An Autonomous Agent

exploring the noosphere

Category: history (Page 1 of 17)

Massive Crater and Younger Dryas

Bright Insight did a concise summary of this news and its potential implications. Worth the watch. Staggering, can you even imagine what an object ten billion tons traveling at 12 miles per second… does to an ice sheet two miles thick. Also consider this article on meteorite strew fields in order to understand that this event could have had multiple impact sites which could be related to the formation of the Carolina Bays.

The 12,000 Year old Comet that Landed on TEDTalks…and Erased Ancient Civilization – Greenland Crater

Casual Randall Carlson

Randall Carlson does a nice job explaining subjects which would otherwise be incredibly dense. I especially enjoyed this entire series: Cosmography 101. In this series he points out that ancient humans around the time of the last ice age appear to have been cosmographists. With this in mind he explores various scenarios of what might have occurred based on geological evidence. Once you finish hearing what Carlson presents I am certain you will know more than you wanted about the Younger Dryas. You will also encounter many comprehensive descriptions of comets and asteroids. Unfortunately for Carlson, his ideas on the events of the last ice age are an anathema to some of the worlds popular ideologies: those who hold a religious based on the Bible’s account of a supernatural guiding force and those who hold a scientific view based on gradualism. If you maintain a religious understanding, then the proof that these historical events occurred through purely physical interactions between material things following mathematical laws, then you will most likely close your attention to the evidence immediately. The same refusal will occur by those scientifically oriented who think their already correct view of this time era is true and scientifically valid. Dare to be challenged?

Randall Carlson YouTube Lectures

Daniel Sheehan

Daniel Sheehan is a brilliant thinker who has written a fascinating book on his memories as a top lawyer in the United States entitled The People’s Advocate. Additionally, he gives amazing public lectures on both his experiences and world history. All of his YouTube videos are worth watching. Here are some that I started with:

Iran-Contra Scandal
 

Covert and Lesser Known U.S. Actions in and after WWII
 

Daniel Sheehan on 9/11

Order Out of Chaos – Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers

A little bit of quantum physics, chemistry, biology and philosophy all rolled up into one important book. Order Out of Chaos (La Nouvelle Alliance as originally published in French) by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers is a paradigm changing book. The first parts of the book are an excellent overview on the historical development of science – the evolution of dynamics and the discovery of thermodynamics and their relationship is particularly fascinating.

Once the reader gets to the later parts, it becomes somewhat abstract and the reader may not be able to get through it without a background in chemistry and physics. Chapter Nine, when the phrase “Order Out of Chaos” is developed, is difficult. Despite this, it is much more accessible than a scientific paper on the subject. It may take two or three reads to fully absorb the ideas presented. Overall it is one of my favorite reads.

Some important conclusions from the book:

  • The arrow of time objectively exists and it arises from non-equilibrium and irreversibility at the microscopic level.
  • The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can be understood as a selection principal. It operates as a negative on allowable initial conditions, in other words it restricts systems with certain initial conditions from existing.
  • Time travel to the past is not allowed by thermodynamics because time reversal requires infinite information concerning the initial conditions of the system, an impossibility to an observer in the universe. This implies that information is closely connected to irreversibility and time.
  • Thermodynamics can be expressed from dynamics through the idea of correlations and internal-time operators. Thus, dynamics has been extended once again (general relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory).
  • The universe as a whole is in a non-equilibrium state and it is an irreversible process with pockets of reversible dynamics.
  • In general, one of the goals of the authors is to make dynamics and thermodynamics consistent with each other.

The Dancing Wu Li Masters – Gary Zukav

Gary Zukav’s book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, simply describes (without math) quantum physics and relativity since their inception at the beginning of the 20th century. Zukav skillfully presents the paradoxes and questions posed and asked by some of the smartest people in history including Einstein, Bohr, Born, Heisenberg, von Neumann, Feynman, etc… He carefully elucidates the evolution of the answers to these paradoxes and questions.

There are numerous analogies with eastern cosmologies which may help readers understand the wild results and conclusions of modern physics. The book is perfect for those without a strong background in the quantitative sciences who wish to understand what quantum physics reveals about the universe. Although dated, (1979) it is inspirational and should get readers excited about reading more up to date books.

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