply we are looking for a frequency at the lower end of the ELF spectrum. A frequency perhaps, which permeates everything .

Many thanks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet
http://www.intuitor.com/resonance/radioTVres.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/magnet1.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd18jun99_1.htm
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/electric/lightning2.html

Charge

Electric charge is a fundamental property of matter which is the cause of all electrical phenomena. Charge is not energy. Charge is acting as the carrier of the energy. Electrical energy is an electromagnetic radiowave which works at extremely low frequencies (electrical systems are generally 50-60 Hz). Charge and energy move differently - in AC cables the charges sit in one spot and wiggle, while the energy flows along at almost the speed of light. What is it that has these charges wiggling in an AC circuit? The charges, it would appear, are repeatedly attracting and repelling one another. Does this suggest two directions of flow at work in the cable?

Electric currents are not just flows of electrons they are flows of electric charge. In order for current to flow, it must be in a closed path called a circuit. To keep the charge flowing there must be a potential difference between two points in the circuit. A conventional current flows from a higher potential to a lower potential as a positively charged particle should. This conventional idea about current flow began with Benjamin Franklin in the 18th Century, before anyone knew what an electron was. When the electron was discovered in 1897, it was found to have a negative charge! Basically, on paper, the current is shown flowing from positive to negative. However, scientific convention would choose the current to be a flow of electrons, and that they are flowing from a higher potential (negative plate) to a lower potential (positive plate).

Before we allow ourselves to become too confused about which is the correct direction of flow, let us examine it from the more recent field of quantum physics. Quantum physics supposes that the flow of negative charge (electron) and positive charge (aka 'hole flow') are approximately equal in probability. A lightning strike can be thought of as a current flowing in both directions; thus making a circuit. This site explains a bit more about it:
http://www.srh.weather.gov/srh/jetstream/lightning/lightning_max.htm

Batteries and generators cause electric charge to flow. Electricity is the flow of charge around a circuit carrying energy from the battery (or power supply) to components such as lamps or motors. Electricity can only flow if there is a complete circuit from the battery through wires to components and back to the battery again. A standard AA battery has a difference of 1.5 volts between its positive and negative terminals. One terminal has a higher potential energy than the other terminal. If we add a piece of wire between the two terminals we create a circuit. We think of the energy moving from the higher potential to the lower potential. Charges from the higher potential are attracted to the lower potential (rather like a boulder at the top of a hill is attracted to the bottom of the hill). But lightning strikes show us that charges from the lower potential are also attracted to the higher potential. Is it not also true for magnets that north and south poles attract, not simply one to the other, but attract each other?

Many thanks to all the sites for all their insights.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field
http://amasci.com/viselect/vedemos.html

Electric Currant Bun

In 1600, William Gilbert published his De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth). In this work he describes many of his experiments with his model earth called the terrella. From his experiments, he concluded that the Earth was itself magnetic and that this was the reason compasses pointed north (previously, some believed that it was the pole star (Polaris) or a large magnetic island on the north pole that attracted the compass).

Gravity and magnetism are thought not to be related. We are told magnetism is the effect of electric currents, and that gravity is the property of massive matter. Matter is light vibrating at very short wavelengths, and very high frequencies (it's frequency would also appear to determine its mass). If you brought together a lot of matter, say planet sized, I wonder what is the net effect of all these high frequencies ?

Only 30 km below the Earth's crust we find the mantle layer reaches a temperature of 1000 degrees c . As we journey down it gets hotter, and the molten rock more liquid. At the very centre of the planet, 5,200 km below the surface, we find an inner core of iron at 4,300 degrees c. The inner core is under such extreme pressure that it remains solid. The greater the pressure, the less room matter has to vibrate, and so the frequencies are getting higher and higher. However, 'electricity' is found at low frequencies- all the way at the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum.

It is said that the Earth cannot be a large permanent magnet since magnetic minerals lose their magnetism when they are hotter than about 500 degrees c. Almost all of the Earth is hotter, and the only way to make an electric field is with a circulating electric current. Light from the Sun takes 500 seconds to reach Earth; this can be written as a frequency of 0.002 Hz. This is an extremely, extremely low frequency when compared to the frequency at which matter oscillates - at billions and billions of times per second. Is light from the Sun acting as an electric current?

At the turn of the 19th century, there was a Norwegian experimenter and explorer called Birkeland. He knew that the Earth was a giant magnet. He wanted to understand the dynamics of the aurora borealis (northern lights). Birkeland led an expedition to the northernmost reaches of Norway to measure the Earth's magnetic field. He found that near the north pole, the magnetic field lines don't run along the earth's surface the way they do near the equator. Instead the field lines go almost straight up and down. The magnetic field flows into the south pole and out of the north pole.

In the true spirit of the times, he went home and built a model of what he found. The model was a sphere with a generated magnetic field, onto which electrically charged particles flew through a tube. The charged particles are pushed away from the equator, along the lines of force, and right into the north and south poles of the model. In nature, as the particles flow in to the upper polar atmosphere, they collide with atmosphere gases, generating the colourful light display of the aurora. Some might think that because this early experiment simulated the magnetic field, it fails to explain how the Earth generates it in the first place. But, on reflection, does it?

Many thanks -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
http://www.news.wisc.edu/2515
http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/interior.html

Brighton to Timbuktu

I was interested to see how electricity behaves in the golden spiral. Electricity is composed of electrostatic fields and magnetic fields which exist in the region surrounding the wires. The energy within these fields is called electromagnetic (EM) energy. Therefore, electricity is not made up of electrons, instead it is made of invisible electromagnetic fields. The EM wavelength of 50 Hz AC power is approximately 6000 km. I once thought this wave bounced happily along inside a cable, but now I'm thinking that perhaps this is not the case.

I'm imagining myself holding an electrical cable (don't worry, I've got rubber underpants on, and a pair of wellies, and now the neighbours are looking at me funny), and I'm staring down the cable like it's a barrel of a gun. Now the cable is surrounded by the spiral staircase (which represents EM fields), and looks pretty much like an archimedes screw. The screw is turning at the speed of light, and with the usual AC circuit, the power's frequency will be 50 Hz (so it completes 50 cycles per second). This means the circumference of the wave is some 6000km in length, and so the circumference of the golden spiral is also 6000km. So now I'm looking at something which is enormous. It's 6000km from where I am in Brighton to reach Timbuktu.(?)

At the centre of our golden spiral the energy is moving much faster than at its parameter, and so the energy is far more intense. Electricity is composed of electrostatic fields and magnetic fields which exist in the region surrounding the wires. If electricity means electric energy, then electricity does not flow inside the wires. In electrical circuits, the electric energy travels as invisible fields found in the space outside the wires and not within. According to the golden spiral, this radius will be 950 km (circumference=pi times diameter), but it's within a tiny fraction of all this where all the action appears to take place - actually on or very near the cable. So this EM field is the direct result of the intense heat and friction felt at the centre of the wave.

I've no idea if any of this is right - though of course I hope it is - I just had to get it down on paper. Anyways, it gave me an excuse to put those pants on. I owe a debt of gratitude to this site, for setting me straight about my preconceptions of electricity: http://amasci.com/miscon/whatdef.html

Let It Flow

I worked as an electrician for 15 years. I now realise just how little I know about what electricity actually is. All I knew was that it hurt when I touched live cables (which was likely to make me scream); I also realised it was dangerous when it blew holes in my pliers because I'd cut through a live cable (which also made me scream). Other than that, I'd always suspected it was a substance that flowed from a power station, across fields and along cables until it reached a socket in the lounge. As it happens, this is not quite the case.

An element's emission spectrum is the relative intensity of electromagnetic radiation of each frequency it emits when it is heated, or more generally when it is excited. Electromagnetic (EM)radiation takes the form of self-propagating waves in a vacuum or in matter. EM radiation carries energy and momentum, which may be imparted when it inter-acts with matter. An important aspect of the nature of light is frequency. The frequency of a wave is its rate of oscillation, and is measured in hertz. One hertz is equal to one oscillation per second.

At the end of the 19th century, physicists knew there were electrons inside atoms, and that the wiggling of these electrons gave off light, and other EM radiation. EM waves were first postulated by James Clerk Maxwell, and subsequently conirmed by Heinrich Hertz. Maxwell concluded that light itself is an EM wave. According to Maxwell's equations, a time-varying electric field generates a magnetic field - and vice versa. Therefore as an oscillating electric field generates an oscillating magnetic field, the magnetic field in turn generates an oscillating electric field, and so on. These osillating fields together form an EM wave. Radiation is caused by wiggling charges, and the rate of the wiggling determines the wavelength.

Electric power is defined as 'flow of energy'. Electric current is a flow of electrons - but the electrons don't flow forward, instead they vibrate slightly. The frequency of this vibration is slow (standards are around 50-60 Hz) when compared to other forms of EM radiation. I am now starting to think of electricity as a radiowave. Tesla's ultimate application of free energy was as a radiowave. I found this offering on YouTube, which is an example of wireless electricity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMSErlXvqA8

I found this paragraph and its definition of electricity most enlightening......"Under the scientists' definition of "electricity", the electric company does not sell any electricity, instead it sells a pumping service. The electricity just vibrates slightly back and forth inside the wires. Generators don't "generate" this electricity, instead they only pump it. Metal wires act like pipes which are already full of water; where the water is the "electricity." Electrons are supplied by the wires, not by the electric generators, so we should not say that generators "generate" any electricity. Instead, generators act as electricity pumps, and all of the "electricity" in the national power grid is supplied by the metal of the wires. An AC generator forces the electricity of the wires to wiggle back and forth. A DC generator (or a battery) forces the electricity to flow continously in a circle, sort of like a drive belt."
http://amasci.com/miscon/whatdef.html

Since electric charge is permanently attached to certain particles of matter, we're forced to say that electricity is a basic component of everyday matter. In previous posts we have talked of soundwaves being a property of matter. Electricity is a form of EM radiation, while soundwaves are a form of mechanical energy - but what, if any, is the relationship?

The Apostle, Ephesians 5:13 - "All that is made manifest is light."

Resonance

Frequency is the measurable rate of electrical energy flow that is constant between any two points. Everything has frequency. A healthy, adult human heart (when at rest), beats 60 times per minute. This can be written as a frequency of 1 hertz (or one beat per second). I'm struck by this, because it is the same frequency as a clock (one tick per second). There is no clock on the wall of the Universe anymore, or such a thing as 'time' to regulate and control us. The Universe is revealing itself as an energy vibrating at different frequencies. Astrologers already view the Universe in this way - http://www.jeannetteastrosoul.com/why-astrology/ .

The speed of light travels at 300,000 km/s (when the rate of perception is 'normal'). On our golden spiral it emerges that light, travelling at the speed of light, completes one cycle (or one wavelength) in one second. This frequency can also be written as 1 Hz (one cycle per second). The moon is roughly 300,000km away from the Earth, so it takes one second for the light from the moon to reach us. We could also write the frequency of the light from the moon as being 1 Hz.

There's a gamma ray image of the moon taken by NASA. If you could see gamma rays - the moon would appear brighter than the Sun. The Sun, it appears, is extremely faint at gamma ray energies. Gamma ray energies are extremely high frequencies, and very short wavelengths. Why does the Sun show low gamma ray activity? Maybe as light travels from the Sun to planet Earth it is not using high frequencies, but extremely low frequencies.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060527.html

The Sun is some 150,000,000 km away from Earth. It takes 500 seconds for light from the Sun to reach the Earth, so its frequency is much lower than the light from the moon. If 1 Hz is the frequency of light from the moon, then the light from the Sun will have a frequency that is 500 times longer - 0.002 Hz. When we compare the different frequencies of light from the moon (1 HZ), and light from the Sun (0.002 Hz) - does it start to explain why we have the high energy gamma rays at the moon, but then very low energy travelling from the Sun?

The Earth has a circumference of approximately 40, 000 km (24,900 miles). Light travelling at the speed of light, could circumnavigate the circumference of the Earth eight times a second - this can be expressed as 8 Hz. This frequency, or resonance, agrees with observations made by Schumann. The earth-ionosphere cavity, sometimes referred to as the Schumann cavity, surrounds the Earth between ground level and extends upward to a maximum 80 kilometres. The earth-ionosphere cavity has a sort of resonance, which can be thought of as being formed by a standing electromagnetic wave that encircles the whole globe, supported between two conductive layers (the Earth and the ionosphere). So what happens when these low frequencies of light from the Sun(0.002 Hz), meet the higher frequencies exhibited by the planet (8 Hz)? The earth-ionosphere cavity resonates in the frequency range of 6 - 60 Hz. For me, 50 - 60 Hz immediately brings domestic electricity to mind. So what electrical forces are being played out on our planet? Is it possible that they can be utilised as a power source?

On a side note, I was jus wondering what would happen if I slowed my perception down to half its normal speed (this time it helps to think big!). If I then observe the light moving from the Sun to the Earth, it will feel like the light is now moving twice as fast (when compared to my 'normal' experience). It now takes light only 250 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth - it's frequency will have increased to 0.004 Hz. Time and space would appear to be a construct of how we experience energy in the universe. In other words, how we observe the frequency of light determines our ideas of time-space.

Many thanks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonance
http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/cosmicrays/crsun.html

No Matter - No Sound

Light travels through a vacuum. Sound does not travel through a vacuum. A vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. Sound is the vibration of molecules, and since there is nothing in a vacuum , there are no molecules to vibrate. Therefore sound is the vibration of matter - without matter there could be no such thing as a sound wave. A sound wave can be described as a disturbance that travels through a medium, transporting energy from one location to another location. Sound is an inherent property of matter, and perhaps we could also say, that matter is a property of sound. If the entire Universe is electromagnetic energy vibrating at different frequencies - what place does the mechanical energy of soundwaves have in this vast scheme?

An electromagnetic wave is thought of as a transverse wave. The waves of the sea can be thought of as a transverse wave. If you look at the waves on the sea, they seem to move towards you, however the particles that make up the wave only move up and down. On the other hand, a soundwave is a longitudinal wave, where the particles move along with the wave, backwards and forwards along the direction in which the wave is travelling. It makes me think of a long line of commuters trying to get on a tube, where it's the middle of the morning rush and everyone is late for work. The wave begins with those pushing at the very back, it moves forward down the line for a bit, but then it hits a wall of people further down the line, and they start pushing back with their shoulders. The line squeezes (compression) before the energy is pushed forwards down the line again, and then there is something of a stretch (rarefaction) between the commuters until it hits another apparent wall. The wavelength can be measured as the distance between the centre of two compressions. Eventually though, the big shove at the back reaches those passengers trying to board the train. It's as if the energy from the back of the line shuffles along to the front. These sites make a much better job of illustrating this....
http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos/waves/wavemotion.html
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/Class/sound/u11l1b.html

So, we have the energy of the Universe - light moving at vastly different wavelengths and frequencies - which takes the form of matter and electromagnetic radiation. Then we have soundwaves which are produced when the various wavelengths of matter vibrate against one another. Matter is an incredibly intense electromagnetic wave, and one has to wonder what forces are at work, when these waves interact with one another to release this incredible energy we know as soundwaves.

Stop The Clock

Here I am again, looking down into the snake-pit which is the bottom of the golden spiral. There's a couple of things which have been playing on my mind. One of these is the zero-point singularity which the energy spins around. I think we've been looking for black holes in the wrong place. I'm not so sure they exist as an entity in outer space. I think there's one to be found at the bottom of every atom, and at the centre of every electromagnetic wave.

The other thing that's tickling me, is the idea that one spin of an electron around a nucleus is perhaps one wavelength. Is there the same energy in this one atomic wavelength as there is in one wavelength of a radiowave, for example? An electron takes about 150 attoseconds to orbit a nucleus. One attosecond is to one second, what one second is to the age of the Universe. That's unfathomably fast, and I can only imagine just how intense this energy is. As we move up the golden spiral from matter, to electromagnetic radiation, it would appear that this energy is being stretched as the size of the wavelengths increase.

So why does an electron thus appear as a particle? I think of it a bit like a stop-watch. If we imagine the face of a stop-watch with the second-hand spinning round, then the moment we push the plunger it will stop to reveal a 'time'. However, this is only a tiny segment of what is the whole face of the clock. I imagine one wavelength rather like the clock face. If matter is electromagnetic radiation spinning incredibly fast, we could make a comparison to the second-hand on our stop-clock, which would be whizzing round so fast it would appear as a blur. But the mind is unable to input a blur - it appears as something solid, so we are forced to try and measure what's happening by stopping the clock. Hence this tiny segment that we observe appears as a 'particle'.



This site is fascinating...
http://www.electronspin.org/

Tighter

The Universe is energy. This energy vibrates at different frequencies, and takes many different forms. Matter is a form of this energy at extremely short wavelengths, and ultra-high frequencies. Matter has been broken down into its basic chemical elements which occupy the Periodic Table. Using the model of the golden spiral, it would appear that each chemical element is the product of the frequency at which energy vibrates. Each element is subdivided again to reveal isotopes. Isotopes are any of the different types of atoms (Nuclides) of the same chemical element each having different atomic mass (mass number).[1] Can it be that isotopes are also a demonstration of the subtle variances of vibration within each chemical element? And carrying this line of enquiry even further, does the frequency at which the elements vibrate (at the atomic level), define each element's unique qualities, and properties?

On a scale arranged according to the increasing mass of their nuclei, uranium is the heaviest of all the naturally occuring elements, and hydrogen the lightest. Uranium is nearly 19 times as dense as water. The first element in the periodic table is hydrogen. It has an atomic number of 1. This means that it only has one proton in its nucleus. Roughly speaking, as we move up the periodic table, the atomic number of each element increases with the number of protons in the atom's nucleus. The next element is helium with an atomic number of 2, then there's lithium with an atomic number of 3, and so on. In theory it takes two hydrogen atoms to make a helium atom (1+1=2), and also one helium atom plus one hydrogen atom to make lithium (2+1=3). I'm oversimplifying nuclear theory here, but that's just about the gist of it.

Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the naturally occuring elements at 92. The current standard table contains 117 elements. Scientists recently produced (albeit fleetingly) element 118 - ununoctium - in a labaratory. Physicists believe that the higher the atomic number, the higher the principal energy level, and the greater the distance from the nucleus to the further probability range for the electron. But I wonder if the atomic number is just denoting a frequency and/or the number of wavelengths, to which the element vibrates. On the periodic table it's a curious fact the sizes of atoms decreases as one moves from left to right across a row or period, even though the number of protons increase as one moves from top to bottom along a group. I think it might well be showing us how the golden spiral grows tighter as the frequencies increase with the heavier elements.



I found this brilliant .....
http://www.scienceclarified.com/everyday/Real-Life-Chemistry-Vol-1/Periodic-Table-of-Elements.html

And many thanks also to the following sites...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununoctium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope
http://www.helium.com/items/893232-the-real-meaning-of-emc2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium

Hummingbirds And Snakes

I'm exploring the way we percieve energy in the model of the golden spiral. How do we, as observers, fit into the equation? We now know the speed of light is not a constant, but is something which is dictated by the rate of perception. It appears that the rate of perception can be manipulated by vestibular stimulation, and/or influenced by the heart rate. Throughout the animal kingdom the heart rate varies enormously. From a tiny mouse with a heart rate which (when at rest) is 500 beats per minute (bpm), to a human adults' heart rate at 70 bpm, and then onto an elephant's heart rate which is around 28 bpm. This site illustrates this beautifully: http://www.thaifocus.com/elephant/heartbeat.htm . How does the metabolic rate, and/or the heart rate effect the rate of perception? Does the size of the animal, and specifically the size of its brain, effect the rate of perception? What effects could the rate of perception have on an animals perception of electromagnetic radiation?

With the exception of insects, hummingbirds while in-flight have the highest metabolism of all animals. Their heart rate can reach as high as 1,260 beats per minute (bpm) - a rate once measured in a blue-throated hummingbird. The hummingbird also does something very interesting, it can see wavelengths into the near-ultraviolet, but the flowers they use as a food source do not reflect these wavelengths (as many insect pollinated flowers do). Is it possible then that this ability to see UV light is simply the by-product of an increase in the rate of perception?

Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, and it's the next step down on our golden spiral. The hummingbird's brain is the size of a pea, but that don't make 'em stupid. They are performing aeronautical feats that Richard Branson would be proud of. Their wings beat 70 times a second while hovering and upto 200 times a second during courtship dives. Whilst hovering they remain perfectly stationary and must have an excellent optomotor response. If you were going to try and flap your arms 100 times a second (go on, please try it), your brain will have to be able to think much faster - and this all before your feet have even left the ground. Perhaps if we wanted to think faster, we should consider shrinking our own brain to the size of a pea.

Many species of fish, reptiles, birds, and insects are also able to see into the higher wavelengths of UV light. Snakes have color vision but it's not as broad ranged as ours. Their eyes have a yellow filter that, filling the lens, absorbs ultraviolet light and protects the eye. Now to me that suggests that the snake is capable of detecting UV rays, but its nocturnal habits dictate that it's no longer viable, and possibly a hindrance. Pit vipers and boids are two types of snake that also possess a heat-sensitive membrane that can detect infrared wavelengths. This ability to see into infrared has been harnessed, not by the eyes themselves, but by the adaption of a pit organ which converts the longer wavelengths into a crude thermal image.

Snakes have a low metabolic rate, and like all reptiles, they are cold blooded. This means their heart rate is comparitively low when compared to a mammal around the same body-size. With a Western Hognose snake the average heart rate is 50 - 80 bpm, and that's an easy comparison to make to the human average heart rate, which is around the same region.

So where does that leave us then? I feel like I've scattered the cards on the table and I'm looking for a good hand to pick up. Following Kleiber's power law, mammals at the lower end of the scale, for example mice, typically have a faster heart rate and also small brains. Unique among mammals however, many rodents - such as rats, mice and gerbils - have retained the ability to see UV light. So it would appear that throughout the animal kingdom, a very small brain suggests the ability to see UV light. A smaller, compact brain, would mean a faster rate of perception. Does this mean that because the rate of perception is so fast, the brain is able to percieve and process energies of higher frequencies? Does the spin of the golden spiral slow down under a faster rate of perception, and so much so, that higher frequencies of energy become visible?

I'm starting to feel that everything is tying nicely together - except for the heart rates which belong to our cold-blooded ancestors. With mammals a higher heart rate infers a faster rate of perception .This however cannot be applied to reptiles because they follow a pattern of low metabolic rates and faster rates of perception. The faster rate of perception would appear to be due to the reptiles' small brain, and not because of metabolic rate. Is it going to be possible for us to harness this ability to increase the rate of perception, and maintain it at a lower metabolic rate? Some snakes are capable of seeing into the infrared - how relevant is this to its rate of perception? What piece of the puzzle am I missing?

I would like to thank the following for all their insights:
http://www.orgs.muohio.edu/uvlakes/UVecology/Intro/intro.html
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/okhummin/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_sensing_in_snakes
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0708_030708_ultravioletmammals.html
http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/Spring99Projects/snake.htm

Comet anyone?

I found this page on my travels and thought it well worth a mention if you fancy a look at comets... http://www.assa.org.au/sig/comets/mcnaught.asp

The Golden Spiral

Scientists believe cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is the oldest light in the Universe. NASA's satellite - the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) - was sent up to measure the light that they believe was left over from the Big Bang. Their calculations suppose that with the expansion and cooling of the Universe, the light from the Big Bang has now been stretched to longer wavelengths in the microwave region. These wavelengths are in the range of millimetres. The COBE satellite carried instruments to measure wavelengths in this region. But I wonder, if we are looking for light left over from the Big Bang, should we be looking for wavelengths that are bigger than millimetres? Perhaps we should be looking for wavelengths that are much, much bigger.

Einstein showed that energy and matter are the same universal substance, simply vibrating at different frequencies. The Universe is energy, and this energy is contantly changing forms dependent upon its frequency. I am exploring a possible model that would explain how this energy moves at an atomic level, before it stretches out to encompass the Universe.

Try and imagine you are standing on the steps of an immense spiral staircase. You look down over the edge and the stairs spiral down in ever decreasing circles. As your eyes wander over each step, you notice that they become smaller and smaller. The stairwell appears to stretch for miles and miles. At the very bottom is a zero-point singularity which is too far away for you to see. Now hold onto the handrail because it's going to feel a little uncomfortable - the entire staircase is now revolving, and it's moving at the at the speed of light. It might start to feel like you are staring down the barrel of an elaborate Archimedes screw. For a point of reference we'll say that from where you stand, it turns at one revolution per second, or 1 Hertz (Hz) - which just so happens to be the frequency of the average human heart (one beat per second). What you are about to see is how energy moves at different frequencies in the Universe.

Where you are the staircase rotates at a steady pace. One full cycle of the staircase is a representation of a wavelength. When you look down you see that the steps at the bottom are spinning so fast they appear only as a seething, vibrating mass. This is on account of the steps being so atomically small, they are able to turn in a very small area. The stairs are also revolving very, very fast at this level. Each cycle happens extremely fast and very frequent, so we could say that they have a high frequency. This energy, which has extremely small wavelengths, and very high frequencies, takes on the appearance of something solid. It is at the bottom of our stairwell we find energy takes on the form of matter.

Moving up from the bottom we start to notice that even though the steps are still incredibly small, we can count the amount of times they complete a turn. So emerging from our model are the first forms of electromagnetic radiation. Gamma rays have the highest frequency, and the shortest wavelengths of less than about ten trillionths of a meter. Continuing our journey up, the spins are becoming less frequent, and the steps are gradually becoming bigger and bigger. The energy is being driven at a lower frequency, and the wavelengths are growing longer. We watch as the energy transforms from gamma rays into x-rays, and then into ultra-violet (UV). With the next form the energy manifests as something we are all familiar with - visible light. This rainbow of colours are a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelengths between 400 and 700 billionths of a meter. Its frequency ranges between 430,000 - 750, 000 gigahertz - and so it's still incredibly fast. One gigahertz is a wave of energy revolving 1,000,000,000 times per second.

Let us pause for a moment and reflect on something which is missing, or rather, that which is absent from the visible spectrum - the colour black. Black is the absence of any light. But throughout this model it has always been present, it's just that the colour black is more conspicuous by its absence as we enter the visible spectrum. Is it possible that a black entity accompanies the spiral staircase throughout its journey? For most certainly, a spiral staircase has to encircle around something. So it appears the black space of our stairwell has some type of influence over everything else. Surely if there was no darkness, then there could be no such thing as light. If we were able to follow the darkness all the way to the bottom, would it, or would it not, emerge unchanging from the zero-point singularity? Food for thought perhaps because we really must continue our journey up.

The lower frequencies of the red light in the spectrum merge into the infrared, and as the steps grow bigger, we see the wavelengths of the energy become larger. The energy changes into microwaves. Microwaves are electromagnetic waves with wavelengths ranging from 1mm to 1m, or frequencies between 300 GHz to 0.3 GHz. So even though the energy turns with much less frequency than that of matter, or gamma rays - there's an incredible amount of usable energy there. I mean, we can even cook a Pot Noodle with microwaves. Where you are revolving at 1Hz, you can imagine that these energies are still a long way off, and unfathomably small. The cycles at which the staircase turn appear to slow down because the steps grow further apart, and the lower frequencies now become recognisable as radiowaves.

Very High Frequency (VHF) is something we are all familiar with on the dial of our radio. The energy is now spinning in cycles that range from 300 megahertz (MHz) to 30 MHz. To try and maintain some sort of perspective, one megahertz is one million cycles per second. The wavelengths have now grown to a size which range from 1 to 10 meters. In other words, a turn of the archimedes screw at this level, revolves at a circumference of 10 meters. The energy now moves through all the radiowave frequencies until we reach the extreme of those that we able to measure - the aptly titled - extremely low frequencies (ELF). The energy at this level performs a cycle upto 3 times a second (3Hz) and has a wavelength that spans 100, 000 kms. So suddenly you are aware of your position on the spiral staircase as it stretches far out into space, thousands and thousands of kilometres wide. This would still all be happening below you, mind. From the position where you are observing this scenario at one hertz, it takes light (travelling at the speed of light) to perform one revolution, and that would be somewhere in the region of 300,000 kms. For a simple comparison, the moon is something like 300,000 kms away from the Earth. As you look up over your head, the staircase looms on ever larger, and wider, until it fills millions and millions of miles. As long as the energy keeps moving there really is no limit to the size of its wavelength. It's also interesting to note that the energy is constant throughout its entire span of the spiral - it only changes frequency.

According to Stephen Hawking, the observable Universe spans a million million million million miles across. That's a one followed by 24 zeros. If I was looking for something left over from the Big Bang, then that would be the size of the baby I would be looking for. This new model also raises some pretty interesting questions about how we observe energy. If the speed of light is not a constant, but is something which is inferred by the observer's rate of perception, what possibilities lie in-wait as we explore the energy of the golden spiral?

I would like to thank the following sites for their help, and boundless insights:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/electromagintro.html
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/esaSC/SEMB3AR1VED_index_0.html
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2324/stories/20061215001308100.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_frequency
http://www.kyes.com/antenna/dipole.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray

God is love.

God is love. Love is God.

The Philosopher's Stone

Imagine that my rate of perception (the speed at which the brain processes the world) was twice that of yours. There would be twice the amount of thoughts racing through my mind in comparison to the number of thoughts which would occupy yours. I would not experience reality in slow motion though, my thoughts would act as a metronome which would dictate the experience as 'normal', but if you were to observe me, my behaviours would appear manic to you. It would look like I was whizzing around the room, racing to complete any tasks I had been given, and if I was unfocused, I might easily get distracted and try to do all the jobs at once. Any conversation on my part would appear fast, and quite possibly frenzied. When I think of this scenario , I can't help but make a comparison to behaviours which can be a part of anxiety/stress disorders, such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and also schizophrenia. Is it possible that in the cases of some of these disorders, that the rate of perception has been sped-up, and if so - how?

Young children are thought to have a faster rate of perception due to a higher metabolic rate. This is perhaps due to a ravenous brain which needs lots of energy to develop in a procees known as competitive plasticity. In researching these stress disorders, one might expect to find a high metabolic rate was also associated with them, but this however, is not quite the case. What has turned up has been far more intriguing. A theme that runs throughout all these disorders, is a problem with the inner ear, also known as the vestibular system. Vestibular disorders are already officially recognised as being associated with stress disorders, and below I have included a few examples:

"Vestibular (inner ear) disorders can cause dizziness, vertigo, imbalance,hearing changes, nausea, fatigue, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and other symptoms, with potentially devastating effects on a person's day-to-day functioning, ability to work, relationships with family and friends, and quality of life.http://www.vestibular.org/"

"Vestibular deficits and increased neuro-hypersensitivities (sensory overload disorder) follow a variety of neuro-pathological changes in the brain, including, migraine, autism, ADHD, post TBI, hydrocephalus, PTSD, and others." http://www.diaceph.com/NeuroCompensStudy.htm

"A total of 82 schizophrenic patients participated in this study from Takeda Hospital in Sapporo And Jimmiekai Hospital in Nishinomiya. As the results of this study, 72 out of 82 patients show the abnormal degree of vestibular reactivity, which indicates highly possible involvement of vestibular system in schizophrenia. " http://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/repository/80070363.pdf

The vestibular system's association with stress disorders perhaps signifies it is part of a survival mechanism designed to get an animal out of sudden danger. A neat trick of nature is to speed up the rate of perception, so that reality 'slows down', and in so doing, it gives an animal time to think about its escape plan. War veterans often speak of a similar experience at times when their lives are in jeopardy. Is the emergence of a stress disorder where the vestibular system fails to de-activate, or slow down, once a danger has passed?

Kids with ADHD use a trick to stimulate the vestibular system ( and speeding up the rate of perception), by becoming more active. I'll quote from an article by The Spectrum Center in Bethesda MD, a treatment centre for children with ADHD: "...Problems arise with ADHD where the vestibular system of the inner ear.....is unable to provide the brain with the sensory stimulation it needs in order to function optimally. In response, the body finds other ways of stimulating the vestible and brain, such as constant body movement. This response would be diagnosed as hyperactivity." http://spectrumcenter.net/addadhd.html Quite bizarrely, there's an example in nature where this behaviour is also mirrored - the territorial displays of the anole lizard.

Terry J Ordhttp://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2124473 et al, of University of California Davis , produced research on how lizards speed up visual displays in noisy motion habitats. "We found that two species of Puerto Rican lizard, Anolis cristatellus and A. gundlachi, increase the speed of body movements used in territorial signalling to apparently improve communication in visually ‘noisy’ environments of rapidly moving vegetation. This is the first evidence that animals change how they produce dynamic visual signals when communicating in noisy motion habitats." Anole lizards communicate using vertical movements of the head, known as head-bobs. If they really want to get their point across a commotion of rustling leaves, the lizards have to start bobbing the head faster. Is it possible this behaviour is being used to stimulate the vestibular system, in order to speed up the rate of perception, so that its brain can digest, and interpret, the enviroment more readily?

The vestibular system is important in maintaining balance or equilibrium. There are two otolithic organs of the vestible - the utricle and the saccule. They translate head movements into neural impulses which the brain can interpret. The utricle largely registers accelerations on the horizontal plane, while the saccule is sensitive to linear translations of the head, specifically movements up and down (think about our head-banging lizard). When the head moves vertically, the sensory cells of the saccule are disturbed and the neurons connected to them begin transmitting impulses to the brain. Does the rate of these impulses have anything to do the brain's regulation of the rate of perception? Do we now have a pin-point specific area to which the rate of perception can be tweeked, and in the case of stress disorders, can it be there's a way to slow it back down to normal.

For those us that are interested in the mystical, the word for otolith is derived from the Greek oto - meaning 'ear', and lithos - meaning 'stone', or 'earstone'. If we are able to manipulate the rate of perception and bend the rules of time, we have a very realistic opportunity to create the elixir of life. Is the otolith the well sought after Philosopher's Stone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher

I would like to thank all my sources, and a further mention for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_system

http://www.dizziness-and-balance.com/disorders/bppv/otoliths.html

One Billion Heartbeats

What becomes of time as we grow older? I remember playing as a child in those long summers away from school and I think of how the time stretched over a day and became almost infinite. It seemed like a lifetime before we were back at school in the autumn. Now in my late thirties I am reflecting on the experience of how time behaves in my everyday life, and I compare it to the way I felt about time as a child. Time has most certainly become more fleeting. There is no more staring at the clock in the classroom, and wishing those minutes away, and if anything now, I am pleading for that second-hand to stop. Hours fly past into a day, days blend into months, and before you know it, it's that bloody time of year again.

With new scientic models de-bunking the Theory of Relativity, and proofs that space-time does not exist, we are beginning to learn new lessons about the experience of time. So why does the experience of time feel so different as we grow older? It could be an illusion drawn from a nostalgia of days past, where life was perhaps more free and weightless, and the days only dragged because we were wishing them to go faster. Or can it be because as we grow older our experience of time accelerates due to biological, and neurological reasons?

In general all amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles have roughly a billion heart beats per lifetime. A tiny mouse has a maximum life of about 3 years while an elephant could live to 70, but they shall both experience a billion heart beats. Now that we have thrown all ideas of time out of the window, it would start to appear that the mouse and the elephant have both the exact same experience of a lifetime. Time is not relevant to the speed of light - time is relevant to each living creatures' own personal experience. Time no longer hangs on the wall of the Universe, it is intertwined with the metabolic rate and every beat of the heart. I found this article of particular interest: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2007/09/invariant_ratio.php

So how is the metabolic rate applicable to a child's experience of time, and how does that compare to the experience of a fully grown adult? The average heart rate for a healthy adult at rest is 60-100 beats per minute (bpm), while a child's is around 100-130 bpm. In some cases, this could mean the child's heart rate being twice that of an adult's. This increased metabolic rate leads to a faster rate of perception. Increasing the rate of perception would be a bit like changing your dial-up internet connection to broadband - you would be recieving information at a much greater speed. If this was taking place in the mind, you would have a much greater scope, and far more depth, of what action takes place in one given moment of time, and creates the illusion that reality is being played in slow-motion (but only when reflected upon, and compared to a relatively 'normal' rate of perception).

Infants and growing children have higher metabolic rates than adults because of growth hormones, and also, perhaps more importantly, the growing brain is devouring lots of energy during its development. The brain consumes 20% of the body's energy. At the age of 3, a young child's brain is super-dense with over 1,000 trillion synapses, all competing for nourishment. It's not until children near adolescence, that the 'shedding' of excess brain cells (neurons) moves into high gear, and eventually there is a loss of about 50% of the synapses. Before the shedding takes place though, the neurons all have to be fed. This greater demand for energy has to be supplied by a faster metabolic rate.

As we become adults, the brain becomes increasingly efficient, in a process known as competitive plasticity, and our metabolic rate slows down. With a reduction in the metabolic rate, there is a knock-on effect on how fast we percieve the world. The broadband service has been pulled, and we're back using dial-up, less information is being recieved, a moment contains less depth, and reality takes on the appearance it is moving faster. But there are times in our adult lives where we can re-experience a taste of what a faster rate of perception meant in our childhoods.

One trick of nature is to engage a startle response if an animal suddenly thinks it's in danger. Adrenal hormones get the heart pumping faster, and the brain thinking faster. The startle response is bending the rules of perception, so that a window appears where the animal gets more time to think about its next course of action - fight, take flight or freeze. It's like pressing slow-motion on your video recorder. Time distortion under stress is often reported by war veterans, where everything happens in slow motion. This example is taken from law enforcement:

‘Kim remembers that steamy September night in 1979 as if it were yesterday. She had a split second to react before the gunman blasted her from an open window over her head. ‘When you think you’re going to die’, she says ‘your brain works so fast that everything else seems to be in slow motion.’ (Wozencraft 1990)
http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:GZ-d3MZI9YkJ:www.mit.ucf.edu/TimePercept/Hancock_Weaver_2005.pdf+dynamic+slow-motion+time+stress&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=uk

There are plenty of stories where people have experienced this stretching of time, at a moment there was imminent danger. If time is an intrapersonal experience that can be manipulated by nature, is it then possible that mankind can harness this ability to enhance our lives? It could be a basis for showing us how to slow down the experience of time by increasing the rate of perception. If this was made possible without the need of increasing the metabolic rate (so that our lifespan does not become as short as the mouse) - are we looking at a real contender for the elixir of life?


I would also thank, and mention the following sites for their insights:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha

Shore, R. (1997) ‘What have we learned?’ in ‘Rethinking the brain ...

Just A second

It's funny. So far I've only managed to say time does not exist, but I still pursue measuring the speed of light in seconds. When I have done so, I am imagining seconds as the gentle tick-tocking of a clock, (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XNwhwwuRnB0&NR=1 ) whose second hand is turned by each conscious thought. Every ....1 conscious....2 thought....3 becomes.....4 a ....5 segment...6 of.....7 time....8. I am still holding on to the idea that a variable time can be relevant to a variable rate of perception. The more I am absorbed in the theory, the more I am letting go of my previous conceptions of time. There really is no such thing as time and it becomes impossible to apply it to this new model. I popped over to Wiki to try and understand what is meant by a 'second':


"Under the International System of Units, the second is currently defined as the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.[1]"

This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K (absolute zero). The ground state is defined at zero magnetic field. The second thus defined is equivalent to the ephemeris second, which was based on astronomical measurements.
The international standard symbol for a second is s" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second

"How does it all work?
Cesium is evaporated at the cesium source to form a beam of well-separated cesium atoms that travel without collisions at about 250 m/s, through a vacuum maintained by the vacuum pump.

Simple electronics counts the output cycles of the quartz oscillator, and issues a pulse every 10 million cycles - exactly 1 second apart."
http://inms-ienm.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/faq_time_e.html#Q10

The cesium atom is not travelling at 250 m/s though, it is my rate of perception which is implying that it's travelling at 250 m/s. If I was to observe this beam of cesium atoms, where my rate of perception was twice as fast as normal - the speed at which the atoms travel would appear to slow down to 125 m/s (with-in my experience of time). The output cycles of the quartz oscillator would slow down, and the pulse which is issued at every 10 million cycles, now appears to take twice as long - count it ..1...2. It becomes more apparent that distance is nothing more than a product of time, and time a product of distance. The atomic clock is nothing more than an overly dramatic way of measuring the distance travelled by neurons in the brain, and the speed with which those signals are processed.

Time and space are meaningless. How on earth are we going to try and quantify the rate of perception where neither time or space exist? Time is an intrapersonal experience. Have you found how time flies when you are having fun, and how it slows down when you are bored? When we are active we are using more energy. Does our metabolic rate define the experience of time?

Hertz (Hz) is a measure of frequency, informally defined as the number of cycles occuring per second. A clock might be said to tick at 1 Hz. What is very interesting is that this frequency is the same for the heart rate of a healthy adult at rest - 60 beats per minute, or one per second - 1 Hz. The human race is coming home to the heart at last.

"The womb provides almost constant vestibular stimulation to the developing foetus. The consequences of the constant vestibular stimulation a term baby experiences in utero, and the lack of such with a preterm baby are unclear, and there is little information to guide interventions with the vestibular system.

Vestibular stimulation is known to enhance behavioral states; for example, slow rhythmic rocking is soothing, and promotes quiet sleep. Fast arrhythmic vestibular stimulation increases activity and agitation. " This excerpt was taken from Pediatric Physical Therapy by Jan Stephen Tecklin

I am returning to the bizarre relationship between the green anole lizard, and kids with AD/HD. For some kids with auditory problems, they can use bone conduction headphones and frequency filtration stimulate the vestibular system in specific ways that improve the ability to maintain a calm alert state.

The vestible can also be stimulated in two ways, either through motor movement or sound. A child with AD/HD might compensate for the vestibles lack of sound stimulation by increased motor activity. Hyperactivity may be a symptom of an under-stimulated vestible.

Therefore, does vestibular stimulation speed up the rate of perception? Does the vestible conduct the brainwaves like an orchestra to determine the rate of perception? It most certainly could explain why a hyperactive child appears so manic. Is it possible then, that they are processing, and producing thoughts at a much faster rate?

When a soundwave hits a green anole lizard the energy causes the lizard's chest wall to vibrate in tune with the wave. I think of what it feels like when someone sneaks-up behind you and slap their hands together. We jump don't we? We don't even think about it, we just jump. Has the vestible engaged some-kind of primordial reflex that responds before any other part of the brain?

Anole lizards communicate using vertical movements of the head. Males experiencing high levels of visual background noise produced high speed displays, while males experiencing calmer conditions produced more relaxed displays of lower speed. So by increasing motor activity, is the lizard here-by stimulating the vestible to increase its rate of perception? With an increase in the rate of perception, the lizard would be able to process visual background interference at a faster rate.

Fear is an emotion. Emotions in evolutionary terms are involved with motivation. Fear produces strong motivation to act. Therefore a direct emotional connection to movement offers a clear evolutionary advantage. Under stressful conditions, such as a startle response, an animal would need an evolutionary edge in-order to process everything in the enviroment, and compute any percieved threat at a much faster rate than normal. When the adrenals are pumping, are we accelerating the rate of perception?

It's a sad fact of life but most people are engaging the adrenals through-out the day. Nature intended us to employ them only when we were in immediate danger. Some people have them cranked-up all day. We're all told stress is bad for us - it's bad for the systems in the body and also the mind. Where is all this extra fuel coming from that we need to support this increase in brain activity? What effect does the increase on the rate of perception have on metabolism, and vice-versa?

There's an old German proverb which says to never put anything bigger than your elbow in your ear. I'll be honest, I have almost an obsession with cleaning mine with cotton-buds, sometimes 3 times a day! I wonder though if the ear-wax not only serves as a natural agent for cleaning the ears, but also as a shock-absorber? Could cleaning my ears actually affect my rate of perception, and also my behaviours?

For an abstract on the head-bops of the anole lizard you can venture here:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2124473

Interested in AD/HD? This one's good:

http://www.listenandlearn.com.au/type/add.htm