Good work on those dust particles. Following up on Clifford’s question about the song is all.

Some of us might have read about Gurdieff and Ouspensky and the spreading of a philosophy? Gave us a flavour of the Dervish ways. Spinning.

They use this image in combination with other “picture words” to explain the tariqa. Lovely idea!

To me, that is a wonderful way to work. Each picture leaves a space(quark to quark measure in analogy?), for more ideas to enter. While it is historical(self remembering), it might support the movement forward.

Mean anything to you?

-cvj

-cvj

Clifford’s method of teaching while ’sitting under a tree’ … How about something from the sufis? They use this image in combination with other “picture words” to explain the tariqa. Lovely idea! http://www.amara.com/athousand/Onethousandandone.html#picturewords

In the constellation of Cygnus, there lurks a mysterious force–the black hole of Cygnus X-1…
Six stars of the Northern Cross
In mourning for their sister’s loss
In a final flash of glory
Nevermore to grace the night…

Invisible to telescopic eye
Infinity, the star that would not die
All to dare to cross her course
Are swallowed by a fearsome force
Through the void
To be destroyed
Or is there something more?
Atomized…at the core?
Or through the astral door?
To soar…

The X-ray is her siren song
My ship cannot resist her long
Nearer to my deadly goal
Until the black hole
Gains control…

Spinning, whirling
Still descending
Like a spiral sea
Unending…
Sound and fury
Drown my heart
Every nerve is torn apart…

I bet you could work causal Rindler horizons into this somehow…

This continues to be very interesting.

I have nothing original to add. I found however this article. And also this wacky article on ‘39′ and relativistic time travel. Which made me think (anybody: pls feel free to point out the flaw in the logic) –

[a] to experience time dilation, one has to reach near-light speed velocity;

[b] for the ship to do so, the amount of energy needed would be tremendous; so huge in fact that it would be physically impossible for the ship to carry the ‘fuel’ that will eventually propel it to the desired speed;

[c] the other practical issue to deal with would be the length of time needed to reach near-’c’ speed, i.e., if the link/s above are correct, at 1g acceleration so as not to kill the volunteers the speed after 1 year of travel (relative to the inertial frame in which ship was stationary at t=0) would just be 0.77c, and it will take 5 yrs to reach say 0.99993c, a speed where time dilation would really kick in;

[d] hence, the volunteers would need more than 1 year to accelerate and a similar period to decelerate; however, the song says that the volunteers were away for just one year (what gives?);

[e] to my mind thus, the only way the volunteers could have done their exploration in just a year’s time would be via wormholes but I don’t think we can find that in the song (and would time dilation occur in such a scenario?).

Or perhaps the convenient answer to all of the above would be ‘poetic license’?

CC

PS – Can you at least share to us some of the supporting equations given by the class?

The detection of cosmic dust points to another facet of cosmic dust research: dust acting as photons. Once cosmic dust is detected, the scientific problem to be solved is an inverse problem to determine what processes brought that encoded photon-like object (dust) to the detector. Parameters such the particle’s initial motion, material properties, intervening plasma and magnetic field determined the dust particle’s arrival at the dust detector. Slightly changing any of these parameters can give significantly different dust dynamical behavior. Therefore one can learn about where that object came from, and what is (in) the intervening medium