Subatomic particles have free will

If humans have free will, then so do subatomic particles such as electrons, say American mathematicians.

“If experimenters have a certain freedom, then particles have exactly the same kind of freedom,” wrote mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen, of Princeton University in New Jersey, in a recent paper published in Notices of the AMS. “Indeed, it is natural to suppose that this latter freedom is the ultimate explanation of our own,” they said.

… “Conway and Kochen prove that the randomness does not depend on anything. They prove that the outcomes of these quantum random events are really completely independent of anything that has happened in the past,” … The U.S. mathematicians based their deductions on three unassailable theorems, which also happen to rhyme: ‘spin’ – measuring a quantum property called spin of an elementary particle; ‘twin’ – that a pair of particles are correlated; and ‘min’ – that an experimenter’s choice of what to measure cannot be communicated faster than the speed of light.

If experimenters are free to choose between experiments – that is, the choice of experiments is not predetermined by past events – then the particle must also decide how to act on the spur of the moment.  …

via Subatomic particles have free will | COSMOS magazine.

It sounds absurd, but if true … I believe this would mean the Universe is conscious.   Does not a “will” require consciousness?

What is consciousness? Consciousness is what it is like to have a mental model of yourself.

What is a mental model? It is a representation in your brain of something outside (or inside) of yourself.

How does the brain represent something? Sensory inputs (including thoughts) are stored in long term memory. These memories are the brain’s representations, it’s models of everything, you, your computer, Mars, the Moon, Captain Kirk, maple syrup… everything you have ever known.

An aware system is one in which the model has sensors which connect it to and cause it to change with the thing that is being modeled.

A self-aware or conscious system is one which feeds back upon itself by having a smaller model of itself modeling the larger external world.  Consciousness is aware and self aware … and aware it is self aware.

Consensus consciousness may be more than a social phenomena. It may be physical actor.  This idea that we can “manifest” (with a time delay) what we set our minds on, excites me. Still, my scientific training says this is only superstition, that thoughts, by themselves, do not change reality.

And yet… I can not explain the unpredictability of sub atomic particles.   I imagine, rationally, that there must be some as yet undiscovered type of Brownian motion going on… invisible bombardments…

Clinton admits US blame on drugs

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the US must take part of the blame for drug-related violence in Mexico.

Speaking as she arrived in Mexico, she said America’s appetite for drugs and its inability to stop arms crossing the border were helping fuel the violence.

Her two-day visit comes a day after the Obama administration announced new measures to boost border security. Some 8,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico over the past two years.

On Tuesday, the White House unveiled a $700m (£475m) strategy that includes boosting security on the border, moves to stem the flow of illegal guns and drug profits from the US into Mexico, and steps to cut domestic drug consumption.

Speaking to reporters accompanying her to Mexico City, Mrs Clinton said: “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.

“I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility.”

She also acknowledged that US efforts to ban drugs had so far been unsuccessful in stopping the narcotics trade. “Clearly, what we have been doing has not worked and it is unfair for our incapacity… to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people responsible,” she said.

via BBC NEWS | Americas | Clinton admits US blame on drugs.

She is telling the truth, but not the whole truth. It is actually so bad that the CIA is involved:

Drug-related violence in Mexico is escalating at an alarming rate and threatening the government of President Felipe Calderon. CIA and U.S. military planners now fear a worst-case scenario — that the country could implode. The American military is quietly stepping in with more training.

It seems that every night in Mexico there are reports of drug-related violence — murders, kidnappings, armed battles with police, narco-traffickers who outgun even the Mexican army with their rocket-propelled grenades.

“Thousands [have been] murdered this year,” says retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served as U.S. drug czar under President Clinton. He visited Mexico recently and painted a desperate picture.

“I mean squad-sized units of police officers and soldiers abducted, tortured to death, decapitated. So the violence is simply shocking and we’ve got to help,” he says. The violence led the CIA to add Mexico to its list of crises to watch over the next year, alongside longstanding problems like al-Qaida. And U.S. military planners fear Mexico could become a failed state.

So, what would that mean for the United States?

“You have maybe unplanned or unanticipated migration of people” into the U.S. to flee the violence, says Navy Capt. Sean Buck, a strategic planner with the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command. – npr

‘Mile-wide UFO’ spotted by British airline pilot

This is a few years old, but I missed it then and found it interesting:

2/5/2007
One of the largest UFOs ever seen has been observed by the crew and passengers of an airliner over the Channel Islands.

An official air-miss report on the incident several weeks ago appears in Pilot magazine.

Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, 50, flying close to Alderney first spotted the object, described as “a cigar-shaped brilliant white light”.
As the plane got closer the captain viewed it through binoculars and said: “It was a very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area.

“It was 2,000ft up and stationary. I thought it was about 10 miles away, although I later realised it was approximately 40 miles from us. At first, I thought it was the size of a [Boeing] 737.

“But it must have been much bigger because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile wide.”

Continuing his approach to Guernsey, Bowyer then spied a “second identical object further to the west”.

He said: “It was exactly the same but looked smaller because it was further away. It was closer to Guernsey. I can’t explain it. This was clearly visual for about nine minutes.

“I’m certainly not saying that it was something of another world. All I’m saying is that I have never seen anything like it before in all my years of flying.”

The sightings were confirmed by passengers Kate and John Russell. John, 74, said: “I saw an orange light. It was like an elongated oval.”

The sightings were also confirmed by an unnamed pilot with the Blue Islands airline.

The Civil Aviation Authority safety notice states that a Tri-Lander aircraft flying close to Alderney spotted the object.

“Certain parts of the report have not been published. I cannot say why,” said a senior CAA source.

UFO Examiner: O’Hare UFO video surfaces on Youtube

A video posted March 21, 2009, on Youtube claims to be the real deal of the Nov. 7, 2006, Chicago O’Hare Airport UFO sighting.

The video is posted with the headline – “Chicago O’Hare Airport UFO Witness Breaks His Silence.” The username is ohareufowitness, age 39, someone who joined Youtube on the same day as the posting.

Illinois MUFON Director Sam Maranto, who has studied this case extensively, was able to watch the video from his Chicago area home today.

“The footage is shot at an impossible angle,” Maranto said. “It was 1500′ to 1900′ above gate c-17, 200′ – 400′ below the solid overcast…too bright of backdrop…too big of an object. Unless this person was in the tower where it could not have been seen.”

Watch the video for yourself.

via UFO Examiner: O’Hare UFO video surfaces on Youtube.

The video is somewhat interesting, but frustrating because it never zooms out. No perspective.  No way to tell how big it was because you can’t calculate how close it is from the camera because the ground is never shown.

Another interesting clip with this case – “The following video was leaked from a News room, showing unedited discussion of the Chicago O’Hare Airport UFO case among news broadcasters.
2006 O’Hare International Airport UFO sighting.”

The Human Brain Is On The Edge Of Chaos

Cambridge-based researchers provide new evidence that the human brain lives “on the edge of chaos”, at a critical transition point between randomness and order. The study provides experimental data on an idea previously fraught with theoretical speculation.

Self-organized criticality (where systems spontaneously organize themselves to operate at a critical point between order and randomness), can emerge from complex interactions in many different physical systems, including avalanches, forest fires, earthquakes, and heartbeat rhythms.

According to this study, conducted by a team from the University of Cambridge, the Medical Research Council Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, and the GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Unit Cambridge, the dynamics of human brain networks have something important in common with some superficially very different systems in nature. Computational networks showing these characteristics have also been shown to have optimal memory (data storage) and information-processing capacity. In particular, critical systems are able to respond very rapidly and extensively to minor changes in their inputs.

“Due to these characteristics, self-organized criticality is intuitively attractive as a model for brain functions such as perception and action, because it would allow us to switch quickly between mental states in order to respond to changing environmental conditions,” says co-author Manfred Kitzbichler.

The researchers used state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to measure dynamic changes in the synchronization of activity between different regions of the functional network in the human brain. Their results suggest that the brain operates in a self-organized critical state. …

results amount to strong evidence in favour of the idea that human brain dynamics exist at a critical point on the edge of chaos.

via The Human Brain Is On The Edge Of Chaos.

Stealth jet crashes in US desert, Pilot Killed

A state-of-the-art US air force F-22 fighter has crashed in the desert in southern California, the Pentagon says.

The fate of the pilot was not immediately known after the plane, which was on a test mission, came down near Edwards Air Force Base. The US air force website lists the F-22 Raptor, which is made by Lockheed Martin, as its newest fighter.

The air force said the jet has “better reliability and maintainability than any fighter aircraft in history”. The F-22 crashed at about 1000 local time (1700 GMT), officials said. Rescue teams were reported to be on their way to the crash site. A board of officers will investigate the crash, the air force said.

The $140m (£96m), supersonic F-22 is a so-called fifth generation jet, and arguably the world’s most sophisticated fighter. It is capable of both air-to-air and ground attacks. But the $65 billion F-22 programme has faced criticism, with opponents saying the jet is too costly and not sufficiently versatile. The US government is committed to buying 183 F-22s reduced from the original plan laid out in the 1980s to build 750, the Associated Press news agency reported.

The air force said the crash was the second involving an F-22.

In the previous crash, which happened in December 2004 during the aircraft’s test period, the pilot ejected safely.

via BBC NEWS | Americas | Stealth jet crashes in US desert.

Update:

The veteran pilot was initially reported as missing, but the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, later said he had been killed.

The cause of the crash is unclear, and an investigation is under way.

Japanese man certified as double A-bomb victim

A 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II, officials said Tuesday.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi had already been a certified “hibakusha,” or radiation survivor, of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing in Nagasaki, but has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three days earlier as well, city officials said.

Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city. He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki just in time for the second attack, city officials said.

“As far as we know, he is the first one to be officially recognized as a survivor of atomic bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Nagasaki city official Toshiro Miyamoto said. “It’s such an unfortunate case, but it is possible that there are more people like him.”

Certification qualifies survivors for government compensation — including monthly allowances, free medical checkups and funeral costs — but Yamaguchi’s compensation will not increase, Miyamoto said.

Yet, Yamaguchi is satisfied that his record is now a historical fact.

“My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die,” Yamaguchi was quoted as saying by the nationwide Mainichi newspaper.

Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic bomb attacks. About 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki.

Yamaguchi is one of about 260,000 people who survived the attacks. Bombing survivors have developed various illnesses from radiation exposure, including cancer and liver illnesses.

Details of Yamaguchi’s health problems were not released.

via Japanese man certified as double A-bomb victim.

Why can’t human eyes detect all wavelengths?

Why can’t human eyes detect all wavelengths (of light)? Someone named Fred wrote to ask me this question and I think the answer is of general interest.

The simple answer  is that we are evolved from ancestors who lived in the ocean. Water blocks out all but two small windows of the EM spectrum, and receptors in our eyes are most sensitive to the wavelengths not blocked by water. The physical properties of our eyes also block some wavelengths to protect us from damage.

The structure of the mammalian eye owes itself completely to the task of focusing light onto the retina. This light causes chemical changes in the photosensitive cells of the retina, the products of which trigger nerve impulses which travel to the brain.

In the human eye, light enters the pupil and is focused on the retina by the lens. Light-sensitive nerve cells called rods (for brightness), cones (for color) and non-imaging ipRGC (intrinsincally photosensitive retinal ganglion cells) react to the light. They interact with each other and send messages to the brain. The rods and cones enable vision. The ipRGCs enable entrainment to the earth’s 24-hour cycle, resizing of the pupil and acute suppression of the pineal hormone melatonin. – wiki

All organisms are restricted to a small range of the electromagnetic spectrum; this varies from creature to creature, but is mainly between 400 and 700 nm^[20]. This is a rather small section of the electromagnetic spectrum, probably reflecting the submarine evolution of the organ: water blocks out all but two small windows of the EM spectrum, and there has been no evolutionary pressure among land animals to broaden this range.^[21]

The most sensitive pigment, rhodopsin, has a peak response at 500 nm.^[22] Small changes to the genes coding for this protein can tweak the peak response by a few nm;^[2] pigments in the lens can also “filter” incoming light, changing the peak response.^[2]

Most organisms with color vision are able to detect ultraviolet light. This high energy light can be damaging to receptor cells. With a few exceptions (snakes, placental mammals), most organisms avoid these effects by having absorbent oil droplets around their cone cells. The alternative, developed by organisms that had lost these oil droplets in the course of evolution, is to make the lens impervious to UV light — this precludes the possibility of any UV light being detected, as it does not even reach the retina.^[22]:309

Prolonged hours of surfing on the Internet is a major concern that can affect the eyes significantly. White backgrounds on computer screens with a viewing distance of less than 14 inches is known to increase strain, mental fatigue and temporary di-chromatic visions in a normal healthy human being. Trying to opt for black or any non-white backgrounds can help in reducing eye strain infront of PCs. While Black will also eat up the evergy consumption of your computer screen, Green is recommended as the best option to use as backgrounds in webpages. ( color code # 2F6533 is the right median with soothing wavelength of 540nm.) – wiki

Let’s get back to why we can only see some wavelengths. The retina has rod cells and cone cells. The rods are for seeing very dim objects and the cones allow us to see colors.

Cones are less sensitive to light than the rod cells in the retina (which support vision at low light levels), but allow the perception of color. They are also able to perceive finer detail and more rapid changes in images, because their response times to stimuli are faster than those of rods.^[2] Because humans usually have three kinds of cones, with different photopsins, which have different response curves, and thus respond to variation in color in different ways, they have trichromatic vision. Being color blind can change this, and there have been reports of people with four or more types of cones, giving them tetrachromatic vision.

image: Normalized responsivity spectra of human cone cells, S, M, and L types

Humans normally have three kinds of cones. The first responds most to light of long wavelengths, peaking in the yellow region; this type is designated L for long. The second type responds most to light of medium-wavelength, peaking at green, and is abbreviated M for medium. The third type responds most to short-wavelength light, of a violet color, and is designated S for short. The three types have peak wavelengths near 564–580 nm, 534–545 nm, and 420–440 nm, respectively.^[3][4] The difference in the signals received from the three cone types allows the brain to perceive all possible colors, through the opponent process of color vision.

The color yellow, for example, is perceived when the L cones are stimulated slightly more than the M cones, and the color red is perceived when the L cones are stimulated significantly more than the M cones. Similarly, blue and violet hues are perceived when the S receptor is stimulated more than the other two.

The S cones are most sensitive to light at wavelengths around 420 nm. However, the lens and cornea of the human eye are increasingly absorbative to smaller wavelengths, and this sets the lower wavelength limit of human-visible light to approximately 380 nm, which is therefore called ‘ultraviolet‘ light. People with aphakia, a condition where the eye lacks a lens, sometimes report the ability to see into the ultraviolet range.^[5] At moderate to bright light levels where the cones functions, the eye is more sensitive to yellowish-green light than other colors because this stimulates the two most common of the three kinds of cones almost equally. At lower light levels, where only the rod cells function, the sensitivity is greatest at a blueish-green wavelength.

If you want to get a little deeper, you might wonder how light entering the eye is turned into signals which are sent to our brains. HowStuffWorks has a nice write up:

When light enters the eye, it comes in contact with the photosensitive chemical rhodopsin (also called visual purple). Rhodopsin is a mixture of a protein called scotopsin and 11-cis-retinal — the latter is derived from vitamin A (which is why a lack of vitamin A causes vision problems … [When severe vitamin A deficiency is present, then night blindness occurs. ] ). Rhodopsin decomposes when it is exposed to light because light causes a physical change in the 11-cis-retinal portion of the rhodopsin, changing it to all-trans retinal. This first reaction takes only a few trillionths of a second. The 11-cis-retinal is an angulated molecule, while all-trans retinal is a straight molecule. This makes the chemical unstable. Rhodopsin breaks down into several intermediate compounds, but eventually (in less than a second) forms metarhodopsin II (activated rhodopsin). This chemical causes electrical impulses that are transmitted to the brain and interpreted as light.  …

Activated rhodopsin causes electrical impulses in the following way:

1. The cell membrane (outer layer) of a rod cell has an electric charge. When light activates rhodopsin, it causes a reduction in cyclic GMP, which causes this electric charge to increase. This produces an electric current along the cell. When more light is detected, more rhodopsin is activated and more electric current is produced.
2. This electric impulse eventually reaches a ganglion cell, and then the optic nerve.
3. The nerves reach the optic chasm, where the nerve fibers from the inside half of each retina cross to the other side of the brain, but the nerve fibers from the outside half of the retina stay on the same side of the brain.
4. These fibers eventually reach the back of the brain (occipital lobe). This is where vision is interpreted and is called the primary visual cortex. Some of the visual fibers go to other parts of the brain to help to control eye movements, response of the pupils and iris, and behavior.

Color Vision

The color-responsive chemicals in the cones are called cone pigments and are very similar to the chemicals in the rods…. There are three kinds of color-sensitive pigments:

• Red-sensitive pigment
• Green-sensitive pigment
• Blue-sensitive pigment

Each cone cell has one of these pigments so that it is sensitive to that color. The human eye can sense almost any gradation of color when red, green and blue are mixed.

What happens when a color pigment in a cone in your retina absorbs a photon of light with a particular wavelength? How does this cause a reaction which sends a signal, exactly?

Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation.

“In physics, absorption of electromagnetic radiation is the way by which the energy of a photon is taken up by matter, typically the electrons of an atom. Thus, the electromagnetic energy is transformed to other forms of energy, for example, to heat.”

When light is absorbed by molecules, the electronics in those molecules make a quantum leap to a higher energy state. This temporary state change of the electron(s) makes the changed molecules attract differently the other molecules nearby. This causes a chain reaction which, in the cones of your eye, leads to signals being sent to your brain.

If you are still curious, you could dig deeper into how, at the molecular level, photons with certain wavelengths are absorbed by our different color pigments.

Review: Get Motivated Seminar, Colin Powell, Michael Phelps, others live @ Arco arena

For $19 everyone at your workplace can attend a Get Motivated seminar in certain towns with some celebrity speakers. It was free, so I went. $12 parking at Arco Arena. Speakers today were:  Steve Forbes (from Las Vegas via live link), Michael Phelps, Phil Town,  Tamara Lowe and Colin Powell.

I did not realize that Phelps did something other swimmers did not:  trained every single day, year after year, without fail.

Even now, Phelps trains every day — including Sundays, figuring it gives him 52 more days a year in the pool than many of his competitors.- usatoday

Colin Powell was a very good speaker. I enjoyed his story about the perks of his position, what it was like to always have his own private jet, and his story about his meeting with Gorbachev.

I got motivated to try Phil Town’s day trading seminar since my 401K has been taking a royal beating. After researching investools.com, however, I [believe that] you can get the same information for free. Just try this Google search: Swing Trading Tutorial.

This site seems like a realistic overview. I believe that there is not, after all, an easy fortune to be made by swing trading if you are a beginner.

Some comments I found: Author Marie  wrote on (http://www.xomreviews.com/investools.com) Monday, May 14, 2007

“There really is no sytem [sic] actually. All they will do is ask you to pay up for the next level of education with promises that profits will come with that next class (”You must be a PhD to make money.” Then, “You have to learn currencies to make money” etc.). Each class gets further and further away from the method they use as a marketing tool (basic fundamentals and MACD/Stochastic/Moving Averages (MA) technical indicator ie red/green arrows, plus industry group analysis, etc.). There is an entry/exit system involved in the basics, but they also exclude some of the most important aspects of what makes a trader successful (namely controlling risk). I can testify that in the 1.5 years I worked at SWIM and of the many hundreds (thousands?) of students I met, only a handful were profitable traders. Many wiped out accounts or took retirement capital down 30-50%. It was a very serious problem. I tried to make changes within the company, alerting management to issues in the sales tactics, but was routinely brushed off.

So I guess the short answer is that no, the method really doesn’t work. At least I have never seen any evidence to suggest that more than a handful of people (who, I might add, were not even trading the method!) who went through the program were profitable.”

I have e-mailed Brad Moore (you can too, there is contact information available) and he confirmed the information in the post, and that he did post the comments, and did work for INVESTools.

INVESTools teaches you short-term trading. I have read that it is called “swing trading“, although I think the time frame is actually a little longer than the one to four days time frame shown on Investopedia – it seems to be two to six weeks. This is VERY risky – although INVESTools does not caution you enough about this. They will tell you “this is a little risky” but do not impress upon you EXACTLY HOW risky it really is. – link

I canceled and my card was not charged. Be sure to get a confirmation number if you do cancel.

Tamara Lowe, I didn’t enjoy. She turned what was supposed to be a motivational business seminar into a buy-yourself-some-Jesus pitch. I found it offensive because she did not seem to consider that there were people of all religions, including non-religious people in the large audience.   I went to this to get motivated, but left feeling tricked into attending an infomercial … I am not a morning person and getting up at 6:30 AM puts me in a foul mood all day. ( Google “How to motivate people”.  )

Actually, I would have been fine if I left after Phelps and Colin Powell.  So, go if you get the chance, but be warned.

Obama asks NASA, Russian astronauts about aliens, e-mail.

After several busy days aboard the International Space Station and the connected space shuttle Discovery, astronauts today took questions today from President Barack Obama about their diet, science experiments and sending e-mail from space.

The seven NASA astronauts on the space shuttle and the two U.S. astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut living on the space station gathered in the station’s Harmony module today to take part in a video conference with Obama, several members of Congress and a group of students from Washington middle schools. The questions to the astronauts ranged from how they exercise up there and how they send e-mail from space to whether they’ve found extraterrestrial life.

Obama told the astronauts he was proud of them and asked how they went about installing the solar panels that were attached to the S6 truss, which was the last piece of the space station’s backbone. The truss was put in place last week, and the solar arrays were unfurled last Friday.

With the truss and arrays in place, the space station will now get enough extra solar energy to support a doubling of the station’s crew this May.

“This is really exciting,” said Obama. “We’re investing back here on the ground in a whole array of solar and other renewable energy projects. So to find out you’re doing this up there at the space station is very exciting.”

Between the president and the school children, the astronauts were hit with questions about how they sleep in a weightless environment, what they eat in space and if they’ve discovered other life forms. (The answer to the last question was no, not yet.)

The astronauts also explained to questioners how they synchronize their e-mail once or twice a day with servers on Earth to send messages to NASA and their families.

via Obama asks NASA, Russian astronauts about solar arrays, outer space e-mail.