As Above, So Below

I just don’t have it in me anymore to deal with angry or upset people. This is said after years of patience and many sordid experiences in the extreme. I don’t understand why or how to help individuals in my family (and by extension associates and my fellow man) who are like this and I don’t really care to keep trying at my own expense. Can’t you feel how this kind of emotion and behavior is rotting you out from the inside? It doesn’t just erode you, it slowly destroys all the joy in the good human beings you might be blessed to have around you.

I’m convinced: Insanity is other people.

…when one has been through so much gritty shit that an eerie serenity begins accompanying situations that would normally at least really stress people out. I’m not saying the stress response is absent in me, but I don’t know if this calm is a good or bad thing. What does it point to? Wisdom and experience, or just a jaded but steely perspective? I’m gonna go with a little of column A and healthy serving of column B.

The leap from our universe to another is theoretically possible, say physicists. And the technology to test the idea is available today

The idea that our universe is embedded in a broader multidimensional space has captured the imagination of scientists and the general population alike. 

This notion is not entirely science fiction. According to some theories, our cosmos may exist in parallel with other universes in other sets of dimensions. Cosmologists call these universes braneworlds. And among that many prospects that this raises is the idea that things from our Universe might somehow end up in another.

A couple of years ago, Michael Sarrazin at the University of Namur in Belgium and a few others showed how matter might make the leap in the presence of large magnetic potentials. That provided a theoretical basis for real matter swapping. 

Today, Sarrazin and a few pals say that our galaxy might produce a magnetic potential large enough to make this happen for real. If so, we ought to be able to observe matter leaping back and forth between universes in the lab. In fact, such observations might already have been made in certain experiments.

The experiments in question involve trapping ultracold neutrons in bottles at places like the Institut Laue Langevin in Grenoble, France, and the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics. Ultracold neutrons move so slowly that it is possible to trap them using ‘bottles’ made of magnetic fields, ordinary matter and even gravity.

One reason to do this is  to measure how quickly the neutrons decay by beta emission. So physicists measure the rate at which the neutrons hit the bottle walls and how quickly this drops.   

There are two processes at work here: the rate of neutron decay and the rate at which neutrons escape from the bottle. So in the case of an ideal bottle, the rate of decay should be equal to the beta decay rate. But the bottles are not ideal so the rate of decay is always faster. 

That leaves open the possibility that there might be a third process at work: that some of the extra decay might be the result of neutrons jumping from our universe to another. 

So Sarrazin and co have used the measured decay rates to place an upper limit on how often this can happen. 

Their conclusion is that the probability of a neutron jumping ship is smaller than about one in a million.

That doesn’t really say anything about whether matter swapping actually takes place. Only that if it does, it doesn’t happen very often.  

However, Sarrazzin and co also say it should be straightforward to take better data that places stricter limits.

According to their theoretical work, a change in the gravitational potential should also influence the rate of matter swapping. So one idea is to carry out a neutron trapping experiment that lasts for a year or more, allowing the Earth to complete at least one orbit of the Sun.

In that time, the gravitational potential changes in a way that should influence the rate of matter swapping. Indeed, there ought to be an annual cycle. “If one can detect such a modulation it would be a strong indication that matter swapping really occurs,” they say.

That would be one of the biggest and most controversial discoveries in modern physics and one that is possible with technologies available today. 

Anyone got an old neutron bottle lying around and a bit of spare time on their hands?

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1201.3949: Experimental Limits On Neutron Disappearance Into Another Braneworld

(via Technology Review)

In domestic relationships, one of the quickest ways to butter up your partner is by taking out the trash. In business, removing festering piles of waste also makes you the sort of person who’s gets missed when you’re not around.

In 2009, Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez were recent graduates of the University of California at Berkeley who had both been offered positions in consulting and investment banking. Yet both were stuck on an idea they came across in their business ethics class: Gourmet mushrooms grow and flourish in recycled coffee grounds; thus, waste from one industry could be fertile ground for another. Trash, if not treasure, could be a sustainable and cost-free raw material.

The two set to experimenting with growing mushrooms in coffee grounds in the basement of Velez’s fraternity. They managed one crop in an old paint bucket and immediately charged out to their local Whole Foods, where they showed their harvest to the first person they saw in the produce department: “Hey, look, we grew these mushrooms.”

The two were sent from department to department by managers who were curious—and more than a little bemused—by the two college kids and their bucket of mushrooms. Two weeks later, they received a call from the regional produce manager for Northern California Whole Foods stores. They were told that if they could figure out how to do it on a larger scale, “we can blow this up in stores.”

So Arora and Velez turned down their corporate job offers and, learning from YouTube videos, trained themselves as urban mushroom farmers. “We both believe to our core that business doesn’t have to be something where for-profit is bad and nonprofit is good,” Arora says. “It’s an awesome tool, if leveraged correctly, to really make a quick difference.”

…

What started as a small-scale farm supplying local restaurants and a few groceries expanded to include the mushroom kits, which now sell at 1,000 retail centers nationally. Since its founding, Back To The Roots has repurposed 1 million pounds of coffee grounds. After one year, the company had revenue of a quarter-million dollars; last year, it increased that number to $1.4 million. The company forecasts $5 million in revenue this year.

Continue reading at GOOD

Taking a dance course by the same name this semester which will be focusing on, “Sources, dimensions, and elements of ritual; values being ritualized. Creating ritual components through storytelling, chanting, movement, and wearing or carrying special clothing and objects.”

Really, really hoping this class kicks ass. Paranoid of it encompassing some kind of neo hippie new age fluff that discerning explorers do their very best to avoid. I will be seriously impressed if this course meets or surpasses my modest expectations.

jennaddenda replied to your post: Long weekend… is long. Navigating a 1500+ raver crowd…

Oh, did you go to Winter Warmer? How was?

It looked like an epic weekend and for those who attended. 1500+ is a rough estimate from the last turn out in 2010 but I believe it was closer to 2000 people over the course of the event. Was only on site for two sets on Friday and Saturday since I was invited up by my friend Benn (aka The Flashbulb | music) and a couple friends of his who were also playing the shows. Captured some excellent shots of the guys in their “tracksuit entourage.” Good times and silly shenanigans. You’ll see when the photos surface…