As we begin to move further into the study of the human consciousness, I find a lot of discussion regarding subjects that used to be addressed but are no longer.

The orignial Royal Society was designed to bring together the greatest minds of the time and provide them with a forum in which they could explore concepts and ideas in an effort to advance the human condition and alliviate pain and suffering.

Unfortunately todays scientific societies seem to be affraid fo addressing subjects related to god, consciousness or metaphysics, in effect limiting themselves to a mechanistic view of the universe.

In my opinion this mechanistic view has lead us down a path were our planet is at risk, we suffer from over-population, pollution, evironmental degredation and ignorance. Perhaps its time to revist the concept of an organization like the royal society, but one open to all ideas and concepts....

Food for thought

Ed Chesky

Ivestigation of Multi-dimensionality

When studying Multi-dimensionality you have to start with the basics and understand we do have data about other dimensions and ojects that transcend our perceptions.

I offer the following as a starting point for the study of multi-dimensionality

The Kline Bottle and Mobius Strip as examples of concrete physical objects that transcend our normal spacial perceptions

I also offer the unsanctioned NASA experiment in Telepathy that was conducted by Dr. Mitchell the summary of which is as follows;

A telepathic experiment conducted during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 proved distance is not a barrier. The experiment was not authorized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), nor was it announced until the mission was completed. Astronaut Edgar Dr. Mitchell conducted the experiment with four recipients on Earth, 150,000 miles below. Mitchell concentrated on sequences of twenty-five random numbers. He completed 200 sequences. Guessing 40 correctly was the mean chance. Two of the recipients guessed 51 correctly. This far exceeded Mitchell's expectations, but still was only moderately significant.

ALl of the above provide insight into multi-dimensionality

In the case of the NASA experiment how was the information transmitted, by what medium and in waht form? I suspect as we probe it it will lead us to a better understanding of quantumn physics and data transfer at the quantumn level proving a connectivity at a level we are just begining to understand.

These simple things offer us look at something that transcends our current theories of reality and the universe...

In the old days the Royal Society would probe and explore these type of things but for some reason we have moved away from them in pursuit of mechanistic view of the universe.

I also point to the figure in the tree referenced in another discussion as another possible example of multi-dimensionality....where this exploration will take us now lays up to us and you....

Food for Thought

Ed Chesky

For those that want to actually touch a Kline Bottle I direct you tot he following wesite...or you can make your own mobius strip at virtually no cost.....

http://www.kleinbottle.com/

Thanks Edward, for a New Royal Society, a good idea.

Here is the page to the original Royal Society, established about 1660 in England, to promote studies in mathmematics and physico-experimentation, hence a new idea, "science". The brief history of the Society shows how it evolved from a loose association of thinkers towards a more structured scientific and academic institution, such as we know it today. During the founding times of the sixteenth century, there was a real desire by seminal scientists to break away from magic and superstition, and thus to validate knowledge with real observation and facts, or theories built up on proofs of how things work. This was one reason Isaac Newton was never comfortable with his 'action at a distance' for gravitational force, because it was more magic then science. Today many also question in the same way the Big Bang Theory, because creating something from nothing is philosophically untenable, and the first seconds of this new universe had to undergo 'inflation' where space expanded to near its present size in a violent inflation, which itself is magic and untenable. So science is once again posed with a serious self evaluation, if it is to be believed as science and not magic, to verify some of its most outrageous conclusions.

If there is to be a newer approach to science, meaning that all things are interconnected into a complete whole, as a whole body of knowledge representing the reality of the universe, we will also need to address many things today unrelated to those already known: alive being, living matter, consciousness, life force, mental telepathy, prescience, after death reality, spirituality, unity of being, to name a few. But we should also not rest easy with our understanding of those common forces of nature defined by physics as 'inanimate' forces, such as energy and gravity, or the photon and the atom, because we may not have the picture right; or at best inconclusive in the isolation of a greater picture of our universe. So any new Royal Society, first as a loose association of like minds, and later as a formal institution of knowledge, should start from what we already know only with reserve, and then leave open the doors to a much greater intellectual body of potential knowledge than present science allows, yet without sacrificing intellectual and observational integrity. Think of this New Royal Society as founded internationally, thanks to the worldwide web, developed individually with each of our ideas, and universal in scope to include all peoples and ideas. Lest we forget, all knowledge today stands on the broad shoulders of the great minds who preceded us, for which we must be grateful. And if there were errors in their thinking, great minds are not immune from error, it is for us future generations to truly uncover how the universe reveals to us her truth.

Ivan

For those that seek the truth

As a child I trisected the angle. I had the best teachers and went to the best schools. My teachers told me not that it was impossible but that it had to apply in all cases. I put aside my compass and straightedge after doing it and went to serve in the Cold War. I served with distinction and honor in numerous crises around the Globe and rose to the top of my profession as an intelligence officer.

In an age of religious terrorism and extremism, extremists pressured me to solve Alhazan’s Billiard problem to use it as a psychological weapon of war against the children of Islam. Child’s play they thought for the man that trisected the angle as a child. It seemed to be magic to the religious extremists I worked with. I never knew how I could trisect angles, although the intelligence services knew I did it. It took me 44 years to discover that a compass and straightedge could be used as a simple binary computer and that with a variant of the Quadratix of Hippias that I intuitively came up with as a child, like the work of Ramanujan, it was possible to trisect angles.

When I would not play the religious extremists game they resorted to financial pressure. After 9/11 even geometry became a weapon of war. So I walked out the door. Many said I was crazy to do it, perhaps I was, all I know is that the Children of Islam treated me and my religion with respect when I was there.

In time my work will be included in the geometry books, along with my words here. To the men and women of the United States Military, I salute you and the Iraqis that fight beside you against the terrorists. To the rest of the people, have care you don’t surrender yourself to religious extremists that would use even geometry as a weapon of war. When religious extremists of any sort gain political temporal power it is cause for concern, hence why we have separation of Church and State.

As to me when I take my walks I pass by a tree that to me speaks volumes, a simple message from a merciful yet stern god who has many children he watches over.

Food for thought and things they don’t put in the history books for those that would plumb the depths of creation for knowledge.

Last night as I watched the gravitational meter at Pecny and the website at the USGS, both websites depicted below, I noted preconditions for a major earthquake were coming to head...

I have been monitoring the new Madrid fault in the United State and in the data streams I saw a patern of stresses emerging along with one in Central and South America...its a subtle patern of graviational interaction, stresss on the crust and solar and lunar tidal influences and other subtle indicators...I knew it was going to break somewhere...in those areas but not the exact location....I am working on refining the indicators of the data streams...it took me 44 years to solve the trisection of the angle..I have about 40 years to go....

To religous extremists it looks like magic...to me its curse...warning time is critical in saving lives from earthquakes...and getting it wrong makes you look like a fool...my accuracy rate is about 70% of knowing its going to break but not the specific location...

When I was in Mexico City I studied the data, looked at the ground, the tilt of the buildings, stresses in the subway system, alignment of street curbs, the stone alaignment in the cathedral next to the old Aztec temple in the center of the city and came away with a dread I will live with for the rest of my days...

What would you do if you knew something was going to happen but not the exact location or magnitude of the event....

I turned to god....and walked out the door...

As I work on my house I link my computer to the USGS, Study the moon in my telescope, Solar data from a website, monitor the graviational interactions on our deep space probes, the gravity tidal meter at Pecny and the data feed from our NASA gravitational satellights...I study building collapes, wave forms and tremors and when a patern emerges turn to god...and curse the stupididy of man for building in those areas....and cry for the dead in buildings that collapse due to lack of building standards and greed.....

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/bulletin.html
http://pecny.asu.cas.cz/www/tidmease.html

The New Madrid Seismic zone lies within the central Mississippi Valley, extending from northeast Arkansas, through southeast Missouri, western Tennessee, western Kentucky to southern Illinois. Historically, this area has been the site of some of the largest earthquakes in North America. Between 1811 and 1812, 4 catastrophic earthquakes, with magnitude estimates greater than 7.0, occurred during a 3-month period. Hundreds of aftershocks followed over a period of several years. The largest earthquakes to have occurred since then were on January 4, 1843 and October 31, 1895 with magnitude estimates of 6.0 and 6.2 respectively. In addition to these events, seven events of magnitude >= 5.0 have occurred in the area. Instruments were installed in and around this area in 1974 to closely monitor seismic activity. Since then, more than 4000 earthquakes have been located, most of which are too small to be felt. On average one earthquake per year will be large enough to be felt in the area.

The New Madrid seismic zone is so named because the town of New Madrid, Missouri was the closest settlement to the epicenters of the 1811-1812 quakes. At that time, St. Louis and other major cities in the central U.S. were sparsely settled. At least 3 of the series of earthquakes were felt throughout much of the U.S. and as far away as Quebec. The potential for the recurrence of such earthquakes and their impact today on densely populated cities in and around the seismic zone, has generated much research devoted to understanding earthquakes. By closely monitoring the earthquake activity, scientists can hope to understand their causes, recurrence rates, ground motion and disaster mitigation. The probability for an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 or greater is significant in the near future, with a 50% chance by the year 2000 and a 90% chance by the year 2040. A quake with a magnitude equal to that of the 1811- 1812 quakes could result in great loss of life and property damage in the billions of dollars. Scientists believe we could be overdue for a large earthquake and through research and public awareness may be able to prevent such losses

http://quake.ualr.edu/public/nmfz.htm

The devastating 2004 Sumatran earthquake, which caused the worst tsunami in modern times, should have left a detectable scar on Earth's gravity field, European scientists said Monday.

A satellite planned for launch next year could detect the blemish, they said.

The magnitude 9.3 earthquake has already been said to have shortened the day by fractions of a second, shifted the North Pole by an inch, and made the planet less fat around the middle.

The new prediction comes from Roberto Sabadini and Giorgio Dalla Via at the University of Milan. The idea is fairly straightforward. The strength of Earth's gravity varies depending on the depth of a trench or height of a mountain, as well as the density of material. Even changing tides alter the gravity field.

The Dec. 26, 2004 quake lifted an 18-foot (6 meter) ledge along a 620-mile (1,000 kilometer) fault.


Gravity variations are measured using the geoid, which is similar to sea-level. The geoid is a hypothetical "surface" around the Earth at which the planet's gravitational pull is the same everywhere. Over dense areas, the geoid moves away from the real surface, and where gravity is less, the geoid moves closer to the real surface.

The Sumatran quake, the geoid moved as much as 0.7 inches (18 millimeters), the scientists predict.

The variations in the gravity field are already studied from space with NASA's GRACE mission.

The European Space Agency’s Gravity Field and Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), planned to launch in 2006, is designed to be very sensitive to minor differences. As the spacecraft passes over regions of stronger and weaker gravitational pull, it will bob up and down.

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A study of gravity scar data could in turn refine estimates of the physical rupture of a fault.

"Seismology is good for detecting the slip of earthquake faults and the location of the epicenter, geoid monitoring can determine how much mass is actually being moved around," Sabadini said.

Madrid Fault active today?

Ed, here's something I found, 3.9 near Memphis today: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsUS/Quakes/nm737.htm

Rock'n'roll.

Ivan

The New Madrid fault has been more active since the Great Sumatran Quake. It usually has one earthquake per year that can be felt by people or rattles buildings. This year it has had several. I projected increased stress on global fault lines following the Sumatra Quake. At the time I suspected many faults had been stressed and were ready to break. In the New Madrid area I have been watching the earthquakes coupled to gravity induced stresses and saw a correlation.

I ran a scenario during the Cold War that used penetrating nuclear warheads to rupture fault lines and enhance the effects of the blasts both on the East and West Coasts and the New Madrid Fault. It was a doomsday scenario. Following the great quake I expected an increase in seismic and volcanic activity along the Ring of Fire and across the Globe. It was in keeping with our post strike doomsday scenario. I am not alone in this projection, as a number of doomsday websites have popped up lately regarding this same subject.

But unlike these generic websites proclaiming doomsday in keeping with Biblical prophecy, I have been cross referencing my data to try and predict earthquakes. This predictive analysis is based on a long list of indicators that I scan the Web, TV, Radio and the Press for. When these indicators come together I anticipate a quake. As you can imagine this is an intensive and time consuming activity. At present I analyze and correlate seismic, gravitational, historic and more exotic data to perform predicative analysis.

I note Niki Tesla determined that this planet emits a signal, background noise, that is about the same frequency as that found in the human brain, in terms of electromagnetic signature. That signal is about 8 Hz.

Things I look for in addition to normal indicators of quakes relate to changes in behavior, consciousness, in people and animals in an area prior to a quake. I note the website at the end of this posting discusses an experiment that induced changes in consciousness through the use of electromagnetic field manipulation.

As an electronic warfare officer, and one familiar with altered mental states of consciousness, it is my premise that it may be possible to detect an external precursor to an earthquake via electromagnetic means. I note the Chinese have had some success in this area by observing the behavior of animals prior to a quake. I think you get the picture now of what I have been working on in terms of trying to improve earthquake prediction and disaster mitigation.

http://www.raven1.net/elf.htm

I add the following two links regarding esoteric study of non-traditional indicators of events...

The first is a link to an artist that experienced a similar illness to mine...and his brief discussion of a link to a solar/lunar and re-occuring meteor shower that preceded Tecumseh's propchecy of the Great New Madrid earthquake of 1811 and his intuitive use of his information as depicted in the symbology of his art as while recovering from a near death experience...perhaps he saw something intuitively that he is expressing as an art form...he has training in geology and lives in the fault zone area....

http://www.danrhema.com/tec_1.html

The second is about Tecumseh's prophecy's and and his life....

One wonders about the oral history of the Native Americans...their Celestrial Observations and possible intuitive understanding of the forces of gravity and tidal crust inter-action accumlated over the course of centuries.....

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/Tecumseh.html

The third link is two a history page of the Mississippian mound builders that had a high culture in the area for almost 1000 years and would be well aquainted with the reoccuring cycle of earthquakes and gravitational stresses

Just food for thought

Mississippian Moundbuilders.


http://www.mississippian-artifacts.com/

Just a like some information....

I get cranky now and then and it bleeds over into my work...I have very hectic schedule and limited time....

My Best

Directed Energy of the World's Greatest Earthquakes

One thing that I have noticed with regards to the recent earth quakes. If we look at the direction of the energy release in the form of a waves for the last of the greatest earthquakes in the world we note a major release of energy towards the West and East. Tin terms of the Alaskan Great Quake a release towards california and St. Helens as weel as out to the Pacific.... If we also look at the historical record, we have to note that great earthquakes are not just static local events but global events that cause a global effects over various time periods.

Fault lines on the global level have been stressed as a result of this last recent great quake...as the effects are analyzed and compiled we begin to see that the great continental plates themselves have reacted to this energy input.

The energy release of a great quake is like the coiled spring launch system used in the Space Shuttle Bay...when the stored energy is released it jars the orbiter body...things get jared and internal stress points are stressed....

Hence what we are seeing now...on a global scale...

To truly do earthquake prediction and danger forcasting in a meaningful way we have to take a holistic approach to studying our planet and the inter-relatedness of the planet's system of systems...

That said where do we go from here...the best scientists have stated the north pole has moved and inch and the entire surface of the earth shifted by a 1/4 inch...if that truely happened then all fault lines also shifted by a 1/4 inch...hence why I survey the media for data....

Until we put up a graviational sensor system into space we never knew of the gravitional anomoly out in the pacific before the great quake....again a holistic system of system approach....a new way of looking at things....

If I was a betting man I would be start dropping my resume off to FEMA, the RED Cross or Red Cresent and host of other organizations....I suspect we are going to need all of them in the near future...and they are going to need all the help they can get...

I was checking my data streams as I wrote the above mentioned message....

A 6.0 has hit the PNG.....Damage reports will be in the affected regions media....

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_yxav_l.html

Hi Ed, since I live in southern California, an active earthquake zone, I am painfully aware of the need for a better ability to forecast, and what devastations these natural Earth events can bring. I know from experience that anything over 4.0 will be felt, though I had never experienced anything over 6.0, but I do have earthquake insurance, just in case. So far been lucky, but things could change at any moment. I even keep my backup disks in the office, just in case of the 'big one', so I have two locations to protect data, including what had been written on these forums.

Cheers, not too worried, but got my ear to the ground. Actually, during busy earthquake activity, though yet to be successful, I try to get out to "Earthquake Valley" in the Anza-Borrego Desert, to see if I can catch one. Rock'n'roll!

Ivan :-))

Having lived through the Landers Quake, I would not be to keen on living through another Ivan :-)

The following link is to a volcano early warning site maintained by a volcano expert his assessments match my theory....he has already assess the impact of the quake on a local volcano....

My Best ED

http://www.volcanolive.com/volcanolive.html

Geo-Stellar Research,

Just prior to the greater than 4.0 earthquakes that hit the PNG, Middle East and Gulf of California along. I noted preconditions for a solar storm or solar flare event...a flare is still possible...based on my interpretation of data from the following website....I have gotten farely good at predicting solar weather and flares....

http://www.n3kl.org/sun/noaa.html

This prediction was coupled to shifts in the earth's electromagnetic field from the following website....

http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/Plots.html

I cross referenced this information with news feeds on a variety of events, to include things such as water-main breaks, landslides, changes in animal behavior...disruption of electrical grids and a number of other factors....indicating a shift in gelogical strata, and local electromagnetic fields...possibly indicating stress in underlaying strata....

I also cross referenced this data with solar, and lunar tidal forces, gravity meter readings and then made a judgement call on whether or not there was an increased risk of an earthquake...

My accuracy is 70-75 percent in the greater than 4.5 range with a 24-72 hour...

The accuracy is too low for an early warning system at this stage...

My Best Ed

Nice shot of a large solar prominance on June 3 during a period of increased earthquake activity it was a very large one... at the following website...

http://www.spaceweather.com/

we have aready experienced a x-ray flare and currently have several solar prominances on the face of the sun today.....

The activity link to earthquakes is very interesting.......

Experts Predict additional quakes.

One thing not mentioned in the article below is the fact that during the Great Sumatran Quake the entire State of Alaska undulated along with the Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan...the stress load on all world fault lines has shifted.... increasing the risk of volcanic and earthquake activity...

"The tectonic shifts under Banda Aceh in December appear to have loosened the two vast rock faces pressing together along the 290-kilometre-long Sumatra Fault, which bisects the island." (From the article below....)

Couple this to tidal forces and you now understand what I have been researching as to earthquake prediction.

A secondary effect has lead me into the area of gravity, quantumn singularities and multi-dimensional theory....

Experts predict new tsunami risk
By Andrew Revkin
Dublin
March 18, 2005

The violent thrust of the seabed near Sumatra that sparked catastrophic tsunamis in December created significant new risks of earthquakes and tsunamis there, seismologists say.

The researchers say the place at greatest risk from a new earthquake is the devastated city of Banda Aceh and the tsunami risk lies along Sumatra's heavily populated southern coasts. But they added that any fresh tremors or waves would be unlikely to have anywhere near the destructive power of the December earthquake, the world's second most powerful in 100 years.

Still, the researchers, from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, said the threat added urgency to efforts to extend the only existing tsunami-warning network, in the Pacific, to include the Indian Ocean.

They said they could not predict when the next shocks might occur but noted that in similar geological settings, in Turkey and Japan, big quakes had set off tremors in adjacent faults in a few months to a few years. The findings are described in the journal Nature.

AdvertisementRoss Stein, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey in California, who was not involved in the study but developed a method the authors used to calculate risks, called the analysis "important and sobering".

"What we need now are networks of seismometers in Sumatra and its offshore islands," he said. "If the rate of small shocks climbs, I would become very worried about the prospects of a successive shock."

The British team pinpointed the risks by mapping patterns of aftershocks and using a computer simulation to determine where the great quake had intensified or relaxed stresses on nearby sutures, or shear zones, in the earth's crust.

The tectonic shifts under Banda Aceh in December appear to have loosened the two vast rock faces pressing together along the 290-kilometre-long Sumatra Fault, which bisects the island.

Meanwhile, Indian scientists say India has moved 12 centimetres closer to Indonesia after the December 26 earthquake.

- New York Times

A link to a site regarding earthquake potential in India...I have been reviewing the patern of earthquakes against this type of data solar tidal and electromagnetic effects...

http://asc-india.org/

Follow-up on the PNG Earthquake

One person killed, several injured and many houses damaged or destroyed in the Lae area

The official media of the region has little or no data on the earthquake...this came from the USGS....something to think about many governments will not publish data regarding earthquakes or natural disasters for a number of reasons...hence why its important to keep channels of communication open...

One Day perhaps in the near future we will have world crisis center capable of integrating all the data from space weather to earthquakes and providing that data to agencies and governments that need it in terms of advisories...and aiding in relief operations....

Tonight I close out this line of conversation...to focus on other things...Most people don't even know where the PNG is, let alone care about a 6.0 magnitude earthquake...I will however say a prayer for the dead and those in the hot darkness of the PNG trying to rebuild...the best and brightest minds say these things are just a foreshadowing of what is to come…..

My gift allowed me to trisect the angle as a child, proof that a variant of the Quadratrix of Hippias can be generated and applies to the hexagon as well as with a square and the hexagon is integral to the trisection of the angle...no small achievement...in other days it would have gotten me a nomination for a prize or recognition of some sorts....instead I went into the intelligence services and used that gift to reconstruct WARSAW Pact War Plans, run low level agent networks that produced better and more usable intelligence than the CIA, and generate more and better intelligence than had ever been produced for a tactical units...both the intelligence services and the churches knew what I did as a child...and thus I was tracked into the intelligence services for my entire life, fodder for the Cold War...

Many will ask why I give up that career field and moved on to something else...It was because I realized that actual war in all its forms is a losing proposition and that the Cold War was the highest form of Warfare ever conducted...During the Cold War we were able to bring about change without war…we successfully waged an ideological struggle on a global basis...achieving a victory that is unmatched in the annuals of warfare and human society…and that what we have today is falls far short of what we did during the Cold War and that we are expending huge amounts of resources on the wrong set of problems and while failing to induce meaningful change…despite all the propaganda to the contrary…


Despite my reservations and objections to what I saw as miss-allocation of resources and loss of life I continued to serve my nation and at middle age I was poisoned, infected with biological agents and subject to other forms of intimidation to get me to betray my convictions....While I lay there dying and the doctors pumped me full of chemicals to keep me alive...I crossed a line few have crossed and returned from....like the crippled artist...I came face to face with being's of myth and legend....and walked other worlds....that these beings exist I know that for sure...as to why I was granted safe passage...I know not except perhaps to bring back a message like the artist to a world thirsting for answers….Perhaps one day I will write down what I saw….For those that would probe the other side of the great barrier, know that great and powerful beings other than god exist out there…and they take notice in our doing from time to time…For the adventurous who would seek god and insight there are many paths to both…from the Battlefields of Iraq, to the quiet darkness of ancient temples and modern churches, and within the medical fields or within universities where physicists debate the nature of creation, the paths are many and studded with pitfalls….That said I would caution the brave who would seek the path of enlightenment that there are places that even Angels Fear to Tread….and only a few have crossed the great barrier and returned to tell a tale….

Edward, sometimes it takes a serious crisis to
wake people up. Strange, but the indigenous of
the Nicobar and Adaman islands in the Indian Ocean
immediately headed for the hills when the tsunami
was about to hit, so little loss of life. Those
who perished were the 'moderns' living on the
islands, unfortunately they had not prepared
themselves for what could happen. Now there will
be a tsunami warning system put in place for
that region. We will need something like that for
our geologically active regions too, as an
earthquake alert, but the science is still far
from adequate. Need to work on that, from all
disciplines, to come to a true warning system.

Ivan

That is very true Ivan,

But on the good side we are making progress. One day we will be able to do earthquake prediction in a multi-disciplinary way. One crucial aspect of it is getting the European Gravity Sensor in Orbit. I suspect it will give us the capability to do the equivelent of a MRI on the Planet. What you don't know is what hurts you, and the MRI opened new worlds in medicine. I suspect the European Gravity Sensor will do the same.

With regards to where we are at the present, we are in the aftermath of catastrophy of Biblical proportions that we are only now coming to terms with. In the face of this disaster our Scientific, Religious and Political Leadership is pressed for answers, guidence and direction. For myself I take it as a day by day matter. We are making progress but slowely...unfortunately the Planet is reacting much faster than we are and we are playing catch up as we repair damage..

I am, and still remain, very concerned about religous fanaticism and terrorism during this juncture in world history. In terms of what I faced as an intelligence officer at the hands of religeous terrorists. I carry the CCR-5 mutation, which confers HIV resistence as well as resistence to other diseases hence why I survived the biological agents that the religeous terrorists I was inflitrating on behalf of the government as part of a CIA plausable denial operation failed to kill me.

That coupled with a wide sprectrum of vaccinations is what saved my life. I still remember the face of the one religious terrorist, from a middleast background, that I will not mention that sold me a boquet of flowers laced with a weaponized biological agent they got from old soviet stockpiles or another middle eastern country. When I returned after exposure and came face to face with him he did not now what to think. He had never encountered a person that could with, modern vaccinations and the CCR-5 mutation, survive a biological weapons exposure. I tell you it was not easy. I was sick unto the point of death. He was latter taken into custody by our intelligence services....It was after that I was poisoned by an agent of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or an affiliate...and it was only with modern medical support did I survive....

At the present time I have recocovered for the most part from the attacks by religeosus terrorists. To me its a matter of God, Genetics and Science. What it is to my doctors is a puzzle they are still trying to figure out...To those that don't understand genetics or evolution its a miracle, to those that understand genetics its evolution, to those that understand genetics and religion its proof of intelligent design. I suspect that as we study the CCR-5 gene in detail we will find some very surprising things....

All My Best

Watch Deep Impact's Comet Collision Via Webcast
On the 4th of July!

WHAT ARE COMETS?

Nasa's Deep Impact will hit later tonight (PST) at about 11 pm. So what are they made of?

Nasa's first look at chemical analysis says:

"The signatures of these molecules - including water, hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide - can be seen in the graph, or spectrum."

That a pretty good lineup of a "dirty snowball", except for the hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide and monoxide. My suspicion, which we will better know by tomorrow, is that comets are nature's scrubbers of the solar system. As they travel out, where it is colder, they absorb these random free floating molecules in our region of space, and then as they get closer to the Sun's heat, they release them again. They may or may not be made of the material of the primordial solar system, but they certainly represent what is out there now, out to the Kuiper Belt and beyond. If it should prove that indeed gravity is a greater force in the colder regions of space, then comet like "vacuum cleaners" would be even more effective in gathering materials from deep space.

I suppose we'll know more tomorrow when Deep Impact slams into Tempel 1. Happy 4th! with celestial fireworks.

Ivan

Great pix of Tempel1 impact by a 14 year old Michael from Australia.

http://www.scotsons-shack.com/dimages.htm

It's a hit!

Recent research has found a extra-solar Planet that calles into question aspects of our current model of planetary formation. The following is an extract of the story which can be found on the following website
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8424348/


Ed Chesky


Strange new world unlike any other
Large solid core provides clue to how giant planets might form

By Robert Roy Britt

Updated: 8:44 p.m. ET June 30, 2005
A strange newfound planet as massive as Saturn appears to have the largest solid core known, providing an important clue to how some giant planets might form and setting off a controversy over how it formed.

The world passes in front of its host star, so even though they can't actually see the it, astronomers were able to glean important information about its size and density, and therefore infer things about its composition.

Scientists who investigated the large and presumed rocky core of the planet say it supports the idea that giant planets can indeed form by gradual accumulation of a core, long the leading theory of planet formation but one that has been called into question lately.


But how it grew such a massive core is beyond the ability of current theories to explain, according to one expert who does not agree that the isolated discovery proves anything.

The research was supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The discovery will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal

EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE (of mass and deep space grav redshift)?

BAD Astronomy post by "nutant gene 71" on the Hypothetical variable mass in a hypo variable G.

fyi.

I post the following in memory of a great man of consciousness who challanged the extremists of his day at the height of the Cold War.

He lost about everything he cared for in an effort to stop the development of the H-Bomb.

Having run into the same type of people that took away Oppenheimers security clearence during this last war, I feel great sympathy for him.

In my case it was geometry in Oppenheimers case it was the H-Bomb. During the Cold War I used my skill to plan strikes using the Bombs he built in the end we both lost our security clearances, a lesson about the power of extremism.

What Herbert Hoover was is debatable but I suspect that being a man of consciousness was as alien concept to him, and I also suspect Oppeheimer and he had a relationship that went far beyond what was made public.

Ed Chesky


J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER died on 18 February 1967 in Princeton, N. J. More than any other man, he was responsible for raising American theoretical physics from a provincial adjunct of Europe to world leadership.

Robert Oppenheimer was born on 22 April 1904 in New York. His father, who had come to the United States from Germany at the age of 17, was a prosperous textile importer. By inheritance, Robert was well-to-do all his life. The father was quite active in many community affairs, and much interested in art and music. He had a good collection of paintings, including three Van Goghs.

Oppenheimer's mother, Ella Freedman, came from Baltimore. She was a painter who had studied in Paris, and was a very sensitive person. Robert had one younger brother, Frank, who also became a physicist; he is Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo. Oppenheimer had close ties both with his parents and his brother.

As a boy, Robert was already most interested in matters of the mind. He attended the Ethical Culture School in New York, one of the best in the city. He was more interested in his homework, in poetry and in science than in mixing with other boys. He has said, 'It is characteristic that I do not remember any of my classmates.'

Already at the age of 5, Robert collected mineralogical specimens, some of which came from his grandfather in Germany. By the time he was 11 years old his collection was so good and his knowledge so extensive that he was admitted to membership in the Mineralogical Club in New York.

He entered Harvard in 1922 intending to become a chemist, but soon switched to physics. It was characteristic of him not to abandon a subject once he had become interested. Familiarity with chemistry was very useful to him in his Los Alamos days when purification of fissionable materials was one of the main problems of the laboratory. He also retained a lifetime affection for Harvard University, where he was a Member of the Board of Overseers from 1949 to 1955.

At Harvard he was strongly influenced by Professor Percy W. Bridgman, a great and very original experimental physicist. Apart from this, he kept much to himself and devoured knowledge. 'I had a real chance to learn,' he said. 'I loved it. I almost came alive. I took more courses than I was supposed to, lived in the library stacks, just raided the place intellectually.' In addition to studying physics and chemistry, he learned Latin and Greek and was graduated summa cum laude in 1925, having taken three years for the normal four-year course.

His work for the Ph.D. was even more astonishingly rapid: two years sufficed while the present average time required in the United States is four to five years.

After his B.A. degree he travelled for four years to the great centres of physics in Europe. The year 1925 to 1926 he spent at Cambridge University, where he was exposed to the great personality of Lord Rutherford. It was the time when Heisenberg, Born and Schroedinger were developing quantum mechanics. Robert was fascinated and immediately accepted when an invitation came from Max Born to work with him at Göttingen. Here he took his Ph.D. in the spring of 1927.

Next he became a Fellow of the National Research Council, first at Harvard University, then at the California Institute of Technology. In the year 1928 to 1929, he was a Fellow of the International Education Board and visited Leiden and Zürich. He worked with Professor Pauli, an association which greatly influenced his further scientific life.

On his return to the United States in 1929, Oppenheimer received many offers of positions. He accepted two and became an Assistant Professor in Physics, simultaneously at the University of California in Berkeley and at the California Institute of Technology. In the ensuing 13 years, he 'commuted' between the two places, spending the fall and winter in Berkeley, and the spring term, beginning in April, in Pasadena. Many of his associates and students commuted with him.

It was here, in Berkeley, that he created his great School of Theoretical Physics. The majority of the best American theoretical physicists who grew up in those years were trained by Oppenheimer at one stage of their lives. Many were his graduate students, others came to him as Post-doctoral Fellows. They affectionately called him 'Oppie'. His teaching, his style and his example formed the scientific attitude of all of them.

EARLY SCIENTIFIC WORK


Oppenheimer was most fortunate to enter physics in 1925, just when modern quantum mechanics came into being. While he was too young to take part in its formulation, he was one of the first to use it for the exploration of problems which had been insoluble with the old quantum theory.

In 1927, he wrote with Born a famous paper on the 'Quantum theory of molecules'. In this they showed how to separate the problem into one describing the motion of the electrons around fixed nuclei, and another to describe the motion (vibrations and rotation) of the nuclear skeleton. Their method still forms the basis of any treatment of molecules.

Oppenheimer's main interest until 1929 was the theory of continuous spectra. This was unexplored territory. He had to develop the method to normalize the eigen-functions in the continuous spectrum, and to do calculations of transition probabilities. Here as well as later in his work, his great knowledge of mathematical tools was most useful. He calculated the photoelectric effect for hydrogen and for X-rays. Even today this is a complicated calculation, beyond the scope of most quantum mechanics textbooks. Naturally, his calculations were later improved upon, but he correctly obtained the absorption coefficient at the K edge and the frequency dependence in its neighbourhood. It was disturbing that his theory, while agreeing well with measurements of X-ray absorption coefficients, did not seem to be in accord with the opacity of hydrogen in the sun. This, however, was the fault of the limited understanding of the solar atmosphere in 1926. It was then believed that the sun consisted mostly of heavy elements from oxygen on up, like the earth. Many years later, Strömgren suggested that the main constituent was hydrogen. This brought Oppenheimer's calculations of opacity into agreement with astrophysical data. Nowadays the opacity, calculated essentially on the lines of 'Oppie's' theory, is one of the main ingredients of all understanding of stellar interiors. In the course of his calculation of opacity, he also calculated the bremsstrahlung from electrons in the field of nuclei.

His work with the nuclear physicists at Cambridge motivated him to calculate the capture of electrons by ions from other atoms, i.e. such charge exchange processes as


He2+ + H = He+ + H+ (1)


For this work he had to develop a method for the treatment of collision processes involving non-orthogonal save functions.

This work led him on to a treatment of the ionization of the hydrogen atom by electric fields, probably the first paper describing the penetration of a potential barrier, well before the theory of the alpha disintegration. Discussions with Millikan and Lauritsen at CalTech who had just observed the extraction of electrons from metal surfaces by very strong electric fields, motivated him to extend his theory to a description of this effect (1928).

Studying collisions between electrons and atoms, using the Born approximation, he pointed out that the incident electron can exchange with the atomic electron. This effect is indeed important for the understanding of the scattering of low energy electrons from such atoms as helium, as well as in high energy collisions. He could also make mistakes: he believed that exchange could explain the Ramsauer effect while actually this effect is due to the fact that an integral number of half-waves fit into the atom.

THE BERKELEY PERIOD


Pauli, who all his life emphasized the problems at the very frontier of physics, exerted a lasting influence on Oppenheimer. As the frontier shifted from ordinary quantum mechanics to the relativistic quantum mechanics of Dirac, and the theory of electromagnetic fields, the work of Oppenheimer and his great school in Berkeley became chiefly devoted to these subjects.

As early as 1930, Oppenheimer wrote a fundamental paper which essentially predicted the positive electron. One year before, Dirac had reinterpreted the negative energy solutions of his relativistic equation for the electron as indicating the existence of positive charges. Dirac had believed that these were protons. Oppenheimer showed, by very cogent arguments involving symmetry, that the positive charges could not have the mass of the proton, but must have the same mass as the electron. This implicitly predicted the existence of the positron which was discovered three years later. Unfortunately Oppie was prevented from drawing this conclusion by his skepticism concerning the validity of the Dirac equation, a skepticism which had been engendered by another calculation (with Harvey Hall, his student) on the photoelectric effect at high energies, which appeared to disagree with experiment.

Also in 1930, Oppenheimer investigated radiative transitions, making use of the newly developed quantum electrodynamics of Pauli and Heisenberg. He had hoped that the infinite perturbations which Heisenberg and Pauli had found in their theory would not occur in observable processes like the scattering of light. To his disappointment they did. Only the mass renormalization of the late 1940's permitted physicists to eliminate these troubles.

His association with the CalTech experimenters stimulated him to calculate the energy loss of relativistic electrons (1932, with his student Carlson). Their result has proved correct but, at the time, it was believed in contradiction with the evidence from cosmic radiation. In 1933, cosmic radiation yielded the first new particle: Carl Anderson at CalTech discovered the positron which Oppie had almost predicted three years earlier. Oppie immediately proceeded to calculate the cross section for production of positrons at low energy, with his student Milton Plesset. His great knowledge of the continuous spectrum wave functions in the Coulomb field was most useful for this purpose. A more thorough theory with Nedelsky followed.

A little later, he extended the theory of electron pair production to a theory of the showers which are such a prominent phenomenon in cosmic radiation. It had been pointed out by Nordheim, Heitler and Bhabha that these showers could be explained as follows: electrons emit electromagnetic radiation (gamma rays) and these gamma rays in turn produce electron pairs in the electric field of atomic nuclei. Oppenheimer, with his associates Carlson and H. Snyder, developed a most elegant mathematical theory of the multiplicity of air showers, a masterpiece of mathematical treatment of a physical phenomena.

All the time, however, Oppenheimer was worried about the likely breakdown of quantum electrodynamics at energies above 137 mc2. Indeed, laboratory experiments on the penetration of cosmic ray particles through slabs of lead and similar substances seemed to indicate this breakdown very clearly, provided the particles were electrons. It was only in 1937 that it was discovered that the particles were in fact not electrons but mesons. While most physicists were troubled by the supposed breakdown, it dominated Oppie's thoughts, more than anybody else's and he impressed his worries on his students. A number of his papers deal with this problem. We know now that there is no such breakdown and that in fact quantum electrodynamics holds at least up to about a hundred times this energy, probably higher.

Oppie was also very active in other aspects of fundamental quantum theory. In 1931, he attempted to get a first-order differential equation for light quanta, similar to Dirac's equation for the electron. He failed, but in the process recognized the fundamental difference between particles of spin one-half and of integral spin. This was later a basis of Pauli's theory of the relation between spin and statistics.

In 1934, with Furry, he developed a field theory of the Dirac equation, treating electrons and positrons as of equal status. This paper contains essentially the modern form of the electron-positron theory. He was much concerned with other consequences of the existence of the positron. He and his collaborators found that the observable charge of the electron is not the true charge, foreshadowing charge renormalization. They pointed out the effect of vacuum polarization by virtual pairs of electrons and positrons being formed in strong electric fields. Similar ideas were simultaneously discussed by Dirac and others, but the most explicit calculation of vacuum polarization was made by Oppenheimer's student, Uehling.

In 1937 Anderson and others discovered the meson which had been predicted two years earlier by Yukawa in an effort to explain nuclear forces. Making use of Yukawa's theory, Oppie had suggested that the 'hard component' of cosmic rays, i.e. that which penetrates to sea-level, might consist of mesons which, being much heavier than electrons, would have greater penetrating power, while the soft component was interpreted as electrons and positrons, on the basis of the success of shower theory. Now, after Anderson's discovery, he immediately turned his attention to the properties of mesons. Oppenheimer and two of his students, Christy and Kusaka, showed that the meson could not have a spin of 1 or greater, because otherwise it would radiate too fast when penetrating underground. Oppie carefully discussed why he believed the theory of radiation to be valid in this case.

With Serber, he discussed the production of mesons from primary cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. With Christy, he postulated that together with the penetrating, charged mesons, other particles should be produced in the upper atmosphere which have a short life and then decay into gamma rays, thus giving rise to the soft component of cosmic rays. In 1947 he postulated that these intermediate particles are neutral mesons (¼0), well before the discovery of that particle.

Both at Berkeley under Ernest Lawrence, and at Pasadena under Lauritsen, experimental nuclear physics was developing rapidly. Oppenheimer and his students turned their attention to this field from 1933 on. He calculated the excitation function for collisions between protons and nuclei, thus helping much in the interpretation of experiments. His most important contribution was the 'Oppenheimer-Phillips process' in which a deuteron, entering a heavy nucleus, is split into proton and neutron, one of these particles being retained by the nucleus while the other is re-emitted. He gave the first quantitative description of this very prominent process which after the war became an important tool in the study of nucleon energy levels and their properties. He also calculated the density of nuclear energy levels, the nuclear photo-effect and the properties of nuclear resonances. When Lauritsen observed that fluorine, bombarded with protons, gave electron pairs, Oppenheimer contributed much to the explanation: the nuclear reaction is


19F + H = 16O* + 4H (2)


16O is formed in an excited state of angular momentum 0. By selection rules a transition from such a state to the ground state can most easily be accomplished by converting a virtual gamma ray into a pair of electrons.

At Pasadena one of the most important activities was astronomy, through the Mount Wilson Observatory. Richard Tolman worked on general relativity. Oppenheimer became interested in neutron stars, and with Snyder, in the gravitational contraction of massive stars until they disappear from observability.

In 1940 and 1941, Oppenheimer's attention was turned to meson theory and the attempt to explain nuclear forces by mesons. He attempted to deal with strong coupling, using his own theories as well as that of Wentzel. He predicted the existence of nucleon isobars with an excitation energy slightly below the rest energy of the meson.

In addition to this massive scientific work, Oppenheimer created the greatest school of theoretical physics that the United States has ever known. Before him, theoretical physics in America was a fairly modest enterprise, although there were a few outstanding representatives. Probably the most important ingredient he brought to his teaching was his exquisite taste. He always knew what were the important problems, as shown by his choice of subjects. He truly lived with these problems, struggling for a solution, and he communicated his concern to his group. In its heyday, there were about eight or ten graduate students in his group and about six Post-doctoral Fellows. He met this group once a day in his office, and discussed with one after another the status of the student's research problem. He was interested in everything, and in one afternoon they might discuss quantum electrodynamics, cosmic rays, electron pair production and nuclear physics.

In his classroom teaching he always applied the highest standards. He was much influenced by Pauli's article in the Handbuch de Physik, which provided the deepest understanding of quantum mechanics then and even now. Among his students was Leonard Schiff who incorporated much of Oppenheimer's spirit into his excellent textbook on quantum mechanics. New problems were constantly introduced into the quantum mechanics lectures. The lectures were never easy but they gave his students a feeling of the beauty of the subject and conveyed his excitement about its development. Almost every student went through his course more than once.

Oppie saw much of his students and associates after working hours. He would frequently treat them to an exquisite dinner in San Francisco, or to a less ambitious one in a Mexican restaurant in Oakland. His most constant collaborator of these years, Serber, writes of these excursions: 'One should remember that these were post-depression days when students were poor. The world of good food, good wines and gracious living was far from the experience of many of them, and Oppie was introducing them to an unfamiliar way of life. We acquired something of his tastes. We went to concerts together and listened to chamber music. Oppie and Arnold Nordsieck read Plato in the original Greek. During many evening parties we drank, talked and danced until late, and, when Oppie was supplying the food, the novices suffered from the hot chilli that social example required them to eat.'

The magnetism and force of his personality was such that many of his students copied his gestures and mannerisms. Among his students, in addition to those already mentioned, were Fritz Kalckar, George Volkoff, Sid Dancoff, Phil Morrison, Joe Keller, Willis Lamb, Bernard Peters, Bill Rarita, and many others. As Oppenheimer himself has written: 'As the number of students increased, so in general did their quality. The men who worked with me during those years held chairs in many of the great centers of physics in the United States; they have made important contributions to science, and in many cases to the atomic energy project.'

During his Berkeley time, Oppie had also many friends in the faculty, scientists, classicists and artists. He studied and read Sanskrit with a colleague, and his private reading ranged over the classics, novels, plays and poetry.

Most of the time he was indifferent to the events around him; he never read a newspaper, he had no radio or telephone, he learned of the stock market crash in 1929 only long after the event.

His interest in politics began in 1936. He had been much disturbed by the treatment of the Jews of Germany, including some of his relatives. He saw the effect of the American depression on his students, and had great compassion with them and others who could not find any jobs.

In these days, Oppie's sympathies were quite left-wing. He contributed to a strike fund of the Longshoremen's Union and to various committees helping the Spanish Loyalists in the Civil War. His brother and his sister-in-law were members of the Communist Party for some time; he himself apparently never joined. As far as I can tell, he moved away from the party in 1939 and 1940. He was disgusted by the pact between Stalin and Hitler which permitted Hitler to start the Second World War. He was deeply distressed by the fall of France in 1940. I saw him shortly thereafter at an evening party when he spoke long and eloquently about the terrible tragedy that the fall of France meant to Western civilization. Clearly he entirely disagreed with the Communist slogan that this was 'An imperialist war'.

In 1936 he was promoted to a full professorship at Berkeley and CalTech. In 1941 he was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences.

In 1940 Oppenheimer married Katherine Harrison. They had one son, Peter, and a daughter Katherine. They lived in a most beautiful house on Eagle Hill, overlooking all of San Francisco Bay, where I (and of course even more his Berkeley friends) spent many happy hours.

LOS ALAMOS


In 1942, Oppenheimer felt the deep urge to contribute to the American war effort. The opportunity came soon. He was appointed the leader of a theoretical effort to design the atomic bomb.

By the summer of 1942 it was very likely that Fermi's atomic pile would work, that Dupont would build a production reactor, and that useful quantities of plutonium would be produced. The separation of uranium-235 by the electromagnetic method, though extremely expensive, also seemed very likely to succeed; the separation by gaseous diffusion was less certain. In any case, the committee in charge of the uranium project considered it advisable to begin a serious study of the assembly of a weapon. It proved accurate timing. In 1945, the preparations for the assembly of the weapon were finished just about the same time that the necessary amounts of material became available.

Oppenheimer assembled a small group of theoretical physicists: Teller, who had been working on the atomic pile in Chicago, Van Vleck and myself who had been working on radar, Konopinski, Serber who was then associated with Oppenheimer, and three of his own graduate students. Some members of our group, under the leadership of Serber, did calculations on the actual subject of our study, the neutron diffusion in an atomic bomb and the energy yield obtainable from it. The rest of us, especially Teller, Oppenheimer and I, indulged ourselves in a far-off project--namely, the question of whether and how an atomic bomb could be used to trigger an H-bomb. Grim as the subject was, it was a most exciting enterprise. We were forever inventing new tricks, findings ways to calculate, and rejecting most of the tricks on the basis of the calculations. Now I could see at first-hand the tremendous intellectual power of Oppenheimer who was the unquestioned leader of our group. The ideas we had about triggering an H-bomb later turned out to be all wrong, but the intellectual experience was unforgettable.

In the fall of 1942 plans were started for a more permanent laboratory to investigate the assembly of a nuclear bomb. Oppenheimer chose its location, together with General Groves who was by then in charge of the 'Manhattan Project'. General Groves wanted a remote place in order to keep the secrecy of the project. Oppie knew just the place. He had spent many happy summers in the Pecos Valley in New Mexico, on a ranch, owned by him and his brother. He knew about the Los Alamos Ranch School, an expensive boarding school for boys, which was in bad financial condition. The school was bought out and the Government established its laboratory on one of the most beautiful mesas in New Mexico, with a splendid view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range across 30 miles of the Rio Grande Valley. Pleasant aspen forests rose from Los Alamos to the crest of a minor mountain range, the Jemez, and gave the inhabitants of Los Alamos many opportunities for pleasant hikes, horseback rides and ski expeditions.

Oppenheimer searched the country for the best experimental and theoretical nuclear physicists, for general physicists, chemists and engineers. The task was difficult because many of the best people were already deeply engaged in war work, and some were reluctant to leave this work which promised immediate applicability in World War II, for the remote possibility of an atomic bomb. Nevertheless a magnificent staff was assembled.

Oppenheimer had the great desire to identify with the U.S. war effort, and was quite ready to accept a commission as a Lt.-Colonel in the U.S. Army as was desired by General Groves. The better judgment of some of his colleagues, more experienced in scientific war work, prevented him and the rest of us from becoming integrated into the Army machinery. Of course the Army had charge of guarding the laboratory, of construction of both laboratory and civilian housing, of the civil administration of the town and essentially of all our lives. But in scientific matters the laboratory remained independent.

It was not obvious that Oppenheimer would be its director. He had, after all, no experience in directing a large group of people. The laboratory would be devoted primarily to experiment and to engineering, and Oppenheimer was a theorist. It is greatly to the credit of General Groves that he overruled all these objections and made Oppenheimer the director.

It was a marvellous choice. Los Alamos might have succeeded without him, but certainly only with much greater strain, less enthusiasm, and less speed. As it was, it was an unforgettable experience for all the members of the laboratory. There were other wartime laboratories of high achievement, like the Metallurgical Laboratory at Chicago, the Radiation Laboratory at M.I.T., and others, both here and abroad. But I have never observed in any of these other groups quite the spirit of belonging together, quite the urge to reminisce about the days of the laboratory, quite the feeling that this was really the great time of their lives.

The scientific work at Los Alamos has often been described. I will quote the description by Victor Weisskopf in Physics Today:

'The task facing Oppenheimer and his collaborators was stupendous. When the work started at Los Alamos not much more was known than the fundamental ideas of a chain reaction. What happens in a nuclear explosion had to be theoretically predicted in all details for the design of the bomb since there was no time to wait for experiments; no fissionable material was available yet. The details of the fission process had to be understood. The slowing down of neutrons in matter and the theory of explosions and implosions under completely novel conditions had to be investigated. Nuclear physicists had to become experts in fields of technology unknown to them such as shock waves and hydrodynamics. Oppenheimer directed these studies, theoretical and experimental, in the real sense of the words. Here his uncanny speed in grasping the main points of any subject was a decisive factor; he could acquaint himself with the essential details of every part of the work.
'He did not direct from the head office. He was intellectually and even physically present at each decisive step. He was present in the laboratory or in the seminar rooms, when a new effect was measured, when a new idea was conceived. It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else. It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in all of us; it created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time.'
He was everywhere at all times, and he worked incredibly long hours. Nevertheless, he still had time for some social life; in fact, the Oppenheimer house with his attractive wife was a social centre. He lived, as far as we could see, on his nervous energy. Always quite thin, he lost another twenty pounds and during a bout with measles reportedly got down to 104 lb., being six feet tall. It is remarkable that his health could stand this pace, because he was never physically strong. The one sport he loved was horseback riding. But in the three years at Los Alamos there was time only for one overnight ride on the two horses his wife fed and groomed for their use. Before Los Alamos, on his ranch, he used to keep five horses for himself and his guests.

One of the factors contributing to the success of the laboratory was its democratic organization. The governing board, where questions of general and technical laboratory policy were discussed, consisted of the division leaders (about eight of them). The coordinating council included all the group leaders, about 50 in number, and kept all of them informed on the most important technical progress and problems of the various groups in the laboratory. All scientists having a B.A. degree were admitted to the colloquium in which specialized talks about laboratory problems were given. Each of these three assemblies met once a week. In this manner everybody in the laboratory felt a part of the whole and felt that he should contribute to the success of the programme. Very often a problem discussed in one of these meetings would intrigue a scientist in a completely different branch of the laboratory, and he would come up with an unexpected solution.

This free interchange of ideas was entirely contrary to the organization of the Manhattan District as a whole. As organized by General Groves, the work was strictly compartmentalized, with one laboratory having little or no knowledge of the problems or progress of the other. Oppenheimer had to fight hard for the free discussion among all qualified members of the Los Alamos Laboratory, but the free flow of information and discussion, together with Oppenheimer's personality, kept morale at its highest throughout the war.

Weisskopf says 'One of the most important factors that kept us at work was the common awareness of the great danger of the bomb in the hands of an irresponsible dictator. After his defeat, it turned out that this danger was in fact not so great; still the work and the spirit continued until the task was accomplished, until in the desert of Alamogordo for the first time a nuclear fire was kindled by man. Every one of us, and Oppenheimer more than anyone, was deeply shaken by this event.'

For his work at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer received the Medal of Merit from President Truman in 1946, 'for his great scientific experience and ability, his inexhaustible energy, his rare capacity as an organizer and executive, his initiative and resourcefulness, and his unswerving devotion to duty. . . .'

HIS PUBLIC LIFE


It was obvious that a community like Los Alamos would be deeply concerned with the ominous implications of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was one of the most concerned, and had many discussions about this problem with Niels Bohr. Bohr had come to the United States in 1944 and had been asked to help us at Los Alamos. He was quite interested in our work and gave us some advice. However, his main interest was in talking to statesmen and trying to persuade them that international control of the atom was the only way to avoid a pernicious arms race or worse, atomic war. Bohr did not succeed with statesmen but he greatly impressed Oppenheimer and through him the rest of us at Los Alamos.

After the war the American scientists exerted much pressure in Washington. One of their wishes was civilian control of atomic energy rather than continued control by the Army. The Senate responded to the urging of Szilard, Condon and of the American Federation of Scientists, by setting up the McMahon Committee which after long labour, devised the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. Oppenheimer, although originally in favour of military control because it would provide a smoother transition, was an effective witness before the McMahon Committee.

More urgent still seemed the problem of international control. By the intervention of some far-sighted statesmen, President Truman was persuaded to appoint a committee to study this problem, under David Lilienthal. Oppenheimer was one of the members. Lilienthal describes the work of the committee impressively in his 'Journal'. All five members were outstanding men in business, engineering or science. But Oppenheimer brought to it the years of experience of creation of the atomic bomb. The work of the committee, although all its members contributed, was primarily that of Oppenheimer. Lilienthal said of him, 'He was the only authentic genius I have ever met.'

The Lilienthal Report which was then endorsed by Under-Secretary of State Dean Acheson called for the creation of an international authority to control all atomic-energy work. The plan emphasized the need for a positive task for the international authority. It should develop atomic reactors for power and other peaceful uses, and also atomic weapons if desired; it should not have merely the function of a policeman preventing individual nations from developing atomic energy and weapons on their own. This wise plan became official U.S. policy. Its presentation to the United Nations was entrusted to Bernard Baruch, a very respected and very conservative elder statesman. Unfortunately Baruch's advisers and Baruch himself, changed the emphasis: instead of pointing to the great joint task of developing peaceful uses of atomic energy, Baruch placed the main emphasis on the 'condign' punishment of violators of the agreement to be concluded. I do not know whether there was ever any chance of acceptance of the plan by the Soviet Union, that country being at the time exclusively concerned with its own national interest. But if there ever was a chance it was lost by the manner of Baruch's presentation.

Oppenheimer was one of the first to see that the plan would be rejected by the U.S.S.R. Most of the members of the Federation of American Scientists held on to hope beyond hope. His realism, as well as his official duties, kept Oppenheimer rather separate from the Federation and other political organizations of the scientists.

His first government appointment was in 1945, as a member of Secretary of War Stimson's Scientific Panel of the War Department's Interim Committee on Atomic Energy. This panel was asked, before Hiroshima, whether there was any technically effective alternative to dropping the bomb on Japan; its answer was negative. Later, an enlarged panel was asked what to do with atomic energy after the war. The members of this enlarged panel were Oppenheimer, members of the other wartime laboratories of the Manhattan District, and several elder-statesmen scientists. One of the committee's meetings took place at Los Alamos, and some other Los Alamos scientists were asked to participate. I remember this meeting very vividly. All of the participants were impressive people who had made great contributions. Nevertheless, whenever Oppenheimer left the room, discussion slid back into fairly routine problems, such as the specific nuclear reactions one should investigate and the kind of research that could be done with a nuclear reactor. On his return, the level of the discussion immediately rose and we all had the feeling that now the meeting had become really worth while.

Oppenheimer's most important Government task was to be Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) General Advisory Committee (GAC) from 1946 to 1952. This most important body included Fermi, Rabi, Conant, Dubridge, Smythe and Seaborg (both later AEC Commissioners) and two industrialists, Worthington and Rowe. It advised the Commission not only on scientific matters but also on matters of general policy. It was a hard-working committee, having about six sessions a year, of three days each, mostly over week-ends. In the words of Seaborg 'At the conclusion of each session, when the AEC Commissioners came in to review our work, Oppie presented a masterful summary of the proceedings. I know that my fellow members of the GAC remember with me that this was pure Oppenheimer at his very best. I regret that tape-recordings were not made of these eloquent summations of our deliberations, for I believe that these would provide fascinating historical material.'

The first task of the GAC and AEC was to strengthen the position of the U.S. in the production and military use of fissionable material. The plutonium production plants at Hanford had to be improved and further ones had to be built. Oppenheimer devoted much time to strengthening the Los Alamos Laboratory after many of its members had left at the end of the war, as well as supporting the other AEC laboratories, Oak Ridge and Argonne.

These latter two laboratories were given the specific task of developing nuclear power. Oppenheimer had the great desire to foster peaceful applications but, like most of his colleagues on the GAC, he was overly pessimistic about economic possibilities. In a talk at this time, he thought that the application of isotopes in research would for a long time remain the most important peaceful application of atomic energy. In a sense he was right; it took about ten years before large-scale power reactors were constructed in the United States and only recently have they become economical.

Oppenheimer was deeply devoted to the support of fundamental research in nuclear physics. The Brookhaven National Laboratory was established for this specific purpose, the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley was generously supported, and many university projects for the construction of high energy accelerators and their use were financed. The AEC was one of the chief contributors to the tremendous expansion in research in physics in the United States, and Oppenheimer and his GAC gave much encouragement to the Commission to do so. Oppenheimer strongly advocated to make fundamental scientific information available to scientists all over the world and distributing special materials, such as radio-isotopes, freely to scientists abroad.

In military applications, Oppenheimer was one of the first advocates of a system to detect foreign nuclear weapons tests. He proposed this while still at Los Alamos. He then supported strongly the programme to develop techniques for detection in 1948 to 1950. This was one of his many functions as Chairman of the Committee on Atomic Energy of the Joint Research and Development Board of the Armed Services. In addition this committee was concerned with the proper application of atomic weapons in warfare. Its membership was half civilian, half military. His efforts to get a detection system established bore fruit on 29 August 1949 when the first Soviet atom bomb was exploded. A panel of the Committee on Atomic Energy including Oppie himself, scrutinized the evidence presented and concluded that indeed a weapons test had taken place in the Soviet Union.

He served the Joint Research and Development Board from 1947 to 1952, also in other capacities. He was a member of the National Research Advisory Committee from 1949 to 1952, and of the Secretary of State's Panel on Disarmament in 1952 and 1953. Most important of these committees was the Science Advisory Committee (1951-1954). It was then part of the Office of Defense Mobilization and later developed into the President's Science Advisory Committee.

More important still, he participated in many summer studies on the effect of nuclear weapons on military tactics and strategy. In particular, in the Vista project, the study group urged that the U.S. should not place its main reliance on strategic atomic weapons and massive retaliation, but should rather develop tactical nuclear weapons to defend Western Europe against possible Russian attack. This advice was very unpopular in many quarters of the Air Force, devoted primarily to strategic bombing.

In 1949, after the U.S.S.R. had exploded its first atomic weapon, the work of the GAC reached a crisis. As a response to the Soviet explosion, Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence proposed that the U.S. should develop H-bombs. The GAC wrote a strong recommendation against the crash development of the 'super'. All members of the Committee agreed on this (Seaborg did not attend, after writing a letter stating that he was quite undecided).

One important argument of the GAC was that there was, at that time, no sufficient technical basis for this development (the crucial invention was made in 1951, by Teller). Another strong argument was that the U.S. should not deliberately step up the arms race, and should at least first make an effort to discuss with Soviet Russia the possibility of an agreement not to develop hydrogen weapons. A more radical minority report was written by Fermi and Rabi.

For about three months the issue was hotly debated in Washington. The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy of the Congress enthusiastically endorsed the proposal by Teller and Lawrence. Lilienthal, Chairman of the AEC, supported the GAC position and writes in his 'Journal' about the nervous strain of this battle. The decision probably came when Acheson, the Secretary of State, endorsed the H-bomb plan. At the end of January 1950 President Truman decided to pursue with full vigour the design and manufacture of an H-bomb.

He probably could not have decided any other way at the time. However, it is most deplorable that time and again nations have decided in favour of another step in armament without first trying to obtain mutual agreement with other nations to refrain from new escalation of death. The effort of Oppenheimer and the GAC to make the U.S. Government pause and think about this step stands as a most important milestone.

After President Truman had overruled the committee, Oppenheimer tried to resign as Chairman of the Committee, but the resignation was not accepted, probably wrongly.

THE SECURITY INVESTIGATION


1953 was a difficult year in U.S. politics. Senator Joseph McCarthy charged nearly anyone he could think of with being a Communist, and hence a traitor to the United States. Since McCarthy's charges had contributed much to the defeat of the Democrats in the Presidential elections of 1952, the new Republican government let him have free rein for a long time.

That Robert Oppenheimer would be one of the victims was foreshadowed in a scurrilous article in Fortune in 1953. The author had collected much material from disgruntled officers of the Air Force who were opposed to Oppenheimer's defence policy. Although they had won the battle for massive retaliation they wanted to defeat the 'enemy' completely. A former employee of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy in a nearly paranoic letter, accused Oppenheimer of being a Communist and working against the interest of the U.S. Oppie had also made some personal enemies, and on the basis of all this, in December 1953, President Eisenhower ordered that Oppenheimer's clearance for secret government work be terminated. This was communicated to him by the AEC in December 1953. Oppenheimer answered the charges in a long letter, and both charges and answer were published in the New York Times, on 13 April, 1954.

Oppenheimer chose to have a security investigation which was organized essentially like a Court of Law with a Board of three judges, and lawyers both for the government and for the defence. He chose to face this investigation in spite of the fact that he was quite convinced from the beginning that he would lose his case.

The ensuing, long-protracted security investigations became a cause célèbre. Many of his scientist friends came out in his defence, a few against him. The Proceedings, published by the AEC, give a vivid story of the discussions within the U.S. Government on defence policy between 1947 and 1953. They have been avidly read by friend and foe, at home and abroad.

Both the Security Hearing Board, by a vote of 2 to 1, and the AEC, by a vote of 4 to 1 decided to withhold security clearance from Oppenheimer. In the final majority opinion by the Commission the only real argument against granting him clearance was the grotesque story involving Haakon Chevalier in 1942. Intrinsically this 'espionage attempt' was of no importance whatever; the counter-intelligence corps did not even bother to investigate the lead until May 1946. But apparently Oppenheimer, in an effort to shield his friend Chevalier, and at the same time not to endanger his position as Head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, had first invented a very foolish 'cock-and-bull-story' and then later denied it.

The importance attached to this incident is the more astonishing as (1) these facts had all been known to General Groves who had cleared him for wartime work; (2) the same facts were scrutinized by the whole AEC in 1947 and again clearance was granted for the most delicate atomic energy work. One of the members of the AEC in 1947 was Lewis Strauss who, in 1954, wrote the majority opinion of the AEC against him. It is hard to imagine that this old story could have attained so much greater importance between 1947 and 1954.

The scientific community, with few exceptions, was deeply shocked by the decision of the AEC. An eloquent discussion was given by Bush, the wartime leader of the U.S. Science Defence effort, in the New York Times Magazine, 13 June, 1954. Personally I felt that the AEC which I had always regarded as our, the scientists', agency in the government, had become a hostile body.

The AEC soon made efforts to reconcile the scientific community. Perhaps most important was the appointment of John Von Neumann, the noted mathematician, as a second scientific member of the Commission. He was universally respected, by the friends of Oppenheimer as well as those of Teller. Soon afterwards Joseph McCarthy's agitation ended when a Senate Committee investigated his own behaviour as a committee chairman, and this led to McCarthy's censure by the Senate. The political climate generally improved.

But it took until 1961 for the Government to make amends to Oppenheimer, President John F. Kennedy invited Oppenheimer to a White House dinner given in honour of Nobel Prize Winners. The most important recognition, however, was the presentation to him of the Fermi Award of the AEC, the highest honour that body can bestow. It carries a prize of $50 000.

THE FERMI AWARD


The decision to present the Award was made by President Kennedy, the actual presentation by President Johnson in December 1963. On the presentation President Johnson said in part: 'Dr. Oppenheimer, I am pleased that you are here today to receive formal recognition for your many contributions to theoretical physics and to the advancement of science in our nation. Your leadership in the development of an outstanding school of theoretical physics in the United States and your contributions to our basic knowledge make your achievements unique in the scientific world.'

In his acceptance remarks Oppenheimer said, 'I think it is just possible, Mr President, that it has taken some charity and some courage for you to make this award today.'

THE PRINCETON PERIOD


In 1947, Oppenheimer was appointed Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The Institute had always included prominent physicists: Albert Einstein had been one of its Charter Members appointed in 1933. Bohr and Dirac had been frequent visitors, and Pauli spent the war years there. A number of other well-known physicists had worked at the Institute at one time or another.

But on Oppenheimer's arrival, the physics department of the Institute changed. While its emphasis had been on well-established professors before, it now became a centre for young physicists. Five research associates from Berkeley came with him in 1947. Thereafter the Institute was open to dozens of post-doctoral fellows, from the United States and abroad. Even more than Berkeley in the 1930's, the Princeton Institute became the centre for physics. Nearly everybody who was anybody passed through its stimulating atmosphere. Murray Gell-Mann, Marvin L. Goldberger, Geoffrey F. Chew, Frances E. Low, Yoichira Nambu, were among the American visitors, Maurice Levy came from France, Lehman and Symancik from Germany, and countless visitors from Great Britain, Italy, Japan and other countries. There was a distinguished permanent staff including Pais, Dyson, Placzek, T. D. Lee and C. N. Yang. The distinguished visitors of old times continued to come.

Oppenheimer brought to the Institute his whole method of inspired teaching. He no longer did much research of his own, but he constantly inspired his collaborators. The seminars which he directed were always very lively. In 1948 I gave one of these seminars, on some calculations concerning the Lamb shift. I spoke for less than half the time and this, I was told, was a much larger fraction of the time than was customary in the seminar. The rest was discussion by the many bright young physicists, and especially by Oppenheimer himself. Ideas developed fast in this atmosphere of intense discussion and stimulation.

Vigourous discussion as well as emphasis on fundamental problems remained Oppenheimer's style. All through his life he was able to convey to all around him a sense of excitement in the quest of science.

He could also irritate the people who worked with him. His great mind was able to read and digest physics much faster than the minds of his less gifted colleagues. In scientific conversation he always assumed that others knew as much as he. This being seldom the case and few persons being willing to admit their ignorance, his partner often felt at a disadvantage. Yet, when asked directly, he explained willingly.

Abraham Pais writes of his influence at the Institute: 'He could convey to young men a sense of extraordinary relevance of the physics of their day and give them a sense of their participation in a great adventure, as for example in the Richtmyer lecture: "There are rich days ahead for physics; we may hope, I think, to be living in one of the heroic ages of physical science, whereas, in the past, a vast new field of experience has taught us its new lessons and its new order."

'He could define and thereby enhance their dedication, by words such as these: "People who practice science, who try to learn, believe that knowledge is good. They have a sense of guilt when they try to acquire it. This keeps them busy . . . It seems hard to live any other way than thinking that it was better to know something than not to know it; and that the more you know the better, provided you know it honestly."

'To an unusual degree, Oppenheimer possessed the ability to instill such attitudes in the young physicists around him, to urge them not to let up. He could be critical, sharply critical at times, of their efforts. But there was no greater satisfaction for him than to see such efforts bear fruit and then to tell others of the work that someone had done.'

In addition to his work at the Institute, he was a leading spirit for many years at the Conferences on Physics which started from a small basis and then expanded into international scope.

Pais writes: 'The first such conference in physics took place on 2-4 June 1947, on Shelter Island, New York. For this meeting Oppenheimer wrote the outline of topics for discussion entitled "The foundations of quantum mechanics". As was to happen so often in the following years, Oppenheimer showed himself to be the three-fold master: by stressing the important problems, by directing the discussion and by summarizing the findings.

'In his outline he discussed the copiousness of meson production in cosmic radiation in terms of meson theories then current and concluded that "no reasonable formulation along this line will satisfactorily account for the smallness of the subsequent interaction of mesons with nuclear matter". In the discussion of this point, Robert Marshak got up to propose that there should be two kinds of mesons. It was, one may recall, in September of that year that Cecil F. Powell reported the discovery of ¼ decay at a Copenhagen conference.'

The Shelter Island Conference witnessed the opening of a new chapter in quantum electrodynamics. Willis Lamb, one of Oppenheimer's Ph.D students (1938), gave an account of his experiment on the upward energy shift of the 2-S state of hydrogen. Rabi reported on a deviation in the hyper-fine structure of hydrogen and deuterium from theory.

Immediately Oppenheimer emphasized that here one might be faced with self-energy effects. This subject was close to his mind: as early as 1930 he had been concerned with atomic level displacements due to radiative effects. Oppenheimer's remarks, and a talk by Kramers, stimulated me, immediately after the Shelter Island Conference, to explain the Lamb shift as a residual self-energy effect due to the interaction of the electron with the electromagnetic field. My theory was only non-relativistic. But at the next conference, at Pocono Manor in April 1948, Schwinger and Feynman discussed their different, relativistic solutions for the self-energy effects. The Old-Stone-On-Hudson meeting, a year later, discussed further development of the theory.

At these conferences Oppenheimer was the undisputed leader. Pais found some comments in old notes from the Pocono Conference. By Oppenheimer: 'Now it doesn't matter that things are infinite.' By Rabi: 'What the hell should I measure now?' Pais remarks: 'They reflect the sense of optimism of the late forties, especially the expectation that with the new theoretical tools other than electromagnetic interactions would soon give sensible results.'

Oppenheimer continued to play a leading role in the Conferences, which from then on developed into the Rochester Conferences. The latter soon became international. They were among the first conferences which brought together the scientists from East and West. And they have continued to do so, through easy and difficult political times. This role of science to bring together people of different countries and different political opinions, was very much Oppie's desire.

Oppenheimer had become widely known as a principal representative figure of the natural sciences. Thus, when in 1948 the American Institute of Physics inaugurated a new journal, Physics Today, the dialogue between theory and experiment was symbolized on the cover of its first issue by a picture of a pork-pie sombrero, Oppenheimer's well-known symbol, tossed on a cyclotron. When in 1950 the Scientific American devoted an issue to summarize that incredibly full half-century in science, 1900-1950, it was fitting that Oppenheimer should write its general introduction.

In the 1950's, the Institute at Princeton continued to play its leading role. One of the main problems was the profusion of new particles which had been discovered. Pais was one of the men who brought some order into this chaos. Later on Yang & Lee solved a great puzzle in the behaviour of the K-meson by postulating that parity need not be conserved in weak decays. Astrophysics and statistical mechanics were also successfully pursued at the Institute. Oppenheimer was always there to stimulate, criticize, encourage and clarify. Even to the last days (I saw him a few months before his death, when he was already very ill) he followed all of particle and theoretical physics with avidity, and discussed the problems with profundity, and with curiosity about the next step.

WRITINGS ON GENERAL TOPICS


Ever since the Second World War, Oppenheimer's own writings and talks were concerned with general subjects rather than with physics. There is an impressive list of them, about 125. He was invited to give lectures at many universities, and in other distinguished settings, like the Reith Lectures of the B.B.C. In his lectures he cast a spell over his audience with his marvellous command of the English language. It was a pleasure just to listen to him and watch how he formulated his thoughts. He added much wit and a store of good anecdotes, and most importantly, the signs of deep concern about humanity.

Probably his greatest concern was the relation between modern science and the general culture of our time. He was troubled that the tremendous increase of knowledge makes it impossible for an intelligent, educated man to cope with even the more important parts of knowledge. His concern resembled that of C. P. Snow about the 'two cultures', but was more profound, partly I think because Oppie himself was a creative scientist. He worried about the increasing gap between specialized knowledge and common sense, the increasing gap between neighbouring sciences, and even between different branches within his own science of physics. He said: 'Even in physics we do not entirely succeed in spite of a passion for unity which is very strong.'

This activity has again been well summarized by Pais: 'Briefly, then, what Oppenheimer had in mind was this. First, he addressed himself to what is loosely called the intellectual community. He wished to foster a common understanding primarily within this community. Second, as a example of what in his opinion could profitably be shared, he mentions the lesson of quantum theory which we call complementarity. He wished and in fact tried to explain this lesson to the biologist, the statesman and the artist because he believed that what to the physicist is a technique represents at the same time a general way of thinking that could be liberating to all. Third, he saw a two-fold duty for our education system. In the face of increasing demands on education we should continue to stress that the cultural life of sciences lies almost entirely in the intimate view of the professional. At the same time, "no man should escape our universities without . . . some sense of the fact that not through his fault, but in the nature of things, he is going to be an ignorant man, and so is everyone else".

'Of the great effort needed to achieve these aims he said the following: "I think that, with the growing wealth of the world, and the possibility that it will not all be used to make new committees, there may indeed be genuine leisure, and that a high commitment on this leisure is that we re-knit the discourse and the understanding between the members of our community. As a start, we must learn again, without contempt and with great patience, to talk to one another; and we must hear."'

As a move toward bridging the gap between various disciplines he invited many psychologists and historians for temporary visits to the Institute. He talked enthusiastically of the progress psychologists were making in understanding the process of learning.

Another subject of great concern to him was atomic power and the politics related to it. He gave many lectures on this, before colleges, general audiences and to young people. He wrote about it in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs. He discussed the decision to drop the atomic bomb, international control of atomic energy, and Secretary Stimson's role in the development of the bomb. His opinion was always moderate; he thought that the development of the bomb and its drop had been inevitable, but that the world should make every effort that the bomb should not be used again. He also wrote about specific subjects, such as the functions of the International Agency on Atomic Energy to which he was much devoted.

Some of his writings are in response to the many honours he received, and the many interviews he was asked to give. Others are personal tributes to other scientists: he was a very good friend who would not forget his friends.

Other writings are predictions of the development of physics in the future, summaries of conferences and of developments in physics such as 'symmetries of forces', and '30 years of mesons'.

His reputation as a scientist and a symbol was at least as great in Great Britain and France as it was in the United States. He paid frequent visits to both countries, and was much honoured in both.

Again I would like to quote Pais: 'Any single one of the following contributions would have marked Oppenheimer out as a pre-eminent scientist: his own research work in physics; his influence as a teacher; his leadership at Los Alamos; the growth of the Institute for Advanced Study to a leading centre of theoretical physics under his directorship; and his efforts to promote a more common understanding of science. When all is combined, we honour Oppenheimer as a great leader of science in our time. When all is interwoven with the dramatic events that centred around him, we remember Oppenheimer as one of the most remarkable personalities of this century.'

Oppenheimer will be remembered by the world and by his country. He will leave a lasting memory in all the scientists who have worked with him, and in the many who have passed through his school and whose taste in physics was formed by him. His was a truly brilliant mind, best described by his long-time associate Charles Lauritsen: 'This man was unbelievable. He always gave you the answer before you had time to formulate the question.'

Cross-post, as shown in Bad Astronomy, General Astronomy: "Variable Hypothetical Mass in hypo Variable G", pg. 8 of that thread:
___________________________________________________________________________

RULE OF THUMB FOR VARIABLE MASS IN HYPO VARIABLE G, and why it does not show up in our space trajectories.


"The rule of thumb for variable mass in hypo variable G is that the kilograms for mass are taken from the G where it is measured."

(1) This is the only solution possible to resolve the variable mass cum variable G conundrum. Let's use the above example of Titan, which near Saturn has a hypothetical 10G. Knowing Titan's mass, as calculated in Earth's 1G, m = 1.35E+23 kg. And as figured in 10G, "m" = 0.135E+23 "kg", per the above F = 10G"/G (0.135E+23 kg)m/R^2. Taking a ratio of the two:

1.35E+23 kg/ kg = 0.135E+23 "kg"/ "kg" so that

kg = ("kg" * 1.35E+23 kg )/ 0.135E+23 "kg", which is kg = 10 "kg", or "kg" = 1/10 kg.

Remember that the two masses, per volume and size, are identical, so that

"m" = m, though they register different kilograms.

Therefore, if measuring mass in Earth's 1G, the kilogram used is Earth's kg; but if measuring mass from a hypothetical variable G, say 10G, then the kilograms used are that G's domain "kg", as shown above.

(2) The second question about a bar of platinum-iridium was more of a trick question, because the size and volume for the two bars may be different.

If I take 1 kg of platinum-iridium of the size and volume of the French prototype, I know it is one kilogram of mass. But I took the same size and volume, still the same mass, to a hypo 10G domain, it would be 10 times heavier within the gravity of that domain than in Earth's 1G.

Conversely, if I took a one "kilogram" of platinum-iridium from Titan, in a hypo 10G, it would be 10 times lower volume and size than what we had in Earth's 1G. Therefore, a 1 "kg" on Titan is smaller by volume and size than 1 kg on Earth. But if brought to Earth's 1G, that 1 "kg" from Titan would weigh 1/10 th of Earth's prototype bar. So it depends upon where the material is gathered. If gathered on Earth, 1 kg is of one size and volume; if gathered from Titan, then 1 "kg" is of a different size and volume. Given that we hypothetically gave Titan 10G, the volume and size is 1/10 th of Earth's kilogram. In effect, Titan's "kilogram" has only 10% of the molecules necessary to make one kilogram on Earth.

The weight of either kilogram or "kilogram" does not change. And this is why this is such a conundrum: If you measure the weight of a Titanian "kilogram" it will register the same Newtons as if weighed on Earth. Why not, if it is same mass? And if you take an Earthian kilogram to Titan, it will still weight the same Newtons. But they will be different in size and volume, and thus the kilogram mass from Earth will have a different weight from the "kilogram" mass from Titan. As we saw in the example above, once the kg-"kg" are adjusted for G, the Newtons remain the same. But this is contingent upon which measure of mass you used, whether kg or "kg" for the given volume and size of the block of material involved. The difference between the two is that a kilogram on Earth (low 1G) will be 10 times the size and volume of a "kilogram" on Titan (high 10G).

So the Huygens probe leaving Earth and arriving on Titan is still the same mass, and same weight as before when measured in Newtons. But conversely, if the "Huygens" were assembled on Titan, its "kilogram" mass measured in 10G would have made it 10 times heavier, using local "kilograms". So now instead of 350 kg, it would register on Titan as 3500 "kg" because the gravitational force is 10 times that of Earth's; remember that Titan's "kg" is 1/10 th of Earth's kg, so 350 kg is not 35 "kg" (as one would suppose), but 10 times kg: i.e., you need 10 times as many "kg" to arrive at 350 kg. Consequently, when this 3500 "kg" probe landed on Earth, it would show as 350 kg in our 1G domain, as gravity went from 10G to 1G. However, the Newton force had never changed, only the gravitational effect of where the probe was, (as it went in reverse from Titanian "1G" to Earthian 1/10 th "G"). Whether measured in Earth's kilograms or Titan's "kilograms" we will have an equivalent weight in their native measures of mass. And!.. it is for this reason that the Equivalence Principle is never violated, regardless of G. It is always in relation to the G where it is located.

(3) So why doesn't this show up in our orbitals or trajectories? Does it even matter as some suggested, that it is a null sum game? I think it does not show up, but it does matter.

G*M is what always rules, that the product of any (hypo) G adjusted for its native kilograms will always be the same. The Sun has an Earth derived mass of M = ~2E+30 kg (assuming Sun has 1G, which may not be true), so Saturn's mass (in hypo 10G) still answers to the inverse square law 1/R^2, because the product of G*M is still the same. And the same for the Sun responding to Saturn's gravitational attraction, where (10G*0.10m) is still the same product, so nothing changed with regards to their orbital relationship, the barycenter is unaffected, and neither would be their LaGrange points. I realize this is a pernicious problem, but a variable G is a very well hidden phenomenon, hypothetically. Trajectories, especially those affected by gravitation assist maneuvers, would act in the same fashion, virtuallyt unaffected.

The only way this hypo variable G would show up would be in two ways: 1) in how mass sticks together in a higher or lower G: Mercury has to be heavy metal, because lighter substances in its very light G (close to the Sun gives it ~0.4G) so more volatile materials are blown off by the solar wind. And the very large gas giants may be very small in terms of size and volume, but because of their very great G, they act as if they were very large, and thus retain vast atmospheres. 2) The other effect would be on an "escape velocity" spaceprobe, since as it travels from light G to progressively higher G on its way out of the solar system, it is behaving as if it were gaining "kg" mass. In fact, nothing changed in its mass, except how it is affected by the Sun's very distant but massive gravity: it's progressively pulling it back into the Sun as its "equivalent" inertial mass is growing with G.

All else remains equal. I hope this meets with your satisfaction, but if not, sound off. :)

BTW, this above reasoning implies that the reason Kepler's law of elliptical orbits works is because the inertial mass varies with G, so that it is light and faster nearer the Sun, but inertially "heavier" and slower away from it. The fact that some moons also display some elliptical orbits, especially if close to the planet, then also implies that the planet is "hot" in its radiation of electromagnetic energy, if G and em energy are inversely proportional as I suspect, hypothetically. But that is another subject all together, and regrettably I have not worked out the math.


Ivan

A NEW THRESHOLD OF SCIENCE AND GRAVITY?

This article in SpaceFlight Now shows slight hairline cracks in our current cosmology regarding CMB and gravitational lensing: New cosmic look may cast doubts on big bang theory.

The uneven distribution of the cosmic microwave background, combined with lack of gravitational lensing,
may be indicative that the early universe's "inflation" theory, which I always thought was ad hoc, simply didn't happen. The universe did not have some mysterious super-inflation in the first nanoseconds of existence. And the fact that we can now see fully formed galaxy clusters and red giant stars at the very beginning of the hypothesized Big Bang, also casts doubts on the Big Bang itself. Gravitational lensing may not even be what Einstein et al thought it was, but an artifact of light passing through variable gravity domains, so that it concentrates 'lens like' into relatively light G around hot bodies, like galaxies and stars, and gets redirected back into the very great G of deep space in between, so the effect gives us lensing when viewed from here. This is potentially new science on the cutting edge frontier of space, and what will become clearer when we dedicate studies to actually measuring G in deep space.

Ivan

RELATIVITY MATH

In this section of on Relativity, it says in sect. 1.5 Corresponding States, in reference to 'inertial relativity':

---

Quote:

"In effect, then, ether theories assert that light is based in a non-inertial substance, so the principle of inertial relativity (if it is to be meaningful) does not apply to light or its medium. In order to maintain this view, ether theories are forced to conclude that observers are generally being misled about the "true" spatial and temporal intervals between events, presumably as a result of anisotropic distortions of rulers and changes in the rates of his clocks due to "absolute velocity" through the ether, all conspiring to make it appear as if each system of local coordinates is the true rest frame of the ether. According to this interpretation, rulers must automatically contract in the direction of motion, and clocks must slow down and somehow offset their synchronizations at different locations and states of motion, so that they conform to one of the systems of local coordinates in the theory developed by Lorentz in the years from 1886 to 1904."

---

BBC News: Talking Point, radio program on Space Shuttle's future, which I am told is broadcast to 65 countries.

I had the privilege of participating today in a BBC radio program talking about the future of the Space Shuttle and science in space. Main speakers were Sir Martin Rees, British astronomer, and Dr. Mary Ellen Weber, NASA astronaut. My input was no more than that of an eyewitness seeing space shuttle Discovery coming in for a landing over my small piece of sky early that morning. My other input was that only with humans in space, as opposed to merely robotics, do we get a whole world perspective of our planet, what is going on ecologically, a sense of one world, and the fragile beauty of it.

Speaking for me is never as easy as writing, but I hope I offered something of value in the few minutes I allotted to me. I'd gladly do it again, for my 10 minutes of world fame! :-))

Ivan

Speeking is not easy for either Ivan although I have started to get over it and move on. I am glad that you had the chance to talk on the BBC.

I used to do closed circuit televison situation updates for the Intelligence Community. It was like being one of the talking heads on CNN.

I always found it a challenge.

On a side note I am taking a course in Human Biology and the Professor teaching it finally clearified some issues regarding atoms and chemestry during a discussion of the forms of matter, that I never understood as a child.

Its exciting to have that understanding now, when I look at the periodic table I can visualize how all of the elements combine together to make up molecules and can build diagrams of molecules in my mind and look at them.

She is an excelent proffessor and much experienced in teaching. If I had time I was thinking about exploring the concepts of chemistry as they relate to the formation of the forms of mater. I may buy myself a periodic table, I think from the therorectical side that there are a number of compounds and molecules out there that would have some interesting properties and that there is still a lot to discoover in the field of chemestry, especially as it relates to subject such as high temperature super conductors and all the rest.

On a more positive personnal note I have a feeling I may be finally getting back into federal service.

I have never been very capitalistic, I would rather have a stable job and be a servent of the people than a capitalist.

Ed Chesky

FLUFFY DUST BALL COMETS?

I wrote above, July 3, 2005, just before "Deep Impact's" Tempel1 hit, that comets are dusty dirty snowballs that acted as "scrubbers" in the higher G of the outer solar system, and then as release mechanisms within the inner lower G solar system, of molecules gathered earlier on their highly elliptical paths. This was also echoed in my Bad Astronomy (now BAUT) forum at http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?p=449947#post449947 , where I mentioned the fluffy "dust balls" aspect of comets. Now it seems this has been borne out in latest data gathered from Deep Impact: Tempel1 Update, where they say:

"The outer tens of meters (yards) of the comet is less strong than a snow bank, said Deep Impact's Principal Investigator Michael A'Hearn, an astronomer at the University of Maryland.

Still, the object's gravity holds it all together.

Dust emanates from the comet in frequent outbursts, likely a result of being warmed by the Sun."

Pluto's two new moons?

Is this one more bit of evidence that Newton's G for the outer solar system is greater than Earth's 1 G at 1 AU? At Pluto's ~40 AU, G should be about 40 G, per my calculations. (Delta G seems to grow at a constant 1 G per AU, if the Axiomatic Equation is correct.) However, all this remains a mysterious astronomy 'puzzle' for now.

Ivan

Space.com's Milky Way's Big Black Hole Gets Downsized

I suspect the size of any galactic 'black hole' is directly proportional to the ambient star light energy received from the peripheral galaxy. Per the Axiomatic Equation, this supergravity galactic center is where all this light cancels on a point, so its natural gravity modifying characteristic is nulled, and maximum gravity results. There, G' = c, where Newton's G is equivalent to light energy received (as a function of cancelled 1G*c in SI units). But this is way post-Newton-Einstein gravity research, so stay tuned... next hundred years, perhaps.

Ivan

Image of asteroid Itokawa, which shows a detritus littered surface. This lends more credence to the idea that asteroids are solar system vacuum cleaners as they range from very great gravity in the outer system, and release mechanisms of accumulated stuff when in the inner lower G system. Surface should be soft and powdery, made up of all the molecules and dust balls, and small rocks, accumulated while traveling the higher G regions.

Ivan

The Billiard Problem and Game Theory


I have a lot of sympathy for Dr. Nash, to a large degree he lived in isolation and loneliness. He even went so far as to discuss gravity with Einstien and was rebuffed. This set him on a downward spiral because he knew he was correct and a doctor of physics later proved what he was saying was indeed true.

Sir Issac Newton suffered from the same problem, as did Niki Tesla. All understood that there is an order to the universe and that there is something to gravity that is just out of our reach. In the quest for the solution we had to probe the deepest reaches of our minds and wrestle with concepts of good evil, lust desire, mathmatics and geometry and game theory.

I my fight I found the solution to the trisection of the angle and solved the Billiard Problem and was one of the greatest network code breakers DOD ever saw.

With appropriate medication and conseling Dr. Nash was cured and leads a productive life. He was awarded numerous awards for his work.

And yes it was that close to nuclear war at the End of the Cold War and in India. I had to do something so I took a great gamble and use my knowledge of game theory, computers and spy craft to do something about it. It was great risk and I played with the forces of nuclear war. I prayed a lot becaue if I made a mistake and if the signals were read wrong and if the intelligence services were not reading my emails it would have been a nuclear holocost.

Ed Chesky

Here is a link to Dr. Nash

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Nash.html

It was mistake to underestimate Saddam and Osama both are brillient men and masters of the game as were the heads of the KGB in the old days.

Look at Dr. Nash and then look at Osama and think about game theory and the strategy Osama came up with to defeat the Soviet in Afghanistan.

When people ask me how I solved the Billiard Problem and Trisection of the angle with a compass and ruler I tell them like Descates it came to me.

In a poetic sense the best way I can express it is somewhat as Oppenhiemer did when he witnessed the birth of the atmoic age by wrtting, "I have become Shiva Destroyer of Worlds".

In my case within my mind it was as I looked on the face of god.

And Lo I gazed upon the firmament and saw the wonders of creation, spread out across the sea of eternity.

Upon that framework, I saw the tapestry of creation shimmering in the light of God.

Within the fabric of creation I glimpsed a fragment of the truth.

Looking upon its perfection I was left senseless.

What this bodes I have no idea, although I feel that in my sensless state I was touched by the hand of God and given direction.

Ed Chesky

MISSION TO SATURN and its moons, the Cassini-Huygens probes, and Titan.

The links in this BBC Science pages gives a quick overview of what had been achieved thus far on this Saturnian voyage. The Jovian giants are vastly different from the small rocky planets of the inner solar system, so they represent something mysterious. For example, how could Titan, about the size of small Mercury (no atmosphere), have such a thick (almost Earth like density) atmospere, or tiny Encelatus have any atmosphere at all, which it does? Is there something else at work here not figured in with a constant-universal-G? Worth a better look, and find out what is G out there. Why are rings formed around the Jovians? Does the Sun have rings, i.e., asteroid belt, Kuiper belt, Oort 'belt', etc. Also, does Sedna have a large atmopshere more like a gas giant? Does Charon, Pluto's moon, also have an atmosphere like its parent? All worthy of future study, I should think, given that the constitution of the gas giants, and beyond, is giving us some sort of clue. Is it that the 'ratio' force of how masses attract, Newton's G, in those far off reaches is greater than here?

It should be remembered that Sir Isaac Newton based his cosmology on the premise that the physical relationships and forces on Earth are, as Einstein later accepted, isotropic and homogenous. So what we observed here on Earth should apply to the whole universe. But this was merely an assumption without further evidence, so all measures of distant bodies, whether planets in our solar system or far off galaxies, neutron stars, etc., was calculated using a universal-constant-G. The fact that it is usuable, and we landed Huygens on Titan, is proof that (even if we were wrong) it worked, provided we were consistant. However, other evidence would point to a greater likelyhood of G being not a universal constant, but a measured variable instead.

Ivan

TITAN-GANYMEDE ATMOSPHERES -- a physics conundrum?

Here's a quote from NASA page on Saturn's largest moon Titan. Note how dense is Titan's atmosphere, a moon in size smaller than Earth, though larger than Mercury:

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Quote:

Titan is the second-largest moon in the entire solar system (Jupiter's Ganymede is slightly larger). It's bigger than two planets, Mercury and Pluto. Circling Saturn far from the Sun, its surface temperature is only -180? C (-292? F). And it's the only moon with a dense atmosphere -- so dense, in fact, that Titan's near-surface atmospheric pressure is about 60% greater than Earth's. That's about what a scuba diver feels under 20 feet of water.

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Titan's atmosphere is ten times denser than Earth's, though the moon is less than half our size. The composition is largely nitrogen, like Earth's, with a small component of methane. So chemical composition cannot be blamed here. How can this be, unless Newton's G is greater there than here? My calculations show G should be at about 10 times Earth's G, since Saturn is about 9.5 AU vs. Eath's 1 AU. If G grows in linear proportion to distance from the Sun, then it all fits. Awaiting more good news... Thanks Titan!

Ivan

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8395