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Old Photons


Ed in Houston

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 Here is an image of some old photons. They were impinging on my back patio the other night in Houston so I thought I would gather some up. These photons had been tirelessly traveling to Earth for 300 million years before they were scooped up by a parabolic mirror and turned into electron volts in the pixel wells of a CCD camera that was cooled down to -30C. The cooling mostly eliminates thermal noise which would completely overwhelm the old photons scooped up.
 
The old photon's representation are the smudges in the center of the attached image. They originated in galaxies a long time ago far, far away and collectively are called Stephen's Quintet.
 
The second image is the small instruments used to scoop up the photons. The attending life form is one of my helpers, Isaac, who once saw a squirrel (who was the apple of his eye) fall out of a tree and then barked to me that he had discovered gravity.
 
Ed in Houston
 
 
Old photons

old_photons.jpg.7a6a462f57e3d513017ca979

 

Photon scooper- upper and helper Isaac

6inch_f5_Isaac.jpg.6e5d4c5841cba43848a40

 

Ed in Houston

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Nice photons Ed and Isaac Newton.  Well done.  

      Curious if you are in Houston, how did you get such a clear photon picture with all of the ambient light around?

 

jimmyt

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27 minutes ago, jimmyt said:

Nice photons Ed and Isaac Newton.  Well done.  

      Curious if you are in Houston, how did you get such a clear photon picture with all of the ambient light around?

 

jimmyt

Here is a narrative that I wrote about 20 years ago on the subject of imaging galaxies from the city. The math is rather complicated but essentially requires maximizing the signal to noise ratio of the images where the photons are the signal and the noise is ambient light.

Other "tricks" can be employed to image the planets like this image of Jupiter taken from my back yard in 2015. And again it is just a matter of paying attention to the mathematics.

jupiter-2015-11-february_05-45ut.jpg.15e

 

Ed in Houston

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Ed,

Speaking of photons, what is your take on the original experiments of Nicolas Gisin (1997) in which the Geneva Researcher created pairs of entangled photons and sent them flying apart along optical fibers. When one encountered the researcher’s mirrors and was forced to make a random choice to go one way or the other, it’s entangled twin, nearly 7 miles away,  always instantaneously acted in unison and invariably took the complementary option. 

 Instantaneous is the key word here. The reaction of the twin was not delayed by the amount of time that light would have traversed those 7 miles- it  happened at least 10,000 times faster, which was the experiment’s testing limit. Indeed, quantum theory predicts that an entangled particle knows what it’s twin is doing and instantaneously mimics it’s actions even if the twins lived in separate galaxies billions of light-years apart. 

Does this not fly in the face of Einstein’s notion of the impossibility of “spooky action at a distance” or non-local correlation? As I understand it, the expansion of these experiments have proven beyond argument, the fallacy of the classical paradigm in physics that you cannot have instantaneous connections between objects-not in the universe which we have always imagined ourselves to live in. 

In fact, as I understand it, experiment  after experiment continues to suggest that we-  consciousness, the mind- create space and time, not the other way around. Without consciousness, space and time are nothing. What does this rearrangement of Einstein‘s classical physics portend? Funky photons?

What you look for is what is looking

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 It would have been a mistake for proponents of Newtonian mechanics to say the science was already settled when Einstein proposed Relativity. It might also be a mistake by the proponents Relativity to say the science is settled.

It appears that the entangled photons instantaneously know the state of their partner. The exciting thing about this is that it might be possible using the entanglement phenomenon to communicate across the universe instantaneously. This could explain why we have not found evidence of ETs using radio telescopes. What self respecting ET would wish to communicate across the galaxy using radio waves that only travel at the speed of light?

There are many who believe that consciousness is somehow intimately connected to the universe as quantum measurements by consciousness seems to be required to cause collapse of the wave function. The Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics, also described as "consciousness causes collapse of the wave function", is an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which consciousness is postulated to be necessary for the completion of the process of quantum measurement. This neatly sets up a testable hypothesis to determine if an AI entity is conscious.

If the Von Neumann interpretation is true then an observation made by an AI entity can be proven to be conscious if it causes a collapse of the wave function upon making a quantum observation. This would prove that consciousness is substrate independent and suggests that human consciousness cam be uploaded to a computer substrate and free humans to escape the surly bond of the flesh.

Ed in Houston

 

 

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Ed,

I greatly appreciate your articulate and provocative response. While I understand your AI collorary, AI would not exist but for human consciousness. 

This human consciousness is co-relative with objects in the space-time realm. Suffusing the cosmos is the realm of the human mind, whose observations cause objects to materialize, to assume one property or another, or to jump from one position to another without passing through any intervening space. Should AI application create similar results, we should remember that it is a simple adjunct to our human consciousness.

 I believe physics and science has marginalized human consciousness in its progress. I believe physics now concludes inexorably that human consciousness is not secondary to the material universe but is indeed one with it. This leads to some rather intriguing conclusions and I am certain you would agree that human consciousness has long preceeded the advent of space exploration. Where does this take us as human beings beyond our incessant quest for ET’s? Best, bubba 

What you look for is what is looking

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Well, I happen to believe there are ETs. I do not however believe in "flying saucers" but do believe that there is "intelligent" life elsewhere in the cosmos.
 
Traveling anywhere has always been riding on or in something like a horse or being encapsulated in a machine like a car or more recently spaceships. Scooting around our solar system in spaceships is likely to come to past in the near future with just a minor enhancement of today's technology but traveling to other star systems requires a great leap in technology due to the vast distances, probably hundreds of years hence. By the time this level of technology comes into existence people will have long advanced beyond the necessity to encapsulate the flesh in a flying machine in order to move one's consciousnesses around the universe, hence no spaceships.
 
Also remember that technology advances exponentially. Homo used the same Oldowan stone tool set for a million years w/o. any significant changes. Some minor changes in technology occurred in only two hundred years between 1600 and 1800. If someone who was living in 1600 was magically transported to 1800, he would only see a few minor changes to peoples lives. If a man who lived in 1900 was magically transported to the year 2000, only one hundred years later, he would see massive changes and likely be somewhat disoriented for a period of time with a case of future shock. In stead of horses, people would be riding in cars traveling at high speeds on "rock" roads inside machines. Flying would be no longer be just for the birds, even flying to the moon. People would be plugged into a global brain called the internet by harnessing a force of nature called electricity.
 
Now go a couple of hundred years into the future to 2200. One might envision better spaceships zipping around the galaxy with their flesh harbored consciousness encapsulated in the flesh sustaining environment of a flying machine. This is the kind of thinking a person in 1800 would have with him imagining the future as people riding fast and far on a super horses.
 
That is why we imagine that there are ETs riding around in spaceships, just an enhancement of what people have today. Traveling to the stars in two hundred years will more likely mean abandonment of the flesh and just moving their mass-less consciousness around. Technology advances exponentially. Any intelligent life only slightly more advanced than humans would have little need for spaceships to move around the universe, hence there are no flying saucers but there are ETs.
 
And of course this falls within the domain of my belief system.
 
 
Ed in Houston
 
 
 

 

 

 

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Ed,

You missed my point! According to Quantum Physics, human consciousness creates space and time not the other way around. If human consciousness did not exist, there would be no space, time or the material universe. You can hang with the Jetsons and fly with Elroy but this only real space you have traveled is somewhere between your left ear and your right ear. Also, human consciousness emanates through our brain not from our brain. Not sure where this leads!

What you look for is what is looking

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  • 1 month later...

I caught these photons from the Orion Nebula last night. Not nearly as old as yours but still 1,344 light years from earth.   Single tracked image.  1 minute  canon 6d 400mm f5.6 iso 1000  

DB432EE4-0FF8-4C8C-803B-BADE5AF334AE.jpeg

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"it's not dead it's sleeping"

Santee ca, zone10a/9b

18 miles from the ocean

avg. winter 68/40.avg summer 88/64.records 113/25

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Very nice image Steve. With a one minute exposure, you must have had the camera mounted on a tracking system (equatorial mount). Also it is difficult to capture the faint outer wisp of Orion's nebulosity without over exposing the brightest part of the nebula. Well done.

Ed in Houston

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3 hours ago, Ed in Houston said:

Very nice image Steve. With a one minute exposure, you must have had the camera mounted on a tracking system (equatorial mount). Also it is difficult to capture the faint outer wisp of Orion's nebulosity without over exposing the brightest part of the nebula. Well done.

Ed in Houston

Yes. I use a sky tracker. Works ok for when I don’t want to set up the 8” SCT. 

0DC5821D-F6BE-4469-B97B-7D966D3B586E.jpeg

"it's not dead it's sleeping"

Santee ca, zone10a/9b

18 miles from the ocean

avg. winter 68/40.avg summer 88/64.records 113/25

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