Edge of the World

December 18, 2032.. - The kids were moving across the ice in fast bursts. The puck danced in the air above and between them. Cat gave Moogie the look to say: "Let's amp this up!" With a sudden rush of enegy, Moog ran up and launched himself from the packed snow, his stick coming close enough to the overhead puck to cause it to turn sharply and pause. Cat, following close behind, swung hard and directed the puck back over the heads of the kids. Jill and Jen tried in vain to apply a series of air slaps to pull the drone puck downward. Then Laura propelled herself off Rick's back to intercept and move it back to court level for an easy tap in by Brin to tie the game.

The puck's response time was fast. In fact, it was almost impossible to hit it directly if you tried. The new tech anticipated your every movement using a network connected to your snowsuit EEG rig, and the rigs of everyone around you. Using a combination of movement, headset input and eye tracking, you could swing your arm one way, while simultaneously "telling" the puck to fly in the other direction using your eyes to outmaneuver another player. When two player's intents collided, the puck often shot straight up like a magnet flipping out of a field. This happened when Jen and her dad, professor Augustine, tried to lock in on it at the same time. "Zip" it shot 50 feet up, then fell with an erratic up-and-down spiral as players scurried and jumped for it.

Cat gained control again and flicked her stick with a swooping gesture toward the open area nearest to the IceCube 1 tower where Moog stood ready. The rules were no contact with the flying puck. Its sensors responded to the gestures and intent of every player. Protective mesh over the whirling blades kept hands from the rotors during finger glances. Touching the puck incurred a one-point penalty, but the newer tech made contact increasingly rare.

Moog moved swiftly and looked especially tall and slender in his red, yellow and green arctic snow suit. Years of playing hackysack in Jamaca had made him quick and nibble, even for his late 40s. Surrounded with a circle of five kids, dreadlocks tied in the back, arms folded across his chest, he stepped swiftly through the flurry of feet to recover control of the puck by raising his hands with a sudden upward motion on either side of it. It came to a halt within the football goal of his extended arms. Moog gave it a slight mental tap forward to Cat who responded with a full body air punch, which sent it cantering towards Jen, who was wide open across the ice field near the entrance road to IceCube. She gave a final small mental nudge and a flick of the wrist to win the game, and we all rushed for the steaming hot coco and donuts Reg had brought to the side of the field - the winning team got first dibs on the jelly filling, so I made sure to grab a blueberry one for Cat.

The puck's multi-lens circuitry was from her snowbot navigation design, which would prove essential here during the harsh winter ahead. Behind us, on the sea-ice stood the two tallest buildings on the continent -- the IceCube Lab where scientists searched for almost undetectable subatomic particles -- neutrinos. (Several of those hardworking scientists happened to be our parents.)

How tall is the IceCube array compared to the Empire State Building?

The "IceCube" Telescope

The Neutrino Detection Project, led by Jen's dad, Dr. Peter Gorham, a physicist from the University of Hawaii, was the first scientific group to detect the highest known energy neutrinos in the universe. He excitedly gushes (though still struggles finding the words to describe something he's only beginning to understand): "The neutrino is the most ridiculous particle you can imagine. They exist, but we can't get our hands on them, because they seem to just exist in another place. And, as a physicist, even though I understand it mathematically, and I understand it intellectually, it still hits me in the gut that there is something here, surrounding me, almost like some kind of spirit or God, that I can't touch, but I can measure it. I can make a measurement. It's like measuring the spirit world, or something like that. - From Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

“Neutrinos are electrically neutral leptons, and interact very rarely with matter. When they do react with the molecules of water in the ice, they can create charged leptons (electrons, muons, or taus). These charged leptons can, if they are energetic enough, emit Cherenkov radiation. This happens when the charged particle travels through the ice faster than the speed of light in the ice, similar to the bow shock of a boat traveling faster than the waves it crosses. This light can then be detected by photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) within the digital optical modules (or DOMs) making up IceCube. Even though it is located in Antarctica, IceCube is more sensitive to point sources more in the northern hemisphere than the southern. It can observe astrophysical neutrino signals from any direction, but in the southern hemisphere these neutrinos are swamped by the downgoing cosmic-ray muon background.” - More

Neutrinos carry away most of the gravitational energy released by the collapse of massive stars and from supermassive black holes found at the cores of active galaxies. Electric charge-free and with an extremely small mass (0.1 eV or greater, compared with about 0.5 MeV for the electron), the neutrino is considered a key element, because it can relate both with matter and dark matter - if there is such a thing.

Computer data shows a neutrino impact amid IceCube's hollow columns.

"In 2013, the IceCube neutrino experiment at the South Pole reported the observation of two ultra-high-energy neutrino events, which they named after Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie. The third, they nicknamed "Big Bird".

In 2018 Astronomers traced a high-energy neutrino to its cosmic source for the first time, the jets of a Blazer black hole which points in our general direction from within the Orien constellation. Cosmic rays are emitted simultaneously, but their charged nature causes them to take a meandering path.

The 10-meter South Pole Telescope and the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) Telescope against the Milky Way. BICEP2 recently detected gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background, a discovery that supports the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe began. (Photo: Keith Vanderlinde, National Science Foundation)

Great moments in science - a toast to the inflation of the universe.

The Energy of Waves

Through our eyes the universe is perceiving itself - Alan Watts

At the opposite pole, the Inuit man paddles harder and harder, left, right, left, right. On the edge of air and water, his kayak glides past walls of ice and rocky outcroppings. Faster he glides, with each even stroke accelerating the craft on the smooth surface away from the turbulent shoreline.

This morning I gradually awoke, still gliding along the icy artic coast, the voice of an elder in my mind. “When you travel the surface between elements, find the rhythm. There you will move faster than among either element alone.”

As I paddle, near the massive outcropping, my efforts are slowed. Buffeted by waves as they bounce off the rocks and set my boat rocking, counter to my efforts. It is not until I adjust my strokes to use the rocking to my advantage that I can use the waves to increase my speed. Lifting to the crest and moving farward rapidly, then sinking into the trough and holding steady until the next wave arrives.

"It's similar to the waves we see on the ocean," said Unruh. "They are not affected by the intense dance of the individual atoms that make up the water on which those waves ride."

"Only there, behind the edge of filiments, and in the corners of black holes, will you find true speed."

More: Solving one of nature's great puzzles: What drives the accelerating expansion of the universe?

TeVeS - I Still Believe

Yesterday we found another guest to invite...
Chinese astronomer Sheng Zhao.

Tensor-vector-scalar gravity (TeVeS) – a 'simple' formula that explicitly tells how gravity should behave in the transition zone between the solar system, where the golden laws of Newton and Einstein apply, and the outskirts of galaxies. It’s a MOND theory that works perfectly for most galaxies. But it has yet to explain the bullet cluster. MOND stands for MOdified Newtonian Dynamics, discovered by the Israeli physicist Prof. Dr. Mordehai Milgrom.

“Under MOND, mass is much more effective at bending space-time than under General Relativity, so it takes less stuff in the universe to account for all the gravity we measure. When applied to just galaxies, MOND can predict very well the behavior that astronomers observe. But when MOND is applied to larger structures like clusters of galaxies, it fails. To make MOND work for clusters, it must include more complicated concepts, such as entities called dark fields, which are different from dark matter, but work in a similar way to alter the amount of gravity present.”

"One primary success of TeVeS is that it provides an enhancement of gravitational lensing, which could not be achieved by other MONDian theories." - 2005

How Would Galaxies Form in a Universe Without Dark Matter? Researchers Find Out in 2020

The Bullet cluster and others exhibit that under the right conditions, gravity exhibits non-local effects. One of the surviving MOND theories is MOG, a theory of gravity with non-local effects akin to quantum physics on the scale of galaxy clusters - when the relative density of surrounding matter becomes sparse and light breaks free of shapiro time delay.

Of Emergent Gravity and Eternal Inflation

Cat handed the paper back across the desk to Erik Verlinde. The intro read, "Gravity is not a fundamental force of nature, but an emergent phenomenon. On galactic scales matter reduces volume-scaling entropy in its environment, and manifests itself as apparent dark matter."

According to Dr. Verlinde, there is no need to add a mysterious particle to represent dark matter in the math. In a November 2016 paper, Verlinde showed how his theory of gravity accurately predicts the velocities by which the stars rotate around the center of the Milky Way, as well as the motion of stars inside other galaxies.

"We have evidence that this new view of gravity actually agrees with the observations," says Verlinde. "At large scales, it seems, gravity just doesn't behave the way Einstein's theory predicts."

At first glance, Verlinde's theory presents features similar to modified theories of gravity like MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics, Mordehai Milgrom (1983)). However, where MOND tunes the theory to match the observations, Verlinde's theory starts from first principles.  "A totally different starting point," according to Verlinde.

Cat had little doubt professior Verlinde's theory was right.

Adapting the holographic principle

One of the ingredients in Verlinde's theory is an adaptation of the holographic principle, introduced by his tutor Gerard 't Hooft (Nobel Prize 1999, Utrecht University) and Leonard Susskind (Stanford University). According to the holographic principle, all the information in the entire universe can be described on a giant imaginary sphere around it. Verlinde now shows that this idea is not quite correct — part of the information in our universe is contained in space itself.

"What if a black hole was actually a hologram, with the event horizon serving as the “film,” encoding what was inside? It was “a nutty idea, a cool idea,” Leonard Susskind recalled.

“This is what we found out about Nature’s bookkeeping system,” Dr. Gerard ’t Hooft wrote in 1993. “The data can be written onto a surface, and the pen with which the data are written has a finite size.”

This extra information is required to describe that other dark component of the universe: Dark energy, which is believed to be responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. As Verlinde showed in his 2010 work, ordinary gravity can be encoded using the information on the imaginary sphere around the universe. Taking into account the effects of this additional information of ordinary matter within the sphere, Verlinde comes to a stunning conclusion, the result of the additional information in the bulk of space is a force that nicely matches that attributed to dark matter.

Source: New theory of gravity might explain dark matter (2016)
Quintessence - The theory that dark energy is not a constant, it may change over time.

What If Our Understanding of Gravity Is Wrong?
Improving TeVaS with the Dark Dust of Relativistic MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) - Constantinos Skordis and Tom Zlosnik

At the distant edge of the perceived universe, matter appears to accelerate before disappearing. Waves collide and merge, so a variety of shapes are possible for the expanding universe.

The Art of Motion

Back in the Inuit villiage, a group of colorfully dressed children are winding ribbons around a May pole, braiding colors to a circling rhythm.

The darkest time of year at the North Pole is the Winter Solstice, approximately December 21. There has been no sunlight or even twilight since early October. The darkness lasts until the beginning of dawn in early March.

The May Day celebration has ended and the older boys have the task of removing the pole. The first two tug and push to no avail, stuck in the frozen mud. A third, smaller boy, approaches the pole and sets his hand on it and gives a little push. Then another gentle push, and another, and soon the top of the pole is vibrating back and forth. With a slight upward push of his hand with each nudge, the bottom of the pole slowly rises out of the permafrost.

Bending light with fragments of energy (Impetus)

Does light really bend, or do waves combine while canceling out other waves?

In physics, a redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation (such as light). Light redshifts as it passes black holes. Gravitational waves, which travel at the speed of light, have the same redshift phenomena.

Shortly before his original Artic trip, Langford had dropped out of his Masters program to pursue a dream of restoring ice to polar tundra using a Peltier element that produced ice without energy. Within a year, the efficient cooling technology we were developing became the very popular curb-side cooler business you know of today as "PopBox". Designed so the lids were flush with ground level, the solar panel on top allowed the box's solid-state battery to cool the lower chamber while heating a meal in the top - hot and ready to eat the moment residents returned home - it popped up the minute they walked up to their frontdoor - hence the name PopBox. Using a safe sodium battery made the box over 100 pounds, but that was perfect since it discouraged theft.

The company’s focus shifted several more times as we grew in size to compete with Tesla and Amazon, shortening the name to just Pop! Early employees joked about abandoned ideas including delivery by Neaural Lace trained dogs delivering food from PopBox vending machine refrigerators called MunchiePack around London that would be stocked with grab-and-go items. The dogs would be registered as emotional support pets using a transferable NFTs. Employees recollected Langford claiming Snoop Dogg was onboard. (The rapper could not be reached for comment). When generative AI started exploding, Langford saw an opportunity. Through a variety of maneuvers and exaggerations, he would successfully position Pop! as one of the leading unicorn AI companies of the moment, lining up investors to mobilize around their secret strength, which very few knew beyond the inner core in those early days.

"Most every design you see today is the shadow of some inspiration from the past. If you wish to find fresh inspiration, seek out that source." from the teacher to the student. - Rob Macks

Levitating objects with light - Cal Tech

Seasons | Our Mentors

On the Run