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The Kline Directive: Economic Viability

Posted by Benjamin T. Solomon in business, complex systems, defense, economics, education, engineering, finance, military, nuclear weapons, philosophy, physics, policy, scientific freedom, space, sustainabilityTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments on The Kline Directive: Economic Viability

To achieve interstellar travel, the Kline Directive instructs us to be bold, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not. To extend the boundaries of our knowledge, to advocate new methods, techniques and research, to sponsor change not status quo, on 5 fronts:

1. Legal Standing. 2. Safety Awareness. 3. Economic Viability. 4. Theoretical-Empirical Relationship. 5. Technological Feasibility.

In this post I will explore Economic Viability. I have proposed the Interstellar Challenge Matrix (ICM) to guide us through the issues so that we can arrive at interstellar travel sooner, rather than later. Let us review the costs estimates of the various star drives just to reach the velocity of 0.1c, as detailed in previous blog posts:

Interstellar Challenge Matrix (Partial Matrix)

Propulsion Mechanism Legal? Costs Estimates
Conventional Fuel Rockets: Yes Greater than US$1.19E+14
Antimatter Propulsion: Do Not Know. Between US$1.25E+20 and US$6.25E+21
Atomic Bomb Pulse Detonation: Illegal. This technology was illegal as of 1963 per Partial Test Ban Treaty Between $2.6E12 and $25.6E12 . These are Project Orion original costs converted back to 2012 dollar. Requires anywhere between 300,000 and 30,000,000 bombs!!
Time Travel: Do Not Know. Requires Exotic Matter, therefore greater than antimatter propulsion costs of US$1.25E+20
Quantum Foam Based Propulsion: Do Not Know. Requires Exotic Matter, therefore greater than antimatter propulsion costs of US$1.25E+20
Small Black Hole Propulsion: Most Probably Illegal in the Future Using CERN to estimate. At least US$9E+9 per annual budget. CERN was founded 58 years ago in 1954. Therefore a guestimate of the total expenditure required to reach its current technological standing is US$1.4E11.

Note Atomic Bomb numbers were updated on 10/18/2012 after Robert Steinhaus commented that costs estimates “are excessively high and unrealistic”. I researched the topic and found Project Orion details the costs, of $2.6E12 to $25.6E12, which are worse than my estimates.

These costs are humongous. The Everly Brothers said it the best.

Let’s step back and ask ourselves the question, is this the tool kit we have to achieve interstellar travel? Are we serious? Is this why DARPA — the organization that funds many strange projects — said it will take more than a 100 years? Are we not interested in doing something sooner? What happened to the spirit of the Kline Directive?

From a space exploration perspective economic viability is a strange criterion. It is not physics, neither is it engineering, and until recently, the space exploration community has been government funded to the point where realistic cost accountability is nonexistent.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not about agreeing to a payment scheme and providing the services as contracted. Government contractors have learned to do that very well. It is about standing on your own two feet, on a purely technology driven commercial basis. This is not an accounting problem, and accountants and CFOs cannot solve this. They would have no idea where to start. This is a physics and engineering problem that shows up as an economic viability problem that only physicists and engineers can solve.

The physics, materials, technology and manufacturing capability has evolved so much that companies like Planetary Resources, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences Corp, Virgin Galactic, and the Ad Astra Rocket Company are changing this economic viability equation. This is the spirit of the Kline Directive, to seek out what others would not.

So I ask the question, whom among you physicist and engineers would like to be engaged is this type of endeavor?

But first, let us learn a lesson from history to figure out what it takes. Take for example DARPA funding of the Gallium Arsenide. “One of DARPA’s lesser known accomplishments, semiconductor gallium arsenide received a push from a $600-million computer research program in the mid-1980s. Although more costly than silicon, the material has become central to wireless communications chips in everything from cellphones to satellites, thanks to its high electron mobility, which lets it work at higher frequencies.”

In the 1990s Gallium Arsenide semiconductors were so expensive that “silicon wafers could be considered free”. But before you jump in and say that is where current interstellar propulsion theories are, you need to note one more important factor.

The Gallium Arsenide technology had a parallel commercially proven technology in place, the silicon semiconductor technology. None of our interstellar propulsion technology ideas have anything comparable to a commercially successful parallel technology. (I forgot conventional rockets. Really?) A guesstimate, in today’s dollars, of what it would cost to develop interstellar travel propulsion given that we already had a parallel commercially proven technology, would be $1 billion, and DARPA would be the first in line to attempt this.

Given our theoretical physics and our current technological feasibility, this cost analysis would suggest that we require about 10 major technological innovations, each building on the other, before interstellar travel becomes feasible.

That is a very big step. Almost like reaching out to eternity. No wonder Prof Adam Franks in his July 24, 2012 New York Times Op-Ed, Alone in the Void, wrote “Short of a scientific miracle of the kind that has never occurred, our future history for millenniums will be played out on Earth”.

Therefore, we need to communicate to the theoretical physics community that they need get off the Theory of Everything locomotive and refocus on propulsion physics. In a later blog posting I will complete the Interstellar Challenge Matrix (ICM). Please use it to converse with your physicist colleagues and friends about the need to focus on propulsion physics.

In the spirit of the Kline Directive — bold, explore, seek & change — can we identify the 10 major technological innovations? Wouldn’t that keep you awake at night at the possibility of new unthinkable inventions that will take man where no man has gone before?

PS. I was going to name the Interstellar Challenge Matrix (ICM), the Feasibility Matrix for Interstellar Travel (FMIT), then I realized that it would not catch on at MIT, and decided to stay with ICM.

Previous post in the Kline Directive series.

Next post in the Kline Directive series.

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Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

Congratulations Skydiver Felix Baumgartner, on the success of your 24 mile skydive. You proved that it is possible to bail out of a space ship and land on Earth safely.

The records are nice to have but the engineering was superb!

To achieve interstellar travel, the Kline Directive instructs us to be bold, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not. To extend the boundaries of our knowledge, to advocate new methods, techniques and research, to sponsor change not status quo, on 5 fronts:

1. Legal Standing. 2. Safety Awareness. 3. Economic Viability. 4. Theoretical-Empirical Relationship. 5. Technological Feasibility.

In this post I will explore Legal Standing.

With respect to space exploration, the first person I know of who pushed the limits of the law is Mr. Gregory W. Nemitz of The Eros Project. He started this project in March 2000. As a US taxpayer, Nemitz made the claim that he is the Owner of Asteroid 433, Eros, and published his claim about 11 months prior to NASA landing its “NEAR Shoemaker” spacecraft on this asteroid.

Within a few days of the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft landing on his property, Nemitz sent an invoice for twenty dollars to NASA, for parking and storage fees at twenty cents per year, payable in one century installments.

Citing faulty interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, NASA refused to pay the fees required by Nemitz. This issue then proceeded to court. Unfortunately, on April 26, 2004 U.S. District Court Judge Howard McKibben Ordered the case to be dismissed.

The moral of this real story is that you don’t have to be a high flying physicist, planetary geologist, astrobiologist or propulsion engineer to advocate &/or sponsor interstellar travel initiatives. You could even be a retired coastguard, and miraculous things might happen.

Congratulations Gregory Nemitz for trying something nobody else dared to do in the spirit of the Kline Directive.

Planetary Resources, Inc. whose founders are Eric Anderson and Peter H. Diamandis could possibly provide the second challenge to space law. How? The “treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries” … you see where I’m going with asteroid mining?

I’m not an attorney, but these are things we need to watch for. In the light of Planetary Resources objectives and activities Nemitz’s parking fee case poses some dilemmas. First, if the US Government will not stand up for its citizens or entities, what is to stop other governments from imposing taxes for mining what is “to benefit all countries”?

Unfriendly governments will be quick to realize that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by pursuing such claims in international courts, and through UN organizations.

Second, the judicial system could not intervene because, were it to agree, then everyone would have a claim to outer space property without investing in their claim. That would be like saying John Doe, during the gold rush of the 1840s & 1850s, could claim half of California but had no intention to exercise his mining rights.

Everything hinges on what one could consider an ‘investing’. The Homestead Acts of 1862 to 1909 would be a useful analog. These Acts gave an applicant ownership at no cost of farmland called a “homestead” to anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, had to be 21 or older or the head of a family, live on the land for five years, and show evidence of having made improvements.

So what would an interplanetary equivalent be? You, the reader could propose your version. Here is a first pass at it. There are two parts:

1. Asteroids: An applicant may claim ownership to an asteroid, provided the claimant had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, and can exercise the claim by placing a token of claimant’s ownership on the claimed asteroid within 1,000 Earth days or equivalent, of submitting the claim. Upon placing the token on the asteroid, the claimant is then given 2,000 Earth days or equivalent, to show evidence of having developed the commercial value of the asteroid.

Failure to comply will cause the claim to be null & void and return the asteroid to the public for future applicants to claim the property.

2. Planetary Resources: An applicant may claim ownership of up to 25 km2 of planetary surface, and the mineral & water rights within the area, provided the claimant had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, and can exercise the claim by placing a token of claimant’s ownership on the claimed planetary surface within 1,000 Earth days or equivalent, of submitting the claim. Upon placing the token on the planetary surface, the claimant is then given 2,000 Earth days or equivalent, to show evidence of having developed the commercial value of this planetary surface.

Failure to comply will cause the claim to be null & void and return the planetary surface to the public for future applicants to claim the property.

In the case of gaseous planets like Jupiter, the claim shall be limited to 25 km3 at specified altitudes, longitudes, and latitutes.

Planetary Resources, Inc. I wish you the best.

Previous post in the Kline Directive series.

Next post in the Kline Directive series.

—————————————————————————————————

Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

Science and engineering are hard to do. If it wasn’t we would have a space bridge from here to the Moon by now. If you don’t have the real world practical experience doing either science or engineering you won’t understand this, or the effort and resources companies like Boeing, Lockheed, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences Corp, Scaled Composites, Virgin Galactic, and the Ad Astra Rocket Company have put into their innovations and products to get to where they are, today.

If we are to achieve interstellar travel, we have to be bold.
We have to explore what others have not.
We have to seek what others will not.
We have to change what others dare not.

The dictionary definition of a directive is, an instruction or order, tending to direct or directing, and indicating direction.

Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, US Department of Defense 2005, provides three similar meanings,

1. A military communication in which policy is established or a specific action is ordered.
2. A plan issued with a view to putting it into effect when so directed, or in the event that a stated contingency arises.
3. Broadly speaking, any communication which initiates or governs action, conduct, or procedure.

In honor of the late Prof. Morris Kline who authored Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, I have named what we need to do to ensure the success of our endeavors for interstellar space travel, as the Kline Directive.

His book could be summarized into a single statement, that mathematics has become so sophisticated and so very successful that it can now be used to prove anything and everything, and therefore, the loss of certainty that mathematics will provide reasonability in guidance and correctness in answers to our questions in the sciences.

To achieve interstellar travel, the Kline Directive instructs us to be bold, to explore what others have not, to seek what others will not, to change what others dare not.

To extend the boundaries of our knowledge, to advocate new methods, techniques and research, to sponsor change not status quo, on 5 fronts:

1. Legal Standing.
2. Safety Awareness.
3. Economic Viability.
4. Theoretical-Empirical Relationship.
5. Technological Feasibility.

I will explore each of these 5 fronts on how we can push the envelop to reach the stars sooner rather than later.

Next post in the Kline Directive series

—————————————————————————————————

Benjamin T Solomon is the author & principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification, titled An Introduction to Gravity Modification, to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. For more information visit iSETI LLC, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative.

Solomon is inviting all serious participants to his LinkedIn Group Interstellar Travel & Gravity Modification.

The shift that has happened in 40 years which mainly has to do with climate change. Forty years ago, I could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, “we are as gods, we might as well get good at it”. Photographs of earth from space had that god-like perspective.

What I’m saying now is we are as gods and have to get good at it. Necessity comes from climate change, potentially disastrous for civilization. The planet will be okay, life will be okay. We will lose vast quantities of species, probably lose the rain forests if the climate keeps heating up. So it’s a global issue, a global phenomenon. It doesn’t happen in just one area. The planetary perspective now is not just aesthetic. It’s not just perspective. It’s actually a world-sized problem that will take world sized solutions that involves forms of governance we don’t have yet. It involves technologies we are just glimpsing. It involves what ecologists call ecosystem engineering. Beavers do it, earthworms do it. They don’t usually do it at a planetary scale. We have to do it at a planetary scale. A lot of sentiments and aesthetics of the environmental movement stand in the way of that.

Continue reading “We are as Gods…” and watch the video interview

One question that fascinated me in the last two years is, can we ever use data to control systems? Could we go as far as, not only describe and quantify and mathematically formulate and perhaps predict the behavior of a system, but could you use this knowledge to be able to control a complex system, to control a social system, to control an economic system?

We always lived in a connected world, except we were not so much aware of it. We were aware of it down the line, that we’re not independent from our environment, that we’re not independent of the people around us. We are not independent of the many economic and other forces. But for decades we never perceived connectedness as being quantifiable, as being something that we can describe, that we can measure, that we have ways of quantifying the process. That has changed drastically in the last decade, at many, many different levels.

Continue reading “Thinking in Network Terms” and watch the hour long video interview

Scientific discovery in the natural sciences has proceeded at an exponential rate and we are now seeing the social sciences experience a profound transformation as a consequence of computational social science. How far computational social science will reinvent social science is the big question. Some of the themes I’ve explored in my own work have been about the relationship between political philosophy and science and whether the computational sciences can help formulate new conceptions of societal organisation. Many in the field seem to think so.

These three things—a biological hurricane, computational social science, and the rediscovery of experimentation—are going to change the social sciences in the 21st century. With that change will come, in my judgment, a variety of discoveries and opportunities that offer tremendous prospect for improving the human condition. It’s one thing to say that the way in which we study our object of inquiry, namely humans, is undergoing profound change, as I think it is. The social sciences are indeed changing. But the next question is: is the object of inquiry also undergoing profound change? It’s not just how we study it that’s changing, which it is. The question is: is the thing itself, our humanity, also changing? (Nicholas A. Christakis, A NEW KIND OF SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR THE 21st CENTURY)

A biological understanding of human nature combined with new insights derived from computational social science can potentially revolutionise political, social and economic systems. Consequently there are profound philosophical implications. Secular political philosophy specifically emerged out of the European experience of Church and monarchical rule, and socialism emerged out of the experience of industrialisation and capitalist ideology. Therefore is it possible that a new political philosophy could emerge out of the reinvention of the social sciences?

One question that fascinated me in the last two years is, can we ever use data to control systems? Could we go as far as, not only describe and quantify and mathematically formulate and perhaps predict the behavior of a system, but could you use this knowledge to be able to control a complex system, to control a social system, to control an economic system? (Albert-lászló Barabási, THINKING IN NETWORK TERMS)

With Big Data we can now begin to actually look at the details of social interaction and how those play out, and are no longer limited to averages like market indices or election results. This is an astounding change. The ability to see the details of the market, of political revolutions, and to be able to predict and control them is definitely a case of Promethean fire — it could be used for good or for ill, and so Big data brings us to interesting times. We’re going to end up reinventing what it means to have a human society. (Alex (Sandy) Pentland, REINVENTING SOCIETY IN THE WAKE OF BIG DATA)

Edge has an excellent discussion exploring computational social science and how it could transform humanity. One of the exciting challenges I see will be to integrate the exponential discoveries in the natural sciences with the social sciences, and to truly build a civilisation upon rationality.

iPhone 5 Hyper-Anticipation: It Didn’t Mean What You Think it Meant (AGAIN)
https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/09/iphone-5-hyper-anticipation-it-didnt-mean-what-you-think-it-meant-again

Okay, now — bear with me on this — and check it out:
For now and for better or worse, The United States is home to a plurality of the world’s techiest technology, investment capital, productive creativity, and cutting edge research. As such, hiccups in those technology-driven economies of real currency and ideas can ripple around the entire planet.

Amid considerable anti-intellectualism and various public & private R&D funding issues, American tech leadership and innovation is stuttering and sputtering and might be in danger of faltering. While we’re not at that point just yet, there is an interesting harbinger with a peculiar manifestation: New iPhone Anticipation Loopiness. As I said, bear with me.

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This is a repost & redux from an October 5, 2011 Anthrobotic.com piece — published a day before the suspected-to-be-iPhone 5 was released as the iPhone 4S. While the fanboy drool and mainstream gee-whiz was considerably dialed down this time around (in part due to lots of leaking), the sentiment of this piece remains relevant and largely unchanged. Now, we did have the Nuclear-Powered Science Robot Dune Buggy with Lasers (AKA the rover Curiosity) this year, and that was very big, but on a societal level we still have a sad hole in our technology heart.

Of course any hand-wringing about the underlying catalyst for weird iPhone fervor is a so-called first-world luxury, but to that I say “Shhhh, Trickle Down Technonomics©® is real.“
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The Great Want
I was half-seriously saying to my friend Jason last night that waiting for the iPhone 5’s release is like waiting for Christmas morning when we were 10. Except that the reveal of this present will be more like “Here’s what we got you, but you can’t actually have it for another two to four weeks.“ That part’s kinda cruel. He’s at 3G, I’m at 3GS — upgrade is ferociously justified (and cheap here in Japan). So, like lots and lots of Americans and other people around the world, we’ve been not so patiently waiting for Tuesday morning; we have also been part of this peculiar intensity.

Troubling Telecommunication Technolust
Now, is there any other product, across any and all areas of industry, for which a pending release has been the subject of such anticipation, such broad media coverage, and so much conjecture? And how is it that the key marketing strategy for a company’s flagship revenue source is their absolute refusal to talk about the product until after its launch? Do we consumers really want the new hotness that badly? How are all these strings being pulled? How can so many otherwise reasonable adults have so much longing for this device?

Even if one’s not an iPhone user and has no plans to convert, chances are one is at least curious about what Apple’s got. I mean, be honest, even if you’ve got only a very general interest in technology, you’re going to be paying attention to the announcement. And if you’re not actively following the story, you’ll hear about it passively — it will be everywhere for a few days or a week or so.

So… what’s this all about?
It’s just a pretty new phone, right?

No.
We know that a phone hasn’t been just a phone for several years now — a lot of us hardly use the telephone part of the device at all. And, they’ve become, well, you know — smart. This guy (Mike Elgan) and this woman (Amber Case) have developed theories suggesting that smartphones are actually highly personalized digital information prosthetics, and we users are already cybernetic organisms (Anthrobotic.com nods in agreement). Smartphones connect us as individuals to the vast stream of human communication; they non-invasively enable the RAM & ROM of all recorded human history into the palm of our hands, and devices’ elegantly rapid penetration into everyday life has been… (drama pause) profound. Ask organizers and participants in the Arab Spring. Ask villagers in developing countries who lack roads and electricity — but do have respectable data plans. And ask again, if you like.

Mobile phones have become much more than the name implies, and as a practical tool, the iPhone 5 in particular will be an exciting addition to comms and gaming and entertainment blah blah blah. As per usual, Apple will probably introduce hardware and software features that will shape mobile technology on a global scale — that’s what Apple does.

And all that’s awesome whoo-hoo way to go, but still, it’s #5, just the latest iteration.
Not really THAT big of a deal, so why the hell do we care so much?

Deep-Seated Social-Psychological Phenomena Available in Red, White, & Blue
It seems to me that shallow, mindless American consumerism, certainly a well-documented species, is not the primary force driving our overblown iPhone 5 excitement and anticipation and media coverage and hyperbole. You’d think so, but…

Listen for the thud — here drops a cheesy armchaired macro-diagnosis:
Subconsciously — in my country — the rabid anticipation for the iPhone 5 is actually about hope, inasmuch as it’s about the American Dream. In a way.
Or, more accurately, the corpsification thereof. In a way.

And that is because we the people have almost nothing else to be excited about.
(except: The Nuclear-Powered Science Robot Dune Buggy with Lasers)

We of the Uninspiring Slump
Over at Anthrobotic.com, fundamental to my silly-ass take on tech is the primary tenet of the 51%+ Positive Technological Utopianism Movement (that I totally just invented), which is:

Technology is the fundamental precursor to civilization and is therefore the most powerful social force in the universe, yo. Srsly.

Humanity is in the midst of a rapid upswing in almost all facets of human development. Things are just getting better, all across the board. BUT, there are still some crappy little downward notches in the larger upward curve. We’re in one of those — the American Dream has lost coherence - and we are desperate for something big, something to inspire and unite us, something more than, oh I don’t know, the impotent & mentally retarded discourse of America’s pathetic political charade, for example.

A leap too far? Overgeneralizing? Pandering to the Dumb? Just dumb?
Well, I suppose it’s possible that the population of the U.S. who find themselves anywhere on the mildly-curious-to-completely-rapt scale of interest in the iPhone 5’s pending release are a poor sample from which to gauge the attitude of a nation. But for that to be the case it would have to be in another universe with different rules. Because A: There are around 310 million people in the U.S., and about 100 million are smartphone users, and I’d guess (and read survey data reporting) that a strong percentage of them are pretty interested in learning about or buying the iPhone 5 — so if you think such a massive population block that is engaged and ready to take action on an issue provides a poor statistical sample, well then, you can’t count. And because B: those 100 million people have nothing else to give a shit about.

The iPhone 5, Insidiously Alluring in a Vacuum!
So what the hell am I saying here? Well, The iPhone is an incredible device that quite literally represents a truckload of previously impossible mobile functionality. Think about it — just 4.5 years ago it didn’t exist, and the App Store (which has been copied by, ummm… everyone) is barely over 3 years old. It’s a beautifully designed tool, elegantly powerful in so many ways. But, it’s no revelation, it’s just a very precedented technological creation of late 2011; it’s a consumer product — and in another year, we’ll want the next version, and the next, and so on.

Physical artifacts are usually outshined by big ideas, but the thing is this: while we’re lousy with the former, we’re fresh out of the latter.

Projecting
Now this isn’t about dorks like myself and those inhabiting this higher ranks of sciencyness and geekdom — we’ve got plenty to excite us. But everyday humans in the U.S., where traditional notions of culture are diffuse and diluted, tend to unite around ideas and ideals — and very often those drive and/or are a product of scientific or technological advancement of some kind — and sometimes, that can inspire others around the world. The mass-production of automobiles and human flight inspired notions of the freedom of movement, TV launched and inspired vast visual creativity, and following the Soviet advances, the Apollo missions united the nation, gave new appreciation for the Pale Blue Dot, ROI-ed ten$ of billion$, and inspired the rest of the world to continue pushing into the frontier of space. And, American computer technology, much of it pioneered by Apple, jumpstarted what will probably be the single largest paradigm shift in the history of our species. It’s become natural for us to see great positivity and opportunity in our technological achievements.

Americans fundamentally appreciate and embrace innovation, and we want look to the future with hope, longing for new ideas and new developments that create new economies and new possibilities. But for the time being now, our American Dream is stuck in neutral and we have no common rallying point. Our nation’s greatest point of unity and excitement and anticipation is for the release of another mobile telecommunications device — the best thing we have to look forward to is Tim Cook, 10:00am, PST.

Well That’s not so Uplifting Now, is it?
We desperately want good news, we desperately want a new great project stabbing toward some awesome goal — and there’s just… nothing there. The economy is crap, there is no great leader to inspire us, and there is no great undertaking for the betterment of all humankind. That’s where the iPhone 5 anticipation energy comes from. Americans want what is new, we want to push forward, we want profound ideas to inspire us now and for decades to come — it’s in the fabric of the nation. If we were about to launch a manned mission to Mars, or a Manhattan Project-style energy initiative, or building hotels on the moon, this announcement would be but a spark.

Myself and millions will soon have a state of the art, super cool new phone. And the Dream will stay on break. Such is life. But it’s not gone, and do check back later — we might have space tourism and near-infinite fusion energy pretty soon!

It’s Tuesday night here in Japan — going to sleep.
I’ll check the morning news straight away, and I’ll be excited about the phone I will own in a few short weeks. It’ll be awesome, I’m sure. And the world’s most valuable company will get more valuable, I’m sure.

Aside from the next-next iPhone and a new figurehead, will another year bring anything new? Not so sure.

(The Nuclear-Powered Science Robot Dune Buggy with Lasers came close, didn’t it?)

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Thanks for reading!

-Reno at Anthrobotic.com

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Complexity decomplexified: A List of 200 Results Encountered over 55 Years

Otto E. Rossler

Faculty of Science, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Abstract

The present list was compiled by a “specialist for non-specialization” who owes this scientific identity to the masters of three disciplines: physicist Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker, biologist Konrad Lorenz and mathematician Bob Rosen. With the best findings compressed into a line or two by heart, the synopsis brings hidden patterns to the fore. Simultaneously the individual results become maximally vulnerable – so as to facilitate improvement or falsification.

(August 28, revised September 16, 2012)

Philosophical Preface

Descartes re-invented the rational world of Heraclitus. Specifically, he asked the following question (paraphrased): “Do the ‘assignment conditions’ that we find ourselves glued to (the body, the now, the qualia including color and joy) represent an acceptable state of affairs?” The answer is “yes,“ Descartes proposed: if and only if the other two conditions that hold us in their grip (the “laws” and the “initial conditions”momentarily applicable within the laws, to use Newton’s later terms) are consistent. As long as this “machine conjecture” is empirically fulfilled, an infinite privilege separates the conscious observer from all other inhabitants of the world: The others become “mere machines” in the experience of the first (so that he may, for example, do a brain operation on one of them to save his life). Levinas called this state of one’s being totally outside the other’s interior side, “exteriority.” The subject has the option of not misusing the infinite power of exteriority by acting fairly towards the poor “machine” of the other so as if it possessed a subjective side of its own – even though this cannot be proven and indeed is absurd to assume (were there not the miracle of the consciousness of the first). A single act of not misusing the infinite power of exteriority, performed by the inmate of the dream of consciousness on a fellow machine, would then put the Dream-Giving Instance to shame – unless it is benevolent itself. The fact that this risk is being taken by the DGI is a living proof, according to Descartes, that the chain of colorful subjective nows imposed on the victim of consciousness is not a “bad dream.” But this applies only as long as the “steel fibers” of the Cartesian coordinates, proposed to mathematically fit the colorless sub-portion of experience (its “Hades part”), prove to be consistent. This empirical question endows the study of their properties with a maximal dignity. In the Greek Hades, all quantitative relations valid in our upper world were preserved – except for the “blood” that endows them with color and substance. Hence the merely relational (“shadow”) part becomes an instrument by which to do good to one’s fellow inhabitants of the dream who, by their being machines, are totally given into the dreamer’s hand as hostages. This “exteriority theory” (Levinas) endows science with an infinite dignity – as long as it is empirically consistent. The task to include quantum mechanics – with its indeterminism and nonlocality explained by micro assignment – was singlehandedly taken up by Everett in the footsteps of Einstein. (I thank Ali Sanayei and Ivan Zelinka for discussions and Stephen Wolfram for encouragement. For J.O.R.)

The List

• Energy-saving voice-signal proportional amplitude-modulation (made distortion-free by negative feedback between rectified high-frequency output and low-frequency input)

• Z-incision (a non-mutilating circumcision method)

• “Invisible machines”: virtually infinitely many non-negative chemical variables that are almost all zero for most of the time (with arbitrarily long delays incurred at very low concentrations)

• Chemical evolution as a special case: forms an Erdoes-type growing automaton (similarly Stu Kaufmann, Joel Cohen and Koichiro Matsuno)

• Far-from-equilibrium statistical mechanics and chemical kinetics jointly predict the emergence of life with C-C-C- backbones in liquid water on earth and Europa (and with B-N-B-N- backbones in liquid ammonia inside Jupiter)

• Teilhard’s “second arrow” in statistical thermodynamics is a valid description of the implied asymptotic approach towards “point Omega”

• “Recursive evolution”: evolution improves evolution in the first place (with Michael Conrad, in the footsteps of John Holland and John von Neumann)

• Unlike “metabolic adaptation” (Darwin) which is non-predictive in its history-dependent details, “positional adaptation” (discovered in a discussion with Konrad Lorenz as being of equal rank) is predictive

• “What are brains for?” is a well-posed scientific question (in the new science of deductive biology)

• “The Rossler task” (Michael Conrad) or the “decision-type traveling salesman problem” (as its re-discoverers, Garey and Johnson, called it in their book “Computers and Intractability”)

• Ric Charnov’s “optimal foraging theory” is closely related (finding things “just in time” is what brains are made for)

• Goedel’s incompleteness theorem can be seen as a limiting solution to the NP-complete traveling salesman problem (so incompleteness becomes intuitive)

• “The bacterial brain” (residing in the cell membrane with both sensors and motors) implements a local solution to the “smoothed-out” traveling-salesman problem (with Hans Bremermann)

• “The brain equation” yields a highly efficient local solution to the decision-type traveling-salesman problem

• The brain equation attaches a positive or negative weight to all neighboring sources of different types in a distance-, angle- and time-dependent fashion (so that an optimum “sum direction” results, with all directions attached an either finite or infinite, positive or negative weight)

• Nonexistence of an “eusocial brain equation” (with Thimo Böhl and Oswald Berthold)

• “A universal brain”: the brain equation combined with a powerful “universal simulator” (or synonymously “cognitive map system” or Virtual-Reality machine “VR”)

• The combined system (brain equation plus artificial cognitive map system with overlap buffer and long-term storage device) is what Bill Seaman calls a “Neosentient”

• The “sinc algorithm” (real-space equivalent to a Fourier window in frequency space) can be approximated by a multi-level, multi-resolution, both ascending and descending Reichardt-von-Foerster type neural net (with Bernhard Uehleke)

• “Tolerance attractors”: form under recurrence in such a neural net (implementing Poincaré-Zeeman-Poston-DalCin “tolerance theory” in their realizing von Foerster’s prediction of “Platonic ideation”)

• The technical problem of “fast picture-shifting” in such multi-resolution level neural nets or wavelets, while solved by nature, still eludes science (with Michael Klein)

• “Pandaka-pygmaea Institute“ proposed to solve the Platonic and other brain problems by investigating the smallest fish’s brain (along with that of its normal-sized close relative, Gobius niger)

• The positive sum potential in the brain equation – “happiness” – is displayed by the young of social animals

• One of the sub-potentials in the brain equation – “bonding” – is displayed by all social animals

• Two distinct displays (like happiness and bonding) can acquire a functional overlap through an evolutionary accident called “Huxley evolutionary ritualization”

• Huxley’s accident happened independently in the evolution of two mammalian species: tail-wagging signals both bonding and happiness in wolves, and the Smiley face signals both happiness and bonding in humans (similarly Jan van Hoof and Frans de Waal)

• “All Animals Are Autistic” (AAAA): because the brain equation, an autonomous optimizer, is autistic by definition

• Every brain-equation-carrier is “alive” independently of hardware because it solves the positional-adaptation problem which is no less vital than the metabolic-adaptation problem (“chemical life” and “brain life” have equal ranks)

• Universal brains are “mirror-competent” (owing to their high simulational capability)

• Unlike humans and some other species, wolves do not have a universal brain (their VR component is too weak for mirror-competence)

• Smile-laughter overlap + strong bonding + mirror-competence = sufficient condition for an “epigenetic function change” in the sense of Robert Rosen to occur: the “personogenetic function change” (PFC)

• The PFC consists in the invention of the “suspicion of benevolence shown by the other” (which then leads to a state of “being moved” in a positive feed-back comprising both sides in the elicited bonding bout)

• The PFC represents an example of “creation out of nothing” (the suspicion of, and then production of, benevolence)

• “Was Mom totally moved like scrambled eggs?” [the German word “geruehrt” means both being moved and being stirred], asked 3-year-old Jonas (in “Jonas’ World – The Thinking of a Child” edited by Reimara Rossler and the author)

• “Person attractor” (Detlev Linke): the new stable mode of functioning arising in the PFC

• The PFC can be seen to be nothing but a misunderstanding (a mistaken convergence concocted in the universal simulator): were it not interactively confirmed

• The fact that the PFC represents a joint functional trap allows one to speak of “Nature’s Shadchen trick” (with Roger Malina)

• The person attractor resembles a “folie à deux” (a form of “animal schizophrenia”) compared to the physiological autistic functioning of the two autonomous optimizers with cognition

• The PFC constitutes a miracle, worked by the toddler

• Watching this creation-out-of-nothing being achieved by the toddler is a maximally moving event (there appears to be no recorded documentation of this “holy of holies” of humankind)

• The mutually confirmed suspicion of benevolence acquires the character of an “objective truth” (there is no older objective truth)

• The “miracle” goes still further: a third fictitious person is involved in the personogenesis (called “god” or “Buddha” etc. in different cultures): the Dream-Giving Instance DGI or synonymously the “non-I” (or even the “palpable emptiness behind the dream”)

• The “non-I” arises concomitantly with the “I” and the “you” (the two other persons created in the PFC)

• Women are probably more religious (they statistically have more “heart” in the sense of bonding and in regard to the presence of the bonding hormone oxytocin, and moreover form in the majority of cases the partner in the PFC

• Friendly teasing jokes (“humor”) are implicit in the PFC

• Being able to ask a factual question is a new behavioral trait made possible by the PFC

• “Nonautistic languaging” automatically develops as a consequence of the PFC (similarly C. Andy Hilgartner)

• Human society in all its essential aspects is formed as a consequence of the PFC: society is based on asking questions and giving answers on the basis of the mutual trust between persons

• “Personology” – “Adam” means: person made out of soil (with Michael Langer)

• The “physiological autism” of every autonomous optimizer with cognition persists in human beings with an innate “smile blindness” (if the latter is strong enough to prevent the epigenetic PFC from occurring)

• Most alleged autism in humans is “pseudo-autism” (a lesser fluency in some social conventions)

• The causal explanation of autism enables a causal therapy: the caretaker can deliberately produce an “acoustic smile” whenever momentarily happy (the acoustic smile consists in a tender bonding noise made)

• The fact that the caretaker must be the essential bonding partner proves that modern child cribs are a collective tragedy (their uninformed use explains the global rise in autism)

• The “causal therapy of autism” has been shunned by the profession for 37 years (only Gregory Bateson approved of it)

• The reason for the silence seems to lie in the fact that the person attractor is “too easy to elicit”: young mirror-competent bonding animals can predictably be lured into the personogenetic function change, too

• “Galactic export” is the technical term for the export of the personogenetic bifurcation towards non-human mirror-competent bonding animals (since the “small step” of recruiting a second terrestrial life form is the “giant leap” involved)

• Evolutionarily speaking, the epigenetic PFC is a “lethal factor” (since it replaces natural selection by person-controlled caring)

• The PFC nevertheless is the opposite of being “evolutionarily lethal” since it represents a jump up into the heart of point Omega (which thereby ceases to be asymptotic in the sense of being unreachable in finite time)

• The planet-wide shying-away from galactic export is an example of a collective-subconscious “speciesism”

• The fear is palpable ever since Gregory Bateson and John C. Lilly’s joint student, Margaret Howe, tried to adopt a male dolphin 47 years ago; Koko (Francine Patterson’s gorilla life partner) and Kanzi (Susan Savage-Rumbaugh’s grown-up bonobo child) are both underrated

• Stephen Spielberg played on the same taboo in his movie “AI” – which brings-in the added feature that his non-biochemical person is potentially immortal (a fact he played down tactfully)

• Leo Szilard introduced non-human persons in his 1948 sci-fi story “The Voice of the Dolphins” (written in the aftermath of his failure to prevent his other brainchild, the bomb, from being dropped)

• The “Rosette phenomenon” of sperm whales (the carriers of the most sophisticated brains on earth) deserves to be taken seriously: what function has their daily meeting? (Cf. the unpublished sci-fi story “The Tale of the Whale” mentioned in the book “Neosentience” by Bill Seaman and the author)

• “Horizontal exteriority” in the sense of Emmanuel Lévinas is the omnipotence of the PFC, re-activated in an act of fairness

• “Vertical exteriority” is the matching term in the theological sense of Edmond Jabès (with Nils Roeller, Kai Grehn and and Klaus Sander)

• “A program can force the programmer to reply” (with Christa Sommerer and Adolf Muschg)

• “Simulacron Three” (by Daniel F. Galouye 1964) and “A Puppeteer’s World” (‘Welt am Draht’-movie by Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1973) are anticipations of the same insight, followed by the “Matrix” movie and Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity Theory”

• The “Turing test” – a test for personhood – got first passed in ancient Rome by the Cretan slave and subsequent stoic philosopher Epictetus (as I learned from Bob Rosen)

• A mathematical proof that the orangutan brain is functionally superior to the human brain (with Michael Langer, homage to Willie Smits)

• An equation for a universal immune system (with Robert A. Lutz)

• A chemical universal circuit (with Dietrich Hoffmann)

• Differentiable automata exist mathematically (because certain ordinary differential equations can, approximately-if-consistently, be described by automata theory)

• Well-stirred automata exist physically

• Reaction scheme for a temperature-compensated chemical clock

• An “ultra long-term continuous-stirred-tank-reactor version” of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, proposed: to check for a “late explosion” in the number of variables produced (with Michael Conrad)

• “Traffic-light” version of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (with Wolfgang Engelmann and Reimara Rossler)

• “Slinky attractor” (with Okan Gurel and Eberhard Hopf)

• “Reinjection principle”: is valid in more than two-dimensional phase spaces (independently Floris Takens and Christian Mira)

• A chaotic electronic multivibrator (built with Hartmut Waible)

• “The Rossler attractor” (Norman Packard and Ralph Abraham)

• “Spiral chaos”

• “Screw-type chaos”

• “The sound of chaos” known to everyone (idling motor, hoarse voice)

• Chaos (a stereoscopic sound movie made with Reimara Rossler and Thomas Wiehr 1976)

• “Chaos = disciplined tangle” (with Alfred Klemm who turns 100 this year)

• Hyperchaos (name courtesy Paul Rapp)

• “The sound of hyperchaos” (like raindrops falling on a car’s roof)

• “Running electric fan suspended from a long rope” (Olafur Eliasson’s experimental hyperchaos)

• X-attractor in 3 D (still unidentified)

• “Playdough task” (to be given to thousands of toddlers to find the hoped-for X-attractor)

• Atrio-ventricular heart chaos (with Reimara Rossler and Herbert D. Landahl)

• “Endocrinological chaos” (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Sadowski, independently Colin Sparrow)

• Chaos in the Zhabotinsky reaction (with Klaus Wegmann, in parallel to John L. Hudson)

• “Cloud attractor” (with James A. Yorke)

• “Folded-towel map” (in parallel with Masaya Yamaguti’s “folded handkerchief map”)

• “Punctured hyperchaos” as the source of any transfinitely exact 2-D self-similarity or self-affineness (with Michael Klein)

• “The chaotic hierarchy” (the simplest equation was subsequently found by Gerold Baier and Sven Sahle)

• Explicit differentiable Smale-Urysohn solenoid (with Pal Fischer and W.R. Smith)

• “Transfinitely invertible attractors” (almost everywhere so)

• An explicit Poincaré recurrence (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• A generic Milnor-like attractor (with Francisco Doria and Georg C. Hartmann)

• “Flare attractors” (with Georg C. Hartmann, and with Vela Vilupillai in late homage to Richard Goodwin)

• A “society of flare attractors” (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• “Hyperfat attractors” (with John L. Hudson)

• “The fat etc. hierarchy” (with Erik Mosekilde)

• Particle indistinguishability is transfinitely exact (with Hans Primas, Martin Hoffmann and Joe Ford)

• Deterministic entropy (with Hans Diebner)

• “Gibbs-Sackur cell” in phase space

• Classical unit action (the system-specific Sackur cell)

• Micro time reversals in the Sackur cell of the observer (with Richard Wages)

• An estimate of Planck‘s constant (based on Sackur cell)

• Causal (exo) explanation of quantum mechanics (with Peter Weibel)

• Endophysics (with David Finkelstein and John Casti)

• “Boscovich covariance” (with Edgar Heilbronner, Jens Meier and Matthias Schramm)

• Causal (exo) explanation of spin (with Michael Conrad and Debbie Conrad)

• “Single-spin chemistry” in ultra-strong magnetic fields (with Dieter Froehlich, Guenter Haefelinger and Frank Kuske)

• Second Periodic Table of Elements (single-spin chemistry)

• “Cession twin of action” with h/c as its quantum (with Claudia Giannetti)

• Everett’s global Psi-function is replaced by Boltzmann’s global H-function on the exo-level (with Siegfried Zielinski)

• Everett’s observer-centered explanation of nonlocality (1957, p. 149, left column), confirmed

• The momentarily consciousness-bearing Sackur cell in the brain determines both h and c - a conjecture (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Weibel)

• “VX-diagram” (correlated photons measured in two mutually receding spaceships): the completed Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (with John S. Bell, in parallelism to Susan Feingold and Roger Penrose)

• Partially satellite-based VX experiment: will prove that more than one quantum world exists (with Anton Zeilinger)

• Locally-counterfactual superluminal telegraph (with Uwe Niedersen and Jürgen Parisi)

• Everett immortality (with Markus Fix and Bryce DeWitt)

• Aging equation (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• An evolutionary explanation of the higher female longevity (with Reimara Rossler, Peter Kloeden and Bob May)

• A constant-temperature physico-chemical time-of-life clock in the body, predicted (with Reimara Rossler)

• Melatonin as a likely “handle” of the time-of-life clock (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• Lampsacus, hometown of all persons on the Internet (with Valentino Braitenberg and Gerhard J. Lischka)

• An attempt to found Lampsacus in homage to Anaxagoras (with Ezer Weizmann and Mohamed ElNaschie) [quote from Beer Sheva: “This is what Israel was meant for”]

• “Earth-Moon University” in Lampsacus (with Wilfried Kriese, Artur P. Schmidt and George E. Lasker)

• The 16-level “pyramid of knowledge” in Lampsacus

• “WM-diagram”: simultaneous signals sent up and down in time across different levels, in gravity (with Dieter Froehlich)

• A gravitational-redshift proportional size increase, implicit in the WM diagram (with Dieter Froehlich, Heinrich Kuypers and Jurgen Parisi)

• The most energetic photon possible (with Heinrich Kuypers)

• All black holes are “almost-black holes” since they are never finished in finite time (with Dieter Froehlich, Heinrich Kuypers, Hans Diebner and Mohamed ElNaschie)

• Non-uniqueness of simultaneity on the rotating cylinder (with Dieter Froehlich, Normann Kleiner and Francisco J. Muller)

• Correct proof of angular-momentum conservation in gravity (with Heinrich Kuypers and Martin Pfaff)

• Only apparent invariance of transverse size in the new locally isotropic gravitational size increase (in parallel to the only apparent invariance of the transverse size in the likewise locally isotropic Lorentz contraction)

• Einstein’s gravitational Time dilation possesses three new corollaries: Length, Mass and Charge suffer a proportional or antiproportional change (“TeLeMaCh” theorem)

• General relativity is in for a far-reaching mathematical and physical re-interpretation

• c is globally constant (Max Abraham rehabilitated)

• Nonexistence of gravitational waves (as a corollary)

• Nonexistence of gravitons (as a corollary)

• The famous “indirect evidence for gravitational waves” (Hulse-Taylor) explained instead by tidal friction (with Dieter Froehlich and René Stettler)

• A “Reeb foliation in spacetime” exists around every rotating black hole (with Dieter Froehlich following stimulation by Art Winfree)

• Kerr metric disproved (as a corollary)

• Ur-meter disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Ur-kilogram disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Charge conservation in physics disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Black holes are haved of one of their 3 hairs: charge (while mass and angular momentum remain)

• Reissner-Nordstrom metric disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Eddington-Finkelstein transformation disproved (with apology to my good friend David)

• Bekenstein theory disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Hawking radiation disproved (with apology to a world hero)

• “Coordinate singularity at the horizon”: rehabilitated as a physical singularity (via Telemach theorem)

• “Interior Schwarzschild solution” disproved

• “Singularity theorem” inside black hole horizon disproved (with apology to my friend Roger)

• “Wormholes” disproved

• Upper half of “Flamm’s paraboloid” replaced by a generic 3-pseudosphere (the lower half disappears)

• The Sackur-cell explanation of h entails non-existence on the exo level of all field particles

• The exo-nonexistence of the field particles implies that Supersymmetry is nonexistent

• The human Lorenz matrix of facial expressions: a universal natural facial-expressions simulator (with Wilfried Musterle)

• An equation for a one-dimensional – purely temporal – brain (with Michael Conrad, similarly Susie Vrobel)

• Evil is a contagious disease (unlike the good, evil cannot arise spontaneously)

• Children and adults form two different species, ethologically speaking (with Konrad Lorenz)

• “Pongo goneotrophicus” (meaning “the parent-feeding ape”) is a more appropriate biological name for Homo sapiens

• Biochemical life (including Robert Forward’s nuclear-chemical life) on the one hand, and “brain life” on the other, are functionally disjoint (Hanns Ruder introduced me to Forward’s book “The Dragon’s Egg”)

• Electrons have finite volume (owing to Telemach)

• As a corollary, string theory is qualitatively (but not quantitatively) confirmed

• The empirical confirmation of string theory implies that a successful generation of black holes at particle colliders has become much more likely

• Freshly generated black holes are undetectable by the detectors of particle colliders

• The empirical ten-orders-of-magnitude “quasar scaling law” extends downwards by some 50 orders of magnitude (owing to the new properties of black holes)

• There exist no more unstoppable and voracious parasites in the universe than black holes

• Miniature black holes grow exponentially inside solid matter (once they get stuck)

• “Clifford conjecture”: finite-universe solutions to the Einstein equation are unphysical (with Walter Ratjen); if so, there exists no “Gödel solution” and no time travel

• Fractal dimensionality of the cosmos is close to unity, not only empirically but also theoretically (“Fournier-Mandelbrot solution” to the Einstein equation)

• A first consistent history of galaxy formation is taking shape

• The newly discovered very far-away mature old galaxy BX442 (more than ten billion light years) is only the first – optically little-distorted – example of its kind (besides the many still older quasars)

• Low-surface-brightness galaxies (“black galaxies”) are about 50 billion years old (with Henry Gebhardt)

• Giacconi’s ultra-faint equidistributed X-ray sources most likely are ultra-distant ultra-high-redshift quasars – so that redshift measurements are highly desirable (with Dieter Froehlich)

• The microwave background radiation is predicted to merge smoothly with equal-temperature galactic-halo objects (hence the raw data of the Planck mission deserve to be published)

• There exist differentiable dynamical systems that are made up, not of 1-D locally parallel threads as customary, but of 2-D locally parallel surfaces (Bouligand-Winfree theory)

• Inadvertent re-discovery of Zwicky-Chandrasekhar “dynamical friction” (with Dieter Froehlich and Normann Kleiner, in contact with Ilya Prigogine, Alfred Klemm, Joachim Peinke and Jurgen Parisi)

• The not quite straight Hubble-Perlmutter line holds true in a non-expanding Fournier-Mandelbrot cosmos (with Dieter Froehlich, Ramis Movassagh and Anthony Moore)

• Dynamical friction numerically confirmed (with Klaus Sonnleitner)

• “Deterministic statistical thermodynamics” (with Hans Diebner)

• “Deterministic statistical cryodynamics”: exists as a new fundamental science side by side with deterministic statistical thermodynamics (with Klaus Sonnleitner, Frank Kuske and Christophe Letellier)

• “Deterministic ectropy” in statistical cryodynamics (with Ali Sanayei)

• The smaller (almost) black hole in a pair-collision predictably gets re-circulated with all the still in-falling particles which jointly make it up (with Dieter Froehlich)

• Black hole mergers are a source of both charged and uncharged cosmic rays of moderate energies

• Conjecture: 50 percent of all matter in the cosmos is (almost) black holes (with Dieter Froehlich)

• “Metabállon anapaúetai” (metabolizing it remains at rest): Heraclitus’ transfinitely recycling cosmology, proven valid after 2 ½ millennia

• Abramowicz’s “topology inversion” near a black-hole’s horizon, confirmed (with Dieter Froehlich)

• “Identity jumps” between 3 indistinguishable classical particles on a ring (with Peter Weibel and Richard Wages)

• In a classical radiationless atom containing two indistinguishable electrons, two spherical shells are formed (with Dietrich Hoffmann and George Kampis)

• Is the “flotor” (Ralph Hollis) a transluminally fast measuring device? (with Peter Plath)

• The counterfactual superluminal telegraph is “subluminally confirmable (with Uwe Niedersen)

• A counterfactual world-change machine (with Jürgen Parisi and Koichiro Matsuno)

• History of the transfinitely exact indistinguishability (Anaxagoras, Gregorius of Naziance, the Mutakallimún, Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz, Gibbs, Pauli), in exchanges with Martin Hoffmann, Joe Ford, Hans Primas, Peter Weibel, Alexandre Ganoczy, Richard Wages, Rudolf Matzka Elisabeth von Samsonow, Jurgen Heiter, Anna-Sophie Mahler)

• “Everett-Schrödinger Russian Roulette” (with Markus Fix)

• Unit “el-action” is a new universal conserved quantity (like the unit action)

• Unit “el-cession” is a new universal conserved quantity (like the unit cession)

• “G-zero” is a new fundamental constant replacing the universal gravitational constant G and the universal vacuum permeability constant mu-zero, which both remain unchanged locally (similarly Richard J. Cook and György Darvas)

• The nonlinear simultaneity generator in the brain forms a qualitative analog of general relativity (with Eva Ruhnau)

• Cryodynamics and thermodynamics, combined, allow for an eternal cosmology in the footsteps of Heraclitus

• No WIMPs since cold dark matter was disproved

• No dark energy, in the absence of accelerated expansion

• No Big Bang and no space expansion since cryodynamics explains the Hubble-Perlmutter law in a stationary fractal cosmos

• “No Big Bang” also follows directly from the global constancy of c

• No inflation, in the absence of space expansion

• No “primordial” nucleosynthesis, in the absence of space expansion

• No Sunyaev-Zel’dovich cutoff, in the absence of a distant origin of the background radiation

• The decades-old problem of the “survival conditions of the scientific-technological world” (C.F. von Weizsäcker) remains a pressing problem of humankind

• The new results on black holes (facilitated production, non-evaporation, unchargedness, exponential growth inside matter) change the safety equation of any attempt at producing them on earth

• The LHC experiment, designed for producing black holes (amongst other courageous aims like finding the Higgs field), is being run at history-making energies and luminosities for almost two years

• Simultaneously CERN refuses to update its 4-years old LHC safety report – even though a stop may soon come too late

• An attempt to convene an “LHC safety conference” (with Markus Goritschnig and many other scientists) fizzled, although a court would humbly suggest it and a whole country had briefly left CERN out of concern (and the United Nations’ Security Council is concerned with the matter for more than a year – which fact explains the media curfew)

• Leo Szilard’s 1948 proposal to slow-down scientific progress by introducing the modern peer review system (which admits only differentiable increments in the fractal landscape of truth) is co-responsible for the current “Sleeping Beauty” period in science which may prove suicidal

• Proposal to employ the new science of cryodynamics to stabilize Tokamak-type fusion reactors so as to generate unlimited free energy for humankind just got published (I thank Eric Klien for encouragement)

(Friedrich Valjavek kindly compiled an annotated bibliography in 2002: http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/RosslerBibliography.pdf )

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905134912.htm

It is a race against time- will this knowledge save us or destroy us? Genetic modification may eventually reverse aging and bring about a new age but it is more likely the end of the world is coming.

The Fermi Paradox informs us that intelligent life may not be intelligent enough to keep from destroying itself. Nothing will destroy us faster or more certainly than an engineered pathogen (except possibly an asteroid or comet impact). The only answer to this threat is an off world survival colony. Ceres would be perfect.