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Blogger William Orem wrote on Sep. 7, 2009 @ 14:57 GMT
I am posting this month from the Holy Land, in an area known locally as the “Galile” but more famous to westerners as the region surrounding the Sea of Galilee. The “sea” is, in fact, a large freshwater lake, the lowest of its kind on earth. Its various names--Galile, Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, Sea of Tiberias—testify both to its significance in antiquity and to the multiple historical streams that feed the region. To the scientific eye, the lake is a particularly beautiful manifestation of the Jordan Great Rift Valley, a structure brought about by the split between the Arabian and African tectonic plates. Looking across its azure surface from the west I can see the rocky steeps of the Golan Heights; beyond them, just perceptible after sunset, appear the lights of Syria, and the greater middle east.
Moving around Israel this week I have been struck again and again by the significance of domes to human cultural expression. In the “Old City” section of Jerusalem, still kept behind massive stone walls, the skyline is wholly dominated by the Dome of the Rock, refurbished in glaring gold recently by King Hussein of Jordan. In the Christian Quarter of the divided city believers gather at the double-domed Church of the Holy Sepulcher (itself divided among Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Roman Catholic and other Christian denominations, an arrangement not without its own tensions). With a little hunting—the door is tiny and all but concealed by Arab market stalls--I was able to discover the silver-domed Church of St. John the Baptist, built in the 5th century, rebuilt in the 11th by Crusaders in one of the many periods during which Jerusalem was being overthrown. In a fanciful way one might see the unending struggle for possession of this city as a debate over domes.
Traveling north from the place once called the Center of the World one finds Jerusalem’s architectural predilection is not singular: domes appear in every Arab village, most often accompanied by minarets, gesturing skyward as if in longing. (Depending on their size, some villages have two, or three, or – once -- as many as six visible mosques.) More recent religions have also found Israel: in Haifa, adherents of the Baha’i faith have erected their own dome at the “Shrine of the Bab.”
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In Tzfat, a Kaballistic Jewish community just north of the Sea of Galilee, I peered into the domed interior of an ancient synagogue and reflected that regardless of origin these structures are almost always painted with stars. At one time the pinnacle of architectural ability—one thinks of the great Duomo in Florence---domes replicate the apparent arch of the sky, what for all but the most recent human history was thought to be something like an enormous inverted bowl, or possibly a transparent sphere studded with lights.
And again I am struck by that seemingly universal inclination skyward we, as a species, inherit. Up there, the Pythagoreans dreamed in nearby Greece, moved the timeless perfections of mathematics. Up there, various sages of the Middle East cried, dwelt the divine. In Jewish tradition, Elijah rode to the heavens in a flaming chariot; for Muslims, Mohammad took a night journey to al-Aqsa — now a steely gray dome -- before rising to the sky on a winged horse. The theme seems to be that we build domes to commemorate some moment of cosmic identification, a transcendent connection between humanity and the broader universe.
I am moved by these structures, by the aspiration they imply -- and am led to reflect that our generation has a new type of cosmic dome as well: that of the observatory. Though we have too often allowed scientific inquiry to become passionless in the public mind, these modern domes are, to the ones built atop ancient mountains, more than a little bit akin. They are part of the overall human quest for “gnosis,” or understanding; they bring us together as a species intent on discovering our place in the cosmic. They inspire -- or should inspire -- a grand sense of purpose and discovery. I would submit that we fail as moderns if we think of our holy places, from whatever tradition we hail (if any), as expressing a connection to profundity -- while regarding our observatories as “mere machines,” the province of a fusty few.
To my eye, the domes of the Keck, ESO and elsewhere are as much a cause for deep reflection as the various monuments to world faiths that fill this region. And, like them, their interiors are filled with stars.
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Lawrence B. Crowell wrote on Sep. 8, 2009 @ 18:01 GMT
IN the ancient or medieval world the domes created a space inside which set to focus of ritual activity. The telescope dome houses instruments which focus us on great distances.
LC
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Georgina Parry wrote on Sep. 8, 2009 @ 22:56 GMT
Contemplation and observation. Private contemplation in a beautiful and peaceful space can be a deep exploration of the personal experience of subjective reality. Whether that is within the natural environment, church, mosque or temple. A place set apart from the noise and haste of the world and worldly affairs. Ritual does not allow deep contemplation but serves other social functions. The construction of many places of worship go beyond that required for ritual. Seeking to inspire and demonstrate the magnificence of the particular deity (and sometimes also the wealth of the patron).
The housing of the telescope is a result of its function. The telescope seeks to give us comprehension of external reality that exists separately from the experience of the observer. It could also serve as a space for peaceful, private contemplation should the astronomer wish. Both contemplation and observation are valuable attempts to reach for deeper comprehension. One looking out, the other searching within, freed from the distractions of everyday life.
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Helen Horton wrote on Feb. 12, 2010 @ 11:38 GMT
As far as I know there is no specific religious or spiritual reason for the domes. It's purely architectural, and was implemented by the Turks (what I discovered by downloading some articles from
rapidhsare SE and which was actually a surprise to me). I must say that many mosques, catholic and orthodox churches carrying this design are quite beautiful. sure thing, I can't agree more saying that I'm also moved by these structures, by the aspiration they imply. as for the modern dome -observatory or planetarium- it is one of the best places to blend the rational scientific with the mystic sense of enchantment, as everyone who has experienced the strong “wow effect” under a dark starry sky knows. Things that seem contradictory (science, technology, enchantment) may coexist in harmony there, stimulating questions and thoughts.
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Lawrence B. Crowell wrote on Feb. 12, 2010 @ 13:21 GMT
The dome was first introduced by the Byzantine Greeks. St Sophia was Greek Orthodox Church, but converted to a grand Mosque after the Turks took Constantinople in 1453. Islam early took on the dome as the format for a Mosque, which was borrowed from the Byzantine Greeks. The Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the one which Mohammed is thought to have ascended to heaven from, and which the al-Haram ash-Sharif (Most Noble Holy Ground --- Dome on the Rock) is based upon, is a remodelled version of a Church established by the Byxantine emperor Justinian a century before Muslims took Jerusalem. Within Islamic architecture the dome was perfected into works of art.
Cheers LC
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Feb. 12, 2010 @ 23:37 GMT
Hagia Sophia means holy wisdom in Greek. This building has a big half-spherical roof surrounded by smaller ones in order to be stable.
Domus means house. Our Dom is the house of our dominus (Lord) that dominates all other churches.
Several thousand years ago, priests used "open air domes", i.e. round areas surrounded by a ring of stones or of wood precisely arranged as to measure shadows that indicate particular positions of the sun.
Presumably, first mathematics arose from religious observations of space/heaven.
Perhaps tho oldest picture of the space/heaven, the so called Himmelsscheibe was found near to such an old place at Nebra in Saxony-Anhalt. The place was most likely used for both observation of sun and moon for belonging religious activities. The metallic green Himmelsscheibe (disk) shows golden applications: the sun, the moon, and also a few stars.
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Georgina Parry wrote on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 01:33 GMT
Its quiet here and the science and philosophy blog is now too long to load easily
From Wikipedia: "McTaggart argued that our perception of time is an illusion, and that time itself is merely ideal. He introduced the notions of the "A series" and "B series" interpretations of time, representing two different ways that events in time can be arranged. The A series corresponds to our everyday...
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Its quiet here and the science and philosophy blog is now too long to load easily
From Wikipedia: "McTaggart argued that our perception of time is an illusion, and that time itself is merely ideal. He introduced the notions of the "A series" and "B series" interpretations of time, representing two different ways that events in time can be arranged. The A series corresponds to our everyday notions of past, present, and future. The A series is "the series of positions running from the far past through the near past to the present, and then from the present to the near future and the far future" .... This is contrasted with the B series, in which positions are ordered from earlier to later, i.e. the series running from earlier to later moments.
"McTaggart argued that the A series was a necessary component of any full theory of time, but that it was also self-contradictory and that our perception of time was, therefore, ultimately an incoherent illusion."
The A series it is argued has to exist but presupposes that an A series does exist.So the A series is a generally accepted assumption of the ordering of events.
From Wikipedia: "Broadly, McTaggart argues that if events are not ordered by an A as well as a B series then there cannot be said to be change. At the center of his argument is the example of the death of Queen Anne. This event is a death, it has certain causes and certain effects, it is later than the death of Queen Elizabeth etc., but none of these properties change over time. Only in one respect does the event change wiht respect to the A series."
Past, present and future are our general working assumption about time. But it is not necessarily correct, it is a prior assumption. The A series is building on the past to form the present and on to the future or the future becoming manifested in the present and then receding into the past. The B series gives earlier and later events in a series where there are cause and effect. But there is only change, as we recognize, it if it is superimposed on the A series.
Interpretation. The B series is the actual spatial changes the causality events occurring in timeless space. (This causality always has to be ahead of observation of the event due to delay because of transmission of the information about it, whether em, sound, or printed news.) It does not move in time from that causality front it just "is" and then "is no more" as it is superseded by new events, new spatial arrangements. It is only by interpreting that timeless change with the (assumed not proven) A series past, present future is the spatial event interpreted into in a temporal framework rather than a non temporal series of spatial arrangements.
Past, present, and future belong to the biological representation of reality and the mathematical model of space-time. The A series is shown by Mc Taggart to be an assumption prone to infinite regression and so to be unrealistic. Unitemporal Now, the causality front, or ever changing arrangement of the unitemporal object universe gives the imaginary B series. A sequence of earlier and later spatial configurations, (without an observer's temporal perspective), necessary for cause an effect.
So rather than throwing out time entirely as Mc taggart did it can be seen that both A and B series are required. B for causality and A for human comprehension. B belongs to the object universe that actually exists concretely and A belongs to the human representations of the universe, the image reality.
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John Merryman replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 03:32 GMT
Georgina,
This format does have problems for those of us not on the digital mainline. It would be nice if it could be programed to just add new postings and not have to reload the entire thread. I seem to be having serious computer problems anyway. The safari program on my three year old mac has broken down and I hauled out the ten year old one and it's loading faster than the newer one. Going to have the shop reload it, but thinking of asking for contributions to the new computer fund as my Christmas gift list.
I don't think we have chipped away at spacetime geometry very much. It's like sticking a program in a computer not configured for it. "Does not compute." It just goes too far into the architecture. What does 28 dimensions mean, if time isn't a dimension? What is a particle, if there can be no dimensionless point in time? It's all fuzzy, but fuzzy is energy and it's all energy.
The funny thing is that once you really get into the idea of time as an effect of motion and your motion is just part of that larger whole, then you really start to blend in to the larger whole, but the whole of humanity is still locked in the race of atomized individuals into the future, with everyone afraid to really look around, or they might lose their place in the race and often for good reason. Then you start to ask how can you get off. I guess I've just tried not to bang my head on the wall too hard, but still do it some.
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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 06:17 GMT
John,
It is a little inconvenient but it would be a shame for all the previous posts to disappear. Perhaps they could be put into an accessible archive.
I agree the complexity becomes too great to handle. A more holistic approach would be helpful.I also think it is very important to consider what is currently being modeled by scientists. Is it human perception? Which it might be if it is based on science derived from the theory of space-time and relativity, which only relates to perception and not concrete reality. Or is it a model of the unobservable object reality but assuming that that which is not observed is not existent?( But Abra Cadara take away the space-time hanky and there it is). Or is it mathematics gone feral?I don't have an answer to that yet, it may be some of each. A holographic universe for example sounds like perception not concrete reality.
The Object universe doesn't have a time dimension but it does have change. Objects can move from A to B as steps in a sequence of spatial change, if artificially broken up that way, but do not exist in the past and the present. When it is at B it is only at B, when at A only at A. So if the space is static, lets go with Newton on that, the change has to be a spatial change within that static structure. I thought of the 3 static vector dimensions to represent the unchnaging space and a spatial dimension to represent continuous change.
Continuous change in that "orientation",in, with disturbance of unseen environment, that can effect photons in the region, can then explain gravity and gravitational time dilation outside of the space-time field model.The dimension of change will be the "direction" of gravity and will relate to passage of time in space-time but not be that time dimension..
Lawrence says I can't have spatial change as a dimension. Maybe it shouldn't be called a dimension but it still is something imo. You don't like the model and have explained why. I am at an impasse.
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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 11:07 GMT
Clarification: The time dimension has past present and future all existent along it. That dimension is the A series of time. That is not required in a model where only (unitemporal) Now exists. There can still be change at Now but it does not involve movement along a time dimension, as it is always Now. It is that, then that, then that and so on in a sequence. This is B series of time. There is earlier and later, before and after in the sequence but not past, present, and future.
Other thoughts on a model: Then there has to be a way to describe the where of things. As there is always continuous change it might be better to describe an object as a transition between two spaces. Thats one of the appealing things about quaternion mathematics. It seems to be built with in the notation.I do not know if others would consider quaternion mathematics helpful or a hindrance. I suppose mathematicians will want to describe things in their own way, how it suits them.From one quaternion to the next there is a rotation and if change is also a movement along that not time but spatial change "dimension", "in" (like gravity), then this begins to look like the a model of absolute movement as seen in celestial bodies.
Between any time interval an apparently stationary object (to an observer) will have moved along the "in dimension " between two imaginary frames of relative space and undergone some rotation while the observer sees no change in spatial position of the object but gravity will have been present.If growth is added into this, the rotation and "in change" and growth gives a spiral form. Seen in galaxies. The object may also not be stationary to the observer but moving in 3d relative space, which will add a third kind of change.So we have rotation, gravity and other motion in 3D space.
Something to consider.
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John Merryman replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 11:52 GMT
Georgina,
Not get rid of the old posts, but have a program that would scroll through what is loaded and add the new ones, not one which has to reload everything.
One thing we need to do is develop a dualistic sensibility. Reality is energy manifesting information/order and this information/order defining energy. The problem is that information is necessarily static and energy is dynamic. Trying to perceive reality directly would be like a movie camera that had the shutter stay open and the film move past it. Our brains have to create these static images and then recreate motion back out of them, or it would all be blurred and fuzzy and we would have never developed beyond being mental ameabae.
Complexity theory is the closest, with its dichotomies of top down order, vs. bottom up process, but it defines this as chaos. While energy is fuzzy, it's not chaotic, as it follows fundamental principles, such as paths of least resistance, but it's not conveniently linear, as the rational mind likes. It's this non-linearity which physics spends so much time trying to create linear models out of and so we get these mental knots of strings and dimensions that look like bucky balls, as imagined by C.S. Escher.
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Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 18:18 GMT
John,
yes I understand it would speed things up.
I understand what you are saying about paths of least resistance and non linearity. Maybe the flow of macroscopic objects through (non relative) space, giving gravity, is that. The paths of larger objects determine the paths of least resistance for other bodies in proximity. Smaller sub atomic particles go where the environment takes, them (like grains of silt in the river or dust in the air.)having greater freedom.
Together with flow along paths of least resistance there will be processes of deposition and erosion. Building and dismantling both occurring and leading to structural growth and development. It may occur in a similar sort of way at all scales. Its what we observe on Earth in rivers and in growth and development of organisms via different concentration gradients of chemicals that direct the growth and development process.
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John Merryman replied on Dec. 9, 2010 @ 04:20 GMT
Georgina,
I think it is something of a perpetual convection cycle. Energy radiates out, while mass collapses in and in a way, they are both following paths of least resistance.
Considering the universe as infinite, visible light travels for some13 billion lightyears before it completely fades to black body radiation and space is permeated with this background radiation, but it is...
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Georgina,
I think it is something of a perpetual convection cycle. Energy radiates out, while mass collapses in and in a way, they are both following paths of least resistance.
Considering the universe as infinite, visible light travels for some13 billion lightyears before it completely fades to black body radiation and space is permeated with this background radiation, but it is very smooth, with a temperature of 3.7k. The most logical reason why this seems to be a universal constant it there must be some phase transition at that temperature. Think in terms of a convection cycle and the dew point of air. It's the amount of moisture the air can hold before it condenses out as dew or rain. What this 3.7k is, is a form of "dew point" that the vacuum of space can hold black body radiation, which is light with a wave length so long, it is just about flat. So that above this temperature, this radiation starts to curl up in little sub-atomic particles that tend to clump together. Then the cycle starts back the other way and eventually they all collapse to the point of heating up and breaking these curls open and radiating back out as light. The problem though, is that the pendulum swings way past this stellar formation and this process continues to implode to the point of galactic vortices. I'm not saying Black holes, because while the collapse might be so powerful that normal light can't escape, this infalling energy is still ejected out the poles of these vortices, as gamma rays and jets of radiation. Not falling into some other dimension. This then is the other side of the cycle and that light starts its journey back out billions of lightyears to the point of cooling off and condensing back out again as those primary gravitational particles.
The idea of spacetime geometry creates some confusing mental images. One is the idea that if you were in a spaceship falling into one, time would slow down, because your acceleration would be equivalent to falling at lightspeed. The fact is that you would be falling at lightspeed! Clock or no clock. Think about that. When you drop a pencil, you can see it fall to the floor, but if that pencil were falling past the horizon line of a black hole, it would be falling at the speed of light! That, I think, is a far more interesting and important fact than the pencils clock has stopped. Of course it's stopped, because it's literally been turned to light. According to spacetime logic, if I throw a log on the fire, while I see the log burn up, from the logs perspective, time has slowed to a stop, because it is now light and light is timeless, since photons have no internal motion.
The basic problem is that our minds want and need to create a static impression, model, theory, whatever, of a dynamic process. The irony of modern physics is that a "Theory of Everything" is an oxymoron. A theory is a reductionistic model, but everything is fundamentally wholistic. As Stephen Wolfram put it, you need a computer the size of the universe to compute the universe. There are no shortcuts. There is the absolute and the infinite. Everything inbetween is relative to everything else. The question then, is simply to figure out the various things we can do and go about them as best as possible.
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Peter Jackson wrote on Dec. 8, 2010 @ 18:51 GMT
Lawrence, et al.
A little more on Domes as I once researched them. They go back well beyond the Byzantine Greeks, but you're right in that they pushed the technology on to new limits, and gained far better longevity (which is why few remain from previously). Actually they pushed well BEYOND technology, as did the Romans, as the history of domes is fraught with failures due to poor and over simplistic understanding of the structural dynamics.
Christopher Wren still struggled horribly with St Paul's, and the present dome we see will not stand up. It's a purely decorative 'dressing' over the real structure hidden beneath.
There have now been a few films showing the iconic Dome of the Capital in Washington DC either blowing up or in ruins. What do you think it's made of? I once won a £100 bet with an engineering professor who thought he knew better and should have done. All the films show it as masonry. It would not stand up as a masonry dome. It's one of very few made of cast iron.
Architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, properly understanding and using the one extra single dimension, rendered almost all other dome theory obsolete and brought a new simpler understanding of forces.
I believe to perceive the sky as a dome could be too conceptually misleading, but there are other parallels with current physics, where we don't seem to have quite yet found the equivalent of the complex but really simple geodesic solution.
Peter
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